Marco Polo, If You Can

by William F. Buckley

  “Does the U-2 have the range? I mean, what the hell, I know the range of the U-2. I mean, what sort of distance are you talking about?”

  “Great circle,” said Rufus. “Seoul to Peshawar is 2,692 miles. The route I have suggested, which would be most likely for an intelligence operation, would take five or six hundred miles more. Well within the range of the U-2.”

  “We all know, Rufus, that the Soviets are closing in on our IU-2S. But they haven’t been able to knock any down yet, and their advanced technology for doing so doesn’t sit on that SinoSoviet route. Their radar probably wouldn’t even pick up our U-2 flight. So that the flight could be relegated in the Kremlin to sheer fancy.”

  “Yes, I thought of that,” said Rufus. “My proposal is that our pilot go down.”

  “That he what?”

  “That he go down. Suffer a flameout—in the area of Semipalatinsk—and be taken by the Russians.”

  At this point Dulles simply put down his pipe, as if permanently abandoning it.

  “Oakes?”

  “Oakes.”

  “How do you propose we get him back?”

  “How do you propose the Soviets will get back Hans Steiner?”

  “I give up, Rufus. Have you discussed the matter with Oakes?”

  “No,” said Rufus, looking rather absentmindedly at the map. “It’s on my list of things to do.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Blackford Oakes found the U-2, notwithstanding its eccentricities, the closeness of cockpit conditions, and the wretchedly uncomfortable skin-tight air suit, an exhilarating machine to fly. The idea of combining a jet with a glider was, he felt as he looked out, discerning the Pacific Ocean on his left, and to the northeast the Rocky Mountains, an insight of engineering genius. He was flying at just under 70,000 feet. Sixteen miles high. Five thousand feet higher than the official record, then held by a Brit called Gibb, flying a Canberra B Mark II. The machine was skittish, and although in one week he had logged over thirty hours in it (you could fly only every other day to guard against denitrogenization), he knew not to accept it nonchalantly. For one thing, every aircraft was in some slight way different from every other. He had flown three, and knew this to be true. But all of them had problems in common. One was what the instructor called the “coffin factor,” a graphic way of reminding you that you had better stay well aware of it. At the highest altitudes the atmosphere gets so rare (at 70,000 feet, he was in the upper five percent of the earth’s atmosphere) that small variables in speed could leave you in an—unmanageable situation. If you went too fast, you ran into the Mach “buffer”—and the whole light-skinned soaring plane (that, really, was what it was) could simply decompose. On the other hand, if you didn’t maintain enough speed you would stall. Recovering from a stall in an airplane is routine stuff, but you have to have that nice palpable a-i-r to dive into, not the wispy stuff you get sixteen miles up. Diving down to recover from the stall meant risking those high speeds again.

  And twice he had experienced a flameout. The atmosphere is so attenuated, the engine just loses its fire every now and then, and before you can spark it up again, you have to slither on down to where you can feed the jet a nice gulp of good, wholesome, combustible air. He recovered from the first flameout at 65,000 feet, from the second at 60,000 feet. He had, of course, a particular interest in flameouts, because he was scheduled to have a most inconvenient one, near some goddam city in the Soviet Union whose name he kept forgetting. But don’t worry, Blackford old shoe, you’ll have a nice map strapped to your oxygen suit, and you won’t make any mistakes when the time comes. He would flame out, come down and rekindle, then suffer successive flameouts, and finally—finally, well, time enough to work out the details.

  Blackford’s high-performance experience had mostly been in fighter aircraft, during the war, though his father was always letting him horse around with the latest models, and he had flown jets several times. His navigation was a little rusty, and the day after tomorrow he was scheduled to make an eight-hour run without the use of conventional navigation aids, using only a long-wave receiver, picking up regular radio programs issuing from radio stations en route, whose signal numbers were being assembled. These and, of course, the sextant and the compass. That was it.

  Well. That’s what the fellers have been using, he thought, over Russia and the Mediterranean, and over the China Sea, flying out of Atsugi near Yokohama. There had been casualties, but none the result of defective navigation. So that it was merely a matter of applying himself, and pre-calculating, to the extent possible, the sextant work, so that he would in fact be confirming his estimated position, rather than figuring out ex nihilo where he was; compensating—that’s what he’d be doing—for such anomalies as wind drift.

  He knew he could do it. Getting to that Russian place, whatever it was called, didn’t make Blackford question himself. It was what would happen after that. Rufus had had some zany ideas in the years Blackford had worked for him, but this particular one had to have more moving parts than a pinball machine. And if anything went wrong, why, all he’d have to do was figure out a way of escaping from the Lubyanka.

  How different the sensation from the noisy old Grummans! In those days—it was only fifteen years ago—when he set out, he set out to kill. Not this time. Like so many others, he had been arrested by Yeats’s poem on the unmotivated quandary of the Irish airman:

  I know that I shall meet my fate

  Somewhere among the clouds above;

  Those that I fight I do not hate,

  Those that I guard I do not love …

  How applicable was that, he wondered, soaring peaceful as a seagull up above forests and deserts and mountains? He loved very much, he believed, those he thought himself as helping to guard. And he hated, very much, those against whom he guarded them, the grim men whose enemy is the human spirit, who blind the artists, mute the poets, deafen their musicians, take parents from their children and children from their parents, and lie, with that awful tenacity that severs those painfully fragile threads that inhibit men from giving way to their beastliness. What a marvel, this vessel! he thought yet again; and thought of the closing lines of the Irish aviator. What had driven him to the air, if not a public cause? It was:

  A lonely impulse of delight

  Drove to this tumult in the clouds …

  Except there was nothing tumultuous about it, up here in the cold calm, flying a plane so high it was invisible from the earth, while the sky above was a deep, mysterious purple. The tumult would be below. Soon now. The first good flying day in the first week of April. The instructor had said there was little more he could teach him. At the simulators, Blackford’s reflexes had proved as sharp as when he flew at age nineteen. The navigational work would be done mostly in Japan, and on exercise pads.

  On the ground, he talked casually to the instructor and the briefing officers, rattling off the routing data and submitting to the customary physical. No question about it, you came down tired. Life at Watertown Strip, located in southern Nevada, was calculated to intensify the diligence with which pilots mastered the arcana of the U-2. There was—nothing, at Watertown Strip, except the PX, the mess hall, and his little room.

  It turned chilly in March, and one night after eating he put on a sweater and walked, alone, down the length of the strip. One could hardly tell where it ended. It stretched almost seamlessly into the desert, flat, uninviting. He walked an hour before turning back, at which point he could barely make out the lights from the little cluster of buildings. He homed in on his own, took off his sweater, sat down in the little armchair and began to read Buckley’s Up From Liberalism. But his mind wandered. Hardly Buckley’s fault. Blackford felt he had to talk to Sally.

  So he went out and walked to the dusty corner, to the pay telephone. Exasperated, he shook his pockets for change. The PX had closed. He would have to telephone collect. He didn’t like doing that, even though Sally didn’t mind. But there was something about a conversation introd
uced with the phrase, “Will you accept a collect call from Mr. Oakes?” that had a way of pre-pitching the conversation. He vacillated … and returned to his room. He wrote her:

  Dear Sally: I shall in a fortnight or so be going away on one of those you-know-whats. I wonder, what would you think of spending the weekend before I leave (March 26–27) in Bermuda? The weather wouldn’t be ideal, but swimming with you in Bermuda wasn’t what I had in mind anyway. Now now. That of course: don’t we belong to each other? Even if we haven’t made it formal? But besides that, we should talk. Talk and talk and talk, endlessly. You did a fine and nice thing last October during your interdict, reading all those books by the dissidents. And when I told you about Michael, your reaction was very different, I think, from what it would have been even a year ago. You understand that Michael didn’t waste his life. (He certainly saved mine.) Why did he do it? Why do I feel, more and more, this compulsion, not to build bridges, but to make it safer for people who want to build bridges? That’s the kind of thing we need to talk about. That, and—oh, your stunning academic promotion, your stunning unacademic bustline, your dismayingly learned piece in the Sewanee Review. And—now, this is very important, so don’t let me forget when we get there—there is the question of what we should name our children. Michael is—you will agree?—obligatory for our first boy. Things like that. Say yes, call your former roommate Betty at her travel agency, and book us at the Coral Beach Club. They have those little cottages. I know it’s a private club, and you probably don’t know that dear old Mum keeps up her membership. I’ll call you on the telephone the day after I figure you’ll receive this letter. Meanwhile, be sure to have a letter waiting for me when I get back, telling me how much you love your

  Unruly but devoted,

  Blackford.

  CHAPTER 19

  J. Edgar Hoover, jut-jawed, beefy, all business, sat at the center of the ten-foot-long table. At his right sat Rufus; at his left, the chief of Cointelpro, Lewis Nichols. Opposite them was a screen. The slide operator could, by computer, summon onto the screen a photograph, at the desired scale, of every block or group of blocks in Greater New York. As the men sat, the area shown was the block of which 252 Fulton Street in Brooklyn was a part. The time was 12:31. A loudspeaker at the upper corner of the room was activated: someone was about to transmit.

  “Control One. Able One is emerging from railroad car and making his way into main terminal.”

  Rufus glanced down at the typewritten sheet in front of him:

  Able One-Benni Bolgiano, Washington, followed by Cover One.

  Able Two-Hans Steiner, Brooklyn, followed by Cover Two and Intercept Two.

  Able Three-William Stockley, Bell Labs.

  Able Four-John O’Brien, Aberdeen Proving Grounds.

  Able Five-Esther Meyerson, Edwards Air Force Base.

  Baker One-Nikolai Muraviev, United Nations.

  Baker Two-Josef Golitsyn, Pravda, Washington.

  Baker Three-Vladimir Arakcheev, Soviet Embassy.

  Nichols drew the table microphone close to his mouth, depressed the transmitter signal, “Control One, roger.”

  Hoover, the fingers of his left hand tapping the table, snapped his right fingers at an aide stationed in the corner who nodded, touching a buzzer. In a few moments a secretary appeared with a tray, placing sandwiches, tea, coffee, and three plates with napkins within reach of the three men. Absentmindedly, Rufus shook the salt cellar into his coffee. There was total silence.

  Again, the sound of transmission. The voice of an old-timer: “Control One, Able Two is emerging from residence, heading west.

  “Control One, Able Two has descended subway at Borough Hall.”

  The screen opposite magnified the subway station.

  “Control One, roger.” And, to his colleagues at the table, “he’ll be headed for Manhattan.” Nichols raised the cup of coffee to his lips.

  “Control One, Able One has emerged from Penn Station and is walking south on Seventh Avenue.”

  “Control One, roger.”

  The right half of the screen now showed an overhead view of Seventh Avenue from Pennsylvania Station stretching south about five blocks.

  “Control One, Able Two is walking out of subway at Twenty-third and Park and walking south toward Gramercy Park.”

  “Control One: roger, Cover Two.”

  “Control One, Able One has turned on Twenty-first Street and is walking east.”

  “Control One: roger, Cover One.”

  “Control One, Able Two is walking west on Twenty-first Street.”

  “Control One: roger, Cover Two,” and to the Director, “they’re heading toward Broadway, looks like.”

  The screen now showed New York’s Twenty-first Street, from Seventh Avenue to Third. At the right edge of the screen Gramercy Park was visible.

  “Control One, Able One has stopped at newsstand at corner of Twenty-first and Broadway. He is looking at the papers on the racks.”

  “Control One: roger, Cover One.”

  “Control One, Able Two is approaching newsstand at corner of Twenty-first and Broadway.” The camera descended on the corner of Twenty-first and Broadway.

  “Control One, Able One has inserted the newspaper he was carrying into rack, has pulled out another paper.”

  “Control One, Able Two has picked up newspaper from rack and left other paper. Able Two has gone to vendor, left payment. Has put newspaper in pocket. Is walking back east.”

  “Control One, Able One has paid for paper, is walking north up Broadway.”

  Hoover turned to Nichols, and with his index finger, signaled an X.

  “Control One to Cover One. Suspend further contact. Acknowledge.”

  “Cover One to Control One. Acknowledge, suspending contact.”

  “Control One to Cover Two. Continue to advise.”

  An aide at a switchboard at the right-hand end of the room, beside a table around which three officials sat, sent over a Telex dispatch.

  “ABLE THREE REPORTED AT HOME. ABLE FOUR DITTO, ABLE FIVE IS DRIVING DIRECTION LOS ANGELES, CONTACT OKAY. BAKER ONE LUNCHING IN WASHINGTON, CONTACT SECURE. BAKER TWO, DITTO. BAKER THREE AT HOME, BAYSIDE, CONTACT SECURE.”

  At 1:35: “Control One, Able Two has reentered residence.”

  “Control One to Cover Two, roger.”

  Hoover spoke for the first time.

  “The three times we’ve observed him, he stayed two to three and a half hours after contact before going out and posting.”

  “Yes,” said Rufus. “But we’re guessing that he’ll probably call Ottawa on this one. And he may decide to do that even before making the negatives.”

  “Seat-of-the-pants stuff from now on,” said Hoover.

  “Assuming he goes right to work and skips lunch, he’ll develop the minutes and the protocols in a half hour. Say he takes twenty minutes to read them. Say he decides then to make the call. He’d leave within an hour. That would be 2:30.”

  “Control One, Able Two is leaving residence.” The time was 2:15. “He is proceeding west. He has flagged a taxi.” There was a brief silence. “Control One, instructions to taxi driver intercepted. Destination Grand Central Station.”

  “Control One to Intercept Two, roger.” Nichols was beginning to perspire. “Cautious bugger. Probably wouldn’t use a neighborhood phone if he read we were sending over our missiles at two-thirty.… If he uses one of those phones in the open banks in the terminal, it’s going to be hard as hell to intercept.”

  This, for Rufus, was a moment of high tension. Everyone knew this. Even so, he couldn’t help saying it, “Mr. Hoover, we cannot risk blowing this. Do you think you should cut out the intercept attempt and hope the phone company comes through?”

  Hoover snapped, “I’m using skilled men.” Even so, he said to Nichols: “Warn Intercept Two: No risk; repeat, no risk.”

  “Control One to Intercept Two: No risk; repeat, no risk. Acknowledge.”

  “Intercept Two to Control One. Roger,
no risk.”

  “Control One, Able Two paying taxi and heading toward Lexington … Walking up Lexington … has passed entrance to station. Is headed for pay phone at corner Forty-third and Lex.” The screen zoomed down on the corner, the pay phone easily visible.

  “Able Two in booth.” Rufus held his breath. The switchboard operator had instantly relayed the location of the telephone, and within six seconds the AT&T computer flashed out the number: MUrray Hill 4–3414. The number was flashed to the relevant intercept switchboard, and the recording unit began to turn.

  “Control One, regret no intercept possible account street noise plus security.”

  “Control One to Intercept Two: Roger.” Nichols turned to Hoover questioningly.

  “Dismiss him,” Hoover said.

  “Control One to Intercept Two: Discontinue operation. Acknowledge.”

  “Intercept Two to Control One: Discontinue, roger and out.”

  Rufus now tapped his fingers. Steiner had been on the telephone approximately one minute. Probably the recorder had begun logging forty-five seconds after Steiner picked up the telephone. What it would catch would depend entirely on the speed of the conversation at Steiner’s end and at Ottawa’s.

  “Control One, Able Two has put down telephone. Is leaving booth and flagging taxi.”

  “Control One to Cover Two: Roger.”

  “The taxi trip from Fulton Street to Grand Central took twenty-five minutes,” Rufus said. “Will we get the telephone tape before he gets back to Fulton Street?”

  “The lines are laid on,” Hoover replied. “We should get it right away, if we got it at all.”