Stained Glass (7 page)

The meeting was ended, without abrasion. On the contrary, Wintergrin had liked the American: his tone of voice reflected this. They walked to the door.

“Tomorrow, then, at ten, we shall go over to the library. I have meetings at nine and at twelve. Perhaps you will bring your associates?” Blackford noticed that he stood slightly to one side as the door swung open, avoiding needless exposure. Outside, Blackford paused an instant, closing his eyes to adjust them to the night, whose blackness at first disguised the profile of his Fiat, even though it was the only car in the courtyard.

In the Anselmsklaus, the little eatery across the courtyard, the traveler with the trim beard ate perfunctorily, conjoining pieces of dry Westphalian ham and chunks of bread lackadaisically. He seemed distracted, staring out through the window at the entrance to the palace. When the door opened and the light streamed out, the figure that emerged, pausing slightly before walking to his car, could not be seen except in outline. Günther Matti did not need to see the face. He knew the figure of Blackford Oakes well enough. He could have picked him out if faced with the silhouettes of twenty men of approximately the same age and size. There was the trimness, the firmness of step combined with spontaneity of movement. And besides, there had been no effort at disguise. His car was right out there, and he walked right to it. All those tedious months, from mid-January until now, late August—London, Washington, Boston, New York, Bonn—finally, paydirt. Boris Andreyvich Bolgin would be very pleased. Most important of all, Stalin himself would perhaps smile. Not for long. Oh, how he would rage on assimilating the data. But meanwhile there would be a kind word for the technicians. That's all he was, Günther Matti reminded himself, turning now zestfully to his meat and wine, just a technician. He had done as much for the Nazis. But he would never betray his clients. He worked for cash, and on this job alone he would have earned enough to return to Switzerland and live a year with his family without thought to expenses. It had been tedious. Günther Matti had earned his keep.

CHAPTER 5

Boris Andreyvich Bolgin looked wistfully at the cartoon hanging in the second floor of the Brighton Pavilion. Imagine, he thought. Just imagine. One hundred and thirty years ago, and the British press could even
then
write thus critically, derisively, about their own king! Their sovereign! Well, granted that Prince William wasn't technically yet king—but almost. And in the public press! Cartoons now preserved! Framed in a museum
belonging to the Crown!…
Here was Prince William, great great-great-grandfather of Queen Caroline,
ridiculed
. Made to look like a pig! A lecher! An idiot! An imbecile! Why, in Russia, if one feature—just the bulbous nose, say, or the cauliflower ears, or the pig mouth were affixed to a single picture of Joseph Stalin, what would happen? What? Boris Bolgin asked himself melodramatically.

Of course the artist would be arrested, tortured, and executed. That, of
course
. But then they would start coming, coming in droves. Bolgin knew. In his younger days, before reaching his present eminence, he had served among those droves. They would ask around about the cartoonist's family. About his associates. About his associates' associates. About his associates' associates' associates. Shall I go, on? Bolgin thought to himself. Yes, he would go on. He was at the Brighton Pavilion, in Brighton, Sussex, England, and nobody in the world who saw him could know what he was thinking. So he would continue. He would think with
abandon
. Lasciviously. He would now resume … They would question his associates' associates' associates' (Bolgin was now counting on his fingers) associates, and send
them
—to Gulag.

Here was something he did
not
know. Once, way back (Bolgin was stunned, using his fingers once again, to reckon that it was only ten years ago, during the siege of Stalingrad), when he and Pyotr Ivanovich Ilyich were rising stars in the intelligence service, stationed in Finland, they had devoted an evening to the question: What was it that finally caused Stalin to stop to catch his breath? They thought the purge in 1937 was over. Until the purge of 1938 began. It had been so in 1933. The purges had no trace of rational justification. Stalin must have known that. Ilyich, who had once spoken with Stalin—poor Ilyich, head now of the KGB, had to speak with Stalin regularly, sometimes at two, three in the morning, returning to his apartment exhausted, relieved that he was still alive; wondering whether, imprisoned as he was by his circumstances, he could truly say he was glad to be alive—Ilyich had said that night in Helsinki that he figured Stalin called an end to purges only when he was personally surfeited with them. But there was never any way of knowing when this would happen, and pity the man who wrongly anticipated Stalin's surfeit! The current purge building up had all the earmarks of an eructation. Stalin eructates, Bolgin thought. Lesser phenomena, like volcanoes, merely erupt. There were literally millions of Russians who this very night would go to bed apprehensive. Because they felt the tremors. Ilyich's agents were already doing Stakhanovite duty, pounding on doors at night. Stalin himself kept out of sight these days. He never left his dacha, it was said. From there he caused all of Russia to writhe in pain and fear. His reach was everywhere—except Yugoslavia! How had Stalin managed to fail to bring Tito to heel? Bolgin thanked his venerable mother for not having brought him into the world to serve as Stalin's agent in Yugoslavia these last four years. Or, rather, one of Stalin's
late
agents in Yugoslavia—may they rest in peace.

But Bolgin had his own troubles. When the KGB was outwitted in London, Stalin turned his attention to the American spy responsible, Blackford Oakes. What job would he be assigned to?
Find out
, Ilyich had said.
And do not fail us
. (He
always
said,
Do not fail us.
) (And he always meant it.)

“That cartoonist was greatly feared in England,” the stranger at his side remarked.

Bolgin shook himself out of his trance, and returned the code. “He outlived Prince William.”

Bolgin closed his guidebook and turned to the staircase, followed by Matti. On the street the two men—Bolgin wearing his fedora and his fur-lined Burberry raincoat, Günther Matti with his brownish heavy winter suit, carrying an umbrella and a newspaper—walked silently. At Colby's Tavern, two blocks down, they walked in, taking a table in the corner.

Bolgin had received, by code, an account of Blackford's arrival in Washington, and of his subsequent move to Boston. It had been several weeks before Matti was able to ascertain what Oakes did at the apartment in Cambridge to which he repaired every evening at five-thirty, leaving after ten. The tenants of the apartment sometimes stayed overnight, sometimes left it together or singly, usually a bit after Oakes did. One morning, after an exasperating week of conjecture, Matti followed the girl to a little store specializing in German books. The young man, on the other hand, worked during the day as a Mercedes mechanic. It wasn't until Matti finally bugged the apartment that he discovered that Oakes was spending five hours a night learning German. During the day Oakes's movements were irregular. Sometimes he would audit classes in' engineering, sometimes he would go to the library, disappearing in the stacks. Often he would spend time at a construction project. The foreman had befriended him, though it turned out he knew nothing about Blackford except that he was a graduate engineer interested in practical training. Weekends he would go to New Haven, dancing attendance on his girlfriend Sally Partridge, who—Matti explained in his methodical way—studied English literature at the summer session of the graduate school …

“Do get
on
with it,” Bolgin interrupted. “I don't
care
what his girlfriend is studying.”

“I almost lost him, Leonid my friend”—Matti persevered; he had never before laid eyes on “Leonid” before today, but his orders, through the cut-out agent, had always come from “Leonid.”

“And don't tell me about your narrow escapes,” Bolgin sighed. “Get on with it.
Where is he now? What is he doing?
”

Gunther Matti was put off by the abrupt acceleration of his story. So he gave it out sulkily. “The night before last”—he looked at his watch—“at nineteen thirty-two he left St. Anselm's castle, and the company of Count Axel Wintergrin.”

Bolgin's heart stopped beating, the blood drained from his paunchy face, pockmarked by frostbite in Siberia. He whispered to himself: “Axel Wintergrin. Axel Wintergrin …” And then, “Go on, go on! Do you know what he was doing, talking to Wintergrin?”

“Yes,” said Matti. “He heads a team of Americans who are rebuilding the church at St. Anselm's, which was practically destroyed during the war.”

The fried fish, tepid when served, were cold now. Bolgin drew Matti's newspaper toward himself and deftly inserted a thick envelope into it, as deftly retrieved by Matti and placed in his pocket. He called for the bill, muttered, made a few comments to Matti and walked out, hailing a cab to the railway station, where he caught the 4:57 express to London, reaching his apartment at 6:15, and his vodka at 6:21. On the train he had reflected that Ilyich could wait until the next morning to get the news.

CHAPTER 6

“They gotta be nuts!”

“That's what I told them, though I didn't use that language.”

“Those Russian bastards make me so … goddamn mad. They're all the same. I used to think it was just Stalin. Hell, they're
all
like him. It doesn't matter what you do, what you tell 'em, what evidence you give 'em—we're backing Adenauer, not Wintergrin—
still
they won't believe you. Christ, they think
we
want a third world war?” He looked at the legend on his desk reading “THE BUCK STOPS HERE” and revised his formulation: “They think
I
want a third world war?”

“Sometimes you would think that, the way they talk.”

“Sometimes I almost feel like shoving it to 'em. Strike that. I
could
call in that bastard ambassador and give him a piece of my mind.”

“I wouldn't do that.”

“Why not?”

“He'd think you were running the show yourself.”

“Well, Christ, I can't think of any other show in town I should be running if not this one, if we're supposed to take the threats seriously.”

“They haven't formulated their threats, but it's obvious what their ultimate threat is.”

“Move in?”

“Move in.”

The peppery man behind the august desk paused a moment, working his fingers on the paper pad in front of him. He spoke now more reflectively. “They think we'd just sit here and let 'em do it?”

“That's what we don't know. But they know they can get plenty out of us in return for pulling back from the brink.”

“What do you figure they know about what we could do to them if it came to that?”

“We can't be sure. It's nice to feel we've got
some
secrets left. They know we can reach any of their facilities, all the population centers.”

“What could we do in East Europe?”

“Report them to the Security Council.”

“Christ.”

“Almighty.”

He paused again. “If Eisenhower wasn't so goddamn busy trying to be my successor, maybe he'd have left NATO in better shape.”

“Actually, it isn't his fault. They've all got problems—Britain, France, the Low Countries. And anyway, nobody anticipated
this
problem.”

“You offered to remove our feller out there?”

“The very first thing I suggested. It didn't stop him for a minute.” The Secretary mimicked the ambassador's accent: “‘Removink one man vill not make Axel Wintergrin no less an American operation' is what he said. He wants something more, but he isn't willing to tell us what it is.”

“Shit, are we supposed to
guess
what's on their minds? What's he want us to do, penetrate the Politburo to find out what
they
want
us
to do, so
we
can do it?”

“They certainly want us to sweat over it.”

“Well, go talk with Allen Dulles, and come back when you've got a proposal.”

“All right, sir.”

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency left the State Department and returned to his own office, calling in his deputy. “Have them get out the folder on Blackford Oakes, O-a-k-e-s, and bring it in. We've got work to do.”

In the subterranean repository where the files were kept, Colonel Bristol, aide to the deputy, presented himself. He showed his identification to the guard, who spoke through a microphone from his enclosed bullet- and gasproof cylindrical booth. Colonel Bristol stepped through the steel doors that lifted at the command of the guard—promptly closing again, admitting the aide. Inside the enclosure Colonel Bristol, using a wall apparatus, dialed the code for that day, then gave his name into the receiver to the guard billeted inside the huge vault. In a moment the doors to the inner sanctum opened and as promptly closed. Only the archivist could open them, by tapping in a code on the controls. He inspected the document in Colonel Bristol's hand. Since it called for removal of a file, the authorization had to be personally authenticated by the deputy, whose private number he now dialed. “It says here, sir, to turn over the file on Oakes, Blackford, to Colonel Bristol.” Satisfied, he put down the telephone and walked off to a remote part of the warren, coming back in a minute with a locked steel briefcase, which he routinely handcuffed to the extended wrist of Colonel Bristol. Outside both doors an armed marine was waiting to escort the colonel to the office of the deputy. It was all maximum security. Nobody knew that Blackford Oakes was a member of the Central Intelligence Agency at this point except the archivist, Colonel Bristol, the deputy, the Director and the Russians.