Back Channel

by Stephen L Carter

  “Yes. It’s from a man named—”

  “His name is irrelevant. His letter will contain demands, questions, threats. It is the same as the leaflet from the fascist occupier. I refused to read the ravings of the fascists then. I refuse to read them now.”

  III

  Margo was perplexed. Jack Ziegler’s warnings bubbled through her mind. “Please, Mr. Fomin. All I’m asking is that you take the letter. Whether you read it is up to you.”

  “No.”

  “But we’re not the Nazis. We’re not the fascist occupier. We—”

  “It makes no difference how you see yourselves. To me, to those who love Mother Russia, you are the Main Enemy, and you shall remain the Main Enemy until your ultimate defeat. For the moment we are collaborating, because the time is not right for the final battle. But make no mistake. When we are ready, at a time of our choosing, the battle will come. In the meanwhile, Miss Jensen, I have no interest in your internecine struggles.” His voice softened. “Listen to me. I have no doubt that pressure was brought upon you to force you to cooperate with whoever wrote the letter. It is my advice that you ignore the pressure. Their intimidation is a tactic. If it fails, they will choose another.”

  She shook her head. “I wish I could believe that.”

  “You are a brave woman, Miss Jensen. That you would wish no harm to those you love is not what distinguishes you. What distinguishes you is the ability to soldier on despite those risks.”

  “But—”

  “I ran the réseau for eight months, Miss Jensen. I courted the daughter of a local tradesman. I received the permission of her father to marry her when the war concluded. Shortly after the celebration of our engagement, I was recalled to Moscow, to be sent to a different theater to build a new réseau. It was difficult leaving my beloved, but I was a soldier. The Nazis were in full retreat. I went about my duties in another theater, sustained by the knowledge that the war would soon end, and I would be united once more with my beloved. After the surrender, I returned to the village to find her. But the village no longer existed. The fascist invader had taken revenge as he left, Miss Jensen. The Nazis had arrested the young woman and her father and her mother and her two older brothers and her three younger sisters. Then they burned the surrounding farms. Only one of the younger girls was left alive, and she was horribly disfigured. The rest died, Miss Jensen, none pleasantly. My fiancée was not among the survivors. Nevertheless, I performed my duty, and the war was won. My loss was not inconsiderable, but it was only a tiny piece of a catastrophe that swept the nation. I was a soldier, and, if called upon to defend the Motherland, and knowing the costs in advance, I would do the same again.” His gaze was bright and intense. “Threats to your loved ones are not uncommon. Most likely they are bluffing.”

  Bluffing. So much of Niemeyer’s course was about bluff and counter-bluff. And the purpose of bluffing, as he endlessly reminded them, was not always to fool the adversary; the true purpose was to keep the adversary uncertain. And in the case of Jack Ziegler—

  “Suppose they’re not bluffing,” she said.

  “It can make no possible difference. We are fighting one war to avoid another. It is the fate of the world we hold in our hands.” He turned away, the subject of Jack Ziegler’s letter closed. “Now. I assume that you have a counter-proposal for me.”

  Margo swallowed. She felt teary, yet another part of her mind wondered whether any part of Fomin’s story was true.

  “I do,” she said.

  “Please present it.”

  She did, explaining it just as Kennedy had explained it to her: that his advisers wanted him to retaliate for the downing of the U-2; that he was prepared to withhold the attack if Khrushchev would offer a gesture of good faith; that a deal was still possible if Friday’s offer to remove the missiles from Cuba in return for his promise not to invade remained on the table; and that any exchange of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy was out of the question.

  “I see,” said Fomin when Margo was done. “Your President’s proposal, then, is that we remove the missiles and get nothing in return? Does he understand that the Comrade General Secretary would fall at once from power?”

  “The President said to remind you that it was Khrushchev himself who made the offer on Friday.” She steeled herself. “And there’s something else. Before a deal can be reached, the President wants to be sure that he is in fact dealing with Khrushchev.”

  “What assurances can I offer?”

  “I don’t know. But the President asked me to convey the importance of that condition. If you cannot persuade him by this time tomorrow that he is indeed dealing with the General Secretary, there will be no deal.”

  “That would mean war, Miss Jensen.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Margo. “It would.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Whom Do You Trust?

  I

  It was nearly eleven, but Margo’s night was far from over. This time there was no Warren waiting to drive her. She wondered what had become of him: was he a conspirator, or had the conspirators gotten rid of him? But she had more immediate concerns.

  She needed advice; and help.

  She knew better than to call the emergency number, and she had no doubt that Dr. Harrington’s house would be under surveillance. So she found a phone booth on Constitution Avenue, near the federal courthouse, and called the only other person she could think of.

  Jerry Ainsley listened for thirty seconds, then told her to stop talking.

  “Do you remember where I took you a week ago Friday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Find a taxi. Go straight there. Wait for me inside, near the front, where it’s bright and crowded.”

  “When will you be there?”

  “As soon as I can. I have to check a couple of things first.”

  II

  This time he took her from the diner to his apartment, a high-ceilinged second-floor walk-up near American University. She supposed that the building had once been a single mansion. There were three rooms, and a balcony overlooking an interior courtyard where the shrubbery had missed its autumn trimming, and probably its spring trimming, too. They sat at the kitchen table while she told him the story. He listened quietly, occasionally freshening her tea, and she could feel the tight attentiveness in his strange, orangey eyes. She had the sense that, had she asked, Jerry Ainsley could have quoted her testimony word for word.

  When she was done, he stood and stretched and went over to the sink to put more water in the kettle. “Those bastards,” he said. “How could they put you in this position?”

  “I volunteered.”

  “They manipulated you.” He turned on the flame. “They’ve been manipulating you since day one.”

  “This isn’t about me.” Margo was surprised at her own umbrage. “It’s about the missiles in Cuba.”

  “Tell that to Jack Ziegler.” A thought struck him. “How much do you know about him, anyway?”

  “I know I don’t like him very much.”

  “Well, just wait until you know him better. You won’t like him at all.” Jerry Ainsley’s toothy grin had the same New England charm as the President’s. “I’ve known him for a while, Margo. And what I can tell you about him is that he’s a carrion eater.” He saw her blank look. “You know. A beast that lives off of what more powerful carnivores leave behind. If you’re encountering the Jack Zieglers of the world, that means somebody with an awful lot of influence is out to get you.” Then he asked the question she least anticipated. “Have you and the President been intimate?”

  Margo blinked. She could not possibly have heard him correctly. “I beg your pardon.”

  “You and Kennedy. The affair’s a fake, right? It’s not real? There’s nothing to it?”

  “Of course it’s not real. Why would you ask that?”

  “Wait here.” He went into the next room and returned a moment later with the late edition of the Evening Star. He flipped a couple of pages. “Have yo
u seen this?”

  She looked, and looked again. There was even a photograph of poor Erroll Haar, lying bloody in the street.

  “They’re setting you up, Margo,” he said as she continued to stare.

  “Setting me up for what?” she asked, faintly. Two men who bothered her, she kept thinking. Two hit-and-run accidents.

  “Lots of people know about the affair. Okay, okay.” Holding up a hand. “Fine. It’s not a real affair. But people think it is. It’s an open secret, Margo. And the FBI knows that this guy bothered you the other day. The FBI knows, and, well, some of the people who do what I do—we also know. Are you with me?”

  “Yes.” Faintly.

  “Now, I don’t think for a moment that the Secret Service would let anybody follow Kennedy around with a camera and take pictures through the window. That means your own people leaked it. Maybe Bundy’s people. Are you following me?”

  “I—I had the same thought after I met him. Mr. Haar.”

  “Good. Now, let’s work backward.” Jerry leaned against the sink, folding his arms. “Think about it, Margo. Tonight is the crucial night. The key offer that you’re bringing to Fomin, the key questions—that’s all tonight. And today just so happens to be the day Haar is killed. And tonight just happens to be the night that Ziegler tries to wreck the negotiation. That’s not coincidence. That’s planning.”

  “You’re saying they know what’s going on in the White House? Not just when I’m meeting Fomin, but what messages I’m carrying? Because the President says the only people who know the details are him and his brother and Mr. Bundy.”

  “Are you very sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Ainsley was seated across from her again. He took her hands. “Margo. Do you mind if I call you Margo? Listen. Carefully. I’ve asked you not to tell me the content of any of the messages you’ve carried between the President and Fomin. And I still don’t want you to do that.” His grip tightened. Those peculiar pupils, seen so close, were a fiery gold. She flinched away as his gaze bored into hers. “What I do want you to do is to think about tonight’s conversation with Jack Ziegler. Was there anything in it—anything at all—that would suggest that he knows what’s in those messages?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “He said Kennedy was being duped, and he said Fomin’s people weren’t close to Khrushchev, but he didn’t say anything about the actual content of the back-channel negotiations. I think he was fishing.”

  “And you didn’t tell him anything?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t even admit knowing Fomin.”

  Jerry let go of her hands. “Good. Very good. Then the reason he intercepted you tonight has to do with another aspect of the crisis, external to the messages. But somebody sent him. Somebody chose tonight.” Ainsley was on his feet again, the sort of active man who thought best in motion. He was very different now from the foppish diplomatic fixer she’d met in Bulgaria. “Let’s go out on the balcony.”

  III

  The balcony was cramped, aging concrete with a cast-iron rail. The furniture was modern and cheap—folding chairs, plastic straps stretched over chrome frames. Her coat was buttoned tightly against the night chill.

  “Jack Ziegler used to be one of our traveling salesmen,” Ainsley resumed. “Do you know what that means? No? It means he wouldn’t have a permanent overseas assignment with diplomatic cover, like I did in Bulgaria. He’d go where he was needed. To fix problems that arise. I can’t give you more details, but you get the picture. Men who do what Ziegler does typically are fluent in two or three languages, and understand more than a smattering of two or three more. He left the Agency a couple of years ago. I haven’t kept track of him, but it sounds like he’s a freelancer now. And he’s very good at his work, so I’m told. Young to be so prominent—I think he’s just thirty—but he has quite a reputation, let me tell you. He’s not a man you want as an enemy, Margo, believe me.” He glanced at her. He had poured himself a Scotch, but she was sticking with tea. “What I’m saying is, if you back out now, I don’t think anybody will have cause to blame you.”

  “Back out?” Despite her exhaustion, she sat up straighter. “You’re telling me to abandon the negotiations? What are you, the good cop?”

  He laughed. “Before you start accusing me of being part of the conspiracy, let me clarify. As it happens, I don’t think you should back out. I think what you’re doing is heroic, and, obviously, important. But if you decide to go a different way, I would respect that decision. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “And who’d carry the messages?”

  “I’m sure they’d think of something.”

  “Fomin says I’m the only one he trusts.”

  “He might even be telling the truth.” A long swallow. “But he lies for a living, Margo. Who knows what he really thinks? The point is, if Ziegler and his patron had decided to make you disappear tonight, I very much doubt that the negotiations would have ended. Slowed down, maybe, while they worked out the details. But not ended.”

  She remembered the desperation in Bundy’s manner the night they first met, a thousand years ago. “I’m not so sure,” she said. “I think if anything happened to me Fomin might run for cover.”

  “So—you’re going on?”

  She swallowed. Nodded.

  “Okay. You can stay here tonight. No, no, don’t argue. I need to be able to keep an eye on you. Just in case. And don’t worry about your roommate. I’m sure she’ll assume … Well, we both know what she’ll assume. Sorry, Margo. That’s the role you took on when you said yes.”

  Another nod. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “You told the President what happened to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Bundy will probably have somebody keep an eye on her. Not out of altruism—they just can’t afford to have you scared off. Now. What else? I have a colleague checking, very quietly, to see if anything has befallen a Secret Service agent whose first name or last is Warren. That was one of the things I had to do before I picked you up tonight. I’ll also arrange for somebody to keep an eye on your grandmother for the duration, although it’s possible that Bundy has already thought of that. I wouldn’t take Ziegler’s threat too seriously—probably he was just trying to scare you. Still, it pays to be sure.”

  She sagged with relief. And dizzying gratitude at the swiftness with which he had assumed control. If he was one of the bad guys, then so be it. She was tired of fighting alone.

  Meanwhile, Ainsley was still laying out the rules. “Tomorrow I’m going to drive you to meet Fomin, because, for all we know, there are Secret Service people who are part of this. And I’ll also be driving you to meet the President afterward.”

  “Fomin won’t be able to reach me with the meeting time.”

  “You can call your roommate and ask if there were any messages.”

  “I’ll need clothes.” She swallowed. “A—a fancy dress. To meet the President.”

  “We’ll buy whatever you need.”

  “It’s Sunday,” she said. “What if I want to go to church?”

  They both knew she was now raising objections for the sake of raising objections, but Ainsley treated it seriously.

  “There’s a Bible on the shelf. You can pray here if you want.” He stood. “Come. Let’s go inside.”

  The bedroom was small but pristinely kept. She was increasingly nervous, and again thought of Nana. She had never spent the night in a man’s apartment.

  “Thank you for helping me,” she said.

  “Dr. Harrington thinks the world of you,” he answered. He was at the closet, pulling out towels, a bathrobe, a nightshirt. “That counts for a lot with me.” He set everything on the narrow bed. “Besides, what you’re doing is vital. I’m not particularly interested in seeing the world blown to bits.”

  She smiled.

  “Well, thank you anyway,” she said, and, to her surprise, got up on her toes and pecked him lightly on the cheek.

  “I’ll be rig
ht outside,” he said, crisply. “If anything bothers you—a bad dream, some sound outside the window, anything—give a holler.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep.”

  “You’ll sleep fine, Margo. Don’t worry.”

  “May I ask you one more question?”

  He was like a man on a mission, forcing patience upon himself as once again departure was postponed. “Of course.”

  “How well do you know Dr. Harrington?”

  “I’d never met her before last Friday.”

  “But you said you admire her.”

  “No. I said that her endorsement of you means a lot.” He was checking that the window was locked. “Doris Harrington has quite a reputation, Margo. She’s not an easy woman to impress.”

  “Agatha admires her a lot.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Because they’re both women?”

  “Because they’re both killers.” His voice had gone cold. “I know, I know. You think everybody who works for the CIA can kill ten Commies with a swipe of a pinkie. But that’s not the way it works, even in Plans Directorate. There are people who do what most of us do, and then there are people who do what Agatha does. She kills with her bare hands, Margo. She’s very good at it.”