He looked at the number on the steel box and, opening his own safe, tabulated the corresponding code and applied the appropriate combination to open the box. He pulled out the spool of paper, unwinding it and laying it neatly across his desk, dabbing down the ends with Scotch tape. He lowered the desk light and read:
WE HAVE OUR MAN AND I HAVE EVOLVED A SATISFACTORY PLAN. BUT THERE IS A RESIDUAL RISK IN ALLOWING THE SURVIVAL OF OUR YOUNG MAN. I CAN AT THIS POINT VERY EASILY ARRANGE FOR HIS ALTOGETHER LOGICAL ELIMINATION. BUT ON THIS ONE, CHIEF, YOU’VE GOT TO GIVE ME THE WORD, AND I’M USING THIS QUOTE WORD UNQUOTE IN CASE YOU DIDN’T NOTICE, AS A DELICATE SUBSTITUTE FOR ORDER. I KNOW IT’S IRRELEVANT TO SAY SO, BUT I LIKE HIM AND TRUST HIM. BUT YOU KNOW MY RULE: NEVER RELY ON YOUR OWN JUDGMENT WHEN THE DOING SO IS TO TAKE A CHANCE WITH THE NATIONAL INTEREST. TELL ME NOW—I AM WAITING AND WILL WAIT THROUGH THE NIGHT IF NECESSARY—“YES,” AND HE GOES TOO; “NO,” HE LIVES TO FIGHT AGAIN. OH YES, HAVE A GOOD SLEEP, BOSS. RUFUS.
He sat down in his armchair and set fire to the crumpled ball of paper. Then he picked out a book from the shelf, an advance copy, sent him by a friend in the publishing business who knew his tastes, which inclined heavily to books about history in which he had himself been involved—The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. He was halfway through it, and found that his pencil had marked a passage he wanted now to reread. It was from the girl’s notes when she was hiding in the attic from the Gestapo, who by concentric deductions were coming closer and closer every day to discovering her. “I wonder,” the little girl had written, “why they let people like them grow so powerful?” He paused and his eyes blurred. People like them. People like whom? He reached again for his directory, scratched down a code number, and after it wrote out a single word, dropped it into the box, and rang for an aide. “Have the operator waiting outside dispatch the message instantly.” He handed him the locked box, called his wife on the intercom, and said he was ready for cocktails.
Most of Saturday morning Blackford spent on the ground, briefed by the chief engineer on the aircraft and on the agreed-upon drill for the following Monday. The two airplanes would perform a total of six exercises each, three of them in tandem, three individually. The contest would to some extent be judged impressionistically, but also there were instruments, both in the aircraft and on the ground, that would record precise scientific data—obvious things like speed and angle of climb, less obvious things like pressures on the pilot, oil viscosity changes, fuel consumption, and a hundred other metabolic arcana of vital interest to generals, economists, and aircraft specialists. The exercise would begin by a tandem sweep past the reviewing stand at an elevation of fifteen feet, to begin ten miles west and terminate ten miles east of the stand—“Later on we’ll fly over to Farnborough and you can look at the actual lay of the land.” This was really pyrotechnical stuff, since the two aircraft would fly at a prearranged six hundred miles per hour, or Mach. 89. In the individual exercises, the Hunter and the Sabre would take turns beginning. The odd-numbered exercises were to be done, like the first, in tandem. The final exercise would have the two airplanes approach the field, loop as narrow a diameter as the pilots dared, and land side by side.
“When do Kirk and I get to practice the duets? We can’t walk into that kind of stuff cold.”
“Well, you can, actually, since they’re all standard maneuvers, and the radio contact between the two of you is perfect—no outside interference on this one. We’re trying out the new closed-circuit radio communication system. But we’ll do that on Monday morning. The reason we’re putting it off until then is that it won’t be until Sunday afternoon that either of you is finally selected.”
“What if we’re both turned down?”
“Your father has trained with a Hunter counterpart, and they can go over it again on Monday morning if they want to, or your father with Kirk, or another Hunter man with you—whatever.”
“Well,” said Blackford, examining the reports on the expected performance he was to get out of the Sabrejet, “I’m sure glad that swimming coach at Yale talked me out of four years of booze and tobacco.… On the other hand”—he smiled and looked up—“they don’t seem to have hurt my father.”
He spent two hours in the morning and three in the afternoon going through the maneuvers. He mastered the airplane, as his father had predicted, with considerable ease. It was like his old Sabre, except that everything was better, smoother; dozens of adjustments required the use of fingertips instead of clenched fists, and quickly Blackford learned to play these as a pianist learns to reduce the finger pressure on a clavichord. Far from ending the afternoon tired, he was exhilarated, and he wondered how any other flying machine could begin to match the versatility of the new Sabre.
As they set out for London, Blackford said impulsively to Joe: “Ever been to Stratford-on-Avon?”
“No.”
“Well, let’s go,” said Blackford, smiling at the thought that his first visit to Stratford was prompted by fear of the NKVD. They got tickets for Othello, and at an early dinner Blackford gave Joe the plot, but not the denouement, and as they were driving home Joe expressed himself as genuinely indignant at Iago, and Blackford told him that was really a good sign, because jealousy was no longer so strong a human passion, in part because people loved others less, loving themselves more, so that jealousy was therefore more a form of idolatry, or so it was held by people who scorned patriotism. Joe said that was very interesting, and they reached their flat before midnight, Joe having meanwhile telephoned Vic Luckey to learn that there had been no messages for Blackford during the day except a call from his father telling him he would meet him at the field at 9 A.M.
It was at this session that Blackford was told that for the critical Exercise Six, which called for a mock dogfight between the Hunter and the Sabre, each aircraft was equipped with six simulated cannon from one of which a light beam of sorts shot out in response to the pilot’s trigger, the trajectory registering instantly at a console in the reviewing stand, indicating whether a hit had been scored. The two fliers could fire their six rounds at will during the dogfight that must end exactly 120 seconds after it started. The results of their marksmanship would not be known to the pilots until after they landed, at which point the winner would be announced. His father hastened to add that one could easily lose Exercise Six and even so impress the generals as having the better airplane, since the winner of the exercise was showing off not only his airplane but his own prowess. “And there’s always luck.… Still, you should try to win them all.”
His father then flew with him for an hour, through the run of the exercises, and pronounced himself totally satisfied.
“We won’t do any more. You’re going to have to do it all again at two for Averell and the boys. Let’s stay fresh.” So they went to a roadside restaurant, Joe having tactfully excused himself, and had fish and chips—and one beer, for Dad, who simultaneously ordered a Coca-Cola for Blackford, and looked, talked, and acted as excited as if Blackford were about to win a Nobel Prize for stunt flying.
Tom Oakes told Blackford he thought it would be more tactful not to introduce his son to the North American brass until after the exhibition.
“There’s always the chance they’ll turn you down—you just can’t tell. It’s a lot harder on them if they’ve just finished socializing with you. Did you know I was a judge once at a Miss America contest? I’m telling you, poking Miss Alabama on Friday night, and disqualifying her on Saturday night, was one of the toughest things I ever had to do.”
“Dad, I take it the moral of that story is that we’re supposed to feel sorry for you, not for Miss Alabama?”
“I never went to Yale, Blacky, so I can’t answer those high colonic ethical questions.” He grinned at his son, left the tip, and they walked, High Noon style, to the hangar.
It went well. Very well. And when he had finished the final loop and brought the plane within feet of the brass, there was spontaneous applause. Blackford looked not
unlike Lindbergh emerging from The Spirit of St. Louis, his father thought, only maybe even handsomer. Black shook everyone’s hands, and they sauntered off to a reception, followed by a showing of an extensive documentary on the design, manufacture, versatility, and prospects of the F-86 Sabre. At six, Blackford whispered to his father: “Dad, I’ve got a date at eight I can’t break, so I’ll just slip away. I’m going to be tied up tonight, but I’ll be here tomorrow.” They were interrupted by a North American engineer who informed them that the Hawker-Hunter Committee had just designated Viscount Kirk to fly their flagship. “Chap said over the phone his performance was unbelievable, unbelievable.” Blackford said good, he was pleased it would be someone he knew. “I’ll be here tomorrow at ten for the tandem work with Kirk.”
“Make it nine-thirty, son.”
“Okay, Dad.”
His father pressed his son’s hand with that special pressure he felt Blacky earned for turning in a performance that did justice to the supership, and credit to his father.
There was just time for a bath at home, and a change of clothes, and a scribbled, long-overdue paragraph to Sally.
Blackford, ready to leave, said, “Joe, I assume I’m to go where I’m going without you.”
Joe looked unhappy—professionally unhappy. “I don’t know, Black. My orders were to stick with you.”
It was only four forty-five, so Black suggested Joe use the telephone and ring whatever number it was he took his orders from and ask.
He did so, and Blackford could hear the grunts. “I’m to go with you as far as Brompton Road and Beauchamp, southwest corner, then you’re on your own. When they’re through with you, they’ll call me and I’ll go and meet you at that corner at the time they say.”
They hailed a cab, and Blackford, about to deposit the letter in a postbox, suddenly found Joe’s iron grip on his wrist. The voice was tender, but firm.
“Sorry, Blackford, orders.”
He took the envelope gently from him. “No letters mailed till after tomorrow.”
Blackford, fighting to subdue resentment, barely succeeded in doing so. In the cab he said, “You bastards are primarily watching me, not guarding me.” Joe shrugged his shoulders.
So, in effect, did Black.
“See you, Joe,” said Blackford, waving his hands when they had reached Brompton Road at the specified corner. He was mildly surprised to see Singer Callaway there, whom he knew better than to greet, walking instead by himself to Walton Street and turning the corner. The door opened for him, stayed open a few seconds, and Singer followed him in.
“You people are making me feel creepy,” Blackford said, taking off a blazer and dropping it on the sofa. “It makes me feel good you’re not sure I can get from Brompton Road to Walton Street without armed surveillance. And that I can’t post a letter to my girl until Rufus or President Truman or whoever allows it.”
Singer smiled. “It’s just that animal magnetism of yours, Blacky—we can’t leave you alone.”
Rufus’s solemnity brought Blackford, wordless, to the same sofa he had sat on for so long on Friday.
“Good evening,” Rufus said.
“Good evening,” Blackford said.
Rufus looked at Blackford and said, “Do you know anything about me?”
“No, sir, not much.”
“There is no reason why you should. There is every reason why you should not. I don’t talk about myself, but I am going to do so to you, very briefly. I was in general charge, during World War II, of keeping hidden from the Germans the knowledge that we had broken their most secret code. I was in specific charge of misleading the Germans into believing that the invasion of Europe would occur in the Calais area. In order to discharge these duties, I made every day a decision that I knew would cost at least one man his life. On one occasion I made a decision that cost many men their lives. I retired from this work, gratefully, after the war was over. I soon realized it wasn’t really over. I was called back by General Eisenhower and Allen Dulles because in their estimation the problem in which you are involved is the most delicate diplomatic-security problem they have ever run into; certainly it is the worst I have ever run into. It is, quite simply, unique: because the Queen of England is about all that is left of this diminishing empire, and the destruction of her reputation could mean something very like the dissolution of the Commonwealth. The damage already done is staggering. The information the Queen has given to the Soviet Union via Viscount Kirk cannot mean less than a five-year acceleration in the Soviet hydrogen-bomb program, and that acceleration means that the history of the last part of this decade, and of the next, will be changed, to the disadvantage of millions of people. We know now how to staunch the lesion—we have only to get rid of Kirk, and that is done easily. What cannot be done easily is to protect the Queen from any possibility that the story of what she did will ever become known—even to her own Prime Minister.”
“What do you want me to do?” Blackford asked, with just a trace of impatience.
“I want you, tomorrow, to effect the death of Kirk even if, in order to do it, you have to end your own life.”
Blackford stood up, pale. Rufus watched him with a searing intensity. The next few words would govern Rufus’s instructions to the Sabre weapons expert waiting, alone, at the hangar at Barrington.
“Would I have a chance?” Blackford asked. “Or are you talking kamikaze stuff?”
“You would have a chance.”
Rufus gave his plan.
Blackford, lying flat now on the couch, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, paused when Rufus was done, and then, after a long interval, said almost listlessly, “Okay.”
Rufus got up, walked over to Blackford, and shook his hand.
“You understand, I can’t let you out of our sight from this moment on. I don’t need to explain. You’ll sleep upstairs, and dinner will be brought in.”
Black was out of wind, and, catching Singer’s gesture, followed him out, and up the stairs to a bedroom-sitting room. Singer said, “There isn’t any reason not to have a bottle of wine, so I’ve ordered it. All I want to know is: Do you want me here for a while, or gone?”
“I’d like you here,” Blackford said, and so for an hour, sharing a bottle of wine, they spoke about matters grave and trivial. Blackford came desperately near to telling Singer, whom he liked and trusted, that his willingness to sacrifice for the Queen was motivated by something more even than his willingness to protect her kingdom. He almost smiled as he wondered what that variable, entered into the complex mind of Rufus, would do to affect the morning’s plans?
The morning papers carried extensive descriptions of the forthcoming duel. There were reports and features on the military, the economic, and the psychological impact of a clear victory by one or the other plane. Commentators warned that such a clear victory was unlikely, that all that the experts would probably be left with would be merely suggestive. Still there was much excitement, and though the feature story on Peregrine Kirk was extensive and included several pictures of him taken during the war, and during the celebrated 1948 Olympics, the offsetting feature on the American pilot was necessarily spare. It had even proved necessary to wirephoto a picture of him from New Haven, Connecticut, where he had recently graduated from Yale as an engineer, because he could not be located at his flat in London, and it was assumed that he was away from the city, resting.
The big social news was that the Queen had announced, in plenty of time to record her decision in the Court Circular, that she would be going out to Farnborough to view the exhibition (she cautiously declined to call it a contest), and that although of course she was very pleased that her second cousin and old friend Viscount Kirk was flying the Hunter, she had in fact met Mr. Oakes, the American, and wished him good luck with his own country’s airplane.
Although air shows in England are popular pastimes, they do not occur in the month of January, but suddenly the thirty-mile trip to Farnborough became the thing to do, and by noon t
he traffic on the southwest highway was clogged. The police estimated that, whereas not more than a few hundred people, most of them official guests, had been expected, now there would probably be as many as ten thousand spectators.
The weather was in part responsible. It was like midweek the week before, an equable temperature, with a yellow snap in the air that made you, if you were sitting in one place, wish to rise in order to sit somewhere else; and vice versa. The fledgling television industry was there in force, and of course BBC radio. Both the pilots had agreed, while dressing in the morning, to speak to no one, but the radio and television were busy, beginning at one o’clock, reporting. Kirk, veteran of a hundred equestrian contests, was altogether natural, quietly confident. Blackford, he noted, was nervous; but why should he not be? He was flying, so to speak, in hostile air. And it had already been rumored that his selection was nepotistically contrived. But when they were in the air together, and after they had gone through the first maneuver, Kirk noticed the utter mastery with which Blackford handled his ship. The signals between them were orthodox, following the rules of the same handbook that had governed some of the cheek-to-cheek dancing of the little biplanes at the county fairs a generation earlier. It was the individual exercises, and the mock battle, that would test the men and the planes. The balletic parts were for the visual satisfaction of the spectators.
Forty-five minutes later they were down on the ground, shook hands, and went their separate ways, Kirk to his quarters and the hangar set apart for him, where Hunter officials buzzed about him; Blackford to his own room, where he asked his father if he might be left alone. But he caught the look on Singer’s face, Singer having been introduced as a young engineering professor on sabbatical in London, and amended his request to say that he would like Singer to stay with him.
Saving the Queen Page 25