Marco Polo, If You Can

by William F. Buckley

  The letter, the following morning, was spotted, pursuant to the court-approved directive of the FBI that any mail addressed to an Iron Curtain country should be diverted. The order governed mail going out of Washington or greater New York. It was collected and sent once a day to an FBI office in midtown, where each envelope was steamed open, and its contents photographed, along with the face of the envelope. The time-objective was to delay the letter by no more than one day. The post office was instructed to postmark the stamp before delivering the letter to the FBI.

  So that Benni’s eight sheets were on a flight to Berlin not on Monday, but on Tuesday. Wednesday the envelope was delivered in East Berlin. It reached Moscow on Friday. That afternoon Anton Speranski, Aleksandr Shelepin, and Rodion Malinovsky read with fascination the minutes of a National Security Council meeting held the day before Chairman Khrushchev’s arrival in the United States. There had been a detailed discussion of the U-2 flights, and the decision was made to step up the overflights on the Russian border and East European territory. There were scattered references to launch sites. The Americans were apparently now onto the Soviets’ discovery that the CIA was using Giebelstadt in Germany as a base, and it was decided therefore to consolidate operations out of Pakistan and Turkey in Lahore, Peshawar, and Adana.

  Once again, the KGB placed a call to Chairman Khrushchev.

  Afterward Shelepin said, “He is a great joker,” and putting down the telephone he shook his head, smiling. “He said, ‘Aleksandr Nikolaevich, I am never too busy to read the minutes of a meeting of the National Insecurity Council of the United States.’”

  “What a wag!” said Speranski, who would not have used language that informal about the Premier of the Soviet Union before he and his agents had contrived to filch the minutes of the National Security Council, conferring upon Speranski certain social prerogatives.

  CHAPTER 10

  “The detection of people who are violating American laws is a matter for the Justice Department, and the apprehension of such persons is the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and that’s all there is to it.”

  If the Director of the FBI said that once to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency he said it—ten, fifteen times? The Director of the CIA replied, at first with his habitual placidity, that the resources of the CIA worldwide would need to be used, that it was there rather than here that we were likeliest to come upon the tripwire, that Rufus was ideally qualified to superintend the entire operation, that of course the CIA needed the aid of the FBI, but the matter was so delicate, in a way that involved foreign countries, that it really made more sense to put it under the direct responsibility of someone especially conversant with international intelligence and counterintelligence. And, finally, that the CIA had “designs” to turn to U.S. advantage the whole messy, dangerous business.

  “Come to think of it,” the Director said, sipping his scotch and soda in the comfortable study of his house, to which Rufus had come for a protracted evening, “I probably repeated my line as often as Hoover did his. I finally said, there’s only one way to go. To the President.”

  “‘Not without the Attorney General!’ Hoover said. Of course he wants Bill there—Bill Rogers is scared to death of Hoover. For that matter, who isn’t?”

  “Are you?” Rufus asked.

  “Absolutely. Don’t know why, but he’s the single most intimidating presence I’ve ever encountered.”

  “So?”

  “So I finally said okay. Hoover went off and obviously gave Bill his orders. I called the White House and we got an appointment for four this afternoon. We went into the Oval Office, and Ike sat and listened. I waited till I thought the moment was just right, and then I said”—the Director was now clearly enjoying himself—“I said, ‘Mr. President, I’d like you to know that I would like to put the whole operation under Rufus. I’ve been to see him and he’s prepared to take it on.’

  “You’d have liked his reaction:

  “‘My Rufus?’ he asked.

  “‘Yes, Mr. President,’ I said.

  “Then he turned to Bill. ‘Bill’ he said, ‘it’s obvious to me that what we got here involves two jurisdictions. There’s a role in it for the FBI—that’s for sure. There’s a role in it for the CIA—that’s also for sure. Now everybody in this room knows that any operation has to have a single boss. Just the way’—Ike’s a cool one, all right: he was all of a sudden the same man who managed all those generals and kings and ex-kings and would-be kings in Europe. He nodded in the direction of Hoover—‘just as Hoover, here, is the boss of his Bureau. Now, in this particular operation it is my judgment that the foreign thing outweighs the domestic thing. I mean, we’re going to end up putting some sons of bitches in jail for violating American law. But the law they’re violating is giving the Soviet Union the edge in a contest that could involve national survival.’ Then he put on his glasses—you know the way he does, when he’s laying down the line?—‘Under the circumstances, I think we’ll put the operation under Rufus. Mr. Hoover should appoint one of his most valued subordinates to cooperate in every way with Rufus, who will report to Dulles who will report to me. The FBI man will report to the Director, and then to the Attorney General. Now, Bill, have I said anything unconstitutional?’

  “‘No sir.’

  “‘Okay. Have I done anything unlawful?’

  “Bill winced a little there, and looked away from Hoover. But he said, ‘No sir.’

  “Then Ike turned to us and gave us one of his pep talks. Hoover left that room profoundly convinced that America would live or die depending on his cooperation. We can complain about some things, Rufus, but Ike’s sheer ability to handle people—what the hell. Let’s get to work.”

  The Director had emptied three suites of rooms in a compound. Already he had amassed a sheaf of material detailing exactly the procedures to be followed by National Security Council members on receipt of their individual copies of the minutes of the meetings. The Situation Room had been swept, the sound deflectors checked; everything was secure at the mechanical level. The Director said he would be obliged if Rufus would take over the operation beginning the following day.

  Rufus began at that moment. “How many meetings of the Executive Committee of the NSC have there been in the past year?”

  The Director walked to his briefcase and brought out a sheet of paper. “First thing I checked. Here they are.”

  Rufus studied the calendar. “I see the longest interval without a meeting was about two weeks, but you’ve had them sometimes—here’s a week you had three. Hmm.”

  “Of course. And we’ll continue. We’re going to have to keep feeding the mole. With minutes that’ll satisfy the other side.”

  “That means,” Rufus said, “we’re going to have to give up a lot.”

  “Right. That’s why we’ve got to compress the whole business as much as we can.”

  In the course of the next four hours they made many decisions. To begin with, the six members of the executive committee would need to be advised of the problem. They would be informed that the minutes they would hereafter receive would be blends of fact and fiction. Enough fact to persuade the KGB that the minutes were the real article. Until the crisis was solved, the committee members should follow exactly the same procedure as before in the handling of their copy of the minutes. In respect of policy implementation, they would have to rely on their own memories or their own notes, since obviously much that was important would be withheld.

  Rufus would henceforward attend all executive meetings of the NSC and, in consultation with Dulles, would draft the “minutes” that would officially go out. This would require—in order not to alter external procedures in such a way as might tip off the mole—staying in the Situation Room together with Colonel Saunders, the man who kept the minutes. He had worked for the Agency since its inception, and before that for General Donovan. He would need to be apprised of the arrangements, so that, beginning at the point when
he left the Situation Room to dictate the “minutes” to his secretary, no one would know that the minutes were doctored, save the selected members of the National Security Council constituting the unofficial Executive Committee.

  An intense effort, beginning immediately, would be made at all the watering places of international intrigue to develop leads. Enticing money would be offered for defectors. Dulles agreed with Rufus that the probability was slight that the minutes were traveling from Washington directly to Moscow, although that possibility was also being looked into. The Soviet Embassy and known Soviet satellites were under electronic surveillance. The post office alert had been ordered as a routine check (during the past five years, such checks had been made four times), and a painful, meticulous effort was being made to check out correlations between outgoing mail and the dates of meetings of the NSC. Rufus would appoint someone, probably from the FBI, to check on the mail to Eastern Europe and Russia.

  “Here’s a figure for you: last week, almost twenty thousand pieces of mail went out to the Communist countries. The sheer scale of the thing—going out there someplace … and wending the trail back here—is pretty intimidating.” Yes, Rufus said, but the effort must be made; besides which, it would give us an up-to-date feel for pressures and counterpressures in the spy world.

  The Director, his note pad filled, said he was tired—perhaps they should continue tomorrow.

  “One more thing,” Rufus said. “You know I like to work with people I’ve had experience with.” Rufus, as always, was matter-of-fact. In the tone of his voice there was nothing anyone could interpret as a demand. And yet (the Director knew) Rufus was advising him what was necessary for the Agency to do in order to expedite—make possible?—Rufus’s participation in the enterprise.

  “I would like to have Singer Callaway, Anthony Trust, and Blackford Oakes working with me.”

  The Director paused. “No trouble on Callaway and Trust. But you know, don’t you, that we had to drop Oakes?”

  “Yes, I know. I think you made your disciplinary point. But I’ve worked with him on three assignments, and I’d like him back.”

  “I don’t know whether we can get him back. He’s working with an architectural firm, doing very well someone told me.”

  Rufus asked, “Would it be easier for you if I talked with him?”

  “As a matter of fact,” the Director said, “it most assuredly would be. I’ll fix it at the administrative end; you take care of signing him on.”

  “Two questions: Am I to tell him that we want him for this assignment only, or that he is back in the Agency?”

  The Director, puffing on his pipe, took a moment to answer. “I guess it’s only fair, if you’re signing him on for this particular mission, to tell him we’re agreeable to taking him back. If he says he doesn’t want in for the long haul, offer him a contract for this one assignment and he can go back to building bridges, or whatever.”

  “A minor point, but one he might ask: What grade?”

  “Whatever he had before, plus one.”

  “Plus two, Allen.”

  Dulles smiled. “All right. Plus two.”

  Michael Bolgiano was the least importunate of men. Tenacious, yes, but that was always at his own expense. Requests made of others were always diffidently advanced, and accordingly Blackford was surprised when he got the call asking whether, even at the risk of inconvenience to himself, Blackford could join Michael for dinner on Tuesday. The call was placed on Monday morning, and Blackford was at his desk, engaged in making careful calculations on an aspect of the proposed subway, the contractors having retained A&G as consultants. He flipped open his calendar and looked under Tuesday, October 6. “Dinner—Sally.” Ah, but that date was made before he got her note on Saturday morning at his apartment. The telephone in his left hand, he ran his pencil through “Sally” and wrote above her name, “Michael.”

  “See you then.” He went back to his work.

  But his mind wandered. He opened his middle drawer and took out the letter and read it yet another time.…

  “Blacky, my love: So last night I bugged you again, just like last May, at that horrible Kentucky Derby party. We went a month—the whole of June, I think it was. Well, do we have what Emma (J. Austen, 1775—1817) felt for Mr. Churchill, namely a ‘crystallizing incompatibility’? I don’t know. I do know that what’s going on now doesn’t seem to work. I get so much pleasure from you, and you’re the most alluring man I’ll probably ever know. But your world and mine are rotating on different axes. I care mostly about literature, you care about who has the most atom bombs. Just writing that sentence makes me feel blue, because it’s bound to infuriate you. What I don’t want is the wretched business of last June—who will call who first; meanwhile we both are conspicuous in other people’s, ah, company. I enjoy it when Austen’s characters brood and fret and analyze their feelings, morning, afternoon and night, an evolution of glorious leisure lasting through chapters, even books. I love it; I write about it; I teach it. But not for me, Blacky my love. So: I’ve decided that I’m going to give you up for October. No, let me be fairer and say I’ve decided you’d be happier if you gave me up for October. You know, like Lent. At the end of the month, we’ll know more about each other, but not, this time, with the kind of awful agonizing we did during June. By the end of October I’ll—no, I won’t tell you now. I’ll surprise you. By the end of October I’ll be ready to talk to you. Now, if you want to interpret this letter as a terminal provocation, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, except to say I love you, but if it wasn’t meant to be, let’s—let’s not face it. Let’s just drop October.

  “See you in November, I hope.

  “Love, Sally.

  “P.S. You’ll have more time to take riding lessons from Amanda. Though I could tell her you don’t, really, need to practice what you’re already perfect at.”

  Blackford could think of little else over the balance of the weekend, and a dozen times he had sat down to reply, but by Sunday night he had resolved that no reply was precisely the correct reply, so to speak, in the spirit of the moratorium she had decreed. The night before, to remind him of the suspended loyalty, he had greatly relaxed with Amanda. He was quite startled at a technique she had shown him, but stopped short of asking her who had given her her riding lessons. A nice young woman, exemplary family. He remembered that Byron had said that St. Augustine had taught him vices Byron had never known existed. Should he read the Confessions? Later, perhaps. Besides, Byron probably found what he was referring to in other of Augustine’s writings. Without thinking he reached for the telephone and very nearly began to dial Sally, who of course would have known the answer to that question, until he remembered that he was under interdict. He went back to the subway designs.

  The following morning it happened that he and Michael left for work at exactly the same time. As a rule, Michael—it was a part of that unending thoughtfulness to which Blackford had become shamefully habituated—rose very early and instantly made full use of the bathroom, so that by seven it belonged entirely to Blackford, whose rising hours were more flexible. Usually Michael was at his desk at 2430 E Street at 8; Blackford at A&G at 9. Blackford was therefore surprised when, at 8:30, he came out of his door at the same time Michael did.

  They walked down the staircase, Blackford leading.

  “What’s up tonight, Michael?”

  “If you don’t mind, Black, I’d rather talk to you about it then, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll be back at six. Got a little reading to do. Pick me up any time that suits you.”

  When, a few minutes before six, Blackford turned the key to his apartment, opened it, and saw the three men sitting in chairs boxing the compass of his room, he stopped. Slowly he shut the door behind him. Two of them were smiling, the third—something less than that.

  “Son of a bitch. I mean, even Hollywood wouldn’t do this! Goddam!”

  He embraced Anthony Trust, and had another bear hug for Singer Callawa
y. Rufus, he actually slapped on the back—before sobering up and extending his hand. He felt as if he had stolen a kiss from Marie Antoinette at Madame Tussaud’s.

  There was general laughter, and babble, and Blackford thought suddenly, “Is this my birthday?” No. He was born on December 7, a date that will live in infamy (over the years he had used that line more than a couple of times, often at marvelously appropriate moments of high salacious activity).

  “Okay, okay, what’s going on? Sit down. What do you want to drink? We’ll start with you, Rufus. You would like, er, something that’s one part clam juice, one part Perrier, with maybe a drop of rose water.” Blackford opened the refrigerator and brought out a ginger ale, Rufus’s drink. He brought gin, tonic, and white wine on a tray, with assorted glasses. He filled his own with wine.

  And sat down. “So,” he said. “What is it that brings to my humble abode three burglars? Or do you have a court order authorizing your illegal entry?”

  Anthony Trust—a year older than Blackford, slim, intense, primly affectionate, a former classmate at Greyburn Academy in Great Britain, and at Yale—pointed to Singer Callaway. Age—oh, fifty-five? Relaxed, loose-jointed, idiomatic, he’d have looked altogether at home performing behind a guitar in his native Ohio: Singin’ a little ole song or two to his little old girl/Waitin’ for ole Singer/To stop singin’, and come home. And Singer in turn pointed to Rufus. And that, always, was when the singing had to stop. They hadn’t all convened at 40 Woodward Street to celebrate the sixth of October with an ex-agent who had been kicked out of the Agency.