“That’s okay,” Blackford said. “We can fill in for him.”
But Webster was affable and penetratingly intelligent. Blackford’s dealings with him in the last six months had been pleasant and productive. Judge Webster rather enjoyed a little banter in his meetings. That may have been one reason Reagan appointed him.
“How you doing, boss?”
“Well, I’m okay. How about you? You got our daily reports while in Moscow?”
“Yes. I like the way”—Blackford carried on the conceit—“you plant your news in Pravda. Not easy to read, but if you stick to it, there it is. ‘Minister Pleshkov flatly lying about Soviet production rate of MIRV missiles.’ That was very useful to me. Also the one in the next day’s Pravda, ‘Project Wiretap-the-Kremlin successfully completed.’”
“Glad you caught those. Anything to worry about, Black?” Webster was now all business.
“I don’t think so, Judge. My guess, and it’s pretty well informed, is that the nascent plot was stillborn. The two principal players have been pulled out of the scene. The civilian contender for general secretary when Chernenko died—Dmitriev—is now a prisoner. We don’t even know—and that was more than two weeks ago—what he’s been charged with.”
“That wouldn’t have worked in Missouri when I was judge.”
“It’s not quite like the old days in Moscow, but a far cry from the way you did things in Missouri. In any case, Dmitriev’s in no position to pull off a coup d’état. The other guy, the general, has been demoted. We did learn that Boris—I don’t think you know who he was, Judge; no reason to. But Boris Bolgin was an ace KGB operator, Gulag survivor, who locked horns with me a few times over three decades. He became the chief KGB operator in Europe. He retired and—defected. Only he and the Pope knew this. And me. He tipped me off to the plot a year ago, a very live plot, to assassinate Gorbachev. I went over there to tell him he had to get it called off. He shot himself the next day. I’ve put it together that before pulling the trigger of the pistol in his mouth he blew my cover. Maybe they’ll go back and dig it up from a year ago. The general who was demoted—General Baranov—was in charge of the secret commission that investigated the assassination plot.”
“So. Nothing that ties us to it in any way we don’t want?”
“No, sir. Gus Windels undertook some pretty adroit sleuthing. So—I’ll write the report and get it to you in the next couple of days. Is that okay?”
The director said yes, that was fine. “And, welcome home, Black.”
CHAPTER 33
Philby went to bed soon after Graham Greene left. Greene, a night owl, said he intended to walk to Pushkin Square and go on from there to his “terrible hotel. Tell your spy network to avoid both the Cosmos and the Sovietsky.”
Philby was up early in the morning. There was a burr lodged in his mind. After his first cup of tea, he was able to yank it from the subconscious. He stared hard at it.
What is this guy Harry Doubleday up to?
Further: Who is Harry Doubleday?
A simple emissary of the USIA and U.S. publishers? Not “simply” anything. Simple people weren’t likely to capture the roaring passion of Rufina’s old friend, the ultra-sophisticated Professor Ursina Chadinov.
Philby rarely did this, but after he had chewed down his breakfast roll, he went down to the ground floor, a mission in mind. He opened the door and signaled with his hand. His full-time security detail across the street would catch the signal, and act on it. He was never given a telephone number he could simply ring up in such circumstances. No matter. In less than a half hour, his case officer came up the stairs and knocked on the door.
Philby didn’t want to share his conversation with Rufina, and so he asked the case officer, Yegor, to walk back downstairs with him. There in the lobby he told Yegor he had urgent reason to check up on an American who had been doing work on the cultural exhibit in Gorky. Philby gave the name and all the details he could summon immediately to mind.
Yegor took notes.
An hour later, Yegor came back to him and said that his superior in the Lubyanka wished Comrade Martins to come by the office.
A car was waiting outside. Philby called out to Rufina to say he would be gone a little while. She called back from the living room that she was on the telephone with her brother, who complained of a terrible headache.
“Give him my best,” Philby said, grabbing his coat.
It was always so in the security world that you spoke as sparingly, even to your own colleagues, as possible. Philby was talking now to Captain Kuzmin, with the great head of black hair. Philby had no way of knowing whether Kuzmin knew anything at all about the Professor Chadinov scandal of Monday, and no reason to suspect that he might know anything.
What Kuzmin wanted to know was what had given rise to Andrei Martins’s request. A request that he had classified as urgent, to look into the KGB file on the American, Doubleday.
“Captain, you will simply need to act on my suspicions. Mine are refined suspicions. If you feel I should call on Colonel Bykov, I am of course prepared to do so.”
That had the desired effect. Colonel Bykov was not to be trifled with. Evidently he and Andrei Martins had a working relationship of some sort.
“Tell me what you want from us.”
“What I want is to know from our people in Washington: Is there a Harry Doubleday”—he paused to write out the words for the captain—“associated with the United States Information Agency in Washington? If the answer is yes, I wish to know whether Mr. Doubleday has recently traveled to Moscow, and if so, when.”
Kuzmin looked up from his notes. “That is a fairly simple assignment. We can do that. But I will need the authority of Colonel Bykov to proceed.”
“Go ahead, Captain. Tell him that Andrei Fyodorovich thinks it important.”
He was driven back to the apartment on Uspensky Street.
He found Rufina in distress. Her brother, Kostya, living in Kiev, where he worked as a curator in the museum, was suffering from a severe headache, the cause of which no one had successfully diagnosed. Kostya had been only six years old, ten years younger than Rufina, when their father died, and Rufina had helped to rear him. The siblings were very close, and twice Kostya had visited at Uspensky Street. Philby liked the studious and informal Kostya and admired his manual skills as electrician, plumber, and carpenter. He referred to him as “Comrade First Aid.”
“I may have to go to him. I can get a lower-priced ticket using my Economics Institute I.D.”
“Of course, go if you have to, Rufina.”
It passed through his mind to put in a phone call, through channels, to Artur Ivanov, whom Rufina had spoken of as the Soviet counterpart with whom Harry Doubleday had conferred on the Gorky exhibit.
But what would he say to him? “Did you notice, Artur Filippovich, anything queer about the American, Doubleday?”
“Just who is calling? What do you mean, ‘queer’?”
He ruled that out.
And what were the special powers of this Mr. Doubleday? Only Ursina could answer that question. But Rufina was right, Ursina should not be troubled. Presumably she was teetering from her experience, struggling to stand upright. She’d be under pressure from the Ministry of Culture and the security apparatus.
That was when the doorman rang up. Rufina walked down the two flights. She came back carrying a large brown envelope, her name neatly penned on it, over the Uspensky Street address. It had been delivered by messenger.
Philby was seated in his favorite armchair with a book when she opened it. She read the contents carefully. “Andrei. It’s from Harry Doubleday.”
He looked up sharply. “What does it say?”
“I’ll read it to you. ‘Dear Rufina, I am sorry I did not have an opportunity to call and say goodbye to you and to Andrei. I have to get back to America on business, but will return as soon as feasible.
“‘Rufina, you know Ursina’s condition, because she told me she had c
onfided it to you.’”
“Ursina’s condition?” Philby interrupted. “What’s that all about?”
“Ursina,” Rufina said quietly, “is pregnant.”
“You never told me that.”
“I only knew yesterday. She told me confidentially. Shall I go on?”
“Of course. Yes. Yes.”
She found her place in the letter: “‘… she told me she had confided it to you. I will certainly discharge my duties as father of her—our—’” Rufina tilted the paper to receive the daylight. “He crossed out her and wrote our. ‘… our child. Ursina told you I was flying off. I wanted to make an emergency provision and so wrote out a brief testamentary letter, which I would very much appreciate your keeping until my return. I do not wish to leave it with Ursina, because of her recent troubles with the regime. Thank you ever so much, and my best to Andrei.’”
“I assume it is some instrument conveying something or other to her and the child. Odd he couldn’t just keep it until his return.”
“Keep it with whom?”
“Well, that’s a point. Presumably not with the U.S. ambassador. ‘Dear Mr. Ambassador: I have knocked up a Russian professor. If she calls on you for help, please tender her the care owed to the pregnant party.’”
“Oh Andrei, you can be so skeptical, so cynical. I’ll put the letter in my file of family papers.” She paused. “Andrei, I take it you do not wish to discuss what it was that took you away this morning?”
“Some things we never discuss, dear Rufina. You know that.”
“Yes, that’s true. I know that, and that’s as it should be.”
At noon the next day, Philby found a cab for her. They embraced and he helped load her bag into the trunk. She was off to her sick brother in Kiev.
CHAPTER 34
The tall, lithe official in the Soviet Embassy in Washington received early in the morning the special packet of documents from Moscow, for distribution as prescribed. He read the dispatch concerning one Harry Doubleday. It was marked “For Immediate Action.”
When Mikhail Lebedev was seventeen years old, studying ballet in Kiev, he was told one morning after the class on Marxist doctrine that he was to take immediate action to correct his ongoing delinquency, which was his indifference to the finer points in Lenin’s thought. Mikhail affected to be concerned, but actually spent his time pursuing his dancing, and one day he was sent to a reform camp in Siberia, where he stayed for six years and forgot everything he ever knew about dancing. But he forgot nothing about the need to take immediate action when directed to do so.
This directive, involving one Harry Doubleday, he decided to tackle himself. It could prove quite easy to probe. It was before nine in the morning when he scanned the Washington telephone directory, then the one for nearby Virginia. He found an M. H. Doubleday in Alexandria and rang the number using the special telephone. This phone was replaced every few days, which protected against the crystallization of fingerprints in surveillance antennae.
A woman answered the ring. “Who is calling?”
“Pan American Airways, ma’am.”
“What about?”
“We have something in Lost and Found with the name Harry Doubleday on it.”
“What is it?”
“We don’t know, ma’am. We don’t open packages left by passengers.”
“Well, Mr. Doubleday is out of town. Will you leave me your number?”
Mikhail was ready. He gave her the number for Pan American. “Just ask for Lost and Found.”
“All right.”
She hung up.
Mikhail didn’t want to call the number again, not for a while, anyway. On the other hand, immediate action was what had been requested.
He cabled back to Moscow. “INFORM ME IF POSSIBLE WHEN SUBJECT FLEW FROM MOSCOW.”
In twenty minutes he had a reply. “PAN AM MOSCOW–NEW YORK, JANUARY 26, FLIGHT 27.”
It was time to contact the New York consulate. “CHECK ARRIVAL MANIFESTS, PAN AMERICAN, JANUARY 26, FLIGHT 27. WAS A HARRY DOUBLEDAY LOGGED AS ARRIVING?”
That took a little longer, but not much. “AFFIRMATIVE. SUBJECT ARRIVED.”
Mikhail shot back, “ATTEMPT ASCERTAIN IF SUBJECT LISTED ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA, AS HOME ADDRESS.”
In another half hour he heard back. “AFFIRMATIVE. 34 QUAKER LANE.”
Not good enough, Mikhail reflected. He would bring in Josey.
In forty-five minutes, a middle-aged woman, her shoulder-length gray-brown hair neatly brushed, arrived at Quaker Lane. She carried over her shoulder a navy blue tote bag, marked “Washington Post.” Josey knocked on the door of 34 Quaker Lane. An elderly woman wearing an apron came to the door, opening the top half of it.
“Good day, ma’am. We are conducting a survey—”
“It’s a cold day to be conducting surveys.”
The visitor said, “That’s real nice of you to worry about me, ma’am. That doesn’t happen every day. Some people are real nice.”
“I didn’t exactly ask you to come in. I just said it was cold.”
“Well, ma’am, if you prefer, I can just ask you these few questions standing out here. The cold isn’t bad at all.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Are you satisfied with your delivery of the Washington Post?”
“It comes in every day, don’t it? You got trouble at your end of the business?”
“No no, just making sure you’ve got no complaints.” Josey checked a line on her clipboard. “How many members of the household see the paper?”
“Just us.”
“Yes, ma’am. Just you and …”
“Me and my husband. He’s away a lot.”
The inquirer entered another check. “Do you save the paper for when your husband gets back?”
“Save it? Sometimes he’s away for two, three weeks.”
Another check mark. “Would your husband be willing to fill out a questionnaire sent to his office?”
“He don’t have an office. He works here.”
The questioner registered surprise. “I thought you said he traveled a great deal.”
“He does. He takes his office with him when he travels.”
Josey laughed indulgently. “Yes, some people do that, traveling salesmen.”
“He’s not a traveling salesman. He’s a book jobber. He sees that the bookstores have books in stock.”
Josey took a deep breath. “That must have taken him to Frankfurt last week.”
“Frankfurt? What do you mean?”
Josey seemed puzzled. “I thought everyone in the business went to the Frankfurt Book Fair.”
“Last week, until Monday of this week, my husband was here. Now he’s in Chicago.”
“Well,” Josey smiled. “I like to think that he’ll pick up the Post at the airport.”
“Hope that’s all he picks up in Chicago. Look, I’ve got housecleaning to do. You got everything you need?”
“Yes,” the visitor said. “Thank you very much. I have everything I need.”
It was just past eleven. Nineteen hundred hours, Moscow time.
It was almost nine when Philby’s telephone rang. It was Captain Kuzmin.
“We have the word from Washington. I’ll read it. It says, ‘HARRY DOUBLEDAY OF 34 QUAKER LANE ALEXANDRIA NOT SAME MAN AS SUBJECT.’”
“Thanks, Captain.”
Philby was ecstatic. His suspicions were correct. Harry Doubleday was a phony.
It was good that Rufina was away. He walked quickly to the corner of the bedroom where she kept her writing desk. He dived into the file drawer and flipped to the folder marked FAMILY. He opened it and pulled out the sealed envelope marked for Ursina.
He must be cautious, but he knew well this, the technical end of the business, and ten minutes later he was passing the envelope over the flow of steam, easing open the flap. He put the envelope on the kitchen table and pulled out the enclosure.
It was a single page, written by hand in d
ark blue ink, and witnessed by someone whose name Philby did not recognize.
He read the text. It was an averment of the writer’s love for Ursina Chadinov. A second averment acknowledged that he was the agent of her pregnancy. The last paragraph registered his intention, on his return to Washington, to confirm this instrument naming Ursina Chadinov heir to one-half of his estate.
It was signed, Blackford Oakes.
CHAPTER 35
Kim Philby had been up late. Over the years his friends, and in particular Rufina, had remarked the rages he would sometimes get into. Almost always these furors were, if not initiated by drink, intensified by it. Philby had already had several drinks when the telephone call came in from Captain Kuzmin, but before he scurried to Rufina’s desk to find and pull out the letter, he had another slug. When he slid open the letter, his hands were shaking with excitement. And then his eyes saw the name at the bottom.
He poured out a full glass of whiskey and cursed. He closed his eyes to recreate the scene of his wedding reception.—That man, surveying the books in his library, was the most renowned agent in the enemy intelligence system. The same man who had confronted, and twice outwitted, Boris Bolgin. He had been in this very room! Receiving Philby’s hospitality. And, perhaps that very same night, only blocks away, impregnating a Russian woman. A Russian woman who was his own wife’s best friend. An illustrious professor of medicine. Just a couple of kilometers away, sitting there—lying there, legs apart, screwing a woman who used to be a prime Soviet citizen. Oakes, ejaculating into her not only his seed, but also the poison of Western capitalist thought. And now he proposes to give her one-half of the capitalist wealth he has accumulated by his services to capitalism and to the arms race and to opposing the march of history.
Philby interrupted his drinking to light another cigarette.
He was very glad, the next morning, when he recovered his ability to think, glad that Rufina was not there. Her tablecloth was stained with tobacco … turd.
He wiped up the mess and prepared for himself Rufina’s potion: three cups of tea and three aspirin. He added one shot of brandy.
Last Call for Blackford Oakes Page 14
