But it wasn't all peaches and cream. Being on your own at twenty generally means being broke, and I was no exception. Of course, there was the GI Bill, but that didn't go very far, and during my four years at NYU and two years more at law school I worked six nights a week at Gimbels department store, being what was euphemistically called, in those days, a resident engineer. I was, in fact, a glorified janitor, and the work was hard and boring, but I managed.
Actually, I managed very nicely, and at this point I want to make it clear that I am in no way complaining about the manner in which I had to put myself through college. I was brought up with a belief in certain virtues that are considered somewhat unfashionable these days, and one of those beliefs is the bedrock conviction that any man, and particularly any American, can attain whatever goal he has set for himself in life, so long as he works hard enough, and with enough dedication, to achieve it. This simple fact, which is our nation's most precious asset, is what distinguishes our society from that of the totalitarian East and godless Communism, and I am proud that my own experiences as a young man were representative of the American way of life.
So much for college days, and the grind of law school. Next came my admission to the New York Bar in 1953, and hard upon the heels of that, the day I went to work for the distinguished law firm of Swan and O'Mara at 75 Maiden
Lane. Edwin Swan, senior partner of the firm, was like a father to me, and no other single person (with one exception to be mentioned later on) influenced my life as much as he did.
When I use the phrase "like a father to me," I do not use it lightly. My own father, along with my mother, died tragically when I was seventeen years of age, and from that time until the day that I met Mr. Swan I was without the older man that every young man needs to admire and to emulate. Edwin Swan provided that function in my life. He was, and still is, a tall, soft-spoken man of distinguished appearance, high intelligence, and impeccable character. The very first day that I met him I resolved to model myself on this man in every way. From observing him daily, I learned about the clothing with which a civilized man garbs himself. From dining with him, I learned that the preparation of food can be raised to the level of a fine art. As the years went by he encouraged my interests in baroque music, nineteenth-century American literature, and post- impressionist painting. He inculcated in me the habits of a lifetime, and when, in 1968, he left private practice to become Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency he set one final example for me, one which I was proud to follow when my turn came to be called to public service.
But all that came later. Back in 1953 I doubt that Mr. Swan took any particular notice of me. Just as I had been a glorified janitor at Gimbels, at Swan and O'Mara I was nothing more than a glorified law clerk, one of a dozen, who ran errands, looked up citations, researched decisions, and in general did all the scut work that enables the legal mills to grind, no matter how slowly. It was, in fact, a first-rate education in the day-to-day workings of the law, and as such was an invaluable experience.
It was in 1954 that Edwin Swan indicated that he was not entirely unaware of my existence. In fact, he made it clear that he had had his eye on me for some time, and in the fall of that year I was plucked from the ranks of the lowly, given a tiny office of my own, and put to work preparing corporate documents for some of our largest clients. Of course, in keeping with tradition, I wasn't paid any more than I had been before, but I knew that my mentor thought well of me, and that I had a future with the firm.
Now for that exception I mentioned earlier, and she certainly is an exceptional woman. Any of my classmates who have had the privilege of meeting Mrs. Emerson will need no description of her, and for you others, I will only say that she is beautiful, witty, and intelligent, and I say this after twenty-five years of marriage. It was just about the time that I began to move up the ladder at Swan and O'Mara that I first met Rusty (her name is Janet, but no one calls her that), and a very proper meeting it was, too. Nowadays, I guess if you asked every man you know how he met his wife, about half would say through a mutual friend, and the other half would say, "Well, I was standing at this bar and in walked ..." I'll bet on it. But it was nothing like that with Rusty and me. We met, of all places, at a church supper. Just imagine it! Shades of the eighteen nineties. There I was, munching away on my fried chicken and trying to figure out how the heck a man can be expected to eat potato chips with a knife and fork, when I looked up and there she was. I guess she didn't have the same kind of reservations about those chips that I did, because she picked one up with her fingers, very ladylike, of course, and popped it into her mouth. Then, to my amazement, she picked up another one, reached across the table, and popped it into mine. And smiled at me. And gentlemen, right at that moment my fate was sealed, so I guess there are some fringe benefits, after all, to being a Methodist.
As the saying goes, I chased her until she caught me. It was love at first sight, all right, but please remember that I was making the munificent salary of $110 per week at Swan and O'Mara, not very much even for 1954, and another one of those old-fashioned virtues that I was brought up to believe in is that a man doesn't marry until he is financially able to support a wife. Rusty and I kept company for most of 1954 and well into the next year, and I suppose we'd be keeping company still if she hadn't sat me down one night and said, "Jimbo, it's time to fish or cut bait." (Rusty can be a very determined lady when the mood is on her.) Rusty pulled out the old pencil and paper and started making like a CPA, showing me how we could manage easily on our two salaries, and, as I said before, the lady can be very determined. It was no contest; she had her way with me, and we were married a month later in the very same church where we had met. Three years later our daughter. Ginger, was born, and my happiness was complete.
After that, events occurred, but they were nothing more than the orderly process of a man's life and career. I went up the ladder in the firm, and in 1968 I was offered a full partnership, an offer which I regretfully declined. That was the year Edwin Swan left the firm to enter public service as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and without him at the helm I could see no purpose in remaining there myself. I therefore resolved to open my own offices, something I did later that year at 2 Wall Street. The firm, which eventually became Emerson, Jacobs and Blake, prospered from the start, and in the natural course of events honors and obligations came my way. Finally, three years ago, came the call from our President, to come to Washington to serve as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Air. This call I answered willingly, despite some personal sacrifice. I have just used the words "honors and obligations," and I should like to make it clear that while I consider this service to my country to be both an honor and an obligation, the emphasis is on the latter, not the former. Yes, surely it's an honor to serve one's country, but according to the old-fashioned verities that I mentioned before, the ones I learned first at my father's knee, and later from Edwin Swan, the primary obligation that goes with citizenship is an uncomplaining service to the community, which in the largest possible sense means service to one's country.
Old-fashioned yes, indeed, but you have to remember that I'm an old-fashioned fellow, a Yankee Doodle Dandy born on the Fourth of July, and it comes naturally to me. Not that I think that the happy coincidence of my birthday gives me a monopoly on the patriotic impulse, but I do believe that citizenship in a country such as ours is a two-way proposition, like double-entry book-keeping. An American citizen is the most privileged person on the face of this earth. He is the recipient of advantages which, in the natural order of things, should belong to all men but which, in this century at least, are particularly his. These privileges have to be paid for. All of us know that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and the manner in which we pay for the privilege of being Americans includes a dedicated service to the state. That's not much of a price to pay, is it? I don't think so. I think that being an American is the best deal on earth.
* * *
These wo
rds of James Emerson, printed in an obscure commemorative album, should have slipped gracefully into oblivion, but no sparrow is too small for its fall not to be noted by the intelligence services of the Soviet Union. Within a week after their publication, the words had been absorbed into the information-gathering network of the KGB, had been translated, taped, fed into a computer; and eventually were distributed to all interested parties within the organization.
One of those interested parties was Colonel Andrei Petrovich, who read the words of James Emerson with a broad smile on his face, silently congratulating the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Air on his guile, his duplicity, and his command of American patriotic rhetoric.
What Petrovich did not realize was that James Emerson meant every word of it.
Operation Homefire
CHAPTER THREE
James Emerson opened his eyes and was at once awake. This was something he was always able to do, no matter how late he had gone to bed the night before, no matter how many brandies he had taken after dinner, no matter how weary his body might be. It was a habit he had developed early in life, and it had served him well.
On this morning, the day before his fifty-third birthday, he awoke minutes after six and was at once aware of the sunlight that filtered into his bedroom through closed curtains, of the song of a cardinal piping over the Virginia countryside, of the pungent smell of freshly cut grass, of the regular breathing of his wife asleep beside him, and of a faintly metallic taste in his mouth which he correctly attributed to the sauce marchand du vin that had accompanied his Chateaubriand the night before.
The people in this town will eat anything, he thought, remembering the restaurant and the meal. I'll never understand Washington, and I'll never understand people who cook with wine that they wouldn't dream of drinking.
Half an hour later, shaved, showered, and with a dark suit of conservative cut draped over his lean body, he stood over the bed looking down at his sleeping wife. Her copper- colored hair, the reason she was universally called Rusty, was spread in a rich wave over her pillow, and as he watched a tendril fell across her face and she stirred in her sleep. Carefully, delicately, he brushed the lock of hair aside. It was his custom every morning to say good-bye for the day to her this way, standing over her silently. They had been married for over twenty-five years, and he truly believed that she was as lovely now as the day he had met her. The outlines of her body showed clearly through the light covering. and he felt a flush of warmth and a rush of temptation rise up within him. In other, younger days he would have succumbed to the temptation by waking her gently to lead her up and down the hills and valleys of desire that were so much a part of the topography of their marriage. But not now. Not that desire had lessened all that much with the years, but because he lived a life of rigid schedules and competing priorities. It was part of his job; he accepted it as such, and he pushed away temptation as he bent to kiss her cheek.
Downstairs in the neat and modern kitchen, which he secretly thought to be a touch too neat and too modern, he drank a glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice and turned on the automatic coffee-maker. While he was waiting for the coffee he flicked on the FM radio and lowered the volume as the strains of Copland's Appalachian Spring swelled through the room. He spun the dial. He had nothing against Copland; enjoyed him, in fact, despite his personal preference for the clean astringencies of the baroque period, but with the Fourth of July coming up he knew that he could expect a surfeit of American composers on the local stations. It was that way every year, as if an annual homage could atone for the neglect that the nation otherwise heaped on its native musicians. Sure enough, the next station had Piston's Incredible Flutist. He smiled and let it play, resigned to the absurdity.
When the coffee was ready he cut two thin slices from a loaf of dark bread, two thick slices from the butt end of a Smithfield ham, and took himself to the kitchen table to consume his simple breakfast. It was the one meal he preferred to eat alone. Rusty always slept late; their daughter, Ginger, no longer lived with them; and Ellen, the one servant they still employed, did not arrive until midmorning. Thus, his lonely breakfast had become something of a ritual, a transfer time between his private persona and his public image. These were some of the few moments of the day when he was left completely alone with time for contemplation, and he had come to cherish the minutes.
Sipping his coffee, he consulted his pocket diary and reviewed his appointments for the day. He had a fairly light schedule for a change. Nine thirty with the Secretary for a progress report on the B:B bomber. Senator Ferguson at eleven for the umpteenth round of a continuing battle over a missile contract, lunch with the Brazilian Attache for Air. staff meetings in the afternoon, and then, with luck, aquick getaway in anticipation of the Fourth of July weekend and his birthday tomorrow.
Perhaps there'll even be time to have a drink with Swan before I head home, he thought happily. It would be nice to have a birthday drink with him.
Fifty-three, not the happiest of birthdays; not a round number, so it's nothing more than age without honor. The thought of his age bounced around his brain like a sad little marble in a pinball machine, and on the heels of the thought came the reminder that he actually had been fifty-three for over six months. The Fourth of July belonged to James Emerson . . . Yuri Volanov's birthday was late in November . . . but he had been Emerson, and only Emerson, for so long now that the November date was all but forgotten, along with everything else that his youth had represented. In fact, the Fourth of July, and the birthday that came with it. was one of the few times during the year when he was forced to remember who he really was.
I know who I am, he thought with a sudden surge of irritation. I'm James Emerson, husband, father, and the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Air. That's me, and tomorrow's my birthday, and if nothing else I'll get to see my daughter for a change. She's never missed a birthday of mine yet, and she's not going to start now, even if it means coming down from New York. It also means that we'll be blessed with the presence of Mr. Eddie Angelotti, but I can put up with a lot more than that if it means seeing Ginger.
Warmed by the thought of his daughter's visit, he finished his coffee, and ten minutes later, at exactly seven thirty, he came out of his house and into the sweetness of a summer morning in Virginia. His car and driver, both from the Pentagon pool, stood waiting at the top of the driveway, but he paused for a moment in front of his door to breathe in the odors of grass and magnolia, to soak in a touch of the pale sunshine, and to revel in the sight of the land, the rolling lawn that was more like a manicured meadow stretching down to the road and the whitewashed split-rail fences there that marked the limits of his property. Five full acres of Virginia's best. The sight of this land, his land, was always a source of pleasure to him, although at times he could surprise himself with his passion for ownership.
You're turning into a goddamn squire of the manse, he told himself. Well, why not? I worked hard for this land. I earned every square foot of it.
As he stepped into the black Lincoln limousine, he nodded to the driver who stood holding the door. "Good morning, Michael," he said. "Well, they did it again."
"That they did, sir," said the driver, closing the door, and then when he was seated behind the wheel and they were rolling down the driveway, he added, "The Orioles have got more ways of losing a ball game than any other team in baseball."
"I take it that you would have bunted?"
"In the ninth, sir? Yes, indeed, sure I would. One out, men on first and second, down by two in the ninth, the books says bunt. Get those two men into scoring position."
"The book also says that you play to tie at home and to win on the road."
"Yes, sir, I know that, but I still would have bunted. But not Mr. Weaver, oh no. Mr. Weaver has him hit away into the prettiest double play you ever saw, and there goes the ball game."
"Yes ..." Emerson sighed. "There it went. But it was Weaver's decision to make, not yours or mine. That's some consol
ation."
"Indeed it is, sir. I wouldn't have his job for the world."
"Nor mine, for that matter, I imagine."
"Definitely not yours, sir. Especially not yours. I'm a responsible man, I am, but I wouldn't want that kind of responsibility weighing on my shoulders. All those airplanes and rockets and missiles whirling around up there. No, thank you, not me. No offense intended, but I'd rather have Earl Weaver's job than yours any day."
"Frankly, Michael, so would I. In fact, I'd rather enjoy it. In my next life, I might try."
The two men laughed quietly. The driver, about to say something more, thought better of it and shifted in his seat to concentrate on the driving. The moment of intimacy between master and man, the common interest in sports that was the great leveler in a supposedly classless society, had lasted just long enough. In the rear seat the passenger also recognized this limitation and settled back for the forty-five-minute drive to the Pentagon. For a moment he glanced out at the familiar landscape flowing by, the gently rolling hills and fields that he loved, and then he turned his attention to what lay beside him on the rear seat. As every morning, there was a copy of the Washington Post, one of the New York Times, and on top of them both a thin leather dispatch case containing the overnights received by his office and ferried out by Michael to be read during the drive to work.
He unlocked the case with a tiny key on his chain and began to pore through the flimsy sheets methodically. Most of the overnights were routine, and only one file caught his attention, the one marked Operation Homefire. The flimsy was a transcript of an intercept monitored by Military Intelligence, an exchange between the Czech Ministry of Security and its opposite number in East Germany. The intercept was, on the surface, innocuous, being nothing more than a high-level discussion of impending military maneuvers within the Warsaw Pact nations. Only the passing reference to Homefire took it out of the ordinary. Emerson's eyes sought out the passage.
The Sleeping Spy Page 3
