Back Channel

by Stephen L Carter

  “Assuming she survives.”

  “That’s your responsibility, not mine.”

  “There’s more to this than you’re telling me.”

  Niemeyer was his cool, diffident self again. “Use her or don’t use her. It’s entirely up to you.”

  Harrington hated him for that, as for many other sins, and for a week pretended that she might not need GREENHILL after all. But, no matter how hard she tried, she could not come up with a plausible alternative.

  She gave in—and the rest of the operation fell into place. Within days, she had a rudimentary plan of attack. There was no point in going back to Gwynn, and so Harrington chose a tactic known in the jargon as “plowing around the tree.” She stepped outside the chain of command and, ignoring Gwynn entirely, took her brief to Higher Authority: the undersecretary, at that time the second rank in the State Department, whom she had known in London during the war.

  The undersecretary owed her a favor, and so gave her half an hour the very next afternoon.

  And listened; and said no.

  But, unlike Gwynn, the undersecretary gave reasons: Fischer is too unreliable. He needs a minder. No, his asking price is too high. No, a college sophomore is too young. Also, this particular sophomore is a girl. And a Negro. And has a radical roommate and probably smokes marijuana.

  Harrington battled back. She had built her storied career on standing her ground, and if those with whom she worked disliked her at times and resented her always, they nevertheless admired both her fortitude and her stellar record. Her magic was the string of successes she had built upon similarly shaky operations. Harrington had enjoyed a marvelous war, much of it lived behind German lines, and although nobody ever talked about the details, everybody gave her a little extra maneuvering space. True, she had had her failures as well, most spectacularly the operation known as PBFORTUNE, aimed at bringing down the Guatemalan government by assassinating key leaders. But she was still the great Harrington, and when she spoke, even Higher Authority in the end had no choice but to listen.

  Bobby was perfect, she said. The very nuttiness that had people worried made him an unlikely target of recruitment. Therefore, nobody would suspect him. As to the money, surely it was trivial when placed beside the value of the intelligence dividend.

  “What about GREENHILL?” the undersecretary asked.

  Nineteen years old was perfect, Harrington insisted. Young enough to be an idealist still, to believe that the world was fair, and therefore to take part willingly in the sort of mission that would frighten a more jaded soul out of her wits. Besides, Harrington herself had run younger agents in occupied France just twenty years ago, and not without success. “Needs must,” she said.

  The undersecretary frowned.

  Female was perfect, Harrington gushed on. GREENHILL’s gender provided natural cover as Fischer’s supposed girlfriend. Negro was perfect, because she would be so prominent and obvious that nobody would imagine for a moment that her role was covert. Here again, her youthful innocence would help, for it was precisely what was needed to pull off her dual role of bucking up Fischer and keeping her ears open: a more mature and watchful young woman would have every secret policeman in Bulgaria on her tail within minutes. Even the radical roommate was perfect, said Harrington, because—

  The undersecretary gave in.

  By formal memorandum three days later—one copy up the chain of command, another to the file, a third to the Agency, and of course a copy for Gwynn—SANTA GREEN was born. But the delivery was not without complications.

  The case was full of disturbing anomalies. Back at her desk now after briefing Margo Jensen, Harrington pondered the most troubling of them all: the body that had washed up on the shore of the East River in Flushing just this morning. It was very strange. The dead man was a habitué of the coffeehouses and chess clubs of the Lower East Side. He was also the one who had overheard Bobby Fischer one evening talking about his strange conversation on Curaçao with Smyslov, and had brought it to the attention of the proper authorities. He had apparently drowned—although how he had wound up in the river, nobody seemed to know. The remains had been in the water less than a day, but the fish had savaged his flesh.

  Harrington saw no reason to burden her agent GREENHILL with the news.

  IV

  Viktor Vaganian was sitting on a bench in Dupont Circle, polishing his gold-rimmed glasses with a cheap cotton handkerchief. At a low stone table nearby, two old men were playing chess. Viktor slipped his glasses back on and watched the game as he fed the pigeons the remains of his sandwich. He marveled at the amount of food the Americans wasted. They were awash in luxury, and yet always wanted more. He was not surprised. Their empire was young, and yet already they were spoiled. Theirs was the only industrial nation left untouched by the Great Patriotic War. Naturally, the monopolists took advantage of this position, but the deluded workers believed their corrupt politicians, who told them that their advantage was a result of the capitalist system. It was lunch hour. He watched the men and women streaming through the park and wondered whether Marx was right, that in some peculiar way America might prove immune from the socialist tide that was bound to sweep the world—and if Lenin was right that, in time, the proper form of industrial relations would have to be forced upon them.

  Some of his colleagues believed that Operation Anadyr was a necessary step in realizing Comrade Lenin’s dream. Viktor hoped that this was true. The Americans were many things—decadent, greedy, oppressed, uncultured—but they were not cowards.

  “Good afternoon.”

  Ziegler had arrived, and sat on the bench beside him, unwrapping a chicken sandwich and pretending to read a newspaper. They spoke in English, knowing that the crowds surrounding them provided the requisite anonymity.

  “They found the body,” the American continued in a murmur.

  “What body is this, please?”

  “The body of the man who heard Fischer talking about Smyslov’s message and passed it on to our intelligence people. The man you cut up and left in the East River.”

  Viktor shrugged. “He did not wish to share what he knew.”

  “He didn’t know anything. He was a conduit. And the body shouldn’t have washed up for weeks. What exactly did you call yourself doing? I thought you were a professional.”

  “Perhaps the weighting was improperly done. I shall talk to my people.”

  “I need you to do more than talk to them, Viktor. Your people, as you call them, need a little more discipline, it seems to me.”

  The man called Viktor suppressed his anger. Typical bourgeois, he reminded himself: all impatience and disapproval, full of what Comrade Stalin used to call the jargon of the huckster—the use of words for effect on the listener, without proper attention to their meaning.

  “Do you have any additional information for me?”

  “I have the particulars on our agent. They’re in my lunch bag.”

  “I have warned you what might happen to this agent at the hands of my colleagues. You will allow us to treat one of your citizens so?”

  “I told you. Your territory. Your rules.” Ziegler finished his sandwich. He brushed his hands on his shirt. “But I don’t understand what you people are doing over there. You know the message came from Smyslov. Why isn’t he arrested? I’m sure he’d tell you in two minutes who he got it from.”

  Viktor briefly removed his gold-rimmed spectacles. He marveled that so boorish a man as Ziegler could rise so high. This was among the most serious contradictions of bourgeois culture: it claimed to value music and art, but insufficiently rewarded refinement, and therefore often elevated the unrefined. Viktor suspected that the man sitting beside him had never been to the ballet in his life.

  “You have no understanding of our system,” said Viktor. He slipped the glasses back on. “You worked in intelligence, but you are subject to the same illusions as your deluded workers. We are a people’s democracy, not a police state. We have laws and procedures. We c
annot simply arrest and interrogate a man who four years ago was the chess champion of the world. In Soviet Russia, authority is divided and balanced. Smyslov has powerful protectors in the Party. This is as it should be, for he is a valuable national symbol. Until we have proof of his treachery, therefore, we must seek alternative measures.”

  “That’s a very nice speech, Viktor, but you and I both know that if you really wanted him you could get him.” Now he, too, was feeding the birds. “Because let’s remember what’s at stake here. We have a common interest.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Whoever sent Smyslov, that’s who we have to stop.”

  “We cannot arrest a man like Smyslov,” Viktor repeated, unhappily. “We cannot interrogate him. We can in certain ways inconvenience their conspiracy, but we must find the answer on this side of the ocean.”

  “I know. But look at it from our point of view. We can only cover for you so much. If you’re going to do any damage, it’s better if it’s mainly Russians who get hurt.”

  Viktor frowned. Definitely nyekulturny. Uncultured. To speak so casually about violence. Typical of the sort of man who rose to authority in a country that had never faced extermination, as the Motherland had.

  “It was you who came to us,” he said. “Not we who came to you.”

  “Because we know what the Smyslov approach means. Because we don’t trust our leaders any more than you trust yours. We didn’t know you’d be torturing our citizens!”

  Viktor wiped his hands and stuffed his napkin in the paper sack. His contact did the same. With a quick, deft motion, each wound up with the other’s bag of trash. He stood up, looking down at the uncultured American.

  “In Russia, we have a proverb,” he said. “If you’re afraid of the wolves, you shouldn’t go into the woods.”

  EIGHT

  Babysitting

  I

  “I’m thinking I might get married,” said Bobby Fischer. His high-pitched voice was defiant with uneasy confidence. “But I don’t know. Maybe I should buy a car instead. With a car, you get something for the money.”

  “Mmmm,” said Margo, wishing that the young genius would, for just a moment, shut his mouth. They were strolling along the white sands behind the looming towers of their blocky socialist-modern hotel, where, as Agatha explained, you had to tip the maid an American dollar—quite against Bulgarian law—if you wanted such rudiments as recently laundered towels. That was the rule for Westerners. Those who flocked to Varna from various landlocked Iron Curtain nations often received no housekeeping services at all.

  Agatha, Margo’s mousy little minder, who so far seemed to know everything about everything.

  “I want a Japanese wife,” Bobby continued. “Maybe Korean.” The sun was low and splendid in the cloudless afternoon sky. Margo was wearing slacks and sandals appropriate to the seashore, but Bobby was dressed in a tailored gray suit, complete with shiny hand-tooled leather shoes, white shirt, and dark tie. At nineteen, he was tall and gaunt, with a long chin and a narrow pink face that thrust itself insolently forward. His dark eyes were sparkling and intense: you could feel that remarkable brain ticking away. The ticking drew you. Bobby projected the peculiar magnetism of the rare man truly destined for greatness, and young women flocked to him wherever he went; what spoiled the aura was the words that spilled from his mouth. “American girls spend all their time at the hairdresser’s,” Bobby explained with a puzzled earnestness. “Women from Asia aren’t like that. Also, they don’t talk back. But the cost of bringing one of them to the States is about the same as the price of a car. And if I have to send her back, I’ll lose money on the deal.”

  “I can see how that might be a problem.”

  He gave her a sidelong glance, not sure whether he was being mocked. “Are colored girls like that? Regina says that segregation is unfair. We went south when I was little. Regina showed me the water fountains and everything. I guess I wouldn’t mind, if they’d let me play chess.”

  Regina being his beloved if occasionally hated mother.

  “She used to come on Radio Moscow,” he continued, in evident bewilderment. “The Russians cheated me out of the world championship—I proved it, I wrote a whole article about it in Sports Illustrated—and there was Regina, on the radio, talking about how Russia is a paradise for the workers. I mean, she used to. Who’d want to marry a woman like that? No wonder my father left. I would, too. Well, I did. I don’t let her near me any more.” He pointed to the massive hotel up the slope. “If she ever comes within six blocks of where I’m staying, I’m going home. All the organizers know that. I’m hoping she’ll try sometime and get arrested.” He brightened. “Hey, did you see my game against Unzicker? I’ll bet I win the brilliancy prize.”

  Margo was in agony. This was her sixth day in Varna, and every afternoon was the same, walking with Bobby after lunch, listening to his views, usually about his game from the day before. His shy pride could be appealing or repulsive, depending on the nuances of expression and tone. There were times when he seemed so sweetly possessive that she nearly forgot they weren’t a couple, and others when her every word annoyed him and he marched off in a huff. Margo persevered. This was why she was here. To listen to his conversations, to make her notes for Agatha, to wait until they met up with Smyslov and discovered what he was trying to tell them about Cuba: Margo Jensen, doing her patriotic duty. And the entire experience might have been almost bearable but for one small difficulty.

  Smyslov wasn’t in Varna.

  Grandmaster Smyslov had fallen ill, the Soviet captain told the assembled journalists, and had been replaced by Grandmaster Yefim Geller.

  Who, coincidentally, spoke no English.

  Nobody had shared any of this with Margo until she arrived in Varna, although she suspected that Agatha knew, because at each stop along the two-day journey they had been met by a quiet man who had pressed pages from metal briefcases into the minder’s hands, waited while she read, and locked the papers away again. The quiet men were all different, but they possessed the same rigid face and gazed at Margo with the same unashamedly suspicious eyes. One of the many reports Agatha read must have alerted her to Smyslov’s absence; she simply had chosen not to pass the tidings on to Margo.

  We follow the plan, Agatha said on the first night, after Margo read the news in the English version of the tournament bulletin. They were strolling in the surf, slacks rolled up, because, according to Agatha, even the best directional microphones were confounded by the waves.

  I thought Smyslov was the plan, said Margo.

  We don’t give up, said Agatha. We improvise. You’re going to have to stay closer.

  To Bobby? No. I can’t.

  As close as you can, honey. As close as he’ll let you. A message might still come, and he can’t be relied on to pass it to us. She raised a warning finger, then pointed at the hotel. And no names.

  Margo had reluctantly conceded the point. The crates, she reminded herself. Harrington’s briefing. Anadyr. Finding out. This was what she had signed up for. Nana would say she had a duty; for that matter, so would Professor Niemeyer.

  So Margo agreed. She would stick closer to Bobby.

  And yet Agatha’s command of the moment had come as a growing surprise. She was a small, prim woman, possessed of the inoffensive manner Margo associated with shopgirls and librarians. Agatha Milner seemed the perfect chaperone. Her brown hair was always in a bun, and she wore a pair of rimless glasses, which she called spectacles. She was perhaps thirty, although her meekness made her age difficult to judge: at times she seemed a good deal younger. Agatha was shy to the point of diffidence. She spoke little, and Margo found her singularly unimpressive, particularly in comparison with the ebullient brilliance of Dr. Harrington back at the State Department. But the quiet men who greeted them on their stops at airports and train stations all treated Agatha with an elaborate courtesy. Margo couldn’t think why. In her own world, obsequiousness of that sort usually meant that a woman was relate
d to or perhaps the wife of a powerful man, but here she sensed something else going on. They were in Vienna before the answer struck her.

  The quiet men were all afraid of mousy little Agatha.

  Margo wondered why.

  II

  “Did you see my game against Unzicker?” Fischer repeated, now in the proud-little-boy tones Margo much preferred. They were farther from the surf than she would have wished, but the beach was crowded down there, and Bobby hated crowds. “He should never have played bishop-takes on the fifteenth move, but I would have beaten him anyhow. And the rook sac at the end!” he crowed—“sac” being short for “sacrifice” in chess parlance. “You should have seen his face fall apart.”

  “It was a very nice move, Bobby,” she said, knowing what he needed. She found a smile somewhere.

  “I don’t know. Maybe my rook sac against Najdorf the other day was better. What do you think?”

  “You’re the genius, Bobby,” she said dutifully, and watched his face glow with a child’s delight.

  “We should celebrate,” he declared, not meeting her gaze. “We should have dinner. In fact, why don’t you come up to my room? I’ll order a couple of steaks. We’ll celebrate.”

  This was the sort of invitation Margo was learning to tiptoe around. “Don’t you have to get ready for the next game?”

  “Day off. Come on. You can even get wine if you want.” This reluctantly, for Bobby didn’t drink. Nor did he have much experience of the opposite sex, although another member of the American team, mistaking her, as everyone did, for Bobby’s girlfriend, had regaled her with unwanted tales of a woman they had sneaked into the young man’s room at a tournament in South America a couple of years ago. Margo had no way to tell whether a single word was true.

  As it happened, Margo had visited Bobby’s room at least once a day, according to Agatha’s strict instructions, and he had yet to behave as anything but a gentleman.

  “It would be my pleasure, Bobby,” she said, resignedly.