A Very Private Plot

by William F. Buckley

  He asked if she had any videos. She said no, but for a few rubles she would give him an address. He gave her two rubles and she pulled a pen from her bosom, a scratch pad from the counter, and wrote out an address at the Tishinsky Market. He asked for directions. She offered to sell him a map of Moscow. Smiling, he took the map from her, giving her a few kopeks. He opened the map and studied it. The address was a short cab ride away.

  There he rang the bell. It was promptly answered by a lightly clad young woman of voluptuous dimensions. She looked him over, without a word. She asked if he was a policeman, because “if so, you may know my brother. He is a policeman.” Pavel understood her point, and assured her he was not on official business. “In that case,” she said, “come in.”

  He walked into her dingy quarters, past a little utilitarian kitchen, into a bedroom. “Ten rubles for one-half hour,” she said, slipping off her blouse. Pavel stopped her. He wanted videotapes, he said.

  “Why not the real thing?” she countered.

  Pavel was embarrassed by his brief hesitation. He asserted self-control, repeated that he wished only the videos and had been told she had a supply. She buttoned her blouse, walked to a corner cupboard and asked, “How many? They are twenty rubles, each one.”

  How many did she have?

  She smiled. “As many as you have rubles to pay for.”

  He bought ten.

  This was one half of his duty. He went then to a job printer, picked out the type design, and ordered the appropriate labels. They were ready by late afternoon. At his mother’s house, in his study, he affixed the labels with care, eliminating all traces of the erotic descriptive matter.

  The following morning he appeared at the security office with a cardboard carton. It was loosely packed, so much so that it was possible to discern one of the labels on the exposed tape, a video edition of War and Peace. Pavel telephoned to the private secretary of the General Secretary, gave his name, and said that he had succeeded in accumulating the research material he had been asked for. After a moment or two he was told to come with the material at 11:10.

  Gorbachev dismissed the guard at the end of the room. Pavel approached the General Secretary, holding the carton in his left hand, saluting with his right hand.

  “At ease. You succeeded?”

  “Yes, Comrade General Secretary. And if after a while your cousin should desire more, you have only to advise me. There is a fairly large supply.” Pavel then reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope, putting it down on the desk. “The excess rubles, sir.”

  Gorbachev reached over to switch on the desk lamp. It flickered on. Then off. Then back on. “Cursed lamp. Thank you, Pogodin.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like me to get your lamp fixed?”

  “I most certainly would. I have twice asked that it be done. You may know that the wiring for this whole unit of the Kremlin is being redone. For that reason, I suppose, they have postponed fixing it effectively. If you can have it done, more power to you. I am beginning to believe you can accomplish anything, Pogodin. Perhaps I should turn foreign policy over to you.”

  “Thank you, Comrade General Secretary. I shall see to it.”

  CHAPTER 30

  OCTOBER 1986

  They assembled again on Sunday morning, as planned. It was not easy to reach Okateyvsky because huge rains coming on the heels of the big electrical storm the night before had caused flash floods. Bus drivers welcomed every opportunity to bring service to a halt, and Andrei had walked to the front of the bus and made an unambiguous threat to his driver. Intimidated, and talking loudly to the crowded bus travelers, among whom two Narodniki sat, about the high probability that they would end up spending the night in a bus stuck in the mud, he eased his vehicle over on the left bank of the road and made his way past a water trap. Pavel, coming from the south with Viktor, was a half hour late. The storm gathered force again. The four conspirators were grateful for the mounds of hay that seemed to insulate them from the pelting rain, battering against the old building’s rotting eaves.

  Nikolai, with some forethought, had wrapped a large bath towel under his shirt and he offered it now to his sodden companions, who, stripping, did what they could to get dry. Andrei undertook to light a fire in a cavity near the entrance to the stable. He took dry hay and bits and pieces of wood and then a half-dozen loose egg-sized stones. It produced a modest and welcome blaze. He dragged from the corner an old bicycle wheel and placed it over the stones. Now there was a grate of sorts, over which the especially wet clothes were left dangling to dry as Nikolai called the Narodniki to order.

  He told Pavel to recount the extraordinary experiences of the past week. He did so, leaving out the episode involving the pornographic tapes. He had given his word of honor, and although Pavel was prepared to assassinate Gorbachev, he would not dishonor a promise made to him. Pavel concluded by telling them that he had promised the General Secretary to fix his quirky desk lamp.

  “I told Nikolai about this when I went off duty on Friday. Saturday morning, I brought Nikolai to the secretary in the outer office and told her that my friend Nikolai Trimov, the electrical engineer, would need to inspect the area around the desk in order to ascertain exactly what was needed to fix the lamp. With her and a security guard closely observing him, Nikolai did so. After the inspection, Nikolai specified what he would need to do.”

  Pavel continued: “It must be done by Tuesday. We want to give the General Secretary immediate attention. I have an excuse for not getting it done tomorrow, Monday, when he will be occupying his office all day. But the General Secretary has the weekly Politburo meeting on Tuesday afternoons. I told Maritsa that my friend Trimov would come in prepared to fix the lamp when the General Secretary was absent from his office.”

  Pavel deferred now to Nikolai.

  Nikolai turned to another point. Inasmuch as none of his companions had advised him to the contrary, he said, he assumed that each had made his own escape plans.

  Viktor said his plans were made but that his forger would not actually give him his documents until he paid for them. Nikolai turned inquiringly to Pavel.

  “Yes, yes, I’m sorry. I should have begun with that.” He reached into his sack and pulled out three hefty manila folders, giving one each to his companions. “Three thousand rubles,” he said, with a routine voice. “My dear mother’s jewels are indeed worth well over one hundred thousand. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are worth twice that, even more.”

  Nikolai said he thought it appropriate to thank Pavel. “Perhaps one day we can make it up to your mother.”

  Pavel replied, “You will make it up to her in full on Tuesday afternoon. Nikolai will explain. Though God knows,” he laughed heartily, “what would happen to my dear mother if after the Soviet Union were overthrown and Restoration declared, they failed to tender me the throne.”

  The laughter was general and their perspectives returned. The bourgeois debt to Pavel and to his mother faded in importance.

  Nikolai spoke again. “You are not electricians, and you needn’t know in detail what I plan. Suffice it to say this, that a) if Gorbachev leaves his office, b) if the Kremlin’s electrical utility workshop has in it what I am almost certain are parts of its regular inventory, c) if the Kremlin security leave me alone under the desk, then d) I will proceed to wire the metal rosette handle that pulls the drawer open to a strip of copper under the drawer, so that anyone who pulls on the handle and simultaneously on the bottom of the drawer will receive a mortal load of current. I have gone through all the motions. I know exactly what I have to do under the desk, the measurements I need to make before going to the workshop. Pavel will accompany me, explaining to anyone, as required, what it is we are doing. Pavel has the complete confidence of Comrade Maritsa, who dominates that office. The desk’s front is solid, so that what I am doing when on my back in the desk’s kneehole will not be visible to any of the security wandering about.”
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br />   “What if he comes back in less than one hour?”

  “I am in a position simply to fix the connection and leave undone the electrocuting link.”

  Viktor wanted to know if anyone was likely to bring about a premature electrocution.

  “It is unlikely that anyone would sit in the chair of the General Secretary and then, one, slide open the drawer, and two, tug at the drawer from the base. There would be no need to tug at it until I bind it to make it stick. These simultaneous acts are necessary to cause the electrocution.”

  There was a general silence.

  Nikolai went on. “Pavel and I will leave the Kremlin together, and separate. From his mother’s house, Pavel will telephone to Viktor, who will report to his contact that the plan has been consummated. That is vital. We do not know any details, but we must assume that Viktor’s all-important contact has a cadre that will take the assassination as the signal to move for immediate reforms. Andrei and I will go our separate ways. No one of us knows the plans of any of the others. And that is as it should be.”

  They were silent. The rain had stopped and the wood splinters in the fire continued to crackle.

  “Perhaps,” Nikolai said, “we will one day all meet, in this … venerable building.” He smiled.

  They gathered up their clothes. Nikolai started to leave, but stopped and embraced his fellow Narodniki, each in turn; then, wordlessly, each walked out toward the bus stop, at five-minute intervals.

  CHAPTER 31

  JUNE 1995

  You checked it with Mitchell?”

  “Yes. Yes sir.”

  “And of course Dole and Moynihan and Boren?”

  “I regret to tell you, Senator. Not only will they go along, that phone call made them happy men.”

  “I need happy women too. Okay with Roberta, I assume?”

  “Oh sure. Needless to say, the whole committee is for it.”

  “Anything beyond thirty days begins to look like cruel and unusual punishment. But you know something, Arthur, I think the defiance by Blackford Oakes is in a funny way working for us. Sure, we’re preparing to let him out of jail even though he won’t testify—so theoretically he hasn’t purged the contempt that put him in there. But the punishment imposed on him affirms the rights of congressional investigating committees. There are people out there, I have a feeling—Alice, for instance, feels exactly this way—who are thinking that, okay, so the great Blackford Oakes will not tell us what we want to know, even though we stick him in jail. So we let him out—he wins that one. But, we win the big one! By passing a bill that denies the Executive the authority to authorize covert activity. So that Blackford Oakes’s keeping the secrets to himself, Cyclops especially, gets him—exactly where? So his secret is still secret—it’ll come out one day, you bet. But his tactics, which were clearly designed to obstruct the legislation he opposes, will not be permitted to prevail. See what I mean?”

  “I do, Senator.” Blaustein was a little put off by the disorderly thought of the orderly chairman. But it was momentary, surely. “I see what you mean. And you may very well be right.”

  “Did you see the MacNelly cartoon in the paper this morning?”

  Arthur Blaustein had seen it, but he pretended he hadn’t.

  “You remember that, protesting against the Mexican War, Thoreau committed an act of civil disobedience and they put him in jail. The next day Emerson visited him, spoke to him through the prison bars.

  “‘Thoreau, what are you doing in there?’

  “‘Emerson, what are you doing out there?’

  “Well, you can imagine what MacNelly did with that. I’m the Emerson, and Oakes the Thoreau. The trouble is, with these funny cartoons, nobody submits them to any reasoned analysis. MacNelly is saying, in effect, that everyone who opposes covert action ought to be in jail, like Thoreau. Isn’t that the plain meaning of what that cartoon says?”

  “Well, Senator. Not exactly that. But I see what you mean.”

  Hugh Blanton decided to drop it. He picked up the Wall Street Journal. “See this? The editorial that ends, ‘Somebody should engage in a little covert action and escort Senator Blanton and his dream team into the real world, but to accomplish that would require an effort on the order of a Manhattan Project or Normandy landing.’”

  “Senator, the Wall Street Journal is on the wrong side of every issue, so why should you be surprised?”

  “Well, that’s true. Arthur. Let’s quickly go over it, one more time.

  “At two-thirty I ask for the floor. Gore’s been tipped off to be in the chair, and the leak’s got around about springing Oakes. I think we’ll have a pretty full house. The senators want to be able to say they voted to let Jack Armstrong out of jail.

  “So. At two-thirty I announce to the Senate that, speaking for a unanimous committee, I call on the honorable senators to vote to release Blackford Oakes from prison. We are not”—Senator Blanton was suddenly addressing the full Senate chamber, not just Arthur Blaustein, his chief counsel—

  “We are not expunging the contempt of Mr. Oakes, fellow senators. No. We have made our point, that when a duly constituted committee of Congress seeks information on the basis of which it can most responsibly recommend a piece of legislation, we need—we are helped by—the cooperation of expert witnesses. We have made our point. Mr. Oakes chose an act of constitutional defiance. It is the judgment of the committee which I have the honor to serve as chairman that two insights have crystallized during the past thirty days. The first is that the integrity of the Constitution and of this body has been affirmed. The second is that the legislation sought by the committee majority by no means stands or falls on the basis of what one man, one civil servant who has worked many years for the Central Intelligence Agency—on what one man can contribute to the argument. It does not matter, really, what Mr. Oakes now does. What matters is that the United States guard against the corruption of the basic democratic practice of open covenants, responsible deeds, accountability.”

  Blaustein thought it wise to break in. “But before you get into your bill, you’ll let them vote on Oakes, won’t you, Senator?”

  “Oh yes. Of course. So I’ll do that. ‘I therefore move that Senate Resolution such and such voted on such and such a day’—you have those citations in my manuscript, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So the vote is taken. It will be unanimous.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Why? Who?”

  “Senator Wellstone loathes the CIA in general, and Oakes in particular.”

  “What did Oakes do to Paul?”

  “Senator Wellstone appeared with Oakes on the MacNeil-Lehrer show a few months ago, on the general subject of intelligence activity. Oakes’s demolition of the senator’s arguments was not covert.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I remember reading about that. That was … incautious of Paul. It should have been I, not he, on that program. You need to know how to take care of yourself in this business, Arthur.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right then, we’ll have a virtually unanimous vote to let Oakes out. I will then say that I am introducing a bill to prohibit covert activity by any branch of government. I’ll make the arguments, which are not difficult to make, and which appeal to the basic sense of decency of American legislators. I will then read the concise table of historical atrocities we’ve assembled—that will take, I figure, oh, twenty minutes—”

  “More likely forty.”

  “All right, forty. Then we’ll do the historical bit, the long struggle against secrecy, et cetera—about fifteen minutes. Then I’ll read a list of organizations backing us and Nobel Prize laureates—how many of them do we have lined up to support us?”

  “Four hundred and thirty-six.”

  “I didn’t know there were that many laureates.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  “Then I’ll give them the final crusher: the enormous leverage imprudent acts can have in a nuclear age. And that’s wh
en I’ll hit them with the Gorbachev bit. That he actually considered a nuclear demonstration strike, to the best of our knowledge, though we cannot pin that one down.”

  “If anything will do it, that ought to.”

  “Right. And we’ll do the usual pleading against a filibuster. It won’t work. We’re going to have to win this one after a filibuster. All right. So we have to fight. The civil rights struggle took a hundred years. “We’re prepared to give it a hundred hours—right, Arthur?”

  “Right,” Blaustein said wearily. “Right on, Senator.”

  CHAPTER 32

  OCTOBER 1986

  Seated in his office, Blackford waited patiently for Kathy to call back. She did so, an hour later. He listened.

  “So that’s the way it is?” Blackford’s voice was grave.

  After she replied, he said, “Well. Thanks, Kathy. I’ll be in touch.”

  The presidential rebuke ringing in his ears, he drove his car out of the space reserved for it and headed for Westminster, an hour’s drive north of Langley.

  He had arrived from Moscow late the afternoon before, had a long talk with Sally in Mexico and a few happy words with Tony. What exactly were his plans? He couldn’t say, exactly, at this point …

  Sounds like the old days?

  Well, not quite, but there is something rather important … Yes, I suppose I have said that kind of thing before …

  And then he tried to read the Sunday paper, but soon went into a fitful sleep. He must be at his office early enough to file his request for a presidential audience, a top priority.