Last Call for Blackford Oakes (16 page)

She looked at her watch.

Timing was important. Relieved of duty, she was free to sit anywhere, but she didn't want to take her assigned seat before the program actually began. If she did, Rufina would be startled at her absence from the stage and would question her.

What she would do was take her aisle seat, but only after the program had begun. She would whisper to Rufina that her speech had been canceled—and pass her the envelope.

At the hospital, before lunch, she had made three copies of the two-page document. One copy, Minister Belov had. A second, Rufina, her closest friend and confidante, would have. The third she kept for Harry.

She looked at her watch. The festivities would begin at seven. Arriving a few minutes before seven, she would take a spare seat. She had noted which were the seats—N113, N114—allotted to Rufina and Andrei. When the curtain parted and the minister of culture approached the lectern, then she would walk over and sit down next to Rufina.

CHAPTER 28

Ursina wished she hadn't had to wear a coat to the Great Kremlin Palace. The checking of coats was obligatory, and she didn't want to run the risk of having to wait in line to leave. But she reminded herself that she would be leaving during the intermission. Only a few others would also be leaving. A little creeping liberty. During the reign of Stalin, to leave the hall before he spoke would have been inconceivable, interpretable as an act of infidelity, mutiny, treason.

So, after deliberation, she decided it would be safe to go ahead and wear the coat so necessary to getting about in Moscow in January, especially since the Great Kremlin Palace was several minutes' walk from the metro. She most anxiously hoped she would not run into Rufina in the gilded corridors with their large French mirrors. If she did, she would say hastily that she was on her way backstage.

The hall of the Great Palace was filled with flowers, brought from the Caucasus. The National Symphony was performing excerpts from Tchaikovsky. The leading figures among the cosmopolitan delegates were seated in, or heading toward, the front central section of the hall, clearly set off with wide red sashes.

The orchestra played on, and there was the beginning of an official stir. Ursina looked at her watch. It was seven minutes past seven. The lights dimmed slightly. She walked up the aisle and over to the passageway leading down on the left.

The music ended. A spotlight focused on the minister of culture. He welcomed the special guests, pausing after the mention of each name to give time for applause. The orchestra played snatches from their respective national anthems. Then Roman Belov introduced the first of the official welcomers.

When he spoke, his words were instantly interpreted into English by an unseen voice, and the screen behind him gave his greetings in French and in German. The fifth welcoming speaker was Dr. Lindbergh Titov, middle-aged, bald, energetic in step, who had often been mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate for his work on radioactivity and his seminal book on Hiroshima and its victims.

Blackford had entered the Kremlin Palace using the ticket Ursina had left for him. He arrived just before Belov started to speak, and sought out an empty seat in the rear. He had put it simply in his own mind: He would not take a seat next to that cocksucker Philby. Ursina need not know that. She would guess that he was in the audience somewhere, in time to hear her speak.

According to the program, it was Ursina's turn to come to the lectern.

But the minister was introducing the seventh speaker, Alisa Vorobev of the Lawyers' Union. Blackford brought his program down below his knees, to give him reading light from the tiny bulb at seat level. He wanted to check again the page listing the welcoming speakers. He could make out—number six, Dr. Ursina Chadinov.

What was going on?

He would wait until the next speaker was announced. Perhaps there had been just that slipup, with Ursina coming not sixth, but eighth. But introduced now was Osip Grigorev, the poet, on behalf of the Writers' Union. And there had been no explanation from the master of ceremonies. Not a mention of Ursina. Blackford's impulse was to spring from his seat and go to the ticket office outside to see if she was there waiting for him.

But he'd have been disruptively conspicuous, rising in the dark and climbing his way past the couple seated to his left. He would have to wait.

Oh, the agony of having to listen to number nine … number ten … number eleven … number twelve. In his mind it was all just a blur of Russian and of metronomic English interpretation. He prayed that when the twelfth welcomer finished, the culture minister would instantly announce the intermission, the lights would go on, and Blackford could sprint up the aisle to the ticket window to find Ursina.

The intermission was finally announced, and he bounded past the seated couple and reached the ticket window in moments. The bulbs behind the crystal sconces brightened. A dozen men were lighting up cigarettes. He looked about anxiously for Ursina, and noticed then a knot of celebrants gathered at the other end of the hall, around another ticket window, under the sign,
FOR TODAY'S EVENT
. Ursina was there, her overcoat on. She looked up at him. “Let us leave, Harry. Follow me.”

They found a cab in the cold, and she gave her address on Pozharsky Street. He held her hand. She was shivering. She spoke not a word. They made their way through the door and climbed up the stairs to apartment 2B. He saw her hand trembling and took the door key from her, opened the door, and turned on the light.

“What shall I get you?”

“I think, vodka.” He sat beside her. She would not release his hand. He let her say it as she chose.

“I was there. I was in the seat next to Rufina and Andrei. But I didn't arrive until after the program had started. I didn't want to have to talk to her, but I did want to give her something. All I did was lean over—this was after the first welcomer had begun his talk—and say, ‘Rufina, I will not be speaking after all. I will tell you about it later. But I want you to have this. It's just two pages. Put it in your purse, and don't show it to anybody.' I wanted her to have a copy.”

“A copy of what?”

“My speech. My intended speech.”

“Ursina. You mean, the speech I read at lunch? They wouldn't allow you to give it?”

“No. It was another speech. It was one I didn't dare to show you, didn't want to show you.”

“Tell me what happened, exactly.” She told him.

They lay in bed, having resolved to defer further talk about the problem.

They said nothing for a half hour.

Blackford's mind was working, groping for useful elements of the story. It wouldn't do, clearly, to ask her just the obvious questions about her furtive work on the talk and her purpose in writing it. So he said, “You know, my darling, I have to leave at noon tomorrow. I will be back in Moscow as soon as it can possibly be arranged.”

He edged out of the bed and put on his trousers.

“You are in a hell of a pickle, Ursina. But they too have problems. That whole thing tonight, the whole conference, has also to do with displaying the new face of the Soviet regime. To take direct brutal action against you, given your contacts at the university and elsewhere, they surely don't want. If it had been five years ago, let alone fifty years ago under Stalin, you would not have left the office of the minister of culture under your own power. You would be right now in the Lubyanka.”

She said nothing, staring into space.

“That doesn't mean that they aren't going to investigate you thoroughly. Who has influenced you? What have you been reading? Who've you been seeing? Hell, you know all that.”

She lay back on her pillow. Blackford's passion rose up again. He lay down alongside her and again she took his hand. After an interval she said, “You haven't asked me why I wrote that little speech.”

“No. I haven't.”

“You remember last night we sat here and discussed what the alternatives were for the future? Of the child, and of you and me?”

“Yes, Ursina, I remember.”

“Well, I decided which of the alternatives I would choose.”

“Yes?”

“To leave Russia, and to go and live in America with you. And with our baby.”

It was after three in the morning when Blackford attempted sleep. He felt a need to communicate in a special way his joy from her. He would not be seeing her again before flying off. He had whispered to her what he intended to do. Arriving at his hotel suite, he went to his desk and wrote out an amendment to his last will and testament, bequeathing one half of his estate to Ursina and their child. He would have Gus witness it tomorrow. It was not to go to Ursina. No document would be safe from scrutiny at the Pozharsky Street apartment. But, with this letter written, it was unlikely that anyone could move to deny his role as father of the child.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER 29

There were just the two of them. They were served a simple dinner. She sat at the table, he, to one side on a sofa close enough to allow him to reach over to his plate on the table. He was reading a book, she, a magazine. He sipped from his glass of wine, but put it down hastily to allow himself to laugh. His glasses were well down his nose; his thumb held open the paperback.

“You've got to hear this. But I won't say anything to give the plot away.”

“You can't read and eat your dessert at the same time. Apple cobbler takes two hands. Come on, honey. What is it about?”

Ronald Reagan folded the page and put the book down on the coffee table. “It's Graham Greene.
Our
—” he grabbed the book to remind himself of the title—“
Our Man in Havana
. It's the craziest plot I've ever read, and the funniest. This middle-aged Brit who lives in Havana is at his usual bar and starts talking with a younger Brit, just come in from London. Our guy is just a little loony. He's been in Cuba ten years, a tiny business selling vacuum cleaners. The young guy starts to talk to him and pretty soon, after two or three drinks, says there is a great need for the Brits to beef up their intelligence service in Cuba, talks about how London needs to be warned in case the Reds take over.

“No. No coffee, thanks.

“Well, the older Brit says sure, he'll cooperate, but these things take money. The young guy says
of course
these things take money. We need, for instance, somebody in Cienfuegos to keep an eye on what's going on there. The older guy says, I have a little outlet in Cienfuegos and I know just the guy to line up.”

Reagan's eyes were rounded in mirth.

“So this whole thing goes on—I haven't finished the book—and MI6 is pouring money in there to our guy, who makes up funny reports. What's about to happen is that a professional guy from Britain is coming in, and, to save money, he'll board with our guy. Why couldn't Graham Greene just write comic novels?”

Nancy nodded. “I saw his name in the story on the conference going on in Moscow.”

“Oh sure. Graham Greene will fall in with that whole peacenik set, and Gorbachev will play to them.
You
know I was pushing for the treaty we signed in December, and I'm pushing for confirmation right now in the Senate—while that gang gasses on about how the U.S. is engaged in a new arms race.”

“Jesse Helms is opposing the treaty.”

“Jesse would oppose a treaty with the Soviets banning poison ivy. But Jesse's on our side, and he can be useful—though George Shultz doesn't think so.”

Nancy Reagan raised her hand. “But does Jesse have a point?—about the Soviet Union, under the treaty, having to junk intermediate-range missiles? Only, Jesse maintains, there's no way for us to verify that they're
actually
doing so.”

“That's always a problem, and Jesse had a nice line on that point.”

“If it's a nice line, I'll bet you've memorized it.”

He laughed. “As a matter of fact, I have. Jesse said, ‘Old Soviet warheads never die, they are just retargeted on the United States.' That's in part true, but—listen, Nancy. We can junk our intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe, and anything the Soviet Union started up we could wham them just as decisively with our submarine fleet. Did you see that Klaus Fuchs died?”

Yes, she had seen that, Nancy said.

“He managed to get the atom bomb to Stalin years ahead. Our guys got on to him, too late of course, but we did track down the Rosenbergs. They fried.

“No more cobbler, thanks. But it's really good.”

“What about George Bush! Beating Jack Kemp in Michigan yesterday.”

“My guess is George will get the nomination.”

“Is Bob Dole a factor?”

“Well yes, he's a factor. But I'm still guessing it will be George.”

“Well, a lot of people will say: If Ronald Reagan picked George Bush for two terms as vice president, he's got to be—the next best man.”

Reagan blew her a kiss. Then, picking up the novel, “You've really got to read this book. Makes you almost forgive Graham Greene.”

CHAPTER 30

On night two, after the festivities at the Great Kremlin Palace, Graham Greene would leave the International Peace Forum for an evening with Kim Philby. Forum participants were not easy to reach by telephone, so Philby had sent him a note. Greene replied in writing that he was leaving the Cosmos Hotel, in which he had been assigned a room. “It has terrible cockroaches scuttling in all directions, and very dodgy characters,” Greene wrote.

“I have made my way to the Sovietsky,” he continued. “It is grander, but also full of petty crooks. I will expect you at the end of the proceedings on Tuesday, and will happily go with you to Uspensky Street.”

It had been an afternoon and evening of high antics and political passion. Beginning in late afternoon, there had been a concert of many delights, as Gus Windels reported in a confidential memo to file. These included “folk songs and poetry and the American actor Kris Kristofferson urging everyone to eschew whiskey and women for sober thoughts on God, war, and peace, all taken in by an audience including the likes of Yoko Ono in white mink, and Gregory Peck.”