Saving the Queen (23 page)

“Anyway,” Rufus suddenly began to speak again, “the project, at this stage, is perfectly straightforward.

“Blackford, you, insofar as you can do so, are to probe the Queen's proficiency in nuclear scientific talk, and that of anybody who is regularly in her company, her staff in particular. To recapitulate”—Rufus liked to do so, but Blackford didn't mind; each time it was clearer—“in order to do this and do it naturally, you must between now and when you next see her learn more about the subject than she knows. If our hypothesis is correct, when she finds you know more than she about hydrogen bombs, and if she concludes that you have secret material she can get from you more lackadaisically than from the Prime Minister, for the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of X, whoever he or she is, there is a further reason beyond”—Rufus allowed himself to wink—“the Queen's natural attraction to young Blackford, which apparently germinated quite naturally. Unless”—Rufus, Blackford assumed, was now playing out, with an amusement only faintly detached, the theoretical possibilities, even as, morally, the scientist in him required him to acknowledge scientific possibilities—“the NKVD is not only in cahoots with the Queen, but has penetrated our own counterintelligence operation, and has called on her to cultivate your company.”

It was Singer who, at this point, insisted on an interruption. Apropos of nothing at all, he walked to the corner of the room and lit the burner under a kettle, while trying clumsily to recall a tension-releasing, irrelevant, and irreverent limerick about any old queen, the first part of which he abandoned trying to reconstruct, but, finally, produced triumphantly, through his foggy memory, the closing lines,

“.… she said, ‘
Turn the lights out
,

“‘
It's royalty's night out
,

“‘
Queens may be had, but not seen!
”

Black and Rufus laughed, and took the proffered teacups, and, briefly, so very briefly, Singer cackled on about tea and coffee and Ceylon and Brazil, in an animated monotone which, while it engaged the interest, did not require antiphonal response, from either Rufus or Blackford. Singer wound down with a suitable cadence, followed by a pause, followed by—Rufus.

“After the visit to Windsor, we'll decide how to go. If things should, for whatever reason, move very rapidly; if, Blackford, you think you may have, suddenly, a onceonly opportunity to discover who the Queen is talking to,
use your own judgment
. I pray to God it will prove sound. And remember this about the Queen. She is quickly attracted to people—and just as quickly put off. The ghettos of London society are crowded with ex-favorites of the Queen. She can be very informal, almost dismayingly informal. And she can be as squatly regal as the Stone of Scone. There has always got to be—that's how I figure it—an
undertone
of deference—

“What the hell, you seem to be doing it all right on your own. Come back tomorrow, 9:03, and be prepared for about four hours. More than six hours of the stuff I'm going to feed you you can't take. Come to think of it, more than four hours
I
can't take.”

Eleven

That morning over the telephone Boris Andreyvich Bolgin had been given two numbers and a time. From the time he subtracted the ritual one hour, according to practice. The first number designated which of the six Catholic churches regularly used by Robinson he had selected for the forthcoming rendezvous. Entering the designated church through the main door, Boris would begin to circle it clockwise, and when he had counted twelve—the second number given over the telephone that morning—he would stop, turning his back on the priest's compartment, as if pausing to admire the stained-glass window or statuary opposite. Two hands would reach out and expertly frisk Boris Andreyvich, one half of whose torso was enveloped by the priest's curtain, invisible to the gaze of any chance worshiper lingering in the vicinity. Robinson's hands reached under the jacket sleeves and around to Boris's front, and when the hands, satisfied that no recording machines threatened, were withdrawn, Boris would open the penitent's curtain, adjacent, and kneel down. And say, “I don't often hear from you on Sunday.” To which the indicated answer was: “This isn't Sunday, it's Saturday.”

From that point on, it was conventional—convivial, really, because the two men had without any sense of strain evolved a most cordial relationship over the years. Robinson, moreover, felt under no time pressure, having satisfied himself respecting security. So Boris gave him a leisurely account, suitably bowdlerized, of his trip to Moscow, and stressed and restressed the anxiety felt there (Boris used Stalin's name as infrequently as possible when talking to Robinson—it was, wherever possible, “Moscow”) on the matter of the hydrogen bomb.

“You have been very ingenious, Robinson, in the matter of getting information useful for world peace and the socialist cause, but—”

Robinson interrupted him.

“Boris, old boy, I have told you before. I am entirely committed to the grand historical purposes of our cause, but (a) I despise, as you know, your leader Stalin, though I recognize his strengths and his usefulness; and (b) I find the repetition of the cant phrases of communism altogether depressing. I recognize that they are
necessary
, even as the Baltimore Catechism is necessary, but I would
not
expect in a serious conversation with a cardinal about great affairs that he would punctuate his message with bits and pieces of Christian doxology. You may proceed, Boris.”

Boris recomposed himself and told Robinson, frankly, that Boris
had
to come up with more information and that the focus of Stalin's—or, rather, Moscow's—concern, was the hydrogen bomb.

“I've given you a great deal on the subject already.”

“I know, I know. But we must have
more, a great deal more
. I need, Robinson, to pass a few pages of paper to you. If it is agreeable, when you leave I'll have the corner of my envelope jutting out, and you can pick it up and pocket it. It is the result of many hours spent with Sakharov and contains the
specific
questions for which they do not have the answers. These may or may not be too difficult for your understanding. But they are not too difficult for the understanding of your contact or contacts who are getting their information, presumably, from America.”

“Boris, I have asked you not to speculate about my sources.”

“I'm sorry, Robinson. I really wasn't doing that. I mean, I wasn't intending to do that. I say only that the pieces of paper I hand you won't, maybe, be intelligible to you—that's all.”

“I shall worry about that, Boris.”

Boris found himself wondering, as he had before, several times, whether Robinson was himself an atomic scientist. But he thought it unlikely: Robinson's language was too casual, too makeshift, when passing along to Boris technical information he certainly must have picked up from someone else. Boris was permitted to take notes on what Robinson told him, but, however poetic the formulas sounded on reaching Moscow, they never sounded, from Robinson's lips, quite like a poem of his own devising.

“On the other hand, the second sheaf of papers I will be giving to you are easily understandable. They aren't scientific in any difficult way, Robinson. These are very practical questions. The
eternal
question—about when the first test will be made. Questions about
when
, assuming the test is successful, production will begin. Questions about the weight of the prototype bomb. About the
weight
of the production bombs. The kilotonnage—that is the kind of thing.”

Robinson already guessed that Boris was quoting his superior.
Boris's superior
… Robinson knew it could not, under the circumstances, be anybody less than the director of the NKVD. He had allowed himself to wonder, when he began passing along secrets of the first magnitude of importance, whether Boris might be reporting directly to the odious Stalin himself, but the reservation was theoretical. When James Peregrine Kirk decided to follow the course he did, he consciously determined to discount these factors, even as Miss Oyen had done, so that his personal loathing of Stalin proved much less an inhibition than—he comforted himself—it had proved to Churchill and Roosevelt, both bourgeois, in their dealings with Stalin during the war.

“Now, Robinson, I cannot begin to tell you how these matters press. Obviously you must not endanger your contacts. But you must not permit them to adopt a … bourgeois's timetable. The socialist response to the challenge of the warmongers requires that we have the hydrogen bomb
within months
—not years—of the development by the imperialists.”

“There, there, Boris,” Robinson said. “I can imagine the pressures you are under. And I will do what I can. And Boris, just as I don't like
you
to repeat things unnecessarily,
I
don't like to repeat things. But I am going to tell you this again, and probably I'll tell it to you again in six months or so, and six months after that.
If I have so much as a suspicion that an effort is being made to fix my identity;
I will do two things. One, I will disappear, as far as you and your principals are concerned, from the face of the earth. And two, an anonymous but highly detailed letter will find its way to the NKVD chronicling our relationship and suggesting that I have grounds for believing that you are a double agent, and that it was for this reason that I finally suspended my meetings with you. I have kept back one or two secrets—not of great objective importance, but the kind of thing Comrade Stalin, pausing from his preoccupation with the historical tides of socialism, likes very much to see—dirty, personal stuff, for instance—which I shall report having passed along to you, along with a professed concern that these critical insights into the minds of Western leaders in fact had gone no further … that kind of thing.

“Now, Boris, I have become very fond of you, but although Marx and Lenin did not devote much of their theoretical attention to the abstract need for individual survival by those who help history along toward its final resolution, these are problems that
necessarily
engage the
individual
attention, and, no doubt, have individually absorbed
your attention
. I would not blame you. Indeed, if I were in your shoes, I do not know how I would operate, feeling the insecurity you necessarily feel as an agent not only of a grand historical enterprise, but also, coextensively, of Joseph Stalin.”

“Ah, Robinson, how well I understand you. But how poorly you understand poor me. I did not intend to tell you, but it is true in Moscow they asked me to take, ah, steps, to establish your identity. My reply was: Only if I am ordered over my written protests. Ilyich instantly capitulated. Your anonymity is, in fact, the most valuable possession of mine. I would
never
seek to penetrate it. And it is impenetrable
except
through me. I assume, always, that you operate only through me.…”

“Your assumption is correct, Boris. And I understand that we have personal interests in common. But you must also understand that from time to time I shall require confirmation that the information I go to such pains to provide you is making its way quickly to the intended source. So far I am satisfied that it is; so the arrangement is sound, and will continue.

“Now, as regards the questions you ask. I shall, as usual, be in touch with you when I have something useful to communicate. In the meantime, let me give you this casual political impression. The leadership of the Labour party in England is increasingly in the hands of the anti-Communists. One or two of them—Herbert Morrison is one—have been apprised of the Prime Minister's surreptitious promises to Harry Truman respecting the use of the atomic bomb to enforce any settlement in Korea. I know that you have been agitating for a mass-member peace party and that the idea of such a thing caused certain popular commotion. But you must not count on it to effect anything more than a very minor influence on the Labour party. So do not report to Moscow that you can count on significant parliamentary strength in England. Not yet. Later. It will come some time after you have developed the hydrogen bomb, my dear Boris; and maybe even some time after you have developed a missile for delivering it. And probably it will have to await the eventual collapse of the Amercian will, than which there is nothing I nor Marx count on more confidently. But although that is sure to happen, its happening is not a vulgar correlation of the development of the hydrogen bomb, a point, Boris, I would not expect you to try to explain to Ilyich, let alone to the great Stalin.”

“Thank you, Robinson.” Boris always retreated, under this kind of vernacular ideological pressure, to familiarity.
Poor Boris
, Robinson thought; and to think I am helping his oppressors. But they are
right
—eternally
right
—

“—I shall pass along your advice, and we will, all of us who desire a great new world, count on you.”

Robinson despaired of attempting any further refinements. And anyway, he thought, maybe Boris already understands—completely.

So Robinson pronounced, in public-schoolboy accents, “
Ego te absolvo
, Tovarich Boris, and say a good act of contrition.”

He slipped out of the confessional after parting the curtain, cautiously to survey the surrounding area of the church. As he slid by Boris's compartment, he took the envelope, whose tip barely projected, pocketed it, left by the side door of the church, looked at his watch, walked down Brompton Road across to Harrods, took the elevator up to the shirt department, asked by name fot a salesman with whom he talked about the necessity of a strategic plan for replenishing his supply of French silk shirts, which were only now, ever so slowly, making their way back to the English market, after the endless period during which they were available only in America, and other porcine countries that had accumulated by military and geopolitical opportunism their squalid surplus of the world's hard currency. Robinson resented the little indignity, even as, after his occasional rendezvous at the Bag of Nails, he resented it that he was expected to leave his little tart, as a tip, a gen-nyu-ine United States five-dollar bill.