Marco Polo, If You Can

by William F. Buckley

  So, Rufus got down to it. There was at hand a considerable crisis. As with some crises, this was one that bore an opportunity. Rufus had consented to take the command post. He had—“‘specified’ would be the wrong word,” he said (but he did not go on to supply a substitute), that he work with three men with whom he had worked on a number of other assignments. Unhappily, the sheer scope of the enterprise would require that many men be involved. But he was here authorized to ask Blackford to accept recommissioning as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. Rufus thought it entirely inadvisable, on this or any future occasion, so much as to touch, let alone dwell upon, the reasons for Blackford’s separation from the Agency. An earnest of the Director’s confidence in him was that if Blackford agreed, he would be reinstated immediately as a Grade 16 officer. The invitation was, at Blackford’s choosing, finite, or other than finite. Rufus hoped that whatever his ultimate professional plans, he would at least agree to interrupt them in order to help with the enterprise at hand; but he was here also to say that if he desired to stay on in the Agency, he would be welcome. He had already briefed Callaway and Trust on the problem, and had brought them along in order for Blackford to know that if he consented, he would be working with men with whom he had shared a number of experiences.…

  Blackford said, “Let me think about it, Rufus.” He paused, wrinkling his face in a caricature of concentration. “I’ve thought about it. The answer is yes. I assume I can give A&G a couple of weeks’ notice?”

  “We’d like you to start working—tonight.”

  A&G’s subway … Was there anything, Blackford thought, that he and only he could contribute to the realization of the projected subway car? Yes, come to think of it. He had hoped to install a sauna in each car. But on the other hand, he could pass along that suggestion to his successor. Gaither would blanch. No, unfair. Roland Gaither, for all that he was occasionally a pompous old fart, was pretty decent, and, on the patriotic front, right up there with the Green Berets. After all, he had given his only daughter to the Agency. Given her, come to think of it, not only to the Agency, but to an ex-agent. At least, through October.

  “Okay, Rufus. I’m all yours. What are we going to do about dinner?”

  “Michael Bolgiano is having it brought in.”

  Blackford could not remember when last he was’ so thoroughly content.

  CHAPTER 11

  It was cold in Berlin in January, and Blackford, walking now to the safe house he had occupied since early November, had braced against the cold which (what was it about the wind in Berlin? It always blew from the direction he wanted to go) roared down Hochstrasse. At the west end the buildings turned gradually to squat apartment houses. He entered number 322, taking the automatic elevator to the seventh floor. The elevator door opened, confronting him with the front door of his apartment—there was no hallway. With his foot he held the elevator door open while putting the key in the lock and stepping into the warm room, furnished with squalid, colorless comfort, heavy woods, gray-brown walls, carpeting, dusty books. There were two bedrooms, a dining room, and the large sitting room. In the dining room he had set up an office of sorts. It consisted of a file cabinet, a typewriter, what appeared to be a lifetime’s supply of 3 × 5 index cards, and the most detailed map of Berlin outside the Berlin Museum. There were a few, not many, photographs. These were kept moving; at any given time Blackford husbanded not more than a few days’ accumulation. In a separate pile were the photographs he got back from Washington with requests for more detailed pictures.

  At 5:45 Günter came in, pounding himself to revive circulation. They spoke in German.

  “Busy day?”

  “Yes.” Günter sat down at the dining room table, having taken off his coat. “I could use some tea.” He was balding, chunky, red in the face, and well fed, but his movements were sprightly.

  Blackford put the kettle on the stove. Günter drew four envelopes from his right inside breast pocket. Each had a name written on the outside. In each envelope were Günter’s collected notes. Blackford would study these and decide which subjects, if any, warranted photographing. The decision made, Günter would work with Ada and Niklaus and, depending on the habits of the mark, the photographing would be arranged. Ada and Niklaus were in their mid-twenties. They could pose convincingly as newlyweds, and often did. Their “guide” Günter (he was, in fact, an official guide, registered as such and available from Cook’s to take visitors anywhere in greater Berlin) would obligingly snap their photograph—at just the moment when they would suddenly pose—as the mark, the object of the photograph, turned the corner, or came out of the doorway, or whatever.

  It was work at once dull and demanding, because almost every mark presented a different kind of problem. Take yesterday, for instance. They were to check one Anna Krindler who lived on Gartenstrasse. At 8:30 Blackford had presided over what was, in effect, a staff meeting. In the room was Michael, whose German was less than fluent, and who therefore attended to most of the paperwork westbound in English to Washington.

  Anna Krindler. Why was she a suspect? She had received five letters from one Heinz Hary of Washington, over the two months since the postal reconnaissance had begun. The letters were simply signed “Heinz.” The dossier from Washington contained a) photostatic copies of those letters, and b) a brief description of Heinz Hary. He was employed in Washington as a truck driver by a moving firm. Research indicated that he had been captured during the Italian campaign and transported to a POW camp in Augusta, Georgia. The war ended, and he registered his desire to remain in the United States, giving as his principal reason that if he were repatriated, it would be to East Germany, and he didn’t wish to live under the Communists. U.S. regulations did not accept this as sufficient reason to warrant immigration into the United States, so Heinz Hary solved that problem by marrying one of the WACS engaged in administering the prison camp. With that, Heinz Hary became a legal U.S. immigrant. Five years later, he became a United States citizen. And five years and one month later, he divorced Mrs. Hary, who was now remarried to a postman. Mrs. Hary had been obliquely questioned about her former husband. The FBI agent, posing as a lawyer involved in a complicated distribution of death benefits, wanted to know whether the former Mrs. Hary knew anything about the identity or whereabouts of one Anna Krindler—was she related to her, or to her former husband? Mrs. Ancrum said not to her, or to Heinz, as far as she knew. Heinz often wrote letters to old friends in Germany, she recalled, but never talked to her about them. It would not be a close relative, because she knew that both his parents were dead, and his only sibling, a brother, had been killed in the war. The employers of Heinz Hary were approached, as if by a credit agency. They reported that Hary was a faithful driver, had his own little house, was quiet, withdrawn and, so far as they knew, kept a bank account and was current on unpaid bills—at least, no complaints from creditors had ever reached them.

  Blackford had read over the letters to Anna Krindler the night before. They were most fearfully dull. He could not imagine that Anna Krindler could be as interested in hearing about Heinz’s drives to Birmingham, Atlanta, Mobile (he was apparently stuck on southern routes) as he was interested in telling her about them. The Agency reported that the letters had withstood radiation tests—there was no secret ink. A superficial cryptographic reading had been given them—no peculiarities leaped to the eye.

  So, then, Blackford had now to decide what kind of priority he should give to developing information on Anna Krindler. He had handled 118 Anna Krindlers in the two months he had been in Germany, and struck out every time as he would on this one, spending two days on the enterprise.

  But he felt no sense of futility. It was on Thanksgiving Day, as it happened, that the nature of the enterprise had dramatically changed. Rufus had sent Blackford to Berlin, in part from intuition, in part because Berlin contained, within a small compass, the highest congestion of agents in the world, and for the most obvious of reasons. The Agency maintained, moreov
er, a number of “assets” (as they were called) in East Berlin. Some of these were ideologically motivated; others were mercenaries. Both were useful. Much of the material they sent Washington was redundant, or pointless. But some of it was not. Rufus sent a second team to Paris, and still others to London and Rome, though the rigorous mail check was made only of letters going to a) West Berlin; and b) all addressees behind the Iron Curtain.

  When Blackford arrived, he had made contact with the asset in East Berlin considered by the Agency its hottest property, in part because he was clearly motivated not by loyalty, but greed; was ever so careful to look after his own welfare, yet adventurous enough to take chances; and disposed of brilliantly useful contacts.

  “It is this simple,” Blackford explained at the Dahlem Museum where they had met, the requisite recognition signals having been exchanged, Blackford going by the code name Sebastian. “We believe it likely that someone in East Berlin is receiving information on a fairly regular basis from an agent in the United States, probably in Washington or New York. Obviously we want to know who that person is. But short of that, we care greatly to know whether the person we are looking for, whoever he is, in fact lives in East Berlin—or, for that matter, in West Berlin. Your assignment is to try to discover whether there are any signs within the KGB centers in East Berlin of any special activity—any special precautions, any unusual procedures or hustle and bustle such as would suggest that extraordinarily useful information is coming in.”

  What kind of unusual activity?

  Blackford had replied that this was obviously for him to judge. “My clients would be willing to pay ten thousand DMs to anyone who assisted you in ascertaining whether we’re working in the right city. We would express our gratitude to you with a like sum, and if we succeeded in locating our target, we would double it.”

  The man known as Reynard, pointing to the museum catalogue describing the corridor in which they strolled, said in a flat voice:

  “There is something special going on. I know it.”

  Blackford, without changing the pitch of his voice, looked up at the “Man in the Golden Helmet” by Rembrandt and said, “Do you have concrete information?”

  Reynard said, “A big man came in late June. It was assumed on an inspection trip. But he is still here.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “No. I know he is a big man.”

  “You will find out?”

  “I will try to find out.”

  “You will also try to find out why he is still here? Perhaps he has been demoted.”

  “I will try to find out. I will be in touch with you in the usual way.”

  The next engagement with Reynard was not at the museum. Reynard made it understood that he needed more privacy and a more extensive visit. And so it happened that Cabin B on the express train to Munich on Thursday November 26, 1959, was shared by two strangers, one American, one East German.

  The conductor took the tickets, passport formalities were transacted. They traveled now, at 120 kilometers per hour, south through Leipzig. Passengers going by and looking in saw two men, both reading, the older, gaunt man smoking a cigarette. They went separately to dinner. While the passengers ate, they passed Plauen. At Hof, on the West German border, East German officials disembarked and West Germans boarded, jovial counterparts of the grim northerners, checking passports and asking the routine questions about cigarettes and liquor. The West Germans in turn got off, and the train roared on toward Nuremberg and Munich. Blackford went back to the cabin, and Reynard joined him a few minutes later. He drew the blinds and locked the door. Reynard inspected every corner of the sleeper for microphones.

  He then drew from his briefcase a notebook and began to read aloud. “You can take this down later, at your own speed, Sebastian. But I’ll read right through it here. General Nikolai Kankrin, whose biographical history I have in detail, is one of the four principal assistants of Shelepin. He has been an inspector general for the KGB, survived the Beria purge, usually stays in Moscow, and makes occasional trips to different centers.

  “He arrived in June. He displaced the regular man, occupying his quarters. Beginning one week or so after his arrival, procedures for relaying information to Moscow were changed. It used to be done by one courier taking the commercial flight to Moscow. The courier now goes by military jet.”

  “How often?”

  “It varies. Sometimes every two weeks. Sometimes two or three times in one week. It is definitely irregular, it is definitely a change in procedures. I have the information from someone who coordinates between the general and the Air Force. I have pictures of General Kankrin and the military jet, and I would be obliged for twenty thousand Deutsche Marks. Only I want them in dollars or Swiss francs, which is one reason why I brought you to Austria.”

  After that, the business of looking into the Anna Krindlers in East Berlin seemed less academic.

  The meeting, requested by Rufus, was held in the Cabinet Room. The appointments secretary had said three o’clock, and of course the designated participants were there—the Directors of the CIA and of the FBI, the new Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Nathan Twining, was there with time to spare. The President, who had acquired his habits in the military, was on the whole punctual. When, seven years ago, he had found himself commander-in-chief, he permitted himself the occasional indulgence of being five or ten minutes late. He confessed it once to Mamie (it was the night of his reelection).… Although the early results portended a landslide over Adlai Stevenson, word from Stevenson headquarters in Chicago was vague as to just when the Governor would go to the ballroom of the hotel to concede defeat. When the President’s jubilant campaign manager went to the presidential suite and told him that Stevenson had not yet set a time at which to capitulate and congratulate the victor, the President looked at his watch. It was 10:55. “Tell the son of a bitch I’m going to proclaim my victory at exactly 11:15, then I’m going to bed.”

  The message, bowdlerized, was instantly transmitted to Chicago, throwing Stevenson into considerable disarray, inasmuch as the convention was that the victor await the concession of the loser. Since Stevenson wanted above all to make a belletristic concession, he had to compose it. He could not bring himself to do so ahead of the event, notwithstanding the adamant despondency of the polls; and so now in the noisy suite, where his principal aides had begun to pay more attention to the bar than to the late returns, Stevenson retired quietly to an adjacent bedroom with only a yellow pad and a pencil, rejecting any offer of help. Of course, there was not enough time. Stevenson couldn’t possibly compose something beautiful—something lapidary—descend to the ballroom, silence his lachrymose followers, and deliver his concession, all by 11:15. So that when he had it written out and it was being typed, along about midnight, and he asked anxiously where the President was, hoping that he would be photographed reacting in some way to Stevenson’s eloquent message, it was perhaps the hardest blow of a hard evening to learn that the television cameras had followed Eisenhower from the hotel to the White House, where the door had been most conclusively shut to the press. It was then that his running mate, Estes Kefauver, weighed in with the elegant suggestion that the concession be made in the form of a telegram sent to the President at the White House, as though this were quite habitual. Sure, the commentators would catch it, but not the crowd inside. So that the words were quickly typed in, “I have”—here Adlai Stevenson stretched the truth a little—“one hour ago, instructed my office to send the following telegram to President Eisenhower, at the White House.” One hour ago. Neat. That would have been before Ike’s victory statement.…

  It was later that night, with only Mamie and one or two others sitting about the living room of the family quarters, that Ike let off steam about Stevenson’s tactics during the last weeks of the campaign, during which Stevenson had solemnly assured his countrymen that if they voted for Eisenhower, they would get Nixon. Without saying so in as many
words, Governor Stevenson had implied that the medical statistics simply gainsaid any reasonable possibility that a sixty-six-year-old man who had had a heart attack and an ileitis operation would likely endure another four years of White House activity, in which case the catastrophe of a President Richard Nixon would confront the nation.

  Ike had a glass of whiskey in his hand. “Every now and then,” he said to his jovial and constant companion George Allen, “they say I’m ‘ornery.’ Well, every now and then I am. Right, Mamie? Shut up, Mamie. Every now and then I am, and this is one of those times. You know what? I’ll attend his funeral. That’s a promise.”

  Eventually only Mamie was left, and Ike was feeling pretty good. That was the occasion when, leaning back in the comfortable armchair and looking up at the discreetly lit portrait of Abraham Lincoln, he permitted himself to speak of the perquisites of his office. “I have to confess it, Mamie, when I arrive for a Cabinet meeting and all those people stand up, people who are tops in their own fields, I—well, it doesn’t exactly annoy me. Took me a while before I remembered not to say ‘At ease!’ That was funny, that first time. Everybody laughed. Huh? Well, I guess just one more. Light. Don’t get reelected President of the United States every day. Last time around for a Republican was 1900, McKinley. What? McKinley. William McKinley. The one who was shot by that anarchist. They strung him up in a hurry. Yup, four more years, Mamie.…”

  The President entered the Cabinet Room, two doors down the hall from his own office, at 3:05. He greeted everyone in the room with a nod, with the exception of Rufus, whose hand he took. “Still got my dog tags, Rufus?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” Ike had told Rufus in 1944 that if his predictions about Omaha Beach proved correct, Ike would give him the dog tags he had been issued when he graduated from West Point.

  “All right. Rufus, go ahead.” The President leaned back, thus exhibiting the confidence he showed only when he turned the meeting over to men of demonstrated economy of expression.