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FOR A TIME, I WROTE PASSIONATE LETTERS TO KITTREDGE BUT SHE DID NOT respond. Finally, she referred to the Talmud. “Here, Harry, is wisdom for the small part of you that is Jewish. When the old Babylonian Hebrews did not wish to indulge a powerful temptation, they built a fence around their desire. Since one fence is never strong enough to hold the impulse, they built a fence around the fence. Therefore, I do not see you, and I do not encourage love letters. Tell me, rather, what you are learning.”
Reluctantly, I complied. The letter that follows can serve as a sample.
September 12, 1965
Dear Kittredge,
I note that it is a year to the day since you sent me the special information pertaining to William Harvey, and I have not ceased thinking of him since. In fact, I hear about his doings from Cal, who is dreadfully upset at what a mess Harvey is making of Station in Rome. The more Cal thrives as Helms’ troubleshooter, the more he has to wonder whether Helms, when he becomes our next Director, will assign Cal to be his Deputy. So the power of the escalator has entered my father’s estimates, I fear. Cal is getting as authoritative as he used to be in my boyhood. We clash. I believe he’s furious because I won’t be his assistant any longer but have chosen to work for Hugh. But then, it was impossible for my father and me to keep together after Paris. There is no reason for it, but, do you know?—bad conscience lives between us. And Cal has a sense of doom again these days. I do not know if Harvey is the reason, but he is obsessed with him. You see, Helms, most reluctantly, is getting ready to pull Wild Bill back from Rome and send him out to pasture. Who, however, gets the assignment to tell the man he’s through? Helms wants Cal to go over and do it. “That will cushion the fall,” he tells my father. “One of us ought to be there to guide him down the steps.” Cal, however, is having what I am almost tempted to call a failure of nerve. “I can’t do it,” he has said to me more than once. “I would never forgive Bill Harvey if he came around to tell me that I was through. I would assume the man was gloating, and it might put me into a most untenable state.”
“All the same,” I said, “if Helms wants you to do it, you can hardly refuse.”
“Well, I can ask you to be my surrogate. If I send my son, that shows respect.”
“I could end up in close quarters with Bill.”
“Rick, I wouldn’t drop this plum on you if I didn’t believe you could carry it off. An uncomfortable hour or two, yes, but you are my son. When the time comes, you may have to do it. Let us hope he resigns at his own behest.”
We left it at that, but I, for the first time in my life, do not trust my father. I think his fear is career-inspired. I think he is afraid Harvey will make some kind of mess that Boardman Hubbard, future DDP, does not wish to be associated with. I hope I am wrong. I keep hoping, yes, that Bill Harvey will resign, or take a turn for the better. The trouble resides, I think, in the way his job came about. The problem, if you recollect, was that Helms had to spirit Harvey out of McCone’s sight. Only Rome was open. To tempt the palate, Helms gave Harvey an ambitious bill of fare. “Look,” he said, “Rome is now a cream-puff shop. The intelligence we receive is spoon-fed to us by the Italian services. It’s a disgrace. We haven’t turned one KGB man there in ten years. The situation calls for your talents, Bill. Go in there, be yourself, rough as a cob, subtle as a Medici. You can turn that place upside down.”
Helms, according to Cal, was just firing the guy up so that he wouldn’t have to see the job as a demotion. But Harvey charged in. Now, while it is true that even our best people in Rome Station were hardly more than skilled adjuncts to State’s party circuit, and no real intelligence was being acquired, Harvey did play hell with everybody working there. After all, Rome had become a lovely place for old case officers. One could live at last in the lap of a few amenities. Harvey put them on stake-outs. He kept prodding these suave old hands: “Have you recruited your Russian today?” Of course, no Russians were recruited. For topping on the cake, Harvey violated Roman pride as well. He lobbied hard to get his own Italian in as head of one local intelligence service. When Bill finally managed to place this chosen person, the man was such a figure of ridicule to all his new Italian associates that he turned on Harvey. He actually began to obstruct him. Finally, he informed King Bill that no more American taps were going to be allowed on the phone lines of the Soviet and Eastern European embassies. Bill had stage-managed a disaster. A few episodes like that and Harvey grew famous for being bombed at lunch. He would snore until nudged awake.
Then he had a heart attack. He recovered. He kept drinking. One morning, behind the closed door of his office, a gun went off. No one moved. No one dared to look in. Who could face the mess that William Harvey’s walls might offer? One brave secretary finally grew brave enough to push open the door. There was Harvey at his desk, cleaning his gun. It had gone off by accident. Harvey winked.
Kittredge, I think it is getting close. The other day, Cal told me that Helms said, “I would like to take Harvey’s fat head and ram it through a wall.”
Well, it looks like I am going to be the one to get the job. My chances for coming back alive have to be at least one hundred to one in my favor, but, Lord, that one is a live underdog, isn’t it?
Love to you and to Christopher,
Harry