Marco Polo, If You Can

by William F. Buckley

  “When do you wish to come, Mr. Ottley?”

  “Mr. Ottley! Fritz, I must’ve told you one hundred times you call me BILL. Or you can call me Sunshine—lots of people do. Why not? The sun’s gotta shine on people who only have to piss once a day—right, Fritz? Hans? When? Like, ten minutes ago. I’ve got nine-ten. Can I come—two assistants—right now?”

  “I was doing other work … Bill.”

  “Other work! There’s no such thing as other work when O-T-T-L-E-Y calls, there’s only this work!”

  “I suppose I could put off the other.”

  “What other?”

  “I am photographing a seventeenth-century engraving for a Christmas card company.”

  “Christmas card? Shee-yit, Fritz, Christmas is four months away. December twenty-fifth, remember? When do they celebrate Christmas in Germany? You people invented the Christmas tree, didn’t you?”

  “The Christmas tree originated in Germany, that is correct.”

  “Well now, don’t let me down. Remember, we’ve been doing business four—five?—years, and when Bee Bee Dee and Oh-oh-oh want something, they want it fast, and from the best. You are the best—right, Fritz?”

  “I’m glad you like my work … Bill.”

  “Come on, no modesty. You’re the best. You don’t have much of a plant, but what do we need much of a plant for—we’re not promoting the Sistine Chapel. Hmmm. Wonder who has that account? Know anybody at the Vatican, Fritz? You people didn’t bomb the Vatican back then, did you, Fritz? Now level with me, because nobody fools O-T-T-L-E-Y.”

  “No, we—I mean, they—didn’t bomb the Vatican.”

  “Well, then, I’ll think about that one, but meanwhile, is it go-go-go?”

  “What do you wish photographed, Bill?”

  “Spaghetti. With our new sauce—get this, Fritz—Salsa del Sarto. Class? Bee Bee Dee and Oh-oh-oh specializes in class. Our clients are class. Be there by ten? Don’t say anything. Just unlock that door, and get ready to see your old friend Sunshine. And you don’t have to tell me where the men’s room is: won’t need it. Well, maybe the girls. We’ll use your stove. Seeya, Fritz!”

  Ottley leaned back in the chair of Steiner’s little studio. The intricate ligature of the camera had been carefully composed to bring it down at exactly the desired angle. Steiner had spent two hours arranging the lights. The two women had cooked the spaghetti and poured the new sauce, and Steiner had studied it.

  “It’s gotta look hot, Fritz. It’s got to look—succulent. It’s got to show the yellow cheese streaks running through the ketchup. It’s gotta look the way it is, only better.”

  “We’ll have to use some artificial substances, Bill.”

  “So? I care? President Eisenhower cares? Nikita Khrushchev cares? Go ahead and pull out the stuff, ya got it all in those cabinets, Fritz baby. My job is to stay here till I can go to the office with a negative.”

  Steiner busied himself with his considerable inventory of powders, paints, plastics, rubbers, designing a spaghetti sauce that would impersonate Salsa del Sarto and survive the heat of the lights and the attrition of the engraving. He puttered about, opening drawers, spreading his artifacts out on the table. The cooks, their work done, were on standby. They sat at the far end of the studio eating sandwiches they had brought with them and watching “Our Miss Brooks” on television.

  “How you like this business of Khrushchev coming over to see Ike?”

  “I have read about it,” Hans said, bending over the table.

  “Obviously you’ve read about it, everybody’s read about it. First seven months of the year old Khrushchev rants and raves about all the missiles he’s got to blow us up with—and then Ike invites him over. Big deal. They’re going to take him cross-country. See America. I guess the idea is, see America before he blows it up. What do you think, Hans?”

  “I don’t follow politics.”

  “Come on. You’re a German.”

  “I am a citizen of the United States.”

  “Well, yeah. But you came over what, 1951?”

  “1947.”

  “Land of opportunity, eh? Well, you’re doing all right, I guess. Why don’t you expand? That’s American, expand. BBDO was once a small outfit, biggest in the old Yoo Ess of Aye now. What you need is somebody to give you a little advice. Begin by moving to Manhattan. It’s a pain, let’s face it Hans, to come all the way over to Fulton Street in Brooklyn to get a little spaghetti photographed. Bet some of your customers have to stop between Manhattan and Brooklyn to take a piss, not old O-T-T-L-E-Y, the original dehydrated man.”

  “Thank you, but I am content here.”

  “How much you make, like last year? How much did you make in 1958?”

  Steiner was handling tweezers, arranging the rubber-spaghetti strands. Ottley could barely hear him.

  “How much? Oh, enough to pay the bills, and a little more, a little for the old age, not much.”

  “What about your family?”

  “I don’t have family.”

  “Oh come on, Hans. I mean, life isn’t only work. After hours is another life, ho ho ho. Don’t you have a little somebody to look after you? When you get … cold … in bed?”

  “My landlord keeps the apartment upstairs well heated.”

  “Now I’m not talking about that kind of heat, Fritz baby. How old are you? Maybe sixty? Well, one of my bosses was sixty last week, and guess what, he married—for the fourth time. Maybe number four will bring him an account, wouldn’t be surprised. But you should’ve been there. I was invited, yup. Not to the wedding, that was just for the brass, and family, I guess. But to the reception. You were married, weren’t you? Must’ve asked you that before, but I forgot.”

  “My wife and I were separated.”

  “Kids?”

  “My only daughter was raised by my wife.”

  “When did you see them, I mean, last?”

  “In 1945.”

  “Do they write you often? What’s your daughter do?”

  “I don’t know. They live in East Germany. They don’t write to me.”

  “You know where they are?”

  “No.” Steiner walked back to the cabinet, ran his fingers down the little trays, searching for, and finally finding, the elusive shade of red putty. “I have only a sister who sends me Christmas cards, and maybe a postcard sometimes.”

  “Whajudoo for old Hitler? I mean, I don’t mean it was your fault, but you must’ve been in the action somehow. Let’s see, war began 1939, you’d have been what, thirty-eight, forty?”

  “I worked as a photographer in Bremen, at the boatworks.”

  “Boatworks, you call ’em! That’s where they made most of those submarines, right?”

  “No, that was—yes, I suppose so. But I was in the photograph division of a naval architect who worked on destroyers, not submarines.”

  Ottley yawned. “Some life. What made you decide to come over here?”

  “My wife went to East Germany, but I don’t like politics, so I came here. I read in the paper there were jobs here for commercial photographers.”

  “So you just arrived in Brooklyn and went to work?”

  “The immigration people were very helpful, very nice, and a few friends from before the war helped me.”

  “How come you know English so well?”

  Hans straightened up and stretched, to relieve the long strain of leaning over the table. His hair was gray, his eyeglasses rimless, his face featureless. One knew he had eyes, nose and a mouth, because people do, but they asked for no attention. Ottley could understand why he hadn’t kept his wife, or attracted a substitute. Efficient old drudge, though, you had to hand it to him. He looked about the utilitarian studio—everything tidy, but not aggravatingly so. Nothing was conspicuous at 252 Fulton Street.

  “Ever do anything except commercial photography?”

  “Occasionally I take portraits. Mostly for my neighbors.” Steiner leaned over a large sink and plucked a negative from
a clip. “That’s the cleaning woman’s daughter in her First Communion dress, yesterday. Felipa Vilches.”

  Ottley held it up to the light.

  “Nice-looking spic.”

  Steiner said nothing. “I am ready to shoot.”

  “How’d you learn English so good? I mean, I had French at Bayside High, you should hear me, though when I was in Paris this chick heard me, all right all right, no trouble there. How’d you learn English?”

  “I apprenticed in London for two years in the twenties.”

  “Well, no wonder, no wonder.”

  “You will have to stand back. No reflected light.”

  Ottley stood up and looked down at the simulated spaghetti. “Hans, you’re a genius. I’ll get out of the way. Where’s the can?”

  After Ottley and his crew had left, Hans Steiner sat down and listened, motionless, to a Beethoven quartet on the record player. He felt a profound satisfaction.

  CHAPTER 4

  Anton Speranski could hardly remember when last he had used a typewriter. But no one else—no one—would be permitted to translate the six sheets of paper he now had before him, delivered from microfilm developed and enlarged in the Special Services laboratory on the east wing of the fourth floor of the Lubyanka. Even though the technician knew no English, Speranski had stood over him—ante partum, in partu, post partum—the birth of a film the holy nature of which had been revealed to him three days earlier, when he received the cryptic message, the Annunciation, from East Berlin. He had cautioned the technician to be particularly careful. They entered the darkroom and the overhead light was turned off, replaced by the red bulb that enveloped the little room and its two occupants in the scarlet eeriness the technician was used to but which made Speranski, who hadn’t worked in a darkroom since his very early days in the KGB, faintly nervous.

  “You are certain the light is not too bright?”

  The technician replied that he was quite certain.

  Speranski could not conceal his nervousness. “You are to take no chances, understand?”

  “Yes, Comrade Anton. I will make no mistakes.”

  In twenty minutes the negatives were dry. The technician took them to the enlarger. “What size do you desire?”

  “Regular paper size … No. Larger: this size—” he spread his hands about eighteen inches apart. “But don’t take any chances.”

  The technician, an old hand, was exasperated by the suggestion that he was all thumbs with the precious negatives. He didn’t reply, adjusting the enlarger to the required size and reaching for the box containing the larger-size paper.

  Speranski stared as, under the light, the typewritten letters gradually reified into recognizable English characters. A minute or so per page; in ten minutes they were stacked together. The technician reached for a large envelope, inserted the prints, and handed the package to Speranski.

  “Give me the negatives also. In a separate envelope.”

  He took them then to his study, into which the typewriter had been brought. Speranski’s English was letter-perfect but he worked slowly, turning the English into the most faithful Russian rendition he could manage, occasionally crossing out phrases and whole sentences and rewriting.

  An hour and a half later it was done, and he stared at what lay before him, very nearly breathless with excitement. He had intended to retype it all, so that he would have a clean copy for Shelepin and Malinovsky, but he could not contain himself. He seized the telephone and dialed the number of the Director of Soviet Security, Aleksandr Nikolaevich Shelepin.

  “It’s ready.”

  “Bring it in,” the head of the KGB said. “Malinovsky is waiting.”

  The room at the corner was the most inaccessible in the Lubyanka, and even Speranski, notwithstanding the years he had spent proving to the same set of people that he was who he was, had to flash his identification to be admitted. It was not the large meeting room of the Director he went to, but the private office, with the small table around which not more than four people could sit on the stuffed red leather chairs circling the small but massively constructed mahogany table overlaid with a green cloth, with glass over it.

  Malinovsky, Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union, flaunting only his Order of Lenin in addition to his marshal’s stars, was seated. They exchanged perfunctory greetings.

  Shelepin extended his hand. “Let’s have it.”

  Speranski could hardly conceal his pride. He gave it expression by something he would not normally have done in such informal conditions. He clicked together his heels as he extended the envelope.

  Shelepin sat, motioning the other two men to draw their chairs to sit, Malinovsky on his right, Speranski on his left.

  Shelepin elected to read the papers aloud, and slowly. He lit his cigarette and cleared his throat. He began to read.

  “Minutes. Meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council of the United States, September 1, 1959. Present: The President. The Secretary of State, Mr. Herter. The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Twining. The Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Dulles.

  “The President called the meeting to order at 3:20.

  “The President said that it was clear from many reports that the invitation to Chairman Khrushchev to visit the United States on September 15 was not being met by universal enthusiasm. He cited the official position of the executive committee of the AFL-CIO announcing a boycott of Chairman Khrushchev, the delegation of Congressmen who had announced they would cooperate with the anti-Communist committees which had called for a ‘day of mourning’ on the day that Chairman Khrushchev arrived in New York. He alluded to several speeches, editorials, and columnists who had assembled Khrushchev’s remarks during the past year threatening the peace of Europe by announcing the intention to make a separate peace treaty with East Germany, terminating Western rights in and access to Berlin.

  “The President said that diplomatic objectives quite apart, it was important that the right tone be set in greeting Chairman Khrushchev. There would be none of the ‘customary diplomatic affability.’ He wished to establish a clear agenda, which would be communicated to relevant parties.

  “The first and most urgent problem, the President said, was Berlin. The Soviet deadline on Berlin has to be lifted, the President said. He asked Secretary Herter whether the U.S. might come up with a face-saving concession that would permit Khrushchev to lift the deadline without appearing to be backing down.

  “Secretary Herter said his specialists had examined the texts of Chairman Khrushchev’s various messages but had come up with no formula that would be satisfactory to both Khrushchev and Chancellor Adenauer or to Western public opinion.

  “General Twining said his own opinion was that Khrushchev had no intention of forcing the Berlin issue. That his purpose was merely to set the stage for what would subsequently be interpreted as conciliatory diplomatic action.

  “Secretary Herter said that the numerous references to a summit meeting in May, 1960, could have the effect of tacitly lifting the deadline on the grounds that it would hardly make sense to meet in May, when the Berlin ultimatum was due to terminate one month earlier in April. The Secretary said he thought he and Ambassador Lodge—who would be Chairman Khrushchev’s escort throughout his tour of the country—and the President himself, by guarded references to the forthcoming summit, might plausibly act in such a way as to invite the inference that Chairman Khrushchev would naturally not press the Berlin question until after the summit.

  “The President asked whether the technical arrangements requested by the Kremlin had been completed, mentioning specifically the open telephone line from wherever Chairman Khrushchev would be, to his switchboard in the Kremlin.

  “The Director said the arrangements had been completed by a special division of AT&T. He added that extravagant pains had been taken—in order that when the President visited the Soviet Union the following summer, the Soviets could not reasonably oppose what the CIA, the NSC, an
d the Secret Service would insist upon by way of communications made available to the President.

  “The President then asked Director Dulles about the Soviet claim made in late July that a manned Soviet fighter had attained an altitude in excess of 94,000 feet. He asked to be refreshed on the altitude at which the U-2 aircraft could fly.

  “The Director replied that the U-2’s altitude depended on a number of variables, but that except in extraordinary conditions, it could maintain altitudes in excess of 70,000 feet. As for the claim made by the Russians on behalf of the T-431 piloted by Major Ilyushin, the Director said that the flight in question was under our radar surveillance, and that in fact the aircraft had not risen above 62,000 feet. The Director said there was clear agitation within the Soviet military at their continued inability to bring down our U-2 reconnaissance planes.

  “The President asked how many sorties had been made over Soviet territory during the past period.

  “The Director replied that no overflights had been deemed necessary during the past eighteen months, but that a number of special missions along the boundary were being made, and that these continued to collect important data. Other sorties continue, from bases in Turkey and Pakistan, over a wide area, from which we gather useful information about military movements in the Middle East and in southern Russia. The Director reported that without penetrating Soviet territory, it was possible for the U-2, in combination with U.S. radar, to check major developments in the Tyura Tam area on the basis of which Defense Department intelligence had come up with the conclusion that the Soviet Union has only ten fully operative intercontinental missiles.

  “The President said he wished no sorties to be made by the U-2S during the period of Chairman Khrushchev’s visit. Nor did he desire that any member of the executive branch or of the military should, during the period of Khrushchev’s visit, entertain any question from a reporter or anyone else concerning the relative strength of the Soviet strategic arsenal and the U.S. arsenal.