Marco Polo, If You Can Read online

  “We find him guilty as charged on all counts.

  “We sentence him to be shot at dawn tomorrow morning, April 30, 1960.”

  Valerian Ryleyev rose, coughed twice, and said, “Comrade Generals, I beg leave of the court to appeal the sentence.”

  “Permission granted. Unless the Supreme Court commutes the sentence by May 6, the sentence will automatically be carried out.”

  Ryleyev whispered to Blackford, “Thank the court! Thank the court! Quickly, quickly.”

  “I thank the court,” said Blackford.

  The presiding general gaveled the proceedings to a close. Two guards approached Blackford and manacled him. Following the major, they walked past the half-dozen rows of chairs to the door, down a single flight of stairs, into the waiting car. Ryleyev, standing on the sidewalk, leaned down before closing the door.

  “I shall bring along a draft of the appeal in the next day or two.”

  The car sped off in the light, post-seasonal snow. Inside, the car was well heated. The driver had kept it snug, the heater on, throughout the chill afternoon. It was a short drive to 2 Dzherzhinsky Street, where the building stood, firm as Soviet authority, vessel of the people’s justice.

  CHAPTER 2

  After the session with CIA Director Allen Dulles that afternoon in October 1957, Blackford Oakes returned to the little apartment house, climbed the stairs, turned the key to his living room on the right, sank down into the deep armchair and looked out at the falling light streaming obliquely into the room, filtered by the red and orange leaves of the oak and maple trees in Mrs. Carstairs’s courtyard. He sat without moving or turning on the light, meditating on the ten minutes just spent with the man who, at 4:20 exactly, had ceased to be his employer.

  When you resign from the Agency (Blackford learned), you don’t resign as of a given day, but as of a given time. He smiled as he thought that it was—at least in his case—a perquisite of resignation that he was spared the trouble of drafting the instrument itself. It had been neatly typed up, and sat on Mr. Dulles’s immaculate desk. At the appropriate moment—the Director having looked at his watch and noted the hour with his fountain pen—it was handed over to him. Blackford had reached for his own pen, signed the paper, and felt an antic impulse to look up solemnly and ask the Director whether he would like it if Blackford made him a gift of the pen as a souvenir?

  But given the gravity of his offense—Blackford, giving way to sentimentality, had failed to warn the Agency about the shipment of an important piece of cargo to the Soviet Union, in order to save the life of a Russian scientist—Blackford kept reminding himself that the Agency’s decision to permit him to resign, rather than be dismissed, must have been a significant concession. He did not know the stern-faced Director with the trim white mustache and endlessly lit pipe in hand, having had only one or two meetings with him during the six and one half years he had worked for the Agency since being recruited as a graduating senior at Yale. Under the circumstances he was not able to calculate confidently what the motives of the Director might be in treating with relative calm Blackford’s delinquency and suggesting that Blackford resign, though to be sure in such tones as made the alternative to resignation very clear. True, the Director had, without extraordinary ceremony, made a commendatory remark or two about Blackford’s work over the years. And (Blackford felt morally sure about this, though in the world of intelligence he recognized that nothing was safely taken absolutely for granted) the Director made a point of declaring that he did not doubt Blackford’s loyalty to the anti-Communist enterprise. But, after all, Dulles knew that a dissatisfied ex-agent is not as desirable an ex-agent as a less-than-dissatisfied ex-agent. That last, really, was the category he found himself in. Blackford could not dispute the justice of his severance: the Director had done what he had to do. Assuming he were in other relevant respects normal, Blackford could not now go out into the world with a festering resentment that might make him bait for an enemy, foreign or domestic.

  The Director, who would spend hours and weeks pondering ambiguities, was the least ambiguous man in town about when an appointment with a subordinate was over. Blackford having handed over his resignation, the Director rose. Had there been any hesitation in extending his hand? That was one of the questions Blackford now pondered.

  So what? It could not now affect him. All clerical problems—back pay, that sort of thing—took care of themselves automatically. His back pay would come: cash, in an envelope, delivered by an older man whose name he did not know, the precise time of whose materialization at 40 Woodward Street Blackford never knew, but who managed to confront him every month or so with sums of money, the annual total of which always came out about right. During protracted stays abroad, the equivalent of the old paymaster would somehow turn up. Blackford had thought that the Director might ask what Blackford intended to do, and he was prepared to reply that such information was only available on a Need-to-Know basis. But that would have been not only cheeky, but—really—provocative. In any event, it was all unnecessary because the Director, having shaken hands, touched a button; instantly the door was opened by a secretary, and Blackford turned and walked out.

  What does one do when one is dropped from the Central Intelligence Agency—at age thirty-one? His mind was lightly probing the question when the knock on the door came: Michael. His knock was distinctive—somehow it conveyed both diffidence and affability. Quickly Blackford leaped up to flick on the switch that would light up the four lamps in the comfortable, book-lined room: he was not given to letting people know that he had been interrupted in introspection.

  “Am I disturbing you?” Michael smiled toothily through his five o’clock shadow, providing a vivid contrast in black and white. At five-nine he was shorter than Blackford by three inches, but his body, never for very long in repose, made it hard to guess Michael’s exact size. He spoke not only with his hands, but with his shoulders and hips. His hair was dark and plentiful. Slung over his shoulder was a towel. “I was going to shave”—Michael Bolgiano and Blackford shared a bathroom—“unless you’re in a hurry.…”

  Blackford was always delighted by Michael’s presence. They had shared the top floor of Mrs. Carstairs’s four-apartment building for three years. Michael also worked for the Agency, and tended to disappear, like Blackford, for weeks and months at a time. Neither knew anything of the work of the other, though there had been moments when both yearned to speak about an assignment. Social contact between deep-cover agents was discouraged. But Blackford was relieved of the most formal construction of this prohibition when his occupation became known to the enemy after his first operation. And Michael—whatever he did—wasn’t under any social interdict, so that in the course of several years they had frequently dined together and, more than once, caroused together. A year ago it happened that their vacations coincided. Sally was out of town lecturing at a summer seminar in Oklahoma. Michael never permitted his ephemeral female friendships to interfere with his relatively dogged pursuit of outdoor pleasure, and Blackford suggested that Michael join him in an improvised barnstorming tour in the new-model Cessna-310 Blackford’s father (who had the Washington-Maryland franchise) made available to him whenever he wished it. It had been a splendid holiday. They flew as far west as Laramie, south to Mexico City, north to New Orleans, and back—landing at midnight, just before the airport discouraged all except emergency landings. Michael said it was positively the best fortnight of his entire life, notwithstanding Blackford’s penchant for idiot acrobatics, and Blackford said it was amazing what fun you could have with an eighty-five-thousand-dollar airplane and no traffic cops.

  “And nobody to shadow,” Michael had added.

  “And nobody to shadow you,” Blackford said. They were fraternity brothers.

  “Go ahead,” Blackford said, gesturing expansively toward the bathroom. Then, impulsively—he didn’t want to see Sally tonight—“Free for dinner?”

  “Sure,” Michael’s dark eyes lit up. Any co
mradely suggestion, social or adventurous, from Blackford—or from anyone else, Blackford supposed—aroused sheer pleasure in Michael Bolgiano. Forty-five minutes later, Blackford found himself at the corner table at La Noisette, looking vaguely at a menu with which both were thoroughly familiar.

  They drank white wine, and then red; and, with the coffee, slivowitz. Michael, as usual, was the happiest man in town. His distinctiveness was that little things made him happiest. Blackford could not imagine Michael elated because he was about to marry the most wonderful woman in the world, or because his aunt had left him a million dollars, or because the United States had just won a war, or Adlai Stevenson lost an election: he was made happy by things like a good ham sandwich, an exciting movie, an engrossing book, warm air (“balmy!”; “really sensual!”)—or cold air (“exhilarating!”; “makes you kinda tingle, doesn’t it, Black?”). So it had been, all evening long. Blackford didn’t know what it was—almost surely not the booze: he had long since learned to seal hermetically his professional thoughts from the reach of any gab-inducing liquor. But, presumably because giving the matter instant reflection he could find nothing unprofessional in saying it, he blurted it out.

  “I’m no longer with the Agency.”

  Michael put down his glass. Just as all of Michael could light up, all of Michael—shoulders included—could shrivel with concern.

  “What … happened?”

  The slight delay in the verbal exchange between intelligence operatives was the inflection that stood for: “—to the extent you are permitted to speak about it.”

  “I was canned.”

  Michael’s surprise turned his face into yet another fully orchestrated mode. Nobody could be more surpised than Michael when Michael was surprised. The idea that someone of Oakes’s manifest abilities, sophistication, quickness of mind, demonstrated ingenuity, could cease to be useful to the Agency was quite simply unthinkable. He waited for Blackford to relieve him—

  “It was my fault. All you need to know is, I didn’t do something I should have done. And it wasn’t unintentional. That’s really all there is to it. I am officially unemployed.”

  Clearly, what mattered most to Michael was the awful prospect that Blackford would move away from Washington.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Right now? Make love to Sally. I mean, with Sally.” (Sally, feminist forever, had instructed him in the correct use of the preposition.) “What do I want to do tomorrow? Screw with Sally.”

  “What do you want to do when you aren’t screwing Sally? I mean, other than think about screwing ‘with’ Sally.”

  “Well, I’d like to screw Khrushchev and help bust up that act, but that isn’t easy to do on a free enterprise basis. So—I guess I’ll do what I’m trained to do. Build something, or help build it. Did I ever tell you I once built—or rebuilt—a chapel? Every bit of it, stained glass and all. It was … an experience.”

  And so it happened that, at eleven the following morning, Blackford Oakes found himself in the Hill Building, standing before the receptionist of the firm of Ambrose & Gaither, Architects. The receptionist smiled at the trim young man with the rusty blond hair and casual manner; dressed in a khaki suit, white shirt, and blue striped regimental tie, he was carrying, moreover, no briefcase; just the morning paper, folded in his hand.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Bolgiano.”

  Manifestly disappointed that the engaging stranger would not be lingering for a while in the waiting room, the receptionist pointed down the hallway. “Third cubicle on the left,” she said. “His name is on the glass.”

  Blackford had never met Michael’s family, but Mr. Bolgiano was transparently aware that he was greeting his son’s best friend, and solicitously asked him to sit in the little chair by the side of the desk, on which was piled neatly the bookkeeping paraphernalia of Ambrose & Gaither, Architects. Blackford was surprised at how old the bookkeeper looked. Not entirely surprised by his heavy accent, however, because Michael had been born in Italy, arriving in America with his mother at age twelve, at the outbreak of the war. His father joined them several years later.

  Mr. Bolgiano fussed over Blackford, fetched him a cup of tea, and told him that, based exclusively on what he had learned from Michael, an appointment had been made with Mr. Gaither himself, who had instructed the bookkeeper to bring in his son’s friend any time, Mr. Gaither’s schedule being flexible all morning long.

  “That’s awfully nice of you, Mr. Bolgiano. What did you tell him about my … professional background?”

  “I told him you been mostly in-a Europe, like Michael says, okay?”

  Blackford nodded. He had a résumé in his pocket and after a little conviviality with Mr. Bolgiano, to whom Blackford expressed his admiration of and fondness for Michael, he was led to Gaither’s secretary. She spoke softly into the intercom, and motioned pleasantly to the walnut door on which, in discreet and stylish lettering in inch-high brass, was posted simply, “Mr. Gaither.”

  There was a startling resemblance, Blackford thought, to the Director himself. Tweedy, glasses, gray hair, a small, whitish mustache, even the pipe. But Mr. Gaither’s face was so freckled, the flesh tones appeared as little cosmetic afterthoughts. Mr. Gaither took a long look at Blackford, asked him to sit down, made small talk about the remarkable success the Soviet scientists had achieved with their Sputnik satellite, an obligatory reference to the Braves having won the World Series, and then asked Blackford whether he had brought with him a curriculum vitae.

  “Yes sir. A sort of abbreviated one.” He handed him the piece of paper on which he had typed that morning:

  Blackford OAKES. Born Toledo, Ohio, December 7, 1925. Schooling: Scarsdale, N.Y., HS. Greyburn Academy, England (one term). Yale, B.A., 1951, mechanical engineering.

  Government service. World War II, army fighter pilot.

  Consultant, Greenhouse Foundation, research on development of structural techniques in British architecture.

  Consultant to U.S. mission in Germany, in charge of reconstruction of St. Anselm’s Chapel.

  References on request.

  “What kind of references, Mr. Oakes?”

  “Well, sir, beginning with Yale, there are some professors there. Then foundation executives … the army people I worked with in Germany.”

  “What was your most recent job?”

  “Actually, after I finished the chapel I took a lot of time off. I’ve been all over Europe. My mother lives in London.”

  Gaither stared at him. “You don’t by any chance know my nephew, Nelson Gaither? He was Yale 1950. Works for the CIA.”

  “No sir,” Blackford said. He caught a trace of a smile in Gaither’s face, but did not return it.

  “You come very highly recommended by Mr. Bolgiano’s son in the State Department, and if you will give me those names and addresses I’ll send out some routine letters. Right now, we need a competent draftsman with your background. We’re competing for the congressional contract to build the memorial to FDR. The competition is hot, but we want it. We’ve hired three draftsmen who are competent in mechanical engineering and who might have a few ideas. Can’t give you any contract, no guarantee. If you work out and we get the commission, you stay. Otherwise, you can just add one more consultantship to your résumé. Pay, three hundred dollars. All right?”

  “I’d like to think about it for a day or two if I can. Without losing the option of accepting?”

  “Very well.” Gaither’s mood suddenly changed, and he leaned back in his chair. “Out of curiosity, do you have any ideas that spring to mind for a memorial for FDR?”

  “Well,” Blackford said pensively, “obviously I haven’t thought much about it. Marble, I guess. Some kind of modern design—simple; like FDR’s grave, which he designed himself. Then maybe with some memorable quotations from his speeches?”

  “Such as?”

  Blackford thought for a while. “Well, there’s the one about balancing the budget.” He bowed his head in
concentration. “Then there’s the one about … er, our boys will never fight in foreign wars. Er … there’s the Four Freedoms and the future of Poland …”

  “Thank you, Oakes.”

  Blackford raised his head and smiled. “I’d be glad to do a little more research, sir, if you like.”

  “Don’t bother. Practice up on your draftmanship.” Mr. Gaither rose and extended his hand.

  “Thanks very much, Mr. Gaither. I’ll call in in a couple of days.”

  After Blackford had left, Gaither buzzed his secretary. “Get me Amanda on the line.”

  “Amanda? What kind of thing gets you fired from the CIA?”

  “Dad, what an odd question. Well, at one end if you steal an atom secret and give it to the Russians—that’ll do it every time.”

  “I’m in a hurry, Amanda.”

  “You mean: nondramatic firings? Well, a guy can be passed over for promotion. Or maybe he was on a project that terminated, and there wasn’t anything for him to tackle. Could have had a fight with his boss.”

  “I don’t suppose you could find out anything about the background of an ex-CIA agent if I asked?”

  “No, Dad. That’s one of the other things you get fired for doing.”

  “Thanks, darling. See you.” He put down the telephone and turned his mind to means by which to perpetuate the memory of FDR on earth. It would help balance his budget.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Hans? This Hans Steiner?”

  “Yes, Steiner here.”

  “This is Bill Ottley.”

  “Who?”

  “OTTLEY! O-ldest T-ime T-ested L-iving E-xample of Y-urinary bliss. I haven’t pissed in twenty hours. Put that in your book of records, Fritz. I mean Hans. Did they ever call you Fritz? I mean, as a boy? I always think of Germans as Fritz. Now Hans, got something here, my bosses at BBDO—BBD ayand Ooooh. B-iggest B-astards D-oing O-ll the Lawd’s work! We got something real hot here. Gotta have photographs. Deadline. Space reserved: Life, Look, Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmo, you name it, Fritz. Hans. Can I come over? Special rates for special work.”