6
That morning the Secretary had ridden for his usual hour in Rock Creek Park, breakfasted at seven, and arrived at the office at eight-thirty. The early morning broadcasts had warned him he’d have a busy day. Even Arthur Godfrey sounded lugubrious, and when there was no cheer in Godfrey then the world was in a sorry state.
It was, too.
The Russians had murdered an eighteen-year-old G.I. in Vienna. So said Headquarters of United States Forces Austria. Radio Moscow’s version was different, but Moscow’s version was always different. He would instruct Keyes to protest. The protest wouldn’t do any good.
Stockholm was frightened. All night Stockholm had seen shooting stars that didn’t come from Heaven.
Something foul was going on in the uranium mines of the Belgian Congo. Brussels blamed it on Soviet propaganda. But Brussels also suggested that if the Southern Senators could be persuaded to stop screaming their racism, the blacks in the Congo might go back to work.
The un-American Committee was sniping at one of his section chiefs whose wife’s nephew had attended a Communist Front rally in San Francisco. The Committee wanted him fired at once, and the section chief was in the Secretary’s outer office, hysterical and in tears, with an armload of affidavits saying he had always lived in Westchester County and voted straight Republican.
The President was in bed with Virus X.
Greece and Turkey needed more money.
So did China.
The Dominican Republic said Trujillo was en route to Washington, where he expected to be received by the President and presented with a four-motored flying yacht, and a cruiser, three destroyers, and a few tanks. He wanted to fight Venezuela.
There was bad news from Korea, Afghanistan, Damascus, Jerusalem, Prague, Indo-China, Trieste, and Rome.
The Secretary lunched with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and attended a three o’clock Cabinet meeting.
When he got back to his office memoranda and cables rose in a ten-inch pile from the center of his desk. They were all urgent, and all required immediate decisions and answers.
He cancelled his press conference.
He was presented with a scroll by the Daughters of the Spanish-American War.
He took two aspirins and a glass of bicarbonate of soda, and then dictated the speech he would make the following night at the Legion banquet.
A cable typed on red paper, labeling it extremely urgent and confidential, came in from the Counselor of a Central American Mission. It said the Minister had been on a three-week toot, and what should he do?
The Secretary telephoned his wife that he wouldn’t be home for dinner.
He had chicken sandwiches and milk in his office, and talked by telephone to the President, the Ambassador in London, and his son, who was going to New York for the New Year’s weekend and needed an extra hundred dollars.
France needed an extra hundred million.
No matter how fast he cerebrated, he couldn’t seem to diminish the pile of papers on his desk, all tabbed red for urgent.
He became aware that one of his secretaries was reeling with fatigue, and sent her home.
The Department of State was quiet, now. It was past nine, and the business of government was slowing down. In all New State, only the lights in the code and cipher section and the Secretary’s office still burned.
He was wearing down that pile. At ten o’clock a messenger brought four final cables, to be read and rejected or initialed.
The Secretary’s hands and knees trembled with tiredness. His shoulders were broad and his courage limitless, but there was too much trouble in the world for one man.
The last cable was outgoing from Balkans to Budapest. It demanded the resignation of someone in the Budapest Mission named Baker. The Secretary lifted his glasses to his forehead and rubbed his eyes. It was too bad, he thought, too bad that some could not stand the strain, and must fall by the wayside. He initialed the cable. A secretary appeared and took it away. He must go home and get to bed, he thought. Tomorrow might be worse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1
THE CABLE REACHED Budapest Tuesday morning, addressed BLANKENHORN FOR BAKER, but it was almost midnight before Jeff Baker sat down to type his answer. It had taken that long to make up his mind. Some decisions, even of life and death—such as whether to cross the street—are made in an instant. Others bear a clear sign saying “crossroads” and require thought and calculation.
The request for his resignation had hardly surprised him, but he was startled by the detail in which his sins were listed. The cable was like an indictment drawn up by a prosecuting attorney not quite sure of his case, who seeks to base an edifice of guilt upon many thin laths of accusation. It was not at all like a cable from the Secretary of State, and yet the Secretary’s name was signed to it, and it could be assumed that such a cable would at least be seen by the Secretary, and initialed, before dispatching. But there was no way to be sure, for all cables from the Department bear the Secretary’s name, whether they concern the drafting of a new treaty or the disposition of an old steamer trunk.
On this night candles lit his room. Whether there was a power failure, or the government was conserving electricity, or whether the lights were out in this sector of Budapest alone he did not know, and it was useless to inquire of Madame Angell or Sandor. He had placed candlesticks at each end of the long Italian desk, so that they framed his portable. The shadows shielded the imperfections of the furnishings, rounded the angular chairs. It was a Nineteenth Century room, and it became warm and mellow in Nineteenth Century lighting. It had been his home for almost four months. In that time his belongings had found their place here, like roots in hospitable soil. Now, whatever his decision, those roots would be torn up.
Before him was this implacable sheet of flimsy—a notice of eviction, certificate of failure, diploma of disgrace. Six other paraphrased copies of the cable would have been made in the code room, and distributed, so that by now everyone in the Legation would know. He suspected this was why through the whole day he had received no phone calls and no visitors. News of the cable would have seeped to the British and the French, and even the Hungarians, during the cocktail hour at the Park Club. The cable had come in BROWN, a code which the Germans had broken in 1941 but which was still used for matters classified as less than secret because it was economical, saving wordage by compressing standard departmental phrases into single symbols. So probably the Russians would read the cable too. It would puzzle them.
The paraphrase read:
“Most disturbing information has reached the Department concerning your conduct, which appears to border on treason, in the Budapest Mission. Specifically you are charged with the following violation of State Department regulations:
“1. Without authority engaging in diplomatic negotiations with an official of a foreign power.
“2. Endangering United States policy by indiscreet utterances to an official of a foreign power.
“3. Deliberately disobeying warnings not to associate with representatives of this power.
“4. Refusal to obey direct orders of superior.
“5. Conduct unbecoming of an officer of the Foreign Service.
“6. Purloining narcotic drugs from the Mission dispensary.
“Since all these charges have been substantiated the Department regrets requiring your immediate resignation. However, in view of your inexperience, and your previous record in the armed forces, the Department will permit you to resign without prejudice. In accordance with regulations governing such cases, passage will be furnished to your home station.”
The last paragraph was the key, of course. It was an invitation to go quietly, without a fight. The rest of the cable was there simply to show him resistance was hopeless, as indeed it seemed to be.
All he had to do was write and sign a simple note of resignation and that would end it. It would sponge off the first thirty years of his life. No public stain would remain. He could go ho
me and marry Susan. He could get a job and start over. If necessary, he could refer without shame to his short diplomatic career. It might even carry an aurora of distinction. He could say, “Oh, yes, I was Third Secretary in the Legation at Budapest. Had to give it up. Not enough money in it.”
Yet he could not bring himself to write his resignation. All day he had known he would not write a resignation. He could go home and get a job, but never again for his government, for in the files would be this unchallenged cable. This was peculiarly important to him. He was a Washington boy and a government boy, and all his life a career in the Department had represented honor, respectability, and security.
And he couldn’t let down Leonides.
Had he been a FSS or a FSR instead of a FSO he would have been deprived of choice. Those on the staff, and in the reserve, could be fired without formality. They could be labeled security risks and fired, and they could never discover by whom they were denounced, and only generally of what they were accused. But in his case it was different. He had been appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate, and it would take something approximating a court-martial to get rid of him.
He could use his hearing to tell his story. Perhaps he would be believed in Washington, even if unbelieved in Budapest.
There would be the unpleasant taint of a Departmental trial. It would undoubtedly leak to the press. To have a hundred people in Washington and Budapest know of these accusations was one thing. To have a hundred million people know was quite something else. If there was a Departmental trial, and he was not believed and fired from the Department, his name would be damaged beyond his own lifetime. So long as there were clippings in the steel morgues of newspapers, his name would be tainted. It would not be a good thing to pass on to a son.
Yet it was necessary that he fight. There was nothing else to do.
The blank paper was already in his typewriter. While it seemed no more probable that the Secretary would ever see the letter than that God should note each sparrow fallen from Heaven, he typed it in the traditional form.
“To the Secretary of State,
“Sir—
“I have the honor to report receipt of your coded cable 49122692, classified confidential. Despite this cable I find I cannot resign from the Foreign Service of the United States. I will be happy to answer the charges contained in this cable at any time, according to your convenience.”
He signed his full name at the bottom, boldly, Jefferson Wilson Baker.
He yawned, stretched, and broke open his pint of emergency rye. He poured three fingers of the whiskey into a water tumbler and drank it. Then he looked again at his reply to the cable. He would deliver it to the Admiral or Morgan Collingwood in the morning.
It looked right.
2
On that Tuesday morning Horace Locke had found a young woman outside his office door. He put his key in the lock and she said, “You’re Mr. Locke, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m Locke.”
“My name’s Susan Pickett. I wonder whether you could see me, Mr. Locke?”
“Certainly. Come in.” Hardly anyone ever visited Horace Locke, except to peddle magazine subscriptions, or ask for donations to the Community Chest or Red Cross, or to get his name on petitions. People didn’t seem to have much interest or pride in past diplomatic triumphs. They didn’t care what happened to the original copies of old treaties. The trouble was, of course, that what had seemed triumphs in 1921, and 1925, and 1932 now were listed as disasters. This girl seemed tense, and agitated, and he wondered what she could want. Anyway, she was pretty. He didn’t often see a girl so pretty in the dour and creaking pile of Old State.
He drew up the one chair he hoped was comfortable, and held its back for her in a courtly manner long out of fashion in government offices. “Now, Miss Pickett?” he inquired. She was extraordinarily vivacious. It would have been fun, having a daughter like this. Now that it was too late, he wished he’d produced children. A man was never really dead if he had children. Long ago he had loved a woman in London, but marriage had been impossible. It was unfortunate that he was a one-love man.
“Mr. Locke,” she began, “I understand you’re a friend of Jeff Baker’s. He’s mentioned you in his letters, and he’s never mentioned anyone else in the Department, and so I felt you would be his friend and I could come to you.”
“More precisely, I was his father’s friend,” Horace Locke said.
“Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to you. I don’t suppose you want to get mixed up in this. But I don’t think he has any other friends in the Department—and he needs a friend.”
“Don’t mistake me,” said Horace Locke. “I’m very fond of Jeff Baker—very much interested in him. Have been all his life. Are you his friend too?”
She said, “I love him.”
“Oh. I can only say that Jeff has very good taste.”
“Thank you, Mr. Locke. He is also in very serious trouble.”
Now his thin, sensitive hands were on the desk, and he was looking at her differently than he had before, and all his instincts were alert and wary. “How do you know that?” he demanded.
She took a cigarette from her bag and tapped it on her thumbnail, and he noticed that her nails were well shaped, but stubby from typing. He guessed she was deciding what to tell, or how much to tell, so he said, “You can tell me the whole thing, Susan Pickett. I’m on Jeff’s side, and I think I know something of this too.”
She put the cigarette back in her bag. “I work in the Department,” she said. “Secretarial. I take the nine o’clock conference.”
“This matter of Jeff’s didn’t come up at the conference, did it?”
“No. If it had, I couldn’t talk about it.”
“Of course not.”
She went on, “I have a friend named Gertrude Kerns. She works in Balkans. We always have coffee together in the cafeteria after I’ve typed the agenda. This morning she told me Jeff was being recalled. He has been asked to resign. They sent a cable last night. She knows I know Jeff. She doesn’t know how I feel about him.”
“So quick,” exclaimed Horace Locke. “So damnably quick!” Matson hadn’t wasted an hour. Matson wanted Jeff Baker out of the Department. Locke didn’t know why. He might never know. There could be so many reasons. In the internal workings of the Department there were always so many personal reasons. The Department was men, and therefore the Department possessed men’s emotions, their frailities, hopes, ideals, and passions. Always hidden. Always the most secret of secrets.
Susan didn’t seem to hear him. She resumed speaking, almost in a monotone. “I didn’t know what to do. I told her I had a pain in my stomach and it might be appendicitis. I told her please to go to the Undersecretary’s office and tell them I felt sick and couldn’t take the conference. I went up to code and cipher and got a paraphrase of the cable. I suppose I’ll get in trouble. I don’t care. Here it is.”
She had drawn a folded paper from her bag. Now she handed it across the desk.
Horace Locke read it, and read it again. “They didn’t leave out anything, did they?” he murmured. He saw it was a carefully constructed cable, shrewd in semantics. It was strong enough to blast Jeff out of Budapest, and out of the Department. It was not sufficiently specific, or important enough to the national welfare, to make further investigation necessary.
“What did you say?” Susan asked.
“Nothing. I’ll handle this. I’ll handle it and let you know. Now get this paraphrase back to code and cipher, and forget it.”
“All right. I thank you so much, Mr. Locke. I feel better now.”
He saw that she had something else to say.
“Mr. Locke, I almost didn’t come here.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I am too, now, but I almost didn’t. I want Jeff home. I want him.”
Horace Locke said, “I don’t guarantee that he won’t be home. I have very little influence. I can only do what I can. It m
ay be too late already. Whatever happens in Washington, in the last analysis it will be his decision. Even with the six-hour time difference, he will already have this cable. It will have been decoded and paraphrased in the Budapest Legation, and he will have had time to answer. He may already have resigned.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “He’ll think it over, and over, and over, if he has any chance at all. I don’t know whether he can deny any of these charges. I can’t believe that Jeff would endanger his country, or take dope, or disgrace the Department. I just can’t believe it. If he did he’ll have to quit, of course.”
“I’m sure his behavior was correct,” said Horace Locke. “I’m sure.”
She raised her eyes to his. “You are sure, aren’t you? You know something I don’t know.”
“Yes, I do.” Naturally he couldn’t tell her of the Russian business. Baker had entrusted him with important official information for official use. He could not use it for personal reassurance, and Susan Pickett’s interest in this matter was personal.
“If he hasn’t done these things Jeff won’t quit,” she said. “He mustn’t quit. It would break his heart to quit. He might think he’d be the same if he resigned without prejudice. He might think he’d be the same out of the Department. But he wouldn’t, really. He’d be a different Jeff. I’ve thought it through. I want him to stay there and do his job. I can wait. I’ve waited a long time for Jeff. I can wait two years more—two years and eight months.”
Horace Locke said, “I’ll do my best.”
She rose, and he rose and opened the door for her. As she left he could not help putting his arm around her shoulder. She needed reassurance. She didn’t have to sham her inner sickness.
3
Now the time had come for Horace Locke to act. There was no use appealing to Matson now. Matson had committed himself. Only the Secretary of State could save Jeff Baker.