Last Call for Blackford Oakes (27 page)

“He is on Do Not Disturb.”

“Ring him anyway!”

“Sir, shall I put you through to the general manager?”

Preshkev clenched his fists. Using a public telephone, he dialed the Soviet Embassy. The duty officer answered. Preshkev identified himself sufficiently to be put through to the ambassador at his residence.

The ambassador listened to the alarmed voice. “That is grave news. I will call Moscow. Do not report his absence to the police. Proceed to the airport, to the departure gate. Perhaps he misunderstood and made his own way there. If he is not there for the flight, have the car bring you here. I will have preliminary reactions from Moscow.”

Colonel Bykov shouted at Captain Akimov. “Why did you let him go to Vienna with only a single security officer? Don't just tell me that Titov has traveled before to other conferences. The point is not that he may have traveled once or twice before with only one single security officer. The point is:
He is missing!
One of the two or three most important scientists in the Soviet Union is
missing
. Why did you let that happen? Were there any signs of disaffection? Bring me his files.”

Bykov read them. He called Dr. Shumberg. He listened to Shumberg describing anti-state remarks made by Titov at their last meeting, a criticism which had been reported by Shumberg at the time, and duly entered into the Titov security file.

Bykov addressed Captain Akimov again. “
What is the use of files
if they are not acted upon? Here is
clear
evidence that Titov was a risk. But he is permitted to go to Vienna with only a single supervisor.”

He put down the file. He told Akimov: “Order an immediate inspection of Titov's apartment. Let no one else enter the apartment or leave it. Get me a record of all telephone calls into and out of that apartment in the past week.”

Bykov would learn in less than one hour that no one was home in the Titov apartment, though it hardly looked abandoned. “Everything seems intact—I mean, the furniture, all the usual things. Dr. Titov's desk has papers and manuscripts. There are no signs of preparation for departure. The refrigerator is running, though it is without fresh food. The boy's room is full of model airplanes, scattered about. I don't know what to say, Comrade Mikhail Pavlovich.”

Bykov called for his car and drove to the radiological institute.

He sat down at Titov's desk and called in the four scientists designated as senior.

He addressed them in solemn tones. “We are concerned for the welfare of Dr. Lindbergh Vissarionovich Titov. He is missing in Vienna. It is not inconceivable that he has been kidnapped. Dr. Astrey: Was Dr. Titov near to completion on any particular research project?”

“Well, Colonel. Yes. He had done all the projections on UL 242.”

“What is
that
?”

“That is what Dr. Titov—what we have been working on for almost two years. A very exciting project. If I may say so, cosmically exciting.”

“Is it something your staff can complete without him?”

“Oh no, Colonel. His role is indispensable. We would need him here.”

Back in his office, Bykov called the mysterious and critical Esterhazy, at the office of the general secretary. He briefed him. “I propose to call out a general alarm in Vienna for Titov. And to report to the police that he may have been kidnapped.”

“I think you had better talk with the general secretary. Stand by.”

He was put on.

Gorbachev told him to proceed to issue that alarm.

CHAPTER 52

The U.S. Embassy in Vienna relayed the bulletin about the missing Titov to the State Department. A copy was sent simultaneously to the CIA. Director Webster called the American ambassador in Vienna. “Mr. Grunwald, I have the bulletin on the missing scientist, Lindbergh Titov. Do you know anything about it?”

“No,” said Henry Grunwald. “But of course I know who he is.
Time
magazine did a profile on him only a year or two back. Quoted a lot of big-name scientists who said how important his radiological work was. There's a Soviet lobby working to get him a Nobel prize.”

“Do you know anybody—any Austrian, I mean—who might have got some idea from Titov as to whether he had any … interesting plans? Some friend, or working contact?”

“Yes I do. My contact would know Titov professionally, and was almost certainly there at the Science for Welfare conference. He's also anti-Soviet.”

“What kind of leg room are the Soviets giving the KGB in Vienna?”

“Well, Vienna is, maybe only after Berlin, the center of the spy world, as you know. There are things they're not permitted to do, same things we can't do, but the prohibitions are only against military or paramilitary activity, and the Russians can always dress their generals in plain clothes. Do you know what language he has, Titov, that's useable in this part of the world?”

“I don't. But we're looking to find someone who's been in the Soviet Union who might be able to answer that. When you call back about your contact, I'll have that for you. I have to assume he knows some English, and maybe German.”

The director called in Blackford Oakes and told him about Titov. “Black, do you know Vienna from first hand?”

“I lived there two months, 1976.”

“Any live contacts?”

“No. But I remember the city layout pretty well. And my German isn't all used up.”

“Did you make any contacts in Moscow who might have some idea what Titov is up to?”

“Yes I did. Vladimir Kirov was my Ursina's—my late lady's—mentor, and for sure he knows Titov, they're both high academicians. But who we ought to have in on this, Bill, is Gus Windels. He knows Kirov, and more important, he talked with Titov just a week or so back. Maybe he can come up with a lead.”

The television station in Vienna, ORF—the Osterreichischer Rundfunk Fernsehen—broke into the evening's news with an announcement.

“
This is live news
. The missing Dr. Lindbergh Titov has just telephoned this station. He spoke with our representative and said that he has not, repeat has not, been kidnapped. Dr. Titov said that he was ‘in retreat'—his words, ‘in retreat'—in Vienna weighing alternative possibilities for his future. He then hung up. ORF will contact the Soviet ambassador and relay this message from Dr. Titov and request a comment. We will broadcast that comment as soon as we have it.

“On screen is a picture of Dr. Titov addressing the Science for Welfare conference at the University of Vienna. This picture was taken on Tuesday. The renowned Dr. Titov spoke about the promising role that radiology will play in human health.

“ORF has interviewed several participants. Nobody has an explanation for the disappearance of Dr. Titov. It is widely speculated that he is defecting. A question was put to the U.S. ambassador, Henry Grunwald, who was seen with his wife arriving at the Vienna State Opera, where
Don Giovanni
is being performed. He said there would not be any comment on Dr. Titov other than that Titov had not been in communication with the U.S. Embassy.”

Blackford was on the secure line with Gus. “I'm sure glad you're back on the team, Dad. Now I think the world is safe.”

“Gus, good to hear your voice, and thanks again for those cables. You had a full evening with Titov and the family.”

“Yes. And I'm hardly surprised they're thinking maybe he's defected.”

“Gus, you okay for an assignment?”

“Shoot.”

“First, how is the Soviet press handling the Titov news?”

“By ignoring it. But that probably won't be what they're going to be doing tomorrow, especially if Titov says he's defecting.”

“If he was going to do that, why didn't he do it today?”

“Maybe he's not ready to face the alternatives. He would have to plead for asylum in order to be allowed to stay in Vienna. Stay there, or go somewhere else. Somewhere he'd be accepted.”

“In his case that would be like, everywhere, right?”

“I'd guess so. But these things take time.”

“We want to be ready to do the right thing if he turns in our direction.”

CHAPTER 53

After his “reincorporation” into the CIA, Blackford had taken to returning home in midafternoon. He hadn't recovered his old stamina and felt keenly the need for a “lie-down.” He disdained the word “nap,” which he thought appropriate for children and pregnant women.

He would reach Merriwell, climb the stairs, shake off his trousers, and be asleep in minutes, waking an hour later. He would then go down to his study and, seated in his armchair, read books and magazines. The mention by Director Bill Webster of Vienna prompted him this afternoon to dig out the handy German reader he had leaned on and mastered a decade before. He was reading, also, a life of Stalin that attempted to track Stalin's purges in the thirties, seeking also to get to the bottom of the so-called “Doctors' Plot,” which had activated Stalin's complicated anti-Semitic dispositions. The historian Robert Conquest shed some light on the point when he wrote that “Lenin himself (who was partly Jewish by ancestry) said that if the commissar was Jewish, the deputy should be Russian. Stalin followed this rule.” Until the bloody end.

Blackford's attention turned to Tom Wolfe's
The Bonfire of the Vanities
. He picked it up where he had left off the day before, reading on with admiration and delight. He had at hand also
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer
, by Peter Wright, and would give it his critical attention. For many years he had passed around précis of books he thought professionally interesting, and welcomed recommendations by fellow agents. With the afternoon mail, Josefina brought him a pot of tea, when normally he'd have taken a cocktail. One letter, postmarked Moscow, caught his eye. Before he had completed opening it, he sensed who it was from.

Again, it was handwritten, on the same quality stock as had been used in the letter from Vienna.

Dear Oakes:

I hope you are recovering from the death of “wife” and child. But you have had your life's ration, when you think of it. “Birth and copulation and death / That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.” That's how my old acquaintance Tom Eliot put it. You had the one, plenty of the second, and now, just a little ahead (I have reports about your ill health), the third. I hope you go as peacefully as your dear Ursina. I saw to it that she would experience no pain. She would pass away without having to parse her vagabond speech for the People's Minister of Internal Affairs. My gracious, such language as you taught your Ursina to use! But she is at peace. Pending, to conform to Christian diplomacy, your reunion, which will surely not be too far distant.

Ever your nemesis,

Philby

At the bottom of the page Philby had scrawled, in the British fashion, “PTO”—Please Turn Over. Blackford did so, and read. To add to his fury, there was the need to acknowledge this terrible man's flair for evil piquancy. “You will perhaps have forgotten, Oakes, that you left, in care of Rufina, a testamentary will, duly witnessed, deeding one-half of your estate to Ursina. I have tracked down an aunt of Ursina's in Leningrad and I have dispatched to a lawyer there a copy of your will, with the suggestion that he consult the aged lady, who, as next of kin to Ursina, is indisputably her beneficiary, to advise her that she can press in American courts for one-half of your property. Does this include one-half of your files on anti-Soviet activity? Perhaps a settlement might be made. If you are so inclined, do not hesitate to be in touch with me. —P”

Blackford pondered the words. He needed company, needed the strength of another person. A friend … He called Singer Callaway. “Could you come by?”

“For a drink?”

“Yes. I think I will have a drink with you. I need to share something with you.”

He tried to turn his mind away from the letter. He picked up the
Spycatcher
volume. He opened the cover of the bestseller. The book was an account of the penetration, over three decades, of Western intelligence, focusing—he saw from the chapter headings—on the work of Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Kim Philby.

He closed the book, and waited anxiously for Callaway.

CHAPTER 54

In their whispered planning, Linbek and Nina were moderately reassured. Nina's mother did indeed live in Leningrad. It didn't matter that her senility intermittently excluded rational discourse—that was not a Titov problem. What mattered was that Nina and Aleksei would have reasonable grounds for making the trip to Leningrad. There must be nothing suspicious about their departure from Moscow.

Titov had planned his own movements with great care. Leaving Moscow on Sunday, April 24, he would be in Vienna that night, comfortably ahead of the opening of the conference on Monday morning. Nina and Aleksei must remain in Moscow, to avert any suspicion of collective Titov flight plans. They must wait until Tuesday, April 26, and leave
then
for Leningrad. Titov's disappearance would not be effected until Thursday night. In Vienna, he would take a cab to the home of his old student, Dr. Valeria Mikhailov, simultaneously advising the Austrian Ministry of Security that he was at least contingently petitioning for asylum. Valeria, a woman of talent and determination, was delighted at the prospect of having a role in the escape of her old tutor from the country from which she had herself fled after completing her studies fifteen years earlier.

“So. On Tuesday evening, you and Alyosha will take the overnight train for Leningrad. On our Family Calendar”—he pointed to the closet door, left of the refrigerator, where a large calendar hung, on which social and professional engagements were noted—“you will write, for April 24, ‘Linbek departs Vienna.' For April 26 you will write, ‘Visit Grandmama, Leningrad.' For April 29, write, ‘Linbek returns.' For May 1, ‘Back from Leningrad visit.'”