Last Call for Blackford Oakes (6 page)

“General, I can do that, yes. When?”

“Tonight.”

Pavlov looked down at his watch. “It is just past midnight. I suggest you send your driver home, and come discreetly with me in my car.”

Twenty minutes later, Pavlov's old Volga sedan pulled up to the curb in the lonely street north of Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. The woman at the desk was not there. Pavlov led the general upstairs to room 48. He knocked several times, but there was no answer.

“Let's leave,” the general said, turning away.

In the car, they did not speak. But shortly before reaching his imposing house, the general turned to Pavlov. “I will think about this whole thing. Think about the advisability of … visiting with the girl. I will let you know my thinking.”

“Yes, General.”

CHAPTER 10

When Gus next met with Ursina, this time at the Preskov, she arrived alone—walking from the metro, he concluded. She sat down without any affected salutation. She said simply, “Well, it's nice to see you, Gus. You need not call me Dr. Ursina, even though this time I am unchaperoned. At least, not until you appear on my operating table.” She babbled on as Gus poured out the wine she had ordered at their earlier dinner.

They talked at first about the initiative of Gorbachev to end the testing of nuclear weapons. “Your government has been rather ambivalent on the point.”

“The Reagan people,” Gus said, “are looking out for any clause in a new treaty that would limit pursuit of our Star Wars program.”

“Yes, and of course the language of the ABM Treaty is under discussion. Your people are promoting the position that Star Wars experimentation can proceed without violating the treaty.”

“Unless the explosions take place in the atmosphere.”

“Oh goodness. When will it end?”

“I don't know. But Ursina, should it concern us?”

“Obviously it concerns us, young idiot.” She began now speaking in English, and Gus replied in English. They moved in and out of the two languages, according as idiomatic references lent themselves better to one or the other language.

After the first course, he asked her whether she would care to spend the night with him. “You are a dazzling lady.”

“Well, you are not a dazzling man. You are by my standards a child. Though a well-spoken child. And I rather like your face. I am a little surprised that such a face could have been generated in the Ukraine. Are you certain your parents were Ukrainians?”

Gus laughed. “I'm sure a Soviet historian doing faithful duty to his boss could find a way of proving that I was actually born and bred in Iowa.”

“Our scientists can be very ingenious.”

“Yes. Like Lysenko. He could prove anything that your scientific commissions wanted proved.”

“For instance, that when you were growing up, whether in the Ukraine or in Iowa, you were taught to be respectful in the company of … middle-aged ladies?”

“Oh, shit. Forget Lysenko. I'm not sure any phony scientists got in the way of your specialty.”

“No. There is no party line on the subject of male urological problems.… You know, Gus—maybe you have not lived here long enough to run into it: The official Russians are great prudes. You cannot read pornography here.”

“But there is no difficulty in Moscow—I am told—in finding prostitutes.”

“Well done, Mr. Gus. No difficulty—as you tell it. We are left to infer that you never inquired personally into the subject.”

Gus thought to say, and did, “Well, there was the one occasion, it was very late at night—”

“I hope you were protected.”

“Well, at one level I was protected.”

“What other levels are there? What are you talking about? I forgot to ask, are you CIA?”

Gus laughed, and poured her some more wine. “You have asked me a lot of questions. I begin by saying you are intelligent enough to know that if I
was
a member of the CIA, I would not admit it.”

“Unless it was necessary in order to seduce me.”

“Ursina, you have a bad habit of trumping every point I make. I am using plain English—
trumping every point
. Do you understand?”

“Of course. I have played bridge.”

“Well, I'll tell you what. If you sleep with me I will tell you that I am a member of the CIA and will report on every detail of the evening.”

“I suppose I could use you to advance my research, too.” She smiled and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

CHAPTER 11

At regular intervals, during his visits to the university library, Gus did a special kind of research. He spent a lot of time at the library, collecting data for his book on the Okhrana. But once every week he would call up Volume III of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1911 edition). Inside the front cover were the signatures of every library patron who had consulted that volume of the encyclopedia (it was forbidden to remove it from the library). He would scan these looking for the code—the name of Galina Sokolov. When her name appeared, that was the signal, and he would initiate a meeting with her by calling in at the brothel and paying for a half hour with her, putting down forty rubles on the counter. The clerk, a heavily made-up elderly woman, would check upstairs on the intercom connection without removing her cigarette from her mouth. Galina was—or was not—available.

Galina—short, blonde, with sleepy hazel eyes beneath her bangs—conceived of herself, depending on the patron, as a ravishing sexual object, or a warm den mother, or a sophisticated salon matriarch.

She collected political gossip. Her tips weren't always reliable. She trafficked mostly in rumors, but some of these, Gus, whose meetings with her satisfied several of his appetites, listened to with assiduous interest. She had once reminisced to Gus about General Secretary Chernenko, who had been one of her clients. Already an old man when he succeeded Yuri Andropov in 1984, he had told Galina he was going to inform the Presidium of his recommendation for a successor within a few weeks. Whether he had actually done so she did not know. Chernenko fell seriously ill one week after his last encounter with Galina, and died two months later.

On this visit, Gus was surprised when Galina spoke with some familiarity about “the plot last year to assassinate Comrade Gorbachev.” Few people knew more about that plot than Gus Windels, who, posing as the son of Blackford Oakes, had traveled to Moscow with Oakes to foil it. Yet Galina spoke knowingly of the plot. She managed to give it an erotic dimension, going on about it even when they were deeply entwined. Now, her formal duties done, she lit a cigarette and returned to the subject with very special information.

That the attempt a year ago had been made, she said, was widely known by the cognoscenti, though the plot was never officially acknowledged. The insiders, Galina told Gus, knew that a bomb had actually exploded in Gorbachev's desk, killing an aide. Galina now told Gus that one of the assassins, caught, tortured, and executed, had a brother. And he, seeking revenge, was determined to make a fresh attempt on Gorbachev's life. To that end, he had lined up support from a disaffected general.

“Who?”

“I don't know. But the brother—he told me that the general hopes to find financing for the next attempt.”

“Financing from whom?”

“Gus. I do not know. From the Americans, one imagines. It is Americans who usually finance things. Perhaps the American Central Intelligence.”

“Galina, you are in touch with the brother?”

“I have been in intimate touch with him.”

“You can find him, then?”

“No. We don't have a code system. That's only for you. And somebody else who is special. But the brother comes back quite often.”

“Why would he tell
you
about a plot against Gorbachev?”

“Because the general told him to tell me.”

“Why?”

“I guess, wanting to use me to set up a meeting with an American official. The brother knows I have U.S. contacts.”

Gus took a deep breath. He mustn't just say Americans-don't-do-that-kind-of-thing. And he wanted as much information as he could get. “Is the brother … talking about a day? Soon?”

“He said that was for the general to decide. Oh. The most important thing. Really, the reason I went to the library to give you the signal to come. The brother knows you and I are friends. He said that perhaps you could enlist the aid of a ‘Mr. Singleton.'”

Gus dug his nails into the palms of his hands. He raced though his memory. When he came to Moscow last October it was as Jerry Singleton, son of Harry Singleton, allegedly in search of a Ukrainian aunt. No one in the Kremlin knew that the Singletons had other reasons to be in Moscow.

“I never heard of a Mr. Singleton,” Gus told Galina. But her intercom was buzzing.

“Yes,” she said. “Send him up in five minutes.”

CHAPTER 12

The rules were formal. CIA activity in a foreign country had to be disclosed to the U.S. ambassador in that country. But formal rules sometimes bump into presidential prerogatives. The moment had come when Gus Windels had to face the problem, in total privacy with the ambassador.

They went together into the embassy's so-called bubble room—the capsule with glass enclosure designed to block eavesdropping of any kind. Jack Matlock was a historian, a learned student of Soviet life and politics. Gus Windels had rehearsed what to tell him, what to hold back.

“Sir, you probably know Blackford Oakes? CIA?”

“Yes, sure I know him, though I haven't spent any time with him. What's he up to? Not coming over here, I hope.”

“Yes sir, he is. He's on a presidential mission.”

Ambassador Matlock peered over his glasses. “What is the mission?”

The answer to that question Gus had rehearsed over a protected telephone line with the director. “Mr. Oakes wants to investigate a rumor of special interest to the president.”

Matlock's expression was wry. “Presumably of no special interest to me, merely the ambassador. Such a rumor as would cause the president to send his own man to check?”

“Sir, it's nothing more than a rumor, and Mr. Oakes wants to play it that way.”

“Well, it must be a mission of some importance, bringing in the former head of the covert-operations division of the CIA. Bringing him here, as we both know, is against security rules. But the president can override such rules. He is presumably engaged at this moment in overriding them by your failure to disclose to me more exactly what Oakes—what the president is looking for. What kind of cover is Mr. Oakes using?”

“He will be here, sir, as a kind of book agent or promoter, with ties to the USIA. The USIA is routinely committed to the exchange of cultural information, and, you of course know, '88 is the year for a special exhibit—once every two years. It's on your calendar to be there physically at the opening. The USIA exhibit will open in June. In Gorky. It's Oakes's assignment to involve himself thoroughly in the Gorky exhibit and to try to persuade Gosizdat to publish a few U.S. titles.”

“Getting Gosizdat to open up on foreign books takes a while. It took Soviet publishers twelve years before they published Philby's book.”

“Yes, sir. But that was a unique operation. Kim Philby is the crown jewel of Soviet intelligence operations.”

Jack Matlock tightened his lips. “Thank God one can think of Philby as unique. If there were more Philbys, maybe one of them would work his way to becoming national security adviser.” Matlock reflected on Philby's remarkable career. He was a clandestine Communist agent who managed to get himself appointed head of counter-Soviet intelligence in Great Britain. He did a tour of duty in Washington and betrayed a dozen clandestine operations and who knows how many human beings. “I never got over that: a Communist agent working his way into the job of looking out for Communist agents! I don't suppose Oakes is coming over to sell Gosizdat on publishing more books about the successes of Soviet spies in the West.”

“No. But we
can
take advantage of Gorbachev's easing up on the reading rules. Remember the fuss at the eighth congress of the Union of Writers? Well, the battles between the reformers and the gatekeepers of orthodoxy aren't over. Those people are sore as hell that
Novy Mir
is publishing Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago
. Mr. Oakes has that very much in mind. His idea will be to get publishers to release a few books written in English and promote them in connection with the Gorky cultural exhibit.”

“Like what books?”

“Well, one of them is the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, which is now a U.S. publication. Also, the Great Books, which is fifty-plus volumes right there. Another is
The Federalist Papers
—”

“That's one of the quote unquote Great Books.”

Son of a bitch Matlock knows everything
. “Yes, of course. But the point is, we're not asking them to okay books by Whittaker Chambers or Eugene Lyons or Max Eastman. Or, for that matter, speeches by President Reagan.” Gus returned Matlock's smile. “I think Blackford Oakes is going to tread carefully.”

“Will he need an office, or just a hotel room?”

“We're getting a couple of rooms at the Metropol Hotel. There are a dozen suites there rented and lived in by ‘businessmen.' He told me he wants to get around, be where the culture mavens gather.”

“Does he speak Russian?”

“Some. Not enough to get very far. That's an important point, sir, because he wants me to work with him again.”

Matlock paused. “Well, that's okay. We can detach you for special duty on the Gorky exhibit. I hope he does not want to see me.”

“No, sir. He wants very much not to see you.”

The ambassador got up. “Okay, Windels. You've gone through the necessary motions. I don't need to tell you to be careful. Try to do things so they don't end up kicking me out of the country. To be U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1987 and be kicked out of the country! That would be torture for a historian.”