Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

‘There’s a development.’

‘Talk to my boss.’

‘Tried that, but he’s in Miami.’ Hart’s tone of voice made it clear that he didn’t believe that Mann was in Miami.

‘You could just make that flight where they serve free champagne in tourist,’ I suggested.

‘You really in Wall Street? Or are they patching this to some number in Langley, Virginia?’ He gave a little chuckle.

‘What’s on your mind, Gerry?’

‘Listen! I wanted to avoid Mann. It’s you I want to talk to. Spare me thirty minutes over a cream-cheese sandwich. You know the Cookery? – University Plaza? Say one o’clock? Don’t tell Mann – just you alone.’

He had chosen a restaurant about as close to the CIA safe house in Washington Square as it was possible to get. It could have been a coincidence – the Cookery was one of my favourite haunts, and Gerry Hart might well know that – but I had a feeling that he was trying to cut me down to size before hitting me with his proposition. ‘OK,’ I said.

‘I wear a moustache nowadays. Will you be able to recognize me?’ he said. ‘I’ll be reading today’s New York Times.’

‘You mean with two peep-holes cut in the front page?’

‘Just make sure you don’t bring Captain America with you,’ said Hart and rang off.

Gerry Hart pinched his trousers at the knees, so that he wasn’t putting any strain on his twelve-ounce wool-and-mohair suit. That done, he eased his shirt sleeves far enough to reveal his cufflinks, but not so far that his black-faced Pulsar wrist-watch was hidden. The file said he was an authority on New Orleans jazz. ‘Can’t be all bad,’ Mann had remarked at the time.

‘I’m in politics now,’ Hart said. ‘Did you know that?’

‘I thought perhaps you were playing the horses.’

‘You always had a great sense of humour.’ He smiled for just a fraction of a second. ‘I’m not so touchy as I used to be in the old days,’ he said. He fingered his new moustache self-consciously. I noticed the manicured fingernails. He’d come a long way from that nervous, opinionated State Department clerk that I remembered from our first meeting.

The drinks came. I put extra Tabasco into my Bloody Mary and then offered the same to Gerry. He shook his head. ‘Plain tomato juice doesn’t need flavouring,’ he said primly. ‘And I’m certainly surprised you need it with all that vodka.’

‘My analyst says it’s a subconscious desire to wash my mouth out with disinfectant.’

Hart nodded. ‘Well, you have a lot of politician in you,’ he said.

‘You mean I approach every problem with an open mouth,’ I said. I drank quite a lot of my Bloody Mary. ‘Yes, well, if I decide to run, I’ll come and talk to you.’

I knew it would be foolish to upset Hart before I knew what was in his mind. His file said he was a 31-year-old lawyer from Connecticut. I regarded him as one of the first of that growing army of young men who had used a few years’ service in the CIA as a stepping-stone to other ambitions, as at one time the British middle classes had used the Brigade of Guards.

Hart was short and saturnine, a handsome man with curly hair and the sort of dark circles under deep-set eyes that made you think he was sleepy. But Gerry Hart was a tough kid who didn’t smoke and didn’t drink, and if he was sleepy it was only because he stayed up late at night rewriting the inaugural address he’d deliver to Congress on the day he became President.

Hart sipped a little of his tomato juice, and wiped his mouth carefully before speaking. ‘I handle more top-secret material now than I did when I was working for the company – would you believe that?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Gerry Hart liked to refer to the CIA as ‘the company’ to emphasize that he had been on the inside. His file didn’t mention service in the CIA but that didn’t mean a thing.

‘Did you ever hear of the 1924 Society?’ he asked me.

‘I’d rather hear about it from you,’ I said.

‘Right,’ said Hart.

The waitress came to the table with the menus. ‘Don’t go away,’ he told her. He ran his eye quickly down the list. ‘Club sandwich, mixed salad with French dressing, regular coffee, and I’ll take the check. OK?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the waitress.

‘The same,’ I said. That made Gerry Hart feel very secure, and I wanted him to feel very secure.

The waitress closed her pad and took the menus from us. She came back with our order almost immediately. Hart smiled at her.

‘We have penetrated the 1924 Society. That’s why we can do it,’ Gerry Hart explained when she had gone.

‘What’s inside a club sandwich?’ I said. ‘Do what?’

‘Bring Mrs Bekuv here.’

‘Is it like a triple-deck sandwich?’

‘Bring Mrs Bekuv out of the USSR, officially or unofficially.’

‘How?’

‘What do you care how?’

I took the top off my sandwich and examined the filling. ‘We don’t have club sandwiches in England,’ I explained.

‘Even Greenwood hasn’t been told that this is a CIA operation,’ Hart said. ‘Sure, we’ll try to get Bekuv’s wife by asking the Russians through the Senate Scientific Development sub-committee but if they won’t play, we’ll make it work some other way.’