Who's on First

by William F. Buckley

  “Do you have the answer?”

  “As far as we can figure out, they have nine. In other words, they flew their entire goddam fleet over Moscow.”

  “Don’t swear, Allen.”

  “Is that what you used to tell Harry Truman?”

  “Presidents are allowed to swear. Second Samuel 19, Verse 23.”

  “Now of course we don’t know this for sure, but there certainly aren’t a lot of Bisons, and they don’t seem to be coming off the assembly lines.”

  “Do I take it our President is reconciled to a little skywatching? And has your brother the Secretary of State found any theological objections?”

  The Director laughed. “You’d think Ike had invented the U-2 himself. You remember he only grudgingly allowed us to produce it, said he doubted he’d ever permit us to use it. He’s got now so he’s absolutely hooked on the U-2 reports.”

  “You mean he prefers them to Zane Grey?”

  “Oh come off it, Dean. Ike didn’t become General of the Army by specializing in military ignorance.”

  “That’s true. He specialized in other forms of ignorance.”

  “Shall I go on?” The Director was mildly exasperated.

  “Sorry.”

  “Anyway, as you know, we’ve been tracking Kapistan Yar for a couple of years. Total radar monitoring of all their rocket activity, which has been progressing, but without any spectacular breakthrough. Well, last week our birdie, coming in from Peshawar in Pakistan to Adana in Turkey, photographed some interesting stuff, which we have developed, and which was the reason for the special meeting this afternoon. Remember the name ‘Tyura Tam.’ By contrast, Kapistan Yar is a Potemkin village.”

  “Where is Tyura Tam?”

  “It’s 680 miles east of Kapistan Yar, on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. They need the railroad because of the weight of the fuel and rockets. The base is sixty miles by ten miles, on a line extending from the northern tip of the Aral Sea”—the Director pulled out an atlas, ran his eye over the table of contents, opened it, and put it in front of his friend—“to the middle of Lake Balkhash. The big stuff is there: sixty- to seventy-foot-tall missiles. They look bloody well ready to go.”

  “How does a missile look ‘ready to go’?”

  “The assumptions are based on comparative appearance. If you get a dozen missiles in a row, a mile between missiles, comparisons will tell you those on which work has been apparently completed. These missiles use the RD-107 as the basic launch vehicle. There is no doubt in our minds that at least one or maybe more of those missiles is designed to launch an earth satellite. That satellite is intended to electrify the world—which it will, if it’s the first one—and the achievement of that one launch will establish beyond any doubt that the bombers were a ruse—that the highest priority and the best brains in Russia have been devoted to developing an international ballistics missile powerful enough to lift their heavy thermonuclear heads but also smart enough to guide them to any target within a projected range of 5,500 miles.”

  “Does that mean Texas would still be safe?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Too bad.”

  “The effect of that satellite—a symbol of a burgeoning technology that threatens Soviet strategic preeminence—can’t be exaggerated. However, they are stumped on one thing.”

  “What is it? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “They are stumped because they don’t know how to increase the power of—I’m using layman’s language—”

  “Why not? After all you are a layman.”

  “… increase the power of the transistor crystals. Without that power the satellite, even if launched, would be uncontrollable, would emit no durable radio signal, and would be useless in accumulating and recording scientific data.”

  “Is this crystal business you speak of something we know how to do?”

  “It is, thank God. And we came on it quite by accident. Courtesy of the private enterprise system, as it happens. Moreover, Dean, as we sit here, the Soviet Union—if only it knew—could pick up something called a Van de Graaff. Van de Graaff, by the way, isn’t a seventeenth-century Dutchman. He’s a live MIT professor. The machine is manufactured, of all places, in Massachusetts. The unit is about the size of a Volkswagen, costs a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and increases the potency of transistors by means of an electron beam bombardment that irregularizes transistor crystals.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “Neither do I. I’m just telling you: That’s all they’re missing. They simply don’t know that the irregularization of transistor crystals can increase their potency by a factor of one hundred. A fifty-cent transistor can be turned into a thirty-dollar transistor by passing through a Van de Graaff.”

  “How do you know they don’t have it?”

  “That’s something, Dean, I do mind telling you.”

  “Very well. How long would your people guess before they crack it?”

  “That’s the damnedest thing. We don’t know. Conceivably they could come on the thing tomorrow. But then conceivably they could poke about six, eight, ten months before getting it. And by that time we should get our birdie up there.”

  “What’s holding us up?”

  “Agreement on the right blend of launching fuel. There are advocates of just about every combination. We were able to guess when we took a hard look at the size of the Russian rockets, and checked the performance of their western base, that they’ve licked the fuel problem. We only just now have an inkling of what it is they are on to.”

  “Yes?”

  “Liquefied ozone. Liquid ozone is something the rocket-types sometimes call ‘supercharged oxygen.’ Ozone that hasn’t been liquefied is incredibly dangerous and erratic. Our Dr. Dornberger has said he wouldn’t stand several miles from any launch site using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Ozone, in a liquid form, they have thought of as ideal—if it could be distilled in totally pure form. Ideal in terms of withstanding vibration, heat, impact. One guy not long ago thought he had perfected a 100 percent pure liquid ozone—which promptly exploded. (He died, by the way, Dean, intestate.) It looks as though the Russians have developed a means of stabilizing ozone for liquid-fueled monster rockets. And it looks as though we will eventually learn how to do this. Once we’ve got it, using just the ozone, or a combination, we can go.”

  “So what it comes down to is: They need the Van de Graaff. We need, so to speak, their ozone formula.”

  “That’s a fair way to put it.”

  “And we think we’re about to discover the ozone formula, but they know nothing about Van de Graaff?”

  “That’s an optimistic way of putting it.”

  “Well, you put it your way.”

  “I am telling you something known to the President and six—now seven—Americans. Which is that we hope by the end of this week to have the ozone formula.”

  “Once we get it, how long before we can fire?”

  “We figure, as closely as possible, six to eight months.”

  “How long would it take them to go if they got the Van de Graaff?”

  “Two weeks.”

  The former Secretary paused. “It is obvious what we want and what we don’t have.”

  “Correct. One cannot exaggerate the importance of going up first with a satellite. It will affect our diplomacy, the way we are regarded, in every chancellery in the world. Are you agreed?”

  “I am agreed. It would take a long time to overcome a technological setback of that kind. It might, incidentally, very easily decide the next presidential election.”

  “You mean, the ‘stupid’ party could be voted out?”

  “I didn’t say that, Allen.” He smiled. “Besides, Democrats often wage stupid campaigns. What can I do for you, my friend?”

  “I speak now on behalf of my brother and the President. Will you, early in the fall, take a trip? London, Paris, Bonn, Rome. The purpose: to advise our friends that the Soviet Union is
going to go big for rocketry. That the United States is doing solid work on rocketry and confidently expects to launch a satellite ahead of the Soviet Union. That a Soviet satellite will not, however, be delayed for very long, but that our massive technological resources will in any case cause us to forge ahead and extend that lead over the next two or three years, and that as a leading Democrat you are quite confident that the Democrats in Congress will vote the necessary funds.”

  His guest pulled a leather book out of his pocket and leafed through a few pages.

  “I will be in Europe in November. Is that soon enough?”

  “That may be stretching it. Could you possibly move it forward? October?”

  He studied the book. “Hmm. Judge Lorenzo, before whom I am scheduled to litigate in October, is, I believe, a Republican appointee. He has—up until now?”—one tip of the famous moustache cocked up quizzically—“adamantly declined any further postponements.”

  The Director took out his pencil.

  “What court?”

  “District Court, D.C.”

  “Consider it done.”

  The visitor stood up, shook hands, and walked toward the door. “It’s bad news they are making such progress. But you appear to have done a good job of intelligence. Well done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Someday your spy network may discover poverty in America, and do something about it.”

  “There can’t be that many poor people, Dean. They all voted for your party—and look how many votes you got.”

  The former Secretary smiled, and they shook hands.

  14

  The idea was to leave them alone. There were contingency arrangements. “The Worst Case situation,” Rufus had lectured Blackford, Anthony Trust, and Vadim, “is if Kapitsa raises unshirted hell, refuses to speak to his old friend, clams up, demands the police, the ambassador, the whole works. If that happens, then we cover our losses. Vadim will apologize, tell him he, Vadim, felt he had to make an effort to give Viktor and Tamara a choice, that to that end he got a couple of friends with anti-Communist backgrounds to help him out, that he hadn’t tipped off any U.S.A. officials because no one from America would cooperate in any such enterprise especially on foreign soil; that Vadim will arrange to get him back to Paris, and he can tell the Russians he persuaded the Algerian kidnappers they would be much better off letting him argue the case for aid to Algeria in person than as a prisoner. End—we hope—of an unsuccessful episode.

  “Going to the other extreme, there’s the possibility that Kapitsa will welcome the opportunity to defect—don’t interrupt me, Vadim—we’re talking hypothetical possibilities. In that event we are ready to move with great speed to get him out of the country. At this end we can tie up the Russians by stretching out the Algerians’ demands for a few days and then telling them that Dr. Kapitsa has escaped. They will guess either that he defected or that he was killed. Let them guess.”

  Rufus stood up, and there began one of his renowned pauses, during which his three auditors maintained a disciplined silence. Finally he resumed.

  “A third possibility strikes me as the likeliest, on the basis of what Vadim has told us about Kapitsa. It is that on the one hand he won’t turn against his old friend here resentfully—particularly when Vadim tells him that he arranged the elaborate cover story assigning responsibility to the Algerians. But that he will want to go back to Russia. We just don’t know. But Vadim is in a position to tell him, gently but with some firmness, that Kapitsa must agree to stay in the chateau and think it over for at least forty-eight hours, that for one thing the cover story would stand up better if there was a delay of at least that long. During those forty-eight hours, Vadim must labor as best he can to get the most information out of him. Will he tell us what they are up to in Tyura Tam? When do they expect to go with the satellite? What’s holding them up? What can he tell us about the fuel mix they’re going to use? Have they had any success in purifying ozone? Everything we can get out of him. There is, further, the remote possibility that he would be willing to return to Russia—and feed us information on a regular basis. This, for us, is obviously the ideal result, better than a defection. To make that arrangement raises the question of Tamara. And my guess is, Vadim, that you shouldn’t even raise it as a possibility until you and Viktor are entirely alone. You should try to be alone with him as long as you can when you first meet. Then bring in the girl, have dinner, make them feel at home. You’ll be excellently fed. They will see only the French maid, and the cook, if they wander into the kitchen. Trust will be in the east wing and will stay there to take any communications from Vadim. Blackford, you will supervise the delivery of the ransom message to the Soviet Embassy, come back to me, and report on the success of the initial proceedings. Then return to the hotel until I tell you to go back out to Chantilly. You will check with me, using a pay phone, the next morning and we’ll discuss what we find in Le Monde. I’ll give you any information I’ve gotten from Trust.”

  And Blackford had done just that, and then repaired to a public telephone booth. Rufus was pleased that the operation had in its first phase gone smoothly. He informed Blackford that Trust had already called in from Chantilly to say that his “guest” was acting very “reasonably”—which meant he was not resisting his sequestration. “By the way, Blackford,” Rufus went on, “your old friend Bolgin is in town. Left London two days ago, we’ve learned. So he’ll be managing the case here on the spot. There’s nothing to do now until tomorrow morning. You may as well go out and taste the smells and sights of Paris.”

  “Rufus!”

  Rufus ignored this, saying merely, “Call me in the morning. Let us say … between nine-thirty and ten. I’ll have a report from Trust.” He hung up.

  Trust! Ah, Anthony. Blackford remembered his own report.… Last night, at the chateau, after Vadim had gone to bed, they had chatted. Toward the end of the evening Anthony had said, “Do you remember Doucette?”

  “My dear Anthony, I dimly remember Doucette. I am quite certain that she remembers me.”

  “Well, Doucette has a younger sister. I … ‘met’ her sister over the weekend.”

  “At Madame Pensaud’s?”

  “Madame Pensaud has gone to her reward.”

  “Ouch!”

  “But as you know in France tradition is everything. Madame Pensaud’s niece is the current entrepreneur, and her quarters and facilities are unchanged, including the picture of Queen Caroline, and the diatribe against the Fourth Republic. But Doucette’s sister, she confided to me—”

  “Is that all she did to you?”

  “Quiet, Oakes: I am about to share a treasure with you.”

  “Anthony, before you share any treasures with me, may I ask when you last had a checkup?”

  “This’s hardly the way to treat your old benefactor, Blackford. Anyway, Doucette’s sister, Alouette, slipped me her telephone number, telling me that it was ‘more convenient’ all the way around that way.”

  “In other words, she doesn’t have to share the boodle with Madame.”

  “Oakes, you should be in Intelligence.”

  “I would prefer to be in Alouette.”

  “Moreover, you have not lost your distinctive vulgarity.”

  “I’ll discuss my distinctions with Alouette.”

  They had been interrupted—the maid came in to ask if there would be anything else before she retired—but Blackford had in fact absentmindedly pocketed the card with the telephone number.

  As he walked out of the telephone booth he reflected that this had been a full day. Should he simply order a meal—perhaps even in his room in the hotel?—read a book, and go to bed? Tomorrow might be busy. On the other hand as, crossing the river, the evening breeze braced him, he reconsidered: It was more probable that tomorrow would be uneventful; that he would be spending the whole of the day or most of it in his room, waiting for instructions. Why not, then, wander about Paris a little bit? Should he call Alouette? Or simply go to th
e bar at the George V, perhaps run into someone, male or female. Male? “Blacky Oakes! For Pete’s sake? Haven’t seen you since New Haven. What’re you doing?” How many times had that happened to him. One hundred? One thousand? He tried to come up with interesting variations on the theme that he was an international consultant in engineering, in which he was known by all his old classmates to be highly qualified. But, inevitably, there had been rumors. Only once or twice, usually when his friends got drunk—or, more often, when their wives did—the question would be pressed. Was it true that he was actually in the … By definition, Blackford Oakes was no longer a deep-cover agent. The KGB now knew his identity. But the rules of the Agency were not relaxed. The Agency took the position that even if the Soviet Union discovers the identity of an agent his usefulness in clandestine operations by no means entirely lapses. By staying clear of embassies and U.S. officials in whatever capacity, covert agents retain a measure of mobility. They must constantly be on guard against being followed, because very often they are, and the KGB seems to develop a fascination for the movements of particular agents, for no rational reason. Blackford had been pestered while in Washington, but had eluded the KGB entirely, he was certain, during the months in Budapest, and there was no evidence the KGB were on to him in France. Still, in the middle of a drastically secret operation, he was best off not frequenting a bar, or a restaurant, where he stood a higher chance of running into somebody he knew; so, passing by Au Petit Riche on Rue Le Peletier, he decided impulsively to enter it, and eat alone, and read a little—he carried a pocketbook always, and was enjoying Jane Austen, whom he had once vowed to Sally not to read. “It would embarrass you most awfully, wouldn’t it, Dr. Partridge, if after reading Jane Austen it should transpire in conversations in academic salons that I, a mere vulgar engineer, know more about Jane Austen than you do?” She had answered with characteristic vitality that any academic salon which thought that he would ever know more than she about Jane Austen would likely be in Equatorial Guinea. But at the airport he had impetuously picked up Pride and Prejudice and, to his amazement, discovered that Jane Austen was most awfully … funny. So, when the waiter came, he ordered a kir, and a half-dozen snails and a crêpe de volaille and a half bottle of Montrachet and later a little cheese and a half bottle of burgundy and then, he decided, Alouette. He rose to the telephone, and she answered immediately.