Stained Glass (19 page)

“Now, we finally agreed to go along on the proposition that Wintergrin must not come to power and that the interests of world peace are better served by neutralizing him before he wins an election rather than trying to do so later. That much you know. But we have been telling the Russians it isn't any more
our
responsibility to get rid of him than it is theirs. They keep coming back at us with the argument that your presence in St. Anselm's suggests the whole operation is ours. At the
tenth
session with the Secretary Gromyko finally backed down—but only to the extent of conceding that it was arguably true that
at this point
we didn't want Wintergrin to win but only because the Soviets had caught us and reacted ‘as you would expect.' But the idea—they keep insisting—was ours in embryo, as witness our incestuous relationship with the Wintergrin enterprise. Then they make their final point: that as a
mechanical
matter, only
we
can get inside St. Anselm's and dispose of Wintergrin smoothly, because only
we
have a trusted agent within the enclosure. That,” Rufus concluded, “is why Miss Chadinoff's bug is a major development.”

“Have you established she's theirs?” Blackford was numb.

“No. We've been working on it on all fronts ever since your call to Singer. It's a tough one. Her background is pure pedigree. Dimitri Chadinoff's daughter: It's as if Joe McCarthy eloped with Priscilla Hiss. The odds are heavily against it. We've sent people to Smith College, to Paris, where she went right after graduating from Smith, to Geneva, Rome, and New York, where she's done translations for various UN agencies, and to Mürren, where her mother and father live. It's too early for all the reports to have come in and of course we may not find anything. Conceivably she's working for Wintergrin—”

“I doubt that,” Blackford interrupted. “It isn't possible Wintergrin would treat me the way he does, or tell me the things he tells me if he thought there was any doubt—listen, Rufus, here's something I got from Wintergrin at dinner.
Ulbricht
has reported to Moscow that East Germany would unite against the Russians if their army moved in.”

“Very interesting,” Rufus said. “Very interesting; and very interesting that Wintergrin told you about it. He shouldn't have done that. Could blow one of his men in East Berlin. Hmm … But on the other point: nothing—including Wintergrin's complicity in the tap—should be excluded on the basis of personal hunch. Remember, Wintergrin may not himself have authorized the bug. It could have been done by one of his security people, the fellow Wagner. You said that Hallam Spring says it's a highly professional installation?”

“Right.”

“Well, the only concrete information we have is this: It
isn't
the Adenauer people. We talked to their top man. They do have somebody trying to work into the St. Anselm situation, but he hasn't yet succeeded. And anyway, their agent isn't Miss Chadinoff.”

“Ollenhauer?”

“A technical possibility, but remote. After all, you're hardly an obvious pipeline into the Wintergrin operation. As far as they know, you spend all your time working on the church, and though you have a nice thing going with Wintergrin personally, there are twenty people closer to the Wintergrin political operation whose phones they'd tap before yours.

“No, it's got to be either the Wintergrin people, or the Soviets. And it matters that we find out quickly. Because if it's the Commies, the negotiations between the Secretary and Gromyko change—to our advantage. When next would you probably be seeing her?”

“I'm having dinner with her tonight. Would you like me to strap her into a polygraph, tell her it's a new simultaneous-translation gadget?”

Rufus went on as if there had been no interruption. “There's no way at the moment to establish who she's working for except by the process of elimination. So remember the rule: assume the worst, until something, else is proved. We should get reports from the field later today or tomorrow.”

Singer Callaway interposed. “There is the direct approach, Rufus. Black could go to Wintergrin and tell him there's a bug in his room, that it leads to Erika's room, and what the hell's going on? Wintergrin calls in Wagner and they either own up, pleading routine security precautions; or else they deny it convincingly, in which case we know Erika is a Soviet agent.”

Rufus looked at Singer, disappointment written on his face.

“The disadvantages would appear to me critical. One: What happens then? We are probably at this point better off with Erika Chadinoff in the picture than out. Two: What if Wintergrin's security officer is lying—and he did install the bug? The very fact that you discovered a highly sophisticated bug would suggest to him that you have certain skills alien to those of a construction engineer. Resulting, three, in casting suspicion on you, which is the last thing we can stand.

“No,” he concluded, “that's out.”

He paused. Oh, God, Blackford thought, we're going into one of those trances. There was nothing to do but wait it out.

It didn't last too long. “Do you remember the Teller-Freeze Bypass, Blackford?”

“Of course.”

“It worked in London. A suitable variant could be useful to us here. We need to discover—and we don't have much time—how she is reporting back to her people. If we're lucky enough to find her making contact with a known agent, then it doesn't matter what she says. But if she is passing along information to someone unknown to us, her passing on a special piece of goofy information could help tip us off.”

“That's not going to be easy, Chief. I've been using my bugged telephone only to call Colonel Morley. It wouldn't be easy to be kittenish with
him
. And they must all know that Morley isn't a plant. I doubt she's even transcribing my calls to Morley and passing them on. No, whatever I shoot into the Soviet bloodstream won't be through the bug, but in conversations with her. I'll see if I can figure something out, but I don't think this arrangement is a natural for that formula … Let me think about it.”

“Very well. But think about it fast. Meanwhile,
whoever
is going to undertake the—elimination, if it is to be undertaken”—Rufus was given to direct speech, but certain words he avoided like an undertaker—“plans for it have got to be formulated. We should come up with alternative arrangements. I don't expect you, Blackford, to come up with the definitive plan—that's for Spring and Pulling in consultation with us. But no effective plan can be conceived, let alone brought about, without you.”

A day earlier, Blackford would have made a mordant remark. No longer. After his long introspective evening he had come to the conclusion that whatever he elected to do or not do himself, he would refrain from emphasizing his moral superiority over his associates. Either Blackford Oakes would cooperate or Blackford Oakes would not cooperate. He had said yesterday, after the three awful hours with Singer, that he would reserve a final decision on whether he would be willing, as he now termed it, to “trip the wire.” He preferred the expression “push the button,” which phrase, however, he shrank from both as a cliché and as presumptuous: the buttons, after all, were being pushed in Washington. So, pursuant to his resolution, he spoke now only in professional terms.

“I was a little brusque with the … electricians last night. I've already apologized to them. I'll give them the help they need. My principal function—I mean, depending on the final arrangement—has been discharged.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I got them their passes, so they can go in and out of the courtyard. As chapel electricians they get to go anywhere they want. I doubt there'd be any problem if they said they wanted to go right in the castle to look at electrical connections, all that sort of thing. Mention work on St. Anselm's chapel around there and you can do anything you want. So if the ‘creative' work is going to be done by Spring and what's his-name, they've got themselves a pretty free rein. I'm not sure anybody would ask questions if they started constructing an electric chair in Wintergrin's study. What else am I supposed to do?”

Rufus said, “Answer any questions they have. And”—he got up from his chair—“put your own ingenuity at our disposal. You haven't exactly performed as a creative artist.”

Blackford decided to say nothing.

He was back at St. Anselm's at four, spent two hours at the chapel, returned to the inn, washed, and killed an hour reading the afternoon papers from Essen, Hamburg, and Munich. Singer had suggested he call at three minutes after eight, ahead of the dinner date, to a special pay phone number in the event there was information from the field.

There was. Erika Chadinoff, the Paris people reported, once had a torrid love affair with a young undercover Communist activist who had been murdered. The culprit was never caught. The deceased's dossier had been carefully examined by M. Raymond de Guest, chief of the political section of the Paris police, who wrote at the time—1948—that in his opinion it was a political vendetta, possibly the work of anti-Communist resistance leaders. There had been four “executions” during that fall for which there was no apparent motive. Two of those killed had been members of the anti-Communist Croix de Feu. (One had been pushed off the first story of the Eiffel Tower at night by a man who thought himself unobserved, but the entire operation had been seen by an amorous young couple whose tender extrication from one another caused a delay in shouting alarm that made chase unfeasible. The other, an excellent swimmer, was mysteriously drowned off Nice. He was wearing contact lenses. But his friends reported that he invariably removed his lenses before going out to swim.) Rome reported that Erika had been briefly in the news in 1949. She was mistress to the fiery young Christian Democrat legislator who in the critical election of 1948 had proposed the illegalization of the Communist Party and very nearly carried the day. He was now in prison, convicted of demanding a kickback from the wages of a translator he had placed with the UN Secretariat. The chief witness, indeed the only witness against him, was the translator herself—Erika Chadinoff. The prosecution had presented checks, made out to Erika by her UN employers but deposited to the account of the defendant, Giovanni Buegos. He swore ignorance of the transactions. Asked how he could account for his swollen bank account, he had replied that eight hundred dollars over six months was not all that conspicuous, and he hadn't even noticed it. Five to seven years. His political movement might as well have been convicted along with him.

“Sounds like what we're looking for, don't you think?”

“Yes. But her
parents!
Did you check out the story that her father suggested she apply for this job?”

“We got someone in to see the old boy—a ‘reporter' from the Chicago
Tribune
. Chadinoff likes the
Tribune
, told the reporter he found Colonel McCormick's recent charge that Rhodes scholars are picked with the subversive strategic purpose of effecting an amalgamation between Britain and the U.S. hilarious, but he believes this is a good age to cultivate mutual suspicion. The reporter represented himself as doing a piece on Wintergrin's staff, and obviously his daughter Erika was the best-known member of the staff among the international set. He asked whether M. Chadinoff approved her working for Wintergrin. He said he certainly did approve. So much so that when she told her parents she was going to work for Wintergrin, if necessary as a volunteer, the old boy said if there was no money for her salary he would stake her.”

“Well, that probably does it. She lied to Wintergrin. She told him, and he told me, that the whole thing was her father's idea. So what do we do?”

“What do
you
do? I don't know. I know what we do over here. We're moving all this information to Washington right now. I wouldn't be surprised if the Secretary decides to confront Gromyko with it today.”

“In that case she's bound to find out pretty soon that I've blown her cover. Although”—he mused—“the Soviets are even more secretive than you people. Sorry—I mean us people. You didn't tell
me
I was blown until I confronted you with the telephone bug. Maybe they won't tell Erika we know about her. No way of saying. Still, I'd better act fast if there's going to be any element of surprise. I'll let you know how it goes. Same number tomorrow?”

“No.” There was a pause as Singer—Blackford could almost see him—turned the pages of his notebook. He read out the new telephone number. “One of us will be in. What are you going to do?”

“I don't know. So long, Singer.” In a way he could not account for, Blackford felt better. Perhaps because at least over the next period he would be exerting himself to outwit a Soviet agent, leaving to one side, if only temporarily, the question of how to dispose of the Soviets' most formidable enemy.

She was dressed in blue and wore gold on her ears and around her neck and wrists. There was a trace of red in her light-brown hair and, Blackford thought, a trace of pout in her lips he had not noticed before. Her eyes were a working blue, never still, and she smiled confidently as, putting down the newspaper, he rose, took her hand and affected something of a bow, and said,

“Not bad for a little Nansen girl.”

She smiled and they walked out together to Blackford's car, parked across the street.

“Where are we going?”

“I ran into a nice place the other night at Gummersbach. Have you been there?”

“No.”

“I think you'll enjoy it.”

Driving down the highway he said, “The speech at Bremen went well, I take it?”

“Very well. Did you see the papers?”

“All but the Polish papers. How did they take the declaration of war?”