Rufus sat as though he had not moved since the Sunday evening Blackford had last seen him. He looked up at Black and said, “You are a good man.”
Blackford bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.
“I think I should tell you,” Rufus said, with the nearest intimation of a smile since Blackford had known him, “that if you had declined to volunteer your own life in the event of having to use the cannon, I’d have regretfully made a different estimate of you and would have taken steps. But you convinced me you were willing to give your life, and that has always weighed heavily with me in assessing the risk of letting a man stay alive.”
“Taken steps? Blown up my plane, I take it? When did you plan to detonate? And how?”
“It was remotely controlled by a Sabre engineer. It would have appeared as an apparently sympathetic detonation. Either on the heels of Kirk’s fatal dive or after you shot Kirk down, or during your own dive.”
“I thought you had it set to go off automatically?”
“Not quite. It required that I give the ground operator the word, which I’d have done if you had had to shoot Kirk out of the sky.”
“Remind me to go back to engineering,” Blackford said, sitting down and wondering why Rufus had told him all this. He wondered for only an instant.
“I know that you will never reveal our secret. But you must know that if you were ever tempted to do so, the order I did not give yesterday would, mutatis mutandis, automatically be reissued, and the republic would lose not only you, which I say sincerely would be a real loss, but my reputation, which rests on a professional record of: taking no risks.”
Blackford looked at Rufus’s deeply set eyes.
“I understand,” he said.
“Several details. We have the package from 1305 Chelsea Station. It was, in fact, everything Kirk represented. The voices were clear and frighteningly unmistakable. The recording was apparently done at Windsor Castle, in one of the Queen’s drawing rooms, I take it, while she was having tea with Kirk.
“As for the morning papers, there is a tremendous hue and cry from the Hunter people, which was to be expected. They are urging the conclusion that Kirk died of a heart attack a second before his ostensible death. They have this going for them: Slow-motion movies do not reveal any suggestion that he attempted to bring the aircraft up from the dive at the final moment. Clearly the Hunter people are concerned to bring their new model back to life, not Viscount Kirk. Since it is unseemly that he was guilty of bad judgment, they urge the medical conclusions. An autopsy, however, will prove impossible, given the fragmentation of the corpse. Management has announced that on Monday next, allowing a week’s mourning for the lost pilot, they will demonstrate the Hunter in a nose dive attaining a speed identical to Kirk’s, and will recover beginning only at five hundred feet from the ground. The names of the three pilots who will perform the exercise three times running have already been released.
“Now, there has been absolutely no suggestion, anywhere, of anything, over on our side, except personal dismay, and a certain professional disappointment that in one or two of the exercises, the Hunter showed itself to be narrowly superior to our Sabre. But these are conceded to be inconclusive, so it is safe to say that yesterday’s events have not significantly advanced the answer to the question which of the two is the plane of the future for NATO. That is not our concern.”
“It’s sure as hell my dad’s concern,” Blackford felt constrained to say, and wondered, for the first time, whether his preoccupations had caused him to perform, as test pilot, less well than he might have.…
“On the other hand, the press had shown an enormous interest in you, Blackford, more than I’d have anticipated, and more than I welcome. Obviously their correspondents in America have done a lot to poke into your background.”
He pulled out the Express. “‘AMERICAN ACE SCHOOLED AT GREYBURN / QUIT AFTER FLOGGING.’ Another story pokes around London and your job here for the American foundation, identifying it, and calling you something of a social lion. That fellow discovered that you spent two and a half days at Windsor Castle at the invitation of the Queen, and there is even an interview, not unfriendly, with the keeper, who pronounced you a serious student of engineering.
“Now, there isn’t anything in all this that we need to worry about. However, I think it would be a good idea for you to leave this afternoon. Go back to New York, and spend a couple of months preparing some reports for the foundation. Your presence in England while the story is hot is a magnet to the press.”
“Rufus, my dear, omnipotent friend …” Blackford hadn’t remembered enjoying himself so much since the nightmare’s beginning. “I bring you the news that Her Majesty the Queen has commanded me to deliver the principal eulogy over the corpse, or rather the memory of it, of the late Peregrine, Viscount Kirk, at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, the day after tomorrow at eleven A.M., thereafter joining her and, I am sure, a most august assembly, at lunch, where no doubt I shall be fought over between that half of the company that holds me responsible for Kirk’s death, and that other half that will be appalled at my presumption in showing up at all, let alone in delivering the eulogy. But wait a minute, Rufus—I’ve a terrific idea! Why don’t you kidnap the Queen, hypnotize her, then send her back and have her rescind her invitation to me to do the eulogy?”
Rufus’s eyes widened, and he fell, as expected, into one of his silences. He began to put his thoughts into expressionless words, addressed, primarily, to himself.… “You could simply take off, and leave the Queen a nice letter … you couldn’t face it … that kind of thing.… But that would be uncharacteristic … and the Queen must be unaffected … nothing must shake her self-confidence.… You will have to go through with it.”
“Will you write the eulogy for me, Rufus?”
“That can be arranged.”
“Never mind, I’ll do it.”
“I shall have to see it. No irony, Blackford. Absolutely no irony.”
He turned to Singer. “I still think we should get Blackford away from the press. Take him to Paris and come back late tomorrow. Keep Joe in the flat, answering the telephone, in case any of the questions suggest they are on to something. If so, get word to me. Blackford, my boy, look me in the eye right now and tell me: We did a thorough security check on you. But is there anything the press is likely to uncover that we haven’t?”
Blackford paused, and then said nonchalantly, “The press has less to discover about me than about the Queen of England—and I haven’t scared her off.… I suppose if they went over George Washington U’s records for last summer they would find I hadn’t actually spent much time in the engineering school. But I can’t imagine they would go that far, or that if they did, there would be any sensational inferences to be drawn. After all, I didn’t shoot Kirk down. I just invited him, in the most genteel way, to commit suicide, or else I’d kill him.”
“Is there anything in the Greyburn story I ought to know?”
“Yes,” said Blackford. “Up until about a week ago if anybody had accused me of being a coward at Greyburn I’d have punched him in the nose.”
“What happened a week ago?”
“I got it out of my system.”
“How?”
“Suddenly … it just came … steaming out. I don’t care anymore. However, if, while I am in Paris, you think my manhood at age sixteen was endangered, contrive to get somebody in the press to telephone Sir Alec Sharkey, at 50 Portland Place. He is my stepfather, and he examined the damaged goods after I came home. He can answer, as an Old Greyburn Boy, whether I was the coward or Dr. Chase the sadist. The only other witness to the event I doubt you would want to summon, since his name is Anthony Trust, and he is a trusted agent of our thoughtful, energetic, easygoing, but obstinately anonymous employer, the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Boris Bolgin was not expected to stay late at the Soviet Embassy for routine diplomatic business, so he was usually home, in his little flat, by six o’
clock, and on Monday had already poured himself his first vodka. He followed a procedure here which he found not only prudent, but quaint, and in a sense protective. In his apartment he kept six goblets ranging in size from the miniature one-shot glasses the pubs liked to use—for no other reason, Boris of course understood, relapsing by habit into a class explanation for so labor-consuming an object, than to exploit the masses by requiring them constantly to refill a glass that would hold only a single ounce at one time. Still, he always began with one of these and graduated to a port-sized glass, then to a Bordeaux glass, finally to a white-wine glass, though he seldom totally emptied it—Boris, he liked to tell himself, was a fan of vodka, not a slave of it. He had usually downed the first glass and begun to sip the second by the time the national news came on, and it was then that he saw the graphic record of what he had heard about the exciting events of the early afternoon. But BBC, exercising great ingenuity, had pieced together a considerable retrospective on the short but dramatic life of Viscount Kirk. Most of it was given over to old clips of Kirk talking about his horses during the Olympics, though there were in fact still earlier shots, including one that reproduced a minute’s worth of a patriotic speech given by Kirk after he had been acknowledged as one of England’s outstanding aces, and even a schoolboy shot as captain of the Greyburn eleven when they defeated Eton. Boris’s glass was untouched throughout the television special. For all the precautions he had taken, Peregrine Kirk had not attempted to disguise his speaking voice, which after all was never these days broadcast on radio or television. So that for the first time outside the confessionals of a cluster of Catholic churches in London, Boris Andreyvitch Bolgin heard the voice of Robinson, while staring at his face.
It did not take long for him—the vodka glass was now entirely forgotten—to understand the potential consequences of the death of Robinson. For the Soviet Union, of course. But, most particularly, for himself. He did not instantly decide what would be his own course of action, but he reasoned that he must take what measures he could to explore the possibility that the enemy had got on to Robinson. And this was easily reduced to a single question: Was the American, Oakes, aware of Kirk’s double life? If so, did Oakes have a hand in Kirk’s death? If so (very important), how would he, Boris, account for the loss of his most productive contact? Stalin did not have that part of the normal man’s brain that understands that certain things happen without the acquiescence of his nearest agent. The death of Robinson would translate, to Stalin, as the dereliction of Boris.
But one step at a time, the old warrior said, as he turned the safety key in his apartment, relocked it on the outside, and trudged back the four blocks to the Soviet Embassy where the guard instantly admitted him, forgoing the formality of an identification card for someone as indelibly conspicuous as Boris Karloff.
He went directly to the radio room and roused the operator, who was studying English by translating British comic strips. Boris had become autocratic by habit not so much as a matter of nature—as a young man, he was elaborate in his courtesies to subordinates—as of training. A generation of Soviet bureaucrats responded in one way to barked commands, in an entirely different way to whispered velleities.
“Take this communication instantly. Address it to”—Boris consulted his note pad and, mentally, effected the necessary transpositions; no one else, coming upon his note pad, would be able to decipher it—“Hilton Jones, NTX-NTX-NTX SovEmbassy, Newyork. IMPERATIVE WITHOUT ANY DELAY YOU ESTABLISH WHETHER ASSISTANT TO PROFESSOR RENE WALLACK AT YALE UNIVERSITY (A) PREPARED AT MIT, (B) WAS RECOMMENDED TO PRESENT EMPLOYER BY BLACKFORD OAKES YALE CLASS OF 1951, (C) WRITES REGULARLY TO OAKES IN LONDON GIVING REPORTS ON PROGRESS EFFECTED BY WALLACK IN LIAISON WITH TELLER RE HYDROGEN BOMB RESEARCH. IMPERATIVE I HAVE REPLY WITHIN HOURS. I AUTHORIZE YOU”—Boris paused to find another page in his notebook, and once again he made the verbal transposition—“UNDER PRIORITY SCHELL-YUGIN GIVE THIS TOTAL ATTENTION.”
It worked. At six in the morning his number rang. Boris quickly put on his clothes and coat, and trundled back to the embassy. He knew not to expect any explanation of how the mission had been accomplished—these romantic appoggiaruras on the mechanics of the spy business were peculiarly the anxiety of the Americans and the British. He was pleased by the directness of the message handed to him. “EXTENSIVE RESEARCH CONCENTRATED IN FEW HOURS PENETRATED FLIMSY STORY WALLACK ASSISTANT. SUBJECT WAS IN FACT TRAINED IN BERKELEY, HAS NEVER WRITTEN OAKES, BUT WAS INSTRUCTED TO INDICATE OTHERWISE LAST FRIDAY.”
Boris walked home slowly.
Blackford Oakes, then, knew about Robinson. How? He could not imagine. But on the other hand he could not imagine, either, that Robinson’s operation could go forever undetected. But where had Robinson gotten his information? This Boris had never been able to imagine, and his failure to conceive what were Robinson’s sources had contributed to his decision to permit Robinson to remain anonymous. Now he had no alternative. He would need to inform Ilyich that Robinson was dead, and that by voice identification, he, Boris, had identified him as Viscount Kirk. Would he then be expected to conduct an investigation into the contacts of Viscount Kirk? He was one of those English royal blades who move everywhere. How could Boris divine from whom he got the vital information? He would need to try and would concentrate on Robinson’s friends within the nuclear scientific community. Was there someone there who, passing along the secrets to Robinson, knew what was their ultimate destination? Was it possible that Boris could approach that person, once his identity was deduced?
But something else was more likely. Blackford Oakes having discovered and exposed Robinson, wasn’t it likely that the CIA, or MI-6, had done the work necessary to demolish Robinson’s scaffolding? In the next few days, could Boris expect to read in the paper or—more probably—hear through the grapevine, the news that scientist Jones, or cryptographer Wren, had been silently arrested and was being held incommunicado?
It occurred to Boris that the young American was as close as he was likely to come to identifying the source of the great leak. But perhaps Blackford was only the mechanic—had he actually killed Robinson? If so, how? How in the world had he persuaded that cocky young man who occupied the priest’s compartment in the confessional with such assurance to commit suicide?… In fact, Boris meditated, he was left with only this: Oakes was a fraud. He was a secret intelligence operative of the United States. Whether he had personally contrived the death of Robinson, Boris simply did not have the necessary information to conclude.
Boris liked to write notes to himself, when in tight situations. He did so now. A course of action, together with variables.
“1. I can notify Moscow that Peregrine, Viscount Kirk, turns out to be the invaluable Robinson. That I have arrived at that undeniable conclusion. But that I cannot know how many of the enemy are similarly aware of Kirk’s double role.
“2. I can notify Moscow that I have ascertained that Blackford Oakes is most probably an agent of the CIA, and possibly had a hand in the death of Robinson.
“3. I can recommend to Moscow that we take steps either to abduct Oakes or to neutralize him by letting him know obliquely that we are on to him.
“4. I can do none of the above, save (2), which the embassy cryptographer will pass along in any case. Moscow is bound to learn that Oakes is a fraud. But Moscow doesn’t know that Kirk was Robinson. And doesn’t know that Oakes might have had a hand in killing Robinson.
“5. [Here Boris’s handwriting became less emphatic. In fact the script became almost flimsy, demure, as it shifted into English, deserting the intractable Cyrillic.] I can defect, and have a useful conversation with Oakes and the CIA. I could give them useful information and get a big-big settlement. Question: Would they all be able to protect me?… All very confused … Maybe I am better off putting the noose on the head of the American ‘flier.’ …”
He had, by this time, very nearly drained the large goblet, and his thought was getting foggy, and anyway there was time to come to
a conclusion in the next few days. He knew one thing, and—again in English, whose vernacular constructions appealed to him—he repeated to himself, as he drained the goblet and turned the light off, “Well, Mr. Oakes, you son of a bitch, sir.” Boris’s old habits, earthiness and deference, accepted the rhetorical incompatibility. “I know who you are, you don’t know it, and you shall pay for it.”
Boris was quite right about one thing. Blackford had no idea he hadn’t got clean away. And Wallack’s young assistant, in turn, had no idea that the inquisitive and alluring graduate student who had enticed and then yielded to his advances had been moved by anything more than, at the margin, his irresistible charms, or that she had got from him anything more than a good dinner and a splendid tumble in his quiet little apartment with the computer print-outs on the desk, and the large technical drawings on the wall of a nuclear device, spilling out its aphrodisiac charms.
They were in Paris at five, began dinner at seven, and at nine they were drinking champagne with Mme. Pensaud, Michelle, and Doucette, and at nine-thirty, notwithstanding Doucette’s ever-loving attentions, Blackford’s eyes riveted on the portrait across the room, the coronation portrait of Queen Caroline. He sighed deeply, closing his eyes and trying to fancy a tiara on Doucette’s head. She smiled maternally, through her rapture, and Blackford smiled back. Doucette, eyes only partly closed now, knees raised, hands working, asked finally, more inquisitively than wistfully, why Blackford stared at the picture of the Queen. “C’est encore question de symbiose?” She laughed, and Black laughed back, forgetting for these few extravagantly carnal moments the consuming nostalgic fantasy. In fact he was asleep when, at eleven, Singer nudged him, held out a glass of champagne, and told him to get dressed.
“Would you believe it, our girls are going to give themselves to another pair of gentlemen? Make cuckolds out of us? Hurry up, Black, they’re downstairs already. We are to leave the back way. I’ve settled the account.”
Saving the Queen Page 27