High Jinx (20 page)

He returned to his room not in the best of moods, and wondered what to do during the two hours before hearing from Alice. He would have liked to wander about the city to view the changes during twenty years and a world war, but thought it best not to do such a thing without first checking with his guide. In the general turmoil of leaving the
Fernbrook,
he had left behind not only his sailing clothes but the satchel with the books he always had in hand: two or three scientific treatises, a novel by Graham Greene, the current issue of
The Economist,
a new biography of Lloyd George, and Kingsley Amis's
Lucky Jim.
That precious satchel, he thought, sitting in that boat! In his briefcase he had only technical papers and plans of the mini-Zirca. What would he do?

There was nothing for it but to go down to the lobby of the hotel and see what he could find on the newsstand. He walked to the lift, reasoning that the defective unit must either have been fixed or taken out of business. There were, after all, three to choose from. He pressed the button and presently the indicator showed that the lift was there, so he opened the door, entered it, and pushed the button marked ‘Lobby.' Arriving, somewhat to his relief, he saw again the great area he had first seen the night before, except that now it was full of what seemed to be Russian businessmen, except of course that there were no Russian businessmen. But there were a lot of men in their thirties, forties, and fifties, wearing mostly ill-fitting grey suits, bustling here and there. Fleetwood heard mostly Russian, but now and again some German and some French. No-one, as he crossed the lobby walking in the direction of the concierge, was speaking in English. Too proud to use his neglected Russian, he decided that he would speak in French to the concierge, pending an update in workaday Russian from Alice Goodyear Corbett. So he asked for ‘
les journaux
—
où se trouvent-ils les journaux?
' The concierge pointed back to the lifts, and then indicated with his finger that on reaching them, the inquirer should turn sharp left.

On reaching the newsstand, Fleetwood first eyed matter-of-factly the several rows of Russian papers and magazines, and then looked about for books and magazines in foreign languages. But in English he saw only theoretical and historical works on the Soviet Union. No magazines whatever. It was so in French—and in German. He picked up a guide to Moscow in English, paid two roubles for it, and went discontentedly back to his room. The maps in the guidebook gave the names in Russian of everything about which he read in English. He remembered with remorse Alice's instruction, when she recruited him, to cease instantly his study of the Russian language with which he had got conversationally quite far during that golden summer twenty years ago. His resourceful mind now began the act of reconstruction, and by the time the telephone rang some of it was beginning to ooze back into memory, quickening his circulation, a feeling he had got used to over many years as he trained his powerful mind on scientific problems.

But he was happy to hear her voice, and he told her to come right up.

Dressed in heavy brown wool and a beret, she asked after his state of health and he told her that it had not been an ideal morning, but he was anxious to get on with the project. He looked at his watch: ‘At what time are we meeting with Comrade Beria?'

She hesitated. Her embarrassment was palpable. ‘I called on Comrade Abakumov—he is, as you know, State Security Minister, and the right-hand man of Comrade Beria. I must confess, Alistair, I was very much surprised. He told me that Comrade Beria has … he said that … schedule problems—that he hopes to see you before you leave but cannot undertake to make any commitment. You are to proceed immediately with the installation,' she finally blurted out.

Alistair Fleetwood got up from his chair. He removed his beard. His complexion was white.

‘I—I find this quite inconceivable, Alice. How is it possible, what you say? I am perhaps the most eminent living scientist after Einstein. I have devised an instrument that has already done historic work for the socialist revolution. I have stopped all my own work for five weeks in order to meet Beria's special request. I cannot believe what you are telling me.'

Alice Goodyear Corbett burst into tears. She rushed over to Fleetwood and hugged him, and cried convulsively. She too, she said, could not believe it. But—attempting to control herself—but, she said, there must be a reason. There is always a reason. And by training they had to accept the decision and—

‘My dear Alice,' Fleetwood said. ‘I understand Bolshevik theory, and do not need your exegetical help in this matter. Here is my answer to Comrade Abakumov. Inform him that I shall proceed with the installation only after I have had a good'—Alistair Fleetwood stopped, and thought for a moment—‘only after I have had a good hour with Comrade Beria, during which I shall discuss common concerns, and public policies, and perhaps even Soviet developments. Tell Comrade Abakumov'—Alistair Fleetwood was beginning to enjoy his massive retaliation—‘tell him that I shall stay in these quarters until I have been to see Comrade Beria. And'—Fleetwood was now walking up and down the living room, his hands clutched behind him, in the manner of Napoleon—‘tell him, further, that there is not one living soul in Great Russia who can make the mini-Zirca work for him other than me. Tell him that I am here for exactly seven days, as per our arrangement.' Fleetwood was now standing on tiptoe, his arms akimbo, looking down as though at a threatening bully. ‘Oh yes. And tell him that if on the seventh day I am not back in Stockholm, why, I shall have no alternative than to march over to the British Embassy and complain.'

She stood up and gave a short cry. ‘Alistair! Stop! Stop, I say!' She looked about the room, her eyes hysterical. She raised her finger to her lips. She beckoned to him to go with her to the bathroom. There she turned on the water taps at full force, and in a low voice whispered hoarsely, ‘My darling Alistair! One doesn't talk that way about Comrade Beria! Not even
you
can talk that way about Comrade Beria! And this business of going to the British Embassy … I mean, Alistair, don't
ever
say such a thing, not even in levity.' Alice Goodyear Corbett was weeping like a baby.

Fleetwood had calmed down, but he was not about to reverse the thrust of his comment. He put his hands on both her cheeks and pressed them together. He spoke in a low tone of voice.

‘Very well, Alice. And on no account would I make trouble for you. But my message stands. No meeting with Beria, no mini-Zirca. Now you go and tell them that. They can hardly blame what I say and do on you. If I knew how to communicate with them directly I should do so. And listen, dear Alice, when you come back, whatever you do, bring me something to read. And not something about the Soviet Union. No offence intended, you understand: the Lord knows, I am concerned with the Soviet Union, interested in the Soviet Union, obsessed by the cause of the Soviet Union, honoured to be a servant of the Soviet Union. But right now, in my present mood, I want to read something. In English. Bring me some Trollope. Or Jane Austen. Or Dickens. Hemingway is legal here, isn't he? Well, bring me some Hemingway, then. And I am never averse to a little literate erotica, if there is any of that about. Now hurry away, my darling Alice.'

He turned off the water and led her back into the living room. She powdered her nose in front of the mirror, picked up her handbag, blew him a silent kiss and left, her countenance grave as she contemplated the heavy message she was to deliver.

22

When, three months earlier, the Office of the Director was advised that a communication had come in from someone who described himself as a ‘middle-aged Italian gentleman' with ‘very interesting information' which information, however, he would divulge only to the Director himself and to no one else, the request had received routine handling: the letter was turned over to an aide.

The aide wrote back to the box number designated on the letter to say that unfortunately the Director was busy, but that he, the aide, would be glad to see ‘Mr. Mussolini'—as the letter had been signed—anytime, at any reasonable place. That letter got back an urbane letter advising the aide that if the Director was not interested in knowing what the internal fighting within the Kremlin was all about, perhaps the Director should resign his position as head of the Central Intelligence Agency and perhaps become Baseball Commissioner? The aide pondered the communication, its rather special élan, and made the decision to put the whole dossier into the Director's In box. The Director studied it, sighed, said to his aide that the chances were ninety-nine out of one hundred that Mr. Mussolini was a crackpot, but—well. He told his aide to set up a meeting at a safe house.

And so it was that Allen Dulles met Mr. Mussolini. Within five minutes the Director knew that he had drawn the one-hundredth straw. The man he was speaking to was not there in jest, or to announce that he had invented an ingenious means of keeping the sun from shining over the Soviet Union until they all said Uncle.

Mr. Mussolini was in his mid-forties, tall and angular. His hair was full and black. His eyes were always amused, even when his features were solemnly set. He was well dressed; the Director—dressed in his customary tweeds—thought him even rather foppish. And there was even a hint of fragrance there. Cologne of some sort? Not the kind of thing the Director found endearing in men. But he had become resigned to it, gradually, after discovering that young members of his own immediate and non-immediate family, of inescapable masculinity, were going in for the new convention.

Mr. Mussolini spoke flawless English, accented as if he had spent years in a British public school.

Seated in the small Victorian drawing room with the two sofas, the coffee table, the fireplace, the bookshelves, the heavy oak doors, he began directly, autobiographically.

‘I was a communist when I was a young man in Padua, and I went to Spain to fight with the Loyalists. While there, I became very good friends with a young Russian. We were over two years in that long war, and we saw everything'—he paused—‘absolutely everything,' Mr. Mussolini said, was the best way he could put it.

Mr. Mussolini had immediately volunteered, on returning to Italy, to divulge what he knew about the cynical nature of Soviet operations in Spain—‘They cared not a bit for Spanish democracy; they cared to govern Spain'—to the Italian government, notwithstanding his loathing of II Duce, its Fascist dictator. The communists were onto him, but for several years were powerless to act. Finally they caught up with him when the partisan movement had begun to prevail; and, in December of 1943, he was sentenced to execution by a partisan firing squad—from which he was saved by an unexpected directive that came in through the communist hierarchy.

‘And the man who signed that directive was—my old friend from Spain!'

His old friend was in the KGB, Mr. Mussolini explained. And once or twice a year he would hear from him, through channels now consolidated, channels the details of which ‘I would not tell to my father confessor, even though I tell him the most fearful things!' Mr. Mussolini smiled.

The Director thanked him for the background and said that he must be aware that in the trade the Director was engaged in, the counterintelligence people want ‘what we call “earnest money”'—did Mr. Mussolini know what that term meant?

Again Mr. Mussolini smiled. Yes, he knew about ‘earnest money.' He assumed that the Director wanted a scrap of valuable information to establish that Mr. Mussolini was on the level. ‘And incidentally, Mr. Director, speaking of “earnest money” reminds me of just plain money. There will have to be some of that. Not kings' ransoms, but not pocket money, either. My friend needs to look out for the inevitable day when, if he is not shot, he will escape that dreadful country, in which event he would not wish to spend the rest of his life as a common labourer. And that day is not far off.'

The Director replied without reference to the matter Mr. Mussolini had brought up. ‘Let's begin with the earnest money,' he said.

Mr. Mussolini's accents were now clipped, utilitarian. ‘At the last meeting of the Politburo, it was decided that the Foreign Minister should attack the American hegemony in Japan and propose a separate arrangement between the U.S.S.R. and Japan.'

‘You are telling me that Foreign Minister Molotov will make that public proposal soon? Or that it will be confided to Japan's Prime Minister?'

‘The first. Something else. This is Tuesday. Before this week is out,
Pravda
will attack the British Labour leader Clement Attlee for the criticisms he has made of the People's Republic of China since returning from his tour.

‘That, Mr. Director, is your earnest money.'

When, the next day, the attack on Attlee appeared in
Pravda
and, on Saturday, Molotov delivered a speech on the subject of the iniquitously close relationship between the U.S. and Japan, Dulles probed his staff to ascertain whether there had been any advance tips anywhere respecting the two events. The answer was negative.

From that moment on, the Director never hesitated to answer personally a call from Mr. Mussolini. These calls came irregularly, every two weeks or so, and each one of them cost the Director—this only after a little haggling—four thousand dollars in cash.

‘Today'—Mr. Mussolini, meeting with the Director in the designated safe house, was dressed in Austrian loden, positively gleaming in green and pigskin leather buttons and a huge belt—‘I have very important news from my friend.'

The Director, a little deaf, removed his pipe from his mouth and leaned forward.

‘The Politburo is divided on how to react to the American plan to recognise West Germany. The section headed by Beria wants to retaliate by recognising East Germany's independence and then having East Germany take over the government of Berlin. Yes,
West
Berlin. Take over, in other words, what you, the British, and the French now control. Malenkov opposes this. But Malenkov needs, as I have told you before, shoring up. There must be, my friend informs me, some sense that he is making progress in his negotiations with the Western powers, even if that progress is measured only in terms of sociopolitical recognition.'