Who's on First Page 13

  “Tell that to the critics of Lysenko.”

  “Lysenko engaged in a science that impinges on ideology. Viktor and I do not. How to launch a satellite is an instrumental, not an ideological, problem. In our own milieu we are much freer than the poets, or the painters, or even the musicians.”

  “Free to discuss nonscientific matters?”

  “Of course not, as I say. Our opinions are private, and there is a great deal of complacency, resignation, fatalism. Even some optimism. Scientists aren’t men of affairs. You have an American who wrote ‘Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.’”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I forget. We are permitted to read the foreign technical journals. Some of them are quite funny sometimes, especially in the letters’ section. Anyway,” she went on, “our scientists are working for Stalin’s Russia because they are not permitted to give thought to what they do—and because they don’t want to. The great Sakharov gave the Kremlin a hydrogen bomb. Why?”

  “Why are you about to give them a satellite?”

  “Because a scientist develops his own momentum. It is …” she looked at him with an expression entirely clinical on her open face, “sexual, in a way: The excitement begins, consummation is required. Viktor—is there anyone in the world who feels more keenly than he does the suffering of the Russian people? It would be hard to name anyone; but he … works.”

  “Why criticize Sakharov?”

  “Sakharov succumbed to scientific hubris when he gave the bomb to the Kremlin. But who knows?” She furrowed her brow. “Most creative men who set out to create, and are permitted to do so, will do their utmost. You are familiar with the Church of St. Basil commissioned by Ivan the Terrible? The paintings done for the Borgias? The rockets built for Hitler? By the same man, incidentally, who is at this very moment trying to improve on them for the same man—Eisenhower—who led the army that beat Hitler.”

  As they spoke, they looked at the Sevres collection. “Those,” said Tamara, “were assembled for the successor to the French King whose motto at Versailles is that he ‘Governs by Himself.’ Our Russian ‘autocrat,’ the Czar, reached out for a Greek, not a Slavic term to describe the full scope of his powers. Which reminds me, what are you by profession?”

  “I am an engineer.”

  She paused, and looked up at Blackford, square in the eye.

  “What is a cantilever truss?”

  Blackford raised his eyebrows, and paused, a smile bursting to come out: “It’s a horizontal span supported in the middle and sustaining loads at either end—sort of like bras.” He pursed his lips professionally.

  She smiled, a radiant smile.

  “Are you here in France to build bridges?” she asked.

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “How long really have you known Vadim?”

  They were back in the car now, driving slowly toward Café Tipperary. Blackford found himself furiously resentful at the necessary lie. “Since shortly after he came to America.”

  “How did you come to meet him?”

  “He lectured one day at the home of Countess Tolstoi. A friend invited me there. We have been in touch ever since.” The cover story had been rehearsed. He wondered whether she had asked Vadim the identical question.

  “Do you know what I think?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “I think you are an American intelligence agent.”

  He laughed.

  “Why do you laugh?”

  “Because women have a marvelous faculty for making conversation unprofitable. Whatever I say will leave you suspicious.”

  “I have no objections to American intelligence agents. I have very great objections to anyone hurting my Viktor. If only you knew Viktor! He is, to begin with, a genius. But he is—so special, so loving, so patient. You will never do anything to hurt him?”

  “I certainly will never do anything to hurt him.” Blackford felt he was entitled to say that much. But he felt a twinge in the stomach. He thought of Theo.

  What the hell. He was a professional. He had better recapture the offensive. He said: “Would you do anything to hurt Viktor?”

  “Why do you ask me that?” She seemed both startled and offended.

  “Suppose he tells Vadim he wishes to cooperate with the West?”

  “He has already done that. He spoke half the day yesterday about the scientific work we are doing at Tyura Tam.”

  “I mean, suppose he told Vadim he wanted to help the West even while living and working in the Soviet Union?”

  “I would not permit it. Because there is no safe way to do this.”

  “There is no truly safe way to do anything in your country. Viktor knew that even before he went to Vorkuta.”

  “Julian, you are being quite silly. It is true it isn’t safe for anyone to live in the Soviet Union. But it is a lot safer to live in the Soviet Union if you are not a spy for the United States.”

  “You are speaking entirely of physical safety. I asked you if you would ever do anything to hurt Viktor. Suppose it made him a happier man to contribute to the cause of freedom even at some risk to himself?” Blackford wondered whether the CIA had unconsciously taught him scholastic argumentation or whether he was naturally cursed with the talent.

  Tamara fell silent. They got out of the car and walked across the street to the restaurant, which was half empty. Blackford ordered a bottle of Musigny while she looked absentmindedly at the simple menu.

  “Could I give you some advice?”

  “About what?” she snapped.

  “About the menu, Tamara.”

  With a clearly synthetic gesture of impatience she flung the menu to one side. “If you are going to run my life, you may as well order my meals.” Then she smiled at him, but there was concern on her face, and she ate lightly and distractedly from the wonderful dishes placed in front of her, and Blackford, emphatically, left uneaten one-half what he was served. The conversation was about life in America.

  21

  Trust was waiting for them when they reached St.-Firmin. He smiled at Tamara and told her Vadim and Viktor were out walking. She said she would go to her room and rest, thanked Blackford distractedly, and climbed the staircase.

  “You’re to call Rufus. I haven’t had a chance to quiz Vadim, but I gather things are going well. Any difficulty”—he pointed discreetly toward the staircase—“with her?”

  “Yup. She’s on to us.”

  Trust whistled.

  “When you think of it, it doesn’t make that much difference—unless Viktor should feel betrayed, and that’s unlikely, given his attitude. After all, we’re not forcing him to do anything. If he wants us to escort him to the U.S. and leave him alone, we’ll do that. Tamara’s not resentful, she’s just afraid. I’ll ring Rufus.”

  Rufus told Blackford to come to Paris at about 11 P.M., driving Trust’s car. “We’ll meet at Mme. Rondpoint’s. Contrive to talk to Serge just before leaving. We’ll want the latest on the state of mind of our friend. Anything for me?”

  “I had a few hours with the girl. Nothing that won’t hold until I see you later.” Rufus hung up. Blackford told Trust it looked like a late evening, so he might as well grab an hour’s sleep.

  “Tell me when you feel like talking about what happened yesterday,” Trust answered.

  “Sure. I’m still doing a little assimilating.”

  “Whenever you say. You got something to read?”

  Blackford pulled the paperback from his pocket. “The girl is beginning to realize that the guy isn’t so bad after all. The suspense is killing me.” He went upstairs, lay down on his bed, and wondered whether the Central Intelligence Agency had anybody in the Soviet Union from whom it received regular information. His eyes scanned the pages of the novel, but did not transmit their meaning. He closed his eyes:

  Dear Lloyds of London:

  I am a Soviet scientist, working on the most closely guarded nationa
l enterprise. Now I have decided regularly to inform the Central Intelligence Agency on the progress of my unit in the Soviet Union. I would like a life insurance policy. I am forty years old and extremely strong, as witness that I spent eight years in a slave labor camp in the Arctic and survived. Would you please cite me your rates as I should like to take out a policy of one million pounds on my life, payable to my wife, Tamara. In the event she is not living at the time of my death, I should like the beneficiary of that policy to be Mr. Blackford Oakes, also known as Julian Booth, also known as just plain Harry. He is one of the nicest young men I have ever met, and I would like to make this gesture of appreciation. Write to me c/o Satellite Center, Tyura Tam, Russia. If there is anything I can do for Lloyds of London at T-T, please do not hesitate to advise

  Your servant,

  Viktor Kapitsa

  Blackford reminded himself that it was unprofitable to go on this way, in this line of work. “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem,” he remembered from his Latin studies at Greyburn, the midterm exam at which required the translation of the Lord’s Prayer into Latin. The French version, “ne nous laissez pas succomber à la temptation,” he thought, recalling his activities of the evening before last, was far less realistic.

  If led to temptation, the chances were overwhelming he would succumb. And now he was leading poor Viktor straight into it. But “poor Viktor” wasn’t what this whole enterprise was about. Insufficient attention to strategic objectives created Vorkuta in the first place, and Viktor, if apprehended now, would almost surely in one sense suffer less than he had suffered already—he would simply be executed. Isn’t it justifiable to lead people into temptation, to expose them to danger—in order to prevent the recurrences, on a systematic scale, of such spectacles as he had witnessed at Dohany Street in Budapest last November? Wasn’t Viktor better situated than almost anybody to recognize this? Blackford experienced that wave of frustration he had taken such pains to avoid. He forced himself to ask a simple question: Was he, or was he not, going to permit himself to get some sleep? When Trust woke him, it was seven o’clock.

  Blackford washed his face, and joined the group downstairs. Viktor and Vadim were drinking vodka. Tamara and Anthony were sipping from wineglasses. Vadim switched to English, jabbered about the French political crisis, and quickly slid back into Russian. To Blackford’s surprise, Tamara joined the English group rather than the Russian. She was amusing, inquisitive, altogether ingratiating. The dinner was a very special effort, to which Vadim had made numerous references in the course of the past two days. “You are entitled to one very great French cuisine,” he said, “and the cook he has worked all day”—to prepare what proved to be the most extensive meal Blackford had ever eaten, and it gave him pleasure to see Viktor and—surprising, in the light of the experience at noon—Tamara go enthusiastically from the turbot, to the capellini, to the sorbet au cassis, the poularde en feuilles, the cheese, strawberries, and chocolate mousse. The three wines were, to say the least, appropriate, and Vadim insisted on bringing in the chef. Blackford whispered to Anthony that they really ought to bring in Congressman Rooney. When the chef appeared, Anthony began to sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” in a French accent, and Viktor and Tamara caught the tune in time to join in the reprise. They went giddily into the living room for coffee, after which Blackford said he must be going and asked Vadim please to give him now whatever package it was he wanted delivered to Paris. Blackford said good night to the others, told them he would see them again in the morning and might even be able to bring in the first edition of Le Monde. Vadim excused himself.

  In Blackford’s room Vadim reported in a voice entirely sober: “Viktor he is cooperating. His terms are most pure and simple: (1) Tamara she is not to know nothing; (2) no chain of communications from us to him is to be formed—only the other way. He will not even listen to all the arrangements of Rufus, not even hear them. He has given to me, providing the understanding that I will not share it with anyone, the means he has elected for sending us ‘my occasional communications.’ He feels we must get him back to the delegation not later than tomorrow—the delegation it is returning to Russia on Sunday. We must rehearse in very good detail the cover story. He leaves that to us and ‘your friend in Paris.’”

  “Does he know who our boss is?”

  “Interesting. Very interesting. He has not never brought up the subject. As far as Viktor is officially concerned, he has an arrangement—with me. Yes, he must most certainly know what I will do with the information. He could pass a truth test—and maybe they will give him one—that he has not knowingly been with American intelligence agents.”

  Blackford knew that polygraph tests didn’t work that way, but said nothing. “Okay, I’m on my way. I’ll see you whenever Rufus is through with me.”

  The drive went quickly, and without asking any questions the landlady gave him a key. Blackford opened the door and found himself face to face with an entirely naked stranger drying his buttocks with a large towel while talking uninterruptedly to a presence in the kitchen. He paused only to say, “Hi. You’re Julian, I guess. So anyway, we got this real dumb sonofabitch and he says, ‘I got the stuff one hundred percent purified.’ Sonofabitch is an MIT bastard, you’d think he’d know his ass from an isosceles triangle, you can bet your ass he doesn’t.”

  Rufus came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with a thermos of coffee. “Ah. Julian. This is Punston Hirsch, Julian Booth.”

  “Call me Punky.” He had slipped on his shorts and T-shirt, and reached over and grabbed Blackford’s hand with a grip, thought Blackford, that would have made John Wayne wince. “Howdy, Julian, howsa boy.” He turned to Rufus. “Twelve fucking hours on that Here, noisiest fucking plane ever built. I’d like to meet the designer. Know something, by the time I rode in one of those things a half hour, I coulda told the creep how to balance the engines better than they did, cut down the friction, increase the insulation: I’d like to send that designer to Russia to build their planes, we’d have a better chance to win the next war. Coffee? Shit, I didn’t fly from Cape Canaveral to Paris nonstop to drink coffee, gimme some hootch. Here, kid”—he handed the rejected coffee cup to Blackford, who wasn’t more than three or four years younger—“want some of this crap? It’s hot, but I suppose you guys make other people taste things first.” He laughed. “All I got to do is lift that mother up in the sky, that’s all, while you people slow down the other team. This guy I was talkin’ about, I’m not supposed to use names, anyway, so he says he’s got the stuff purified. You begin by facin’ the problem, it’s got to go out as O3. To do that, you got to convert two molecules of O2 into one triple-atom molecule O3 and that leaves the extra oxygen atom flyin’ around like a horny tomcat lookin’ for another loose oxygen atom to form O2. The Russians—I pick this up from what you guys got from that feller—have got it licked. Got to figure out how to keep it pure all the way to containment and storage. Ya get trouble, I mean real trouble, I mean you blow up, boy, at any stage where there’s impurities, hoses, couplings, valves, meters, seams, linings, lubricants, you name it. Ya get to see those pictures? Well I did, and man, those rockets, they’re not going to go up without 170 tons of lift on the first stage rocket, I’m tellin’ you. And they popped one of those babies the other day three thousand fuckin’ miles, to Kamchatka.” Blackford noticed with some amusement the pain on Rufus’s face at the serial indiscretions of the scientist commonly acknowledged to be the leading Western authority on jet propulsion.

  Rufus interrupted: “All we have here, Punky, is brandy. How about brandy and soda?”

  “I’ll take brandy without the fuckin’ soda, thanks.” He was sitting now on the couch, in shorts and T-shirt, his slacks and coat lying untended on the radiator. “Okay now, so I’ll tell your boy Julian here exactly the questions to ask the Communist feller, it won’t take all that long.” He took a slug from the glass given him, and lit a cigarette.

  “Before you begin, Punky, I’ve got a littl
e business here with Julian. We’ll go into the next room.”

  “Take your time. I’m feelin’ a lot better after that shower and a little hootch, fucking Air Force doesn’t give you any booze. Ride a Herc-30, they should give you morphine.”

  Rufus closed the door of the kitchen, and Blackford gave him the news of the decision of Viktor, and of his interlude with Tamara.

  Rufus thought silently, leaning against the kitchen table. “I had the second message delivered to the embassy at one o’clock, giving them plenty of time to get an answer in tomorrow’s Le Monde. I said”—he quoted from memory—“‘Your terms are unreasonable. But we will meet you halfway. When the Chekhov is tied up at Bizerte, Kapitsa will reappear. Our contact in Bizerte will inform us within one hour that the vessel is docked. Do not attempt any treachery as you would greatly regret it. We agree that we are brothers. It is for you now to prove it. For the liberation army, Jean.’”

  “What happens if the Chekhov ties up and nobody gets in touch with the captain?”

  “Somebody will get in touch with the captain. An authentic Algerian insurrectionist. All he knows is that a collateral but unidentified Algerian cell in Paris contrived the delivery. No problem.”

  “So what am I to do?”

  “Take down—you will need to take extensive notes on this one—what our friend Punky tells you. Get all the details you can from Kapitsa as early tomorrow as you can. The Chekhov could dock, if instructed to proceed at full speed, as early as noon. When we get the word from Tunisia, have Anthony drive the Kapitsas to Porte de Clignancourt. Let them out of the car to take a taxi to the hotel. They don’t know where they were. The taxi that picked them up took them to a van and they were made to enter at gunpoint. They were blindfolded. It took them about two hours to get to their destination. During the period of their detention they were kept in a small farmhouse—there’s a book in your bedroom at St.-Firmin illustrating typical farmhouses in France. Pick one out and get them to study the interior. They were not addressed by a single person while there. The cook who fed them was a male of swarthy complexion. There was someone else with a gun, also of dark complexion, with a moustache, guarding the only entrance to the farmhouse, day and night. At night they were locked into their bedroom. No telephones. Not a single word spoken, though they overheard the guard and the cook occasionally talking in a guttural French. Their line is very simple: They haven’t the remotest idea who was using them for what purpose. I’m going to leave. I’ve got a lot to do. I advise you to get back to St.-Firmin tonight, even if it’s late. I’ll call you in the morning.”