Manhattan 62 (33 page)

CHAPTER SIX

October 26, '62

“
W
HO DO YOU WANT
?”

“Mr Forrester. E. A. Forrester.”

“And is he expecting you?”

“Yes.” I had been to the building the night before. Forrester was out. I had gone up to his apartment and banged on the door; nobody had answered. A neighbor looked out and said they were away. “Back tomorrow. Now stop that racket.” She waited like a guard dog in the doorway until I left.

Under the canopy of the apartment building on 12th Street, stood the sullen doorman in a shabby blue uniform, cigarette hanging from his lower lip, looking me over with the disdain of the underpaid, nothing except this tiny piece of turf to protect and the power that went with it. It took me a fiver to change his attitude. I didn't like it. But the bastards were going to murder Adlai Stevenson, and I needed some kind of proof. If Forrester had been whispering in Stevenson's ear, maybe he would help, if he could, if—and I remembered Ostalsky's theory that he might be working both sides—he wanted to help. The 28th was coming fast; Sunday would be the 28th. It was Friday.

“What name shall I say?”

“Maxim Ostalsky.”

The doorman tossed his cigarette butt into the gutter, and buzzed the Forrester apartment. After a few seconds, he turned to me. “He says you can go right up. 7C.”

I could have saved the dough.

On the way up, with the elevator operator, a dwarfish man who never said a word, I considered what the hell I was going to say. Unlike Max Ostalsky I had no spy tricks, nothing up my sleeve; I was no magician. All I knew was Adlai Stevenson was in danger. This was a long shot, but it gave me a focus; then the elevator door opened and I was standing in front of the door to apartment 7C.

“Coming. Just please wait. I'm coming.” A woman's voice trilled out from behind the door to 7C. I removed my sunglasses. Turned my coat collar down. Smile, I thought. The door opened a crack.

“Yes?” A middle-aged woman in a pink housedress peered through the crack in the door. “Is that Mr Ostalsky?”

“Yes. Hello. How do you do?”

She removed the chain from the door and let me inside. “I'm Mrs Forrester. Please, my husband said you're to go right to his study.”

The walls were tan, the furniture, the rugs, all old and expensive, were brown; in the faint sunlight that crept between the slats of Venetian blinds swam motes of dust and anxiety.

I followed her along a corridor hung with watercolors and framed diplomas. The study door was open, and behind a large partner's desk with a green leather top, was the little man I had seen on television.

He rose slightly. “Sit down,” he said, removing the thick-rimmed glasses. He wore an open-necked white shirt with a button-down collar, a woolen tie, a dark brown cardigan that you might see on some English professor. The whole apartment had an unused feel, an air of drab melancholy, as if it was an occasional stopping-off place, nothing more.

“I wondered why Maxim Ostalsky would be here,” he said, pleasantly enough. “What's your real name? You must know Max, then, isn't that right? Is he still studying for his advanced degree in Moscow? What news of him? You are not Ostalsky, obviously. The news is not good,” he said, glancing at the TV where a reporter droned on about ships in the Atlantic, possibly carrying warheads to Cuba. There were already nuclear weapons on the island, I knew. Who will believe us? Max had said. Nobody, I thought; nobody at all.

“My name is Patrick Wynne.” I remained standing. It made him very small. “I'm not, as you can see, Max Ostalsky.”

“But you do know him.”

“Sure.”

“Is he well?”

“Well enough.”

“Please sit down,” Forrester said. “You were here yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry. My wife and I spent the night with friends on Sutton Place after a long dinner.”

“Was Mr Stevenson there?”

“Yes, as it happens. Why?”

He gestured at a chair. So I sat. I was taller than him anyhow. As he reached for a fancy cigar box, his long hands, the fingers slim and graceful, were out of proportion with his small body. “Cigar?” he said.

“No. Thanks.”

He held the match and puffed to get it lit, and smiled. “Cuban,” he said. “Lovely.”

“Good for you.”

“If you're a friend of Maxim's, I'm happy to meet you. Did you know I met him in Moscow? He was very helpful; he was an excellent guide. In fact, he gave me a whole new sense of what our Soviet friends were like.

“You were there for what reason?”

“Didn't Max tell you? I sell refrigerators and other appliances and we were showing these wonderful American items to the Soviet Union. It was quite an event. Vice President Nixon, was there, I'm sure you recall.”

“They liked it all, did they, the Russians?”

“Of course. Mr Khrushchev is a practical man. I believe he would like all his people to have such modern wonders, and has promised them for everyone in twenty years.” He smiled. “Over the years, I've been lucky enough to see that vast country, I really got to know its people, to understand their culture, even to help them, and I was also able to report to Mr Khrushchev on the economic advances in the USA. And I admired the Soviets, they knew I did, and they appreciated it. After the war, I often thought that only the Soviets understand, only they had suffered enough and knew what it was to fight, in their bare feet, with their bare hands, without food if necessary. You know, I met a few young Soviet officers when I went to Yalta.”

“Fine, and you intend to cash in this big new market with your refrigerators? What about washing machines?”

“Certainly. But I was simply there to help our country, as you might imagine. I've been of at least a little help in other places, I think.”

“What kind of places?”

“Indochina, for example. Shall we get down to business, Mr Wynne?”

I gestured to the apartment. “This doesn't look like the place a refrigerator salesman would live.”

“It belonged to my wife's aunt and uncle. When she first came to New York, she lived with them, and they were like parents to her. She finds it hard to give up.”

“But you prefer Florida.”

“This apartment permits me to spend some days in New York City from time to time.”

“At the United Nations, for example?”

“Yes, certainly, it's a very important organization. Don't you think so?”

“I saw you on TV. I saw you sitting behind Adlai Stevenson.”

“Maxim would have spotted that. I'm so sorry he hasn't called by to see me in all this time.”

“Then you knew he was in New York. What were you doing at the UN?”

Forrester, looked at his watch, then removed his cufflinks, polished them on a tissue, put them on the desk, turned his cuffs back, like a man getting ready for action. I tensed up. Was there a weapon in that big mahogany desk? What was he, this little man who knew so much. “I sometimes act in an unofficial capacity as an advisor,” he said.

“Who to?”

“Excuse me one moment, Mr Wynne,” he said, and left the room. In the distance, I heard him talking to his wife, but I couldn't make out the words. I rummaged in the green leather wastepaper basket, grabbed what I could, and shoved the bits of paper into my pockets. I noticed the gold cufflinks were engraved with a military insignia.

On the wall, diplomas revealed that Forrester had gone to Princeton and then to Columbia Law School. I had met his kind once or twice, the men with such certainty about everything, so much charming passion for their country, and the assumption of intimate knowledge of many others. He was CIA, clear as day, and Ostalsky must have spotted it; or maybe back in Moscow, he had been too naive.

Propped on top of a bookcase were photographs from Indochina and Chile, Algeria and the Soviet Union, all meant to look like tourist snaps, but you would ask, why the hell was he in these places, and how did he know so many officials? In Moscow, he had posed with Khrushchev; in Vietnam with one of those dragon ladies who ran the show; in Cuba, he stood alongside Battista, the bastard who ran it before Castro took it over, and Forrester had a picture of a very young Fidel Castro too. I thought about Mrs Reyes' description of the man who came up with the idea of the worm. I recalled her words: “Somebody quite silly, an American official in Washington DC, one of those, what do you say, gung-ho ex military men who feels he is a diplomat and understands a country after a few months …”

There were family photographs, too, and snaps from Forrester's college years when he had played football at Princeton. There were pictures of the young Forrester in uniform, on an airfield with three other young men. In the background was what looked like a B-17 Flying Fortress.

I was looking at a picture of Bobby Kennedy, when Forrester returned.

“I admire Bob,” he said. “I saw quite a bit of him when I worked in Washington. He has stood up for the few good men who returned from the Bay of Pigs. By the way, I asked my wife if she would make some coffee for us.”

“I don't need coffee. I need to know what the hell you were doing at the United Nations with Adlai Stevenson?”

“I told you. I advise.”

“On what?”

“I try to act as an informal mediator. I happened to be at the United Nations. I saw that Mr Stevenson and Mr Zorin were not in any way ready to reach a satisfactory conclusion. We are very close to a terrible confrontation. I had an idea or two. I know Ambassador Stevenson quite well.”

“What is your idea of a satisfactory conclusion?”

“Peace, of course.”

“At any price?”

“Look, Detective, I think there is some misunderstanding. Why don't you tell me where Maxim Ostalsky is? I'd so like to see him, and to help him.”

“Help him with what?”

“I know that he's in trouble.”

“How do you know?”

“Actually, I tried to reach him. I wasn't entirely straight with you, but I was a little thrown when you said you were Max Ostalsky. I had heard he was studying in New York, and I wanted to meet him again. I made inquiries at the University, and they gave me a phone number. I reached the apartment where he was staying only Monday, in fact. I was concerned. I thought it might be difficult if he was here and the crisis had begun, and I didn't want him to feel everyone was hostile to him. I talked to a Mr Miller, very helpful, and he told me he'd give Max Ostalsky a message when he returned. He was out of town, Miller said. In fact, I have a letter for Max.”

“From his family, no doubt.”

“From one of his teachers in Moscow, in fact.”

“Why don't I get it to him?”

Forrester ignored my offer. “I think I told you, I sell appliances,” he said. “Look, our government sees my job as a way to break through the deadlock between us, as a more personal kind of communication. I do it because I love this country. I do what I can.”

“Selling refrigerators?”

“Sure.”

“And advising our diplomats on the side? You're CIA, aren't you?”

From the way he turned to avoid me, I knew I was right. I was itching to get a look at more of his paperwork.

“Where's that coffee?” he said. “You know, of course, that I can't directly answer those kind of questions, Detective Wynne. Let me just say you're quite wrong about things.”

“What's going to happen on Sunday, October 28th?”

Again, he failed to answer, but this time because he was startled. He knew. I recognized Edward Forrester's surprise, the brief flash of, what, of fear?

He hurriedly reclaimed his placid expression. “I have no idea what you mean at all. On Sundays, I attend church with my wife. She's rather a devout Roman Catholic.”

“I have one more question.”

“Of course.”

“Do you think Adlai Stevenson is getting in the way of what you might call negotiations?”

“Of course not. I'm personally very fond of Adlai. We're old friends. We were both at Milton Academy, at different times of course, and I was at his son's wedding out at Big Sur.”

“You know him that well?”

“Yes, indeed. I worked in Chicago when he was Governor of Illinois. I helped on his '56 Presidential campaign. I'm close to many politicians. In fact, Bobby Kennedy worked on that same campaign; there were quite a lot of us young fellows. Does that help you?”

“I heard Bobby didn't like Adlai. I heard he didn't even vote for him afterwards, he voted for Eisenhower.”

“Is that right?”

“You think Stevenson goes to church?”

“Not during this sort of crisis, no, I don't see Adlai as particularly devout.”

“You think he's soft? You think Bobby Kennedy's soft?”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

Something occurred to me. “Your wife, she has a slight accent?”

“Yes, I suppose she does.”

“Is she Russian?”

“She left as a young woman. She was so happy to be in New York, we met then, my goodness, it must be more than thirty years.” He had a relentless manner of recounting the details of his life. “I met her on a student trip to Moscow, then she came here, I was at Columbia Law School, she was a student at Barnard College.” He smiled. “She loved New York. America. Her uncle was a professor, you see, and this was his apartment, and when they passed on, my wife Katherine inherited it.”

“You got her out? Of Russia?”

“I may have helped.”

“Will you be staying in New York for a while?”

“Until Sunday, or Monday perhaps,” he said. “I'll be here as long as I'm useful. Please tell Maxim Ostalsky to stop by, would you? We have so much to catch up on.”

“I'll see what I can do. By the way, I was looking at some of your photographs. The picture from the war, is that you? My older cousin flew a B-17.”