Back Channel (40 page)

The President looked at his watch. “It’s time, gentlemen.”

As they headed for the Cabinet Room, Bundy pondered Bobby’s final question. He was right, of course. They couldn’t make a deal through the back channel unless they had proof that they were dealing with Khrushchev himself.

The problem was how to get it.

“I am afraid you are correct,” said Viktor Vaganian. “I received this morning a lengthy cable from my superiors in Moscow. Although Fomin remains, as a formal matter, a colonel in the First Chief Directorate, he has been secretly reassigned to the personal staff of the Comrade General Secretary. He has been given a personal cipher and cable access directly to the Comrade General Secretary’s chief aide. He is not running
GREENHILL
as his agent. They are negotiating.”

“Exactly what I told you two days ago,” said Ziegler.

“That is true. But I prefer to wait for hard intelligence before acting. We are not cowboys, after all.”

They were once more in Warrenton, Virginia, an hour from the city. This time, they were in a booth in the sort of rustic café that serves bad breakfasts to early-morning hunters. Nobody from official Washington ever came this far out. Here the Old South still ruled: precisely the reason Ziegler chose it.

“Well, fine,” the American was saying. “Your intelligence is confirmed. So, now that we’re sure they’re negotiating, what are we going to do to make sure they don’t reach a deal? Because the chain is pretty flimsy. Only a few people involved. And two of them would seem pretty vulnerable.”

Viktor’s tone was mournful. “Fomin I cannot touch. He has powerful patrons.”

“You use that excuse a lot. Protectors back home.”

“It is not an excuse. It is a fact. I told you. In the Soviet Union, power is divided. This is appropriate—”

“I know, I know. So the Party doesn’t get out of hand. Great.” He signaled for the check. “Okay. Fine. We’ll try on this end, with
GREENHILL
.” A hard look. “Nonviolently.”

“Of course. But if your method does not succeed, it is possible that we shall have to try our own.”

“She’s an American.”

“She is the only one Fomin trusts. Remove her, and the entire back channel will collapse.”

Margo’s Friday was almost normal for an intern with her job. She filed and stacked and sorted and delivered. She collected books and reports and folders and mail. She kept watching the clock, although she had no earthly idea whether the
Grozny
had turned, or what time the Soviet Union might be planning to shoot down an American aircraft. She wondered whether the story would even make the news, or whether the Administration would hush it up for a day or two. And although turning out to be wrong would shake the reputation for intelligence she had worked so hard to cultivate this past week, she hoped against hope that she was mistaken.

And knew she wasn’t.

She lunched at the Museum of Natural History with another intern, and noticed a man wearing gold-rimmed glasses a few tables away, watchfully ignoring her. She had the sense that she had seen him somewhere before; perhaps even in Ithaca. But when she left he did not so much as look up from his paper, and she wondered afresh whether she was imagining.

A little past three, in the midst of her filing and ferrying, the usual afternoon summons brought her from her cubby out to the reception desk. She listened carefully to her instructions, spoke a few code words so they’d know she understood, and rang off. Only later, as she happily hummed her way toward five o’clock, did Margo realize that she had been so looking forward to the call that she’d scarcely noticed Sylvie’s usual disdainful curiosity.

Her good mood continued to hold her, even after she arrived back at the apartment to find a taxi waiting and the doorman loading Hope’s bags.

“She’s going home,” said Patsy, upstairs. “Her parents called. They want her out of the city.”

“What about you?”

The Californian shrugged. “I’m staying until the end.”

“The end?”

“I want to see what it’s like.”

“There’s not going to be a war,” said Margo, severely. In the shower, she went back to her singing. No plane had been shot down. Khrushchev
had been bluffing; or he’d changed his mind. That was why she was so happy, Margo told herself. No other reason but that. Because the war was going to be averted.

Patsy, watching her dress, had a different theory.

“So there
is
a guy.”

Margo, standing at the bathroom mirror, looked at her roommate’s reflection. “What?”

The Californian slouched against the jamb. “Hope and I have been trying to figure you out. You go out every night, you’re all dressed up, you come back later with your clothes all mussed. That spells guy, right? But you never seem to look forward to it. You’re always down in the mouth. Hope even said maybe you were faking the whole thing for some reason. But look at you. Singing, all happy. It’s a guy.”

Margo had done more blushing in the past week than in the past year. “It’s not a guy. I can’t explain, but—it’s not.”

“I know that look, Margo. It’s a guy all right. I can hear it in your voice and see it in your eyes.”

“It’s
not,
” she said, too fiercely. Patsy wandered away, chuckling. Margo knew her denial would never be believed. The entire operation rested on the fiction beneath the fiction beneath the fiction: if Patsy didn’t think her roommate was lying, then the cover story wasn’t working.

But as she headed downstairs to catch the bus, she wasn’t smiling any more.

“Is your President going to stop our ship?”

“He won’t let it cross the blockade line.”

Fomin was shoveling food into his mouth. “Did you explain to him that the Comrade General Secretary must please his war faction?”

“I told him.” She glanced around the restaurant, then leaned across the table. “What happened with the ship? You told me it would be at the quarantine line this morning. Did the Navy stop it?”

He barely glanced up. “The Comrade General Secretary has decided to give your President more time to gain control of his war faction. The ship is still proceeding, but more slowly. It may reach your country’s illegal blockade tonight. I do not know the details.”

“You misled me. You implied that your side was going to shoot down a plane.”

“I cannot tell you what our side will do, Miss Jensen, any more than you can tell me what your side will do. I can only tell you that we have a war faction, just as you do.” He signaled the waiter for more water. “I sense that your President is uneasy.”

“Everybody’s uneasy.”

“I am referring to his role as the commander in chief. Your Constitution is a curious document. The voters select a leader, and the leader holds the highest rank in the military, whether or not he has served, and whether or not he has the confidence to perform the role. Or the confidence of his soldiers and sailors.”

“President Kennedy was in the war.”

“He allowed his patrol boat to be run over by an enemy destroyer. This was careless of him. In the Red Navy, a man who did this would face court-martial.”

Margo knew better than to argue. Fomin might be right or he might be wrong, but it wasn’t her place to debate the point. He had a goal in mind.

Fomin took another largish sip from his water glass. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His tone was brisk. “You may inform your President that the Comrade General Secretary will not insist on immediate removal of the Jupiter missiles. He will agree to dismantle our missiles in return for a public promise by your President never to invade Cuba.” He paused as if awaiting contradiction, but Margo was waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Provided, however, that he understands the need for the Comrade General Secretary to reassure his war faction.”

“Are you saying that if we let the
Grozny
through the quarantine line the General Secretary will take the missiles out of Cuba? Is that what will satisfy the—the war faction?” She could not believe that things could be so simple. “The crisis will be over? Or is there something else you want?”

But she had forgotten how the proud Russian hated to be questioned. “The response of the Comrade General Secretary is as I have stated it. I am not able to amplify the words in any way.”

Again she sensed a hidden meaning. She had from here to the townhouse to work it out.

Tomorrow night would be given over to Ziegler’s plan, but Viktor Vaganian doubted that the plan would succeed. Therefore, he had come up with an idea of his own, in keeping with both his talents and his inclinations.

Ziegler said he could not allow the killing of another American.

But not all direct action involved death.

Once more Viktor sat outside the apartment house. He did not have long to wait. G
REENHILL
’s roommate, the tall blonde one, came out the front door. A young man in a cherry-red sports car was waiting. He kissed her on the mouth, then she kissed him on the mouth, then he kissed her again. Viktor frowned at the showiness of their affection. At last they disentangled, and the car shot down the driveway and out into traffic on Fourth Street.

At a safe distance, Viktor followed.

“This calls for a celebration,” said the President.

Margo stood near the window, hugging her hunched shoulders as she modeled her fourth new gown of the week. “I’m not sure, Mr. President. I don’t think it’s necessarily over.”

“Khrushchev said he doesn’t need the Jupiters, right? All he needs
is my public promise not to invade. Even the biggest fire-breathers around the table will agree to take that deal.”

She felt hot and frightened and uncertain, and wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the setting—a continuation, evidently, of whatever last night might have been. Once more, all the guards were outside the townhouse. Once more, Sinatra was playing on the paneled Victrola. Once more, Kennedy was in his socks with tie and collar undone.

Her lack of enthusiasm seemed to bother him. He came over and stood beside her. Together they looked down at the side street. Night mist made soft halos of the street lamps.

“You’re right, of course,” he said finally. “We don’t know if it’s really over. There’s a lot to work out, and the Russians can be tricky.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A public promise,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I can do that.”

Margo hesitated. She thought she had figured out the rest, but her last guess had gone terribly wrong. “Mr. President, there’s more. Fomin said that the General Secretary still has to placate his war faction, and I think he might mean—”

The President waved her silent. “Please. I’ve got a roomful of advisers to tell me what Khrushchev
might
mean. Let’s stick to what Fomin actually said.”

She tried again. “Yes, sir, but Fomin also said that the General Secretary would not require the ‘immediate’ removal of the Jupiters. I wonder whether he was trying to say that he would expect you to move them later.”

Kennedy was plainly exasperated. “We can’t run this thing according to your hunches.”

“Yes, sir, I—”

“And didn’t he tell you not to amplify his message? Because I’d say that reading some dark meaning into his words counts as amplification. Secret messages, secret promises …” He was running his hand through his hair, obviously agitated. “We can only go by what he actually says. Okay?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

An awkward beat. “Long day, Miss Jensen,” he said, not looking
at her. She supposed this was an apology of sorts for losing his temper.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I’ve got people telling me I have to invade.” His suit jacket was slung over the back of a chair. The thick brown hair was mussy, and, before he departed, would be a good deal mussier.

He talked for a while, unwinding, and then, once more, they set about creating the fiction, balling up the bedsheets and wrinkling their clothes. Just like last night, Margo was unable to look at him as they worked; and, just like last night, she sensed his eyes a little too steady on her body. She went over to the sofa and, unbidden, sat. She realized that she was trembling. Without asking, he fixed her a drink.

“Nobody shot down any planes,” he said, speaking slowly and softly, as we do around invalids. “All that worry about Khrushchev’s hard-liners was for nothing. That’s why we can celebrate. It may not be over, but it’s close. The Jupiters were the only stumbling block.”

Just as with Fomin, her questions were plainly beginning to annoy him. She wondered what it was about powerful men, their annoyance at women seeking entrée to their thoughts.

“It just all seems too easy,” she said.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned being President …” he began, but then sensed that she was in no mood to be lectured. “Look. Take my word for it.”

“Fomin says the General Secretary still has to—”

“Please his hard-liners. I know. But, believe me: In a confrontation like this? Once a guy twitches? He’ll back down.”

Margo thought about Niemeyer’s classroom, and his theory about bluff: the key was to keep the other side guessing. Maybe this time he means it, maybe this time he doesn’t. Your adversary had to be uncertain.

“The
Grozny,
” she began, but again Kennedy interrupted her.

“Has slowed to half-speed. We’re fine, Miss Jensen. The Cuban missile crisis is essentially over.”

It was dinner and dancing. Viktor and one of his associates followed Patsy and her boyfriend of the moment to a fancy restaurant in Chevy
Chase and then to a dance hall a few blocks away. Inside the hall, they sat at the bar, amidst spoiled young people whirling and shimmying to decadent music that a more cultured country would ban. Viktor worried briefly that he and his associate might stand out, but then he noticed that any number of men of middle years were there without women. It took him a few minutes to work out that these men were prospecting for girls to go home with them for the night.