Then we went to the poem. I had been wired with a sneaky which possessed only an hour’s capacity, so the tape was finished before we came to the poem. I was asked, therefore, to reconstruct all dialogue not recorded. In what ways did the couple react to my suggestion that the poem was printable in America? Am I certain that Zenia muttered the word madness?
I won’t bore you with how long they spent on “I fall into depths that are great heights.” (It is, of course, being interpreted as the Masarov offer to defect.)
On the second day, I said to Omaley, “Do you always pursue details this intensively after Agency meetings with Russians?”
He smiled as if only an idiot like myself could ask such a question. I felt as if I were in the dentist’s chair.
On the third day, Howard Hunt took me to El Águila, his favorite restaurant, for lunch. The Sourballs were in an uproar, he confided, over the discrepancy in Boris’ dossier. Since my report that he was thirty-seven gummed up their Soviet Personnel Record file, they were damned upset. The question now is whether our present Boris is the original, or a new body? “Next question,” said Hunt. “Does Boris want to defect, or does he wish to entrap you?”
“For practical purposes, he has,” I said. “I can’t get any of my other work done.”
“This will pass,” he answered. “Your bad mark in Berlin may put a little extra heat on you now, but just keep to the positive side of the equation. Get Boris to defect and you will hold all the bouquets.” He nodded. “But, buddy, you’ve got to be more observant next time.”
“It doesn’t add up,” I said. “If Boris wants to come over to us, why would he entertain me and put himself at risk?”
“Given Zenia’s affair with Varkhov, Boris’ judgment might be off.” Hunt now tasted the first glass of wine from the bottle just opened for him, and made a face. “Joven,” he said to the waiter, “esta botella es sin vergüenza. Por favor, trae un otro con un corcho correcto.”
“Bottom line,” he said to me. “The situation does not add up. Why fraternize with you? What can you give them, Harry Hubbard? Maybe they believe you can offer them something.”
“Way beyond me, Howard,” I said, but at this moment, I had an image of Chevi Fuertes’ face. Could the Russians be witting of AV/ OCADO?
“Back to basics,” said Howard. “What do we know for certain? It is that Boris, whether Masarov One or Masarov Two, is KGB. As the Montevideo residentura, he is definitely Number Two man under Varkhov.”
“Definitely?”
“Heulihaen and Flarrety have studied their films comprehensively enough to establish an authoritative pecking order. They can document precisely whose ass is exposed to whose beak. Varkhov has precedence over the Soviet Ambassador and his minions. And Masarov is Number Two. Meanwhile, Number One is banging the boobies off the wife of his own Number Two, while Number Two seeks to fraternize with you.”
“I’m dreading the picnic,” I said. “It’s not the picnic. It’s the three days with Omaley that are going to follow.”
“Get a couple of real pieces of Masarov meat, and I will grind Hjalmar’s testes into powder. But do your best to avoid inconclusive results.”
Thus armed, Kittredge, thus armed. Yesterday, Zenia phoned to ask if Nancy was coming. When I said that she was still indisposed, Zenia gave a grunt that sounded much like Boris. Zenia will not be with us either.
Then, today, Sunday morning—it is now late Sunday evening as I write to you—Boris and I drove out to the country. He took along his fishing gear, and little else since Zenia had neglected to pack a hamper. I felt wrung out and distracted; so, I suspected, was Boris. We hardly talked. After half an hour on the road, he reached over to his glove compartment and handed me a flask of Scotch, which was, under the circumstances, agreeable. On the laissez-passer of the booze, we uttered a word or two.
“Do you like the countryside?” he asked.
“Not much.”
Kittredge, this was only my second trip out of Montevideo. In almost a year and a half! I can’t believe the fact even as I write this; I am such an underground animal! At Yale, I never left New Haven. Here, all my world is contained within the Embassy, the safe house, Hunt’s villa in Carrasco, and my cheap hotel room. I think it is because everything I do means so much to me that I simply don’t notice from month to month how circumscribed are my movements. I saw more of the city in my first three days than in all the time since.
Of course, outside Montevideo, there is not much to look at. Along the sea are third-rate resorts trying to rise to the second level. Stucco debris stirs dust in half-finished villas by the side of the road. Inland are no more than gently rolling grassy plains, occasionally fenced in with cattle, but, over the whole, monotonous.
Masarov speaks out of a silence. “Cuando el Creador llegó al Uruguay, ha perdido la mitad de Su interés en la Creación.” We laugh. His Spanish is not as good as his English, but I laugh heartily—partly at the Russian accent in Spanish. It’s true. God did lose half His interest in creating the world after He came to Uruguay.
“Yet I like this country,” he says. “Conducive to inner calm.”
I am not feeling much of that. The highway has dwindled into a narrow two-lane road, much broken and humped and oil-stained by the weight and effluvia of truck commerce, and when we pull over to have lunch at a café cum gas station, it is for the omnipresent hamburgers, the local cerveza, and the smell of rendered beef fat and onions—what Porringer has called “the whorehouse-full-of-traffic smell.”
Yet, Masarov is known in this café. We are apparently near his fishing hole, and he must have stopped here often. I am wondering if these poor roads, flat country, and functional little roadhouse do not remind him of his native country, and, as if we are curiously tuned to one another, he now says on the first sip of beer, “Uruguay is like small corner of Russia. Nondescript. To my liking.”
“Why?”
“When nature grows awesome, man turns small.” He lifts his mug. “Homage to the Swiss!”
“Whereas here, you feel larger than nature?”
“On good days.” He looks at me carefully. “You know Uruguayans?”
“Not many.” I am thinking, however, of Chevi.
“Me neither.” He sighs and lifts his beer. “To Uruguayans.”
“Why not?”
We click glasses. We eat in silence. It occurs to me that Boris may be under as much tension as myself. I remember Hunt’s injunction: Avoid inconclusive results.
“Boris,” I say. “What are we up to?”
“That will develop.”
I feel as if I am back in the chess game. Does he long for a book to read while waiting for each of my cautious moves?
“Let me put it,” he says. “I know who you are, and you know who I am.”
Now I have to turn on the sneaky. The switch is in my pants pocket, but the shift of position entailed to get my left hand over (for it is the left hand that has been holding the hamburger) cannot possibly appear as clumsy to him as it feels to me.
“Yes,” I say, now that I have pressed the recording button, “you claim to know who I am, and that I know who you are.”
He will not keep from smiling at this obvious move. “Of such nature,” he replies.
“What does that promise?” I ask.
“Extended discourse. Is a possibility?”
“Only if we trust each other.”
“Half-trust,” he says, “sufficient for such discussion.”
“Why choose me?”
He shrugs. “You are here.”
“Yes.”
“Seem cautious,” he says.
“Apparently I am.”
He drinks a good portion of his beer at a gulp. “I have more to lose,” he says, “than you.”
“Well, that,” I say, “depends on what you want.”
“Nothing,” he says.
“Do you want to come over to us?” I ask.
“Are you mad, or clumsy?” he replies i
n a gentle voice.
Kittredge, I am thinking of how bad this is going to look on the typed transcript. It will not convey the lack of personal offense in his voice. It will, to the contrary, project me as maladroit.
“No, Boris,” I say, “I am neither mad nor clumsy. You approach me. Your overtures are friendly. You suggest that we have much to talk about. What can I suppose that to be but an indication of your desire to come nearer to us?”
“Or demonstration,” he says, “of absolute ignorance of your people about mine.”
“Are you prepared to tell me why we are here?”
“Could disappoint you.”
“May I be the judge?”
He said nothing, and we sat side by side at our table looking out to the open end of the café, which had no front window but only an awning that flapped with a sound as sharp as a pistol shot each time a truck went by.
“Let’s approach this again,” I said. “What do you really want?”
“Political intelligence.” He smiled, however, as if to deny the remark. “I may be more ready to receive than to give.”
“Could not be otherwise,” he said. He gave a weary sigh. “KGB,” he said, “stands for Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti. Committee for State Security.”
“I know all that,” I said. “Even a Foreign Service Officer in the State Department knows that much.”
He looked amused that I would still insist on maintaining cover. “Many Directorates in KGB,” he said.
“I know that as well.”
“Will speak of First Directorate, and Second. First is for Soviet officers abroad; Second for home security. Respectively, CIA, FBI.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Our FBI, Second Directorate, has fine reputation in America. Is seen as effective. But, by many of us, is considered stupid. Wish to hear joke?”
“Yes,” I said, “I would.”
“Of course,” he said. “Why not?”
Now, we both laughed. It was droll. We both knew that my sneaky was on, and everything said would generate analysis. We quaffed our beer. Down the hatch. He clapped his hands and el patrón came forward with two more mugs, and a bottle of vodka. It occurred to me that this café could conceivably be a Russian outpost with microphones in the woodwork and a camera in the ceiling cranking away.
Or—Masarov merely came here often enough for the owner to stock a few bottles of vodka.
Yes, Kittredge, droll. Masarov, with a glass in his hand was not unlike other sturdy souls who live for a booze-up—he mellowed quickly.
“Two men,” he said, “from Second Directorate are in car following boy and girl in other car through multitudes of Moscow streets, then zip out to highway. The boy and girl have been with foreigners they should not visit, but are children of very high officials, so not frightened. Say to each other, ‘We get rid of these yeggs, yes?’” He stopped. “Yeggs?”
“Perfect use of the word.”
“Dumb cops. Yeggs. Yes?”
“Perfect.”
“So boy and girl pull their car over to side of road. Behind them, other car also stops hundred meters back. Our brave boy gets out. Lifts car hood to indicate motor trouble. What do yeggs do?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Get out of car,” Boris said solemnly, “and lift their hood. Copycats, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, “stupid.”
“Our Second Directorate,” he said, “has undue complement of stupid people.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
“Because your CIA should distinguish between First and Second Directorate. Your CIA sees all KGB as brutes.”
“Oh, that’s not true,” I said. “We spend weeks analyzing what Dzerzhinsky learned from The Golden Bowl.”
Now he starts to roar. He laughs with a great bellow and smacks me on the back. Boris is one hell of a strong man.
“I like you,” he says.
“Vertigo is joy,” I reply.
We both laugh again. We are practically hugging one another. When the mirth ceases, he is suddenly and powerfully serious.
“Yes,” he says, “in First Directorate, we go abroad. By our work, are obliged to study other nations. Become aware, sometimes painfully, of deficiencies in Soviet system. Within limitations of bureaucratic tact, we give accurate picture to home base. We try to help rectify our great Soviet dream. Yes. Even when answers are ugly and show it is our fault. The leaders of the First Directorate know more of everything wrong in the Soviet Union than anyone in your country.”
“That’s not the impression we get.”
“Of course not. For you, KGB is equal to killers.”
“It’s a little more sophisticated than that.”
“No! Low level! You speak of us as killers. We are professionals. Name one CIA officer who loses one little finger because of us.”
“It’s the hired help who get it,” I said. I was thinking suddenly of Berlin.
“Yes,” said Boris, “hired help get hell. True for you, true for us.”
I was silent. “When do we go fishing?” I said at last.
“Fuck fishing,” he said. “Let’s drink.”
We did. After a while I began to feel as if he had been waiting all his life to have a dialogue with one American. I was getting to know him so well that it was almost carnal, by which I mean that like most Russians he spoke with his face in mine (I suppose it is due to their small, crowded apartments) and so I came to know his exterior intimately—the places where his razor had missed some stubble, the spike-hairs in his nose, the breath of hamburgers, Turkish tobacco, onions, vodka, beer, and just enough caries to be, I swear, half-agreeable, as if a touch of rot in the mouth keeps a man honest. Hugh once imparted to me that unforgettable line of Engels—quantity changes quality—well, a touch of bad breath is altogether different from the odor of a badly corrupted mouth. I offer this aside because I lived for so long at a café table with Brishka, as he soon insisted I call him—Brishka and Harry, for sure—that the lunch drank itself down into the late afternoon, and the sun glared out of the west into the corner of our eyes as it dipped below the awning open to the road, and once in a while, a car went by or a drunk wandered in or out.
Masarov must have gone on for an hour about Nikita Khrushchev. Nobody in America could understand the Soviet Union, said Brishka, unless they came to comprehend the Premier. He was a great man. “Great in relation to present situation of Soviet Union.” And he recited a litany to me. Countless killed, was the phrase. Countless Russians had been killed in the First World War, countless were also killed in the Civil War initiated, he would remind me, by Americans, British, and French, countless killed by Stalin in collectivization of the farms, and countless-countless Soviet soldiers and citizens killed by Hitler, countless-countless killed again by Stalin after the war. The Soviet Union had been battered more than “a wife,” he said, “who is beaten every day by an ugly husband. For forty years! If it were American wife, she would hate such husband. But Russian wife knows better. Underneath everything in such marriage is man’s desire for improvement.”
“I’m lost,” I said. “Who is the Russian wife, and who is the husband?”
“Oh,” he said, “obvious. Russian wife is Russia. Husband is the Party. Some days, one must recognize that Russian wife is at fault. She may deserve her beating. Looks at ground. Won’t move forward. Husband may be drunk, but looks at sky.” He stopped here and slapped himself across the cheek with a blow hard enough to rattle the crockery in the kitchen (if it were listening). “Drunk,” he said, and ordered black coffee.
Now his syntax improved. “What I said before is kvatch.”
“Kvatch?”
“Of no value. Too general. The relation of Communist Party to people not easy to explain. Soviet children grow up with belief that one becomes a better person by sheer force of will. The will to be good and unselfish. We try to destroy interest in enriching ourselves personally. Very hard to do. In my childhood, I would fee
l ashamed of greedy desires. Weight upon the leader of such a people has to be immense. All trying to be better than they are. Stalin—I am ashamed to confess this—lost inner balance. Then Khrushchev, one of the brave, replaced Stalin. I love Khrushchev.”
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Because he was bad man. And gets better.”
“Bad? He was the Butcher of the Ukraine.”
“Oh, they teach you. They give you good course for the winter, Harry. But, they forget spring.”
“Who is they?”
“Your teachers. Miss huge point. Take question from Russian point of view. We see cruel people magnetized by power.”
“Isn’t this a little beyond Marx?”
“Ultra-Marxist,” said Brishka. “Comes from Russian people. Not Marx. We expect cruel leaders. Our question is how can leaders transcend origins? Become better men. Stalin was great, but Stalin would not transcend. Turned worse. Evil deeds drive him crazy. Khrushchev is the opposite.” He slapped himself again as if English were about to misprint itself on his tongue, and he had to jar his brain into line with his mouth. His English might be relatively polished, but underneath, Russky Tarzan lurked. As Boris got drunk, I could feel a cruder mode of expression come nearer and nearer to asserting itself. Of course, he would never say “Khrushchev opposite,” but you could feel the words he was ready to leave out. “Khrushchev is the opposite.”
“Yes,” he said, “contemplate Khrushchev. He is not wholly popular. Many Russian detractors. Some say he is too emotional.” Kittredge, you get the idea, I hope. Only this trace of deformation showed. “Yes,” he said, “almost all agree Khrushchev is nyet kulturny. You comprehend nyet kulturny?”
“I speak no Russian.”
“Stick to your story.” He laughed at this. Like Zenia, he has two persons in him, and they are not accommodated to each other. He had been drunk, and heavy in his sentiments; now, the irony of the chess master leaped out again. “Stick to your story,” he said once more, as if he had a clear dossier on me. (Probably he did, and doubtless it was as inaccurate as ours on him.)
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