High Jinx Page 9

  Rufus had not specified what his plan was, but it was known that he had something in mind that required patience and a continued irregularity of secret communications between Washington and London.

  ‘We’ll do as asked, and see, right?’ Anthony Trust sought, during dinner, to put the matter out of their minds as they sat down at the small table, the candle at its centre, over the traditional red-checkered tablecloth. There was the faint and all the more appealing smell of wine and herbs and cooking butter, and the genial concern of the maître d’hôtel to leave his clients happy. The braised chicken and petits pois were fine, the claret excellent, the mille-feuilles sensational.

  And so they moved on. The residual frustration imposed a certain drag on their mounting spirits so that it took longer than usual to reach overdrive. But they would do so.

  When professionally burdened, his old friend Anthony, Blackford knew, tended to turn his mind to stimulations unrelated to the world of getting and spending and the cold war. And, as ever, Blackford was bracingly acquiescent. For one thing it was very much worthwhile just listening to Anthony Trust in his romantic mode, if only for the sake of listening to Anthony Trust in his romantic mode. He was very good at it, and it was heavily contagious.

  Anthony was just one year older than Blackford. They had met as the only two American boys at Greyburn College, in 1941: Anthony a shrewd, urbane senior whose precocious social skills had got him named a prefect by the time Blackford Oakes, the irrepressible young Yankee, arrived, causing by his informality something of a sensation, which had culminated in the ironic scene of Blackford being physically held in place by his fellow American while the headmaster applied a savage beating with a birch rod to punish Blackford’s insolence. Trust did his formal duty, but then risked his prefectorial standing by acting as an accomplice in Blackford’s altogether unauthorised departure from Greyburn.

  They had coincided again at Yale, the one (Anthony) a junior, the other a sophomore. In due course Anthony Trust recruited Blackford into service with the CIA.

  Anthony Trust was something of a sentimentalist. Unmoved by facile pain, by quotidian vicissitudes; but deeply moved by genuine pain, and positively outraged by sadistic pain. It was, he once confessed to Blackford, primarily for that reason that he devoted himself so completely to the political struggle against communism. ‘Every time the spirit lags,’ he told Blackford as they fought their way clear of the inscrutable problem of the Comprehensive Mole, ‘I pick up a book on a particular shelf in my library. I have another sequestered library shelf: it chronicles the atrocities of the Nazis. Do you know of Rolf Hochhuth? He has a play. I’ve read it. It will hit Broadway one of these days, hit it big, I predict. It’s called The Representative, and makes out a case against Pope Pius XII. The thesis is: the Pope didn’t do enough to alert the world to the evil of Adolf Hitler. I want to know: how would Rolf Hochhuth (or his followers) treat the same Pope—or the present Prime Minister of England or the President of the United States—if he used the kind of language Hochhuth thought appropriate to use against Hitler, but used it now against Malenkov, successor to Stalin? And, in fact, many of them never even approved of tough language against Stalin.’ Anthony Trust was gripping his glass.

  ‘Anyway, when my spirits flag, I pick up one of those books. I’ll give you just four or five titles—you know them all. I Speak for the Silent. The Captive Mind. I Chose Freedom. Darkness at Noon. Tchernavin, Milosz, Kravchenko, Koestler, and twenty-five more. Then I reach out and I pick up The Diary of Anne Frank, but I say to myself: “The people who did that to her are dead or in prison.” We managed that! We finally reduced the Thousand-Year Reich to one bunker and an automatic pistol, and Hitler took it from there. The remaining bastards we dithered over at Nuremberg before hanging them (should just have shot ’em, Black, and then hanged them). There is no such thing any more as a Nazi threat. But the other bastards are doing it all the time. Every year there is another book I add to that shelf.’ His smile was grave. But then, and this quality in Anthony Trust Blackford cherished, it was gone—flash!—in a moment, replaced by a smile that Black-ford or anyone else could only describe as, well, joyful—lascivious, though that perhaps is a word unfairly freighted against those whose keenest sensual distraction happens to be carnal.

  Anthony Trust was at once deeply in love with women and resigned to the knowledge that, in the absence of engaging any one woman in an eternal embrace, they were capable, on a quite casual and, so to speak, disposable basis, of yielding intense pleasure, pleasure he made certain to reciprocate. Anthony had started to talk about the Bag o’ Nails, a London ‘gentlemen’s club,’ here defining a collective of particularly attractive ladies of pleasure. Blackford leaned back and listened to Anthony Trust, who went on as though extemporising the last, elating act of South Pacific.

  ‘They are all very attractive, but Hilda—well, she is quite unique. Let me tell you …’

  Blackford, of course, listened, without reminding Anthony that if Blackford had perfect recall, he could give back a dozen accounts of unique Hildas in Anthony’s life.

  But Anthony—dark and slim, and intense now, his white teeth flashing in a curious way in synchronisation with the expressions on his face, at once of awe, of love, of pleasure, of admiration—talked on. Of course, he said, poor Blackford, who had been away all that time in that lonely castle in Germany (Anthony knew better than to protract any reference to Blackford’s preceding, heart-rending mission) had never met Hilda, and of course such a meeting must be effected this very night! given that no one knew exactly when Blackford would be back in London.

  Three hours later they were in the suite Hilda shared with Minerva: two bedrooms, the living room between them dimly lit by lamps covered in only barely diaphanous pink, the walls hung with nineteenth-century prints of lush nineteenth-century fops in rustic setting, the furniture highly varnished, heavy in design, with here and there a touch of silver—an ashtray, a cigarette case, a little flowered vase.

  Anthony, at the club, had talked very nearly nonstop, as Hilda had done—sometimes, it seemed, simultaneously. They managed to communicate with each other without any apparent difficulty as, Blackford knew, a single telephone line could mysteriously accommodate simultaneous transmissions from both ends, tapped in concurrently without interference to either of the two parties, who received their messages on their own receivers apparently uninterrupted.

  But soon Minerva and Blackford, sitting with their champagne at the table at the Bag o’ Nails, were engaged in their own conversation. They quickly and quite sincerely exchanged compliments, managing this without any sense of routine. Minerva was a slight but voluptuously beautiful blond young woman with sprightly green eyes that turned, at least on that night, very quickly from cynical to sceptical to—enraptured. Blackford Oakes, she said to him after a half hour, was the most beautiful man who had ever entered the Bag o’ Nails. ‘Not as beautiful as Tyrone Power,’ she qualified this in a spirit of intellectual rectitude. ‘Nobody is as beautiful as Tyrone Power. And do you know, he was here once? and do you know, that was the one night I was not here? I was visiting my mother in Sussex. But Hilda was here, and Hilda said—no. She said nothing. Truly. She never spoke about it. She just sighs when you mention Tyrone Power.

  ‘But even though you don’t look like him, you are, really, Charles’ (neither Blackford nor Anthony ever used their own names except in last wills and testaments, letters to their mothers and to alumni records offices, to which they regularly lied about their professional occupations), ‘so beautiful. Really, I hope Hilda will suggest we go home soon.’

  Soon Anthony did, and the four of them shared the living room for a few minutes, after which they separated. And in due course, in that charmingly vulgar room with the thick quilt bedcover tossed playfully on the floor, the music (Strauss) (Johann) coming in softly from the automatic record player, the mirror on the ceiling, surrounded by the faded wallpaper with the dozen dreamy-eyed copulators weaving in and a
round flower trees and vines and waterfalls, the paper exactly framing the mirror ever so lightly tinted, Minerva was giggling as ‘Charles’ expressed his affection for her, though she knew, as he did, that, released from the springs of passion and finding a more appropriate mode of speech, he would speak rather of ardour than affection; but then her giggling ceased, and she groaned out the pleasure they both felt, the appreciation of each other’s bodies, an appreciation mature in the knowledge that tomorrow it—they—would be nothing more than last night’s memory, last night’s voluptuous, memorable memory.

  The Pan American flight connection to Washington required of its passengers that they check in one hour early, and Blackford did so, Anthony Trust at his side helping with the bags. He retained in his own briefcase, to hand over to Blackford for delivery in Washington, a sheaf of classified papers. But he would not release the papers—The Rule—until the time came for Blackford to board his flight.

  They had a cup of coffee at the airport restaurant and touched conversationally on the morning’s headlines, which spoke of the Kremlin’s obsessive demand to Western heads of state that they meet in a summit conference. Their idea of a conference was to consider Soviet objections to the scheduled independence of West Germany. Flight 112 was now called and Blackford, taking from Anthony the sealed brown envelope and putting it into his own briefcase, got up. Together they walked out toward the gate.

  Blackford passed by the large newsstand and paused to buy a paperback to take with him. As he leaned over the book racks he heard the voice.

  It said: ‘A pack of Virginia Rounds.’

  Blackford froze. That voice. He shot up and turned toward the man handing over the ten-shilling note to the saleswoman. He was looking at a large man with a full beard, a cap over his abundant black hair, dressed in a loden coat and black corduroy trousers. Blackford stared at him.

  ‘Henry!’ he said.

  The man turned abruptly as his change was being dropped into his open hand. His eyes rested only fleetingly on Blackford, then back down to his open hand. He muttered, ‘You must be mistaken. Good day,’ and quickly left the newsstand, his pack of Virginia Rounds still on the counter.

  Blackford closed his eyes for a second. He looked up. Anthony Trust was at the other end of the magazine rack, idly scrutinising the display.

  Blackford grabbed him by the sleeve and whispered tersely, ‘Listen! Mayday mayday mayday! See that man—’ he pointed to the stranger, now halfway across the large terminal. ‘Follow him; whatever you do don’t lose him. I may be wrong, but I don’t think so.’ Anthony Trust, trained agent, reacted instinctively, sprinting away without even muttering goodbye.

  ‘This is the last call for Flight 112/Pan American Clipper to Washington D.C., with a stop at Santa Maria in the Azores. Flight 112 to Washington is boarding now.’

  Blackford hesitated. Should he cancel?

  He was tempted to dump his briefcase and run at full gallop across the terminal.

  Briefcase.

  Rufus.

  The vital documents.

  Stranger. Hallucination?… My Henry, after all, is dead. I’ve seen pictures of him dead …

  He boarded the aeroplane, took his seat assignment, removed his jacket, sat down, and shut his eyes.

  Henry? Henry, the commando leader of Operation Tirana? Henry, who had been first tortured, then shot, the whole of it photographed.

  Could Blackford have been mistaken?

  As he persuaded himself that it was irrational to believe that that was Henry, his mind closed on a certitude: that, it said, was Henry. Henry of Camp Cromwell.

  He could not stay seated. And so he walked to the rear of the plane, merely to pause there and walk back. Five hours to the Azores to refuel. Then seven hours to Washington via New York. At the airport at Santa Maria he would try to get through to Anthony Trust. He did try, but was firmly advised by guards that through-passengers were not allowed into the terminal area where public telephones were.

  It was three in the morning London time when Blackford called in to London from the airport in Washington where the Stratocruiser’s passengers passed through Customs and Immigration. He asked Anthony Trust breathlessly:

  ‘Did you trail him?’

  ‘Yeah. He checked in at the Goring Hotel. We’ve got a surveillance team there watching him. You may be on to something ’cause I had to practically destroy an old lady to get a cab to keep sight of him. Now, pal, would you do me the favour of telling me who it is I practically killed myself and other people to trail? Was it Molotov?’

  ‘No. That was the chief commando of Operation Tirana.’

  Blackford could hear the pause. Followed by the cluck-cluck.

  ‘You’ve got to be mistaken. The guy they called Henry? He was executed.’

  ‘In that case he’s risen again.’

  Another pause. ‘You sure, Black?’

  ‘I’m as sure as I am that I am talking to Anthony Trust. Now: grant the hypothetical possibility that someone has been studying your voice for years, trashed you an hour ago, has been lying in your bed waiting for my phone call, so I’m not really talking to Anthony Trust but to an impostor. Grant it was hard to see the Henry I knew through that forest on his face. But the size was right, the eyes were right, and the voice was unmistakable. And he was flustered enough to forget the cigarettes—the Virginia Rounds that Henry smoked at Cromwell. And after that’—Blackford was becoming impatient—‘to take off pretty goddamn rapidly.’

  ‘I’ll say it was rapid. I had to gallop to stay up with him. You headed for Rufus?’

  ‘You bet. Now listen, that guy is the key to everything. Don’t for God’s sake let him get away. I’ll talk to Rufus. Get him to call London and get out a warrant. Never mind on what grounds. Just tell me, Anthony—reassure me—the guys you got out there are good men.’

  ‘They’re the men we rely on.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll call you back after I see Rufus.’

  Blackford dialled Rufus’s number. No answer.

  He closed his eyes in concentration. He needed orderly thought. It was three in the morning, internal clock time.

  He dialled another number and got the duty officer at the CIA. He carefully identified himself, giving the requisite signal that communicated that he was on emergency business. He was put through to the Deputy Director, interrupted in a bridge game in Georgetown.

  ‘You don’t know me, sir, but I am Blackford Oakes and I just flew in from London on instructions from Rufus. Something is up that’s a real emergency. Do you know where Rufus is?’

  The Deputy said no, he did not: he knew only that Rufus was back from London. Nor had the particular alarm gone out that requires specified officials to log in with a central clerk where they can be found at any hour. Could the Deputy himself help Oakes?

  Blackford thought, and concluded it would be too complicated to brief the Deputy on the need to get a London warrant for arrest that suited the demands of this situation. He would take his chances perching outside Rufus’s apartment.

  He signed off and told the taxi driver to take him to the nearest rent-a-car. In a few minutes he was driving a Ford sedan. Again he telephoned Rufus; again there was no answer. He drove to Lee Street, the quiet street in Alexandria where he and not many others knew that Rufus dwelled. He walked into the ground floor and placed a folded note in the slot of Rufus’s mailbox. It read simply: ‘I am waiting for you in a Ford sedan across the street—Blackford.’ The alternative was to confront every figure that came in from the dark into the apartment house, to see if he was Rufus.

  It was a long and agonising wait. But shortly before midnight, as Blackford was dozing, there was a rap on the windshield. Rufus.

  They drove together to the CIA building at E Street. It would be, in London, a few minutes after five in the morning. The objective, Rufus had said, would be to have the police at the hotel by seven, it being unlikely that ‘Henry’ would be leaving his room before then.

  Rufus did no
t hesitate to wake the director, who approved Rufus’s plan. He called London and roused the ambassador. Joseph Abercrombie Little did not like to be seen merely as a link in a chain that led from somewhere he did not know to somewhere else he did not know, and began to make this point to Rufus until Rufus cut him short by telling him that the Director of the CIA desired the arrest to take place by seven in the morning, namely one hour and forty-five minutes from now.

  The ambassador, taking down the details, said he would call Rufus back.

  In half an hour he did so.

  He had roused Sir Eugene Attwood and relayed the request. Sir Eugene had called back fifteen minutes later to say that the relevant judge and magistrates ‘and God knows who’ were being mobilised, that his legal aide was right now drawing up papers alleging a violation of the Official Secrets Act and other national security violations, and that they knew a judge who in the past had proved amenable to the need for extraordinary judicial exertions designed to expedite the work of MI5—Ambassador Little was beginning to enjoy all this, and almost hung up when suddenly he remembered the one datum missing: he had not been told who it was who was supposed to be arrested, and where he was to be found.

  Rufus suddenly recalled that Blackford had not given him that meticulous information. He turned to him, hand over the receiver: ‘Where is Henry staying, and what name is he using? Do you have his room number?’

  Blackford replied. ‘He’s at the Goring Hotel. But damn, I don’t have the name he’s using. We’ll have to get that from Trust.’

  ‘Call Trust on that telephone’—Rufus pointed. ‘I’ll keep the ambassador on the line.’

  It took the operator several minutes to get through to London. But Anthony Trust answered the phone.

  ‘Anthony. Black. What name is Henry registered under, and do you have his room number?’