Anthony had obviously been drinking.
“Listen, and listen hard, okay?”
Anthony’s reply came as after an ice-cold shower.
“I’m listening.”
“Who is on first,” Blackford spoke slowly, emphatically.
Trust’s guttural reaction revealed he hadn’t forgotten the code. But Blackford, in his excitement, elaborated. “It’s up and functioning.” And then to business. “Got a pencil? Two zero point zero zero five and four zero point zero zero two megs. This is a twenty-four-hour … twenty-three-hour … beat, for whatever it’s worth.”
A husky voice replied: “Well, it’s worth whatever a doctor is worth who alerts you you have twenty-three hours to live. Where are you calling from?”
“Never mind. Over and out. Good night.”
Twelve hours later aboard the overnight flight (Stockholm–Gander–New York–Washington) Blackford looked out over the darkening North Sea. He wondered idly whether, at that moment, the Sputnik was at its apogee of 947 kilometers (Viktor’s fine-tuned declaration), or at its perigee of 228 kilometers. Either way, he comforted himself, it would not be bumping into SAS’s four-propped Constellation. It would, he shut his eyes to perform the arithmetic, take the Swedish airliner eleven hours to travel a distance the Sputnik would travel in—twelve minutes.
I’ll be damned.
Tomorrow in Washington would be chaotic. Tomorrow, everywhere would be chaotic. Just think, Oakes, you might have been born Japanese, in which case you’d have had an easy out: You’d commit hara-kiri!
Another thing, Oakes—you might have been Russian. In which case they’d have performed the hara-kiri on you!
Or is hara-kiri a transitive verb?
He beckoned the stewardess for another drink.
Can someone perform hara-kiri on someone else? Surely not; it must be a … reflexive verb? Or is it a verb at all? A simple noun, surely? He might, when taken to the office of the Director, interrupt him to ask whether he happened to know the answer to that question.
Blacky wondered what it would be like when he stepped forward to confess: “It wasn’t only Vadim who knew. I also knew.”
Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.
What does it say? Is there a symbolic meaning in that defiant cluster of sounds which, beginning tomorrow, will electrify, serenade, importune, threaten—the whole world? Is there a cryptographic key?
Blackford tilted his seat back, and slowly closed his eyes. His mind wandered.
His lips gradually parted: and soon there was a silent triumphant smile.
His fantasy enthralled him. He pinched it in all its erogenous zones. It sang out with pleasure! (He beckoned the stewardess for another drink.) Yes. The next day, after his auto-da-fe in the Director’s office, he would say: “But sir, you may not have heard! CIA-Stockholm has broken the Russian code! That Sputnik, gamboling about the universe like a young gazelle, is out of control!! Russian scientists are working f-e-v-e-r-i-s-h-l-y to force it to change its signal before its meaning is DISCOVERED!!
“But the CIA—through one of its young, resourceful (to-be-sure not altogether predictable) agents—HAS ALREADY BROKEN THE CODE!”
“What! What! What!” the Director would surely say.
To which Blackford Oakes would most solemnly reply: “That Sputnik, careening loose-footedly about the planet, paddycakin’ ’round and ’round and ’round the spheres, is singing out to all the people of the world a fugitive cry of joy, decoded by the CIA! It is saying, over and over again.
“‘I CHOSE FREEDOM!’
“Isn’t that great … sir?”
EPILOGUE
The astronaut had been assiduously briefed as to his conduct upon becoming the first human being to set foot on the moon. The President had insisted that his own speechwriters should compose the message which—he predicted, leaning back in his chair in the Oval Office—would “resonate through the echo chambers of time”; from which the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration deduced that the President wanted something at once awed and awesome, exuberant and spiritual, heroic and lyrical.
The President had so instructed his chief speech-writer. Moreover, all other communications from the astronaut were to be of a purely functional nature, to heighten the melodrama.
“We don’t want the guy who first steps on the moon, 22 billion U.S. bucks having been spent on him, to say, with everybody in the world listening, that he owes it all to Aunt Tillie.” President Nixon had been intimately involved in the selection of the first moon-landing astronaut, reviewing personal history, studying his physical features; and indeed—the world seemed to agree on that tense morning at Cape Kennedy when at 9:32 the huge missile discharged what seemed a century’s pent-up energy, trembling its way up to the unknown—the first man on the moon might have been sculpted by Walt Disney himself, to play opposite Snow White.
But although a highly disciplined scientist, engineer, athlete, and—if need be—martyr, the astronaut, setting down his nearly weightless boot on the sands of the moon, having given out the wrought-iron message crafted by a dozen hands—something to do about a large step forward for mankind—was overcome by a flush of gratitude, and he blustered chattily to his two companions, one of them standing by in the space module, a few feet away. But the radioed words would travel to him via Houston, Texas, a half-million-mile round trip; then greetings to the other astronaut, guiding the capsule in orbit about the moon, on whose orderly reflexes hung the chances of returning safely to earth. Then—in defiance of explicit instructions—he spoke a word of affection for his wife and son.
But on doing so, violating explicit instructions, he experienced a flash of remorse, and so he resolved to try to salvage the situation, by professionalizing his breach of discipline: so he went on to congratulate “everyone” at Houston Control.
But having done that, once again the personal fit was on him, and so he blurted out: “Especially Punky and Viktor.” Walter Cronkite, to be sure only after a few seconds’ research, supplied the background of the two men to the avid audience.
Ninety percent of the world’s population (it had been officially estimated six years earlier) knew of the death of John F. Kennedy two hours after the event. About the landing of a human being on the moon the figures were comparable; but the 10 percent of the world’s population who did not learn quickly about the moon landing came to about 60 million people, and one of those was Blackford Oakes: who, in Borneo, was engaged in a preliminary survey of a long-distance radar-detection site deep in the interior.
It had been a grisly trip, in jungle heat on the first leg out to the highland, and back through jungle heat on the leg back to the settlement at Balikpapan, where, descending from the jeep at the hotel, Blackford Oakes gave instructions to the driver and walked wearily up the dilapidated steps, parting the screen to enter the hotel lobby, with the ceiling fan that brought grudging movement to the fetid air.
The concierge greeted him in German, handing him the contents of his room key locker, accumulated during the week of his absence.
There was a telegram. As the concierge shuffled through assorted packages to see if there was anything more, Blackford ripped open the envelope: “M. BLACKFORD OAKES C/O HOTEL SUHARNO, BALIKPAPAN, BORNEO, HOLD FOR ARRIVAL. BLACKFORD: RE YOUR COMMUNICATION OF OCTOBER 4, 1957, DON’T GIVE IT ANOTHER THOUGHT. WHAT’S ON SECOND. LOVE ANTHONY.”
Acknowledgments
I am as ever indebted to more people than I can manageably name. But I must once again especially thank Sophie Wilkins for her perceptive reading. Samuel S. Vaughan and Betty Prashker, though they are ever so high and mighty with Doubleday (and with me), were never too busy to advise and encourage. My brother F. Reid Buckley gave me invaluable help, and my son Christopher administered corrections in that authoritative style to which he became accustomed as a child. Again, Joseph Isola is responsible for the fine copy-reading. Dorothy McCartney’s research was indispensable, as also Frances
Bronson’s editorial coordination. And, once again, I am inexpressibly grateful to Mr. Alfred Aya, Jr., of San Francisco for the technical aid. When he was a little boy, forty years ago, Alfred used to amuse himself by tiptoeing out of his room to the hotel elevators and rewiring them, so that when you pushed UP, you went DOWN. Thus, if you wanted to go up to the tenth floor, you found yourself on … first. He has not entirely grown up. For which, I repeat, my gratitude.
W.F.B.
Stamford, Connecticut
July 1979
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
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 © 1980 by William F. Buckley, Jr.
A portion of this novel originally appeared in Playboy magazine.
Cover design by Barbara Brown
Cover illustration by Karl Kotas
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1851-7
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