Firebird_A Spy Story of the 1960's

by Noel Hynd

  On this night in Indiana, Wallace again switched gears.

  “Now let me explain something,” he said. “I am not a racist. I have never made a racist speech in my life. I am an Alabama segregationist. I believe that it is in the best interest of Negro and white to have a separate social order. You see, my friends, this 1964 Civil Rights bill that the pointy-headed intellectuals enacted into law in Washington will wind up putting a homeowner in jail. My friends, a man’s home is his castle. He ought to be able to sell it to people with blue eyes and green teeth if he wants to; it’s his home.”

  There was a roar of approval. Wallace stepped back and basked in the enthusiasm of his audience. Then he sailed into his wrap-up.

  “I will tell you again, my friends: This campaign is about our fine American people, living their own lives, buying their own homes, educating their children, running their own farms, and not having intellectual morons trying to manage everything for them. It’s a matter of trusting the God-fearing majority of Americans who do not need meddling from the pseudo-intellectual government,” Wallace continued, his voice rising over a crescendo of approval. “We do not need help from an elite group who speak from liberal pulpits, from ivory tower college campuses and from some newspaper offices, and who are looking down their pointy noses at the average man on the street who has more sense than all them highbrow ten-dollar-word types even if they were all tied back to back like a bunch of hogs at a county fair!” He stepped away from the podium, still protected by glass, and he held up two hands in triumph. This evening Wallace had been at his tobacco-chewin', turkey-shootin' best. His admirers stood and thundered an ovation upon him. It shook the stadium.

  George Wallace took the microphone a final time. “You all take care of yourselves and get home safely,” he said. “But I want to warn you! There’s a small group of little pinkos and leftwing agitators running around outside, carrying Communist signs and protesting my right to speak. Don’t let them do you any harm. They’re just outside of Section Eight.”

  Amid whoops, some of the audience quickly moved to the exit, not wanting to miss throwing some punches at the trouble-makers outside who were tearing down America. With the help of a recording on the speaker system, the remaining crowd joined in singing “God Bless America.”

  Martin Friedkin of the New York Eagle had arrived just minutes before the rally had begun. He sat in an upper balcony and watched with ever-accelerating astonishment. The Nixon campaign had been a tall glass of Lipton instant ice tea compared to the spicy pulled pork with Cajun hot sauce of a Wallace rally. Nothing had prepared Friedkin for the spectacle he encountered in northern Indiana this night.

  “There is self-righteousness and bloodlust in the howls of this crowd,” Friedkin wrote in a column to appear the next day in the Eagle. “And we have seen this before. Never again will I read about Berlin in the 30's without remembering this wild spiritual event here among angry but supposedly decent people in the American heartland. The American sickness had been personalized in George Wallace, easily the ablest demagogue of our time. He speaks with a voice of venom, an aura of menace and a visceral knowledge of the prejudices of ignorant low-income Americans. He cannot win,” wrote Friedkin, “not this year, anyway. But his strength is accelerating and sympathy for him is yet another matter. I wonder if he is paving the way for another even-worse candidate ten, twenty or thirty years down the road. Considering the widespread support for this man, I am after one close look frankly terrified for the future of American democracy.”

  Chapter 6

  Stanley Rudawski threw around names and dates as if they were last season's confetti. Within minutes, time spiraled. “I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in modern political systems, Mr. Cooper,” Margot's father explained, “and a minor in Classical Studies. May 1923. Cum laude. Served in World War Two. Survived. Went to law school at the University of Pennsylvania. Margot has the details all written down.”

  “Dad spoke French, Polish and Russian,” Margot said. “He was assigned to combat divisions but frequently served as an interpreter.”

  “Impressive. Where did those languages come from?” Cooper asked.

  “I learned French in school,” he said. “Polish, Margot’s grandmother was from Eastern Poland. A lot of Russian was spoken there in years after World War One. My mother spoke it and I learned it from her. I expected to be killed in the war but wasn’t. I got back to the States in the late forties. Became bored. One day I took a train to Washington, and found a job working for peanuts in Senator Pastore's office. Senator Pastore was a new Senator then. Rhode Island.”

  Cooper nodded, wondering where things were heading. “I know who he is,” Cooper said.

  “I stayed with Senator Pastore's office for two years. Then I went back to Harvard to teach. I took some time out in 1958 to volunteer for John F. Kennedy's final senate campaign in Massachusetts. I loved Kennedy,” he said. “I liked the fresh attitude he brought to government. I don't know if you will ever see anything like that again,” he said. “I know I won't.”

  “JFK’s personal lifestyle never bothered you?” Cooper asked, playing the devil’s advocate. “Partying with the Hollywood crowd? Trysts with hookers in Cuba?”

  “All the politicians do that, except for the religious nuts, and those are the ones who are really dangerous.”

  Rudawski had been fluent in four languages by the time he picked up a law degree, he said. He looked for another job in the federal government, aced the civil service test, and won an appointment as a senior Foreign Service officer.

  “Naturally,” he continued, “since I knew three other foreign languages well, the State Department sent me to school in Washington to learn Spanish. My first tour was in Central America. They knew I could speak in all these languages. Now I had to prove that I could think in them.”

  “What dates are we talking about?” Cooper asked. “Can you tell me exactly?”

  “December 1960,” came a very quick answer. “December third. That was the first day I went to work for Uncle Sam. I was one-month shy of my sixtieth birthday. The State Department sent me to Panama. Spent most of my time listening to radio broadcasts from Cuba. Nineteen fifty-nine was the year Castro took over.”

  Cooper, remembering also, was nodding, but keeping quiet and not looking up.

  “The Caribbean was reeling. All the islands were flooded with Cuban refugees. I was sitting in the embassy in Panama City when the American navy was blockading Cuba.”

  Rudawski did his two years in Panama City posted at a visa desk.

  “Washington was next,” he said. “One of every three tours had to be stateside. I drew Washington on my second two-year tour, which seemed okay at the time.”

  The higher-ups moved him into the political division. For the first half of his tour, he translated stolen French, Polish and Russian documents into English for the senior staff. He dealt with whatever coded-then-deciphered material had been recently picked off the nocturnal high-speed radio blips. His product was solid. He understood different cultures, as well as the languages: an uncommon virtue.

  “I was at my desk in Washington in November 1963,” he said hesitantly, “when I heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated.”

  The death of the young President depressed him. He spent the next five months sullenly writing theoretical papers concerning European policy toward Eastern Europe and Central America. They called it Post-Colonial Era Policy Studies. Even those of us writing papers on it weren't sure such an era existed.

  “I was wasting my time in the Foreign Service. I tried for one of the better appointments next. Vienna, Paris, Rome, or London. If I didn't get what I wanted, I'd find a private sector job.” He shrugged. “But I still had this hankering for some excitement.” In August 1964, Rudawski's posting assignment came back. He was on his way to Paris, effective October 1.

  “Worse things could have happened to you,” Cooper offered.

  “Worse things did.” />
  The mid-Sixties were not an easy time in France, he recalled. The Parti Communiste Francais was the second largest Marxist party in Western Europe. The French had entertained an affinity for John F. Kennedy thanks to his Catholicism and his captivating wife. But following the events of Dallas, anti-American graffiti had again become as common as pissoires throughout the city—and almost as fragrant. Worse, the old man in the Elysée palace, le grand Charles himself, was making ominous noises about withdrawing France from NATO.

  “Kennedy's ambassador to France at the time was a man named Chip Bohlen,” Rudawski explained. “He was a Soviet expert. Career diplomat. Wealthy. Harvard educated. Good man.”

  “Previously he had been the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, hadn’t he?” Cooper asked.

  “Yes. He’d served in Moscow from the 1920s till the 1950s. Succeeded George Kennan as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviets, then became ambassador to the Philippines and to France. In 1962, I think. Served Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. He was one of those old-fashioned nonpartisan foreign policy advisers. We used to call them the ‘Wise Men.’”

  Rudawski paused while Cooper took notes.

  “Bohlen learned Russian as a boy. Later he accompanied Sam Hopkins on missions to Joseph Stalin in Moscow. He worked closely with was Roosevelt's interpreter at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945. Impressive credentials,” Rudawski said. “But Paris was a ‘hot’ embassy. There was a lot going on in the backrooms. Gray area stuff. So there was an official protocol in the embassy under a man like Bohlen. Then there was unofficial protocol: people with obvious clout who were assigned to the embassy but never paid much attention to their official duties.”

  “That must have ruffled a lot of feathers,” Cooper said. “Particularly Bohlen’s.”

  “It appeared that way,” Rudawski answered. “But you know how Lyndon Johnson hated and distrusted Kennedy’s Harvard crowd. Wasn’t long after JFK was murdered that LBJ filled the void in Paris with a man of his,” the old man said. “When Ambassador Bohlen went home for a month in February 1965, the embassy suddenly had an unofficial ‘acting ambassador’, a fellow known to all of us as David Charles. ‘D.C.’, we were supposed to call him. Or Mr. Charles. Loud and obnoxious. An oilman. A cowboy. No class. More money than brains. That’s how he came across.”

  Cooper grinned. Yes, that sounded like Johnson.

  Off to the side, Margot rolled her eyes.

  “Johnson might have done Mr. Charles a larger favor,” the retired diplomat remarked, “by confiscating his passport. He might have done all of us that favor.”

  David Charles liked to attend diplomatic functions and ogle the wives of the other European diplomats, paying particular attention to their breasts. Aside from that, Charles hated the food, thought the French people rude and disagreeable, and generally found dealing with foreigners to be the worst part of the Foreign Service. Within the embassy walls, things weren't much better. Charles fought daily with the career State Department people on his staff.

  “We called him ‘Lyndon's Man,’” Cooper's host said.

  Cooper was now writing extensive notes.

  “Charles had only two qualifications for his post. First, he was Johnson's friend. Well, hell. Most Texans in the government had had the foresight to contribute heavily to LBJ's reelection in 1964—even if they were politically more tuned in to Goldwater. But second, Charles was said to have been promised Paris only briefly. He wanted enough time to transact some business and then go home. That seemed to be satisfactory to everyone.”

  The “business,” per Margot's father, was petroleum wholesaling. Charles told people that he had been a wildcatter in Texas in his youth and now presided over a small independent oil drilling and producing outfit. And Paris in the mid-sixties was perfect to strike up friendships with Arab interests from Benghazi and Tripoli. Several Libyan producers kept expensive flats and mistresses along the Avenue Foch. Charles was courting the Libyans, who were pro-West at the time, and was angling for joint ventures in North Africa. But Rudawski then edged toward another conclusion about David Charles.

  “All of this,” Rudawski said, “was one of the best covers I ever saw at any embassy. Charles was right out of spy central.”

  Over the ensuing days, Charles fell into many lengthy political and philosophical conversations with Rudawski. Rudawski fascinated Charles on two levels. First, Rudawski spoke Russian. Second, Rudawski was a legitimate intellectual, well-read and cognizant of other cultures. Charles sensed that these attributes could be of use.

  “Come in here, young man!” David Charles liked to roar at Rudawski, who was far from young. “Come in and bounce some ideas off me, you Harvard egghead.”

  Usually, Charles would close an office door with a swipe of a boot.

  “Get in here, Egghead,” was a frequent refrain. Then Rudawski would disappear into Charles’s office, a bottle of Canadian Club would open, and they would talk.

  Egghead. It was Charles’s new moniker for Rudawski. It had started with purported disdain and contempt. Increasingly, it was used with affection and respect. During the private conversations, Charles’ buffoonish nature was no longer apparent. To Rudawski, it was evident that Charles was there to take care of some unofficial business that the rest of the staff would be better off not touching. He was sounding out Rudawski to see if he could trust him.

  “CIA?” Cooper asked.

  “Maybe,” Rudawski said. “That was my impression, but I never knew for sure. He wanted to know how fluent I was in French and Russian. I said I was almost as good as a native speaker. Then he wanted to know if I could hold some issues in confidence. Stuff between the two of us, you know? I said I would if I wasn’t breaching any State Department security.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He said his authority was higher than the State Department.”

  “What could that have meant?” Cooper asked.

  “I asked that same question, Mr. Cooper. Direct link to President Johnson, he said. Again, I said I was fine with anything if it was legal. After all, it was a time,” the former Foreign Service officer said, “in which strings could blatantly be pulled. Do favors for the right mentor, be circumspect, and the next thing you know you've shot up three grades in the Foreign Service overnight.”

  Cooper nodded. He continued to fill the notepad on his lap.

  “Ever hear of a man named Pavel Lukashenko?” Rudawski asked next.

  Cooper said he hadn't.

  “I'd never heard the name either, up until April 15, 1964,” he said. “We had a flood of Americans coming into the embassy to apply for extensions to their U.S. tax returns. Every time you looked up someone with a polyester necktie was asking directions to the IRS office.”

  Charles turned up in the younger man's office toward eleven a.m. on that tax day. Charles was in shirtsleeves, looking as if he'd been up all night. He pushed the door shut. “Listen up, Egghead. You need to come with me at noon today,” Charles said. “I want you to witness something. You can't tell anyone. When it's finished, it will never have had happened. Okay?”

  “I need to clear it with my department head,” Rudawski had replied.

  “I outrank your God damned department head. You’re going to walk out of here later without telling anyone where you’re going. Got it? I’m going ahead of you,” Charles said. “You’ll need to meet up.”

  Charles instructed Rudawski to leave work at a quarter hour before noon and proceed to the Métro stop at Place de la Concorde. He was to take a train in the direction of Neuilly but get out after two stops and wait on the platform. Let the next two trains go by. Make damn well sure no one was trailing him, Charles instructed, and then reverse direction, return to Place de la Concorde and take the Mairie d'Issy line to Sevres-Babylone. Rudawski was to come up the steps, walk to the corner where the Boulevard Raspail intersected with St. Germain and “wait until goddam hell froze over if necessary.” A white Peugeot 404 would eventu
ally pick him up.

  “It all seemed awfully melodramatic,” Rudawski said as he kept a watchful eye upon Cooper. “I asked who'd be in the car. Where would it take me? Where were we going? Charles told me to shut up. He was acting officially.”

  “I assume you went?” Cooper said.

  “Ha! Naturally, I went! It's as if you were happily married and in love with your wife—but what if you could go to bed with Brigitte Bardot? Wouldn't most men sneak off?”

  “I suppose most would,” Cooper said. For a moment, he felt Margot Bradford's amused eyes on him.

  “There was something else, too, that occurred to me,” Rudawski said. “The white ‘Pug’ was the most common car in the city. Easiest to disappear in traffic, right?”

  “Spy stuff,” said Cooper with a snort.

  “Spy stuff,” said Rudawski. “The ability to disappear quickly in a crowd or in traffic.”

  The old man grinned and seemed charged up again.

  A few minutes before noon that day, Rudawski left the embassy and boarded the Métro. He went to the stop at the Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, waited for two trains to pass and reversed himself. He kept watch of the time. It was twenty-two minutes after noon when he stood at the corner of Raspail and St. Germain. He waited seven more minutes. The white Peugeot 404 rolled by and jerked to the curb. The man at the wheel leaned over and rolled down a window.

  “Egghead!” David Charles yelled. “Get your sorry Harvard ass in here!”

  For a moment Rudawski stared in disbelief. Then he got in.

  The Peugeot's tires squealed even as Rudawski was closing his door. “What are we doing?” Rudawski asked. “Am I now allowed to know?”

  “First, we’re zigzagging all over goddam Paris to make sure no one’s following,” Charles said. His gaze bounced from the side mirrors to the rear view to the road in front of him. He seemed intent now, focused more on where he was going than where he was. “It’s not really happening,” he continued. “Back channel of the back channels. Doesn’t have a name.”