Mongoose, R.I.P.

by William F. Buckley

  “What is it, Yitzkah?”

  “You heard Premier Castro, about the relatives of Soviet personnel in Cuba?”

  “I wasn’t listening, to tell the truth. Long day. Our … guest speaks at endless length. What did he say?”

  “Well, Comrade Khrushchev, he said he wished to ‘greet’ personally relatives of all Soviet personnel working in Cuba.”

  “He said what?”

  “Just that, Comrade. I calculate roughly that would mean sending out about four thousand invitations. And the worst of it is that everyone living within Moscow would almost certainly come, and that probably would mean—oh, one, maybe two thousand people.”

  “He’ll forget about it in the morning.”

  “I am afraid not, Comrade Khrushchev. He just this minute asked me when exactly the event could be scheduled. What am I to do, Comrade?”

  Khrushchev thought, downing his drink. “Tell him at noon tomorrow that you have been through the files, and that there are only about two or three hundred relatives of our technicians living in Moscow. Set up a tea, get thirty or forty of them to come.”

  “Whom do you wish invited from—from our government?”

  “Keep it small. The ambassador to Havana, obviously, a few East European representatives, and oh, a half-dozen others, I don’t care. I won’t be there. Tell the members of the Politburo I don’t want them there. Goddamn bore.”

  “Yes, Comrade Khrushchev.”

  The reception was held the following Friday afternoon, after Castro had come back from his tour of Industrial Russia. Entering Georgievsky Hall at the Kremlin, he was greeted with heated applause by the hundred attendants. En route to the microphone, he turned and whispered to Colonel Yitzkah that he was surprised that there were so few guests present.

  The colonel replied that it had not been possible to do more in just three days.

  Castro reacted by proclaiming that, given how small the assembly was, he would greet each Russian individually.

  A line was formed, and the guests began to file by. Castro asked everyone questions. The same questions. The colonel, looking at his watch, calculated despondently that, at this rate, the reception would last two hours.

  About halfway through the line’s passage, following established procedure, Castro was introduced to the next person in line. The officiating protocol officer said, “Mr. Prime Minister, I present Mrs. Olga Kirov.”

  She was a slight, fair woman in her thirties, a tiny piece of fur choked tightly around her slender neck, her light brown hair carefully coiffed. Her woolen suit was worn, but neatly fitted.

  “And where is your husband stationed, Madame Kirov?” Castro routinely asked.

  “At San Cristóbal,” Olga Kirov answered, smiling.

  And then she said it, in bold and resonant accents: “I do wish, Comrade Castro, that you would persuade our government to permit us to go and live with our husbands while they are in Cuba.”

  The translator had no option than to transcribe the statement exactly: there were too many people in the room who spoke both languages.

  Castro listened intently, smiled warmly, motioned to an aide to take a note of Mme. Kirov’s request and to remind him to raise the subject with the General Secretary. Olga Kirov smiled exuberantly, bowed her thanks, and, a half hour later, was drinking tea with one of the Cuban interpreters, a woman who was an official in Cuba’s Foreign Office. She told Olga Kirov, in answer to her question, that she had learned Russian as a child, when her father had been the Cuban military attaché in Moscow. She continued, she said, to conduct classes in Russian at the University of Havana. “But most of the time, I work in the Foreign Office.”

  Olga Kirov was elated by her personal communion with the high and the mighty; such a change from life in the one-room apartment she shared with Zinka Petrov, a spirited artist (she sang in the Bolshoi Opera chorus)—another wife whose husband was stationed in Cuba. Though even that small apartment was agreeable shelter from the drab office in which, six days every week, she worked as a file clerk.

  “Your husband is at San Cristóbal,” the interpreter said, a smile obtruding her creased face.

  “Yes, yes. Do you know San Cristóbal?”

  “I was born and raised in San Cristóbal. My mother lives there, and I visit her every other weekend. It may even be that I have met your husband, at one of the parties occasionally given by Colonel Gutiérrez for the Soviet contingent. I am always invited, because I can interpret.”

  Olga was carried away by it all. Soon she found herself blurting out, “Would you, dear Señorita, do me the favor of mailing a letter to my husband on your return? It takes such ages and ages to go by regular mail, sometimes as much as two months.”

  “Of course, with the greatest pleasure.”

  Arrangements were made. Olga would deliver the letter to the Cuban Embassy, marked “Personal,” and Señorita Evita Rincona would mail it in Cuba. “I might even arrange to hand it personally to your husband next weekend, when I plan to be in San Cristóbal.”

  The following day Olga Kirov took the bus to the center of Moscow, walked into the Cuban Embassy, explained that Señorita Rincona was expecting her, and was admitted into the special reception area, heavily manned because of the manifold requirements associated with Fidel Castro’s visit. Olga explained herself to a Russian-speaking Cuban sitting at one end of the reception table who said, “Of course,” reached for the letter, attached a label to it, and put it in her Out basket. Olga gave profuse thanks.

  Three days later, at one in the morning, there was a loud knock on the door of her apartment.

  It was all as of ten years before, in the days of Stalin. Such knocks, at such hours, were not commonplace anymore, but neither were they isolated. Olga Kirov was in due course driven to Lubyanka Prison, booked, and placed in a solitary cell.

  It had been surprising to Major Rostropov when the orders had come in to prepare for the prisoner Olga Kirov at such an hour, and surprising to him, on examining the orders from the high command, that the detachment of three KGB agents sent to bring her in had been instructed to search every cubic inch of the woman’s apartment. That hadn’t taken so long, though it would have taken less long if Olga’s roommate, Zinka, had screamed and yelled a little less—she had, finally, to be taken out and locked in the police van until the KGB were done, the report read.

  But the orders respecting Olga Kirov had come down straight from Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny, Chairman of the KGB. The charges against her, Major Rostropov reflected, were serious, but hardly that unusual. She had evidently attempted to evade routine censorship by giving an envelope to a member of Castro’s Cuban entourage. When the Cuban interpreter, one Evita Rincona, had mentioned to her Soviet counterpart this trivial favor she was so gladly doing for the wife of one of the Soviet technicians, the Soviet interpreter had sternly objected that the accommodation was in violation of Soviet rules, that she must have the letter, get it photographed, and only then return it to Evita Rincona for delivery in San Cristóbal.

  A few days later, on the eve of the departure of Castro and his party, Señorita Rincona reminded the Soviet interpreter, at the final Soviet-Cuban social affair, that she had not yet returned Mrs. Kirov’s letter. Evita Rincona got only the brusque reply: “It has been confiscated.”

  Adding, after a pause, “I am sorry.”

  The Soviet bureaucracy tends to move slowly, but it can, under certain kinds of pressure, move with great speed. In the computer files on Soviet personnel serving in Cuba, only six technicians—out of eight thousand—had a special marking attached to their names. This signified that they and their activities were to be supervised directly by Semichastny—that is, by the head of the KGB. All letters mailed to these six technicians were to be read with special care, as also mail from them. A letter that appeared in any way unusual was to be brought to Semichastny for his personal scrutiny. When the censor, at the special request of the Russian-Cuban interpreter, promised a quick reading of t
he letter to Major Kirov from his wife, he checked his files routinely, and spotted the monitory marking. Accordingly he read the letter attentively. Even if he had not been warned about the especially sensitive aspect of the Kirov correspondence, he’d have reported the letter to Special Branch KGB because, in that letter, Olga innocently mentioned to her husband that she had asked Fidel Castro himself please to invite the wives of Soviet technicians to visit in Cuba. And—the censor’s eyes stared with dumb astonishment at what followed—she, Olga, thought that once she got to Cuba, she and Anatoly should consider taking out Cuban citizenship, since Anatoly had written so many enthusiastic letters about Cuba, its climate, the friendliness of the people. They were childless, Olga wrote ruefully, and had, really, no ties to the Soviet Union. Why not go to live in another socialist country, where life was, apparently, so much more pleasant?

  Twelve hours later, the fate of Olga Kirov and her husband was being discussed by, no less, Nikita Khrushchev, Malinovsky, and Semichastny.

  They arrived quickly at priorities. The first was: What did Olga Kirov know, if anything, about the nature of Anatoly Kirov’s assignment in Cuba? To get this information was of primary importance. If it developed that she knew anything at all about the hidden missile, Olga Kirov would need to be silenced, permanently. Moreover, only the most trusted “examiners” must be allowed to question her. And the questioning must be done with Semichastny physically present, to interpret knowingly her replies, which might be inscrutable to examiners unaware of the august secret of the hidden missile.

  Number Two: The KGB agent at San Cristóbal—Lieutenant Vassilov—should be instructed to keep a special watch on Major Kirov and report every week on his every activity.

  Number Three: As soon as practicable, Major Kirov would be recalled (they could call it “home leave,” even though he was not due to return to Moscow for another nine months). A suitable replacement would be dispatched to relieve him. A suitable replacement, Malinovsky said, looking into a folder, had been singled out several months ago. Captain Nicolai Pushkin had been trained in the maintenance of the larger missile, the SS-5, SKEAN, and it would take only a few weeks to familiarize him with the differences in the two missiles, as also, of course, to acquaint him with the super-secret nature of the operation. “He has all the general technical qualifications of Kirov, and was in charge of preparing for the emplacement of a missile battery of SS-5’s at Remedios during September and October, and he is a bachelor.”

  Khrushchev was satisfied.

  No one had counted on Olga’s fragility. Her examiners, in one of the soundproof rooms reserved for that purpose, had proceeded according to routine, even as the head of the KGB himself observed the proceedings from his chair, through the frequently used peephole, wearing headphones so that he could not only see but hear what was going on. Later, he swore to Khrushchev that a thirty-year-old man would “hardly have noticed” what the examiners had done. Her head could not have been held under the water in the huge sink longer than “oh, believe me, Nikita Sergeyevich, not longer than—twenty seconds.” However many seconds it was, Olga Kirov had died. The examiners at first thought it merely a matter of water in the lungs, and the doctor was quickly summoned. But she did not respond. The water in her lungs had brought on a fatal heart attack.

  There were formalities to worry about. The official story would be that Olga Kirov was summoned by the police because there had been a report—utterly false, as it turned out (obviously the work of a Cuban agent provocateur)—that her husband, Major Kirov, had been wounded by a sniper at San Cristóbal. They wished to break the news to her gently, and give her such medical care as she might need. But even before the report came in that it was a false alarm, she had suffered a heart attack and died. Major Kirov would be given home leave at the end of the month.

  There was the problem of Zinka Petrov. She was told the identical story that would be given the following day in the coded telegram to Kirov; and no doubt she would understand the causes of the tragic end of her roommate’s life.

  But they were very wrong about Zinka Petrov. Zinka was a close friend of a fellow singer in the Bolshoi Opera chorus who, two years before, had entertained, lavishly, a visiting Cuban tenor with whom she had established a special line of communication, courtesy of the Union of Artists. Zinka had no difficulty in asking her friend to convey a message to her Cuban tenor, written in the florid language of separated lovers. That message, appropriately disguised, read: Contact Major Kirov (she gave his telephone number at the officers’ quarters at San Cristóbal). Zinka’s message to her dead roommate’s husband was straightforward: Olga was killed by the KGB last night. Nothing else you hear is true.

  23

  San Angel Inn is the name by which a barrio in the southern part of Mexico City is still known by most of its residents, notwithstanding that its official name is Villa Obregón, named after the dictator assassinated there in 1928, whose embalmed hand still reposes in a statue dedicated to him on the spot of his assassination. It was judged doubly appropriate by his court at once to honor the fallen leader and to pursue his campaign of official anticlericalism. One less “Saint” as a geographical location, plus the nice blasphemy of assigning, in its place, the name of the dead religious persecutor.

  And within the barrio called San Angel Inn stands an old inn, called, however confusingly, San Angel Inn. This hostelry was not renamed Obregón Inn. At one time, when Mexico City was a tidy, manageable city of 500,000 residents, San Angel Inn was a two-hour carriage drive from the center of town, down Calle Insurgentes, in the direction of Cuernavaca and Taxco. Now the Inn was surrounded by fashionable residences, yet managed to retain a detached remoteness, with its large garden, fit for promenading, and its distinctive internal arrangements: it comprised a dozen old, Spanish-dimensioned suites, to one of which Consuelo directed “Bledsoe.” He gave eleven the following morning as the meet-time.

  Blackford smiled inwardly. Clearly he was not meeting with a trained intelligence agent, else the appointed time would not have been given in round numbers. If the initiative had been Blackford’s, he’d have specified a rendezvous at 11:03. He made it a point, of course, to arrive at exactly eleven, having asked at the desk directions for “Suite Calero.” A bellboy led him there, Blackford knocked, and the door was opened.

  A handsome man, about Blackford’s age, smiled and extended his hand. “Señor Bledsoe, I am Consuelo, at your service.”

  Blackford was instantly taken by the manner of his host, assured, soft-spoken, animated. He was two or three inches shorter than Blackford, and his face showed just that trace of color that suggested somewhere along the line—perhaps a hundred, two hundred years ago?—a rivulet of Indian blood into the Castilian mainstream. His features were fine, his skin without trace of a beard. The eyes were a soft brown, his lips austere yet full-blooded, his teeth faintly uneven, as if he had been tended by an orthodontist who permitted the survival of dental character. He was wearing a finely fitted light-gray suit (“English public-school gray,” Blackford once called that special shade, because it always reminded him of the uniform he had worn at Greyburn). Consuelo’s tie was dark red, with diagonal lines of bright red spaced three or four inches apart. His shirt was light blue, the collar buttoned down.

  The host motioned Blackford to an armchair, whose back abutted a long, windowed door that opened to San Angel Inn’s garden. Consuelo sat on the sofa to Blackford’s left, and between them was the coffee table with, fittingly, a pot of fresh coffee, from which Consuelo began to pour.

  “Sugar?”

  “No thanks. Black.”

  Consuelo poured two cups, brought out a silver cigarette case, obviously antique, and offered a cigarette to Blackford, who declined. He was glad that his permission (“Do you mind if I smoke?”) had not been asked. Blackford had long since acknowledged that cigarette smokers are uncomfortable if they cannot smoke their cigarettes, and shouldn’t feel they need to ask permission to be comfortable. He had made
a passing effort to detoxify Sally during senior year at Yale, but hadn’t since hectored her (or anybody else) on the subject of smoking.

  In his twelve years with the Agency, Blackford had met with myriad men and women under circumstances not generically different from those that today brought him, using a pseudonym, to deal with someone, himself using a pseudonym, to further a common purpose. On some occasions it became important—in some even imperative—subsequently to undertake inquiries after such a meeting as to the true identity of the other party. Whether that would be necessary this time around, Blackford would decide later.

  And, at such meetings, the business at hand was, usually, quickly brought up. Consuelo, being Latin, could not proceed without at least one amenity, and so he asked whether this was Bledsoe’s first trip to Mexico. Blackford answered that no, he had in fact been several times in Mexico—indeed, he had once before dined at San Angel Inn.

  He did not reveal that when he had done so, he was staying only one street away, at Calero, with an American expatriate family and his—friend. Blackford no longer permitted himself to think of Sally as his former “girlfriend.” He had never particularly liked the term, and in any case it was with greater and greater frequency being used to describe exactly the relationship he had had with Sally, though to be sure they had thought of themselves as affianced.

  He repaid the opening amenity by remarking that it was obvious, from Consuelo’s fluency in the language, that he had spent a great deal of time in the States. Yes, Consuelo said, in fact that was so, he had been schooled there. He did not say where, and Blackford was not able to guess, from his unaccented English, where.