Who's on First (16 page)

Trust tore out the clipping from
Le Monde
and handed it to Vadim. “Black, why don't you go upstairs and call Rufus—he'll have seen the paper by now. I'm going to talk Vadim through the inquiries that came in from Washington.”

Taking his coffee with him, Blackford climbed the stairs and rang Rufus. Blackford thought he detected a note of excitement in Rufus's voice, but he dismissed the notion as intrinsically inconceivable.

“Good morning. The reply to our friends should be dispatched by someone other than yourself, given the events of yesterday, the odd bits and pieces of which have by the way been disposed of.” Good old Rufus, Blackford thought, not even sarcastically. “I have been receiving considerable traffic from our principals and the decision is to try for Option #3. If he consents, the mechanical arrangements have already been worked out on a contingency basis, and you will instruct him after getting the details from me. We are thinking in terms of getting a final decision from him tonight. Spend the day with him and with her. The tack is that Option #3 permits them to have it both ways. He gets to work at home on his own thing, but also serves the higher cause. Do you understand me well enough to communicate completely with Vadim?”

“Yes. What is the timetable if he goes along?”

“That will depend. We are making inquiries. If in fact the vessel is headed west, then our representations are being accepted. In that event we can move more deliberately. Otherwise we may need a quick movement.”

“When will you know?”

“By early afternoon, though it depends a little on the weather.”

“I got you. Am I to call?”

“No. I'll call.” Rufus hung up. Blackford went downstairs into the little parlor and shut the door behind him. He remained standing.

“Instructions from Rufus: We are to attempt to persuade Viktor to go back to Russia and pass us information on a regular basis. The most secure conceivable arrangements have been worked out on a standby basis. The line is the obvious one: He can help the cause of freedom, while continuing his own work in his own country surrounded by his own friends. Vadim is to make the decision whether the proposition should be put to him alone, or jointly to Viktor and Tamara. If possible we want an answer, or in any event an indication of what the answer is likely to be, by tonight. Our response to the Soviets on the Algerian matter will depend on whether our aerial reconnaissance reveals that in fact the
Chekhov
is headed toward Tunisia. If it is, then they have swallowed our story and we're safe for the time being. If not, then there are several possibilities, among them that they have a lead on us.”

“At which point?…” Trust asked.

“At which point, as ever, we will do whatever Rufus tells us to do.”

20

Blackford was astonished at the informality of Viktor Kapitsa and Tamara when he was introduced to them by Vadim. The couple had breakfasted as usual in the sitting room by their bedroom, read the papers and, gluttonously, assorted journals to which, in Russia, they had no access. It was ten-thirty and the weather had suddenly cleared, the sun turned bright, and the air, ventilating the main living room on the ground floor with a cross draft, was fresh and sweet, and a little of the languor of summer crept in, with the scent from the rose garden. On the little lake the swans were parading; there was a rowboat up on the grass, and stillness.

Tamara's face brightened. “Well, our taxi driver!” Vadim gave Blackford's name as “Julian Booth.”

“I am delighted to meet you formally, Mr. Booth, notwithstanding that your detour to our hotel has proved longer than you gave us any idea it would be.”

Blackford smiled, shook her hand, and then the hand of the tall, thoughtful, gentle Viktor.

“I'm sorry about that, Madame Kapitsa—”

“Tamara.”

“Thank you. I'm Julian. But I'm especially glad you and Dr. Kapitsa are getting a little relaxation.”

Tamara looked at Vadim. “It has been a great pleasure to come to know the man who saved my husband's life, and who has remained through all these years his best friend.” She spoke matter-of-factly, but there was a flighty femininity in her tones Blackford had difficulty in reconciling with her reputation as an established astrophysicist. She wore a summer dress of vivid pink with a white silk sash and deep V-neck. Vadim had sought expert advice on a modest but chic wardrobe for the unexpected guests, freshly arrived from drabness. She had her own small pearl necklace her husband had purchased on the black market with money earned by tutoring the son of a high Soviet bureaucrat who sought admission into the Lenin Institute of Technology. She wore it always, except when at work. That, and a little gold band on her wedding finger, were all the jewelry she owned. Viktor wore light flannel gray slacks and moccasins, a blue shirt, and a very light sweater. He looked strangely at ease. Clearly he was overjoyed that Tamara shared his fondness for Vadim, who now was acting the role of the constantly solicitous host. The telephone rang and the maid summoned “Monsieur Booth.” Blackford climbed the stairs, and was back in two minutes.

“Hot dog! The
Chekhov
is headed toward Tunisia. There now, Dr. Kapitsa—”

“Viktor.”

“There now, Viktor, that suggests the esteem in which you are held by your patrons in the Kremlin.”

“I prefer to think of them as my owners.”

Tamara winced. Viktor was openly violating his pledge never to express himself politically. But the news clearly elated her, and she spoke in rapid Russian to Viktor, while Vadim nodded his head in agreement, and then Vadim turned to Blackford. “I agree. I agree. It is now practically not conceivable that they doubt the Algerian cover story. Not conceivable.” And then, in a subdued voice the Kapitsas, who continued talking to each other, could not hear, Vadim asked quietly, “Does Rufus say what message he is going to give back to the embassy?”

“No. Except he said that whatever the reply he finally decides on, he wants to deliver it in time for tomorrow's
Le Monde
. I'm set to go to work on Tamara, but it would be better if you suggested the outing.”

Vadim turned and put his arm over Viktor's shoulder. “Quiet! Quiet, everybody, and listen to Uncle Vadim. I need to stay with Viktor for several hours to speak with him. Tamara, you have earned a little relax. I am quite certain that the French police do not look for you. Quite certain there is not given a general alert. I think Julian here can, without running any risk, take Tamara out to visit Chantilly, and perhaps have lunch—he tells me he has a favorite restaurant here. Anthony can stay in to keep up communications with Paris. All is clear?”

Tamara addressed her husband in Russian. He replied briefly. Only then did she say, “Yes, I should be very happy to do a little touring with you, Julian. Thank you.”

She had been once to Leningrad, she told him as they left the car in the parking lot and approached the warm chateau, surrounded by water from which summer mists rose like vapor on that windless day. And over there, she explained, the reconstruction of the old czarist palaces was progressing nicely. “Except for the palace at Tsarskoye Selo where Alexandra and the last Czar lived,” she chatted. “That is in disrepair. There was only a single foot soldier there, to shoo people away. The Bolshevik mind is
so
inscrutable. It is all right to restore all the beauty of the fabulous gardens of Peter's summer palace, all the fanatical opulence of Catherine's palace—that doesn't offend them historically. But they do not wish to draw attention to the last, relatively modest, chateau of the last Czar. Do you know what I think?”

Her animation surprised Blackford. Why had he supposed that a Russian physicist, if she happened to be beautiful, should compensate by being dull? “No,” he said, as he took her arm to help her slide through the narrow ticket entrance, “what do you think?”

“I think the Soviet leadership isn't really comfortable with the concept of regicide. It could, after all, happen to them. Stalin was morbidly paranoiac. He had good reason to be. I would suppose that any time during the thirties until the end, if you had sentenced him to death and asked for an executioner you'd have had about fifty million volunteers.”

“One to represent each person he was responsible for killing?”

“I suppose the figures vaguely correspond. But the business of Nicholas and Alexandra is fascinating. The authorities feel it is necessary to stress and re-stress the evil of the last Czar, though they don't much bother in the history books, or on the museum tours, to stress the evils of their predecessors, whose palaces are maintained as museums. More, really, than museums. They are very nearly treated as shrines. But not that poor palace where poor stupid Nicholas spent those weeks before the long journey to Ekaterinburg, and where his guards amused themselves by tripping up his bicycle when he exercised. Now look at this.” She waved her hand in an arc pointing to the sumptuous and stately Chantilly: “It's grander, I would say, than the Czar's last palace.”

“Wait a minute,” Blackford objected. “Nicholas lived there
only
because he happened to like it. Whenever he felt like it, he could hunker down at the Winter Palace. And this whole thing could fit in one of the wings of that palace.”

“Yes, the Czars treated themselves with much generosity.” Her eyes twinkled, and Blackford marveled that such spontaneity could flower in the parched earth of Soviet society. He decided, as they strolled down the manicured gardens, to say so:

“Tamara, you speak as if you had never worn a straitjacket.”

“It isn't the scientists in the Soviet Union who suffer systematic repression. Political repression, of course. But certain modes of freedom are necessary to scientific success.”

“Tell that to the critics of Lysenko.”

“Lysenko engaged in a science that impinges on ideology. Viktor and I do not. How to launch a satellite is an instrumental, not an ideological, problem. In our own milieu we are much freer than the poets, or the painters, or even the musicians.”

“Free to discuss nonscientific matters?”

“Of course not, as I say. Our opinions are private, and there is a great deal of complacency, resignation, fatalism. Even some optimism. Scientists aren't men of affairs. You have an American who wrote ‘Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.'”

“Where did you hear
that?
”

“I forget. We are permitted to read the foreign technical journals. Some of them are quite funny sometimes, especially in the letters' section. Anyway,” she went on, “our scientists are working for Stalin's Russia because they are not permitted to give thought to what they do—and because they don't want to. The great Sakharov gave the Kremlin a hydrogen bomb. Why?”

“Why are you about to give them a satellite?”

“Because a scientist develops his own momentum. It is …” she looked at him with an expression entirely clinical on her open face, “sexual, in a way: The excitement begins, consummation is required. Viktor—is there anyone in the world who feels more keenly than he does the suffering of the Russian people? It would be hard to name anyone; but he … works.”

“Why criticize Sakharov?”

“Sakharov succumbed to scientific hubris when he gave the bomb to the Kremlin. But who knows?” She furrowed her brow. “Most creative men who set out to create, and are permitted to do so, will do their utmost. You are familiar with the Church of St. Basil commissioned by Ivan the Terrible? The paintings done for the Borgias? The rockets built for Hitler? By the same man, incidentally, who is at this very moment trying to improve on them for the same man—Eisenhower—who led the army that beat Hitler.”

As they spoke, they looked at the Sevres collection. “Those,” said Tamara, “were assembled for the successor to the French King whose motto at Versailles is that he ‘Governs by Himself.' Our Russian ‘autocrat,' the Czar, reached out for a Greek, not a Slavic term to describe the full scope of his powers. Which reminds me, what are you by profession?”

“I am an engineer.”

She paused, and looked up at Blackford, square in the eye.

“What is a cantilever truss?”

Blackford raised his eyebrows, and paused, a smile bursting to come out: “It's a horizontal span supported in the middle and sustaining loads at either end—sort of like bras.” He pursed his lips professionally.

She smiled, a radiant smile.

“Are you here in France to build bridges?” she asked.

“That's one way to put it.”

“How long really have you known Vadim?”

They were back in the car now, driving slowly toward Café Tipperary. Blackford found himself furiously resentful at the necessary lie. “Since shortly after he came to America.”

“How did you come to meet him?”

“He lectured one day at the home of Countess Tolstoi. A friend invited me there. We have been in touch ever since.” The cover story had been rehearsed. He wondered whether she had asked Vadim the identical question.

“Do you know what I think?”

“No,” he lied.

“I think you are an American intelligence agent.”

He laughed.

“Why do you laugh?”

“Because women have a marvelous faculty for making conversation unprofitable. Whatever I say will leave you suspicious.”

“I have no objections to American intelligence agents. I have very great objections to anyone hurting my Viktor. If only you knew Viktor! He is, to begin with, a genius. But he is—so special, so loving, so patient. You will never do anything to hurt him?”

“
I
certainly will never do anything to hurt him.” Blackford felt he was entitled to say that much. But he felt a twinge in the stomach. He thought of Theo.

What the hell. He was a professional. He had better recapture the offensive. He said: “Would
you
do anything to hurt Viktor?”