The Company: A Novel of the CIA (49 page)

"We have been clear about this from the start," the ambassador said. "Mr. Ebbitt here, at great personal risk, brought an unambiguous message to Mr. Zeik. The day you assumed the powers of premier, I delivered the same message to you, Mr. Nagy. Neither the Americans nor NATO are prepared to intervene in Hungary"

"What if we were to provide a casus belli for the Western powers to intervene by taking Hungary out of the Warsaw Pact and declaring neutrality?"

The ambassador said, "It would not alter anything—except perhaps infuriate the Soviets even more."

"Our only hope, then, rests on the Russians being unsure of the American attitude," Maleter said. "As long as they are in doubt, there is always a chance that Khrushchev and the doves on the Soviet politburo will restrain Zhukov and his hawks."

As the Americans were leaving the Parliament building, the chief of station pulled Ebby into a vestibule. "I think it might be wise if you came back to the embassy with me. We'll supply you with diplomatic cover—"

"What about Zoltan, my radioman? What about Elizabet Nemeth?"

"If word gets out that we're giving asylum to Hungarians we'll be swamped—mobs will beat down our doors."

"A lot of these people went out on the limb for us."

"What they were doing, they were doing for Hungary, not for us. We don't owe them anything."

Ebby said, "That's not how I see things. I'll stay with them."

The chief of station hiked his shoulders. "I can't order you. Officially, I don't even know you're in Budapest—you're reporting directly to the DD/0. For the record, if the Russians do invade I strongly urge you to change your mind."

"Thanks for the advice."

"Advice is cheap."

Ebby nodded in agreement. "The advice you gave me is cheap."

8

WASHINGTON, DC, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1955

AT SUNUP, BERNICE SHIFTED ONTO HER SIDE IN THE NARROW BED, pressing the large nipples of her tiny breasts into Eugene's back. The previous night he had turned up at her third-floor walkup later than usual—the candles she always lit when she knew he was coming had almost burned down to their wicks—and their love-making had lasted longer than usual. He hadn't wanted to do any peyote; he seemed to be walking on air without it. "So are you awake?" Bernice whispered into his neck. "I think there's something you need to know, baby."

Stirring lazily, Eugene opened an eye and, squinting, played with the sunlight streaming through slits in the window shade. "What do I need to know?"

"I figured out where you don't come from."

"Where don't I come from?"

"Canada is where you don't come from, baby."

Eugene maneuvered onto his back and Bernice crawled on top of him, her long bony body light as a feather, her fingers reaching down to comb through his pubic hair.

"If I don't come from Canada, where do I come from?"

The tip of her tongue flicked at the inside of his ear. "You come from ...Russia, baby. You're Russian."

Both of Eugene's eyes were wide open now. "What makes you think that?"

"You mutter things in your sleep, things I don't understand, things in a foreign language."

"Maybe I'm speaking Canadian."

Bernice's body trembled with silent laughter. "You said something about knigi"

"Knigi sounds Canadian to me."

"Max speaks pigeon Russian from when he visited Moscow before the war. Hey, don't worry—I told him I overheard two customers speaking what I thought was Russian. Max says I must have been right—he says knigi means 'book' in Russian."

"Book?"

"Yeah, baby. Book! So don't act innocent. You say other Russian-sounding things, too. You say something that sounds like starik. Max says starik is Russian for 'old man.' He says Starik with a capital S was Lenin's nickname. Almost everyone around him was younger and called him 'the old man.' Honest to God, Eugene, it gives me goose pimples thinking about it—I mean, actually talking to Comrade Lenin in your sleep!"

Eugene tried to pass it off as a joke. "Maybe I was Russian in a previous incarnation."

"Maybe you're Russian in this incarnation. Hey, there's more. Reasons why I think you're Russian, I mean."

Eugene propped himself up in bed, his back against a pillow, and reached for a cigarette on the night table. He lit it and passed it to Bernice, who sat up alongside him. He lit a second one for himself.

"So you want to hear my reasons?"

"Anything for a laugh."

"Remember when Max lent us the station wagon two weeks ago and we drove down to Key West? You did something real funny before we left— after you packed your valise you sat down on it."

"I was trying to lock it."

"It was locked when you sat down on it, Eugene, baby." Eugene sucked pensively on the cigarette.

"After we left, you remembered you'd forgotten the antenna for your Motorola. Shows how dumb I am, I didn't even know Motorolas needed antennas. Long as we were going back, I went up to pee. You found the antenna in the closet and then you did something funny again—you looked at yourself in the full-length mirror on the wall next to the john."

"That doesn't make me Russian, Bernice. That makes me narcissistic."

"Remember me telling you about my grandfather coming from Vilnus? Well, he always used to sit on his valise before setting out on a trip—us kids used to kid him about it. He said it brought good luck. He flat-out refused t0 go back across the threshold once he started out—he said it meant the trip would end badly. And if he absolutely had to, like the time when my grandmother forgot the sulfa pills for her heart, he did what you did—he looked at himself in the mirror before starting out again." She reached across Eugene's stomach to flick ashes into a saucer on the night table. "I don't know how you got to talk American with a Brooklyn accent but if you're not Russian, Eugene, I'm a monkeys uncle."

Eugene regarded his girlfriend of five years. "This started out as a joke, Bernice, but it has stopped being funny."

Leaning toward him, Bernice pressed her lips against his ear and whispered into it. "When I was vacuuming your apartment over the store yesterday, I discovered the hiding place under the floorboards in the closet. I found the antenna. I found packs of money. Lots and lots of it. More money than I've ever seen before. I found stuff—a miniature camera, rolls of film, a small gizmo that fits in your palm and looks like some kind of microscope. I found matchbooks with grids of numbers and letters on the inside covers." Bernice shuddered. "I'm so proud of you, Eugene, I could die. I'm proud to be your friend. I'm proud to fuck you." She reached down with her right hand and cupped it protectively over his testicles. "Oh, baby, it takes my breath away when I think of it. It's the bee's knees. It's the cat's pajamas. Its completely colossal! You're a spy for Soviet Russia, Eugene! You're a Communist warrior battling on the front line against capitalism." She began sliding down his body, sucking on his nipples, planting moist kisses on his stomach, pulling his penis up toward her lips and bending to meet it. "You don't need to worry, Eugene. Bernice would die before she tells a soul about you being a spy for the Motherland."

"Even Max, Bernice. Especially Max."

Tears of joy streamed from Bernice's shut eyes. "Even Max, baby," she whispered breathlessly. "Oh my God, I love you to death, Eugene. I love what you are, I love you the way a woman loves a soldier. This secret will be an engagement ring between us. I swear it to you."

She rambled on about the permanent revolution that would bring Marxism to the world and the dictatorship of the proletariat that would follow. She kept talking but gradually her words became garbled and he had difficulty understanding them.

Eugene had met SASHA the previous night at the rendezvous marked as

X 0 X

0 X 0

X 0 0

in the tic-tac-toe code: the McClellan statue on California Avenue. A face-to-face meeting between an agent and his handler was a rare event; when the
matter was more or less routine, Eugene usually retrieved films and enciphered messages from dead drops. Both SASHA and Eugene had taken the usual precautions to make sure they weren't being followed; doubling back their tracks, going the wrong way on one-way streets, ducking into stores through a main entrance and leaving through a side door. Despite the chilly weather, two old men were playing chess under a streetlight on a nearby park bench. SASHA nodded toward them but Eugene shook his head no. He'd reconnoitered the site before leaving the coded tic-tac-toe chalk marks on the mailbox near SASHA's home; the same two old men, bundled in overcoats and scarves, had been playing chess then, too.

"Know anything about General McClellan?" Eugene asked, looking up at the statue.

"He won a battle during the Civil War but I don't remember which one," SASHA said.

"It was what the North called Antietam, after a creek, and the South called Sharpsburg, after the town. McClellan whipped Lee's ass but he was too cautious for Lincoln when it came to exploiting the victory. Lincoln grumbled that 'McClellans got the slows' and fired him."

"Khrushchev's got the slows, if you ask me," SASHA said moodily. "If he doesn't go into Hungary and put down the goddamn insurrection, all of Eastern Europe will break away. And there will be no buffer zone left between the Soviet Union and NATO forces in the west."

"If Khrushchev's dragging his feet, it's because he's worried about starting a world war," Eugene guessed.

"There won't be a world war," SASHA said flatly, "at least not over Hungary. That's why I phoned in the order to the girl at the liquor store. That's why I asked for this meeting." He held out a small brown paper bag filled with peanuts. "Under the peanuts you'll find two rolls of microfilms that will change history. There are contingency papers, there are minutes of a high-level telephone discussion, there are messages from Vienna Station, there's even a copy of a CIA briefing to President Eisenhower on American military preparedness in Europe in the event of war. I sat in on the briefing. When it was finished Eisenhower shook his head and said, 'I wish to God I could help them, but I can't.' Remember those words, Eugene. They're not on any of the microfilms but they're straight from the horses mouth."

"'I wish to God I could help them, but I can't."'

"Starik's been peppering me with interrogatives since this business in Budapest exploded. Here's his answer: The Americans won't move a tank or a unit to assist the Hungarians if Khrushchev takes the leash off Zhukov."

Eugene plucked a peanut from the bag, cracked it and popped the nut into his mouth. Then he accepted the bag. "I'll have the remark from Eisenhower in Starik's hands in two hours."

"How will I know it's been delivered?" SASHA asked.

"Watch the headlines in the Washington Post," Eugene suggested.

Philip Swett had a hard time rounding up the usual movers and shakers for his regular Saturday night Georgetown bash. Sundry stars of the Washington press corps, senior White House aides, Cabinet members. Supreme Court justices, members of the Joint Chiefs, State Department topsiders and Pickle Factory mavens had asked for rain checks; they were all too busy following the breaking news to socialize. Joe Alsop, who had popularized the domino theory in one of his columns, dropped by but fled in mid-cocktail when he received an urgent phone call from his office (it seemed that Moscow had just threatened to use rockets if the Israelis didn't agree to a Middle East ceasefire and the British and French continued to menace Egypt). Which left Swett presiding over a motley crew of under-secretaries and legislative assistants and the stray guest, his daughter Adelle and his son-in-law Leo Kritzky among them. Putting the best face on the situation, he waved everyone into the dining room. "Looks like Stevenson is going down in flames next Tuesday," he announced, motioning for the waiters to uncork the Champagne and fill the glasses. "Latest polls give Ike fifty-seven percent of the popular vote. Electoral college won't even be close."

"Adlai never had a chance," a State Department desk officer observed. "No way a cerebral governor from Illinois is going to whip General Eisenhower, what with a full-fledged revolution raging in Hungary and the Middle East in flames."

"People are terrified we'll drift into world war," remarked a Republican speech writer. "They want someone at the helm who's been tested under fire. "

"It's one thing to be terrified of war," maintained a Navy captain attached to the Joint Chiefs. "It's another to sit on the sidelines when our allies—the British and French and Israelis—attack Egypt to get back the Suez Canal. If we don't help out our friends, chances are they won't be there for us when we need them."

"Ike is just being prudent," explained the State Department desk officer. "The Russians are already jittery over the Hungarian uprising. The Israeli invasion of Sinai, the British and French raids on Egyptian airfields, could lead Moscow to miscalculate."

"In the atomic age it would only take one teeny miscalculation to destroy the world," declared Adelle. "Speaking as the mother of two small ones, I don't fault an American president for being cautious."

Leo said, "Still and all, there's such a thing as being too cautious."

"Explain yourself," Swett challenged from the head of the table.

Leo glanced at Adelle, who raised her eyebrows as if to say: For goodness sake, don't let him browbeat you. Smiling self-consciously, Leo turned back to his father-in-law. "The data I've seen suggests that Khrushchev and the others on the Politburo have lost their taste for confrontation." he said. "It's true they rattle their sabers from time to time, like this threat to intervene in the Suez matter. But we need to look at their actions, as opposed to their words—for starters, they pulled two divisions out of Budapest when the Hungarians took to the streets. If we play our cards right, Hungary could be pried out of the Soviet sphere and wind up in the Western camp."

"Russians believe in the domino theory as much as we do," said a much-published think tank professor who made a small fortune consulting for the State Department. "If they let one satellite break away others are bound to follow. They can't afford to run that risk."