“Do you suppose, Mr. Oakes, that the Russians will deal that way with Axel? Will they decide they might as well let Axel have East Germany?”
Blackford reflected that nobody in Washington had trained him to deal with such as Countess Wintergrin. He mobilized himself to attempt a reply to her impossible question, then decided to sidestep it. Instead, he asked:
“Tell me, Countess. What was wrong with Mlle. Lachaise? She must have been a brute.”
“Mlle. Lachaise? Now let me see. Which one was that? She was not Mlle. Bouchex. No. And she wasn’t Mlle. Longueville. No. Mlle. Lachaise … I can’t really remember. When Axel comes, we must ask him.”
Blackford very nearly panicked. “No no, thank you very much, Countess. It doesn’t really matter. I’m sure Count Wintergrin had good reasons, whatever they were.”
“Oh, indeed, Mr. Oakes. Axel always had good reasons. It’s just that other people don’t always know what those good reasons are. I’m sure that’s true of you, Mr. Oakes. I am sure you have good reasons for being here.”
Axel Wintergrin strode into the room, leaned over to give his mother a light kiss on the forehead, then extended his hand to the visitor. He was dressed in his favorite rust-colored tweed, and though the jacket was unbuttoned, the trimness of his body was evident. He took a biscuit absent-mindedly from the tray on the table and sat down, extending his long, thin hand to take the cup and saucer the butler handed him.
“It is very good to meet you, Mr. Oakes. Good evening, Mother.”
“Good evening, darling.”
“You are most welcome, Mr. Oakes”—he spoke in English. As fluent as Blackford’s, though the accent was British. Not surprisingly, there was a trace there of the distinctive Greyburn slur—“as I hope I have made clear. In due course we’d have attended to the church ourselves. But it would have been a long time. Perhaps ten or fifteen years from now. Even the Russians, who can conscript their laborers and their artists, are talking in terms of twenty-five years to rebuild all their palaces in Leningrad. It is irrelevant that the liquidation of the state as promised by Karl Marx will be delayed even longer. The gesture of your government, in any case, is greatly appreciated. You are familiar with my father’s book?”
“Yes, I am. An admirable work. I trust one day it will be translated into English.”
“You anticipate me, Mr. Oakes. It is my intention to subsidize a translation in a memorial edition dedicated to the American people when the rebuilding is done.”
“Dear Axel”—the countess rose, upon which the two men followed suit—“forgive me. You have matters to discuss with Mr. Oakes. I have matters to discuss with my cook. So nice of you to come, Mr. Oakes.” She extended her hand, but drew it back with that abruptness of the European who suddenly recalls that it will not be kissed, because the gentleman is American and doesn’t … know; so don’t embarrass him, and she smiled wholesomely through her lightly tinted lips, turned her tweedy presence to the door, and muttered something to the butler, who followed her out.
“We will stay here, since my mother has left us alone.” Blackford had his first direct experience of the surefooted authoritativeness of Axel Wintergrin. (He hadn’t said—important difference—“Shall we stay here, now that my mother is gone?”) Black nodded, and Wintergrin began to talk.
“You know, Mr. Oakes—from my father’s history book—that the building of St. Anselm’s church coincided with the settlement of the village. When the church was consecrated, just after 1250, the first Baron of Wintergrin was charged by the bishop to maintain the church in its pristine mini-magnificence. Probably that is the single charge all my ancestors have taken seriously.” He smiled. “Though that’s not entirely fair. On the whole they have been a good lot, and the one who was executed for adultery simply lived at the wrong time: the German Catholics were especially anxious, at that period, to distinguish their own position on marital fidelity from that of the British king.” Blackford smiled. Fancy. Royal adultery!
“I have, as you certainly know, undertaken the organization of a national political party to compete in the elections in November. This will require me to spend a great deal of time away from St. Anselm’s. But I make every effort to get back here on Sundays and Mondays. I shall always be at your disposal to review your work and that of your assistants—I look forward to meeting them to check every particular. The chapel must be authentic.”
He paused, reflecting. “The supreme challenge is the stained glass. The colors were magnificent! Tomorrow I shall take you through my father’s library, which has a complete collection of photographs of the church: every square inch, with careful colorwork and coding. My understanding is that you have made preliminary arrangements with carpenters, stonecutters, masons, and glassmakers.”
“That is correct.”
“Splendid. Let me ask, How many men will be working on the project at the outset?”
Blackford said probably a half dozen, with an additional two or three coming in, as skilled craftsmen were located.
“It is a vulgar question. But do you have any idea how long it will take?”
“We’ve talked about it—Overstreet, Conditti, and I. Not less than a year. Say a year, if all goes well. Knock wood.” This mundane appeal to superstition had the effect of prying his host loose from his preoccupation.
“A glass of wine? Or do you prefer beer? Whiskey?” Wintergrin rang the bell at his side, without waiting for an answer.
“Thank you, a glass of white wine.”
“I understand you flew during the war. Do you still fly?”
“Not regularly,” Blackford said. “I did fly the new American Saber at an exhibition in London recently. My father is the European salesman for Saber. You perhaps read about it: the British flier in the Hunter was killed.”
Axel looked sharply at Blackford, and his voice went up a half tone.
“Of course. It was you! I was related to Viscount Kirk. And we were at school together. Greyburn.” Wintergrin did not advertise that—like Kirk—he too was related to the Queen.
“I spent a few weeks in Greyburn myself.” Oakes stepped forward. He had decided, in his dealings with Axel, that he would hide only what he had to hide.
“Indeed? When were you there?”
“From September, 1941, until December. I would tell you that I left on account of Pearl Harbor, and it’s true that I’d have had to leave on account of Pearl Harbor, but in fact a couple of days before Pearl Harbor I ran away.” Blackford was tempted to add that he did so because the headmaster declined to discharge Mile. Lachaise.
Axel looked as if he would ask why Blackford had run away, thought better of it, and instead tilted the conversation to a slightly different course.
“We did not overlap, in that event. I was graduated in 1938. Kirk was a couple of years younger. A fine horseman, even then. An impressive war record.”
Blackford sipped his wine. “Yes. And a fine flier. The whole thing was tragic and … inexplicable.”
“Did they ever discover the cause of the accident?”
“No,” said Blackford—and thought, God help me if ever they do.
Axel asked whether he had known this person, and that person. Whether he had had experience with this teacher, or that teacher. What was his opinion of the headmaster, Dr. Chase, who was still there? Blackford said he thought Chase a cold fish and a bully, but had never studied under him. Wintergrin said he had had fair treatment from Chase up until the Austrian Anschluss. “After that, he thought of me first as a young Nazi, only then as a student at his school.”
“Were you”—Blackford’s risk was calculated—“at that point a nationalist, er, a defender of German policies?”
“You are asking if I was identified with the Nazis?”
“I simply wondered, knowing Chase.”
Axel trilled his fingers on his glass of wine which, Blackford noticed, he had not touched. “I decided when I went first to Greyburn at age fourteen that I would answer no que
stions and involve myself in no discussions having to do with the policies of my government.”
“I wish I had followed the same rule,” Blackford said.
“No one who knew me at Greyburn would have had any grounds to know what was on my mind. That training proved useful. And during the holidays I avoided political discussions here in Germany, pleading that any involvement in them would make life difficult for me back in England where, after all, I was spending nine months of every year. When I left Greyburn and went to officers’ school I was assigned to the Kavallerieschule in Hanover, where the traditions are very strict, very … venerable. There are no political discussions—for the simple reason that it is commonly accepted that everyone is entirely enthusiastic about every policy of the government.”
Blackford decided to press his luck.
“When did you decide to defect?”
“I decided to defect after an incident at officers’ school.”
Blackford said nothing. He would let Wintergrin decide, without any pressure, whether to tell the story. Wintergrin said nothing. After a moment’s pause, Blackford decided to take him off the hook:
“Perhaps one day you will write your story completely?”
“When my story is written,” Axel said, “what I did or experienced as a nineteen-year-old will not greatly matter.” Again Blackford thought it wise to ease off.
“I hope they will find it appropriate to say about you, Count Wintergrin, that you always found time to give to the concerns of St. Anselm.”
Axel rose. “Indeed.”
The meeting was ended, without abrasion. On the contrary, Wintergrin had liked the American: his tone of voice reflected this. They walked to the door.
“Tomorrow, then, at ten, we shall go over to the library. I have meetings at nine and at twelve. Perhaps you will bring your associates?” Blackford noticed that he stood slightly to one side as the door swung open, avoiding needless exposure. Outside, Blackford paused an instant, closing his eyes to adjust them to the night, whose blackness at first disguised the profile of his Fiat, even though it was the only car in the courtyard.
In the Anselmsklaus, the little eatery across the courtyard, the traveler with the trim beard ate perfunctorily, conjoining pieces of dry Westphalian ham and chunks of bread lackadaisically. He seemed distracted, staring out through the window at the entrance to the palace. When the door opened and the light streamed out, the figure that emerged, pausing slightly before walking to his car, could not be seen except in outline. Günther Matti did not need to see the face. He knew the figure of Blackford Oakes well enough. He could have picked him out if faced with the silhouettes of twenty men of approximately the same age and size. There was the trimness, the firmness of step combined with spontaneity of movement. And besides, there had been no effort at disguise. His car was right out there, and he walked right to it. All those tedious months, from mid-January until now, late August—London, Washington, Boston, New York, Bonn—finally, paydirt. Boris Andreyvich Bolgin would be very pleased. Most important of all, Stalin himself would perhaps smile. Not for long. Oh, how he would rage on assimilating the data. But meanwhile there would be a kind word for the technicians. That’s all he was, Günther Matti reminded himself, turning now zestfully to his meat and wine, just a technician. He had done as much for the Nazis. But he would never betray his clients. He worked for cash, and on this job alone he would have earned enough to return to Switzerland and live a year with his family without thought to expenses. It had been tedious. Günther Matti had earned his keep.
CHAPTER 5
Boris Andreyvich Bolgin looked wistfully at the cartoon hanging in the second floor of the Brighton Pavilion. Imagine, he thought. Just imagine. One hundred and thirty years ago, and the British press could even then write thus critically, derisively, about their own king! Their sovereign! Well, granted that Prince William wasn’t technically yet king—but almost. And in the public press! Cartoons now preserved! Framed in a museum belonging to the Crown!… Here was Prince William, great great-great-grandfather of Queen Caroline, ridiculed. Made to look like a pig! A lecher! An idiot! An imbecile! Why, in Russia, if one feature—just the bulbous nose, say, or the cauliflower ears, or the pig mouth were affixed to a single picture of Joseph Stalin, what would happen? What? Boris Bolgin asked himself melodramatically.
Of course the artist would be arrested, tortured, and executed. That, of course. But then they would start coming, coming in droves. Bolgin knew. In his younger days, before reaching his present eminence, he had served among those droves. They would ask around about the cartoonist’s family. About his associates. About his associates’ associates. About his associates’ associates’ associates. Shall I go, on? Bolgin thought to himself. Yes, he would go on. He was at the Brighton Pavilion, in Brighton, Sussex, England, and nobody in the world who saw him could know what he was thinking. So he would continue. He would think with abandon. Lasciviously. He would now resume … They would question his associates’ associates’ associates’ (Bolgin was now counting on his fingers) associates, and send them—to Gulag.
Here was something he did not know. Once, way back (Bolgin was stunned, using his fingers once again, to reckon that it was only ten years ago, during the siege of Stalingrad), when he and Pyotr Ivanovich Ilyich were rising stars in the intelligence service, stationed in Finland, they had devoted an evening to the question: What was it that finally caused Stalin to stop to catch his breath? They thought the purge in 1937 was over. Until the purge of 1938 began. It had been so in 1933. The purges had no trace of rational justification. Stalin must have known that. Ilyich, who had once spoken with Stalin—poor Ilyich, head now of the KGB, had to speak with Stalin regularly, sometimes at two, three in the morning, returning to his apartment exhausted, relieved that he was still alive; wondering whether, imprisoned as he was by his circumstances, he could truly say he was glad to be alive—Ilyich had said that night in Helsinki that he figured Stalin called an end to purges only when he was personally surfeited with them. But there was never any way of knowing when this would happen, and pity the man who wrongly anticipated Stalin’s surfeit! The current purge building up had all the earmarks of an eructation. Stalin eructates, Bolgin thought. Lesser phenomena, like volcanoes, merely erupt. There were literally millions of Russians who this very night would go to bed apprehensive. Because they felt the tremors. Ilyich’s agents were already doing Stakhanovite duty, pounding on doors at night. Stalin himself kept out of sight these days. He never left his dacha, it was said. From there he caused all of Russia to writhe in pain and fear. His reach was everywhere—except Yugoslavia! How had Stalin managed to fail to bring Tito to heel? Bolgin thanked his venerable mother for not having brought him into the world to serve as Stalin’s agent in Yugoslavia these last four years. Or, rather, one of Stalin’s late agents in Yugoslavia—may they rest in peace.
But Bolgin had his own troubles. When the KGB was outwitted in London, Stalin turned his attention to the American spy responsible, Blackford Oakes. What job would he be assigned to? Find out, Ilyich had said. And do not fail us. (He always said, Do not fail us.) (And he always meant it.)
“That cartoonist was greatly feared in England,” the stranger at his side remarked.
Bolgin shook himself out of his trance, and returned the code. “He outlived Prince William.”
Bolgin closed his guidebook and turned to the staircase, followed by Matti. On the street the two men—Bolgin wearing his fedora and his fur-lined Burberry raincoat, Günther Matti with his brownish heavy winter suit, carrying an umbrella and a newspaper—walked silently. At Colby’s Tavern, two blocks down, they walked in, taking a table in the corner.
Bolgin had received, by code, an account of Blackford’s arrival in Washington, and of his subsequent move to Boston. It had been several weeks before Matti was able to ascertain what Oakes did at the apartment in Cambridge to which he repaired every evening at five-thirty, leaving after ten. The tenants of the apartment sometimes s
tayed overnight, sometimes left it together or singly, usually a bit after Oakes did. One morning, after an exasperating week of conjecture, Matti followed the girl to a little store specializing in German books. The young man, on the other hand, worked during the day as a Mercedes mechanic. It wasn’t until Matti finally bugged the apartment that he discovered that Oakes was spending five hours a night learning German. During the day Oakes’s movements were irregular. Sometimes he would audit classes in’ engineering, sometimes he would go to the library, disappearing in the stacks. Often he would spend time at a construction project. The foreman had befriended him, though it turned out he knew nothing about Blackford except that he was a graduate engineer interested in practical training. Weekends he would go to New Haven, dancing attendance on his girlfriend Sally Partridge, who—Matti explained in his methodical way—studied English literature at the summer session of the graduate school …
“Do get on with it,” Bolgin interrupted. “I don’t care what his girlfriend is studying.”
“I almost lost him, Leonid my friend”—Matti persevered; he had never before laid eyes on “Leonid” before today, but his orders, through the cut-out agent, had always come from “Leonid.”
“And don’t tell me about your narrow escapes,” Bolgin sighed. “Get on with it. Where is he now? What is he doing?”
Gunther Matti was put off by the abrupt acceleration of his story. So he gave it out sulkily. “The night before last”—he looked at his watch—“at nineteen thirty-two he left St. Anselm’s castle, and the company of Count Axel Wintergrin.”
Bolgin’s heart stopped beating, the blood drained from his paunchy face, pockmarked by frostbite in Siberia. He whispered to himself: “Axel Wintergrin. Axel Wintergrin …” And then, “Go on, go on! Do you know what he was doing, talking to Wintergrin?”
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