Back Channel (5 page)

Borkland, the diplomat, trampled on Stilwell’s annoyed response. “I’m afraid we’re not allowed to say, Miss Jensen. Not just yet. In a bit, after this part of the interview is over.” The smile seemed waterproof. “As Professor Niemeyer said, the nation’s security is at stake. I know that’s hard for you to accept. For the moment, I only ask you to bear with us.” With that, he put the pipe back in his mouth.

Margo’s gaze slipped from one man to the other, before settling in the middle distance, where a younger Niemeyer, in black and white, leaned over President Truman’s shoulder, pointing to a line in a document.

“A man followed me on campus the other day,” she said, instinct screaming not to let these cold bureaucrats master the conversation. “He pretended to be an alumnus, but he was taking pictures of me. Why?”

The two men exchanged a questioning glance:
One of yours?
Each shook his head slightly.

“We wouldn’t know anything about that,” said Borkland.

Stilwell put the point another way: “If he’d been working for us, you’d never have seen him. Probably just likes photos of pretty girls.”

“He followed me again on Saturday—”

“Well, he couldn’t have been much good at it if you spotted him. And now, if you’re done with the trivialities, let’s get back to the questions.”

She continued to focus on Truman’s thoughtful mien. She supposed that there was nothing they could do if she stood up and marched out of the office, but her curiosity was aroused, as no doubt they intended. And of course there was also the matter of her not wanting to disappoint Professor Niemeyer, who had evidently singled her out for—well, for something. And if Niemeyer decided to push her career …

“By all means,” she said.

Stilwell wrote a couple of lines in his notebook. “Good. Back to your parents, then. Your father died in action, did he?”

“An accident in the war. His truck crashed.” She kept her voice even. “I was ten months old. I never met him.”

“And your mother ten years ago?”

Squeezing harder still. “Closer to twelve. Cancer.”

Stilwell tapped his pencil on the table, the sound very loud in her state of tautened attention. “Siblings?”

“An older brother. Corbin. He’s married and lives in Ohio.”

“The two of you raised by your father’s mother, is that right? Charlotte Jensen?”

“Claudia.”

“Quite the battle-axe, I’m told.” He turned a page. “She graduated Smith, I see. Why didn’t you follow in her footsteps, Miss Jensen? Wait. Let me guess. You’re following the footsteps of the father you
never met. How dutiful.” He chuckled at her blush. “Or maybe it’s just that Smith doesn’t have boys. You’re seeing a young man now, aren’t you? This Tom Jellinek? He’s physics, you’re government. So how did you meet, if I might ask?”

He had lost all capacity to surprise her. “Freshman English was seated alphabetically,” she explained. “We were next to each other.”

“So you’re blaming coincidence. Well, why not? You gals have to blame something, I’d imagine.” Evidently satisfied, he sat back and glanced at Borkland:
Your witness.

Borkland was the diplomat, his smile well practiced and smooth. “Please forgive Agent Stilwell. His job in this thing is to make sure you’re who you say you are.”

The smoke, she decided: the clouds of pipe smoke were making her punchy. Surely she hadn’t heard him right. “I beg your pardon.”

“You’d be surprised what the Soviets get up to. No, you wouldn’t. Professor Niemeyer seems to think you’re rather bright. Congratulations. He praises men rarely, and women not at all. Like traveling?”

“I haven’t done much.”

“Ever been to Varna?”

Margo was taken aback. Varna was a dying country town due east of the campus. A couple of bars served everybody without checking driver’s licenses, and although Nana would have had a heart attack on the spot, Margo had visited each a time or two.

“Yes,” she said.

“Recently?”

This time she did drop her eyes. It seemed absurdly unlikely that these two had come from Washington to give her a citation for underage drinking, but one never knew. “Two weeks ago,” she said.

Borkland had a wide, mellow face, and comically thick glasses, but Stilwell’s countenance, like his voice, was ugly and twisted and disapproving. “Did you get down to the docks? Notice any of the ships? That sort of information is always helpful to your government.”

Margo’s confusion grew. Perhaps they were testing her. “I don’t think any shipping goes through Varna.”

The men looked at each other. “The Soviet Black Sea fleet is headquartered there,” said Stilwell. “I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

Borkland touched his colleague’s arm. “I believe Miss Jensen is
referring to Varna, New York.” To Margo: “The Varna we are asking about is in Bulgaria.”

She colored. “Oh. No. I’ve never been anywhere in Europe.”

Stilwell: “Well, you’re going now.”

Borkland greedily snatched back the narrative. “There’s a State Department program that provides grants for student journalists to report from abroad, especially behind the Iron Curtain. You applied for a fellowship.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, no, not exactly.” A shy smile. “But you were approved anyway.” He slid the form from his briefcase, handed it over. “Take a look.”

She did. There were the various questions answered in her own block capitals, and there was the essay, in her own handwriting, complete with the little dagger-strikes for the lowercase “g” and “j,” and the many cross-outs that characterized her writing in haste. Reading the lines, she could almost imagine penning them. Her boyfriend was teaching her to play chess, the essay explained, and she wanted to go to Varna, the Bulgarian one, to watch the Chess Olympiad, where several dozen countries would send squads of four players each to battle over the course of a month for gold and silver medals. Thus would she combine her interests in chess and study of the Cold War.

The essay looked and sounded exactly like her work.

The trouble was, she had never seen it before.

“I don’t understand,” said Margo, managing to keep the tremor out of her voice. “Who wrote this?”

Borkland tapped the signature line. “You did.”

“This is a forgery,” she said after a moment.

“It’s as genuine as it needs to be.” Stilwell’s chilly voice brooked no argument. “Maybe we were a little naughty. Let’s get past that, shall we?”

“So—you want me to go to Bulgaria?” She looked at the paper. “To the Chess Olympiad? This is how you want me to—to protect my country? Why?”

Borkland slipped the application from her hand and slid it back into his briefcase. He pointed the pipestem her way. “Well, this is where we have a problem,” he said, with a confiding frown. “We don’t actually want you to go. If we could spare you the trip, we would. Unfortunately, Miss Jensen, the matter is out of our hands. There is someone else we need rather urgently to do something for us there—well, for America, really—and he adamantly refuses to help us unless we send you, too. So here we are.”

Mystification, fear, fury: all were swirling now. At least she understood what Stilwell was so angry about. “Who is he?” When they said nothing, she asked a different way: “Why won’t he go without me?”

The diplomat gave a doleful shrug. “Alas, the identity of the gentleman in question cannot be disclosed until you have agreed to make the trip. And the information in any case is not ours to vouchsafe. You’ll have to come to Washington to get your explanation. All I am allowed to tell you this afternoon is that your country needs you.”

“You expect me to agree to fly to Europe, with a man you refuse to name, and you won’t tell me why?” She finally exploded. “What kind of woman do you think I am?”

At this Stilwell smirked and made a note. Borkland’s tone became if anything meeker. The pipe appeared to have burned out. “My apologies, Miss Jensen. Certainly it isn’t that sort of trip. We’ll send a chaperone. An older woman. What we call a minder.” She was about to reply, but he lifted a finger. “All I can tell you at this moment is that the task we need the gentleman in question to perform is vital to the nation’s security. Nobody else can do it, and, as I said, he will not do it unless you go. Unfortunate, but there it is. He rather has us over the proverbial barrel, Miss Jensen. Thus this visit.”

Margo’s fear was growing, but so was a peculiar thrill of excitement. The national security apparatus of the United States was going to all this trouble—fake documents, a minder, goodness knows what else—because they wanted her. Her. Margo Jensen. A man was going off on a vital mission, and wouldn’t go without her. Ambition began to trump caution. This morning she had been nobody, and now, suddenly, she was nearly as indispensable as the man they refused to name. Yet she would not yield so easily. After all, as Niemeyer liked to remind them, only a fool shows his hole cards before the final bet. And so she took refuge in practicalities.

“I can’t go to Varna. I have classes. I have a boyfriend. What will he think of me running off to Europe?”

Stilwell’s turn. “The dean has been spoken to. You’re excused from classes. As for your boyfriend—well, you gals have ways of dealing with your menfolk’s anger, don’t you?”

Trying to get a rise from her; and so she damped down her slowly uncoiling ire. “At least tell me what I’ll be doing.” She selected a sassy tone. “Will I be helping this man you won’t name do the task you won’t tell me?”

Borkland again: “In Bulgaria, Miss Jensen, you’ll be watching the chess and sunning on some of the most beautiful beaches in Europe. Maybe you’ll be called upon to attend a couple of meals. That’s all.” He smiled at her bewilderment. “You’ll be away two weeks at the most, and then you’ll be back, with the thanks of a grateful nation.”

Margo took this in stride. Anger had cleansed her mind, and she could read the genuine desperation in his round face. Whatever they
needed, they had to have. The trick, she reminded herself, was to get the opponent to show his cards first. “Suppose I say no.”

“You live in a free country, Miss Jensen. If you would rather take its benefits for granted when you could have helped protect it, that choice is yours to make.” The men were suddenly on their feet. “Take a little time to think it over, Miss Jensen—bearing in mind that we need your answer before we leave for Washington.”

“When are you leaving?”

The diplomat glanced at his watch. “In about an hour.” He nodded toward the door. “Take a moment. Speak to Dr. Niemeyer. Ask his advice.”

“And
only
to Niemeyer.” Stilwell lifted a warning finger. “Breathe a word of this to anyone else, Miss Jensen, and you’ll be leaving this building in handcuffs.”

But the silky threat was unnecessary, and the satisfied looks on both their watchful faces said they knew they had her.

“What’s this really about?”

Lorenz Niemeyer shook his head. The government department backed on a private garden shared by several buildings, and they sat together on a stone bench. She supposed the men from Washington were watching from one of the many windows; maybe somehow listening, too.

“I know less than they told you, I’m sure,” said Niemeyer. He brushed at a low branch, whipped by the wind against his pudgy face. “All I can tell you is that the people behind this are people I’ve known a long while.”

She caught something in his tone. “Is that an endorsement or a warning?”

“It’s neither.” He fixed her with those brilliant eyes. “I want to be very clear, Miss Jensen. Whatever they’re asking you to do, you can say no. That is absolutely an option. It won’t come back to bite you. You won’t be marked down in some file as un-American. Is that clear?”

“It’s clear,” she said, but wasn’t sure she believed him.

“You still sound uncertain, Miss Jensen. Let me tell you a story you won’t read in the papers. Last March, two Soviet military aircraft
overflew Kuskokwim Bay and entered American airspace over Alaska. They were on a reconnaissance mission, and they flew unheeded for almost half an hour before we were able to intercept them. An intrusion of that magnitude and duration couldn’t have been accidental. They were taking a titanic risk. Suppose we’d shot them down? Do you realize that, merely by sending military aircraft across our borders intentionally, the Soviets committed an act of war?” He had plucked a dying blossom from the branch, and now began to pull the petals, one by one. “And this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, Miss Jensen. It’s getting more frequent. It doesn’t make the papers, because we tend to keep it quiet.”

“Like Gary Powers.”

Niemeyer’s plump face dipped in a nod of grudging respect. “Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 in May of 1960, and Eisenhower’s summit was canceled. That was very public. Let me tell you what isn’t. Prior to Powers, the Soviets had shot down a good eight to ten of our surveillance aircraft—possibly more—with significant loss of life. A couple of years before, eleven of our airmen survived the downing of a C-130 over Soviet territory and were never heard of again. Presumably, they’ve spent all the time since under interrogation. That’s top secret, you understand. You’re not cleared for it, but you have the right to know.” He stood up and brushed off his shapeless tweeds. “Things are very bad, Miss Jensen. Much worse than I can tell you in the classroom. Much worse than the Administration can admit. We are dangerously close to a shooting war with a regime possessing several hundred nuclear warheads.”

She felt a chill of excitement and fear, mixed. “You’re telling me I should do it.”

“The decision is yours, Miss Jensen, just as I said. All I’m telling you is that, whatever you may decide, childhood has reached its end.” Somehow they were on their feet. Niemeyer was holding the door. “And whatever you may decide, I know your father would be proud.” He saw her expression. “I knew him well, Miss Jensen. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that.”

Margo swayed on her feet. “My father died in the war.”

“Which is where we met.”

“Excuse me, Professor. I don’t see how that’s possible. You said in class you were in the OSS. Behind enemy lines in Europe.”