High Jinx

by William F. Buckley

  Blackford used the light from the hotel’s huge brass lamp and read a page cut out from the current issue of What’s On magazine, giving the names of a dozen bar-restaurants. He was familiar with several of them. He selected the Queen’s Arms, which was quiet; indeed, it had several private rooms. He gave the name and address to the doorman, who called it out to the driver.

  In the cab Bolgin, while removing his cassock and tucking it into his large briefcase, spoke, as ever in German: spoke of the summer weather, of the indifferent quality of British food, of the fact that as a boy, his mother had made him use the confessional, but that it had become increasingly dangerous to do so, and how greatly relieved he was, on reaching fourteen, that his mother thought it in fact too dangerous and so ceased going to church. ‘The revolution’s first flower in my young life,’ Bolgin chuckled, ‘rescued me from compulsory church-going with my mother.’

  They pulled up at the Queen’s Arms, Bolgin took out a ten-shilling note, carefully counted out the tip, and they went in. Bolgin turned to Blackford and, still in German, said, ‘You make the arrangements.’

  In a few minutes they were in a small private room. A table with two comfortable chairs, a couch at one end of the room, and as much or as little lamplight as they chose, done by rheostat. The waiter took their orders. Blackford asked for a pint of beer and some crisps. Somewhat to his surprise, Boris ordered a bottle of vodka; and then asked for cheese and sausage and hard rolls.

  ‘I have not eaten. You have eaten?’

  ‘Yes,’ Blackford said. Bolgin continued with the badinage until the food and drink came.

  Bolgin poured himself a half glass of vodka and placed a sausage into half a roll, squeezing it together. He took a deep draught of his drink and then bit a large hunk from his roll. It occurred to Blackford that he looked not unlike Khrushchev: small, sharp eyes; jowls, wattles, teeth separated, nose squat, though Bolgin had more hair, which he wore in a crew cut. His nose was dappled and slightly pink. Bolgin caught Blackford’s eye: ‘Frostbite. Courtesy of Siberia. It is there, too, that I learned not to postpone eating. Bad habit,’ he took another large swallow of vodka. He leaned back in his chair.

  ‘I don’t often drink while doing business. In fact I never do. On the other hand, I don’t often have a meal with a fascist imperialist.’ He chortled. Blackford half smiled.

  ‘Let’s get on with it, Bolgin.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ He grew, suddenly, serious. He looked about him cautiously. The small upholstered room was secure. They could hear the hum of voices from the bar and dining room outside. Boris turned to Blackford. ‘You will perhaps understand my request if I tell you that my life depends on it?’

  ‘What is it, Bolgin?’

  ‘Would you not consent to call me Comrade Bolgin? Or perhaps Mr. Bolgin? You may of course call me just Boris, though perhaps you will find that too familiar.’

  Blackford detected a creeping mellowness in voice and manner.

  ‘I shall call you anything you like,’ he said.

  ‘In that case, call me Boris. If you think of it as too familiar, you can excuse it by appealing to the protocols of the world we operate in, where everyone has only a single name. A false name. My name actually is Boris, but you can use it as though it were a pseudonym. What shall I call you?’

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  Bolgin chortled. ‘You heard me refer to you outside the hotel as Herr Chestnut? Oak? Chestnut? Birch? Maple?’ He laughed, and drank again from his refilled glass. ‘The “Chestnut” came first to my mind, so I shall call you that: Mr. Chestnut.’ He laughed again. ‘But I must get on with my request. I wish, please, to search you to make certain that you are not carrying one of those wire recorders.’

  ‘Of course.’ Blackford stood up, raised his arms, while Bolgin quickly and expertly frisked him.

  ‘Thank you,’ Bolgin sat down, and drank again. ‘Do you know the Russian authors, Mr. Chestnut?’

  Blackford said that he had read much of Dostoevsky, and a little Chekhov and Tolstoy.

  ‘Ah!’ Bolgin responded. ‘What treasures we have given to the world! I have read them all—Turgenev! My God, you did not mention Turgenev! Or Gogol! Or Pushkin! I have read them all—and when I finish, I begin again!’ Blackford noticed the sudden change in his voice, which had become lyrical. ‘Ah, Mr. Chestnut, if only we lived in a world in which everyone spent time reading, instead of killing.’

  ‘That would put most of your friends out of work,’ Blackford permitted himself.

  Bolgin arrested his hand, which was halfway to his mouth. ‘You talk about killing, my dear Mr. Chestnut. You who invented the atomic bomb. You who plundered the Indians and the Mexicans. You whose folk heroes are Billy the Kid and Jesse James! You lecture us about killing!’

  ‘You certainly do not sound, Boris, like a graduate of the Gulag.’

  ‘Ah!’ The tone now was conspiratorial. ‘I will confide to you that I did not admire Comrade Stalin. No, not at all. I worked for him, yes. There was no other way than to work for Comrade Stalin. But I think things will be different. But I have certain fears. These are what I am here to talk to you about. And please, let us not talk about the imperialists until we do our business, shall we, Mr. Chestnut?’

  ‘Sie sind dran—It’s your call, Boris. So what did bring you out tonight? We have not spoken once in the three years—’

  ‘In the three years in which I have kept pace with your perfidious activities. No, we have not spoken, Mr. Chestnut. But’—he was serious again—‘I come to you with the gravest intelligence. Something even I am not supposed to know. Perhaps only four, five people know it.’ Blackford waited.

  In hushed tones Bolgin said: ‘When Comrade Malenkov comes to visit England, it is planned that a bomb will explode in his car. The English will be publicly blamed. And Beria will take over the government in Moscow.’

  Blackford found himself breathing slowly. Bolgin drank again.

  Blackford: ‘Why are you telling me?’

  ‘Because I do not want another Stalin,’ Bolgin said simply, his eyes downcast.

  ‘What use did you expect me to make of this information?’

  ‘Have security forestall the accident. I would expect to be able, from my source, to supply you with more detailed information before the event. Quick preventive measures would frustrate Beria’s entire plan. Perhaps weaken him decisively.’

  ‘When would you expect to have this more … detailed information?’

  ‘In time. There is no secret more carefully guarded, but I will have it. If I do not have it twenty-four hours before the visit is scheduled, then you must abort that visit, on whatever pretext. I know that that would be difficult. But the alternative would be disastrous—if Malenkov is killed by a bomb while visiting this country.’

  ‘You realise, of course, that this is information I shall need to report to my superiors. Your proposals are hardly of the order I have the personal resources to implement.’

  ‘I know that. I expect that you will share your information with your superior, Rufus. And if it becomes necessary, of course, the Prime Minister and the President will need to concert the postponement. I am safe so long as Beria does not discover my source. If he does, and it becomes plain that British Intelligence was on to the plan, I have the choice of committing suicide or of being shot. Beria would find me anywhere else.’

  Blackford didn’t know quite how to respond to what Bolgin had just now told him. ‘You would of course be given sanctuary.’

  ‘There is no sanctuary from Beria.’

  Best not to pursue the question. Blackford asked, instead, how Bolgin proposed to communicate with him in the critical days ahead.

  ‘Give me a private telephone number. If I need to meet with you I will give “Mr. Chestnut” the exact time that “confessions will be heard.”’ Blackford scratched out on a matchbox the number of the telephone on his desk at James Street. Bolgin drained his glass—the bottle of vodka was empty. Blackford made an
effort to drink down his beer. Bolgin leaned back, flushed. His hand, lighting a cigarette, was not entirely steady.

  ‘The next few days, at most two weeks, will tell. If all goes well, we will be fighting each other again.’ He beamed. ‘But I will then be something other than the agent of Beria.’

  Blackford thought it best not to say what was on his mind, that Malenkov and Khrushchev and Bulganin had not got where they had got except by satisfying the same monster, Stalin. Better, he thought, to be passive. He called for the bill, and presently they walked out together. Bolgin did not extend his hand, satisfying himself merely with, ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’ Bolgin hailed the first cab, Blackford the next.

  He gave the address of Rufus. His heart pounded. From the corner of Rufus’s block, in the pub, he called. Rufus answered his phone pursuant to the convention—two rings, hang up, ring back, answer on the fourth ring. Upstairs in the apartment, he listened exactly to the exactly recounted story. It was 5 A.M. in Washington when, after bidding Blackford good night, Rufus telephoned to the Director on the special line.

  Blackford was wide awake. He went back to the pub and dialed a number and was greatly pleased to hear Minerva’s voice. ‘Are you busy, Minerva?’ he asked.

  ‘Never too busy for my golden boy. When will you be here?’

  ‘I should say in twenty minutes. I could use a little champagne.’

  ‘Is that all you could use, dove?’

  ‘That’s all I can use that you might not have on you,’ Blackford said, smiling into the phone. He had, in visiting Rufus, discharged his nervous exhilaration. With Minerva, of whom he had grown passionately fond, he hoped also to discharge his physical exhilaration. And to please her, at which he had become accomplished.

  He was back at his desk at James Street at seven in the morning.

  26

  No, Blackford had said to his mother, no, under no circumstances would he be late. Yes, he said to his mother, he did realise how very interesting it would be to attend the garden party the Queen was giving for what she termed ‘the academic élite’ of Oxford and Cambridge etc., including the trustees and their families, and yes, he was very pleased to have been invited, ex officio as the stepson of the chairman of the board of trustees of Cavendish Laboratories. ‘And as your dutiful son, Mother.’

  ‘You are more than my dutiful son, darling,’ Lady Sharkey had said. ‘You are my beautiful, wonderful boy.’ Blackford, at the other end of the telephone, closed his eyes in exasperation but let it pass. He would rather suffer than reprimand his gentle mother. His stepfather, Sir Alec Sharkey, was similarly disposed. Not that putting up with Carol was difficult: she was the most obliging, most retiring, devoted, affectionate woman, so unlike Americans Sir Alec had both known and become familiar with in books and movies: the brassy, hard-boiled types. There was nothing hard-boiled about Carol Oakes Sharkey, but after her divorce and remarriage to an Englishman, in 1941, she had made it a point to live as the British did, and a royal garden party was no mere frivolity on her social schedule.

  Blackford wondered vaguely whether, given that there would be over a thousand guests there, his path and the Queen’s would even cross. He half hoped they would not; half hoped they would, three years having passed since their fleeting, fleeted encounter, first at Buckingham Palace, then at Windsor Castle, including the time spent entirely alone … There had been no communication of any sort since that time, and Blackford had never even been tempted to take the initiative. Indeed he thought twice before accepting his mother’s invitation. But curiosity and nostalgia, even a kind of loyalty, prompted him to accept the invitation of the most glamorous woman in the world.

  And now they were bound, the three of them, for the palace, in the limousine rented by Sir Alec. As they drove through the park, their limousine, so bright and spectacular when it set out from Portland Place, became just one of many limousines, rented for the bright occasion, in that long convoy headed for Buckingham Palace.

  Nature, that day in London, was being fully cooperative with the Queen. It was warm and sunny, there was a light breeze, the children were playing in the park, and the tourists were ogling outside the palace gates. When, still a few hundred yards from the gates, their vehicle almost ceased to move under the constipating press of luxury cars, and promenaders, Sir Alec said abruptly that they should leave the motorcar and walk—‘It is too beautiful outside to sit in the car.’ Lady Sharkey said something or other about her new shoes not being very fit for walking, but it was said routinely. Sir Alec exchanged an understanding with the driver on where they should look out for him on leaving the palace a couple of hours later, and soon they were walking, Lady Carol Sharkey with one arm clasping her husband’s elbow, the other eased between her son’s arm and his side. Blackford suddenly realised that he was quite nervous.

  They arrived, their invitations having been examined, in the garden well ahead of the Queen’s appearance. They were Served a fruit punch and finger sandwiches and they strolled about the garden here and there, Sir Alec pausing to greet fellow trustees of Cavendish Laboratories. The garden was not exactly full—it would have needed an additional ten thousand guests to fill the garden of Buckingham Palace.

  Suddenly the band stopped its afternoon music. There was a pause, and then ‘God Save the Queen’ as, at a distance, from the garden entrance to the palace, the Queen emerged, followed by Prince Richard and half a dozen brightly attired ladies-in-waiting and aides. She wore a pale yellow pleated chiffon dress and a perky little veiled hat of the same material, perched on her blonde hair at an angle. She looked directly ahead and smiled, rather absently, but after a few steps she stopped suddenly, stooped over, and lifted up from the lawn a little boy—evidently an old affection, because even at a distance one could hear his giggles at being kissed so resoundingly. She let him down with a gentle pat on his silk-clad bottom and was quickly surrounded by his parents and other adoring subjects. And from that moment on, what had begun as a procession relaxed into the informality of another garden party, though it was plain that guests at the party attempted, without ostentation, so to manoeuvre as to be in the way of the casual circle the Queen was engaged in describing.

  It was while she was addressing the rector of St. Andrews, Sir John Appleton, that she caught his eye. Blackford was chatting with one of his stepfather’s elderly friends. The Queen, on seeing him, began to fan herself briskly with the antique yellow ivory instrument she carried sometimes as if a sceptre, sometimes as a ferrule, sometimes as an adornment. She continued her conversation, and there was a little pause, pending which Blackford might have taken the initiative in approaching her, but did not. Queen Caroline smiled at Sir John and walked, followed by two aides—Prince Richard had left the Queen to make his own, counterclockwise circuit toward Blackford.

  ‘Why, Mr. Oakes! How very nice to see you again,’ nodding her head ever so slightly and smiling warmly, but also warily, though there was no disguising the brightness of her eyes.

  ‘Ma’am, may I present my mother, Lady Sharkey, and my stepfather, Sir Alec Sharkey?’

  The lady curtsied, the gentleman bowed deeply, the Queen acknowledged them. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.’ And, to Lady Sharkey, ‘Your son was engaged in some architectural research several years ago that led him to Windsor Castle, where along with a few other guests he stayed for a day or two.’ And to Blackford, ‘Did you complete your project, Mr. Oakes? Did you find the secret to the Great Wall of China? Do we know why it survives, while so many other structures do not? This is the sort of thing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specialises in, is it not?’

  ‘It was Yale I came from, ma’am.’

  ‘Indeed. Yale. It is in California, isn’t it? Yes, of course. San Francisco. Silly of me to forget.’

  Blackford smiled. She had not changed. ‘Yes ma’am. But don’t be embarrassed. I know some Californians who don’t realise that Yale is in San Francisco.’

  Queen Caroline looked Blackford directly in the
eyes, and there was a trace of an amused wink, an amusement at the play. There was a brief pause, after which nothing the Queen might have said would have surprised Blackford. What she said was:

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr. Oakes. Lady Sharkey. Sir Alec.’ She smiled and, her entourage alongside, resumed her casual round.

  Lady Sharkey was ecstatic. ‘How nice, darling, that she remembers your visit. But you know, dear, she is quite wrong about Yale. Evidently she confused you. I couldn’t quite understand your reply …’ But Blackford had been accosted by a meteorologist who had worked side by side with Rufus during the war. If he heard his mother’s question, he did not heed it. And she did not repeat it, her mind wandering to other of the visual delights, that sunny afternoon at Buckingham Palace.

  27

  It was a year and a half before Nikita Khrushchev, addressing the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, would coin the phrase ‘the cult of personality’ to describe one of the lesser sins of Josef Stalin. But well before the phrase was formulated, its coils embraced the minds of Soviet leaders even though they went to extravagant lengths to conceal this. More time was given to the factor of precedence than at the court of the Sun King, and almost as much time to concealing this concern. So that when the regular Thursday morning meeting of the Politburo convened early in October, Georgi Malenkov, whose post was that of First Secretary and who was therefore the senior member of the body, didn’t stride into the chamber like Stalin, approaching the chairman’s seat as if he had grown up sitting on it. Rather he approached it, so to speak, sideways, as if always in need of orientation in the matter of which was his seat. And his companion members of the Politburo crowded at either side, not noticeably behind him, confirming, if by no means as stridently as they had with Stalin, their acceptance of their subordination.

  He approached the chair, which an aide drew back to permit him comfortably to sit, and found himself facing the nine other members of the Praesidium of the Party Central Committee, generally referred to as the Politburo.