“Aw, go settle your own fornicating account,” Blackford said sleepily, belligerently; then, cheered by the accidental pun, he said resignedly, “Take me home, Uncle Sam, I’ve got an Inaugural Address to write.” Singer took him to the hotel, guided him to his bedroom, looked at him as he slumped down, still dressed, on the bed, left and came back with a sedative, which he coaxed Black into taking, declining to be provoked into responding to Black’s monologuist interrogation, which sprang from a blend of fatigue, alcohol, and tension, and seemed to revolve around the theme of the continuing necessity of looking after the safety and happiness of the Queen, to which duty Blackford Oakes should perhaps be assigned.…
Seventeen
Dressed in a mourning coat, Blackford Oakes drove in a palace limousine to Portland Place to pick up his mother and stepfather. His own father, always deft at getting out of the way, was conveniently off in Rome, preparing for the next Sabre exhibition and suavely superintending the defense against the British offensive, aimed at profiteering from the great Monday duel. At Windsor, Sir Alec and Lady Sharkey were detached from Blackford, and led to a pew in the center of the chapel, while Blackford was led to the forwardmost pew on the left, and directed to the lefthandmost seat, whence he could unobtrusively rise and walk to the lectern when the moment came for the eulogy. The Queen entered the chapel a minute before the ceremony began, and everyone rose. She was wearing black, and sat down at the opposite end of the same pew as Blackford. Between them were assorted royal cousins, aunts, and uncles, whose names were written out in the program Blackford discreetly leafed through, while apparently turning the pages of the hymn book.
The Archbishop of Canterbury read from the Book of Common Prayer. Then the choir sang “Komm’ Süsser Tod” and a Scottish ballad that, the program noted, had been one of Viscount Kirk’s favorites. Blackford wondered whether the choir would finish with the “Internationale,” a less widely known enthusiasm of the late Viscount. Then another reading from the Archbishop, tailored to the occasion and ending with the words:
“No one in this company knows this more keenly than the young man who shared with Peregrine Kirk his last moments of life, high in the skies over England, both in their separate instruments, striving to develop mechanisms of peace, whose deathly potential is designed to prolong life: life in freedom, life as citizens of sovereign nations, allied against any worldly conspiracy against human liberty. Her Majesty the Queen [Black had insisted on this, and Queen Caroline, when finally reached, understood and readily agreed] has asked Mr. Blackford Oakes to say a few words.”
Blackford rose, walked gravely to the lectern, and bowed with that faintly wooden truncation that becomes those ill at ease with the filigreed lengths of native obeisances, first to the Queen, then to the Archbishop.
“Your Majesty; lords and ladies; family, friends, and admirers of the late Peregrine, Viscount Kirk. You know, most of you better than I do, the background of the man whose death we are gathered here to mourn. In everything he excelled. As a horseman, he was supreme; briefly, even, he was a competitive champion. As a war ace, he was unrivaled by anyone so unfortunate as to cross his path. Those of you who know anything about his inner life must know that he strove after perfection in disciplines you cannot even guess at. He showed at the very end his love for his country, and whatever misjudgment caused his death, there was surely no misjudgment in the unswerving strategy that, from his earliest years, brought him to his death: the determination that his will should prevail. We cannot know all the mysteries of this world, let alone those of individual human hearts, but I give it as my own judgment, whatever it’s worth, that Peregrine Kirk’s will did indeed prevail, that in his final moments on earth his mind was fastened, as the minds of all Englishmen, everywhere, should be, on the sublime imperative of their civil lives: saving the Queen. This, in his own way, he sought to do by his heroic exertions. As an American, I can only honor his singular act of self-abnegation, and suggest to you that he would have found it most appropriate if we should reiterate now the full meaning of the words he would most clearly have wished us to meditate, as surely as he did at the end: God save the Queen.”
There was a murmur of appreciation as Blackford returned to his pew. Another hymn, the final prayer, and, the organ launching into the recessional, the Queen rose, as did the congregation. Grave, beautiful, and blond, she was escorted out by the Duke of Gloucester, their pace slow—majestic. The royal party and their luncheon guests walked silently up the courtyard, past frozen sentries, observed by all Englishmen with a television set.
As Blackford filed gravely out of the chapel, he felt the warmth of the mourners who brushed up against him, ostensibly under the pressure of the moving crowd, actually so as to come close enough to whisper, “Such a fine eulogy, Mr. Oakes,” or somehow, tactfully, to communicate that sentiment. Blackford smiled and made what forward progress he could until, suddenly, he realized that only a few yards ahead, whom he would overtake, at the rate he was going, in a matter of seconds, was a grim figure, the back of whose head he instantly recognized—he’d have recognized him at any angle. The last angle at which he had in fact seen him was oblique: Blackford’s head down on a couch, Dr. Chase’s head four feet away, staring intently, his right hand upraised, at Blackford’s protruding backside.
Blackford slowed his pace, notwithstanding that this meant more quietly exchanged hypocrisies with the mourners. Why, he wondered, should he have been surprised? As he thought about it, the monarchy is an elaborate venture in the ongoing validation of the Establishment. Of course Dr. Chase had to be invited. In England the headmaster of a boys’ school is a major figure in his life, and Peregrine had not only been at Greyburn nine years, he had been Head Boy. The question Blackford now considered was whether he could escape into Windsor Castle without having to exchange amenities with the monster. If not, what would he say?
The enterprising British tabloid press took the choice away from him. Although Dr. Chase emerged from the chapel a full half minute ahead of Blackford, he was promptly arrested by the correspondent for the Daily Express, who held him immobile until Blackford spilled out, at which point the photographer of the Express propelled the two together.
Dr. Chase, having no reasonable alternative, turned to Blackford, arm extended, as the photographer flashed a picture, and the reporter started to take notes.
“Awful tragedy, Oakes. Quite awful. A fine young man, he was. Your remarks were altogether … apropos.”
Blackford had from the beginning sensed that—somehow—he could not live forever in England without running into Dr. Chase. Yet he had never given thought to composing a phrase suitable to a reunion. He had read in an essay of the contempt George Orwell felt on coming upon his sadistic headmaster years later, a contempt unanimated by hostility or vindictiveness. Yet a week earlier it would have been different, because unlike Orwell’s, Black’s disdain had been undissipated. But that had now happened—only a hundred yards away, he smiled inwardly. He could hardly communicate to the headmaster of Greyburn School the great social achievement of this Old Boy—he wondered, had any graduate of Greyburn got as far as he, the one-term American, with a British sovereign?
He knew now that he was the center of attention not only of the team from the Express but of many others who, coming out of the church, came upon the paralyzed piquancy; the stern headmaster and the chastened schoolboy, dramatized in the press, face to face under unimaginable circumstances.
“Yes, indeed, Dr. Chase. Kirk was an exemplary graduate of Greyburn. I cannot think of anything you failed to teach him.”
The crowd cooed. The reporter from the Express sensed there was something in Oakes’s words worth probing, and sought an elucidation, but the instincts of both men were similar. Dr. Chase turned to his left to greet the Earl of Holly, and Blackford turned to his right prepared to greet anybody at all, and gratefully recognized the groom who had for so many years mounted Peregrine’s horses, and the Queen’s, and only last week
had done as much for Blackford. Black then set out for the gates of Windsor Castle.
The police, check lists in hand, had politely tabulated the guests, admitting fifty-odd persons before resuming their casual posture as human substitutes for the old portcullis. The very last to approach them, invitation in hand, was Blackford Oakes, and before the gates closed between him and his companion, a man named Callaway, he was heard to say to him:
“So long, Singer. Do please let me hear from you if there is anything at all I can do to help you out in the future. You have my number.”
Epilogue
Blackford Oakes was alone. It was never suggested that witnesses should have a lawyer sitting alongside, or even that they should be accompanied by another member of the Agency. The hearings were to be utterly confidential, and in a way—that was how Rockefeller had described them—“informal”—a meeting between a few of the most prominent men of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the presidential panel instructed to interrogate them, to discover just exactly what the CIA did, what limits it observed, and what mechanisms, if any, were needed to perfect the dominion of it by a self-governing public.
So that Blackford was quite literally unaccompanied when the clerk, and the recorder, rose, as the august panel filed in. Blackford rose too, and the chairman, settled in his seat, looked down over the elevated desk-table to the clerk, and said matter-of-factly, “Proceed to swear in the witness.”
The clerk turned to Blackford and said, “Please stand, and raise your right hand.” Blackford did so.
The clerk, his glasses lazing over the bridge of his nose during the formality, uttered the workaday incantation in the humdrum cadences of the professional waterboy at court. The procedure is everywhere the same. The speed must be routinized and accelerated, like liturgical responses, the phrases agglutinated, yet somehow aud ble. The inflection at the very end requires a note touching gravity.
“Do-you-Blackford-Oakes-solemnly-swear-to-tell-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth so help you God?”
“No, sir,” Blackford said.
The clerk stared at him dumbly. He was frozen by the irregularity. Eighty per cent of the people he had sworn in to tell the truth during the thirty years he had served as clerk had proceeded quite regularly to lie, and this upset the clerk not at all, that being someone else’s problem. But he had always assumed that the imperious demands of his summons to the oath-taking were undeniable and had never experienced—or even heard about—someone who had reacted the way this … kook … this blond, trim, blue-eyed movie-star type in his young middle age, showing no sign at all of nervousness or panic or neurosis—who had gone to the deceptive length of actually raising his right hand, only to …
The clerk looked helplessly to the chairman.
Mr. Rockefeller’s composure, though temporarily adrift, quickly kedged up in that splendid self-assurance of investigating panel chairmen.
“Please sit down, Mr. Oakes.”
Blackford did as he was told.
“Why do you decline to swear to tell the truth?”
“Because, Mr. Vice-president, I am involved in a conflict of interest.”
“Will you elaborate on this, Mr. Oakes?”
“To the extent I can, sir. If I swear to tell the truth, I am bound to answer truthfully questions you might put to me which, if I answered them truthfully, would jeopardize those interests of the United States which I have been trained to concern myself with as primary.”
“I appreciate very much your devotion to duty, Mr. Oakes. But the fact of the matter is that this panel was appointed by the President of the United States, precisely to inquire into questions raised publicly about the Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, is it always engaged in matters that enhance the national interest, and, if so, by the use of methods that are compatible with American ethics? Now, it ought to be clear to you that the authority of the President of the United States exceeds the authority of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, let alone any of his subordinates. So that by telling us the truth, you are in fact upholding the integrity of the democratic chain of command.”
“Mr. Vice-president, I understand your theoretical arguments. I reach different conclusions on concrete questions. I would most willingly give you the reasons why I reach these conclusions if you desire me to do so. But if you feel that merely to listen to me give my reasoning is somehow a waste of your valuable time, and that of your distinguished colleagues, then it would save time—all the way around—for me to say nothing at all beyond what I have already said. I am of course aware of the penalties you are in a position to impose on me for failing to co-operate by your definition of co-operation.”
Rockefeller looked hard at Blackford Oakes, and the political reflexes that had taken him where he was itched with apprehension. He paused a moment, and then moved.
“Will the clerk please escort the witness out of the room? The panel will caucus in privacy.”
Oakes was led out to an anteroom. He tried to concentrate on the Congressional Record for the day before, but found he could not even remember, in his current distractions, whether Earl Butz, the subject of the longest speech delivered the previous afternoon at the House of Representatives, was the American, or the Soviet, Agricultural Minister, and he was not able to infer from his actions, as reported, which of the two posts he served.
Next door the talk was animated. One member said, as the chairman expected at least one member to say:
“I say lets get Van Johnson back in here and tell that prick to take that oath or—”
“Or what?” the Vice-president said—a question he was, really, asking himself.
“Or”—the senator looked, as if for help from a legal aide, first to his right, then to his left; but lacking help, said, a little less resonantly—“send him to jail for contempt.… At least we can get him fired.… Can’t we order the director to order him to take the oath?”
“I actually don’t know,” the chairman mused. “I really don’t. Sure, we can get him fired—we can get anybody fired. If we can’t do that”—he grinned jovially at his colleagues—“we ought to quit.… And”—he was thinking it through—“we could theoretically get him jailed for failure to co-operate. But contempt citations, as you gentlemen know from many recent experiences with the, ah, dissident American elements, are not easy to get through Congress and the courts.…”
The panel discussed the matter for forty minutes, coming finally, grudgingly, to a conclusion. Decorum required that it should not be humiliatingly announced in the presence of the witness. So the clerk was called in.
The chairman addressed him;
“Inform the witness, Oakes, that he is excused.”
The clerk, palpably disappointed, slurred his way into the antechamber. He used the indirect address.
“Mr. Oakes is excused.”
Blackford put down his reading matter, rose, thanked the clerk, and picked up his briefcase. He left the room for the corridor and waited there for the elevator, a grin almost forcing its way through the facial anonymity he cultivated in all public situations, though he could not refrain, as he went down the eighteen floors to the lobby, from whistling, softly, “God Save the Queen.”
Acknowledgments
I don’t yet know whether I—let alone the world of letters—am indebted to Mr. Samuel Vaughan of Doubleday for his mischievous suggestion that I write a novel in the first place; but I am certainly indebted to him, and to his associates, Betty Prashker and Hugh O’Neill, for their acute criticisms and fine suggestions. My thanks also to my friend and aide Frances Bronson for her help with the manuscript; to Robin Wu for his research; and to someone who prefers to remain anonymous for critical help in the research. And, finally, my thanks yet again to Joseph Isola for reading the galleys with his incomparable eye.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electroni
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1976 by William F. Buckley, Jr.
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Cover illustration by Karl Kotas
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