Stained Glass (13 page)

“I list it out of a sense of obligation to list all the alternatives. Now, as for Alternative One, which early on was popular at Defense, I was always skeptical. The weakness of NATO apart, the American atomic deterrent apart, to take on all of Europe is something very few military men would counsel Stalin to do at this moment. If he
has
to do it in order to keep East Germany, that's one thing. Otherwise—later, maybe. It would mean occupying Italy, the parts of Austria they don't already occupy, West Germany, France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia; then war, along whatever ground rules, with England and the United States. No, they can't be
anxious
for that.”

“So it comes down to Alternative Two?”

“In my opinion it comes down to Alternative Two.”

“What are they saying in Washington about the chance of Wintergrin's winning?”

“We have been running polls every week. The week before Frankfurt, it was Wintergrin twenty per cent. The week after, it was Wintergrin twenty-eight per cent. A week ago he slipped—some of the criticism is beginning to tell—down to twenty-four per cent. But now listen to this: the poll four days ago, after his television press conference in Berlin, put him at thirty-four per cent—only four per cent behind Adenauer, and ten per cent ahead of Ollenhauer.

“There are three weeks before the election. Wintergrin's tide is rising. We are directed to proceed on the assumption that he will be elected the next Chancellor of West Germany unless he sinks to below thirty per cent, or unless Adenauer's lead should rise to eight points. As a result of this week's upset, we are now polling continuously, making collations twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. The election is on November fifteenth. If on November eleventh the polls still show him at thirty-plus and Adenauer less than thirty-eight, we must, to be safe, assume that he would be elected.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do about it? To be ‘safe.'”

“We're supposed to do what we can to lower his standing in the polls.”

“That will be an interesting job. Shall we begin by coming up with documents showing that he was really working for the Nazis in Norway?”

“That possibility is being studied.”

“Shit,” Blackford said, and instantly regretted it. One didn't say that kind of thing in Rufus's presence. Not because Rufus was a prude. But because it was an affront to his professionalism. Rather like a doctor swearing at an inflamed appendix. Rufus, of course, overlooked it. He said only, “There are a good many other possibilities, of course.”

Blackford started to say, “All of them equally distasteful?” but checked himself. The questions being pondered by Rufus had nothing to do with good taste or bad, delicacy or indelicacy. He said instead: “I suppose we could fan the Wintergrin-will-lead-us-to-a-third-world-war movement.”

“There is always that.”

“Well, what happens if on the eleventh of November he's still got more than thirty per cent of the vote?”

“He will have to be killed.”

Blackford stood up, his pale face suddenly burning, his lithe body stiff, tilting forward. He could only think to say softly, reproachfully, “Rufus!”

“Moreover, there is only one person who could do it, expeditiously, who could get inside security, arrange for it to happen without suspicion. Who is, in fact, inside.”

Blackford sat down. The pause was long. “Rufus.
I
couldn't. I
couldn't. You
couldn't, if you knew him …”

Rufus snapped: “The matter does not hang on Wintergrin's amiability.” And, in a different tone of voice: “Nobody can
make you
do it, Blackford. And it may not prove necessary to try. It is necessary to guard against the high possibility of a world war and the loss of Europe. We must get on with these preparations irrespective of whether we ever trip the wire. To do that we need at least your cooperation, deferring until another time the question whether you would … act as executioner. I must ask you to cooperate at this critical stage.” Rufus rose solemnly, and Blackford was reminded that he was facing the man Churchill had acknowledged as the single principal asset of the Allies during the Second World War.

Blackford didn't have the stomach to discuss the matter at any greater length with Rufus. He needed someone human to argue with. “Let me talk with Singer, please.”

“Of course. Lunch is waiting for you in the dining room upstairs.”

He was there at exactly seven-thirty. Blackford, true to his training, pulled up across the street exactly on time, so that there was no moment during which Wintergrin was waiting for an automobile, or an automobile was waiting for Wintergrin. On reflection, Blackford thought as Wintergrin opened the door and moved in next to him, the clockwork rendezvous—assuming anyone observed it—looked more suspicious than if one party had had to wait a moment or two for the other. The fine synchronization made it look like a getaway car.

Blackford had had a stiff drink of scotch in his room at the inn, seeking to tranquilize the day's events, and was struggling now to act natural. Wintergrin helped; he was in high spirits as they went down Goethestrasse, toward the highway west. Stopping at a light, Black looked across and noticed for the first time that in addition to the unaccustomed fedora, Count Wintergrin had a mustache.

“Not bad. I wonder what Hitler did when he wanted to go out incognito? Wear a yarmulke? How long have you had that?”

“Since becoming a fixture on television. I have used it perhaps five times, and it is quite wonderful. I have never been recognized with it on. I wish I could fool Wolfgang with it—but I can't; I have to get his permission to use it. The authenticity I owe to my sainted mother. When, after three months' progressive disgust, I decided to shave off the mustache I grew at college, mother persuaded me to let her clip off the ends, which I now use. I am surprised dear mother does not ask me to save my fingernails. Sometimes, after hearing Roland Himmelfarb's dire reports on our financial problems, I am tempted to auction off my fingernails. Do you suppose you could persuade your Marshall Plan people to buy some at a price consistent with German dignity and American resources?”

‘I'll try … Axel”—that was the first time, and the scotch helped to make it possible; besides, Blackford thought wildly, what
is
the proper mode of address between executioner and executionee? He would have to research this. He could not think, offhand, of a course at Yale that covered the subject adequately, though no doubt Professor Lewis Curtis, professor among other things of European arcana, could at a moment's prodding deliver a lecture on the subject. Surely, in a democratic age, matters had advanced from such stiffness as the axeman's who asked Mary, Queen of Scots: “Your Majesty, would you bend your head down a little lower, please, ma'am?”

Blackford said: “Bonn has been pretty good about expenses. Needless to say, we're over the budget—that's always expected. But I'll tell you what: If you would agree to get yourself martyred, I'm sure I could persuade Washington to
requisition
—that is the word, Axel: never just plain
‘acquire'
—your fingernails as relics for the altar at St. Anselm's.”

“Thank you, Blackford. I shall take up your proposal with my staff at our meeting at ten tomorrow. I am quite certain that Weil, my finance chairman, will give it every consideration.”

They reached the Gummersbacher Hof, and Blackford went in ahead and asked for Walter, informing him that Blackford's guest was parking the car. Was everything in order?

Perfectly. They would have
Chambre séparée
3, entirely private, and Walter's first waiter, Karl, would take care of the dinner order, and there would be a bottle of champagne in gratitude to the Americans who were rebuilding the beautiful chapel of St. Anselm's. Blackford, desiring leverage for his request for privacy, had let drop his mission in making the reservation. Walter led him through the dimly lit
fin-de-siècle
dining room, past crystal and candles and roast goose and crepes suzettes and animated Germans, a few with wives, others with women as conspicuously nubile as they were unattached; and finally to the little room sheltered, like one or two others, by a curtain. A single candle-flame held the darkness at bay. At the sides of the table were upholstered chairs. Walter showed Blackford where the bell button was located (on the wall, by the head of the table), and reiterated that Herr Oakes had only to
mention
Walter's name to Karl and, without a moment's hesitation, Walter would materialize. Blackford went out to the parking lot and brought in the Liberator, who slithered by the twenty couples without problem—twenty couples whose thought, in any event, was not, at that particular time and place, easily arrested by politics.

Wintergrin seated, the curtain drawn, was expansive. He drank quickly from the champagne at the table, in sharp contrast with his habit of ordering a single glass of white wine and leaving it virtually untouched. Blackford too drank copiously as they looked unhurriedly at the menu. Wintergrin's paternalistic inclinations were not, however, adjourned, and Blackford was amused to hear his host say, as if in a soliloquy: “Let me see … they have fresh crayfish tonight. But also trout. I think we'll have the crayfish. Yes, don't you agree, Blackford?—without looking up, and without anticipating any verbal reaction. “To begin. Yes, to begin. If my mother didn't always serve trout, I would order it here, since they are superbly done. But under the circumstances, we must have something else. Yes. Something else. Of
course.
” This time he did not bother even to say what his selection was. He pushed the button, and in seconds Karl arrived with his notepad.

“The wine list.” Karl had it in hand. Count Wintergrin drank infrequently, so his attention tended to focus on the familiar wines, and he picked out a Schorlemmer Mosel, then a Lafitte, and gave the order for the meal. Karl walked out. For the first time Wintergrin looked up.

“Will the United States work very hard against us?”

Blackford's mind ran to the joke passed around at school about the Prussian disporting himself with the whore who, it transpired, was palpably enjoying herself, causing the Prussian to pause in mid-enterprise and say: “Now wait a minute, Frieda. Just
who
is fucking whom?” So now
Blackford Oakes
, a.k.a. Geoffrey Truax, was invited to inform Count Wintergrin of United States policy toward the reunification movement! Blackford was confident of his instincts about Wintergrin's preternatural innocence respecting Oakes's role at St. Anselm's. What, then, was Wintergrin after, asking him such a question? Did he mean to probe Blackford's knowledge of what U.S. officials were saying in Bonn, the principal Western listening post for American diplomacy? If that was Wintergrin's intention, surely he'd have approached the question more obliquely? If the idea was to suborn Blackford's good nature by teasing him into indiscretion, Wintergrin would surely have waited—a long evening lay ahead of them—until the wine had done its notoriously good work in softening preprandial resolution. No, Wintergrin was being characteristically frank, surely—ingenuous.

He took a long, slow drink of champagne. “Well, as you know, the Administration is backing Adenauer.”

“Of course I know. That much is obvious. They've backed him from the beginning. And I am not unsympathetic with their motives for doing so. They didn't anticipate a reunification movement. Now they have one. The Soviet Press and the left press throughout Europe have responded to our challenge exactly as one might suppose they would. But is it inconceivable that the U.S. Government—are you aware, Blackford, that not
one
American official has interrogated me, however indirectly?—might change its mind? Or even that it would remain neutral? What puzzles me, now that there are only three weeks to go, is: What will they do to reinforce Adenauer's position? And what will they do if they conclude that Adenauer is going to lose—that I am going to win? I'll tell you something confidential.” He drank his champagne. Blackford followed suit. Wintergrin leaned toward him. “The Americans are conducting polls. You know, we are not yet officially permitted to do so. But even if
Der Spiegel
goes ahead, as it threatens to do, American polling techniques are far advanced, thanks to your Truman-Dewey experience. Now I happen to know—one of our people is, well, nicely situated in there—what the most recent poll says. Do you know?”

“No,” Blackford lied, tilting his glass to hide his face.

“I am at
thirty-four per cent
. Adenauer is only four points ahead of me. I began at twenty per cent. There have been ups and downs. But the upward graph is steady. And”—he drank slowly now from what was left in his glass, and looked directly at Blackford, his face calm, resolute, solemn, his eyes slightly raised as if the subject were, somehow, slightly indiscreet—“I am going to win. Assuming an exact three-way split, I would need only thirty-four per cent. But I am every day taking votes from Adenauer. And why not? Adenauer's position is no longer interesting. It is the position of … an …
inchoate
reunifier. He is progressively seen as the impotent candidate. I make this prediction: When the votes are counted,
Ollenhauer
will be ahead of Adenauer. The publicity against me is—if only my enemies knew it”—he chuckled, a little nervously—“if only you people realized it—at the strategic expense of Adenauer. Everyone who is persuaded by what they say about me—that I'll bring on a war—will be frightened into
Ollenhauer's
camp, don't you see? If they are scared to death of any confrontation with the Soviet Union, won't they go, after the battering they are taking, as far away from confrontation as possible? Ollenhauer is a good German, but his idea of reunification is something that will happen when Stalin's grandson gives away East Germany as a wedding present to his German bride.”