Stained Glass (12 page)

“Well, there's no reason why they shouldn't. But remember, Wintergrin's alleged to be
our
operation. I don't think even Stalin really believes that. But it's a convenient clothes horse for all their complaints.

“But listen. Even if it were so. Even if Wintergrin
were
our man. So, we take the position: ‘Okay, go ahead and get rid of him, even though he is our man.' What better evidence that he
isn't
our man than that we're willing to see him disappear from the scene?”

“It's worth trying.”

“I'm going to do more than that. I'm going to say, Either they do it or it won't be done.”

“Do you have a fallback position?”

“Yes. If they insist, I'll shoot Wintergrin myself.”

The Director smiled. And was silent.

The Secretary spoke again, stirring his coffee for no apparent reason, since he had put neither sugar nor cream in it. “What is his security like?”

“Up until Frankfurt, Laurel and Hardy could have bumped him off. It was loose, loose as hell. Now it's pretty tight. Oakes reports that a real pro has taken on the responsibility of keeping the candidate alive. You can't get near St. Anselm's any more. Even the press are frisked when they go see him.”

“What a wonderful opportunity.”

“To do what?”

“To emasculate the press, dear Allen.”

“And he travels behind an armed car, with radio. He's been protesting the appearance of all this, because Adenauer and Ollenhauer are moving about conspicuously unescorted. But there doesn't seem to be any negative public reaction. Incidentally, don't eliminate the possibility that somebody else will try to bump him off. The opposition isn't all from the left.
Der Spiegel
is off-its-rocker-mad at him, says he's going to cause the destruction not only of East Germany but of West Germany. Oakes says there's a lot of randomly motivated hate mail.”

“Any of it signed ‘Harry Truman'?”

“And the police, a few days ago, arrested a young guy at a rally with a loaded pistol in his pocket. He's being interrogated. They've established he is a member of the United World Federalists.”

“Allen, did you ever read
Murder on the Orient Express?
”

“No, but I could use Hercule Poirot right now.”

“Well, the murdered man has thirteen knife wounds. And there are thirteen passengers on the train. And M. Poirot establishes that every one of them had a motive to kill him. And the denouement is: They all did—took turns with the knife.… That would be a
hell
of a coincidence if, a few days before the election, Count Wintergrin was simultaneously shot, stabbed, asphyxiated, poisoned and drowned.”

“Some people would know it was a CIA job then.”

“Well,” said the Secretary, leading the way into the living room, coffee cup in hand, “now let's go and get grim together. You go see your man Rufus, and get him into the act. I'll bring in hatchet face. My office will tell him ten a.m.”

“We're both lawyers, Dean. You're a constitutionalist, or anyway you pose as one. The mandate here is a little irregular. What, in your opinion, are my direct responsibilities to the President?”

“In my opinion, your responsibilities to the President are never to mention the name of Wintergrin in his presence. His responsibility to you is identical.”

CHAPTER 10

When Blackford called the number in Bonn, he was told to ring a second number and to ask for “Bob.” He rang it, giving—when asked by the voice at the other end of the telephone, “Who is calling?”—his agency name. On hearing “This is Singer!” Blackford felt, for the first time since arriving at St. Anselm's, that he was back in touch with his own country. For eight weeks he had been reporting only to a disembodied voice at the other number, and nothing had come of his request to go to Bonn and speak directly with his superior. He would receive his instructions over the telephone, file his reports either over the telephone, or by mail to Bonn, depending on their character. He had no knowledge of the uses to which his information was being put, or any acknowledgment of the work he was doing.

“God, am I glad to talk to you!”

“Me too, buddy. I want you to come around and see me.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Call the other number at noon, and they'll tell you. Got to go. See you tomorrow.”

Blackford could easily account to his associates for any trip to Bonn. Bonn, after all, was where Washington sent the money. It was the administrative center of all German reconstruction projects financed or partly financed by Marshall Aid. And, of course, Blackford would take the precaution of checking in with the foreign aid mission office to report on progress.

He was at the chapel at eight, to go over the day's work with Overstreet and Conditti. At nine he was to see Wintergrin, who had asked him to stop by. Getting in and out of the courtyard had been something of an operation. The additional sentry was posed at the top of the hill at the entrance to the courtyard. There were guards outside the castle. The inner sanctum was defended by three men casually distributed in the corridor with automatic weapons. They all knew Oakes by sight, and several times saw him stroll in and out of the church and the castle in the relaxed company of Count Wintergrin; still, with Teutonic thoroughness, they went through the motions of inspecting his credentials as if for the first time, until Count Wintergrin caught them doing it. At the stormy ensuing session with Wagner, Wolfgang was called in and specifically reprimanded, and now Blackford could circulate without interruption.

He found Wintergrin alone in his study. The adjacent room, once a refectory for hunting parties, was now a press office of sorts. It was there, surrounded by antlers, boars' heads, strutting stanchions with jaded banners of war, that Erika worked, sharing the huge room with half the staff of twenty involved in scheduling, policy, and organization. Roland Himmelfarb occupied a small office between the refectory and the dark, bookfilled office of the count, into which Blackford was escorted by an appointments secretary.

Wintergrin never appeared to feel harassed, but with Oakes he had become unusually relaxed, carefree. “I sneaked past the gorillas last night at six and took a look. It really is very exciting. The joinerwork up from the panels to the rood screen is first-rate work, first-rate. And the traceried panels themselves, as I've told you, are indistinguishable from the originals. The wood will have to age, but that will happen …” He rippled on about the details of the woodwork in the choir and returned to his continuing pre-occupation: the blue glass. Blackford wished he could divert him to the subject of his political campaign, but the occasion was too formal. Count Wintergrin had summoned his architect to discuss the business at hand, and so Blackford was resigned to a week with nothing to report to his employers when Wintergrin, almost without pausing, said:

“I would like to get away for an evening. I have not been free from my staff since Frankfurt. I know a good restaurant, with private dining rooms. It is located, improbably enough, at Gummersbach, a dull little town, in case you don't know it, between Dusseldorf and Bonn, but much closer. The maître d'hôtel there is called Walter (he pronounced it Valter). There are also discreet opportunities for postprandial relaxation, if that is the mood of the patron. I have two questions: Would you be disposed to accompany me? Second, if so, would you kindly make the reservations in your name only?”

All this, thought Blackford, and Singer Callaway too, in a single day.

“I should be delighted, Count Wintergrin.”

“Axel,” he said, scratching the name of the restaurant on a notepad and handing it to Oakes. “I told you once, I shan't tell you again. You may call me, in due course, ‘Chancellor.' But that will have to wait.”

“Do you get to be called anything special after you unify Germany?”

“I should think ‘Liberator' would do.”

“And if you fail—‘Liberator Manqué'?”

“If I fail, you will probably be referring to me as ‘The Late Count Wintergrin.'”

“Who would be the successor to … all this … if that … happened?”

Wintergrin took the narrow road in his answer, as if Oakes's question were of purely biological concern.

“I have a natural son in England. My lawyers have the documents. If all goes well I shall adopt him legally. If not, he will be acknowledged by my estate as the rightful heir … But go away, Blackford, I am busy, and I shall look forward to your impertinent questions tonight.” He smiled, more warmly than ever.

“Fine. I have to go to Bonn anyway.”

“Oh?”

“Don't worry. They're not running out of money. Routine stuff.”

“You know to take the road north to Schmallenberg?”

“I know to take the road north to Schmallenberg.”

Count Wintergrin smiled, a little shyly. He reached out his hand. Blackford rose and started to extend his own but saw that the impatient count was pointing now at the door.

“Don't get corrupted in Bonn. And don't forget to make the reservations. For eight p.m. At exactly seven-thirty I'll walk out of my car, parked opposite the library at St. Anselm's, wearing a raincoat, a fedora, and glasses.”

“I'll be there. Wearing a suit, over a shirt, tie, and underwear.”

At Bonn, Blackford was directed to an apartment on Remagenerstrasse, within a block of the building where Beethoven was born. The door of the ground-floor apartment was opened by Singer Callaway himself, and he looked exactly as he had on that morning he had opened the door at Park Street in London to introduce Blackford to his mission there, almost exactly a year ago. Callaway was buoyant as ever, orotund in speech, conspiratorial in tone: and Blackford knew in his bones that the Wintergrin matter was coming to a head. All they needed now was someone like Rufus, and he would know that he was stationed on the forwardmost line. Callaway smiled broadly, led him silently through a moderate-sized, overstuffed living room into an adjacent study where, sitting at the desk, was: Rufus.

“Oh, my God!”

Rufus rose, smiled as warmly as he ever did, and quickly sat his thin frame (hung in clerical dress, including the Phi Beta Kappa key) down again, his eyes somber-brown behind the thick glasses, his hair neatly plastered on his balding dome.

“I thought you had retired, Rufus.”

“I thought I had too.”

“What brought you back?” Blackford took the chair toward which Rufus waved him. Singer Callaway sat at the end of the desk, his elbows on it, his chin in his hands, prepared to concentrate.

“What brought me back is the threat of a world war.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“It is really that bad.”

“Intending no offense, Rufus, What do you know about it that I don't know? I mean, that anybody following the news closely, and listening to the shouting and yelling couldn't deduce?”

“We now know the nature of the ultimatum of the Soviet Union.”

Blackford waited to be told what it was. Rufus did not divulge it.

He continued. “What we cannot know is exactly when or how the Soviets would move. We know what they are in a position to do on the ground. We're fighting a war in Korea, where we've concentrated practically everything we have. We all but demobilized the army during the panic to get home after the war. We wrote a treaty that forbade West German participation in a joint military command. The French economy is on the floor, and the French military is completely absorbed all to hell and gone, off in Indochina. The British are exhausted, and engaged in full-time decolonization. We put up a good front about NATO, and Ike made some nice speeches over here, but here are the facts. The Russians have three million men on their western border, comprising one hundred and seventy-five divisions. Twenty-two of these divisions are in East Germany and are mostly motorized, backed by sixty divisions facing west; East Europe has sixty to seventy divisions under arms. We have ten divisions in West Germany—most of them under strength, backed by commitments for twenty divisions. The Russian presence in Korea is negligible. So they have available to fight in Europe the whole of their military machine. We figure they'd mass on the West German border, and twenty-four hours after they move, they'd reach the Rhine. Three days later, Paris. Either there would be no resistance at all—which is a strong possibility if NATO collapsed right away; or there'd be a fierce resistance of a partisan nature, and bloodletting on the scale of what went on in western Russia in the early days of the war. It is”—Rufus looked up at Blackford—“the worst potential situation I have seen since the Battle of Britain.”

“Hell, Rufus, what about our bomb?”

“There's something we
don't
know. We don't know whether the President of the United States would order the use of atomic weapons to stop the Russians if they did move.”

“But you do know—I assume—what can be done to keep the Russians from moving?”

“I think so. But first, consider three alternative constructions.

“Alternative One: Stalin is anxious to strike, desires Wintergrin to win the election, challenge it, and so give him an excuse to go ahead and gobble up the rest of Europe.

“Alternative Two: The Soviet Union is
not
anxious to take on the West but is prepared to do it—if Wintergrin is elected and issues his ultimatum.

“Alternative Three: The Soviet Union isn't anxious to take on the West and won't take us on
even if Wintergrin is elected and presents his ultimatum
.”

“Surely the third alternative is too remote even to think about?” Blackford ventured. He had by now ten weeks' intensive familiarity with the German press, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and his observations of the working of Stalin's iron will were well integrated. Stalin yield to Wintergrin?