Stained Glass (20 page)

She laughed. “They were very good sports.”

“It does rather give them … status, don't you think? Has anyone ever declared war on you?”

“Nobody would dare. Nansen would send the marines and destroy them.”

“
Nemo me impune lacessit
. There, I bet I've said something you can't translate.”

Again she laughed. “Silly goose, as they used to say in London. That is the motto of one of the Queen's orders, I forget which. ‘No one crosses me with impunity.'
Nemo
means no one, as in Captain Nemo.”

“Really, Erika, you are an awful exhibitionist. I should think it would be very difficult for anyone other than Einstein to be married to you. I suppose you know all about relativity?”

“I know everything I need to know about relativity.”

“Do you know what E=mc
²
means?”

“Yes. Hiroshima.”

“What's the difference between Hiroshima and Vorkuta?”

He felt her tighten, and he said to himself,
Cut it out, Oakes. This isn't your show
. Somewhere about four thousand miles away the Secretary of State and the Soviet ambassador are deciding how to handle this one. Cool it. Bang her if you want to, but if you feel like talking politics with her, go take a cold shower.

So he talked about a problem that was vexing him in the chapel and managed to engage her in the problems they were facing in the reconstruction well through the first course of herring and sour cream which—it was late—she ate avidly, injecting enough bright commentary to suggest a genuine interest in the problems he faced. Two hours later they had spoken of her experiences growing up in London, of his brief experience as a schoolboy at Greyburn, of, the coincidence of his having been at the same school where Wintergrin spent so many years.

She interjected that she and her parents had been in London at the same time, leaving right after Pearl Harbor, and Blackford said that he also had left right after Pearl Harbor. When, exactly? And they gasped at the coincidence of their both having sailed aboard the S.S.
Mount Vernon
, and suddenly Blackford remembered the little girl. Could it have been she? Her eyes shone. Of course, the handsome American blond boy with the apple! Really, he hadn't changed so much. It was only eleven years ago. Why had they not seen each other during the voyage? Ah, class distinctions. Erika's face sobered for the moment. She and her parents had traveled in third class, Blackford in tourist class, as they then called the second class, and the barriers between the classes were resolute. So that tall man with the high eyebrows was Dimitri Chadinoff! Off to overpower Harvard University's Russian Literature department! It was all intensely enjoyable, and soon became engrossing. She seemed as anxious as he to exercise her mind and her emotions removed from the epic dimensions of the drama in which she was directly involved. She asked him, when he ordered liqueurs, whether he felt lonely facing so many more months of work in so remote a part of Germany, and he said yes, he was very lonely, and was there anything she could do about it? She let her hand, underneath the table, rest on his knee, and he took it and told her she was very beautiful, and she replied that he was the most beautiful American she had ever seen, and he called for the bill, signaled for Walter and whispered to him and he brought, along with the bill, a bottle of iced champagne wrapped discreetly in a napkin. In the car they embraced, and he guided her hand to his excitement and she said in a whisper, “Quickly, let's go to the inn.” He turned on the radio and, with some difficulty, drove the half hour while she, caressing him, said not a word. He told her to go to her room, he would follow. In ten minutes he was there with the champagne. She went to him gladly, ardently. The dim light came in from the bathroom, and they walked away from its beam to the bed, where she lay down turning her head away while he untethered himself and came down on her violently, while she looked him in the face, squeezing him past pain to pleasure. He breathed with difficulty and suddenly she was Florence Nightingale dressing his wounds, bringing him back to life from battle, triumphant in her powers, and now they were airborne, riding high over St. Anselm's and the forests of Westphalia, higher, higher, so high they could see all of Germany and now Poland, England, Russia, and soon the Atlantic and the whole world, round and round they sped, the pleasure ship on the nonstop intergalactic flight until the moment came for the dive down to that little twinkling village by the sleepy old castle of St. Anselm's, just making it in their spaceship, just in time to their bed, in a delirium of pleasure. Blackford was wet. Erika tickled him lazily. And said, hoarsely, that he wouldn't be lonely any more. That, he said rising, deserves a drink. She watched him as he uncorked the bottle, the devilishly beautiful young man, and thought yearningly of Paul, who had been even more beautiful.

CHAPTER 14

“Bring him in,” he told his aide on the telephone.

The Secretary, a gentleman of tidy memory, calculated that this would he the eleventh meeting with the ambassador on the matter of Wintergrin. And for the first time he felt he could, if not with assurance at least with self-confidence, take the offensive. The door opened and an aide brought in the sourdough Russian who had never been seen to smile. It had been conjectured by a cosmopolitan British journalist—sentenced by his superiors, for gross misbehavior, to three years covering the United Nations, where the Soviet ambassador worked before being reassigned to afflict Washington—that someone had told him, when a young man, that Stalin disapproved of smiling as revisionist; and so the ambassador routinely added this to the other mandates from Stalin which he faithfully executed, like never telling the truth.

“Good morning, Mr. Ambassador.”

The Secretary rose gravely and, as always, walked over to the little sofa and sat down next to his guest, waving the translator in the direction of a chair in front of them. “Shall we get right to the point?”

Nothing was better calculated to put the ambassador at ease, inasmuch as his inventory of badinage was as painful for him to rehearse as for the listener to hear, and in any case had been depleted after the second visit.

“Now, Mr. Ambassador, the position of your government right along, has been that merely because we had an agent in the Wintergrin entourage, we were presumptively responsible for the Wintergrin phenomenon.”

“That, Mr. Secretary, and the identity of interests of your government and Count Wintergrin.”

“Well, if you wish to charge my government with the heinous offense of desiring that one day the residents of East Germany should rule themselves, then we are guilty: as is the Human Rights Covenant of the United Nations, which when it came up before the Security Council, you did not veto. But let that pass. It comes now to our attention that
you
have an agent of your own in the Wintergrin entourage, and that that agent is at least as well placed as our own.”

The translator, who had been with the ambassador for six years now, sensed when he should slow down the rendering of a negotiator's remark, or extend the number of words necessary to convey the message. It seemed a very long time before he put into Russian what the Secretary had just said, and of course the ambassador had that much more time to compose a reply.

“You refer, perhaps, to dissenters in the Wintergrin camp who are opposed to war and fascism?”

“Well, actually, no, I
wasn't
referring to dissenters in the Wintergrin camp who are opposed to war and fascism. I was referring to Miss Erika Chadinoff.”

The ambassador elected not to quibble. He knew when to quibble—indeed, could do so for weeks and months on end. To do so now would suggest that his government was keeping him in the dark. In fact, it was—the ambassador had no idea how Stalin would finally respond to a Wintergrin ultimatum if ever it were issued. But on such a matter as the Chadinoff woman it would not do to deny her role. Clearly the CIA was on to her.

“We need to protect our interests, Mr. Secretary.”

“Precisely. Now, as to the plan. There is no longer any reason why it should not be executed by your agent rather than by ours.”

“Your government bears primary responsibility for Count Wintergrin, and your government must, under the circumstances, take the responsibility of removing him.”

The Secretary elected to be frosty, which he could do without strain.

“I shall not spend more time telling you what I told you in our ten previous meetings on the subject, namely that Wintergrin was
not
our enterprise. I will not even go beyond making the obvious historical point that if there were no occupation of East Germany there would be no cause for Wintergrin to ignite. Because of your government's threats we have had, most reluctantly, to acquiesce in a disgraceful enterprise. It clearly matters more to us than to you who should execute that plan. The reasons why it should be our responsibility rather than yours—because we had an agent in the field and you did not—now no longer apply and, accordingly, I invest you with the responsibility.”

The ambassador had been in frequent communication with Stalin himself, through Ilyich of the KGB, and knew now how to cope with the hand grenade thrown to him. The directive had come from Stalin himself. He could imagine that Stalin thought it both ingenious and merry, in the sense that Stalin understood merriment.

“I had of course previously relayed to our government the objections you have so persistently made on the point in question. In the light of the current development, I am authorized to suggest a compromise.”

“A compromise? How does one compromise on this point?”

“It is suggested that we settle the matter in a way sanctioned by both Russian and American tradition.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pack of playing cards, and laid them down on the coffee table in front of him. “The low man does the job.”

The Secretary's mustache writhed in indignation, contempt, mortification, and settled finally like a bull's horns aimed at his tormentor.

“Mr. Ambassador! Now I have seen everything!”

He rose and paced to his desk, looking up as if pleading at the portrait of John Jay. He could think, at first, only of such a retort as might be appropriate in a western saloon. He closed his eyes as he spoke.

“To begin with, I would need to send the cards to an X-ray technician to inspect.” He almost added, “And I would need to search your sleeves.” He looked at him out of the corner of his eye, to ascertain his reaction to the supreme diplomatic insult. The ambassador sat as if made of stone, which as a matter of fact, the Secretary thought, he was, really. He paused, wondering whether it would be possible to communicate to him the coarseness of the suggestion. He decided it would not. The diplomat in him took over and he wondered if he might succeed in pushing him further. He would try.

“Mr. Ambassador, if your government is willing to draw cards on the question, then your government is confessing its willingness to do the deed. In that event, what reason is there for you
not
to do it? It serves
your
direct interests, not ours.”

“Ah, then, you admit that Wintergrin's enterprise serves your interests!”

The Secretary groaned.

“And besides, you agreed at our sixth session to execute the plan. There is no need, Mr. Secretary, to proceed as if we had not had our previous meetings.”

“We agreed to
the plan
on the grounds that your threat, though unspecified, could mean another bloody war. But we have
not yet
agreed to have one of
our
agents carry out the plan.”

“Do you wish me to return to my government and advise it that our plan—”

“—your plan—”

“—our plan is rescinded? I am prepared to do so.”

The Secretary stopped, thought deeply, and returned to the sofa.

“There isn't much
time
, Mr. Ambassador. The eleventh of November is twelve days away. The efforts to bring Wintergrin down in the polls will begin, as planned, tomorrow. The arrangements for the twelfth, in the event the polls show Wintergrin's probable success, must be laid carefully.
There is no time for further bickering.
”

“Then draw a card, Mr. Secretary.”

He'd have given the remaining years of his life to have there and then drawn the two of clubs. But he could not
himself
touch the cards. For reasons of … ethics? Pride? He could think of only a single retreat.

“Very well. Let the agents in the field do the card-drawing.” There was a certain poetic consistency in this, he thought wearily. And added, “They will in any event need to be introduced to each other formally, since it is agreed that the details of the plan will be approved by your technicians and ours.”

“I accept your modification,” the ambassador said, reaching down and pocketing the cards. “I shall leave it to you to suggest a meeting place. Of course, not Germany. I would suggest Switzerland. If you will be good enough to advise me the place and the time, we shall deliver Colonel Boris Bolgin, from our London embassy, and Miss Chadinoff. You will supply your agent in the field, and the relevant superior.”

The Secretary pressed a buzzer. Instantly his aide appeared.

“Kindly show the ambassador to his car.” He rose and shook hands, unsmiling. The translator in his double-breasted black suit waited indecisively. Some diplomats shake a translator's hand always, some never, the Secretary sometimes. The Secretary extended his hand, the translator took it, and they went out.

He went to the red telephone—to report, for perhaps the sixtieth time, the most recent development. The President would talk to no one else about the Wintergrin matter, and with the Secretary he would speak about little else.

CHAPTER 15

On Tuesday morning, November 2, Blackford advised Overstreet he would be going to Geneva for a few days on romantic leave, that his American girlfriend was there with her parents and that he had grievously neglected her.