Who's on First (9 page)

It was seven minutes after he had picked them up that Tamara said rather reticently to the driver, “You did understand us to say the Hôtel-Grand? At Scribe and Capucines?”

“Yes, madame. But I must leave”—he pointed to the bulky parcel on top of the heap—“that first at the other address, because they expect it by 12:30. You do not mind a little detour?”

“Certainly not,” she said, her lifetime's training in docility taking instant command. And after all, they were in Paris. She resumed her bantering with Viktor.

Five more lights and Blackford popped out of the car, parcel in hand, and smiled. “
Un petit moment!
” Tamara returned the smile. He went around the corner, and deposited the empty parcel in the waste bin.

He returned to the cab and drove off.
Five more lights
. Five more minutes? In fact his passengers did not grow restive until eight full minutes had gone by and clearly they were reaching the outer environs of Paris. This time she was alarmed.

“Where are you taking us?” Her voice was suddenly abrupt.

Blackford reached back with his right hand, and Viktor took from it the proffered envelope. Blackford then electrically elevated a thick glass partition between the front seat and the back seat, and doggedly followed the blue Mercedes, which was now, having passed Porte de Clignancourt, proceeding at over fifty miles per hour on the highway to Chantilly. Upon arriving there, there would be a certain chance of exposure—but not a great deal, Rufus had reasoned. The window glass in the rear was especially thick. The window handles—and the door handles—did not engage. It would be difficult for the passengers to attract the attention of other motorists. And Anthony's nimble Mercedes, ahead, could provide a certain degree of interference.

Viktor tore open the envelope. The communication was brief and in Russian. It said: “The driver of this car is my friend. Please cooperate with him. Neither you nor Tamara will be hurt.” It was signed by a series of numerals. Viktor studied them—and turned excitedly to Tamara.

“Vadim! It is Vadim! Vadim Platov has done this!”

Tamara grabbed her husband by the arm. She extended her hand to the window handle opposite, next to Viktor, and was not surprised that it turned without effect on the window. It was so with the door handle. She sighed. “There isn't anything we can do. We'll have to wait and see.”

“I wonder, I wonder,” Viktor was talking as if to himself. “Is he trying to arrange it so we can escape? Oh, Vadim, Vadim, you will reintroduce us to the nightmare. I know it.” She soothed him though she suspected Viktor was right. And began to suspect that nothing would ever again be the same. Their hearts beat fast when their taxi turned off the highway and went briefly in toward the town of Chantilly. They made no effort to catch the attention of the one or two bystanders they might conceivably have engaged. Viktor began to concentrate on the route the driver had taken. He wondered that he was being permitted to observe the route, the road signs so clearly visible. How easy it would be, when they were released, to find the destination … when they were questioned … by the police. The French police. Then the KGB. He felt his blood turn to ice, his throat go dry.

“Tamara!” he ordered her. “Close your eyes! Mine are closed.
We don't want to know
. We don't want to know
anything
. One more thing. When we arrive, wherever we are going, say nothing, understand,
nothing!
Let me cope. I don't want anything ever to be attributable to you.
Do you understand!
”

“Yes, my darling.”

The car had come to a halt. Blackford opened the passenger door; they stepped into a pebbled driveway in front of a modest chateau surrounded as far as the eye could see by lawns and fields and, down from the front lawn, a small lake with three swans causing the only ripples in that warm, airless July day.

Blackford had removed his beret.

“Won't you come in, Madame Kapitsa, monsieur?”

Blackford turned and walked toward the door. Clutching his briefcase with one hand, his wife with the other, Viktor followed. Inside the hallway Blackford opened the door to a comfortable antechamber, and indicated the way. Tamara accepted her guide's instructions, but when Viktor was about to follow her into the room, Blackford gently detained him.

“Pardon me, monsieur. For just a moment, we must talk with you alone.”

Viktor looked at Tamara. She gestured that he should comply. Blackford, engaging Tamara's attention, pointed to the open door of the well-furnished little room, the washroom at the other end, and just then a maid arrived with a tray of tea and sandwiches. Blackford closed the door and led Viktor down the expensively wallpapered hall to a door on the right, which Blackford opened, gesturing to Viktor, who went in, to see standing at the other end of the room, Vadim Platov.

Gently, Blackford closed the door, and walked up the stairs.

10

Viksne was too busy arranging for a substitute bus to make lunch, arriving at the corner of the huge dining room only as the coffee was being served to his table of scientists. He clicked his fingers at the waitress and instructed her to bring him a plate of “anything”—which she did with manifest distaste, since the hotel prided itself on its cuisine, notwithstanding its great size. The delegates, mostly in pairs, began to drift away to their rooms, preparatory to reassembling for the longish bus trip to the Lycée at Vincennes in fifteen minutes. Nesmayanov tarried, and now he was alone with his coffee and Viksne, who was stuffing bread and rolls and cheese into his mouth and gulping down red wine.

“Is Kapitsa with you?” the academician asked.

“With me?” Viksne said, his mouth full of food. “I have been steadily on the telephone—to the arrangements bureau of the embassy, and directly to the bus company, for”—he looked at his watch—“forty-five minutes!”

“In that case he is missing.”

Viksne stopped eating. “He did not come to lunch?”

“That is correct, nor Tamara.”

“Was there any comment?”

“Yes. They normally sit down at the end of the table next to Dyakov. Dyakov said something about how we'd all better take the opportunity to tell our inventory of dirty jokes, since Tamara was not here. Someone asked where they were, and Dyakov said he assumed they were assisting you.”

Viksne rose, his plate half full. “We'll leave it at that.
That's the story
. They were helping me. I asked them to help superintend the bus replacement, Tamara's knowledge of French makes her especially useful. I am going now to phone the embassy. If I am not in the lobby at 1430, escort the delegation to the Lycée and I'll meet you there by taxi. Remember:
silence
.” Nesmayanov had reached the age when he knew how to deal with KGB officials: acquiescently. He nodded.

Viksne went to his own room to telephone. Sverdlov, he learned, was out to lunch. Did he wish to speak to Colonel Bolgin? the operator asked. He considered briefly. To do so might be to give unnecessary alarm. To fail to act while Sverdlov was lunching, on the other hand, might later be condemned as lackadaisical. Better to go right to Bolgin. “Yes.”

Bolgin came on the line, listened.

“Have you ordered an investigation of the bus?”

“No, sir. I had no reason to suspect …”

“Call back this office and advise where the bus is located at this moment. One of our technicians will go down to inspect it. Get the hotel to let you into Kapitsa's room—tell them he asked you to bring some papers he left behind. Examine the room thoroughly and tell me if there are any leads. Either he has defected, or he has been abducted.”

“I do not think he would defect, Colonel. He is the essence of docility; so is Tamara. Moreover, he is tremendously excited by the advances on our … project. He was even reluctant to come because it would take him from his work for one week, even though he knows there is nothing he can do in the immediate period to accelerate our … project.”

“Just how indispensable is he to the project?”

“On one aspect of it, Colonel, he has been the key figure. But that work is done. We cannot know who will crack the remaining barrier.”

“I shall decide whether to report this to the French authorities. Meanwhile
no one
is to know. Tell the delegation his wife has taken ill and he is at her side. Is he scheduled to read today?”

“No, sir. His lecture is tomorrow afternoon.”

“We'll have a course of action well before then. I shall advise Moscow immediately. I'll expect a call from you within fifteen minutes.” Bolgin hung up.

At 3:15 a telephone call to Bolgin from the garage confirmed that the bus had been stopped by a low-powered explosive. At 3:20, while Bolgin was in the coding room preparing his message for Moscow, there was a knock at the door, a distraction no one had ever before been guilty of. Flushed, he rose, and unlocked the massive door.

It was the ambassador, who beckoned to Bolgin, wordlessly, to follow him. They walked up one flight of stairs to the special chamber in the embassies of the super-powers where conversation takes place inside an electromagnetically insulated room which is proof against all known interceptive technology. Ambassador Yevgeny Silin, an old-timer, had been en route to Moscow the very day Stalin died—because it had been Stalin's twitchy moribund velleity to liquidate Silin. But after Stalin's death no member of his staff could come up with what it was that Silin might have done, or failed to have done, to antagonize the great leader; so Silin, having been examined by Beria, Bolgin, and Molotov, all of them his contemporaries, was sent back to Paris, where he continued to serve, enhancing, year after year, his reputation for personal wit and a dumb servility to his superiors.

“Have a look, Boris. It was delivered to my desk five minutes ago.”

Bolgin looked first at the envelope. It was of first-quality paper, without return address. And, typed on its face: “
FOR THE IMMEDIATE PERSONAL ATTENTION OF HIS EXCELLENCY THE AMBASSADOR. ANY DELAY IN DELIVERING THIS COULD PROVE FATAL
.”

“A little boy gave it to the guard. Someone in a taxi gave it to the boy with a hundred francs. Doesn't know who, couldn't identify him, etc., etc.”

Bolgin took the sheet of paper from the envelope and read.

Your Excellency:

We address you on behalf of the embattled people of Algeria who are fighting a war of independence under trying conditions. Your country is the leading socialist nation in the world, the self-proclaimed friend of all who struggle in the wars of national liberation. We have heard the encouraging words of Soviet leaders. But what else? Your representatives, in Cairo, in Tunis, indeed in Paris, have repeatedly promised a substantial shipment of arms. And now we learn that the
Chekhov,
scheduled to sail from Sebastopol at midnight tonight, is not in fact bringing military relief to our fellow Algerians, but has been instructed to proceed to Indonesia. Why does Sukarno have priority?

We cannot wait any longer. We are men and women of action. We have in our custody one of your top scientists. Unless you reroute the
Chekhov
and make the arms delivery to Algeria, he will not be returned to you. What our disposition of him will then be presents many interesting possibilities, which will no doubt occur to you as well as to us.

You may summon the police, as you like. You may advise the world press, as you like. The press cannot hurt us, the police cannot find us. Should it happen that anyone did find us, we are pledged to die, together with M. Kapitsa and his wife.

We shall watch the personal columns of
Le Monde
. We shall look for a message that begins: “My beloved Anna Krupskaya.” All we desire to read is: “I promise to respect your wishes by …” You may here supply the exact date and approximate hour when the
Chekhov
can be expected to arrive at Bizerte, where the captain will be contacted by a reliable person. Immediately upon the off-loading of the shipment, you will see again the Kapitsas. We estimate that the entire operation need not take more than four days.

We wish you to know, moreover, that when the revolutionary government of Algeria is established, we shall see to it that the cost of your arms is reimbursed.

The letter closed: “For the FLN” and, signed in red ink, simply, “Jean.”

Bolgin asked: “Any idea who it is?”

“I was going to ask you, my dear Boris. This is certainly your … beat.”

“The KGB does not object to our diplomats learning the identity of enterprising Algerian terrorists. Mr. Ambassador”—the form of address was a rebuke: but mild. Silin knew that Bolgin also knew that the upheavals within the FLN since the kidnapping of Ben Bella a year before had made communication with effective authority within the Algerian movement difficult; more accurately, impossible.

“For a socialist revolution, Colonel”—he reciprocated the formality—“the FLN is the closest thing to an anarchist operation since the Narodniki. Nobody appears to know whom to deal with. The French do not know to whom to tender offers of negotiation. Individual Algerian leaders command strikes, acts of terrorism, abductions. It is altogether chaotic. There is no easy way of knowing who Jean is or whether he acted on his own authority.”

“Whoever he is, I wouldn't mind hiring him when this is all over. I envy his familiarity with shipping schedules in Sebastopol.” Bolgin paused, detachedly wondering just
how that
information had got out—he was not himself aware of it. He made a note to probe Moscow. “In the event you were not aware of it, Mr. Ambassador, Kapitsa is critical to an ongoing scientific operation to which the Kremlin attaches the highest priority.”

“May I ask why, under the circumstances, you let him out of the country?”

Bolgin thumped his hand down on the table. “Please! Do not affect to pretend that it is KGB-Europe that decides these matters. He came pursuant to Politburo designs, with a KGB-Moscow escort who concededly did not provide adequate protection. To be sure, the abduction was carried out with extraordinary skill. I have Viksne, the escort official, seeing what he can do to track down the taxi. But apparently that will prove unlikely. The whole thing was done quickly, in hectic circumstances brilliantly contrived. The question is how to reply to ‘Jean.'”