Last Call for Blackford Oakes (19 page)

“Some things we never discuss, dear Rufina. You know that.”

“Yes, that's true. I know that, and that's as it should be.”

At noon the next day, Philby found a cab for her. They embraced and he helped load her bag into the trunk. She was off to her sick brother in Kiev.

CHAPTER 34

The tall, lithe official in the Soviet Embassy in Washington received early in the morning the special packet of documents from Moscow, for distribution as prescribed. He read the dispatch concerning one Harry Doubleday. It was marked “For Immediate Action.”

When Mikhail Lebedev was seventeen years old, studying ballet in Kiev, he was told one morning after the class on Marxist doctrine that he was to take immediate action to correct his ongoing delinquency, which was his indifference to the finer points in Lenin's thought. Mikhail affected to be concerned, but actually spent his time pursuing his dancing, and one day he was sent to a reform camp in Siberia, where he stayed for six years and forgot everything he ever knew about dancing. But he forgot nothing about the need to take immediate action when directed to do so.

This directive, involving one Harry Doubleday, he decided to tackle himself. It could prove quite easy to probe. It was before nine in the morning when he scanned the Washington telephone directory, then the one for nearby Virginia. He found an M. H. Doubleday in Alexandria and rang the number using the special telephone. This phone was replaced every few days, which protected against the crystallization of fingerprints in surveillance antennae.

A woman answered the ring. “Who is calling?”

“Pan American Airways, ma'am.”

“What about?”

“We have something in Lost and Found with the name Harry Doubleday on it.”

“What is it?”

“We don't know, ma'am. We don't open packages left by passengers.”

“Well, Mr. Doubleday is out of town. Will you leave me your number?”

Mikhail was ready. He gave her the number for Pan American. “Just ask for Lost and Found.”

“All right.”

She hung up.

Mikhail didn't want to call the number again, not for a while, anyway. On the other hand, immediate action was what had been requested.

He cabled back to Moscow. “
INFORM ME IF POSSIBLE WHEN SUBJECT FLEW FROM MOSCOW
.”

In twenty minutes he had a reply. “
PAN AM MOSCOW–NEW YORK, JANUARY 26, FLIGHT 27
.”

It was time to contact the New York consulate. “
CHECK ARRIVAL MANIFESTS, PAN AMERICAN, JANUARY 26, FLIGHT 27. WAS A HARRY DOUBLEDAY LOGGED AS ARRIVING?
”

That took a little longer, but not much. “
AFFIRMATIVE. SUBJECT ARRIVED
.”

Mikhail shot back, “
ATTEMPT ASCERTAIN IF SUBJECT LISTED ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA, AS HOME ADDRESS
.”

In another half hour he heard back. “
AFFIRMATIVE. 34 QUAKER LANE
.”

Not good enough, Mikhail reflected. He would bring in Josey.

In forty-five minutes, a middle-aged woman, her shoulder-length gray-brown hair neatly brushed, arrived at Quaker Lane. She carried over her shoulder a navy blue tote bag, marked “Washington Post.” Josey knocked on the door of 34 Quaker Lane. An elderly woman wearing an apron came to the door, opening the top half of it.

“Good day, ma'am. We are conducting a survey—”

“It's a cold day to be conducting surveys.”

The visitor said, “That's real nice of you to worry about me, ma'am. That doesn't happen every day. Some people are real nice.”

“I didn't exactly ask you to come in. I just said it was cold.”

“Well, ma'am, if you prefer, I can just ask you these few questions standing out here. The cold isn't bad at all.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Are you satisfied with your delivery of the
Washington Post?
”

“It comes in every day, don't it? You got trouble at your end of the business?”

“No no, just making sure you've got no complaints.” Josey checked a line on her clipboard. “How many members of the household see the paper?”

“Just us.”

“Yes, ma'am. Just you and …”

“Me and my husband. He's away a lot.”

The inquirer entered another check. “Do you save the paper for when your husband gets back?”

“Save it? Sometimes he's away for two, three weeks.”

Another check mark. “Would your husband be willing to fill out a questionnaire sent to his office?”

“He don't have an office. He works here.”

The questioner registered surprise. “I thought you said he traveled a great deal.”

“He does. He takes his office with him when he travels.”

Josey laughed indulgently. “Yes, some people do that, traveling salesmen.”

“He's not a traveling salesman. He's a book jobber. He sees that the bookstores have books in stock.”

Josey took a deep breath. “That must have taken him to Frankfurt last week.”

“Frankfurt? What do you mean?”

Josey seemed puzzled. “I thought everyone in the business went to the Frankfurt Book Fair.”

“Last week, until Monday of this week, my husband was here. Now he's in Chicago.”

“Well,” Josey smiled. “I like to think that he'll pick up the
Post
at the airport.”

“Hope that's all he picks up in Chicago. Look, I've got housecleaning to do. You got everything you need?”

“Yes,” the visitor said. “Thank you very much. I have everything I need.”

It was just past eleven. Nineteen hundred hours, Moscow time.

It was almost nine when Philby's telephone rang. It was Captain Kuzmin.

“We have the word from Washington. I'll read it. It says, ‘
HARRY DOUBLEDAY OF 34 QUAKER LANE ALEXANDRIA NOT SAME MAN AS SUBJECT
.'”

“Thanks, Captain.”

Philby was ecstatic. His suspicions were correct. Harry Doubleday was a phony.

It was good that Rufina was away. He walked quickly to the corner of the bedroom where she kept her writing desk. He dived into the file drawer and flipped to the folder marked
FAMILY
. He opened it and pulled out the sealed envelope marked for Ursina.

He must be cautious, but he knew well this, the technical end of the business, and ten minutes later he was passing the envelope over the flow of steam, easing open the flap. He put the envelope on the kitchen table and pulled out the enclosure.

It was a single page, written by hand in dark blue ink, and witnessed by someone whose name Philby did not recognize.

He read the text. It was an averment of the writer's love for Ursina Chadinov. A second averment acknowledged that he was the agent of her pregnancy. The last paragraph registered his intention, on his return to Washington, to confirm this instrument naming Ursina Chadinov heir to one-half of his estate.

It was signed,
Blackford Oakes
.

CHAPTER 35

Kim Philby had been up late. Over the years his friends, and in particular Rufina, had remarked the rages he would sometimes get into. Almost always these furors were, if not initiated by drink, intensified by it. Philby had already had several drinks when the telephone call came in from Captain Kuzmin, but before he scurried to Rufina's desk to find and pull out the letter, he had another slug. When he slid open the letter, his hands were shaking with excitement. And then his eyes saw the name at the bottom.

He poured out a full glass of whiskey and cursed. He closed his eyes to recreate the scene of his wedding reception.—That man, surveying the books in
his
library, was the most renowned agent in the enemy intelligence system. The same man who had confronted, and twice outwitted, Boris Bolgin.
He had been in this very room!
Receiving Philby's hospitality. And, perhaps that
very same night
, only blocks away, impregnating a Russian woman. A Russian woman who was his own wife's best friend. An illustrious professor of medicine. Just a couple of kilometers away, sitting there—
lying
there, legs apart, screwing a woman who used to be a prime Soviet citizen. Oakes, ejaculating into her not only his seed, but also the poison of Western capitalist thought. And now he proposes to give her one-half of the capitalist wealth he has accumulated by his services to capitalism and to the arms race and to opposing the march of history.

Philby interrupted his drinking to light another cigarette.

He was very glad, the next morning, when he recovered his ability to think, glad that Rufina was not there. Her tablecloth was stained with tobacco … turd.

He wiped up the mess and prepared for himself Rufina's potion: three cups of tea and three aspirin. He added one shot of brandy.

Life was becoming faintly tolerable when the telephone rang. Maybe it would be Rufina. And she would have news of Kostya. But it wasn't Rufina. “Comrade Martins. I am calling from the office of Colonel Bykov. He wishes to see you. A car will be outside your door in ten minutes.”

Philby dressed and walked down the two flights of stairs. In a warm black woolen coat, his fedora plopped down on his head, he stepped into the waiting car.

He was led straightway to the third-floor office. The receptionist looked up and nodded. He followed her, and she opened the door.

Bykov was seated at his desk, a lamp with a green shade illuminating one end of it. A floor lamp lighted the other end. The colonel rose, shook hands, and indicated the chair next to him, where Philby sat down.

“Now, Andrei Fyodorovich, what the hell is going on?”

A half hour later Bykov leaned back in his chair. “Andrei Fyodorovich, you have been a long time here without a cigarette.”

Philby was not wholly surprised. The men who peered over at him every day and followed him wherever he went, every week, every year, would certainly have reported on his personal habits. Still, it was a little exhibitionistic for Bykov to rub it in, Philby's addiction to tobacco. He would have hugely enjoyed replying, “Oh no, Mikhail Pavlovich. I gave up smoking five years ago.”
None of that, Harold Adrian Russell Philby
. Besides, he longed for a cigarette. He accepted the one proffered to him.

Bykov did not take one himself, but put the pack down on his desk. He leaned back again. “Comrade Chadinov has presented us with a very serious problem. It is one for which we are technically responsible. But in the last two days I have read our full file on the professor. There is nothing whatever to indicate any suspicion of political untrustworthiness. There are reports that she is outspoken, a bit imperious”—he was looking down at some notes under the lamp—“ambitious, inventive, a good student, good teacher …

“So we made no obvious mistake in designating her as one of the twelve welcomers. It has to be as you suspected, that her lover transformed her. And how ironic”—Bykov began amused, yielding to indignation—“that she should have been seduced physically
and
intellectually by one of the foremost spies.” He gave a half smile. “Foremost
American
spies. You of course, Comrade Andrei Fyodorovich, are
the
foremost spy.”

Philby acknowledged the compliment with a nod.

“But her prominence on the program, and the fact that dozens and dozens—that's the way these things always happen—notice it and start talking about it—that puts attention on her case, attention that is very unwelcome. Our conventional arrangements would only draw more attention at this moment to her defection. The culture minister would not welcome that, and certainly not the general secretary, when his stress is on ‘changing ways.'” There was a faint derision in Bykov's pronouncing of those words.

“Has she done anything … indiscreet since Monday?” Philby thought himself at liberty to ask.

“No, and she has been carefully watched. The American spy left at noon on Tuesday. She has been instructed to make no overtures in any direction until she has met with the culture minister. That appointment with Comrade Roman Belov is set for next Monday. Much thought needs to be given to what he should say to her, to what we … will do with her.”

Philby detected the dismissive motion of Bykov's hand. It said, “Our meeting is over.”

Philby got up. “I have a personal interest in this case, Colonel. As you probably know, the suspect has been a very close friend of my wife's. And the American—he has been, for many years, a major antagonist.”

CHAPTER 36

The ideological orientation of the peace forum's schedule was carefully planned to be unexacting. This meant—Culture Minister Belov nodded, on being advised by diplomatic expert Anatoly Dobrynin, the influential former Soviet ambassador to Washington—“leaving plenty of time for cultural pursuits, in which the subject of nuclear disarmament is just a benevolent backdrop.” The delegates were invited to visit museums, to attend the ballet, and to explore Moscow's historic churches. The churches they visited were of course “nonfunctioning.” And there was the program Gus Windels had described in his memo, featuring Kris Kristofferson's call to eschew women and whiskey and to think in terms of world peace.

On Thursday, the day before the final assembly that would vote out a resolution, Pierre Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada, issued a few invitations to a private social gathering to be held that evening in a suite at the Cosmos Hotel. Trudeau had strong political instincts and made it a point to invite one or two guests who were not the kind of people to whom he'd naturally gravitate. Yoko Ono was invited, as also three Latin American writers. Not one Soviet representative was asked. “Just tell your boss,” he said to Aleksei, the Soviet official who had been put in charge of looking after him and making him comfortable, “that I'm not inviting any of your people because I think of them as hosts. This little get-together will be for guests, not hosts.” Aleksei didn't argue the question, and the invitations went out.