Stained Glass

by William F. Buckley

  “Not long,” Spring said. “Figure an hour to be safe.”

  “Okay. The faster you can do it the better. It wouldn’t look good driving the half-ton in there too early. So—get there at seven. Now, what’s the point in keeping the gear in the box you know you’re not going to need, no matter what?… For God’s sake, Bruce, will you stop taking notes on that fucking pad? Can’t you memorize: Seven a.m. remove corpse, remove TNT?”

  Hallam ignored the blast, motioning Pulling to put away the pad. “No point. Bruce and I were talking about that yesterday when we finished sizing up the job. But we figured a supply of explosives in a chapel being rebuilt is less suspicious than a supply of explosives in a sleepy medieval inn, if somebody stumbled into them.”

  “Well, somebody did, and came out shooting. Get them out. Take them to Bonn with you in the morning and deposit them with Sergeant Gold. We don’t know what they’re going to start searching when Wagner stays lost. Now on that problem. He’ll fit in the box if you take out the junk and put it in the tarpaulin. But you’ll have to nail back the section Wagner sawed off.”

  “What do we do with the box?” Pulling asked.

  “The long-term objective is to keep it from being discovered, ever. The immediate objective is to keep it from being discovered before the elections.”

  “That’s one week. What kind of … condition is he in?”

  “The neck will be black where the trachea was fractured. But there’s no blood. I’ll tell you what. I’ll check this out with my guy in Bonn, but let’s assume it’ll go this way: Take it in the box to Gold at Engineers, and have them put in for a coffin. I’ll suggest we fly him out with papers as a U.S. Army casualty, and bury him at Arlington or someplace. My people will attend to the paperwork, you get him into a coffin as soon as possible and remove all identifying material.”

  “When do we get the final word?”

  “On what, the coffin?”

  “No. The elimination.”

  “Tomorrow. When I come back from Bonn I’ll have it. Now, I’ll be getting to the chapel tomorrow at the usual hour. Have the truck loaded up, but don’t bring it out past the sentries until the working gang is in. If there is any reason to call me, don’t use the walkie-talkie. Ring me in this room—give me your extra room key, Hallam. Erika’s bug is out, but I don’t trust her or Bolgin. I’ll be in this room between seven and eight. Then I’ll head for the chapel.

  “Goodnight,” he said.

  Back in his room, he undressed, showered, and put on fresh pajamas. His dreams were tormenting, confused. He was at Yale, entering an examination room without having read any of the books, but when he reached for them they quicksilvered their way through his fingers. He was in Washington, surreptitiously dropping the addresses of the safe houses to the Soviet ambassador, when a hand clapped him on the shoulder: it was J. Edgar Hoover. He was in Buckingham Palace at a ball when suddenly his trousers slipped down, and he was wearing no underwear. Suddenly he was the Dutch boy back at the dike. He looked down, to find that Holland was being kept from flooding by—a wine bottle pressed into the dike. Now he was taking Holy Orders in a reconstituted chapel at St. Anselm’s, and felt peace at last, and slept.

  CHAPTER 20

  At a quarter to eight the phone rang in Spring’s room and Blackford picked it up.

  “Everything is going well. Anything at your end?”

  “No, I’ll be there in a little while. So long.”

  He walked out and looked more intently than usual to see who, if anyone, might be looking at him. The street had only normal traffic, mostly Volkswagens and Fiats and bicycles, carrying the people of St. Anselm’s to their shops and offices and to the leather factory and distillery. Blackford walked across the street to the Westfalenkrug and ordered coffee. He looked about again at the three or four figures usually there at that hour and was satisfied no one was covering him. He bought the morning paper and read an account of Axel Wintergrin’s speech the afternoon before at Stuttgart, of the crowds, the ovation. Paper in hand, he walked casually back to the pay phone. He was grateful for the German propensity to massiveness. The telephone closet was virtually soundproof. Having carefully rehearsed his message, he rang the number for Singer Callaway.

  “Hello, Singer. How are you? Good. I got bad news from home. Montenegro broke his leg. Jockey’s fault, same guy I trained. They’re taking the remains to Corpus Christi; be there in a couple of hours, I guess, local time. But anyway, I’ll be seeing you on schedule. Anything for me?” Blackford had communicated: I killed Jürgen Wagner and his corpse is being taken to our drop at the Corps of Engineers and will arrive in a couple of hours.

  There was tension in Callaway’s voice.

  “No, nothing. Great then, I’ll be seeing you.”

  At the courtyard everything appeared normal, though he noticed that the sentry looked at him a little impishly. No doubt the story of the evening’s debauch had made the rounds and the morning shift knew all about the vinous behavior of Blackford Oakes the night before. Or was he deluding himself? He managed with his eye something an innocent outsider would dismiss as a tic, but an insider would take as a genial wink. The sentry winked back, and Blackford moved into the parking area. As he left the car he was approached by Kurt Grossmann.

  “Have you seen Jürgen Wagner, Blackford?”

  “No. At least, not since yesterday afternoon. What’s up?”

  “Stiller and I were with him until ten last night. He wasn’t at the seven-thirty staff meeting this morning. We checked the inn. He’s not there and didn’t spend the night there.”

  “You don’t suppose our Jürgen has been revelling?”

  “He’d have had to revel with Mother Margaret”—the reference was to the 300-pound barmaid at the Anselmsklaus—“because the sentries don’t have him checked out of the courtyard. That means he spent the night here—occasionally he does, usually on the couch in the banquet hall. Well, just checking. If the sentry made a mistake, he sure picked the wrong guy to make a mistake about. Wagner will have his ass when he shows up. See you.”

  Blackford took his advantage.

  “Oh, Kurt, is the count still planning to be here tomorrow?”

  “Yes, during the day. He’s here now, and going tonight to Hamburg, back late, then Freiburg tomorrow night. Monday night there’s the big final rally in West Berlin—that’s the one we’re really going to need Wagner for!—then back here Tuesday to vote, and listen to the returns. The TV people begged him to set up shop in larger quarters Tuesday night, so we’re going back to Königshof in Bonn.”

  “Good,” Blackford said. “He may want to see me tomorrow.” He waved and walked to the chapel. The half-ton truck was parked, as it so often was, just outside the church door, and Blackford, without turning his head, managed to scrutinize the inside of the truck as he passed by. The box was well forward. Behind it was assorted material, including a large cardboard barrel filled with papers and crating materials sticking up from its mouth. He walked inside, up the aisle and left to his office, beckoning to Hallam Spring. He shut the door and sat down at his desk.

  “I got the word to Bonn. They’ll be expecting you. Take the truck just the way it is. Any problems?”

  “We had a hell of a time trying to lift the box into the truck. Finally ramped it up on a board. But it was loaded away well before Overstreet and the gang got here.”

  “Did the sentries question you coming in?”

  “Only the usual.”

  “Okay, take off.”

  Blackford walked out to the courtyard from which he could follow with his eyes the truck to the sentry post. The guards waved it on its way.

  Inside he went to the fatal spot and dropped his pen. He bent down as if looking for it, and scrutinized the area. There was nothing. He got up and walked to where Overstreet was expostulating with a German carpenter. After reconciling them, he addressed Overstreet:

  “I’ll be leaving for Bonn after lunch. I’ve requisitioned a couple
of extra electric heaters. Hallam has set it up so that we can handle the extra load. Maybe I’ll be able to bring them back from Bonn after I do my own business.”

  “Sooner the better,” said Overstreet, rubbing his arms for circulation.

  Blackford went to the office and spent five joyous hours in the womb of amoral science, checking inclines, templates, cut lines, the mechanical preliminaries to the art of stained glass; he never loved science, with all its engrossing, bloodless concerns, more. Then, carrying a cheese sandwich in a hard roll in a paper bag, he walked to his car and set out for Bonn.

  In Westphalia the meadows stay obstinately green into November, and the tall poplars give up their leaves grudgingly. The air was sweet and cold, and he marveled that he was never out of sight of the most distinctive characteristic of that countryside, the sharp spire of a church, reaching surefootedly, knowing confidently its station in life, higher than any surrounding building. The barns, for the most part painted a rich brown red, looked as if they had been retouched to withstand the coming of winter. On the highway, though not yet transformed into the autobahn under construction, the drivers took their cars at speeds for which, in the general consumers’ abandon after the war, Europeans had become celebrated. Blackford let them pass, regretting it when the telltale signs of urban concentration began.

  During the drive he prayed. Lord, let the German people spare the life of Thy servant Axel by rejecting him in the popularity polls. Blackford had never desired anything so much. He tried praying to St. Anselm. Dear St. Anselm: Intercede in behalf of the lord of St. Anselm’s. You, who proved the existence of God, help prevent others from playing the role of God.… The sandwich untouched, he parked the car three blocks from Rufus’s flat, which he reached at the designated minute, 5:03.

  The moment he walked into the room, he knew.

  He had always known. Known right from the beginning. An Axel Wintergrin could not be permitted to live in this world. That wasn’t the way he would put it to Rufus, but that was the way it was. When he looked at their faces he could tell by a kind of human refraction that he must have turned very pale. Quietly, lest his stomach turn, or his head feel giddy, he sat down on the couch and addressed Rufus.

  “We go?”

  “We go.”

  “How bad is it? I mean how …”

  “The poll we tabulated at two shows Axel Wintergrin with thirty-seven per cent of the vote, four points ahead of Adenauer, and only seven ahead of Ollenhauer. So—we are to go ahead.”

  From now on for Rufus it was all business. “Have you definitely established he will be there tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I asked this morning.”

  “Are you certain you can get him into the chapel?”

  “Hell, Rufus, how can I be certain? All I can tell you is he’s never refused to come before; he’s made maybe fifty trips to the chapel in the last three months. But certain, shit. I mean suppose before he gets there the Russians declare war or something?”

  “Tomorrow is the one day the Russians definitely won’t declare war.”

  Blackford changed the subject. He would have talked about the World Series to stay away from the one remaining question he knew Rufus had to ask him. “Did you get Wagner taken care of?”

  “Yeah,” Singer said. “He’s lying in a coffin in the warehouse, with the American flag over it and an honor guard. He’ll fly out tonight on the regular milk run. We pulled an emergency set of papers we keep here. He’ll be buried tomorrow.”

  “Where?… What the hell. What do I care where he’s buried?” Blackford raised his hand. “Don’t tell me. Thank God he’s a bachelor. From now on, Rufus, promise to make me kill only bachelors, okay? I’ve developed a taste for killing bachelors.”

  Rufus observed him sharply. He understood. But Rufus did not make room for imponderables. He needed to probe Blackford’s emotional state, and proposed to stay with him until he had done so. There was always the alternative plan, but it was far riskier. This plan, centering on Oakes, was sound, he felt. He, Rufus, must see it through. That, Rufus permitted himself a moment’s introspection, was what his life had come to mean to him. The thinking gets done: and then action consistent with that thinking is taken. Otherwise thought is vapid, meaningless, frivolous.

  “I’m sorry about Wagner. Tell us about it.”

  Blackford recounted the story.

  Rufus was pensive. One of his silences ensued. And, finally:

  “Was Wagner close to anybody? Is there anybody with whom he might have shared whatever suspicions took him to the chapel in the first place?”

  “He wasn’t close to anyone I know of. But he was devoted to his job, terribly thorough. More thorough than the poor bastard Wintergrin could really stand. I don’t know if he ever confided any suspicions to Wintergrin.”

  “Might he have kept a log, or notebook, in which he wrote that he intended to inspect the chapel?”

  “I don’t know,” Blackford said, reproaching himself for not having wondered about that possibility.

  “If he did, and if the last entry in it says he’s going off to check the chapel, we could be in trouble when the sentries are quizzed about your late appearance there.”

  Rufus went on: “Did Spring or Pulling find a notebook on him?”

  “I don’t know,” Blackford said, feeling like a schoolboy.

  Rufus looked at Singer, who without further ado picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Sergeant Gold, Singer here. Do you have the personal belongings of Corporal Selznick?”

  “I have them in the safe.”

  “Did you examine them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there a notebook?”

  “Not exactly. A scratch pad. And the notes on it were all in English. Besides that, there was just his wallet, identification, a little money.”

  “No address book, or notebook other than the scratch pad?… Right … Right. I tell you what. Get that stuff out of the safe and bring it around in a sealed envelope. Leave it with Frau Augstein. Thanks.”

  Black reported his conversation with Kurt Grossmann, which suggested that, at least as of eight that morning, they hadn’t got around to looking about suspiciously for clues on his desk. Then he said—

  “I tell you what we could do. We could ask Erika to look on Wagner’s desk. Her desk is about ten feet away, and she’s not going to Hamburg, because Axel’s giving the same talk there he gave at Stuttgart.”

  He and Singer looked at Rufus. Rufus was thinking again.

  Finally he looked at his watch. It was nearing six. “No, we won’t call her now. If they decided to examine the desk, they will already have reviewed its contents. If they have not reached that point of apprehension or suspicion, they probably won’t until tomorrow, or—who knows?—even the day after tomorrow. To call Erika without having arranged a code is dangerous. Look her up tonight, Black, and get her to go to work early and look then in Wagner’s desk. If there is anything there that suggests the chapel was his destination last night, get it from her and destroy it, and tell her to leave everything else intact. Sooner or later they will get around to it. It is fortunate that the missing man happens to be the man who would be directing the investigation if he were around. We have to assume that the trail will not lead to you, Black, or that if it does, there will be nothing like enough evidence to indict you. Your behavior in the chapel was concededly bizarre, but to prove on the basis of it that you killed Wagner is more than anybody could handle. People don’t move with great speed in these matters. And from tomorrow at about four the concerns of the Wintergrin people will be over other matters. But now of course is the time to plan for all contingencies. If Erika informs you tomorrow morning that the desk has been searched, I would still think it safe to assume you would not be questioned during the day—certainly nothing resembling formal action would be initiated. But if tomorrow you should be approached, then after the elimination”—he says it now without pausing, Blackford noticed—�
��you will need to be careful. It might prove necessary to go home, but only if the police start showing an interest in you. Otherwise you are to stay in St. Anselm’s until the spring at least.”

  Rufus turned suddenly to Singer.

  “Shall we have a glass of sherry?”

  He hadn’t said anything so libertine even on the critical evening in London, Blackford thought. Blackford had regained his color, but his eyes were darker, furtive, and Rufus could not descry their meaning. Singer poured, and Rufus then said it, using exactly the words Blackford knew he would use. Blackford knew that, if only to make it hard for himself, Rufus would use the most provocative formulation, tushery and all:

  “Are you prepared to do your duty, Blackford?”

  Blackford put down his glass.

  “Rufus, I don’t want to be argumentative. But are you aware that I was never told on joining this outfit that I would be expected to kill people in cold blood? Let alone the leading anti-Communist in Europe?”

  “This organization is structured to deal with contingencies. Are you saying we should have—could have—recruited people disposed to deal with this contingency, and trained them to do so? Where would we find them? Just what would we tell them? How would we train them? You aren’t required to do it even now. But I am required to lay it on the line. The fact is the commander-in-chief of your government, his principal foreign affairs adviser, and the director of the intelligence agency devoted to protecting American interests—our sovereignty, our freedom—by nonmilitary means; these men, drawing on all their resources—yes, moral resources included—feel that the situation is critical: that this single man’s activities are about to put the lives and liberties of whole peoples on the line. They despise, as I do, the government that has given us this ultimatum. They cannot even know, for certain, whether that threat is bluff. But they agreed, finally, that responsible statesmanship forbade taking so awful a risk—consider it”—Rufus managed to say it so that it sounded fresh, and awful—“conceivably, the risk of millions of people dead. They negotiated as hard as I have ever known our people to negotiate.”