Read Online Saving the Queen by William F. Buckley - Free Book Online Page A

”
    â€œYou must have a lot of time on your hands,” Griswold said, allowing his eyes to catch those of a crusty figure approaching him. They exchanged greetings. Griswold turned—
    â€œWhat was your name?”
    â€œOakes.”
    â€œMr. Oakes, this is Mr. Allen Dulles, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
    Black shook hands and then winked mysteriously and asked sotto voce: “How’s tricks?”
    Dulles stared at him silently, then turned to talk with Griswold. Black eased away toward Sally—his querencia, his love—to lick his wounds. She was chatting with an overly handsome marine captain, one of the White House escorts bobbing about, performing duties official, semiofficial, and quite unofficial. This one, for instance, was asking Sally what she was doing later that evening.
    â€œWhat she is doing later is with me,” Black interposed, pleased with his timing. The captain moved to withdraw, though not until after he had maneuvered Black’s eyes down toward the chestful of war decorations.
    â€œSorry, sir,” he said, leaving, in favor of caution—for all he knew, Black was the son of the chief of staff or Truman’s nephew or Pendergast’s natural son. Sally was generally pleased, and they went together to the East room and listened to Eugene List play Chopin for about twenty minutes. Then President Truman rose, approached the microphone, thanked List, and invited the guests to stay on as long as they wanted to and dance, and everyone stood up, and he escorted the Empress out of the room, followed by the Shah. The room lighted up with talk and laughter, and Black thought it must have been so when Louis XIV went off to bed, though in those days there would be somebody missing, somebody like Sally, he mused, but tonight again she would be all his, and as they lay in Mr. Ellison’s bed, listening to his soft music, they would tease each other and observe an oh-so-strict protocol.

Four
    One week to go. It was almost over. Black’s final instructor, “Alistair,” had obviously spent much time in England. He was a gray man, his mein, hair, face, suit, shirt. But he had an air of competence and experience which Black quickly deferred to, concluding that he was now in the company of someone high in the organization. He felt like a freshman taking introductory physics from Edward Teller. Alistair began by telling Black that he was expected, during the next two weeks, and indeed until otherwise notified, to read in great detail about the English Establishment. He was to go over, every day, a half-dozen English journals, the serious and the yellow press. He was to develop a knowledge of the principal members of the two major political parties, of the Houses of Lords and Commons, of the court, and of the diplomatic and business world.
    â€œThat is a tall assignment, and obviously you are not expected to arrive in England two weeks from tomorrow with the same knowledge of English affairs that a native would have. It is only the beginning of an extensive program of familiarization, the purpose of which will be explained to you when you get to London.”
    When Anthony Trust had first told Blackford that he would be going to London, his general submissiveness before the counterintelligence discipline prevented him from asking questions about the oddness of his destination, or even from wondering very much about it. Apparently that his mother lived there was the operative point. Perhaps if his mother lived in Pago Pago, he would be sent there, on the grounds that cover means all. But in due course he had permitted himself to wonder. London. There was a sense in which that was the equivalent of dispatching a young counterintelligence agent to Chicago. Surely London, crawling with British agents, was presumably more concerned about the activities of an exuberant revolutionary nation from which she was insulated only by France and the