Saving the Queen (36 page)

Boris walked home slowly.

Blackford Oakes, then, knew about Robinson. How? He could not imagine. But on the other hand he could not imagine, either, that Robinson's operation could go forever undetected. But where had Robinson gotten
his
information? This Boris had never been able to imagine, and his failure to conceive what were Robinson's sources had contributed to his decision to permit Robinson to remain anonymous. Now he had no alternative. He would need to inform Ilyich that Robinson was dead, and that by voice identification, he, Boris, had identified him as Viscount Kirk. Would he then be expected to conduct an investigation into the contacts of Viscount Kirk? He was one of those English royal blades who move everywhere. How could Boris divine from whom he got the vital information? He would need to try and would concentrate on Robinson's friends within the nuclear scientific community. Was there someone there who, passing along the secrets to Robinson, knew what was their ultimate destination? Was it possible that Boris could approach that person, once his identity was deduced?

But something else was more likely. Blackford Oakes having discovered and exposed Robinson, wasn't it likely that the CIA, or MI-6, had done the work necessary to demolish Robinson's scaffolding? In the next few days, could Boris expect to read in the paper or—more probably—hear through the grapevine, the news that scientist Jones, or cryptographer Wren, had been silently arrested and was being held incommunicado?

It occurred to Boris that the young American was as close as he was likely to come to identifying the source of the great leak. But perhaps Blackford was only the mechanic—had he actually
killed
Robinson? If so, how? How in the world had he persuaded that cocky young man who occupied the priest's compartment in the confessional with such assurance to commit suicide?… In fact, Boris meditated, he was left with only this: Oakes was a fraud. He was a secret intelligence operative of the United States. Whether he had personally contrived the death of Robinson, Boris simply did not have the necessary information to conclude.

Boris liked to write notes to himself, when in tight situations. He did so now. A course of action, together with variables.

“1. I can notify Moscow that Peregrine, Viscount Kirk, turns out to be the invaluable Robinson. That I have arrived at that undeniable conclusion. But that I cannot know how many of the enemy are similarly aware of Kirk's double role.

“2. I can notify Moscow that I have ascertained that Blackford Oakes is most probably an agent of the CIA, and possibly had a hand in the death of Robinson.

“3. I can recommend to Moscow that we take steps either to abduct Oakes or to neutralize him by letting him know obliquely that we are on to him.

“4. I can do none of the above, save (2), which the embassy cryptographer will pass along in any case. Moscow is bound to learn that Oakes is a fraud. But Moscow doesn't know that Kirk was Robinson. And doesn't know that Oakes might have had a hand in killing Robinson.

“5. [Here Boris's handwriting became less emphatic. In fact the script became almost flimsy, demure, as it shifted into English, deserting the intractable Cyrillic.] I can defect, and have a useful conversation with Oakes and the CIA. I could give them useful information and get a big-big settlement. Question: Would they all be able to protect me?… All very confused … Maybe I am better off putting the noose on the head of the American ‘flier.' …”

He had, by this time, very nearly drained the large goblet, and his thought was getting foggy, and anyway there was time to come to a conclusion in the next few days. He knew one thing, and—again in English, whose vernacular constructions appealed to him—he repeated to himself, as he drained the goblet and turned the light off, “Well, Mr. Oakes, you son of a bitch, sir.” Boris's old habits, earthiness and deference, accepted the rhetorical incompatibility. “I know who you are, you don't know it, and you shall pay for it.”

Boris was quite right about one thing. Blackford had no idea he hadn't got clean away. And Wallack's young assistant, in turn, had no idea that the inquisitive and alluring graduate student who had enticed and then yielded to his advances had been moved by anything more than, at the margin, his irresistible charms, or that she had got from him anything more than a good dinner and a splendid tumble in his quiet little apartment with the computer print-outs on the desk, and the large technical drawings on the wall of a nuclear device, spilling out its aphrodisiac charms.

They were in Paris at five, began dinner at seven, and at nine they were drinking champagne with Mme. Pensaud, Michelle, and Doucette, and at nine-thirty, notwithstanding Doucette's ever-loving attentions, Blackford's eyes riveted on the portrait across the room, the coronation portrait of Queen Caroline. He sighed deeply, closing his eyes and trying to fancy a tiara on Doucette's head. She smiled maternally, through her rapture, and Blackford smiled back. Doucette, eyes only partly closed now, knees raised, hands working, asked finally, more inquisitively than wistfully, why Blackford stared at the picture of the Queen. “
C'est encore question de symbiose
?” She laughed, and Black laughed back, forgetting for these few extravagantly carnal moments the consuming nostalgic fantasy. In fact he was asleep when, at eleven, Singer nudged him, held out a glass of champagne, and told him to get dressed.

“Would you believe it, our girls are going to give themselves to another pair of gentlemen? Make cuckolds out of us? Hurry up, Black, they're downstairs already. We are to leave the back way. I've settled the account.”

“Aw, go settle your own fornicating account,” Blackford said sleepily, belligerently; then, cheered by the accidental pun, he said resignedly, “Take me home, Uncle Sam, I've got an Inaugural Address to write.” Singer took him to the hotel, guided him to his bedroom, looked at him as he slumped down, still dressed, on the bed, left and came back with a sedative, which he coaxed Black into taking, declining to be provoked into responding to Black's monologuist interrogation, which sprang from a blend of fatigue, alcohol, and tension, and seemed to revolve around the theme of the continuing necessity of looking after the safety and happiness of the Queen, to which duty Blackford Oakes should perhaps be assigned.…

Seventeen

Dressed in a mourning coat, Blackford Oakes drove in a palace limousine to Portland Place to pick up his mother and stepfather. His own father, always deft at getting out of the way, was conveniently off in Rome, preparing for the next Sabre exhibition and suavely superintending the defense against the British offensive, aimed at profiteering from the great Monday duel. At Windsor, Sir Alec and Lady Sharkey were detached from Blackford, and led to a pew in the center of the chapel, while Blackford was led to the forwardmost pew on the left, and directed to the lefthandmost seat, whence he could unobtrusively rise and walk to the lectern when the moment came for the eulogy. The Queen entered the chapel a minute before the ceremony began, and everyone rose. She was wearing black, and sat down at the opposite end of the same pew as Blackford. Between them were assorted royal cousins, aunts, and uncles, whose names were written out in the program Blackford discreetly leafed through, while apparently turning the pages of the hymn book.

The Archbishop of Canterbury read from the Book of Common Prayer. Then the choir sang “Komm' Süsser Tod” and a Scottish ballad that, the program noted, had been one of Viscount Kirk's favorites. Blackford wondered whether the choir would finish with the “Internationale,” a less widely known enthusiasm of the late Viscount. Then another reading from the Archbishop, tailored to the occasion and ending with the words:

“No one in this company knows this more keenly than the young man who shared with Peregrine Kirk his last moments of life, high in the skies over England, both in their separate instruments, striving to develop mechanisms of peace, whose deathly potential is designed to prolong life: life in freedom, life as citizens of sovereign nations, allied against any worldly conspiracy against human liberty. Her Majesty the Queen [Black had
insisted
on this, and Queen Caroline, when finally reached, understood and readily agreed] has asked Mr. Blackford Oakes to say a few words.”

Blackford rose, walked gravely to the lectern, and bowed with that faintly wooden truncation that becomes those ill at ease with the filigreed lengths of native obeisances, first to the Queen, then to the Archbishop.

“Your Majesty; lords and ladies; family, friends, and admirers of the late Peregrine, Viscount Kirk. You know, most of you better than I do, the background of the man whose death we are gathered here to mourn. In everything he excelled. As a horseman, he was supreme; briefly, even, he was a competitive champion. As a war ace, he was unrivaled by anyone so unfortunate as to cross his path. Those of you who know anything about his inner life must know that he strove after perfection in disciplines you cannot even guess at. He showed at the very end his love for his country, and whatever misjudgment caused his death, there was surely no misjudgment in the unswerving strategy that, from his earliest years, brought him to his death: the determination that his will should prevail. We cannot know all the mysteries of this world, let alone those of individual human hearts, but I give it as my own judgment, whatever it's worth, that Peregrine Kirk's will did indeed prevail, that in his final moments on earth his mind was fastened, as the minds of all Englishmen, everywhere, should be, on the sublime imperative of their civil lives: saving the Queen. This, in his own way, he sought to do by his heroic exertions. As an American, I can only honor his singular act of self-abnegation, and suggest to you that he would have found it most appropriate if we should reiterate now the full meaning of the words he would most clearly have wished us to meditate, as surely as he did at the end: God save the Queen.”

There was a murmur of appreciation as Blackford returned to his pew. Another hymn, the final prayer, and, the organ launching into the recessional, the Queen rose, as did the congregation. Grave, beautiful, and blond, she was escorted out by the Duke of Gloucester, their pace slow—majestic. The royal party and their luncheon guests walked silently up the courtyard, past frozen sentries, observed by all Englishmen with a television set.

As Blackford filed gravely out of the chapel, he felt the warmth of the mourners who brushed up against him, ostensibly under the pressure of the moving crowd, actually so as to come close enough to whisper, “
Such a fine eulogy, Mr. Oakes,
” or somehow, tactfully, to communicate that sentiment. Blackford smiled and made what forward progress he could until, suddenly, he realized that only a few yards ahead, whom he would overtake, at the rate he was going, in a matter of seconds, was a grim figure, the back of whose head he instantly recognized—he'd have recognized him at any angle. The last angle at which he had in fact seen him was oblique: Blackford's head down on a couch, Dr. Chase's head four feet away, staring intently, his right hand upraised, at Blackford's protruding backside.

Blackford slowed his pace, notwithstanding that this meant more quietly exchanged hypocrisies with the mourners. Why, he wondered, should he have been surprised? As he thought about it, the monarchy is an elaborate venture in the ongoing validation of the Establishment. Of
course
Dr. Chase had to be invited. In England the headmaster of a boys' school is a major figure in his life, and Peregrine had not only been at Greyburn nine years, he had been Head Boy. The question Blackford now considered was whether he could escape into Windsor Castle without having to exchange amenities with the monster. If not, what would he say?

The enterprising British tabloid press took the choice away from him. Although Dr. Chase emerged from the chapel a full half minute ahead of Blackford, he was promptly arrested by the correspondent for the
Daily Express
, who held him immobile until Blackford spilled out, at which point the photographer of the
Express
propelled the two together.

Dr. Chase, having no reasonable alternative, turned to Blackford, arm extended, as the photographer flashed a picture, and the reporter started to take notes.

“Awful tragedy, Oakes. Quite awful. A fine young man, he was. Your remarks were altogether … apropos.”

Blackford had from the beginning sensed that—somehow—he could not live forever in England without running into Dr. Chase. Yet he had never given thought to composing a phrase suitable to a reunion. He had read in an essay of the contempt George Orwell felt on coming upon his sadistic headmaster years later, a contempt unanimated by hostility or vindictiveness. Yet a week earlier it would have been different, because unlike Orwell's, Black's disdain had been undissipated. But that had now happened—only a hundred yards away, he smiled inwardly. He could hardly communicate to the headmaster of Greyburn School the great social achievement of this Old Boy—he wondered, had any graduate of Greyburn got as far as he, the one-term American, with a British sovereign?

He knew now that he was the center of attention not only of the team from the
Express
but of many others who, coming out of the church, came upon the paralyzed piquancy; the stern headmaster and the chastened schoolboy, dramatized in the press, face to face under unimaginable circumstances.

“Yes, indeed, Dr. Chase. Kirk was an exemplary graduate of Greyburn. I cannot think of anything you failed to teach him.”

The crowd cooed. The reporter from the
Express
sensed there was something in Oakes's words worth probing, and sought an elucidation, but the instincts of both men were similar. Dr. Chase turned to his left to greet the Earl of Holly, and Blackford turned to his right prepared to greet anybody at all, and gratefully recognized the groom who had for so many years mounted Peregrine's horses, and the Queen's, and only last week had done as much for Blackford. Black then set out for the gates of Windsor Castle.