See You Later, Alligator

by William F. Buckley

  “Not a word.”

  “It is unlike you to be so imprecise, Rufus. You know at least one word of every language, including Swahili.”

  “I know only Uhuru! in Swahili.”

  Allen Dulles did not repress a smile. “Well, may as well get this part over with. Your generic skills are useful in every situation, but there is only one very specific reason why I have brought you in on this assignment. Blackford Oakes.”

  Rufus looked up, a hint of curiosity in his face. “I saw Oakes ten days ago in Berlin.”

  “I know that. You also know, because you were present, that Oakes reported on the Berlin Wall directly to the President and the National Security Council in the Situation Room last month. Well, the President apparently took a shine to Oakes. This week, he directed me—” (the verb was used with obvious professional resentment; the Director had nothing against Oakes—well, there was one old score involving the Russian satellite, but long since forgiven—but he was not accustomed to being told who on his staff to put onto a specific assignment. He chose not to dwell on the irregularity.) “—the President said, ‘Who was the young man who came in and reported to us on the Wall last month?’ Well, there were just the three of us, Rufus, and I cannot in good conscience call you young, given that you came out of retirement a year ago. So I mentioned Blackford’s name, and he said, ‘Give the job to him.’ I said that Oakes’s professional experience had been in Europe, and it was as if I hadn’t spoken. He merely said, ‘Yes. Oakes. That was his name. Blackford Oakes. Yes. Get him onto this.’”

  “Forgive me, Mr. Director,” Cecilio Velasco said, speaking for the first time, his English accented but confident. “Have you and, uh, Mr. Rufus already discussed the problem? I do not know what ‘this’ refers to.”

  “I just got here, Velasco,” Rufus said, “just five minutes before you. I don’t know either.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Director said, rising to bring the coffeepot in from the kitchen stove. The sound of the steam had distracted him. “‘This’ has to do with arranging a meeting between Oakes and Che Guevara.”

  Velasco looked skeptical.

  An hour later they knew the details of the meeting two days earlier between Guevara and Richard Goodwin in Montevideo, and the startling proposals put forward by Guevara.

  “The President figures that the Sovietization of Cuba is in very high gear. In the past few weeks Castro has nationalized all the schools, introduced the study of Russian into the regular curriculum, forbidden the teaching of religion, deputized the Swiss ambassador to communicate with us, instituted a regular air run to Prague, and shot a lot more people. They are in terrible economic shape, thanks in substantial part to our general embargo. They need the Soviet Union and we figure Russia is already spending at the level of three million dollars per day on Cuba. The President figures Guevara isn’t serious when he promises, in exchange for our lifting the embargo, to contain the revolution. The Soviet Union wouldn’t be showing the kind of interest it is in Cuba if it knew the Castro people weren’t willing to go out and cause trouble in other parts of the hemisphere. But he feels he needs to pin this thing down, and the one thing he can’t risk is doing it through regular channels. For one thing, he doesn’t trust the State Department at any level. For another, the CIA is supposedly non-partisan: We gather information, and the best cover this side of an actual deal with Castro is information collection. Remember, the Republicans would eat him alive if they thought he was talking with Che Guevara. Let alone smoking his cigars.”

  “Cigars?” Velasco said, puffing on his cigarette.

  “Yes. He showed me. Fancy stuff. A large box, mahogany, inlaid with all kinds of ornate material, with the Cuban seal, and a Cuban flag around the key. The President offered me one, and I took it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a large cigar, a voluptuous reminder of what had been generally available to American cigar smokers only a year earlier. “Montecristo #1, I’d guess,” he said, twirling it about his fingers. “Anyway, he wants a back-channel operation. No one else is to be in on it.”

  “Not even Goodwin?” Rufus asked.

  “That’s the President’s business. He told me he did not intend to inform ‘anybody.’ Maybe Goodwin doesn’t count as somebody, if you can figure that out.”

  “And the mission, exactly?” Velasco inquired.

  “The mission is to ascertain from Guevara what kind of guarantees he is in a position to make on the matter of keeping hands off the rest of Latin America.”

  “And then we decide whether to lift the embargo?” Rufus asked.

  “And then we decide whether to lift the embargo,” the Director echoed.

  Four

  Although the midday sun in Mexico City in summer brings heat, it does not bring discomfort, at least not for someone arriving from Washington, D.C., where Blackford had spent a sweltering day answering questions that issued from his report on his Berlin operation. His spirits were sluggish and he had taken a few liberties with the narrative, reasoning that what he withheld from the questioning deputy did not directly impinge on the national security. Moreover, Blackford reflected while walking down Pennsylvania Avenue from the safe house to his hotel, his views on the national security were maturing. He was glad he did not have to answer, at this moment, how exactly these views were changing or what were the implications of the change. But he knew at least that formalities engaged him less. (They had never exactly obsessed him, though he acknowledged their importance.) As it happened, the record need not show what exactly Blackford Oakes did the day the Wall went up. He acknowledged it might have been otherwise. If he had been caught. But in fact he hadn’t been, so why worry?

  He wished only that the night in Washington would hasten by, as the next day he would be with Sally. Toward her his thoughts also were maturing in that he resolved—while acknowledging he had done this several times since leaving college a decade ago—that, really, he would not live without her for very much longer, a resolution reinforced by her letter from Mexico which had somehow changed his perspectives. Though perhaps—he attempted to reason objectively—the realization of the Wall in Berlin, and the renewed palpability of life on the free side of that wall, had also done much to affect his spirits. They focused now on the need to snatch his own life from the rotting carcass of the political world he had inherited, and to breathe deeply the free air of the West, resisting the impulse so to involve himself in the mixed motives of mankind as to develop chronic melancholia.

  On reaching the Hay-Adams Hotel he dialed the number of Anthony Trust, fetching a recorded answer that “the party at that number” could be reached at “his New York number,” a referral vague enough to discourage casual phoners. Blackford knew the New York number and what code to give the woman who answered, after which he asked for and promptly got the number at which he could reach his old schoolmate, who ten years before had recruited him into the Agency. Would Anthony be out to dinner, he wondered, as he dialed the eleven digits. He had only, when the phone was picked up, to say, “Anthony?”

  “Well I’ll be damned if it isn’t Blackford Oakes! Yale 1951! Ace fighter pilot! Honors graduate, School of Engineering! Subsequent activities … vague. But thought to be engaged in His Majesty’s service—”

  “We don’t have a Majesty, Trust.”

  “Oh? How long have you been out of the country, Blackford? Over six months, I happen to know. And I guess you just don’t happen to know that there has been a coup d’état in America since you went away. We don’t have a republic anymore, though we are all very careful to conceal this. We have a kingdom! The king is installed in the White House, a quaint republican relic. He and his queen and the little prince and princess live there in regal splendor, and they invite to their court the most distinguished spirits in the land, who go there and pay tribute and leave frankincense and myrrh—they do not need any gold, because the king gets all the revenues from a vast commercial empire founded by his father, and besides, he has the keys to For
t Knox, which surrendered without a fight, thereby saving the defenders from the garrotte—”

  “Oh shut up, Anthony. Really, you were always bad, but you are becoming an insufferable tight-ass Republican—”

  “Please do not make references to just one of those parts of my anatomy that all women swoon over—you know that, Blackford, since once you actually had the privilege of seeing it happen—”

  “Anthony. Get your dirty mind off your dirty appetites and concentrate on my dirty appetites. Out of curiosity, is Mabel still around these days?”

  “Ah, Mabel. Well, Blackford, you will be happy to learn that Mabel is well and prosperous and that her finishing school is more selective than ever. So selective, in fact, that Mabel’s unlisted number is highly restricted, and I don’t know that I could take the liberty of giving it to you …”

  “Anthony, look. I’m tired. I’m going to Mexico on vacation tomorrow. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks and then we’ll visit.”

  They chatted for ten minutes.

  It was hard to remember when he hadn’t known Anthony Trust—an American prefect at Greyburn College, where Blackford had been sent to school when his mother divorced his father and married that genial and endearing Colonel Blimp, Sir Alec Sharkey, who immediately packed Blacky off, age fifteen, to the same school he and his forebears going back a hundred years had attended; where he had found only one other American student, Anthony Trust, witness to the humiliating flogging Blackford had got from the sadist whose avocation was to serve as headmaster of Greyburn College.

  Blackford could pick up, from Anthony’s guarded talk, some idea of his current preoccupations, even as close familiarity with the work of an artist can cause the student to know what direction the artist is embarked upon after a few brushstrokes. Clearly Anthony was involved with the whole subject of monitoring nuclear tests, the bilateral suspension of which, in the atmosphere, had been and continued to be a high priority of the Kennedy administration. But the hardnoses in Congress, particularly Senator Thomas Dodd, wanted to know more about the verifiability of a freeze than the Executive was willing to let out. All this Anthony communicated in fits and starts, using metaphors and verbal sign language probably no single person other than his oldest friend would have succeeded in piecing together.

  “When are you coming back from Mexico?”

  “Couple of weeks.”

  “I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Listen, let’s spend Labor Day weekend sailing. I’ve got access to a nice yawl, forty-footer, sails out of Marblehead. We could sail to Nantucket, and on the way, curtsey at Hyannis Port, what do you say?”

  “Sounds great, Anthony. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”

  “Oh and Blackford, about tonight. Do you need me to remind you of Mabel’s phone number?”

  Blackford hung up, smiling. And concentrating on how to forget Mabel’s number. His thoughts were of Sally.

  The following afternoon, on Eastern flight 707—unusually empty, Blackford thought, for the month of July—he found himself in random conversation with Elsie, a Mexican-American stewardess who had instantly displayed a curious and imaginative intelligence. She accepted Blackford’s invitation to sit with him while he had coffee and a liqueur (“Captain Rickenbacker won’t notice. Nor will the other eight people on the plane”). They talked a full hour. First about Theodore White’s theatrical introduction to American politics in his big bestseller The Making of the President, 1960, a book both Elsie and Blackford had read—“It quite turned my head about JFK,” she said, sipping on a Coca-Cola. To his astonishment, Blackford heard himself saying, “I have met him.” Elsie was incredulous, and of course wished to know the circumstances, so that Blackford made up something about a Democratic Party fund-raiser which had been briefly visited by JFK during his campaign. Her delight was manifest, and Blackford thought he might as well take advantage of it, and so added, “What would you do if it were he who was here with you, instead of me?”

  What followed consumed a full half hour and led to the subject of James Baldwin, and once again it turned out that both had read his haunting book, Nobody Knows My Name. Elsie said that after reading it and searching her innermost soul she had to admit that she harbored certain racial prejudices. “Just the way, I guess, that some people have them against Mexicans.” Blackford was suddenly struck by whatever special fragrance exuded from Elsie, and looked quickly about the cabin to find the few passengers ahead of where he was seated either asleep or preoccupied with food, drink, and magazines. Elsie, for the first time, was looking directly into his face, and her voice had dropped. “Do you have such a prejudice against Mexican-Americans?”

  Blackford assured her he did not. She asked if, on arriving in Mexico, he was immediately engaged, and he said he was, in every sense of the word, since he would be visiting the woman to whom he was engaged. Elsie said there was a lucky woman living in Mexico, to find someone like Blackford, who “looked so wonderful. Not as wonderful or as beautiful as President Kennedy, but nobody else is like him.” Blackford knew he didn’t want to think anymore about the fulminations of James Baldwin, or even about the star-striking emanations of Theodore White’s early capture of the image of the young man who, only nine or ten years older than Blackford, had been elected President of the United States. And already King Arthur had shed his blessings on this subject, Blackford thought, reasoning that the mention of no other name could have aroused Elsie to such heights of appreciation. But if all the time she had been thinking of JFK, then maybe, after all, he should be thinking about Sally.

  It crossed his mind to discuss the encounter with Sally, later in the day—the sudden platonic infatuation aboard the plane. At that moment the light at the bulkhead went on and, sighing, Elsie rose, and he saw her bringing a liqueur to a passenger who in turn engaged her in conversation. He closed his eyes and appreciated the soundless air conditioner and wondered how she would look, and what Mexico City was like.

  Five

  Sally threaded Blackford through Customs, pleased with herself for having obtained a pass that permitted her to meet the passengers as they disembarked. She was pleased also to show off her Spanish, and Blackford was vocal about being impressed, and noted gratefully that she had not changed in the least in the months that had gone by. She was efficient, and strikingly—visible; she could never be anonymous. Not in any respect, Blackford thought. She wore a trim yellow cotton suit, with her little pearl necklace, and the dark blond hair framing her vividly intelligent face. Neither had the perfume changed—any alteration in the scent just behind her left ear would have upset Blackford greatly, as if someone had trifled with the magnetic North Pole. He hugged her, and somewhat to his surprise he felt moisture in his eyes and so he didn’t say anything more, merely cleared his throat, and waved more or less inconclusively at an idle porter.

  Driving off she chatted, abiding by the convention of not asking in any detail about Blackford’s activities, though after scrutinizing him carefully when he had sat down in the passenger seat, she remarked that he looked tired.

  “But it’s a superficial fatigue,” she quickly added, and went on to brief him on the geography of Mexico City, its history, its Brobdingnagian growth—“Do you realize that when Porfirio Díaz was overthrown in 1910 there were 500,000 inhabitants of Mexico City, and the figure is now well over four million, nobody knows exactly how many? Oh that reminds me, don’t drink the water”—she narrowly missed a car that lurched out from a side street—“there are no traffic lights in the most obvious intersections—no, don’t drink the water, because it’s poisoned by the sewage system. You see, the sewage system is still adequate for only 500,000 people. And don’t assume that bottled water is safe. Bottled water in Mexico City is prepared by running tap water into a bottle, sealing it, and selling it to you for two pesos. You have to boil your own water if you want to be safe, or put halazone in it. Oh dear, we’ll have to stop for a minute, it’s going to rain.” He helped her to raise the roof of t
he Volkswagen. Back in the car she explained that summer was the rainy season. “It rains every day, but only for about fifteen minutes, and then it’s lovely and cool.”

  And she was right. By the time they had reached Insurgentes and taken the right fork up Altavista it was tangycool, like early September in New England. “We are now in Villa Obregón, only most of the natives still call it San Angel Inn. Obregón was shot right over there, and the statue has his hand in it. Altavista runs right into San Angel Inn, which is a state-protected monument with a little park behind it, only maybe it will open up as an inn again, nobody is exactly sure. Oh, over there, that’s Diego Rivera’s house. Notice the passageway between the two houses? Well, he kept his wife in one house, and when he was speaking to her, which was about half the time, they say, he went to visit her through the passageway. When he was mad at her, he locked the door.”

  “When he was mad at her must have been when he painted his pictures,” Blackford commented.

  “Yes, he became something of a bore,” Sally conceded. “You would think the United States and God created peonage. Come to think of it, I suppose God did. Somebody did, and Diego Rivera never got over it. Now, watch this. You turn to the right here—” she turned off Altavista at San Angel Inn. “And you take your first left—” she turned left. “And this street,” she pointed to the block-long cobble-stoned street ahead of them, “is Calero. And,” she turned the car sharply to the right, stopped, and honked the horn, “this is how you get somebody from Mrs. Littlejohn’s to come out and get your bags.”

  A Mexican in his fifties wearing a yellow shirt and blue pants materialized, smiled at Sally, and ducked his head into the car to get the bags from the back seat.

  “Don’t worry. Manuel will take care of the car. Come and meet Josephine Littlejohn.”

  Blackford reflected that his own mother could not have greeted him more warmly. Tall, gray-haired, her figure entirely amorphous, Josephine Littlejohn addressed Blackford as if his arrival were the high point of her summer. She led him into the main living room, in which were crowded rugs and lamps and curios and photographs, and from which one could go out into the garden from three sides. Kenneth Littlejohn was reading The News, the Mexican daily paper. A striking, white-haired man in his seventies, six feet two, angular, his eyes bright, his face seasoned from a lifetime’s work as a land surveyor, he rose now to greet his wife’s latest guest.