Saving the Queen (17 page)

The driver took him through the thickening snowstorm to the hotel. He went up to the hard currency store, open for diplomats and late patrons of the ballet and opera, and with a pound note bought a half bottle of vodka, two rolls, a small jar of caviar, a half pound of smoked salmon, and went down to his room, opened the novel by Gogol he had begun the day before, and ate, and drank, and gave thanks for the guardian angel who had whispered to him months ago, that when asked, as surely he would be one day, to divulge the identity of Robinson, he must say that he did not know. As long as Robinson performed, Boris was safe. He took another long swallow, and looking up at the mirror he whispered, in idiomatic but heavily accented English, his eyes bright, a prerevolutionary smile on his face like Chichikov's trading off dead souls, “Here's looking at you, Robinson my boy.”

Ten

Blackford needed to ask no one's permission before cabling Anthony, “
OF COURSE I
'
LL MEET YOU
.
WILL ALSO BOOK AT FRANCE ET CHOISEUL AND WILL ARRIVE BEFORE NOON FRIDAY
.
REGARDS
,
BLACKFORD
.”

He was excited, having experienced Paris only glancingly on his way back to the States, and in a physical condition that excluded any experimentation with the city's celebrated delights. Almost two months had passed since last seeing Anthony, and he reasoned that although he would not be free to divulge the name of his contact in London, surely he could at least bring Anthony up to date on the general, and highly unusual, nature of his commission. And—who knows?—perhaps now that he was active in the field, Anthony could tell him a little more intimately something about the situation as viewed from Washington; perhaps even something more about the nature of Anthony's own work.

He told his maid where in Paris he could be reached if anybody needed to be in touch with him, and that in any event he would be back on Sunday night. He gave the same message over the telephone to his mother and asked if there was anything in particular he might bring her from Paris, and she said yes, a couple of ounces of any good perfume; and, packing a light suitcase and James Burnham's latest book, which he had been assigned in Washington, he took a cab to the airport and boarded an Air France Convair for the two-and-a-half-hour flight.

He was detained by the immigration authorities.

A moment of irrational panic touched him as the official studied his passport. What could they have seen in it to catch their attention? Was it, somehow, especially stained, for the benefit of Interpol? He quickly rejected these reservations, so obviously in conflict with his training. Yet the man was looking suspiciously at the passport number on his immigration form. His old army passport having lapsed, he had sent in an application for a new one, together with the nine dollars and the three pictures, directly to Ruth Shipley, head of the passport agency of the State Department, and his godmother, reasoning that it would give her a kick personally to expedite its issuance. Miss Shipley did more than he asked her to do. She sent him his passport with a note: “A belated birthday present. With love, Aunt Ruth.” At first he examined the passport, but could not see what there was about it that was either festive or free—the nine dollars had not been returned. True, it had arrived quickly. Then he noticed the number: H 1234567.

He had thought that a truly elegant gift, like license plate #1, and looked forward eagerly to occasions that would require him to use it. Unfortunately, the French at Paris, even as the British had done at the London airport, sniffed not VIP—at his age—but impertinence when they noted his immigration form with H1234567 scrawled in the blank marked:
Passport No
. The tall unamused French official stretched out his hand: “
Vôtre passeport.
” Blackford produced it, and, carefully, the inspector examined the number, visibly disappointed that he would not have the opportunity to reprimand, or even detain, the dashing young American on the charge of bureaucratic provocation. So, Blackford saw the mistake and wondered whether this passport number wasn't something like a dye marker, which would illuminate his trail in the event he needed, using his own papers, to hopscotch discreetly around Europe. But he pocketed it, smiled at the agent, and said a respectably accented “
Merci, monsieur.
”

It was noon when he reached the hotel, built, he saw on reading the legend in the little cobblestoned courtyard into which the taxi took him, on grounds that once belonged to the Marquis de Lafayette. He was agreeably surprised to notice that he would be paying eight dollars a day, including breakfast, for a room positively awesome in its only slightly tatterdemalion Empire splendor. The bath was huge, and there were doors that opened out into the garden; and yet he was only two blocks from the Place de la Concorde. He stood, inhaling the sunny winter wind and smelling from the dining room below the conventional, inescapable, incomparable French bread, and then thought to call Anthony, rather than await, his call; and he was in, and greeted Black's call for the first time, with unreserved joy.

“Don't ask me what we're going to do,” he said when they met in the lobby ten minutes later. “Just follow me.” Anthony had rented a car, and they drove through residential Paris, through the Porte de la Chapelle toward the country. Anthony, chatting away, did not disclose their destination until they reached the outskirts of Chantilly. “There's a little restaurant here, practically unnoticed in
Michelin
, but one of the best—I stumbled on it a while ago, accidentally. But first let's take a quick look at the château.”

It was there sitting content, architecturally self-confident, in the lake, yellow-white and stately, with a Mediterranean grace lacking in its more somber counterparts in England.

“There's no time to go through the rooms now—just wanted you to have a look at it.”

Presently he retreated a mile or so into the town and parked directly outside a small, inconspicuous set of doors with the traditional menu taped inside the window, facing out for discriminating French inspection. The Caté Tipperary abutted, on the right, a shoe store, on the left, a pharmacy.

“Just wait!” said Anthony, bringing his right leg voluptuously over the chair and floating down opposite Black, separated by the usual red and white checkered tablecloth. He ordered, in authoritative if imperfect French, for both of them, having first achieved instant delivery of a bottle of dry white wine from the Loire Valley. The first course was an omelet of sour cream and tomatoes and elixir, unlike anything Black had ever tasted, and better. Then there came a steak and french-fried potatoes. But how to describe the steak? Black looked up wonderingly at Anthony. How had they managed to transmute plain steak into … this? And the
pommes frites
(served with a salad of endives). Then, for dessert, a peach tart covered with crème Chantilly, which he had never tasted before and which he would specify on execution eve. Black paid this tribute first in English to Anthony; then, his enthusiasm carrying him away, in French to the waitress, who was also the maître d'hôtel and the wife of the cook. Black's hold on the language being a little uncertain, this caused not a little confusion, and it was required finally that he and Anthony pool their resources, to persuade the waitress, after explaining the little indulgences granted to condemned men in America on execution eve, that the intention had been to compliment the crème Chantilly, not to suggest that it was fit only for convicted murderers.

“Sorry, Black, it won't do. I don't mean it isn't
likely
that you will be convicted or killed or executed in the line of duty, but I mean crème Chantilly doesn't travel. You can't get it to the States fast enough and anyway there's something about the grass here—doesn't produce the right kind of milk. So you will have to arrange to commit your capital crime in France. As to the crime, I leave it to your imagination. And for the punishment, no problem: The guillotine is still slicing away. Speaking of guillotining, what have they got you doing? Now wait. Before you tell me, you know what you
can
tell me and what you
can't
tell me. Just in case you stray over the line—which try not to do—I won't repeat anything you say.”

Black looked at him.

“Okay,” Trust said, “just to set your mind at ease: I am
not
here as an agent provocateur to test your discretion. Shoot.”

Blackford, afloat with confidence, security, warmth, told him everything, leaving out only the name of his contact, Singer Callaway.

Anthony ordered coffee and brandy and after a pause said, “Well, I'll be goddamned. I've run into some crazy ones. And to think, they are actually paying you
money
—the taxpayer's money, as Senator Taft puts it. Well, all right, tell me: Are you making out?”

Black smiled with a boyish self-pleasure he hadn't intended to contain.

He pulled a stiff card out of his jacket pocket.

“My boss hasn't seen this yet.”

Anthony took the card in his hand. On top was the royal seal in gold. And underneath, in stately italics:

The Master of the Household

is commanded by Her Majesty to invite

Mr. Blackford Oakes

to a supper dance at Buckingham Palace

to be given by the Queen

to honor Miss Margaret Truman

on Monday, January 14, 1952 10 p.m
.

A reply is requested to

The Master of the Household

White Tie

Decorations

Anthony grinned. “Not bad! How did you manage it?”

“By being charming. That is, by being natural,” Black said, with heavy solemnity.

Anthony did not ask the details. So Black proffered them.

“It was easier than I thought. I was only supposed to get myself into high society, try to circulate, have the proper introductions—you know, all that stuff. It just took one. And that's got me to Buckingham Palace. What was required was that I—ingratiate myself—with the U.S. Ambassador's daughter, who is very easy to ingratiate oneself with. I am, in fact, her escort at this party.”

“That must mean you are Number One with Helen Hanks.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Blackford roguishly, “I am. She is not, however”—he found himself saying this in an effort, intellectually unformulated, to suggest the survival of pre-CIA loyalties—“number one with me. Sally still is. All in the line of duty.”

Anthony got up, paid the bill, and walked, his arm around Black's, the two of them sparked by the lunch, and the professional intimacies, and the reconnected circuit, through which the friendship flowed as fast as ever, and their pleasure in each other's company. Anthony, talking about nothing much at all, save bits and pieces of Chantilly history he recalled from a study of World War I, which, incredibly, was run from Chantilly during those disastrous months when, Anthony suggested, the generals must surely have made their battle plans after lunch at the Café Tipperary. They drove around rather aimlessly in the car, poking here and there, snuggling up to the perfect little Château St.-Fermin, owned now by Duff Cooper, before that the summer residence of the American ambassador William Bullitt, before that—Anthony decided to enjoy himself—“the little château where Marie Antoinette slept with Robespierre trying to dissuade him from carrying out the French Revolution.”

“Oh,” said Blacky, “so it was
here
that famous tryst took place?” Except that he was too stuffed with the crème Chantilly, he'd have taken out his notebook, further to extend the historical jape, but Anthony, sticking the gear into reverse (the château was strictly private property), uttered an amiable obscenity, and they lazed their way back to Paris. “It'll be hours before we're hungry again, Black my boy, so I'm going to take you to a little place in Montmartre, known only to the CIA, MI-6, Bao Dai, the Duke of Windsor, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Promise you won't tell any of your friends?”

“Not even the Queen of England?” Blackford asked solemnly.

They had been there over an hour, drinking champagne, watching what Black assumed must be the world's most unlicensed floor show, when Anthony, having disappeared a full quarter hour, came back to the table.

It was the Entrepreneurial Anthony Trust (there was no mistaking him).

“Black, my friend,” he said, making an effort just faintly discernible to steady his voice, “I have … after quite extraordinary efforts … taken some liberties in vouching for your reputation … and made arrangements for us to visit, not more than two blocks from here, two extra-lovely young ladies, so special they are not permitted to appear even in this select company.”

Black could not, at that moment, have resisted an invitation to make a comfortable living as a double agent, provided he were fed at the Café Tipperary and entertained at—but the name, he brought his finger to his lips, would never pass them.

“Count me in,” he said to Anthony.

“Not until after it's over and I talk with Doucette,” Anthony leered.

“You are vulgar, Anthony. And good manners require me not to ask you how you know where to go.”

Anthony replied gravely, as in an intelligence briefing, that during the past half hour, “during which, Black, you have done nothing more to further the movement of the universe than ogle, moreover, at the obvious places—did no one ever tell you that the mind is an erogenous zone?” Blackford was in good form for that kind of thing and could have spent a pleasant evening in badinage, but Anthony had gone too far, and Black felt that he was on the escalator,” and to pull the emergency stop would somehow throw things off kilter for hours—maybe weeks and years, he thought solemnly, lifting his glass of champagne. “Let's go, Trust. Now.”