High Jinx

by William F. Buckley

  It was only then that he felt a twinge.

  Within three hours Alistair Fleetwood had been court-martialled; sentenced to twenty years with hard labour for spying on the Soviet Union; informed that no, he would not be permitted, given the sensitive nature of his offence, to communicate with the British Embassy; put in a cold cell without light or window, having first been stripped of his wallet, watch, and briefcase. He pounded the heavy wooden door of the prison until his hands were swollen. He crawled then on his hands and knees to the thin mattress, wrapped his coat about himself, and wept hysterically until utter exhaustion took over, allowing him to imagine fleetingly that he was in thrall to a nightmare that would surely pass the next morning.

  As Fleetwood, exhausted, was finally dozing, the passenger from Helsinki snowed his passport at Immigration in Stockholm, having flown in from Helsinki to which the army transport, by special orders from the Kremlin, had taken him, on the understanding that he would first deliver the prisoner—who would learn now the high cost of facilitating an act of espionage against the duly constituted government of the Soviet Union—to the concentration camp whose director had been instructed on how to deal with him. All this a reward for very special services to the Kremlin: no less than the revelation of Zirca spying on the Premier himself. A contrivance, ironically, invented by the same man recruited and managed by the informer’s own American-born wife! Ah, the ironies were wonderful.

  He would miss Alice, really, though he would get over it. And of course she, as an accomplice, would be purged. But such was life: some people win, some people lose; and Alice knew that—big girl, Alice. The immigration officer, examining the passport, commented, ‘Well, Herr Henningsen, you evidently like our country. Second visit in just a week, I see.’ He stamped the passport and returned it, disdaining to examine closely the passport photo of a heavily bearded man in his late thirties. The following morning, at a hotel suite where the Bank of Zurich kept an agent with a teletype machine, the Swiss agent confirmed, after a teletyped exchange with Switzerland, that the number given to him by the customer entitled him to the instant payment of the five thousand dollars he requested, against the balance waiting for him in Zurich, one half of which, he kept reminding himself sorrowfully, belonged to his old friend—he was amused as he reflected on the name his friend had given himself, ‘Mr. Mussolini.’

  Vladimir Belushi counted the notes carefully, pocketed them, and walked out, checking his city map for the location of the Swiss Embassy, where certain formalities would need to be undertaken.

  31

  A farewell meeting of the Politburo was scheduled for nine that night. It was intended as a celebration, beginning, to be sure, with a brief business meeting. No outsiders had been invited, not even wives. For that reason it had been designated as a meeting rather than as a social event.

  While Stalin was alive, Politburo members always arrived early. As much as an hour early. In recent months that punctilio had been in decline. At one session a month or so ago Beria had actually arrived late, though only by ten minutes; and he had excused himself, an act of contrition that caught his colleagues, unprepared to believe that Comrade Beria could, after Stalin’s departure, apologise to anyone for anything, by surprise. Most of them assumed it was a tactic, an effort to ingratiate.

  They came, always, in their limousines, through the Borovitsky Gate. Their Zil limousines, the Soviet Union’s bulky 110-horsepower imitations of a prewar American Packard, moved at top speed through the gate, coming in through the very centre of the most heavily guarded streets in the world. During the period of their arrival the principal street through which they would travel was blocked off by police, who received elaborate warnings in time to clear all pedestrians and other vehicles. The cars were followed by touring cars loaded with armed guards. Warning bells went off at the Borovitsky Gate as each car approached.

  Tonight the ten ministers of state began to straggle into the Kremlin’s interior through the East Door after passing through the Borovitsky Gate. They arrived with one or more aides, and were brought in by guards.

  Marshal Bulganin loitered at the entrance to the East Door, chatting with his own aide, his eye on who was coming and going, interrupting himself to greet the ministers casually but warmly as one by one they came in.

  When Lavrenti Beria arrived, Bulganin waved his aide to one side and approached him, speaking matter-of-factly.

  ‘Georgi Maximilianovich requests that you go to his office on the way to the meeting. He wants you to look at his proposed statement at London Airport before he reads it to the whole Council.’

  ‘Very well,’ Beria said, removing his gloves and handing them, together with his overcoat, to his aide. He did not wait for Bulganin to lead the way. Instead he strode directly toward Malenkov’s office. Arriving at the Premier’s office he paused, undecided whether to knock. He simply opened the door.

  Two guards grabbed him, one by each arm.

  Premier Malenkov was standing grim-faced in front of his imposing desk.

  ‘As Premier and Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Army,’ he said metallically, ‘and having surveyed the evidence, I accuse you of high treason against constituted authority. You have been tried by an executive committee of the Praesidium and been sentenced to death, the sentence to proceed immediately.’

  From the corner of the room Nikita Khrushchev bounded forward. He drew a 9 mm. Makarov from his right jacket pocket, aimed it at Beria’s head, and pulled the trigger.

  The guards had been preinstructed on the matter of the disposal of the corpse. The three deputies of Beria would be arrested within the hour.

  Orders would issue simultaneously that until further notice all KGB orders should file through the office of the Premier.

  The three men—Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev—walked, with strict attention to rank, into the Ministers’ Council Room. On noting the expression on their faces there was instant silence.

  Georgi Malenkov opted for the identical formulation they had all heard so often, so stunningly often, from Josef Stalin; so casually delivered. The communication was straightforward, unadorned:

  ‘Gentlemen. Comrade Lavrenti Pavlovitch Beria was apprehended while engaged in treasonable activity against the State. He has been tried and executed.

  ‘We will get on with the agenda.’

  Premier Malenkov proceeded to read aloud the short statement he would deliver at London Airport the following afternoon.

  There was no comment—until Marshal Voroshilov spoke up: ‘I think it is absolutely excellent, Georgi Maximilianovich.’

  One by one the other members concurred.

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Just right.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘Bravo, Georgi Maximilianovich.’

  32

  In Brian Larwill’s office and in his now crowded bedroom it was the same cast. But only a few yards away, in one of the indoor garage’s parking spaces, was the lorry, in the rear section of which sat silently the four men brought in from Camp Cromwell, at Colonel Mac’s direction, by Joe Louis: trained commandos. At exactly fifteen minutes after 8 P.M. on that warm night in the late London autumn Superintendent Roberts called down on the walkie-talkie to the technician standing by the main fuses in the basement.

  ‘Ready out Op Ox.’

  ‘Roger and out.’

  They waited.

  They did not need to wait seven minutes this time. Almost immediately the telephone rang. It was Robert Editta.

  ‘Is this Larwill?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, this is Robert Editta, apartment 516. Goddammit Larwill, our fucking lights are out again. I was just developing a film.’

  ‘I’m most awfully sorry,’ Larwill said. ‘I’ll have to call Jimmy Moser. I have his home telephone number. It will take him ten, fifteen minutes to get here. Do you have torches, sir?’

  ‘We’ve got exactly one torch, and the batteries are weak.’

  ‘In
that case, sir, would you like me to bring you a couple of extras while you wait for Moser?’

  There was a pause. Clearly Editta was soliciting the advice of his companion.

  ‘Yes. Call Moser first, then get up here fast with those torches.’

  ‘Very well sir. Won’t be a minute.’

  In apartment 516 Bertram Heath suddenly stood up and wrenched the flashlight from Editta. ‘I don’t like this. It could be all right but I’m not going to risk it. You stay here. I’ll go out through the hall to the other side of the lift. Just in case.’

  Without further exchange he shone the light on the doorknob, opened the door, and went out, down the dark hall toward the lift. He opened the door to the emergency staircase, leaving it ajar just enough to keep his eyes on the lift. He waited. Not long.

  A few seconds later the lift light advised that the car was coming to a halt at the fifth floor. Bertram Heath saw five men emerging, four of them in commando garb. He waited two, three seconds, and then began on tiptoe to walk away. Moments later he was racing down the five flights of stairs.

  The five men walked noiselessly to apartment 516. Two commandos flattened themselves on either side of the door. Each was carrying a huge flashlight in his left hand, a pistol in the other.

  Brian Larwill, carrying two powerful searchlights, knocked on the door with his toe. And said, ‘The torches here, Mr. Editta.’

  The sound of the chain being unfastened and the lock being turned was easy to make out.

  The door opened, Moser jumped back, beaming his blinding lights into the darkness. The first commando lunged at the door, knocking Editta down. The second and third cast their glaring lights about the room. ‘Where’s the other one?’ one of them said.

  ‘Look in there.’

  They rushed into the darkroom. And then into the bathroom. They searched the closets and the kitchenette. The leader shone his light into the face of Editta, seated on the floor, his hands handcuffed behind him. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, guv’nor. Mr.—Harrison, he left here this morning.’ The squad leader was on the phone to Larwill’s office. Less than a minute had gone by.

  Blackford Oakes, left below with the technicians, posted himself restlessly by the adjacent door of the lift at the basement-garage level. Blackford wanted to stare into the face of ‘Henry’ when, secured by four commandos he had neglected to execute, he came down. He gripped his right hand with his left. He would need to restrain himself.

  At that moment the door around the corner burst open and a large hurtling figure ran out toward the street.

  At the same time the door of Brian Larwill’s office opened—they had got the radio signal from apartment 516. One man apprehended, one man missing. Superintendent Roberts’s staccato report to Blackford caused a moment’s hesitation. But an instant later Blackford had bounded from his post, tearing through the garage toward the entrance through which Heath—Blackford assumed it was he—had just gone. He spotted the figure running on the other side of the street toward a line of taxis. He was fifty yards ahead of Blackford when the cab he had got into pulled out into Upper Grosvenor Street. Blackford jumped into the back of the second taxi and said fiercely: ‘Don’t lose that cab!’ The driver, a heavy, younger man of dour countenance, turned his head slightly and said through the crack in the glass, ‘Easy come, easy go. I ain’t chysin ahfter no one, guv’nor.’ Blackford opened the right-hand door, then the driver’s door, reached in and grabbed the driver by the neck of his coat. With all his strength he sprawled the driver onto the street, and with a single motion seated himself in his place. The motor was already running and Blackford slipped into first gear and careered into the dark street, racing to catch sight of the first car.

  He did. Two blocks along Upper Grosvenor Street. It was travelling at abnormal speed—clearly Heath had bribed the driver to go beyond the conventional speed limit. Blackford slowed, leaving fifty yards between himself and his prey: he would tackle Heath when he left the cab.

  But the fast speed of the first vehicle, after it turned right on Park Lane, made conspicuous the speed of the second, and by the time the lead car had passed Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park it was travelling at over fifty miles per hour. The lead car turned through Cumberland Gate to Bayswater Road and began to race alongside Kensington Gardens. Still Blackford kept his distance, electing, instead of running into the car, to keep it in sight. At Kensington Palace Gardens, it took a left turn.

  Suddenly it was clear where Heath was headed. To sanctuary.

  There it was, the Soviet Embassy, within view. With the armed guard posted outside. An English policeman, to be sure, but not one likely to permit Blackford to apprehend a gentleman authorised to proceed into the embassy. Blackford made the decision quickly. He jammed the accelerator to the floor. As the first cab slowed to approach the embassy gate, Blackford swung left, tearing into the broad right side of his quarry, bringing it to a dead halt with a screech of rubber, and turning it over on its side.

  The crowd formed instantly, with the usual confusion and excitement. There were shouts of ‘Ambulance! Ambulance!’ Police hedged in. A half dozen of them and a few volunteers concerted to pull the two bodies from the car. The driver presented special problems because of the bent steering wheel. The passenger appeared comatose, and the door, facing skyward, was inoperable.

  Blackford had shielded himself by crossing his arms over his wheel at the moment of collision. Stepping out of the cab, he mingled quickly with the crowd. Both driver and passenger were dazed, though the passenger showed signs of recovery, and by the time the window had been broken, its edges scraped and insulated so that he might be pulled through without being cut up, he was talking. It was then that the ambulance arrived, and two men carrying stretchers laid first the driver on a stretcher and into the ambulance, and then Heath, who now was beginning to protest, insisting that he was well enough; he would be on his way. But the police doctor motioned to the assistants to get him into the ambulance. ‘We’ll need to check you over, sir. Won’t take long.’ With no further attention paid to his expostulations, his arms were strapped to his sides with the stretcher’s harness and he was lifted into the ambulance and deposited alongside the cab driver. Then the door was made fast with the outside latch.

  It was now or not at all, Blackford decided; and so, as the orderlies began to walk up to the front seat, Blackford shouted out, ‘You forgot him! The third man! He’s over there! Bleeding!’ He pointed excitedly toward the densest part of the crowd. Both orderlies instinctively turned to search for the third victim. As they did so Blackford sprang into the driver’s seat and brought the ambulance to life.

  He was grateful for being shielded from the back of the ambulance by a steel grille: through his mirror he could see Heath struggling. In a few minutes he had made his way free of the leather straps. He tried to open the ambulance door from the end, wrestling for access to the front seat, and attempting with an aluminium first-aid box to bang open the rear window. Blackford spotted the ambulance’s siren toggle switch on the dashboard and quickly activated it, giving him licence to drive quickly through the traffic. He saw also the radio and flicked it on. He was connected to the ambulance dispatch centre and spoke into the microphone. ‘This is an emergency. Emergency. Emergency. Telephone instantly to TRA 5858, ask for the line for Superintendent Roberts. Tell Superintendent Roberts the prisoner who escaped is being brought back by ambulance to Grosvenor Square. Do you hear me, Emergency?’ An efficient woman’s voice came in. ‘I hear you, whoever you are. I shall make the call instantly. After I have made it, identify yourself.’

  ‘Roger,’ Blackford answered. ‘I’ll stay on the line. Advise when contact is made.’

  He had reached Park Lane before the woman’s voice came in. ‘The number is radioing information to Superintendent Roberts. Now, sir, what vehicle are you calling from?’ Blackford saw no reason to dissimulate, and gave the number of the ambulance, written large on the registration
paper on the dashboard. But when the dispatcher asked for further details he did not answer. He was close now to Grosvenor Square.

  Reaching the building, he swung into the garage through the same door through which both Heath and he had just fifteen minutes before run out. He tore into Brian Larwill’s office. To his relief he saw, still there, Colonel Mac, Joe Louis, and the commandos.

  Breathing heavily Blackford said, ‘I’ve got him outside. Locked in an ambulance. There’s another fellow in there too, cab driver. I had to run into them. They’re shaken up, but not badly. Roberts here, or heard from?’

  Colonel Mac exchanged a glance with Joe Louis, who said, ‘Yes, he telephoned ten minutes ago. We were heading back to Cromwell and he told us to take Heath with us. Said to lock him up; he’d be around tomorrow with the interrogators. Wants privacy, I bet.’

  ‘Let’s get going,’ Mac said.

  Blackford went to the back of the ambulance and turned the latch. The door flew open, knocking Blackford over onto the ground. A human cannonball shot out of the ambulance. Into the clenched fist of Joe Louis. Two commandos dragged Heath into the back of the army lorry. Joe Louis stepped into the driver’s seat. Colonel Mac sat down next to him. Blackford climbed in next to the colonel.