Who's on First (15 page)

But it didn't last long. Rufus said, “I shall do some thinking. You'll hear from me. Some clothes and toiletries will be delivered to the landlady.” Rufus rose, and ambled leisurely down the gallery, pausing here and there to consult the catalogue he had bought at the ticket office. Blackford walked down the staircase, past the “Winged Victory,” and stepped into a taxi. He directed the driver to take him to the public gymnasium at the Hôtel Claridge on the Champs-Elysées. There he got out, paid the thousand-franc locker fee, picked up a towel, and went up to the second floor. For an hour he worked out, running through every exercise he knew as vigorously as he could, using the punching bag and the bicycle and the rowing machine and throwing himself, finally, into the large green pool with the sickly-tepid water. He showered and, his towel wrapped around him, closed his eyes as he lay on one of the gymnasium reclining mattresses; but he didn't sleep. It was enough that he didn't dream. After a half hour he rose, approached the locker, oblivious of the two attendants in the otherwise empty gym who, though it was their routine business to witness exertion, remarked that his had been a most extraordinary example of it.

“
Tiens,
” said the fat man in his clinical white. “
Avec raison il garde sa ligne
.” (No wonder he's so trim.) Blackford dropped a five-hundred-franc note in the wicker basket, nodded
merci,
and went out.

Halfway through the second cracker and after the first glass of wine, he realized that he had suddenly become hungry. He explored the refrigerator. There was chicken, ham, cheese, white wine. He put together a plate with slabs of each and, after finishing the red wine, opened the white. He drew up his chair to the kitchen table and suddenly felt an eerie sense of joy. He could not exactly situate it in the repertory of his emotions. He had been a combat pilot in the last days of the war, and knew what it was to emerge the victor in a dogfight. Was it the same feeling? No, it was, somehow, far deeper. He felt almost like laughing. He drank another glass of wine and put more salt on the chicken. Was there a radio? He would like to hear music. In the salon he found an ancient set which, however, worked; and brought him a Frenchman who droned on for a bit, but whose voice gave way finally to the overture to
Don Giovanni
. He opened the drawer of the desk, found writing paper, and sat down.

Dear Sally:

And what did
you
do today? I of course miss you, and continue to wonder why it is that you insist that I resign my placid career in order to practice engineering in Washington, D.C., while you teach the Georgian novel to that little band, those happy few, who are left hungry after feasting on the cornucopia of twentieth-century literature. What would you like me to build for you? Tell me.
Anything
. Sky's the limit. Skyscraper you say? Where would you like it, and how tall? Will you order the cement for me, and have it ready when I come back? Since my leave may be for only two or three weeks, I wouldn't want to waste any time. Let me see. I should think 28 stories would be about right, one for every year you have graced. Order me 180,000 tons of cement, 80 miles of nickel steel beams—I'll leave it to you to specify the size, that way it will be your-and-my skyscraper. Figure 5 bathrooms per story, times 28, 140. One hundred and forty toilets, washstands, tubs, showers—bidets? I leave that to you. Twelve acres of carpet—my Sally will have wall-to-wall. When Blacky does things,
he does them wall-to-wall
. Decorations? I have taken a liking to Miró. Please order 140 Mirós—do you want his address? I'll give you a secret telephone number in Washington where you can get unlisted phone numbers, SPo-okie. Easier to remember than numbers. Did you ask me am I drunk? I resemble that. I have to confess something. I told somebody today I was “devoting” my life to resisting the tyrants. I'm ashamed of myself. It made me sound pompous. I'd rather die than sound pompous. Actually, that's not true. I'd rather sound pompous than die. Oh dear how I miss you. It has been a hectic day. More in a couple of days.

Love,

Blacky

He scratched out the address on an envelope, sealed it, and was wondering why in the hell he hadn't heard from Rufus when the phone rang.

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah. Don Giovanni just finished screwing another nympho.”

“I want you with the others. Anthony will explain. He will pick you up at six in the morning. Your belongings will be in his car. We'll talk tomorrow.”

“Okay, Rufus. Say, I feel like gambling. Thought I'd go to the races at the Bois de Boulogne tomorrow. Want to come?”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

19

Blackford rose at five-thirty, put water on the stove, and, impatient to discover which switch corresponded with which burner, flicked all six of them on. He went to the window and instinctively shielded himself from view while peering out at an angle. It was raining heavily and the air was warm, the light still meager. His baggage consisted of
Pride and Prejudice,
which he stuck in his pocket, the few toilet articles he had found in the paper bag on the bed, the beret, and the glasses. Opening the door, he locked it behind him after spotting Trust pulling up outside. He dropped the key in the landlady's mailbox and bounded out, opening the car door and sliding into the right seat.

Trust slipped the little Mercedes 180 into gear.

“Let's stop at a newsstand. Or have you already looked?”

“No, too early. There's one at the Porte Champerret. You had a rough day. I see it affected your eyesight.”

“Yeah. I figured it all out. I was paying for the evening before.”

“Ah so. Did I exaggerate?”

“Anthony, you only exaggerate when you recruit people into this goddam Agency.”

“Here, take the umbrella.” Trust reached to the back seat as he braked. Blackford dashed out. Trust saw him gesticulating to the vendor impatiently. He finally returned with a copy of
Le Monde
.

“What's the trouble?”

“The old goat wanted to see me some feelthy pictures.”

“Are they out already?”

“Are what out already?”

“The pictures of you and Alouette?”

“Fun-nee.” Blackford was flipping the pages of the bulky daily while Trust groped his way to the turnoff at Porte de Clignancourt. He came to the personals and ran his finger down the columns. “Here it is!” He read it haltingly, translating as he went. “‘To Anna Krupskaya. I think you are …
te portes
—behaving very … unreasonably. I have always been … faithful to you and your ideals. The specific …
prière
—demand?… the specific demand you have made is acceptable but the articles cannot be
livrés
—delivered … until we are reunited. Immediately after that the distribution will be made. I am your brother.'”

“That's all?”

“Yeah. They want Kapitsa back before the
Chekhov
puts in at Bizerte. Not a bad situation from our point of view. We can just haggle.”

“Rufus doesn't like to draw out these situations. In the first place, that note isn't very different from what they'd place there if they were on our track. They'd want to stall, just as we want to stall. Well, it's up to Rufus, but he'll want an update on the St.-Firmin situation.”

“That's what I want, too,” said Blackford. “That and a breakfast roll.” Trust stopped by a bakery and again Blackford popped out, returning with a two-foot loaf of French bread and two bottles of Coca-Cola.

“Ugh,” said Trust, accepting both gratefully, wedging the cold bottle between his knees, and taking a bite from the hunk of bread Blackford gave him.

“Okay, buddy, talk.”

Trust slowed down to avoid a great big wet shaggy dog being chased by a distraught woman pulling an open umbrella behind her. He swallowed his mouthful and extended his hand for another piece of bread.

“They've been together now for almost two days. Beginning yesterday, I spent time with them—Tamara, by the way, speaks perfect English, and Kapitsa's isn't bad, so there isn't any trouble communicating, though of course they slide into Russian all the time. We're ‘friends' of Vadim from America. Vadim told us about Kapitsa when he found out reading the Russian press that his old Vorkuta camp-mate would be a member of the scientific delegation going to Paris for the International Geophysical Year bit. Vadim came to us—you're an engineer, doing collateral work for the Air Force in the area of Cocoa Beach, where the launchers are, and you're pretty savvy about rockets—though don't worry, no specific ignorance will surprise Viktor. I'm an international lawyer, an old friend of yours. Our friend in Paris—Rufus—is a retired intelligence officer. We acted on our own. If he decides he wants to defect, we'll tell him the real story; tell him we began by deceiving him—for his own protection.”

“Does he
want
to defect?”

“I don't think so. My feeling is he would like to get away from a system he loathes—Vadim told me, after they had gone to bed last night, that Viktor's old rage, suppressed for four years, burst out this morning, and in front of Tamara—apparently they don't talk about it between themselves. But he seems to be terribly afraid to do anything decisive. Tamara is taking a pretty straightforward position: She'll do anything he wants. But my guess is she is calculating one thing only.”

“Viktor?”

“Viktor. She told Vadim, when they were alone in the kitchen, that on the one hand she liked the idea of going to America, where Viktor would be safe from the kind of caprice that put him in Vorkuta, but that on the other hand, he is sitting now with so much high-powered information about the state of the Soviet art in rockets she wonders whether they wouldn't succeed in tracking him down wherever he was, and bumping him off. She's also very concerned about the Algerian business. Concerned whether the cover will stand up if Viktor decides to go back to Russia.”

“Have you gotten anywhere trying to reassure her?”

“Vadim has been great. He told Viktor that if he decides to pull out of Russia, Vadim knows how to put him in the hands of the CIA. Then he described to Viktor the kind of care that the Agency has taken of him in the past few years, stressing that in America he and Tamara would be physically safe. That was part good, part bad—because Viktor said he would have to continue his work if he went to the U.S., that he couldn't just rusticate. He's terribly involved, intellectually and emotionally, in the satellite launch—as we know. And Vadim, who obviously talks the scientific lingo with perfect facility, hasn't had any trouble at all in drawing Viktor out. Vadim is writing down at night everything Viktor tells him, and Rufus is coding it all to Washington and Von Braun, and we've already got back a terrific lot of questions to ask based on leads he's given us. It's fascinating to listen to him, Vadim told me last night. The security neurosis in that ghetto they live in at Tyura Tam has got to be suffocating; so he's getting a tremendous kick out of telling Vadim, scientist to scientist, the problems they've faced, the problems they've cracked, the kind of talk, he says, he can't feel free to have even with his own colleagues. He says he's working—like the rest of them—day and night under breakneck pressure; he says Khrushchev wants the thing up so bad he can taste it. But—get this!—he told Vadim
nothing
would delight Viktor—and Tamara!—personally more than if we got ours up before theirs.”

“Hey man!” Blackford found the report exhilarating. He asked then the critical question: “Are they pretty close to going?”

“That's the good part. Answer: No. They've got a problem, something to do with the circuits in the satellite and the need to pack more power into the transistors. They're trying everything. I have a feeling they could get a dispensation to go to the Vatican to pray to St. Jude. They're going crazy—but they haven't got it licked. They've got the launch, Viktor says, but not the electronic staying power. And they don't want to send a lemon up there.”

“Do we have the same problem?”

“Apparently not.” Anthony Trust brought the Mercedes practically to a standstill to peer through the rain and see if he had reached the turn to the chateau. “We've got a problem with the launching fuel, and Viktor has given Vadim a couple of leads the Washington people want pursued. That's what I have to tell Vadim—giving specific questions—first thing this morning.”

“Why did Rufus decide to pull me in from Paris?”

“If they decide to defect, Rufus had decided they should go separately. You would be escorting the girl. Vadim and I would take Kapitsa. Rufus wants you to—I quote him, God bless his … say, Blacky, is it possible Rufus is an illegitimate son of Queen Victoria? Courtesy of that Scottish guy? I mean, one-half Victoria and one-half a randy gamekeeper,
that's Rufus
—Rufus wants you to ‘gain their confidence'—his words. That will be interesting. Tamara is something, let me tell you.”

“You don't have to. I could see that in the taxi, though we didn't speak in English.”

It was seven-fifteen, and the rain had intensified. The road to the chateau had become muddy. Anthony slowed down. He drove the car into the garage, acknowledging the friendly gesture from the well-concealed security guard at the caretakers' cottage, whose radio had been tuned to activate anything from a single helicopter to a marine unit. Anthony thrust the umbrella into Blackford's hand and sprinted across the courtyard into the chateau. Blackford followed him at a lope, and walked through the door Trust was holding open. He followed Trust into the servants' parlor by the kitchen. There Vadim was sitting, absentmindedly stirring his coffee. He greeted Oakes.

Without going into detail, Anthony had passed along to Vadim word of Oakes's ordeal (at Rufus's instruction); and instinctively Vadim felt toward Blackford that protectiveness he felt for everyone who had suffered, or risked suffering, at the hands of the same people who had sustained Vorkuta. Vadim said nothing, but Blackford felt a special warmth in his handshake.