Who's on First (19 page)

Rufus came as near to impatience as he ever did. “Come on, Punky. They've got a launch-lead on us, and they fooled us about the direction they were headed. But if I understood you, you've now
got
the answer to what's been holding us back, and in six months or so you can go with it. You forget, they
don't
have an answer to the instrumentation problem:
We
do. We've got the scientists, we're developing the know-how, and if we weigh in on the technological war on a crash basis, they'll be worrying about holding on to the Ukraine in ten years, not about taking on Berlin.”

“Atta boy, Rufus,” said Blackford, standing now, and leaning against the book-lined wall of the study. “Rufus,” Blackford addressed Punky in solemn accents, “is the illegitimate son of Knute Rockne. Now it isn't widely known that Knute Rockne had any illegitimate sons. M-G-M wouldn't permit it. But M-G-M just wasn't watching that night, and Rufus came into this world to cheer on the Big Team, for the Big Fight, eh Rufus?”

Rufus's smile was strained, but then it always was, and for the tenth time since knowing him, Blackford felt ashamed at teasing someone whose comprehensive skills mattered so greatly. It appeared now assured that the United States would launch the first satellite. And the contrivance of that was: the work of Rufus. He felt a child's obligation to retreat, though he knew it would be clumsy. “Punky, you're going back to Florida with a lot of information you didn't have. What's done with it is up to you and up to the people who control the purse strings. Lecture them, not Rufus. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough, kid, y'all did a real good job; now if you could figger a way ah could git my ass back to Florida without ridin' that Sherman tank …” His eyes went back to his notes. “Ah think it's time for a drink”—he looked at his watch. “7:35. Ah tol' 'em at the base ah'd be there 'roun' nine, they could warm up the fucker, maybe see if they could fit in an extra propeller, fucker travels 290 fuckin' miles per hour, might as well go back on a sailboat.”

Rufus was prepared, and from the kitchen brought a bottle of scotch, ice, and soda. Punky grabbed the bottle nonchalantly, never taking his eyes off his notebook, and, with his pencil, began a free-sketch drawing. Blackford motioned to Rufus. In the kitchen Blackford said:

“I have an engagement for dinner tonight with Frieda. She's the girl I told you about who saved me at the necktie party the other day. I don't know what she has in mind, but figured you ought to know about it.”

Rufus looked vaguely concerned. He paused, sat down on the kitchen chair. “Let's think out loud. This is Friday. On Wednesday you were supposed to be executed. The executioner, a double agent, disappears. He doesn't report back to his boss. His boss is almost certainly Bolgin himself, or Bolgin's Hungarian operative, who has been spending time in Paris. In any case, Bolgin must have known about the operation, and approved it. What does he do when he doesn't hear again from—was it Joseph Nady?”

“That's how it sounded.”

“He wants to find out what happened, so he might well go after one of the two other members of the Hungarian execution squad. We don't know whether he knew who they were. Let's assume—always safer, Blackford—that he did. So he finds the girl, Frieda. He's looking for you. He lets her dig you up—oh yes, Blackford, I noticed the ad in
Le Monde
. It certainly isn't clear how he would turn her into a sitting ambush for you. So let's suppose the worst—always a good idea, Black. Oh. I said that already. Let's assume the worst: He gets hold of her, and comes up with some argument she swallows, about how you can be useful to her and other freedom fighters struggling to get out. A tall order, but Bolgin doesn't mind complicated problems. The point of it is: Don't meet her at her rendezvous. Unsafe.”

Blackford's face expressed his exasperation.

“Listen, Rufus, this girl is tough, and she believes in me. She's not going to lead me to the slaughter.”

“Correction. She's not going to lead you
willingly
to the slaughter. What restaurant did she propose?”

“Chez Anna near Palais de Chaillot. What do you propose?”

“Simple. Write a note”—he handed a piece of paper to him, leaned back, and began dictating as if to his secretary. “‘Dear Frieda: For purposes of security I have reason to believe we should meet at another restaurant. The name and address of it are sealed in the enclosed envelope. Don't open it until you get into a taxi. I'll be waiting for you.” Inside the second envelope write down, ‘Voltaire, 27 Quai Voltaire.' We'll have the envelope delivered to her at Chez Anna. If she opens the first envelope, takes it with her and leaves the second envelope unopened when she walks out of the restaurant—alone—and if she is not followed, then it is reasonable to assume she is neither actively colluding with someone nor being followed.”

“Who will know?”

“I will,” said Rufus. He yawned. “It occurs to me that right about now, I have absolutely nothing to do until tomorrow. Kapitsa is back with the Soviet delegation, Punky will be leaving here in five minutes, and I don't mind in the least taking a little exercise myself in the simple disciplines. Good practice. If she opens the second envelope—gives any sign at all of looking into the second envelope, or if she is followed out, or if her cab is followed, I'll call you at Voltaire's, and when she arrives, she will find you absent—and safe.”

Blackford smiled. “Okay, Rufus. You really
do
think of everything.” The admiration was genuine: Here was the great master intelligence strategist, willing to do a gumshoe's work.… Well, Blackford supposed, Rubinstein probably plays nursery tunes for his grandchildren. He went back to badinage. “Got any ideas what we ought to eat?”

“I have ideas about what you shouldn't eat, Blackford, but they are old-fashioned and unlikely to appeal to you.”

In the living room, Punky's tie was on and his seersucker jacket. He carried his overnight bag, and Blackford guessed it would require a professional wrestler to loosen the grip he had on it and its sacred contents.

“So long, y'all. Don't forget, next time you're in Cocoa Beach, you look for Punston Hirsch. It's not in the phone book, but,” he winked, “you can get it either by calling the White House or askin' any of the girls in town where Punky lives.” He grinned boyishly, shook hands, and walked out. Rufus watched through the window until Punky's driver pulled away.

“You know something, Rufus? It probably takes somebody who finds 290 miles per hour caterpillar-slow to devise a satellite that will travel at 17,000 miles per hour.”

Rufus signaled to Blackford. “Let's go. I'll drop you at Voltaire's and go on to Chez Anna.”

It was just after 8:30 when Blackford spotted her. He sat in a table in the womb of a concave booth of which there were a half dozen in a row in the slightly shabby Empire-style main dining room. Blackford had been sipping a kir and reading the newspaper, beret and glasses in place, having given a name to the maître d'hôtel in the event of a telephone call. Frieda sat down quickly, before Blackford had time to rise and help her. She wore a simple blouse, starch-white, and a fine gold chain necklace, and around her wrist a knitted cotton bracelet, interweaving the colors of the Hungarian flag. She wore only a trace of lipstick, and her dark eyes were liquid.

Blackford began. “I'm sorry about the precautions. The problem is whether József's friends are following you.”

“They are not,” she snapped, “but they are anxious to.”

Blackford signaled the waiter, and she asked for a dry vermouth, and “
le menu
.” Blackford said make that two. “Tell me about it?”

“That afternoon, after we came back, I went first to work—I had called in the morning and said I was sick. After the office closed I couldn't get József out of my mind, so I went to his apartment and told the landlady—she's Hungarian, and recognizes me—that József had called me from out of town, and asked me to collect some things. She let me in, and closed the door. The first thing I did was take the picture of Theo out of the frame.” She opened her purse, and brought it out. Blackford winced at seeing a picture of a face he had last seen hanging from a rope and swinging in the cold Budapest wind of November.

“I decided to search the apartment. I found in the drawer of his desk a book, a book of addresses and telephone numbers. I have it here.” She produced it from her purse. “I began leafing through it. I recognized the names of many people we both know. The book dates back to … last fall. Then I looked for the Paris numbers—there weren't so many of those. There were familiar names, mine, Erno's, many others. But then there was a number”—she opened the book and held it so that Blackford could see—“that seemed unusual. It's two numbers, very neat, but opposite no name, in the ‘B' section. One is a foreign number. The other, a Paris number.

“Well, I have a friend. Her grandparents were Hungarian, and still live there, though Madeleine went to school in Paris, and works for the telephone company. I asked her to find out for me whose telephone it was, and yesterday morning she gave me the answer: It is the private telephone of the military attaché of the Soviet Embassy.”

Blackford whistled. “On the other hand I guess that shouldn't surprise us.” Frieda had begun to eat her soup, and Blackford ordered some white wine.

“No, not now after what we know now about József. But I conceived a plan, and I have reached a part where I didn't think I should go on with it without first consulting you.”

Blackford looked at her in a different light. Theophilus had always spoken of her shyly, protectively. That day, at the barn near Fontainebleau, her role had at first been passive, leaving it to the men to do the wrangling. But having made up her mind, it was she who had been the decisive factor. Blackford sensed the alarming possibility of a crossed circuit. He had a score to settle with Bolgin, all right; but he had no desire to distract him from his present preoccupation with Algerian kidnappers.

“Consult me about what you
are going to do,
or about what you
have done?
” Blackford asked.

“About what I have done.”

“Oh my God, Frieda,” he said, without volunteering any elucidation.

“Oh my God what? I realize you were the specially selected victim of the operation the other day. But first they took
my
country, then they hanged
my
fiancé, then they tortured to death the woman who got me out of the country, and now they tried to use
me
as a member of an execution squad to assassinate an American who tried to help Theo. And who
did
help me.” She looked up, and her eyes were full, as she extended her hand to Blackford, grasping it warmly, passionately.

“What have you done?”

“I called the number, and a voice answered. I said: ‘I wish to speak to the military attaché.' The voice replied, ‘About what?' I said, ‘About József Nady.' He said, ‘What about József Nady?' I said, ‘Do you or do you not wish to have information about him?' There was a silence, and I could hear that the telephone was being switched off. Then the voice came back, and it was much more pleasant. The man said, ‘Are you where I can call you back?' I said, ‘No'—and offered no alternative arrangements. I am aware that there are techniques for tracing telephone calls—I was using a public phone, away from my apartment and office. So I said, ‘If you wish to know where you can find József Nady and the American, you will have to follow the instructions I will give you on this telephone.' He said: ‘When will you call?' I said, ‘I will call you tomorrow at 10
A.M
.'”

“What,” asked Blackford with increasing awe, “do you propose to say tomorrow at 10
A.M.
to Colonel Bolgin?”

“Is that his name?”

“Yes,” he said. “Boris Bolgin. He is the top KGB official in Europe. I've actually met him. He's good with the soft exterior, but he's been trained to do the kind of thing that Stalin approved of. The business last Wednesday shows a certain imagination: stringing me up for
betraying
Theo—and using Theo's fiancée as part of the execution squad. Not bad. What do you have in mind to say to him?”

“I don't know,” she said simply. She dropped her fork on her plate, looked up at him, and smiled with manifest pleasure at her decision: “I shall say to him whatever you like! At one end of the table,” she said matter-of-factly, “we could arrange to kill him. At the very least, we could … well, get you your money back. But it occurred to me that perhaps there was something
you
might specially want from Bolgin.”

Right, Blackford thought. He would like Bolgin's balls, just, well … for instance.

Frieda sipped her coffee and downed her liqueur. “I think it would be useful—and amusing—to think about it, and I suggest we do that”—she looked at him now directly in the eye—“at my apartment.” Blackford's pause was only barely noticeable. “I think,” he said, summoning the waiter, “that we would have privacy there,” and he returned her gaze directly, “to do whatever we want.”

“I am prepared,” she replied quietly, “to do whatever you want.”

“I think,” he said, feeling that tell-tale tightness in his throat, but smiling, “that we should agree to act jointly.”

“In that case,” she said getting up, “we had better begin.”

He came upon a terrible hunger. He had difficulty, in the climax, in holding her firm the more so through his own wild excitement as, in the dim light that perforated her underthings, strewn in her haste over the little bed lamp, he peered into her eyes. She was looking at him now with exhibitionistic passion as her pale, full breasts broke out in splotches of mottled light brown while her thighs gripped him and with her hands she stroked him, with a desperate milking action. Throughout, he gave himself totally, and once, in his writhing imagination, felt himself caught tightly, finally, in her noose, which drew him together suffocating, exhilarating, released only just in time for air; and then renewing its threat, its black, exacting embrace. It was midnight before, tenderly, he relaxed his hands, and bent over her face, to kiss her gently above the always-open eyes, and whisper to her, inquisitively, unchidingly, “Was that me, or Theo?”