Last Call for Blackford Oakes (18 page)

“Don't tell me where you've been, Papabile. Let me guess. You have been in the … enemy country! My lips are sealed. Just nod. That way the bug won't pick us up.”

“You sound like your mother.”

“I know. I heard her often enough berating … teasing you.”

“Your mother had to put up with a great deal.”

“So do I, missing her, and also, the household staff, and her friends. They come around still, but of course it isn't the same. But then nothing is ever the same.”

Was this the moment to tell him about Ursina? No. He would put that off. “You are going to attend Georgetown Law School?”

“Not quite. I am going to take some courses they offer, geared to Latin American law and American-Mexican precedents.”

“You will of course live in Merriwell.”

“I knew you'd say that, Papabile. But I think it would be better in an apartment.”

Blackford understood. He'd have said the same thing at that age, no matter who had offered him cohabitational shelter.

They talked about several family members in Mexico whom Blackford especially cared about. Tony's stay in Washington would not begin until the spring term, “at the earliest. Conceivably not until summer. Or even fall. I'll know all that stuff later today.”

Blackford drew a deep breath. “Later today. Does that mean you are free to have supper with me?”

“Provided you don't question me too rigorously on my contacts today. We have security to keep in mind, you know.”

They made a date. They would eat here at home. Mexican food cooked by Josefina. Just the two of them.

CHAPTER 32

Blackford Oakes had been thirty-six years in the agency. He had operated in several theaters, winning the respect of his colleagues. His superiors also valued his work. They knew, however, of his tendency to act independently. More than once he had interposed his own judgment at critical moments. One of these had resulted in his discharge from the agency for insubordination. Not much later, he had been brought back in to take on a very delicate mission for which he was thought specially qualified.

This morning he flashed his credentials at security and submitted to having his briefcase examined, though with that little trace of impatience that reveals that you have got out of the habit of the daily security routine.

He went to the director's office on the seventh floor and told Miss Wheelock he'd be in his own office and available whenever the director got back from the White House. It was Wednesday morning. The Director regularly attended a White House meeting on Wednesday mornings.

In his own office at the end of the hall, Blackford sat down to a large pile of agency summaries dating back seven weeks. One or two of these summaries prompted him to write on his notepad. He used a kind of shorthand he had been introduced to when taking training in the summer of 1951. “Speedwriting,” as it was called, would certainly “not fool a cryptographer,” the trainer told him. “But it's a convenient way of throwing off casual bystanders.” Blackford had got accustomed to speedwriting, and used it even when security was entirely irrelevant.

The telephone rang. The director was in his office. “He will see Mr. Oakes now.”

It had taken a few months for Blackford to get used to the director's little formalities. Blackford remembered when, as a student in college, he had got an appointment to interview J. Edgar Hoover. He had sat a good half hour in the waiting room, rereading the issue of
The Nation
that had excoriated the director as archetypally fascist, errand boy for Senator McCarthy and entrepreneur of other villainies.

Blackford was doing this interview for publication in the Yale
Daily News
and was pleased that his petition to see Mr. Hoover had been granted. But he was beginning to be irked by the delay, now over thirty minutes. The words of the receptionist stayed in memory: “Mr. Hoover will see Mr. Oakes now.” No doubt Bill Webster had come to use that kind of language after serving for so long as Director of the FBI, beginning only a few years after the legendary Hoover had left. And of course most people still called him “Judge Webster,” after his years on the court of appeals.

“Webster knows everything.” Anthony Trust had chatted with Blackford soon after President Reagan made the appointment in 1987. “But nothing about intelligence.”

“That's okay,” Blackford said. “We can fill in for him.”

But Webster was affable and penetratingly intelligent. Blackford's dealings with him in the last six months had been pleasant and productive. Judge Webster rather enjoyed a little banter in his meetings. That may have been one reason Reagan appointed him.

“How you doing, boss?”

“Well, I'm okay. How about you? You got our daily reports while in Moscow?”

“Yes. I like the way”—Blackford carried on the conceit—“you plant your news in
Pravda
. Not easy to read, but if you stick to it, there it is. ‘
Minister Pleshkov flatly lying about Soviet production rate of MIRV missiles.
' That was very useful to me. Also the one in the next day's
Pravda, ‘Project Wiretap-the-Kremlin successfully completed.
'”

“Glad you caught those. Anything to worry about, Black?” Webster was now all business.

“I don't think so, Judge. My guess, and it's pretty well informed, is that the nascent plot was stillborn. The two principal players have been pulled out of the scene. The civilian contender for general secretary when Chernenko died—Dmitriev—is now a prisoner. We don't even know—and that was more than two weeks ago—what he's been charged with.”

“That wouldn't have worked in Missouri when I was judge.”

“It's not quite like the old days in Moscow, but a far cry from the way you did things in Missouri. In any case, Dmitriev's in no position to pull off a coup d'état. The other guy, the general, has been demoted. We did learn that Boris—I don't think you know who he was, Judge; no reason to. But Boris Bolgin was an ace KGB operator, Gulag survivor, who locked horns with me a few times over three decades. He became the chief KGB operator in Europe. He retired and—defected. Only he and the Pope knew this. And me. He tipped me off to the plot a year ago, a very live plot, to assassinate Gorbachev. I went over there to tell him he had to get it called off. He shot himself the next day. I've put it together that before pulling the trigger of the pistol in his mouth he blew my cover. Maybe they'll go back and dig it up from a year ago. The general who was demoted—General Baranov—was in charge of the secret commission that investigated the assassination plot.”

“So. Nothing that ties us to it in any way we don't want?”

“No, sir. Gus Windels undertook some pretty adroit sleuthing. So—I'll write the report and get it to you in the next couple of days. Is that okay?”

The director said yes, that was fine. “And, welcome home, Black.”

CHAPTER 33

Philby went to bed soon after Graham Greene left. Greene, a night owl, said he intended to walk to Pushkin Square and go on from there to his “terrible hotel. Tell your spy network to avoid
both
the Cosmos and the Sovietsky.”

Philby was up early in the morning. There was a burr lodged in his mind. After his first cup of tea, he was able to yank it from the subconscious. He stared hard at it.

What is this guy Harry Doubleday up to?

Further: Who
is
Harry Doubleday?

A simple emissary of the USIA and U.S. publishers? Not “simply” anything. Simple people weren't likely to capture the roaring passion of Rufina's old friend, the ultra-sophisticated Professor Ursina Chadinov.

Philby rarely did this, but after he had chewed down his breakfast roll, he went down to the ground floor, a mission in mind. He opened the door and signaled with his hand. His full-time security detail across the street would catch the signal, and act on it. He was never given a telephone number he could simply ring up in such circumstances. No matter. In less than a half hour, his case officer came up the stairs and knocked on the door.

Philby didn't want to share his conversation with Rufina, and so he asked the case officer, Yegor, to walk back downstairs with him. There in the lobby he told Yegor he had urgent reason to check up on an American who had been doing work on the cultural exhibit in Gorky. Philby gave the name and all the details he could summon immediately to mind.

Yegor took notes.

An hour later, Yegor came back to him and said that his superior in the Lubyanka wished Comrade Martins to come by the office.

A car was waiting outside. Philby called out to Rufina to say he would be gone a little while. She called back from the living room that she was on the telephone with her brother, who complained of a terrible headache.

“Give him my best,” Philby said, grabbing his coat.

It was always so in the security world that you spoke as sparingly, even to your own colleagues, as possible. Philby was talking now to Captain Kuzmin, with the great head of black hair. Philby had no way of knowing whether Kuzmin knew anything at all about the Professor Chadinov scandal of Monday, and no reason to suspect that he might know anything.

What Kuzmin wanted to know was what had given rise to Andrei Martins's request. A request that he had classified as urgent, to look into the KGB file on the American, Doubleday.

“Captain, you will simply need to act on my suspicions. Mine are refined suspicions. If you feel I should call on Colonel Bykov, I am of course prepared to do so.”

That had the desired effect. Colonel Bykov was not to be trifled with. Evidently he and Andrei Martins had a working relationship of some sort.

“Tell me what you want from us.”

“What I want is to know from our people in Washington: Is there a Harry Doubleday”—he paused to write out the words for the captain—“associated with the United States Information Agency in Washington? If the answer is yes, I wish to know whether Mr. Doubleday has recently traveled to Moscow, and if so, when.”

Kuzmin looked up from his notes. “That is a fairly simple assignment. We can do that. But I will need the authority of Colonel Bykov to proceed.”

“Go ahead, Captain. Tell him that Andrei Fyodorovich thinks it important.”

He was driven back to the apartment on Uspensky Street.

He found Rufina in distress. Her brother, Kostya, living in Kiev, where he worked as a curator in the museum, was suffering from a severe headache, the cause of which no one had successfully diagnosed. Kostya had been only six years old, ten years younger than Rufina, when their father died, and Rufina had helped to rear him. The siblings were very close, and twice Kostya had visited at Uspensky Street. Philby liked the studious and informal Kostya and admired his manual skills as electrician, plumber, and carpenter. He referred to him as “Comrade First Aid.”

“I may have to go to him. I can get a lower-priced ticket using my Economics Institute I.D.”

“Of course, go if you have to, Rufina.”

It passed through his mind to put in a phone call, through channels, to Artur Ivanov, whom Rufina had spoken of as the Soviet counterpart with whom Harry Doubleday had conferred on the Gorky exhibit.

But what would he say to him? “Did you notice, Artur Filippovich, anything queer about the American, Doubleday?”

“Just who is calling? What do you mean, ‘queer'?”

He ruled that out.

And what were the special powers of this Mr. Doubleday? Only Ursina could answer that question. But Rufina was right, Ursina should not be troubled. Presumably she was teetering from her experience, struggling to stand upright. She'd be under pressure from the Ministry of Culture and the security apparatus.

That was when the doorman rang up. Rufina walked down the two flights. She came back carrying a large brown envelope, her name neatly penned on it, over the Uspensky Street address. It had been delivered by messenger.

Philby was seated in his favorite armchair with a book when she opened it. She read the contents carefully. “Andrei. It's from Harry Doubleday.”

He looked up sharply. “What does it say?”

“I'll read it to you. ‘Dear Rufina, I am sorry I did not have an opportunity to call and say goodbye to you and to Andrei. I have to get back to America on business, but will return as soon as feasible.

“‘Rufina, you know Ursina's condition, because she told me she had confided it to you.'”

“Ursina's condition?” Philby interrupted. “What's that all about?”

“Ursina,” Rufina said quietly, “is pregnant.”

“You never told me that.”

“I only knew yesterday. She told me confidentially. Shall I go on?”

“Of course. Yes. Yes.”

She found her place in the letter: “‘… she told me she had confided it to you. I will certainly discharge my duties as father of her—our—'” Rufina tilted the paper to receive the daylight. “He crossed out
her
and wrote
our
. ‘… our child. Ursina told you I was flying off. I wanted to make an emergency provision and so wrote out a brief testamentary letter, which I would very much appreciate your keeping until my return. I do not wish to leave it with Ursina, because of her recent troubles with the regime. Thank you ever so much, and my best to Andrei.'”

“I assume it is some instrument conveying something or other to her and the child. Odd he couldn't just keep it until his return.”

“Keep it with whom?”

“Well, that's a point. Presumably not with the U.S. ambassador. ‘Dear Mr. Ambassador: I have knocked up a Russian professor. If she calls on you for help, please tender her the care owed to the pregnant party.'”

“Oh Andrei, you can be so skeptical, so cynical. I'll put the letter in my file of family papers.” She paused. “Andrei, I take it you do not wish to discuss what it was that took you away this morning?”