Stained Glass (15 page)

“Is he going to say anything interesting?”

“Very interesting. He's going to declare war on the Poles.”

“Oh? What've
they
done?”

“They've refused to declare war against Russia.”

“Well,” said Blackford cheerily. “Serves them right. Be sure you get the translation right. We wouldn't want Count Wintergrin to be misunderstood.”

She laughed. Blackford asked her to dine with him tomorrow, and she said yes, but it might have to be late, was eight-thirty all right? He waved his assent. Heinrich Stiller was talking into his radio. The press bus waited at the junction in St. Anselm's to join the caravan. A whistle sounded. Wintergrin walked toward the door of his car, and on reaching it stopped. There was no accounting for the silence, but for a few seconds, as Wintergrin gazed out toward the chapel and the castle, lit yellow by a brilliant October sun, the courtyard was motionless. The whistle stopped blowing, the passengers were all in their cars, the coordinators stopped speaking into their squawk boxes. The scene froze in Blackford's mind: motorcade, entourage, the tall slim aristocrat setting out on a crusade. Perhaps almost a thousand years earlier from this courtyard, with a gaudier entourage, horses and infantrymen and archers had surrounded Ritter Erik von Wintergrin setting out on the first crusade while St. Anselm was still alive, coping with the heathen kings of England. Had anything changed?

The policeman fired his motorcycle, the other drivers followed suit, the count stepped into his car, closing the door, engines raced, the sentry opened the gate, and the procession moved fitfully out, to reach cruising speed only after descending the hill and picking up the press bus at St. Anselm's. Blackford watched them go, and as he turned was startled at seeing Countess Wintergrin standing directly behind him. She was dressed in a tweed suit, wearing a floppy felt hat, and carrying a basket of oils and brushes and sketching materials. She spoke slowly:

“They will never allow him to succeed, will they, Mr. Oakes?”

Blackford answered evasively. “Of course, Countess, he has a great many enemies. I don't think Count Wintergrin underestimates that.”

“But does he know who all his enemies are?” she asked. Blackford struggled to escape her intense eyes. Again he tried evasion:

“Perhaps you are saying that we are our own worst enemies? I suppose that is true. Your son, though, has never shrunk from risks.”

The countess smiled, nodded her head, and moved on with her basket toward the west garden. Shaken, Blackford walked into the chapel where, after a time, he felt, for the first moment since noon the day before, a certain composure. He worked for five hours gratefully with Overstreet and Conditti. He wished he could work there without end, wished he could exchange roles with Overstreet.

They walked silently to the Westfalenkrug, advertised by an old sign depicting crossed swords, the shield of Wintergrin, and the legend,
Nobly live, nobly dine
. Blackford led the way. He knew the waitress, who conducted him routinely to the usual table in the corner, removed from the jukebox which played, endlessly, bouncy German Volkslieder and lush American Volkslieder, of the Glenn Miller age. Weeks before, Blackford had made a mental note to requisition twenty new phonograph records from Bonn, intending to make a gift of them to Herr Musiktorturer. Three men and two couples were at the bar, one pair fiercely debating the political campaign, the man gesticulating to his wife and pointing to an iron cross he wore conspicuously on his corduroy jacket. She was pointing to a picture of Wintergrin and saying, repeatedly,
Er hat recht! Er hat recht! Er hat recht!
(He is right! He is right! He is right!) Blackford sat down wearily, told the waitress he would have a beer, and asked his two companions what they wanted. Spring wanted bourbon, but they didn't have it, so he said, “gin mit anything.” Pulling bent over the list of beverages for a full two minutes, cleared his throat, and asked for water. They glanced over the menu.

“The sausage is good, so is the sauerkraut. If you're feeling flush, the
entrecôte
—steak—is okay. So is the veal.” They ordered, and Hallam Spring began.

“We swept your room at the inn.”

“And?”

“Bingo.”

“Come on.”

“Yup.”

“Wintergrin's people?”

“Maybe. If so, they've got an expert on the team. Well, why not? He's surrounded by people who just finished waging a pretty sophisticated world war.”

“Straight bug?”

“Straight bug.”

“Where?”

“In the light socket on the floor lamp by your desk.”

Quickly Blackford thought back. Had he ever said anything indiscreet over the telephone? He was satisfied he hadn't. He tended not to deviate from his training. All his calls to Bonn from that telephone had been to Colonel Morley, on straight chapel business. He had telephoned his mother in England, Sally in Washington. He had called Anthony Trust on his birthday. What had he said? He struggled to remember exactly. But he was certain he had been cautious.

“Did you track it?”

“Yup.”

“All right, to where?”

“Not very far. To the translator's room. Chadinoff.

“
Erika Chadinoff?
I'll be
damned.
” He decided to approach the news professionally, analytically. “Well, that's interesting. So Miss Chadinoff is either—let's look at the possibilities: One, she is doing extracurricular duty for Wintergrin. Or two, she is an agent of Adenauer. Or three, she is an agent of Ollenhauer. Or four, she is an agent of the Commies. Or five, she's a freelancer of some sort.”

“Well, that's for you people to figure out.”

Spring, his mind on the artistic possibilities of explosives, began asking about the configuration of Wintergrin's caravan.

“Look, please. Not tonight. I know you're on assignment, and I'll give you what I got. But not tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” said Spring. “What do you want to talk about? The Yale–Harvard game?”

Blackford was in just the mood to get up and poke him and, while he was at it, take the little shrimp by the neck, bury his nose in the soup and tell him if there was anything suspicious in it to write it in his notebook. He felt color rising in his cheeks. He got up. “Take care of my bill. I'll see you tomorrow.” He felt sick, but managed to walk to the pay telephone in the rear and ring Singer. He was at yesterday's number.

Singer listened while Blackford spoke. Blackford strained to recall the code name for Erika Chadinoff—there was one for each of a half-dozen St. Anselm-based members of Wintergrin's staff. “Have you thought of inviting Eleina to the party? It's not that far from Cologne. She'd probably like to come, get a little relief from the routine. Nice girl, really inquisitive.”

“Sure,” Callaway said. “I'll send her a card. I have her address. When are you coming up to Bonn? I've got some material here might be useful to you.”

The interrogatory had a special meaning: It was a summons. “I thought I'd go up tomorrow morning. I've got several things to do. I'll give you a ring.”

Back in his room, he looked carefully at the light socket. With his lips, he formed the words,
Up-yours-Erika
.

Then he sat down and wrote to Sally the most ardent note since arriving in Germany. (“Do you know this is my seventy-first night in this dreary inn without you? Why are you so faithless? What does Chaucer have that I don't have? You probably think we engineers know nothing about Chaucer. Well, you're wrong, my favorite of his is
Romeo and Juliet
. How are you, Juliet? Do you find me like the moon? Do you look out your window in New Haven, see the moon, and tell that impostor in your room, whoever he is, that the moon reminds you of Blacky, your beautiful Blacky who is going crazy without his Juliet? That last line should convince you I'm sick. Come, give me an aspirin. When I finish, I'm going to handcuff myself to the bedpost and enclose the key with this letter. I can go without food or water for four days.…”) Then he tried to read his Goethe, but his mind would not focus on the German. He picked up Whittaker Chambers' book on the Hiss case, and for a while was absorbed by the account of the net the interrogator drew so artfully, and was struck by the historical irony, as given by Chambers. What he said about himself, Blackford thought, he—Blackford—might as well apply to his own circumstances.…

“And as, hour by hour, the agony mounted, died away and mounted again, point by damning point, I was more and more bowed under the sense of how much each of us was the prey, rather than an actor, in this historic experience to which what had been best in us had led us, from motives incomprehensible to most of those who watched or heard us, to this end.

“The exchange with Nixon began almost offhandedly.

MR
.
NIXON
: Mr. Hiss was your closest friend?

MR
.
CHAMBERS:
Mr. Hiss was certainly the closest friend I ever had in the Communist Party.

“Alger Hiss was now sitting behind me among the spectators, surrounded by a little group of friends. As I testified, I could hear Hiss making, sotto-voce sallies, and the titters of the others.

MR
.
NIXON
: Mr. Chambers, can you search your memory now to see what motive you can have for accusing Mr. Hiss of being a Communist at the present time?

MR
.
CHAMBERS
: What motive I can have?

MR
.
NIXON
: Yes. I mean, do you—is there any grudge that you have against Mr. Hiss over anything that he has done to you?

“That single question slipped the cord on all the pent emotion that had been built up through the day. Until that moment, I had been testifying as a public witness, trying to answer questions carefully and briefly. Now I ceased to answer in that way. As I struggled to control my feelings, slowly and deliberately, I heard myself saying, rather than said: ‘The story has spread that in testifying against Mr. Hiss I am working out some old grudge, or motives of revenge or hatred. I do not hate Mr. Hiss. We were close friends, but we are caught in a tragedy of history. Mr. Hiss represents the concealed enemy against which we are all fighting, and I am fighting. I have testified against him with remorse and pity, but in a moment of history in which this Nation now stands, so help me God, I could not do otherwise.'”

He put the Chambers' book down and picked up
Time
magazine, flipped to the foreign news section, and read there the account of the growing apprehension in the capitals of Europe over the enthusiastic public response to Wintergrin's speeches and press conferences. “
Leaving the amphitheater, the roaring of the crowd still audible, a young man dressed in an old army trenchcoat walked slowly out, dragging his wooden leg like a ball and chain. ‘Don't they understand? Do they really want another war?' That was the question all thoughtful men in Europe were asking themselves last week as the dashing young count went from rally to rally preaching his simplistic solution to the problem of a divided Germany. Everywhere the scientists were asking themselves the same question: Is it possible that young Wintergrin actually has access to a nuclear bomb? Everywhere the answer was: ‘Impossible.' But what is going on in Germany at the moment would have been thought impossible only a few months ago.
”

Blackford threw the magazine on the floor and looked at his watch. It was after midnight. He was tempted to approach the floor lamp and coo, “Goodnight, dear Erika.” Instead he went to the cupboard and poured four ounces of gin into his toothbrush glass, stared at it, walked to the bathroom, and splashed the contents into the toilet. Back in bed he reached impulsively to open the drawer at the bedside, taking out the German hotel Bible. He flipped the pages to the psalms. He read ten of them and then reached for a pencil and his clipboard, and set out to translate the final one. He surveyed the result, and concluded he would not have qualified to serve on King James's commission. Now, finally, he felt he could sleep. The psalmist had revived his spirits, and as he began to doze off he thought, Really, I must join a religious order, and let other people worry about rights and wrongs. It is only vital, he reminded himself as he dropped off to sleep, to remember that there is a difference between the two.

CHAPTER 12

The parents of her friends in America would make references to her “privileged” upbringing and now and then would imply, not without admiration, and not without envy, that she had been spoiled. Sometimes over a weekend visit or vacation, Erika's hosts, in the effusive style of the forties, would push Erika forward to exhibit one of her accomplishments, even as they might ask an older brother to show off a card trick. Erika went through the usual stages: she would be shy, she would be recalcitrant, she would use evasive tactics, but after her third year at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Connecticut, she surprised everybody who knew her. Her fat friend Alice begged her after dinner one night to play on the piano excerpts from the first movement of the Grieg A-Minor Concerto, which Erika had played before the entire school at the annual concert only the week before—accompanied by the school piano teacher, who knew very little about music, but that didn't matter because it was recorded and rerecorded that in her youth she had actually studied under Clara Schumann. Erika surprised Alice, and rather dismayed Alice's parents, who went once every summer to the Lewisohn Stadium when Alexander Smallens did
Porgy and Bess
and thought themselves thereby to have acquitted a full year's responsibility to music, by getting up without demurral and proceeding through twenty-two minutes of music, stopping only to sing at the top of her husky voice the parts written by Grieg for the missing orchestra.

“You certainly are a privileged young girl,” Alice's mother said admiringly while the father, fearful that his daughter would suggest that Erika play an encore—had Grieg written another concerto? he worried … everyone knew that Mozart had written over, was it 400 concertos?—clapped loudly, looked at his watch, and said as a treat he would drive them all to the late movie with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby off on the Road to Morocco. The girls went happily to get their coats and Erika had time in the car to muse over her privileged upbringing, in Germany and England, before coming to the United States three years ago at age thirteen.