High Jinx Page 5

  ‘You may have reasoned to what it is that we need to do, gentlemen. But I shall go through the paces in any event.

  ‘We are faced with the most extraordinary penetration of our intelligence system imaginable. Five discrete landing sites—all of them known to the enemy. The time of the landings—known to the enemy. That is a level of coordinated penetration very difficult even to imagine. There is something extra-human to it. More details on that in due course. It operates, moreover, with uncanny speed and precision. And doesn’t mind exhibiting this extraordinary technical precision. As witness the matter of Shroud. We reason to his probable connections and a half day later he suddenly leaves—on a plane for Eastern Europe. Gone.’

  Rufus put down his coffee cup and was silent. He was given to doing this. Not often; but such silences were not interrupted by those who knew Rufus. He began to speak again:

  ‘At 11:06 GMT, Adam Waterman discloses the list of telephone numbers to Anthony Trust and Blackford Oakes, numbers decoded from the key number in Esperanto’s phone book. One of those numbers is a private number attached to the Soviet Embassy.

  ‘At 11:07, Oakes dials the suspect number and reaches the office of Colonel Bolgin, head of KGB London.

  ‘At 12:05, a message written by Trust reporting on these events is handed to a coding clerk in the American Embassy, whose name is Gerald Astrachan.’ All this from memory: Rufus did not use notes.

  ‘At 12:21, CIA-Washington receives the message which was decoded at—I switch now to Eastern Standard Time—at 0745, and was brought into the office of the Director at 0805.

  ‘The Director brings me in and we discuss the matter and alternative ways of dealing with John Shroud—Esperanto. We reach the conclusion that, most important of all, no action taken in London should alert Shroud to our suspicions. We reason, I believe correctly, that Shroud was one part of a comprehensive network, but that at least now we have a link.

  ‘And you know, of course, what then happened. Within five hours of our discussion in Washington, Shroud had left his apartment. Within seven hours he was on an airplane to Berlin. He is now, presumably, in East Germany.’

  Rufus rose. He walked at first to the coffee pitcher. Then stopped and absentmindedly returned, his empty cup still in hand.

  ‘It means that only a very limited number of people could, hypothetically, have alerted the KGB to our having got on to Shroud. They are:

  ‘1) Blackford Oakes, covert agent, three years with the Agency, during which he was executor of two highly secret, highly sensitive missions.’ Rufus sounded as though he were quietly addressing a tribunal. ‘2) Anthony Trust, chief of station, London-CIA. Six years with the Agency, exemplary performance, and recruiter of Blackford Oakes. 3) Adam Waterman, cryptographer, four years of duty, total security clearance. 4) Coding clerk Gerald Astrachan, fourteen years’ service including with MI6 on the Intrepid project during the war, total security clearance. 5) The decoding clerk in Washington, eleven years’ service, including two years on Air Force One.

  ‘Have I left anyone out, Blackford?’

  ‘Well, yes, Rufus, actually: yourself, and the Director.’

  Rufus didn’t smile. ‘You are quite right. We are hypothetical suspects. Have I left anyone or anything else out?’

  There was silence in the room.

  Rufus went on. ‘Yes. The teletype. All the information we have discussed flowed through the coding room of the embassy.’

  ‘Are you suggesting they have broken our code? As obvious as that?’

  Rufus answered, ‘Our codes cannot be broken. Because the codes, at the level we speak of, are changed every day, and no human being knows what tomorrow’s code will be because that code is selected from a billion billion possibilities, at random, at midnight.’

  ‘What are we supposed to conclude then, if the assumption is that the persons named didn’t tip off the KGB?’

  ‘That without breaking the code, they are getting our messages.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  Blackford regretted asking the question, the answer to which was the towering enigma that had, after all, brought them all together in the first place. Too late.

  ‘We’ll have to try to find out. By working at both ends: In the Code Room, at the embassy. And,’ he sighed, ‘at the other end. By penetrating the Soviet Embassy.’

  8

  Sir Alistair Fleetwood stared at the full-length mirror in the bedroom of his rooms at Trinity College and straightened his black tie. He paused and allowed himself to wonder exactly how Narcissus felt when he looked at his reflection in the pool of water, and adored.

  Fleetwood laughed.

  ‘Sir Alistair!’ He allowed the syllable to pass voluptuously through his lips. Until exactly 12:44 that afternoon he had been simply Mr. Alistair Fleetwood: or, to be sure, Professor Alistair Fleetwood when at Cambridge or in the company of academics.

  It had been quite a season for him—all of it taking place within six weeks, actually. The call had come that morning six weeks ago—on All Saints’ Day, as the musty set at Trinity so quaintly continued to designate the first of November. The electrifying message: The Swedish Academy of Science had selected him for a Nobel Prize. This was to commend his discovery of the electronic formula whose startling success within the astronomical telescope had permitted the examination of the planets and of bodies located light-years away from the earth with the kind of particularity that radio beams never had made possible. When the patent was filed his colleagues at the laboratory were insistent, though he had vaguely resisted, and it was given the name ‘the Fleetwood Zirca.’

  In fact Alistair Fleetwood had not been surprised that he had been awarded the Nobel. It had been widely predicted that he would get it. The development of the Zirca was simply his latest success—who could even say with assurance that it would be viewed as the culminating success? Fleetwood was only thirty-eight years old!—in a career that had dazzled first his family, then the staff and boys at Greyburn, then the staff and fellows of Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge, then his professional colleagues at Bletchley Park, where he had spent four years with the cryptographers introducing novel uses of electrical energy, critically valuable in coding and decoding with near-instantaneous speed. When John Maynard Keynes had visited Cambridge and spent there a few leisurely days before his sudden and unexpected death in April of 1946, he remarked to a friend that Fleetwood was as brilliant a man as he had ever known. Word got about that the great Lord Keynes had said that about Alistair Fleetwood, and it became something on the order of an honorific penned after his name. His talented young student, Bertie Heath, at one point suggested that ‘Mr. Fleetwood,’ as he called him at that point, engrave his calling cards ‘Alistair Fleetwood, C.G.J.M.K.’—Called a Genius by John Maynard Keynes.

  Fleetwood, standing in front of the same mirror, would practice an appropriately embarrassed frown for those many occasions when, introduced as a visiting lecturer or speaker, he would hear recounted his academic and scientific achievements. He had become quite good at it, allowing even a trace of surprise to flicker over his face, as though he was hearing for the first time the striking record of his accomplishments and, really, was quite surprised, in a detached kind of way. If only they knew what he was really thinking about this wholly wretched society and all its frumpery and pomp and hypocrisy. But no one would ever know. Well, practically no one.

  Now there would be the testimonial dinner—he was due at the Master’s lodge in a few minutes, where the round of feasting would begin. His first night out as ‘Sir’ Alistair. He sat down on his red velvet couch, opposite the teeming bookcase that contained, leatherbound, all the books and scholarly articles he had published during the past fifteen years, and poured himself a glass of sherry. He reasoned with himself that, in fact, he would have very little trouble in getting used to it all, notwithstanding his doctrinal disapproval of titles. But that disapproval was, again, his secret, and certainly not something Queen Caroline w
ould have had any suspicion of earlier that day, no suspicion at all. If he said so himself, he had to admit it, his comportment had been exemplary. Exemplary!

  He had been ceremoniously invited, along with Dame Myra Hess, as he had discovered that day, to stay on after the ceremony at Buckingham Palace to lunch with the Queen. After he knelt and accepted the knighthood, following the great pianist, an equerry led them into a large, ornate sitting room. ‘Her Majesty will be with you in just a moment.’

  And indeed, in just a moment she breezed in, her poodle in her left hand, followed by a lady-in-waiting who took a chair in the corner of the room. Dame Myra and Sir Alistair had begun to rise, but before they were properly up the Queen had descended onto a petit-point couch, and they reversed their movement, reoccupying their chairs.

  Fleetwood had seen her often enough on television and was not surprised by the lovely face, the perfect complexion, the fine honey-coloured hair, the loose curls held in place by a near-invisible pearl slide. But he could not exactly have anticipated the eyes. They were dark blue and sent out a bolt of relentless curiosity. Her mind, he had the impression, was forever in high gear, and at this particular moment it was at cruising speed, taking the measure of her newest knight, Sir Alistair Fleetwood. Evidently the Queen was familiar with Dame Myra, and one soon learned that even as a girl the Queen had known the artist, Myra Hess having been a friend of the late Duchess, Queen Caroline’s mother.

  She took a glass of champagne from the tray and began instantly to speak to him. ‘Do you know, Sir Alistair, that I haven’t the remotest, not the remotest idea of what it is that you have accomplished, for which you have been so systematically honoured during the past six weeks? Now Myra here—Dame Myra—I can personally appreciate, because I know that she could, right this minute, put down her glass of champagne, go over there’—the Queen pointed to the far corner of the room—‘to that loathsome Steinway—it is loathsome, Myra, and you don’t have to pretend it isn’t, but everybody around here raised such an unholy rumpus when I suggested giving it away to a museum. They kept sighing,’ she turned back to Fleetwood, mimicking the royal ululations she described, ‘that it was after all made in Hamburg especially for Queen Victoria, my great-great-grandmother, on commission by Kaiser Wilhelm, her idiotic grandson. My first reaction when I heard that about the piano was, “Why on earth do we want anything in the Palace given to us by that horrible man, my great uncle, who managed to slaughter 750,000 Englishmen, including my father, in a stupid war?” Please take note, Sir Alistair, that it is not only scientists who can remember figures. So I said to Lord What’shisname who looks after royal treasures here, “In that case, why don’t we give it to the Victoria and Albert Museum? Maybe my great-great-grandmother would be more comfortable having it there? So to speak, as a part of her special collection?” Anyway, that Steinway. The tone is terrible, the action is too heavy, and twice I have without success had it overhauled by, of course, the best technicians in Great Britain.

  ‘But anyway, assuming she would consent to play that piano, which Myra is too sensible to do, she would instantly transport us by her skill and poetry. But what can you do to humble intelligences like ours to persuade us that you deserve the Nobel Prize and, now, a knighthood? I mean, Sir Alistair, what is a Fleetwood Zirca going to do for us?’

  ‘Well, ma’am, what does a telescope do for us?’

  ‘Now, that’s silly, isn’t it? It keeps us from running our ships into the rocks, among other things.’

  Fleetwood smiled. ‘The more powerful the telescope, the sooner you know there are rocks out there, wouldn’t that follow?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that would follow, as you put it. But why do I need to know that there are rocks out there, a million miles away, if there is no possibility of my bumping into them?’

  ‘Ma’am, you are teasing me, and I don’t really mind your doing so one bit. Because I cannot believe that you deprecate natural curiosity, even if you don’t exhibit it.’

  Queen Caroline smiled, a huge appreciative smile, settling back totally on the sofa, mussing the hair of her dog’s head.

  Just the right answer, she thought. But she mustn’t let him have the last word.

  ‘Curiosity leads to desirable ends and to undesirable ends. Are we so glad there was curiosity on how to cause an atom to implode?’

  Fleetwood answered cautiously. ‘One can’t tell always, can one, whether a scientific discovery will be used to help or hurt humankind. Scientists are not responsible for the use made of their tools. That is the responsibility of our governors. Offhand I cannot think of one scientist, or ex-scientist, who is a president or prime minister, or even—’ he added cautiously, ‘a monarch.’

  The Queen smiled again. ‘Of course, you are correct, and I hope that your Zirca shows us all kinds of things. Perhaps we can do something about the British climate, after we discern how other planets handle their weather? By the way, is the Zirca a state secret?’

  ‘Well, hardly, Your Majesty. You can’t award a Nobel Prize for a secret.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant: do the communists now also have a Zirca?’

  ‘Not at the moment. There is, of course, a patent. And your government has not yet ruled on whether its strategic capability will put it on the list of products British manufacturers are not permitted to ship to the Soviet Union and certain other countries.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Queen Caroline acknowledged with a nod the bow of her steward. She rose and began to walk toward the small blue-toned Dresden dining room at the left, followed by her company. ‘Well, I hope the government decides against giving the Zirca to the Soviet Union. There isn’t anything, Sir Alistair, anything at all’—she sat down, the steward having drawn back the chair, motioned Fleetwood to sit on her left, Dame Myra to sit on her right, and nodded absentmindedly at her lady-in-waiting and equerry to take their places—‘that the communists will not transform to evil purposes. You could give them Mercurochrome and they would use it to poison somebody.’

  She continued in her celebrated, animated way, her eyes flashing. ‘Why don’t you invent something,’ she handed her dog to an attendant, and dipped her fingers in her fingerbowl, ‘—something that immobilises everyone in the Kremlin? We’ll just manage to plop it into Red Square one day when nobody—nobody but you, Sir Alistair, and you, Myra, and I, on behalf of my kingdom—is looking.’ Queen Caroline’s voice reduced to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘And suddenly—the next day!—the entire government apparatus, all those horrible men—notice, Myra, you don’t see any women in the Politburo, do you? Not one. I specifically asked that question of my foreign minister as recently as last week. Not one. Though, I admit it, there was that dreadful Ana Pauker in Roumania, whom Stalin was goodhearted enough to purge before being especially goodhearted by dying. And then the next day, they would all have lost their memory!

  ‘Think of it, Sir Alistair! They would all forget how many people they need to kill during the next few weeks! Forget how many million people they wish they could enslave! What the formulas are for firing their nuclear weapons! What the secret codes are for reaching their spies! Think of it! I will tell you this, in the presence of’—she counted decisively, pointing to each of her guests seated about the table, one after another—‘in the presence of four witnesses: you invent that, and I shall make you a baron. No. I shall make you a duke. Come to think of it, if you do that, I shall divorce Prince Richard and marry you! With Myra, here, playing the organ. What would you choose to play at that wedding, Myra? Remember, the Queen of England would be marrying the man who had brought us peace on earth. Wonderful!’

  Dame Myra spoke, for the first time. ‘I shall certainly make myself available for that performance, ma’am. I shall practice ‘Amazing Grace,’ with 1,001 variations.’

  ‘Splendid! It is a covenant. Never mind the Fleetwood Zirca. It will blow away, in memory of the Fleetwood Covenant.’ Queen Caroline turned to her soup, which was cold. She noticed quickly that none of her gues
ts had begun to eat, waiting for her.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear. I got carried away, and the soup is cold. Would you like yours reheated, Myra?’ The Queen brought her spoon to the tip of her tongue, and gingerly tasted the consommé. ‘Hmm. Well, not too bad.’ Without looking up she said, ‘I beg you, anyone who would like the soup reheated, just motion over there.’

  It had been a memorable lunch, Alistair Fleetwood thought. No doubt about it. It served, among other things, to fortify his loyalties.

  9

  When, at the age of eighteen, on completing his first year at Trinity, Alistair Fleetwood was given the Duhem Prize for outstanding academic work, which prize customarily went to a graduating student or, every now and then, to a singular second-year student, his parents felt that they would have to yield to his entreaty, resisted during the previous two summers, to travel in the Soviet Union. ‘He has, quite simply, earned it,’ the senior Mr. Fleetwood, the librarian in Salisbury, had said after reading his son’s letter. Mrs. Fleetwood agreed, though she didn’t like what they had all been reading about the Soviet Union under Stalin, about the show trials and the executions. And so, that night, father and mother went over their accounts and calculated how they might assemble the eighty-nine pounds necessary to give Alistair the month in Russia as a member of the tour sponsored now for the third year by the Cambridge Socialist Society.

  The eight students and their guide, Alice Goodyear Corbett, travelled by Soviet steamship, leaving Southampton early in an afternoon of mid-June, arriving nine days later in Leningrad having, at about midpassage, ambled lazily through the long cool green of the Kiel Canal, as it had been called ever since Kaiser Wilhelm lost a world war and with it the right to continue to attach his name to the canal that joins the North Sea to the Baltic, saving five hundred miles of circumnavigation.