Saving the Queen

by William F. Buckley

  Black whistled.

  “I’m not saying this on account of paternal pride, and Hubbard knows me well enough to know that. I want that plane sold, and that means I want the best demonstration of it, especially up against the Hunter, I can get. I saw you do things with that plane the other day after an hour that are as good as and better than what I can do with it. Put three or four hours in between now and Monday, and you’ll handle that plane as if you designed it.”

  Black was excited. “Okay!… But what does that do to the invitation to Kirk?”

  “Tell him this: that I have okayed the invitation. But that for reasons he would be the first to understand, we couldn’t let him fly the plane until after the air match on Monday. Anytime after that—Tuesday, if he wants.”

  “When will you be back, and when will we start working out?”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow, late. But I’ve already spoken to Ace Simpson, and Hubbard has confirmed my cable. The plane is yours—exclusively—from now until Monday. Simpson or one of his engineers will ride with you and take notes. On Sunday afternoon, Hubbard will be here, you’ll take it up, and Hubbard and his people will watch. If they like what they see, you’re on. Otherwise it’s agreed I’ll take it up on Monday myself.”

  “Okay, Dad. I’ll be leaving here this morning, and you can get me at my flat, or by leaving a message there. It’s a deal.” He slapped down the receiver animatedly, then picked it up again and asked the switchboard operator to get him Viscount Kirk.

  “Peregrine, good morning.”

  “Good morning, old chap. How are the bridges?”

  “The bridges are coming along fine, thank you, but I’ve got news for you. My father called me just now and told me about the big deal on Monday.”

  “Did he tell you who is slated to pilot the Hunter?”

  “Well, yes, he did.”

  “I hope you know, Blackford, that I wasn’t aware of this when we spoke the night before last. The selection was made yesterday—I think rather impulsively. They pushed me through the doctor yesterday morning and he okayed me. I’m to go up this afternoon and work out over the weekend. As it stands, I’m slated to go if my reflexes are up to snuff.”

  “Well, here is my news, Perry. I’m slated to go on the Sabre if I check out successfully. Otherwise, you will be flying against my father.”

  “Your father!”

  “Yes,” said Blackford, a little defensively. “He is considered one of the finest test pilots in America.”

  “Indeed.” Peregrine’s voice was thoughtful.…

  Blackford took advantage of the pause. “Now, Dad says sure, you can have the Sabre and fly it to your heart’s content. But not before Monday. I think I’ll quote him exactly: ‘Viscount Kirk would be the first to understand the reasons why it will have to wait until after Monday.’”

  “I bet he didn’t refer to me as ‘Viscount Kirk.’”

  “Well,” said Blackford, “as a matter of fact, I did contribute that.” And, to himself he said: At least he didn’t call you that Communist son of a bitch who has been stealing secrets that could jeopardize the safety of your family, your countrymen, and your … Queen. Blackford shifted gears and wondered, idly, whether Kirk would be capable of turning in an inferior performance if it happened that the Hunter was the superior plane: It would after all be ideologically consistent, since fighter planes were being designed for use only against one conceivable enemy.… But this was fantasy and he checked himself. Could Chaliapin, taking pity on an aging Martinelli, fumble his end of the quartet in Rigoletto? Blackford simply didn’t know Peregrine, could not guess what was the mysterious dislocation that had prompted him to this dizzying treachery—what an oldfashioned word, Black thought, in the cosmopolitan world of summit conferences, where the American President, the British Prime Minister, and the Soviet despot make dispositions involving hundreds of thousands of people—millions of people, actually—committing them, for the sake of temporary geopolitical comity, to any convenient fate—these men go back to receive the great acclaim, to be gartered by the Queen (Blackford thought it would be interesting to be around for one of these). But at another level, there was still something like consensus: What Peregrine Kirk was doing was a capital offense, which, really, was the least of it. England, so tolerant of eccentricity, has hated two species: traitors, and people unkind to animals. Peregrine’s ultimate audacity: to use the Queen! He thought: The British are by and large a calm people. But for this, he thought, they would gladly tear a man limb from limb. He made a wry deduction. Would they, as gustily—lustily?—tear apart an American patriot who, in an effort to detect the violation of the Queen, violated the Queen? But Blackford, who thought quickly, had only split seconds for these meditations. He was, on the telephone with Peregrine Kirk, required to give as much attention to what he was saying, and to what he must answer in return, as he would give, during a dive in a fighter plane, to replying to the concatenated demands of the instruments on the dashboard.

  Peregrine laughed. “Of course I understand. And we’ll meet at the zone of combat on Monday at two P.M. After it’s over, we can compare notes at our leisure. And I’ll make it a condition with our people that you can have a run in the Hunter after Monday. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Blackford.

  “I’ll see you, old chap. My compliments to the Queen, if you see her before you go—are you, by the way, coming soon to London?”

  Blackford’s instincts, cultivated by his Washington training, guided his reply.

  “I expect to, but I’m not absolutely sure. One of the foundation people is in Paris and wants to see me, either there or in Brussels. Fortunately, my dad has a Sabre in several European cities, so I can work out and spend time with my project director wherever I am.”

  Peregrine was gently persistent. “You mean, you may go abroad directly from Windsor?”

  “No, I’ll certainly go to London today to arrange my things.”

  “Very well. Good luck, old chap. And don’t take it too hard on Monday.”

  Blackford put down the telephone and felt cold, from one end of his body to another. He closed his eyes to help organize his thoughts. It was nine-fifteen. The Queen would be leaving, she had said, at ten. He must, for appearance’s sake, put in at least an hour in the archives. But above all he must be in touch with Callaway and, this time, with Rufus. He knew he had to move fast, and that therefore he had, consciously, to slow down his physical movements. He forced himself to take a studiedly prolonged bath, during which he thought back, meticulously, on every word he had uttered in the presence of Peregrine Kirk.

  The Queen left Windsor after dispatching a number of communications, to the Lord Chamberlain, to the groom, to the head gardener—and to Blackford Oakes, Esq., which last she dictated to Mabs, one member of the fourteen-man royal caravan readying for the discreet departure.

  Dear Mr. Oakes: I have advised the Lord Chamberlain that you expect to leave some time around midday. I have also instructed him to give you lunch should you desire to have it here in the castle. I repeat that you are most welcome to return to complete your researches. And I hope you will, some time in the weeks ahead, come to Buckingham Palace and have dinner, perhaps with your charming friend Miss Hanks. With all good wishes, Caroline, R.

  Ten minutes after the Queen’s departure, Blackford got up from his desk at the library and told the receptionist he would be taking a little walk and be back in a few minutes. He walked down to the same telephone he had used the afternoon before. Callaway answered.

  Blackford used the emergency code.

  “Singer, this is Black. I’m going to be busy next week. I wonder if we could go over the list for the party today? But it would be a lot easier if we could do it while Nancy was there; otherwise there’d be a lot of duplicated effort.”

  Singer answered: “Hang on a moment, and let me look at my schedule.”

  Two minutes later, Singer having communicated with Rufus over a different line, his voi
ce came back.

  “Fine. Two o’clock at Nancy’s.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Blackford.

  He forced himself to spend another full hour at the archives. He had to concentrate even to manage to set the plans laid before him right side up. Finally he pulled a mass of papers together and put them into two large briefcases. He walked to the keeper’s office and thanked him most cordially, and from there to his room, where he rang for Masterson, to whom he slipped two quid in an envelope, and asked to have his car brought up front.

  Masterson came to help him pack, but the job was already done.

  Blackford shook hands cordially and went out again into the cold muggy air, January having returned to the British Isles. He had memorized, that being his way, the simple, unmistakable road instructions for returning to London. He drove to his flat and unloaded his briefcases, but kept his large traveling bag in the back of the car, for reasons not entirely thought out. He drove then to a garage several blocks away from the garage he usually patronized, left the car, and walked down Brompton Road, checking the time. He was early. He dropped into the same Lyons Tea Room his stepfather had taken him to eleven years earlier. He thought to amuse himself by asking for hot chocolate, but settled for coffee and a meat pie. At five minutes before two he paid the bill, walked down Beauchamp Place, turned the corner to No. 28, Walton, and rang the bell. The door was opened by Singer Callaway, who wordlessly moved him in to Rufus’s study.

  “A cup of tea?” Rufus looked at him.

  “No thanks,” Blackford shook his head, betraying an unwillingness to speak. Rufus detected it.

  “You are safe here,” he said. “We sweep every morning. Go ahead.”

  “Your man is James Peregrine, Viscount Kirk,” said Blackford.

  “How do you know?”

  “One. He is an intimate friend of Queen Caroline, sees her regularly. He has got her greatly exercised over the state of England’s atomic defenses, and most particularly about the imprecise knowledge England has of America’s progress with the hydrogen bomb.

  “Two. The Queen asked me if I knew what progress our people were making with the hydrogen bomb. Why did she ask me? Because she thought I might know the answer. Why did she think I might know the answer? Because at dinner the first night, when there were six guests including Viscount Kirk, I told a very tall tale about my apprenticing at Yale under the retired atomic scientist Rene Wallack, and about having been present on at least two occasions when Edward Teller himself came down to try to persuade Wallack to come back from retirement and help crack the remaining problems of the hydrogen bomb. In the course of it all—I told them debonairly—Professor Wallack asked me to stay on as an assistant, but I was already committed to the foundation job. But I added—goddammit, I know, I know I overdid it—that I had suggested a friend of mine from MIT, who had taken the job, and this friend keeps me pretty well posted on the kind of progress we’re making on the bomb.”

  Rufus was the perfect audience for so orderly a presentation. As long as it proceeded thus systematically, he would not have shown any signs of impatience, let alone have interrupted, if it had gone on for hours.

  “Three. Needless to say, when I spun all of that out, I had no idea Kirk was our guy. But I felt I had to say something that would make me interesting to the Queen. Remember, it was altogether probable that my luck had run its course—having got into the castle and been incorporated into one official meal, I might never lay eyes on her again and would have to pursue the identity of our man through questions directed at stray cooks, valets, and curators.

  “Four. I was lucky. The Queen continued to show an interest in me—which might well have been stimulated by my horseshit about my closeness to Wallack, Teller, et al. A day later, the Queen asked me, some time after we had ridden horseback together, if I knew what the Teller-Freeze Bypass was. I said, sort of casually, ‘Who wants to know?’ and she said ‘Peregrine—he’s very much concerned about national security.’ Of course, I told her that unfortunately I had never heard of the Teller-Freeze Bypass, though I could have rattled on, giving her one of those formulas Rufus gave me last weekend.

  “And that’s the whole story.”

  Blackford, having spent the better part of the morning searching his conscience, could not see that it was any concern of his employers, of the republic he served, from sea to shining sea, to report on what clothes he and the Queen were wearing when they discussed the Teller-Freeze Bypass, or by how many centimeters, if measurable, their bodies were separated.

  Singer looked at Rufus. Rufus looked like a man smoking a pipe without a pipe. He was the most infuriatingly deliberate man, Allen Dulles had once complained, in the history of thought, and it was all the more infuriating that he was utterly unconscious of any imposition on the people who waited on him. He could act very quickly, but never did so when there was an alternative. He was that way with Dulles, and had been that way once with Churchill, who finally stormed out of the room and asked to be summoned “when Socrates comes out of his trance.”

  During all this Singer and Blackford exchanged not a word. Blackford’s eyes had begun to roam about the room, looking at the book titles and thinking that old Tom in Washington would be proud of Black’s capacity, at an instant’s notice, to reproduce on sketch paper the exact contents of this room.

  Suddenly the silence was broken—by Blackford.

  “I forgot something that may prove important.”

  He told them in detail about his conversation that morning with his father, and his subsequent conversation with Peregrine, and about the match set for the following Monday.

  Rufus returned to his thinking.

  Finally he said:

  “I would suppose that NKVD-London has got hold of Professor Wallack by now, though it is just possible they found reasons for delaying a bit—we must find out. Singer, it’s worth the risk. Get someone to approach Professor Wallack immediately to ask whether he has been questioned about Oakes; and to ask him, if the answer is no, to agree to dissimulate when he is approached, as he certainly will be.”

  Blackford interrupted. “Excuse me. But I know the right man to do that. The man who recruited me, Anthony Trust, who is in New York, graduated from Yale two years ago. He knows everybody there, and he is smooth, very smooth.”

  “Excellent. Singer, get that done now, and”—he looked at his watch—“ask for an answer within four hours. Trust should locate Professor Wallack over the telephone and ask him to dodge any telephone call, or any visitor, until Trust himself drives over to see him. Tell Trust he can use Teller’s name, and get word to Teller that if he gets a call from Wallack asking whether he should cooperate with a man called Anthony Trust, the answer is emphatically affirmative.”

  Singer left the room, opened a door apparently to give instructions to a technician in the adjoining room, and was back in a minute or two.

  Exactly five minutes later a bell rang, and, answering the summons, Singer returned to the cryptographer’s quarters. The message, in all its apparent complexity, had been received by Trust, who would act instantly and report, in a matter of minutes, on his conversation with Wallack. But before doing anything, Trust had said, he would take the precaution of telephoning Teller.

  In another ten minutes Singer was summoned again, and came back with a roll of butcher paper, a message from Trust, through the decoder. He read it out loud:

  REACHED TELLER WHO INSTANTLY CALLED WALLACK WHO AGREED TO ACCEPT A CALL FROM ME. I ASKED WALLACK WHETHER HE HAD HAD INQUIRY RE B. OAKES. HE REPLIED NEGATIVE BUT SAID MAN CALLED HIS OFFICE TWICE THIS MORNING WHILE HE WAS AT SEMINAR DECLINING TO LEAVE NUMBER. SAID HE WOULD CALL AGAIN THIS AFTERNOON. I DECIDED TO RISK DIRECT TELEPHONE ORIENTATION WITH WALLACK RATHER THAN TWO-HOUR-DRIVE TIME DELAY AND RUN RISK MORNING CALLER SUSPECTS WALLACK IS EVADING HIM. TOLD HIM IF CALLER ASKS HE SHOULD REPLY YES BLACKFORD OAKES WORKED FOR HIM AS PART-TIME ASSISTANT FINE YOUNG MAN VERY BRILLIANT YOUNG THEORETICAL PHYSICIST TURNED ENGINEER IN FACT TRI
ED TO HIRE HIM TO STAY ON FOR SPECIAL PROJECTS, DETAILS UNSPECIFIABLE. WALLACK AGREED AND WILL TELEPHONE ME WHEN CONTACT IS MADE.

  The relief in the room was celebrated by a concerted silence.

  Rufus then said, “Singer, we must put a tail on Kirk, and try to bug his flat. But use only your top man, or nobody. It would be better, at this point, if we lost him than if he caught on that we are on to him. Get that started right away.” Rufus’s intensest emotions, like J. S. Bach’s, were rendered pianissimo. Again Singer left the room.

  Rufus, though looking at Blackford, was actually talking to himself.

  “So far, they don’t know we’ve got our man. But there’s something we don’t know, and that is: What precautions has Kirk taken?”

  “You mean to get away?”

  “That’s one kind of precaution. Another is to neutralize us. He has a hell of a lever: the reputation of the Queen of England. The unity of the West is a fragile thing as it is. Institutional stability, in Europe, is practically a monopoly of Great Britain, West Germany, and Monaco. The demoralization that would follow from the exposure of the Queen as inadvertent agent of the Soviet Union is something Europe would have a hell of a time adjusting to. You can imagine what it would do to the British. Abdication. A huge, iconoclastic assault on the monarchy, general hell. The problem now is less Kirk—he has to be disposed of, of course—than saving the Queen—I repeat, and we don’t know what precautions, if any, Kirk has taken. And we don’t know how deep the NKVD’s knowledge is of the relationship between Kirk and the Queen.…”

  “Isn’t it safe to assume they know everything?” Blackford asked.

  “Has it occurred to you, Blackford,” Rufus stared into space, “that the NKVD may not even know who Kirk is? That, really, is the principal purpose of our tailing him—to try to establish if there is any face-to-face contact with any of the known NKVD agents.”

  The bell rang in the next room, and Singer came back with a fresh communication from Trust.

  “It sure is moving fast today,” he said excitedly. “Here’s the latest.”