Last Call for Blackford Oakes

by Buckley, William F. ;

  “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.’”

  All of that was carefully done. Even so, Nina was apprehensive on the Monday and Tuesday before the train trip of Tuesday evening.

  She would not tell Aleksei what was contemplated until after reaching Leningrad. A friend would meet the train, ostensibly an old friend of the family. The driver would take them not to Grandmama’s, but to a lodging house.

  Inevitably she heard from her son, “Why aren’t we staying with Grandmama?”

  “I will tell you later.”

  She did tell him, during a walk in the park. She could easily have given him her secrets right there, at the little inn at Durkha Place 40. But habit, years and years of the fear of being tapped, governed her practices in daily life.

  “Alyosha,” she said, sitting down on a bench and savoring the spring air, “we are going to join your father in Vienna,
but we will not be able to travel there by conventional routes.”

  “We are escaping?”

  She should not have been surprised. Aleksei quickly penetrated circumlocutions and dissimulation.

  “Yes. We are escaping. Your father is a very important man, and the authorities will not permit this to happen if they can help it. That is why we are staying at a little inn. And we will not even be visiting Grandmama. We do not wish to leave any trail, in case the KGB explores our whereabouts.”

  Aleksei was dismayed at leaving his school and his friends and, especially, his ten-year collection of airplane lore. But he sensed the tension of the moment and resolved to say nothing that might distract, or disappoint, his mother. So he said, “Let us hope to be soon with Papa.”

  Seated on the park bench, still wearing a winter coat and hat, addressing her son, who wore his long jacket and his aviator’s cap, ear muffs hanging loose around his neck, Nina informed him of her detailed plans.

  “You are to go to the ticket office of the Helsinki Ferry. If you follow this street”—she pointed—“to the square, you will see the bus station. Take a harbor bus. At the Finland Line, purchase two tickets to Helsinki on the ferry leaving tomorrow at 3 P.M. Here,” she handed the leather packet to him, “is my passport and money. You have your own passport. If they ask any questions, tell them you and your mother are going on a visit of only a few days. Be certain to ask for round-trip tickets. When you have the tickets, find your way back to where we are staying. Do you remember the address?”

  Aleksei smiled at her, impatiently.

  “Where?” his mother teased.

  “We are at Durkha Place 40.”

  “Of course, darling. I knew you’d remember the address.”

  “Mama, do you think we could visit where Grandpapa the aviator, my papa’s father, lived?”

  “No, dear. I don’t even remember the address. And your Titov grandparents are long dead.”

  “That’s too bad. I would have loved to talk to my grandfather about his days as a pilot.”

  “One day you will fly in an airplane.”

  “Like traveling from Helsinki to Austria? Of course! There’s hardly any other way to get there!” He thought to tease her in turn. “Maybe when I buy the tickets to Helsinki, I should also ask for air tickets from Helsinki to Vienna?”

  She batted him over the head with her glove.

  CHAPTER 55

  Aleksei set out briskly for the bus station. His mother had told him not to dally. He took her instructions so seriously that when the bus to the harbor drove by the widely advertised History of Soviet Aviation exhibit at the Leningrad Museum, he did not jump off the bus or even change his seat. He passed the museum by wistfully, but feasting, as the bus made its way, on large photographs and artistic depictions of MiG, Yak, and Su fighters.

  He had got from the concierge at the inn a small street map of the city and followed the route of the bus as it headed north, stopping to pick up and discharge passengers.

  The city seemed to him livelier than similar apartment and office blocks in Moscow. Perhaps it was the spring, and what it does to animal spirits. The great palaces, he learned from the guide printed on the back of his map, were, some of them, already open for tourists, and others would be opened in the early weeks of May. Peter’s Palace and Catherine’s Palace were special favorites of visitors, he read.

  But that would be for another day. He took his responsibility gravely and, alighting from the bus, he walked with steady pace toward the ships and ferries he had spotted, a hundred meters from where the bus stopped.

  He could make out the painted Finland Line sign and walked to the door, wedged open in celebration of the warm weather. Twenty people, most of them elderly, were in line outside the single window in the high-ceilinged room. He wondered idly why there should be a full ten feet of space above his head. He speculated that, in years gone by, resourceful travelers voyaging to Helsinki might have taken their own horse carriages on board. That would have been fun!—leaving St. Petersburg with your two horses and getting off the next day in Helsinki with your two horses.

  The line was moving, and he reached the window. “Two round-trip tickets to Helsinki, with reservations for the departure tomorrow at 3 P.M.,” he said to the elderly woman at the window. She was wearing heavy glasses, and had a sweater wrapped around her shoulders.

  “Passports.”

  He pulled them out of his mother’s packet.

  “Open return date?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  She returned the passports, took his money, and fed out two strips of tickets.

  Aleksei pocketed them and walked back to the door, stepping outside. Two men took hold of him, one on his right shoulder, the second on the left. One of them—he could not identify which—said: “Show me your passport.”

  “Who authorized you to see my passport?”

  This was acknowledged by a kick to his left leg of stunning force. Aleksei found himself clutching the jacket of the man on his left just to stay standing. The pain eased. One man held him upright, the other frisked him until he found the leather folder in his jacket pocket. The man opened it, looked into a passport, and said: “Well, well. Aleksei Lindberghovich Titov.” He turned to his fellow officer: “Vanya, we’ve got here the son of the great scientist Lindbergh Vissarionovich Titov. And look, the boy has his mother’s passport too.”

  Aleksei, limping along, was half dragged to a waiting car and, a few minutes later, into a large concrete building painted, though not recently, gray. There was an official at the desk on the ground floor, but Aleksei’s guards walked right by him, without comment, into a hallway. They rang for the elevator and took him down to a lower floor into a windowless room. Its furniture was a long sturdy desk at one end and a single upright chair in front of it. One guard maneuvered Aleksei over to the chair, and then pushed him down onto it.

  Minutes later, a short, stocky man appeared, his black hair swept back, a collar, which appeared to be black velvet, open at his throat. He sat down and motioned to the guards to leave the room.

  “Ah then, Aleksei Lindberghovich Titov. You were intending, with your mother, to flee the country.”

  Aleksei and his mother had not prepared for this interlude. Aleksei improvised. “We were going for a brief visit to Helsinki, sir.”

  “So. Who was going to take you around, when you arrived in Helsinki?”

  Aleksei hesitated. “My mother has friends.” He was encouraged by his improvisation, and decided to expand on his answer. “A schoolmate of my mother’s.”

  “How convenient to have schoolmates in foreign countries where you plan to travel.”

  “Yes, comrade.”

  “And where is your father?”

  “He is in Vienna, comrade. He is a scientist.”

  “Yes, we know that. Was he by any chance going to meet you in Helsinki?”

  Aleksei had given no thought to this possibility. But then he remembered the promised flight—his first flight—from Helsinki to Vienna. “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “Why don’t you think so?”

  He could hardly say that he expected to fly to Vienna. “I think my mother would have told me.”

  “Where is your mother?”

  He knew intuitively that the challenge lay ahead. “I don’t know, comrade.”

  “What address are you staying at in Leningrad?”

  “I don’t remember, comrade.”

  The interrogator reached into a drawer and brought out a black instrument, the length of his forearm. He pushed the buzzer on his desk and the two guards reappeared. “Hold him over the table.”

  One guard pulled Aleksei by the left shoulder, the second by the right shoulder, bringing him over the right end of the desk. They stretched his arms tight over the opposite end. His buttocks protruded over the edge.

  The officer in charge stood and walked to the left of Aleksei. He brought full force to the blow on the buttocks. Th
is brought a cry from Aleksei and a jolt from his hips.

  “Tighter,” the lieutenant said.

  Aleksei’s face was jammed onto the desk top. The lieutenant struck him again. Again Aleksei cried out. But he said nothing.

  The lieutenant paused. With his finger, he pointed at Aleksei’s waist. The first guard knew what that meant. While the other held him down, he moved to Aleksei’s side and yanked down on his belt. But Aleksei was well built, and his pants did not slide off. The guard reached around Aleksei’s waist and felt his way to the buckle, unfastening it. Now he succeeded, pulling the boy’s pants down, and then his underwear. Aleksei lay naked below the waist, two great welts on his backside.

  “That’s better.” The lieutenant struck again. There was another cry, this one more shrill.

  “Are you going to tell me where to find your mother?”

  Aleksei forced himself to think of Charles Lindbergh. He was over mid-Alantic and had fallen asleep, and recovered himself only just in time to keep from crashing into the water. He had met the challenge, the pain of keeping himself awake. But had Lindbergh’s pain been so intolerable? Did Lindbergh weep? Were there tears? Aleksei was weeping and began to cry out, as yet another blow struck him with violent impact. Would he simply pass out? The truncheon struck again, and Aleksei gasped out, “She is in Leningrad.”

  The lieutenant struck him yet again.

  Aleksei found it difficult to speak, but the guard on the left said he could make it out. “She is staying at Durkha Place 40.”

  “Take him away. Come then to me, and bring the car.”

  CHAPTER 56

  The envelope, marked “To be opened only by Soviet Ambassador,” was brought to Ambassador Arkady Luzhin just after nine in the morning. His aide, on handing it over, said, “I thought I should not interfere with this. It could be from him.”