“You are very careful,” Jeff observed.
“Your Department of State,” said Leonides, “is not secure.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
1
IN THE MORNING Jeff awoke thinking. When he awoke and wished himself asleep again it was because the day loomed dreary or unpleasant. But if he awoke thinking then the day invited progress and excitement. It was a good sign.
He showered and shaved and when he stepped out of the bathroom there was a pot of scalding water on his table, insulated by Madame Angell’s tea cozy. He mixed his powdered coffee, and reminded himself that he must wheedle more sugar out of Quincy Todd. He wasn’t happy in the morning without his coffee, with plenty of sugar, but no cream. He set the cup alongside his typewriter, and concluded his letter to Susan.
“Thursday A.M.,” he wrote. “I saw Leonides. He looked fine.” This sounded inane, but how much more could he dare tell her, or anyone, except the one person in whom he eventually must confide? “He is still in uniform. He is attached to the headquarters of the Soviet lines-of-communication troops here. Things being as they are, I don’t expect I’ll be seeing much more of him.
“Susan, I desperately wish you were here. Not only because I want you desperately, but because there is so much we would have to talk about. I want to share my life with you. I suppose that sounds corny, but that’s what I feel inside me. It doesn’t seem possible that I am homesick, because in the years in Italy and Austria I was never homesick. And my job here is much more interesting than anything I have ever done before. For the first time in my life I feel that I have the opportunity to do something that is really important—important to you, Susan. It must be that I’m just plain lonely, and that I need you. I’m getting your air mail letters in three days now. Write me often, for I love you, Susan.”
It sounded stilted and incomplete, but it was the best he could do. He could not tell her of the cabal of which Leonides was a part. He trusted her, certainly, but he was afraid that if it became necessary for her to transmit Leonides’ story to the Department, the story would not be credited. She was, after all, only the girl who took the nine o’clock conference. She was a very attractive and reliable recording machine. He could imagine the reaction if Susan approached, say, the Undersecretary of State, and remarked: “I got a letter from my boy friend in Budapest. He knows something of an internal plot to overthrow the Soviet regime, and he would like me to tell you about it.”
When he shared Leonides’ secret with someone it must be a person with access to the Department’s higher levels, and probably with access to the Secretary himself. He doubted whether anyone except the Secretary would have the power or authority or the nerve to act in the matter. He knew that the hope on which the Department based all its policy was that the Soviet regime would change. Whether the Department would actively encourage a revolt against the regime, or whether the Department preferred to wait until the dictator died, in the belief that a more reasonable leader would replace him, he did not know. Nobody knew, except the Secretary. Perhaps even the Secretary, never having been faced with the alternatives, himself did not know. In any case, this was not a matter to be risked in the mails. If Atlantis Project was too secret to put on paper, then so was this, except in utter emergency and necessity.
He signed his name to the last sheet of the letter, and was typing the address on the envelope when there was a knock on his door. He hoped it was Quincy Todd. He would like to explain last night to Quincy, so he would not suspect Jeff of traffic with the Russians, and tattle to Morgan Collingwood. He didn’t think Todd would do this. Todd would talk to him first. “Come in,” Jeff called.
2
It wasn’t Todd. It was a moment before Jeff realized it was Quigley. He had bumped into Quigley several times since his first night at the Legation residence, but Quigley was a man whose face always seemed like the face of someone else. Now for the first time Jeff was conscious that Quigley wore rimless glasses, and that the eyes behind them, although of no identifiable color, were hard like freshly cast metal.
“Is this room secure?” Quigley inquired.
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a red-headed Russian under the bed. Why don’t you look?”
“Don’t be funny, Mr. Baker. You’re in no position to be funny.”
When he had last seen Quigley, at the mess, Quigley had called him by his first name. Now Quigley was calling him “Mr. Baker.” That wasn’t good.
“I see you were writing a long letter,” Quigley said. “Do you mind if I look at it?”
“You’re damned right I mind!” Jeff came out of his chair and put himself in front of the security officer. Quigley was a small man. The top of his hat came level with Jeff’s eyes. He was not young, and he looked as if he had been absorbing his vitamins in capsule form for years, with no visible beneficial effect. He was just a little man in a trench coat and a pork pie hat who didn’t move or blink or frown or in any way show that Jeff impressed him. He said, “I must insist.”
“Do you like to read other people’s mail?” Jeff asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do. It’s the most fascinating part of my work.”
“Well, you’re not going to read mine.”
“Yes I am,” Quigley said quietly. “You see, Mr. Baker, you’ve committed a really astonishing breach of security. I’ve been in this business for a long time, Mr. Baker, and I’ve never heard of anything more brazen, and I might say stupid. For this day and time, Mr. Baker. For this day and time. You spent three hours last night with one of the most dangerous Russians in Pest. A clever intelligence officer. His assignment is to learn about the Americans, in case you don’t know it. You have been entrusted with the most sensitive, and highly classified, information in this Mission. You drink with this Russian for three hours, and the next morning you write a long letter. I think you will agree that I must require a complete statement. And I must see this letter.”
Suddenly Jeff felt awkward and out of place. He picked the letter from the desk, handed it to Quigley, and said, “Here it is. Hope you get a bang out of it.”
“Do you mind if I sit down?” Quigley said. He took off his coat, laid it carefully across the foot of the couch, and dropped his hat on top of it. Then he found a chair, and moved it so the morning light would fall over his shoulder. He sat down, and read the letter, as methodically as if it were a new Department directive. Jeff could not sit down. He locked his hands behind his back, and took stiff paces in front of Quigley’s chair. He was choking with scorn, indignation, and loathing. He was sure Quigley must feel his contempt, but if Quigley felt it, he didn’t seem disturbed.
Quigley finished the letter. “Well, Mr. Baker, I think that explains everything very well. It doesn’t seem to be so serious as I had imagined.”
“You mean I’m not going to be hung, or boiled in oil?”
“This is still not funny, Mr. Baker. If the Admiral hears about it, he may want you flogged, keel-hauled and thrown into irons.” The very smallest, most elusive bit of humor touched the corners of Quigley’s mouth. It could not be said that Quigley smiled. It was simply that his face exposed an emotion. He rose, dropped the letter on the desk, and peered at the address on the envelope. “Susan Pickett, Bay State Apartments,” he repeated. “Fine girl. Colonel Pickett’s widow. Keeps her mouth closed.”
“Do you know her?”
“No. I know of her. I know of almost everyone in the Department.”
“I can see where you would,” Jeff observed.
Quigley didn’t appear offended. He looked around the room, and said, “Do you mind if I make a little inspection? I’m never happy in a room unless I know what’s in it.”
“Go right ahead. Make yourself at home,” Jeff told him. “If you get bored, why there are some fresh personal letters, just arrived from Stateside, in the right-hand top drawer of the chiffonier.”
“Thanks very much. I asume you have sense enough not to leave them in your room if they contain classifie
d material.” Jeff began to understand that Quigley could never be offended, or insulted. Quigley made a quick circle of the room, examining light sockets, the telephone box, peeping behind the radiator, testing the walls, sniffing with distaste at the locked door that once had made the room part of Madame Angell’s flat. When he finished he said, “I suppose it is all right, but of course anyone could put a wire recorder on the other side of that door, and pick up everything that goes on in here.”
“Do you think anybody would bother?”
“People do. In this day and time, Mr. Baker. In this day and time. If people minded their own business, Mr. Baker, I’d be out of a job.”
Jeff found, to his surprise, that his indignation had burned out, and had been replaced by curiosity. “Tell me,” he said. “How did did you know I met Major Lasenko in the espresso last night? Did Todd tell you?”
“No. Was Todd there?”
“He just poked his head in, saw the Russian, and then vanished as if we were carrying the plague.”
“A very sensible man,” Quigley said. “From now on, that should be a good example for you.”
“Well, how did you know I was with Lasenko?” Jeff persisted.
Quigley sat down, placed a hand on each knee, and said, “Mr. Baker, I am a professional. There are some so-called security officers here—the ones whom Quincy Todd calls ‘Dick Tracys’—who are not professionals. They are not fit to wear a Junior G-Man badge. They may once have been Alcohol Tax Unit agents, chasing bootleggers, or prison keys, or divorce snoops, or third-grade detectives in fourth-rate police departments. When war came they got themselves jobs in intelligence, or security, and now they have found a new bandwagon. They have discovered that it pays to be mysterious. They get a nice salary, and all-expense tours to Europe and Asia and South America, and unvouchered cash in large lumps, and neither the Congress nor Internal Revenue dare ask where the money goes because they are all chasing the Reds and anyone who questions them is meddling with national security and is probably a Red himself, or anyway a fellow traveler. They are wrecking my profession. I have been in the Department for thirty years, first as a courier and later as a security officer. Because I am a professional I know most of what goes on, and because I am a professional I cannot tell you how I know, because it might compromise my sources.”
“I see,” Jeff said. “Thirty years in the Department! I wonder if you knew my father?”
“Baker? Baker? The only Baker I knew was Nicholas Baker. He was an important man in the European Division.”
“My father’s name was Nicholas Baker, and he was in the European Division, but he was a clerk.”
“So you’re Nick Baker’s son. I knew him very well. He was a friend of mine.” Jeff noticed another subtle change in Quigley, hardly a change in expression, perhaps only a change in the cadence of his words. “And he was important. I’m sure that on occasion his influence directed policy. In those days the little, unknown men like your father insured the continuity of our policy. The Foreign Service Officers could take their weekends in New York, or Long Island, and their fortnights in Florida, or Bermuda or the Maine woods. But men like your father had to be at their desks every day, nine to six, and requests for policy from the Missions cannot wait. The Department is too big for that now, and the work too specialized. The little man can see only the smallest fragment of the whole. He should attend to his own job. I do. You should, too, Jeff.”
“I am. I am doing the very best I know how.”
“I’m sure you are. I’m sure Nick would be proud of you. You know, Jeff, Nick talked about you a great deal. We used to play cribbage together, some evenings after work, down in the tunnel that led to the White House from Treasury and he would talk about you. Now I think I’d better go. I’m going back to the Legation. May I suggest, Jeff, that you approach Quincy Todd, and ask him not to mention last night. I’d rather not have the Admiral know about it. The Admiral is sometimes hard to handle.”
“I will,” Jeff promised. “Do you mind taking this letter to the mail room, so it makes the pouch?”
“Not at all.”
Jeff sealed the letter, and handed it to him, and said, “Thanks, Quig. Thanks very much.” When Quigley was gone he flopped down on the bed and for a long time lay on his back without moving, staring up at the stains on the ceiling.
3
When at last he shook himself off the bed he knew something that he had not known before. The career for which he had prepared no longer existed, for him or anyone. The art of diplomacy, like many other things, lay buried in the radioactive dust of Hiroshima. Within Hiroshima itself there might be, within a few generations, mutations of the body. They would be shocking and ugly, but not dangerous. There had been more immediate mutations in the mind of man. His lobe of fear had abnormally grown, his confidence in a better future had disintegrated, his instinct for brotherhood and kindness was vestigial, his memory of the Sermon on the Mount was somewhere gone.
Even the character of the Department of State had changed. The Department had become a two-headed monster, and the head with a tongue was an instrument of psychological and political warfare. It spoke of its power, its goodness, its planes, its ships, its bombs, and the weakness, the badness, the cruelty, and the totalitarianism of the enemy. The other head could only think, and dream—dream of the United Nations, and UNESCO, and world federation, dream of things that could have been, but which—like the Sermon on the Mount—were not practical.
He understood the way of it. There was the bomb, and there was this cold war. There was a saying: “When war begins, diplomacy ends,” and the United States was at war. It was wrong to call it a cold war, as if it moved with a glacier’s deliberation, or were safely encased in the freezing compartment. It was a war hot and consuming and dreadfully wasteful, a war fully munitioned with passion and hatred. Matson had been right. He had come here as a soldier. Once again he was a platoon leader out on the point, and he didn’t like it any better than he had liked it before. Yet he would do his job, because it was in his spirit that he have pride in work well done, just as in the Army he had taken pride in Company, and Battalion, and Regiment, and Division, and later in the importance of his liaison between Ground and Air.
4
He missed Quincy Todd at the luncheon mess in the pension off Kossuth Lajos-tér, but he found him that night in the Park Club. The Park Club was at Stefánia Utca 34, not far from the Minister’s residence, and the homes of Morgan Collingwood and others in the Legation. In the day of that economic cornucopia and political monstrosity, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the cavalry of Franz Josef, plumes flying and breast plates gleaming in the sun, paraded this leafy avenue on Sunday afternoons and national holidays. In those days it had been the practice of the Hungarian aristocrats and foreign diplomats resident in Pest to step out upon the terraces of the Park Club—then an international casino—and admire the lancers and hussars.
Now the cavalry and the age had passed, but the Park Club itself miraculously had little changed, although there had been a remarkable shift in the nationality of its patrons. It was a social outpost of the West. Beyond the Park Club lay the East, and barbaric customs.
The Hungarian hosts were now far outnumbered by their guests, and the guests footed all the bills. The club was off limits, by mutual taboo, to Russians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Rumanians, Jugoslavs, and Poles, except those satellite nationals in disfavor with their Communist governments at home. These refugees were not seen often at the Park Club. One way or another, they vanished from Budapest, for them a perilous way station on the westward road. Most of the members were American and British, and there followed, in the order of their influence in the Western alliance, the French, Dutch, Belgians, Swedes, and Swiss. The Italians were split. The ones with titles preferred the Park Club, the others found their amusement elsewhere. The Hungarian aristocracy, and those business and theatrical luminaries who were socially acceptable, enjoyed the club’s excellent cuisine and liquors, its danc
es and privately imported American films, whenever possible—providing they were already compromised by contact with the West, or in bravery or imprudence dared ignore the Communist displeasure.
Jeff found Quincy Todd in the cocktail lounge. George Fejer, the club’s pianist, was rippling out “Civilization,” and singing what he thought were the words. Fejer had a miraculous ear, and he could pirate a hit tune off American short wave, but sometimes the words escaped him and he made up other words which did just as well. Quincy Todd was dancing with Marge Collins, who was in cryptography, but they were entranced with Fejer’s fingers and their feet were barely moving. Then Quincy Todd saw Jeff, and winked, and said above the music, “Oh, what you did!”
“I’m at Fred Keller’s table. Come on over.” Jeff saw the Collins girl’s lips move, and saw Quincy shake his head, no, and continue shaking it, and so Jeff knew Quincy hadn’t talked about the Russian.
He made his way across the dance floor, and Keller was at a table against the wall. “Come on over,” he called to Jeff. “I’ve got someone here wants to meet you.”
The someone must be the girl with Keller. “I’m on my way,” Jeff said. She was the most striking woman he had ever seen. She seemed to illuminate the side of the room. It was apparent what kind of a body she possessed, for her silver lamé gown, which could only have originated in Paris, was slashed to the waist in unnerving angles. It was not her body which captured Jeff, but her face. “This is Rikki Telredy,” Keller said. He held out his hand as a horticulturist might bring attention to a unique camellia. “Isn’t she lovely? Rikki—Jeff Baker, one of my colleagues.”