The Envoy (6 page)

Allen weighed in. ‘Look, Kit, my brother must be thinking about what Cord Meyer has managed to pull off back in the States. Operation Mockingbird is a great success. Cord has more than four hundred journalists in the bag – and not just hacks, some of these guys are Pulitzer Prize winners. We think you could do something like that here.’

Kit knew it was impossible, but he didn’t say a thing because you only tell them what they want to hear. He was saved further embarrassment by a knock on the door.

Foster looked up. ‘Come in.’

A WAC, Women’s Army Corps, cipher clerk entered carrying a telex message. ‘A cable from Washington, sir.’

Foster took the message, looked at it and said, ‘Thank you,
corporal
. It doesn’t need an immediate reply.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Kit watched Allen eye up the cipher clerk’s calves and ankles as she left the room. The Director looked up and winked at Kit before turning to read the message.

Kit looked at the Dulles brothers while they pored over the cable. He realised he had not only sold his soul to the devil, he had financed the mortgage too. Why? MICE again: it wasn’t the money and certainly not the ideology, but both ‘E’s’ – ego and excitement. He liked the sense of power; even over life and death. It was an ugly vice, but an addictive one. Maybe if he’d been
bigger
framed and better at sport, maybe if he had been a successful lover, then he wouldn’t be here.

Kit left his inner thoughts to eavesdrop on the hushed
conversation
between the Dulleses. The cable was from Eisenhower and it was about the forthcoming visit of Khrushchev and Bulganin to England. The President wanted the Secretary of State to ‘sound out’ the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister on their agenda for the Soviet visit – and to show ‘US disappointment and concern’ over any suggestion of ‘negotiations’ that excluded Washington. Kit knew that things were heating up. There were serious
differences
between the two allies on Cold War policy. The Americans were for military and political containment; the British policy was for détente and diplomacy.

Allen Dulles looked up and smiled. ‘By the way, Kit, thanks for those budget figures you sent us on British nuclear research. That was a fine piece of work. It confirms our views that the Brits have decided to go all out for a hydrogen bomb.’

‘Which,’ added Foster, ‘is in our view a big mistake. Britain simply doesn’t have the economic and industrial base to develop her own independent nuclear deterrent.’

‘The best strategy,’ said Allen, ‘is to frighten the shit out of them about the Russian threat so that they’ll beg us to move more of our own bombs here.’

The making of foreign policy, thought Kit, is not a pretty
business
. It’s a selfish amoral trade. As an envoy, the interests of your closest ally don’t mean a thing; your job, your only job, is to
further
your own country’s national interest. You don’t just fuck your enemies; you fuck your friends too.

‘Kit,’ said Allen Dulles, ‘you seem lost in thought.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Tell us more about Philby. From our side of the Atlantic it all seems most bizarre.’

‘Philby,’ Kit laughed. ‘
Everyone
knows that Kim is the third man: the press know it, Parliament knows it, Graham Greene knows it – who the hell do you think Harry Lime is supposed to be?’

It wasn’t Philby, but the hypocrisy that made Kit laugh. While Nazi bombs were raining down on London in 1940, the Dulles brothers were corporate lawyers brokering lucrative investment deals for wealthy clients with the German war machine. Treason wasn’t a word carved in stone, it was a dye that came out in the wash. Kit hid his feelings and smiled at the Director.

‘It seems,’ said Foster, ‘that the only people who won’t admit that Philby is a traitor are the British government. I’ve heard that he still works part-time for MI6. Astonishing.’

The Cambridge spy ring – Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, allegedly Philby and at least two others who were still undercover – was the reason why London was the only US Embassy in the world that had FBI agents in permanent residence. The
Burgess-Maclean
spy scandal was a running sore that showed no signs of healing. On matters of high security, like nuclear weapons, US officials would never trust their British counterparts again – and the FBI was there to make sure of it.

The Secretary of State leaned forward with a grave face, the loose folds of flesh about his throat quivered as he spoke. ‘Is Philby a pederast, a sodomite?’

To Kit’s ear, the biblical expressions seemed echoes from the paternal pulpit of the Dulles childhood. ‘Philby,’ he replied, ‘is definitely not homosexual. Who knows what he does in bed with his wife and girlfriends – I’m not sure it’s relevant.’

The Secretary of State didn’t seem satisfied. ‘They are, you must admit, a strange bunch.’

Kit wondered whether if by ‘they’ he meant the spies, the
sodomites
or the British in general. He decided not to comment.

‘Listen,’ said Allen, ‘we’ve got to have lunch with the Foreign Secretary. But before we go, can you tell my brother about that party you went to in New York last year?’

Kit touched his ear and mouthed, ‘Bugs.’

‘Don’t worry. Go on, tell us the whole story and don’t leave anything out.’

Kit could see that Allen Dulles wanted to make mischief. The Director knew that their conversation was being recorded by the FBI and he wanted to create a little havoc. Kit didn’t like
playing
the court jester, but this was part of the job too. ‘I’ve got a classmate who’s a lawyer married to an extremely wealthy
heiress
. They have a penthouse on the Upper East Side where they throw some wild parties. If I’m in town, I get invited. The people you meet at these parties are always rich, always glamorous – and usually beautiful. I feel like an intruder, but I like watching what goes on.’ Kit whispered to Allen, ‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Go on, Kit, back to the party.’

‘It was a good party, but I sensed something in the air – a hint of something sordid. As I implied, these parties often have an edge. I’m not a puritan, but …’

The Director nodded.

‘I could tell there was something there that made me uneasy – and I don’t just mean cannabis, cocaine or furtive fellatio in a cloakroom. These things are, in their own way, normal.’

‘Not in the US Embassy, I hope,’ said the Secretary of State.

‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’

‘Let him finish, Foster.’

‘There were two young men there that didn’t seem to belong – eighteen, maybe younger. They both had fine blond hair and bad teeth. I couldn’t tell where they came from: they spoke only to each other, but there was something in their manner that was coarse. They kept to themselves in the shadows – and after a while I forgot they were there. I didn’t like the atmosphere and thought about leaving, but then Porfirio Rubirosa turned up. I guessed it was him when I saw the Hispanic caterers begin to chop their knees with the sides of their hands.’

‘Why were they doing that?’ said Foster.

Allen sighed, ‘You are one of life’s innocents, Foster. It’s Spanish sign language for someone with an enormous cock – in this case, Ambassador Rubirosa.’

‘I see.’

In any case, Porfirio came over to say hello and we chatted amicably – in French, of course, to stop the caterers
eavesdropping
. We talked about racing cars and Trujillo, mostly racing cars. Trujillo, by the way, is developing a urine incontinence problem. Then Rubi was dragged away to meet the ladies – the women would have lynched me had I detained him any longer. So I was left all on my lonesome – and that’s when I saw her.’ Kit paused.

‘Who was it?’ asked Foster.

Kit searched for words. ‘A mysterious woman, very mysterious.’

The Director sniggered. ‘Did you fall in love?’

‘No, sir.’

The older brother was getting restless. ‘What’s the point of this story?’

‘Don’t rush him, Foster.’

‘She was wearing,’ said Kit, ‘a red dress with a low-cut neck, but her cleavage was hidden by a feather boa. I don’t think she was drunk, but she didn’t seem very steady on her high heels. She was wearing little black lacy gloves and black lacy stockings to match.’

‘Was she beautiful?’

‘No sir, she was not beautiful. But the fact that she was
surrounded
by such beautiful people made me feel sorry for her. She wasn’t young either – late fifties. Now, my father used to say that a gentleman is someone who makes a fuss of such a woman, makes her feel the centre of attention – the young pretty ones don’t need any help. Ergo, I went over to have a chat.’

‘The model,’ smiled Allen Dulles, ‘of a US Foreign Service Officer.’

‘She smiled when she saw me coming over, nice dimples. I filled her glass with champagne – Rubi for some reason had left me holding a three-quarters full bottle. I began polite small talk. She didn’t say much; she just made little mewing noises. I
wondered
if she might be Brazilian. She had black eyes and, as far as I could tell, the skin beneath her make-up seemed dark.’

‘An ageing Latina,’ offered Allen, ‘did you consider she might have been a relation of Rubirosa?’

‘No, sir. For when I looked at her face – close up – I realised who she was. In fact, the truth of her identity hit me like a sucker punch in the solar plexus. I was out of breath and got the shakes. The woman could see it too and it made her face turn hard – she knew that I knew.’

Allen Dulles was smiling behind his folded hands, enjoying the story. ‘What did you do, Kit?’

‘I wanted to run – out of the apartment, down twenty floors of service stairs across the Hudson River and all the way to the Canadian border. I knew something that I wasn’t supposed to know. But I couldn’t move. I just stood there holding the ball like a second string quarterback about to be trashed by some brick shit-house of a defensive end. I looked into those black eyes, saw the jowls tighten – and a hint of stubble under the face powder. Sir, I was no longer looking at a woman. I was face to face with J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI.’

‘Did Hoover know who you were?’

‘I think so. He told me to fuck off and that I was playing out of my league. I thought it best to clear off. I said goodbye to my friends and left.’

‘So you don’t know what happened next?’

‘I’ve since heard that the party turned pretty raunchy and that the blond boys gave Hoover a hand job – but I can’t confirm that part.’

John Foster Dulles looked at his watch, told his brother that he’d won the bet and he owed him ten dollars. The meeting was over.

It was almost midnight when Kit left the embassy. He’d stayed until all the FBI personnel had signed out. The officer in charge of embassy night security was a marine captain from a steel town in Pennsylvania. He came from a working-class Polish immigrant family. The captain was sharp and bright – and wanted a career in the intelligence branch. Kit advised the officer to train as a
linguist
. He liked the young captain and had pulled a few strings to help him get posted to the Defense Department Language School for his next assignment. The captain was planning to study Vietnamese. He’d heard that Southeast Asia was a hot tip for the future: ‘It’s where all the action’s going to be.’ Kit thought he was right.

The captain was grateful to Kit and didn’t hesitate to let him into the cramped basement closet where the FBI kept their tape machines. The marine officer knew that Kit could be more useful to his career than a couple of FBI agents who wore white socks with black suits and spoke with mid-Western accents. The tape was easy to find. It was still on the reel-to-reel machine, obviously the only recording the FBI had done that day. It also looked
certain
that the recording had been done automatically and
unmonitored
by a human listener – good. Kit pulled on a pair of surgical gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints and rewound the tape. He put on the headphones and then fast-forwarded to the Hoover
conversation
. He then cut out the incriminating section with scissors. Kit knew that the Dulleses would, to an extent, protect him, but he didn’t want a lifetime of FBI harassment just because Allen Dulles wanted to piss off Hoover. Kit finished the job by
splicing
in blank tape to replace the section he had removed. He then rewound to the beginning and erased the rest of the tape,
making
it look as if the technician had made a mistake. Kit knew that the agent concerned, unsuspecting foul play, would then send the tape to a lab in Washington that had the technology to recover the lost recording. The lab would probably think that FBI London had done the splicing themselves. When the London jerks got the tape back and discovered the empty spliced-on bit, they would think that the lab had fucked up the tape and was trying to hide the fact. Kit smiled in anticipation of the bureaucratic
shit-flinging
fight that would follow.