Black Gambit

by Clark, Eric

  He caught sight of two Russians he knew. One was an attaché who had once tried, cautiously, to sound him out as a potential spy when he was at Defense. The other was the man with whom Sunnenden hoped to raise the Zorin case.

  Khrenin was listed on the mission’s list of diplomats as a second secretary, the second lowest ranking. But Sunnenden knew that his position in the Party was considerably higher than those who ostensibly outranked him. What made the charade amusing to Sunnenden was the open deference with which Khrenin’s superiors treated him.

  He and Sunnenden knew each other. Sipping his drink slowly to make it last, Sunnenden looked up and saw Khrenin watching. The Russian nodded, and moments later the two joined him. Khrenin went through the formality of introducing him to the attaché, who obviously preferred not to recall their previous meeting.

  Soon the attaché drifted away. ‘You are with the State Department now,’ said Khrenin. He had hardly any accent. ‘So enormous. Our Foreign Ministry is too big, but compared with the State Department …’ His voice tailed away.

  A waiter appeared with a tray of drinks. Sunnenden refused. The Russian took a glass of vodka, drained it in one gulp, replaced the glass and took another.

  ‘I shall probably get drunk,’ said the Russian. ‘These receptions — so dull. Don’t you think so?’ Sunnenden smiled sympathetically but said nothing.

  ‘But of course, you must, we rarely see you. Wise fellow.’

  Again Khrenin did not wait for a response.

  ‘The State Department,’ he continued. ‘I’m fascinated. The dear doctor. Such an interesting man. Tell me about him. What is he like to work for? Demanding?’

  The Russian’s expression now provoked a response, but Sunnenden contented himself with a platitude: ‘It’s hard work,’ he said, ‘but worth while.’

  That, he thought to himself, was a diplomatic way of stating the truth. Accompanying Dr. Kissinger on the Middle East tour had not diminished his admiration for the Secretary. He had been shocked though, to experience Kissinger’s personal vanity.

  The puritan in Sunnenden recoiled from it. He remembered especially the Secretary’s pure delight as he had walked across the lobby of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem while visiting American tourists applauded.

  Another waiter appeared. Again Sunnenden refused drinks. The Russian raised his vodka glass.

  ‘They will report me and I will be sent home,’ he said laughing. ‘Drinks too much, commits indiscretions with American officials who encourage him to drink and loosen his tongue, while they drink nothing themselves …’ He waved a hand at Sunnenden’s glass.

  Sunnenden suspected the time was not right for more serious talk despite the openings being offered by the Russian. For ten to fifteen minutes he kept the talk general.

  He suddenly noticed his glass was empty and, instinctively, glanced at his watch.

  Khrenin seized on it. ‘Ah, you must leave,’ he said, putting an arm around Sunnenden’s shoulders. ‘Come, I will walk down with you.’

  They did not speak again until they were outside. There was no one within earshot. Sunnenden wished he had brought a coat. Perhaps he should go back inside and ask the Embassy to telephone for a cab.

  Khrenin led him towards the street. The Russian spoke, as though to himself. ‘It is ridiculous, this anti-Soviet feeling,’ he said.

  Sunnenden forced himself to protest at the statement, but was interrupted. ‘No,’ Khrenin insisted. ‘It is a fact. We both know it. My Ambassador says it is the greatest since Cuba. But why?’

  Sunnenden began to answer: Americans were worried about the Middle East, about Vietnam. It was natural …

  They reached the gate.

  ‘You have a car?’ asked Khrenin.

  ‘No, I will walk.’

  They paused at the gate, both of them knowing that the sparring was over. Khrenin did the prompting: ‘You had something to say?’

  Sunnenden suddenly felt foolish. ‘Zorin. The scientist. The man who has disappeared. His wife was expelled.’ Khrenin said nothing. Sunnenden went on. ‘You talk about bad feeling. No doubt he’s confined somewhere. Freeing him would help.’

  There was no expression on Khrenin’s face. ‘That is your message?’

  Sunnenden nodded.

  ‘From the Secretary?’

  ‘I cannot say. But he is concerned.’

  Khrenin nodded. Then, again, he put his arm around Sunnenden’s shoulders.

  ‘We must keep in touch,’ he said. ‘Unless of course they take me home and send me to a labour camp for talking to American spies.’ He laughed again, then released Sunnenden. ‘It would be nice to help. But we cannot. We wish we could, but it would give the wrong impression. This is a time for showing we are strong, not weak. At home as well as overseas. You understand?’

  Sunnenden did; the Kremlin hawks were fighting to gain power. The ruling men could not afford to make mistakes.

  He was out on the street and Khrenin was saying goodnight. ‘But anything else,’ the voice called as he moved away, ‘anything else, just ask.’

  At the Statler, Sunnenden drank two Jack Daniels on the rocks before calling Scott from a pay phone in the lobby. Scott answered immediately.

  ‘No go,’ said Sunnenden.

  ‘I thought so,’ said Scott. ‘Thanks for trying. I’ll think some. See you tomorrow.’

  There was a click as the line went dead. Sunnenden considered whether he should go to the office, go home, or have a third drink. He was beginning to feel more uneasy than ever.

  *

  Scott did little for two days. He read reports of Mrs Zorin’s arrival in Israel, and, 24 hours later, of the release of her husband after ‘hospital treatment’. He listened to Sunnenden’s full report of the meeting without comment which pleased, and relieved, Sunnenden. Sunnenden himself had been given a new set of questions to answer on Soviet oil. He had been asked to rewrite the two memoranda on the subject he had already completed. The feeling of being the coming man had diminished. It was as though he had never been singled out. As if he had been found wanting — and not for the first time. On the previous occasion he had been rescued by Scott. What would happen this time?

  Scott had other, more pressing problems. A large part of him wanted to forget the Zorin business. Instinct could be wrong. Perhaps he was over-reacting.

  Nevertheless, enough belief in his own intuition remained for him to ask Sunnenden to keep a watching brief on the subject. He did it cautiously, knowing that the younger man was feeling touchy about his standing. And he took great care to hint that Sunnenden might later find it worth while. ‘If it crops up, Bob,’ he said, ‘and I’m damned sure it will, the Secretary’s going to need someone who really knows what it’s all about. There’s no one else around.’

  Over the following days Sunnenden began collating more information. Zorin and the dissident movement became a minor obsession. Sunnenden began to feel he knew some of them. One thing he could not understand: why did so few try to escape? It would be difficult, of course, but was it impossible? The thought came often.

  Less than a week after being given the task by Scott, Sunnenden was rewarded. Scott actually visited his office.

  ‘Better get writing. Bob,’ he said. He moved over to an easy chair, forcing Sunnenden to leave his desk and join him.

  ‘All you need to do,’ he went on, ‘is set down on paper three convincing reasons why the Russian Ambassador should recommend that his government turn friend Zorin loose, and why they should agree.’

  ‘What’s happening, and how long have I got?’ asked Sunnenden.

  Scott stood, his brief visit almost over. ‘A lot of people with muscle are leaning on the President. He’s got enough problems, so he’s leaning on Henry. He sure as hell doesn’t like it, but he’s got to raise it officially.’

  Scott reached the door before seeming to remember there had been two questions. ‘Oh, time. I’d say if it was on his desk when he got back from lunch you’d be all right.�
�

  The door closed, and Sunnenden looked at his watch. It was 12.12.

  *

  The meeting was a short one. It took place a few minutes before five that afternoon. Sunnenden waited in the anteroom outside Dr. Kissinger’s seventh floor office for almost half an hour before he was led in by a secretary.

  Kissinger was sitting behind his desk, head inclined to one side, mouth biting on the earpiece of his spectacles. He was reading Sunnenden’s memorandum. He did not look up and Sunnenden stood, uncertain whether to sit or cough or even say, ‘good afternoon.’

  Finally the Secretary looked up. He waved the memorandum towards Sunnenden. ‘Would this convince you?’

  Looking back later Sunnenden was sure he had been right in his reaction: what he was selling was his honest assessment based on his knowledge. He was not a wheeler-dealer like Scott. If he tried to sugar the pill he would get nowhere. He did not have a salesman’s personality.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  The Secretary nodded. ‘Nor me.’ He picked up a telephone and began dialling. He waved one hand toward Sunnenden who suddenly realized he was being dismissed from the room.

  He was stopped near the door by a shout. He turned.

  ‘But a good brief,’ said Dr. Kissinger. ‘A good brief.’

  *

  Two days later Scott made up his mind. He did it between telephone calls from his apartment. He glanced at the list of people he still had to reach and decided to leave the rest until morning.

  He asked Helen to check whether Sunnenden would be in his office all afternoon. A few minutes later he had the answer: yes.

  Soon after, he began the short walk to the State Department building — his second within a week, an event noted with some surprise by the guards on the gate.

  The official approach, of course, had had no effect. The soviet Ambassador said that surely the United States was not attempting to involve itself in the Soviet Union’s internal affairs. Were not there far more important matters to concern the two countries?

  Scott heard this later the day of the meeting, and would have left the subject alone had it not been for one further event that same evening.

  It was after eight. Scott was stretched on a sofa in the Secretary’s panelled office, reading Time while he waited for Dr. Kissinger to finish glancing through papers.

  They were going to have dinner, a social evening, a chance for two old friends to exchange thoughts and swap gossip.

  ‘Fuck’. The German accent gave the word added weight.

  ‘What is it?’

  Dr. Kissinger threw the slim file near Scott’s feet. ‘The third item,’ he said.

  The file was one of the twice daily intelligence digests. Item three was a brief report. A highly rated source reported that Mrs Tanya Zorin, in Israel, was pregnant. For the time being the fact was being kept secret.

  Scott did not have to ask what the Secretary was thinking: once the news became public a fresh and enormous wave of sympathy and protest would swell. ‘I knew we weren’t finished with this,’ he muttered, half to himself.

  Kissinger was not listening. His lower lip was thrust forward — a certain sign of anger. He lifted a pencil and flipped it on to the desk.

  ‘That man was sent to plague me. What madness when the world stands on the edge of war! You’d think someone could solve this problem.’

  Then, abruptly, he stood.

  ‘Let’s go eat.’

  It was not a successful evening.

  Now, leaving the elevator, Scott found himself reliving some of the same anger. The whole thing was like seeing a lion brought down by bee stings. There were much more important things to consider, not least the fact that the Secretary was due in Moscow by the end of the month.

  He turned into the corridor that led to Sunnenden’s office, disregarding the wall signs that pleaded with walkers to keep to the right when navigating corners.

  Sunnenden was alone. Scott launched straight into what he wanted to say.

  ‘You haven’t much on at the moment, have you?’

  ‘Nothing vital.’

  ‘Good.’

  He sat on the edge of Sunnenden’s desk. Finally he spoke again.

  ‘Remember that crazy thing you said to me when I first asked you to look at the dissidents business?’

  ‘Crazy thing?’

  ‘You said, why don’t some of them get out.’ Scott turned to stare straight at Sunnenden. ‘Well, why don’t we help one of them do just that?’

  Chapter Four

  SUNNENDEN ENTERED the Mayflower Hotel from L Street. Walking through the long, glass-walled lobby with its crystal chandeliers, he imagined that Europe would be like this.

  He reached the reception area, jostled with a visiting delegation of Japanese businessmen, turned into the quiet of the Carvery. Cory had spent many years in Europe. Sunnenden wanted to do everything possible to put him in the right frame of mind before he made his proposition.

  Cory had not yet arrived, so Sunnenden ordered a drink and debated yet again whether he had been right not to discuss the project with Janet. At first he had not been sure Scott was serious. Was he being tested? For what? Loyalty? His readiness to take a chance? His willingness to use any methods to achieve results?

  As they talked, it had become obvious that what Scott was asking was whether there was any way Zorin could be brought out of Russia. Scott made it obvious he did not want to involve himself directly.

  ‘Not that I’m suggesting anyone should do anything silly, Bob,’ he said. ‘But just think what it would mean if something could be worked out by someone After that Sunnenden had called Cory.

  His Scotch arrived and he added water carefully. There was no ice in the glass. He was being European.

  He sipped, watching the door. On the left an elderly senator he recognized vaguely but could not name was being lobbied by a pretty, intense young woman. ‘If I was that someone trying to do something,’ Scott had drawled, his eyes smiling, ‘I’d get someone who really knew the business. And then I’d keep it tight, real tight, until it was all over.’

  Sunnenden thought deeply for twenty-four hours, forcing himself not to discuss it with Janet: if anything came of it, he would tell her when it was a success. He kept thinking less about the problem than about the look in Scott’s eyes, and his words ‘Just think what it would mean …’ He applied the words to his own future …

  Finally, he decided that, whatever happened, there was no argument for not taking it one stage further. It was then that he called Cory to suggest this dinner. In the meantime he read Cory’s file. The dossier was incomplete and heavily sanitized, but from that and what he already knew he felt he had the right man — if only he would co-operate.

  Cory was fifty-four, educated in Europe and England. He was a veteran of the OSS and, in the early days of the CIA, had been with the Office of Policy Coordination, a body which used covert intelligence as a cold war weapon. Perhaps its best known job was setting up Radio Free Europe. From that he had gone back into the field. He was one of the few experienced officers who had not been tainted by the Bay of Pigs.

  Soon afterwards he had fallen prey to a surprisingly common intelligence disease: a mental breakdown. The CIA — ‘the Company’ — did everything possible to help him: doctors, long breaks, complete understanding. Within the CIA there is no stigma about mental illnesses: many Company men are struck and return to duty afterwards as though nothing has happened.

  On Sunnenden’s left the young woman was reaching over to stroke the senator’s hand. She was either taking her job very seriously or Sunnenden had been mistaken.

  Cory might easily have returned to the Company too. He was only fifty-two at the time. But he was tired — not of the spy game, but of the new world of faceless, deskbound bureaucrats who ran it.

  It was harder to admit this but Cory also found it increasingly difficult to see the enemy. Once it had been very easy; even during the Cold War it had been ‘us’ versus ‘th
em’. Now it was so much hazier: on one hand, the Communists were at once the enemy planning to bury the Free World, and the bosom friends of U.S. politicians and business men.

  Sunnenden saw Cory come through the door and pause. After a few seconds he noticed Sunnenden, but he waited to be led over to the table.

  Because of the Middle East trip, Sunnenden had not seen him for over a month. Cory had put on a little weight. Before he had been abnormally thin; now he was simply thin.

  He was tall, perhaps six feet six inches, but his round shoulders made him look shorter. His face was lined but not drawn: a map of the past rather than a ravaged victim of it. His short, totally white hair was brushed to one side.

  Cory’s most striking mannerism was the incline of his head: it leaned slightly to the left, as though he was always on the point of laying it on his left shoulder so that he might doze off. According to some its cause was an old wound; Janet thought it an eccentricity that had become a habit. Whatever the reason, it gave him a perpetually quizzical look.

  They shook hands, formally but warmly. When Cory said, ‘It’s good to see you,’ he meant it. He liked the younger man. He found even his faults endearing:

  Sunnenden’s ambition was, to Cory, so blatant that it had a twisted charm. But above all, for a deskbound analyst, Sunnenden had the best understanding of the East-West situation Cory had ever encountered. Sunnenden knew the two blocs had to coexist — and yet he saw the dangers.

  They ordered the same main course: prime ribs broiled with peppercorns. Cory declined the invitation to choose the wine but he appreciated the younger man’s gesture.

  During the meal they touched on many topics: the latest gossip about the President’s position, progress in the Ellsburg burglary case, and rumours circulating in State about the health of President Pompidou on the eve of his summit meeting with Brezhnev … Both men purposely kept the conversation small and light until dessert. If Cory was curious, he showed no sign.

  Then Sunnenden looked around. The senator and the girl were leaving. They were walking almost too far apart, as though trying to prove they were nearstrangers.