11

April 11, 1957

I can’t imagine why I told the awful egg story, except I do know. Even as I write this to you, the reason comes home. It was the sound of the egg as it struck their tile floor. Being just an empty shell, it made the softest, saddest little sound on breaking. I can’t get that out of my head. Once on a High Thursday, Hugh told us of an ancient Egyptian saying that the difference between the truth and a lie weighs no more than a feather.

Enough! The exciting news is that we now have an Observation Post right next to the Russian Embassy, and this is as major-league as we have been able to get. Once again, credit is due to Porringer, since the OP comes to us by way of Peones, yet the action derives from Howard’s efforts to wake us up. I have not described Peones, but you would hate him. He’s heavy, very vain, half Spanish, half Italian, and built to endure. Medium height, with massive shoulders and legs. Large black mustache. Frankly, he’s swarthy. Gives off an animal odor that he covers with scent. Peones knows all the brothels in Montevideo and scouts them for new talent the way an assistant college coach will go out to high school football games to look for recruitments. Well, Porringer, I’ve learned, is something of a brothelmaniac himself. Much more than I ever was, so quiet all contumely. I’ve settled down. I’m frankly working too hard. But Porringer and Peones became friends by running together from brothel to brothel. It’s not the most discreet way to develop an agent, but in this case was a dependable means of stoking a relationship. And please don’t say poor Sally Porringer. I’m sure Sherman has his reasons.

About three months ago, Oatsie made the pass on Peones. Here is the background: Peones not only hates Capablanca, but systematically had been deluding him about Sonderstrom and Porringer. Kept insisting they were bona fide State Department. Conceive of his embarrassment (and Oatsie’s) when Howard popped out with the direct admission to Capablanca that the lunch was under the auspices of the Intelligence Agency from the Colossus of the North. Peones was mad as hell after that lunch, but Porringer showed his skills. “Face it, Pedro,” he told him—Peones’ full name is, yes, Pedro Peones—“we’ve been working on you for months and you never join us. I tried to hold my Chief back but he’s impatient. He wants to know straight out—how much is joining us worth to you?”

“We have a saying,” said Peones. “Money buys everything but integrity.”

“We say: Every man has his price.”

“Mine is concealed. It is sequestered.”

“Where might it be sequestered?”

“Why, I tell you, Sherman, it is a little secret, but I tell you: It is sequestered in my cojones.”

Kittredge, I did not believe this conversation when Porringer recounted it. Pedro Peones’ price was located in his no doubt massive testicles. There was, it seems, a girl in the brothels of Montevideo who was so beautiful and so talented that she had gone to Havana a couple of years ago to make her fortune. Now, she had become a legend from the Caribbean to South America. Her name—the working name, that is—comes to no less than Libertad La Lengua (which in loose translation does not signify Freedom of Speech nearly so much as “Ah, Freedom—your tongue!”).

Libertad, it appears, has been corresponding lately with Peones. She is the love of his life. If the Central Intelligence Agency would bring her back from Havana to Montevideo—of her own free will, of course—he is ready to serve. Much of Uruguay, via Peones, would be at our disposal: selected government officials, individual dossiers, the telephone company, Embassy Row, and police informers in left organizations. Peones finishes by saying in English, “My country is yours.”

Porringer carried the offer back to the Station. Peones’ promises are vast, but can he be trusted to deliver? Once the girl is here, what if he fails to come through? Moreover, can we afford it? If she is doing all that well in Havana, her shift of venue may prove expensive. No, Peones promises, the cost will not be prohibitive. The girl sincerely desires to return to him. It is a true love affair, he tells Porringer.

Moreover, says Pedro, we will have to bear no more than the transportation costs. Once she is here, he will establish her in one of several fine properties he already commands. She will be Super-Deluxe. La Montevideana.

So a good deal of cable traffic has gone into these projected costs. It may not be as fearful, economically speaking, as we anticipated. (Two thousand dollars will get the girl here, bag and baggage, first class, bonus included.) Moreover, EH2 knows his way around the appropriate fields in Foggy Bottom. I soon learn that where one COS will get empty pockets on the return cable, another, like Howard, will come up with the kale. You’re right. Hunt does talk about money all the time, and has more synonyms for checks and cash than anyone I ever met. “Does Libertad have any idea how many stick-em-ups it will take to transport her butt down here?” is one of his remarks. “Lettuce,” he calls the stuff, and “frogskins,” “cartwheels” (for silver dollars, I find out), and “farthings.” “Bawbees,” “tanners,” “balboas,” “bolivars.” It’s fun when he gets going.

To my surprise, the biggest impediment is Havana Station. Howard suspects that Caribbean Desk has been using Libertad for specific assignments, but he knows how to pull a few strings on the I-J-K-L harp, and the impasse is adjudicated. We get her. We only wonder a little why did Havana try to throw all that sand into the gears.

Anyway, Pedro is so happy that we now have a new term around the Station for extreme emotional states: it is Delirium Peones. In successive fits of generosity—since the girl has not as yet arrived—Pedro has already installed a tap on the phone lines of his detested superior, Salvador Capablanca. Our listening post immediately gives us the confirmation we need—Luis Batlle, President of Uruguay, is even more pro-Soviet than anticipated. Capablanca is completely his boy. We divined that already, but confirmation is to divination as a good meal to an empty belly.

Then comes the super-coup. After the confirmation cable that Libertad was definitively en route, Peones made a short speech to Porringer. “Sherman,” he said, “I am a man who lives by my values. The highest value a man can possess is to be a caballero. You will soon see what a caballero you have found in me.”

Do you know, he was as good as his word? He had a prize prepared. Over a year ago he had obtained a lease on a villa situated next to the Russian Embassy on Bulevar España. These last twelve months, Peones chose to make no money on the rents—merely took in enough to pay his expenses from a family who, in return for the low rental, had agreed to move out on a week’s notice. His instinct was certainly acute enough to know that we would give much to be able to put some of our own people into such a building, but he took no steps until he knew that we trusted him enough to bring his Libertad back to Montevideo.

If Sonderstrom were still here, he would be dubious of this prize, and Hugh would approach it as a tainted sweetmeat. Even Gatsby and Kearns spoke up. What if the villa next to the Russian Embassy is already wired by the KGB, and Peones has suckered us in?

Hunt cuts through such arguments. “We’ll only use the house as a lookout post on the Soviet garden until a few security people are flown down to check it out. Why, even if the Russians have bugged the villa, they are not going to hear anything of value.”

No, we decide, not if we put the right people in. They must be people who know nothing of our business yet will be patient enough to sit for hours behind the window curtains, always ready to turn on our Bolex H-16 movie camera should someone enter or leave the Embassy. While it is getting late for outdoor parties, the weather here in April is warmer than Washington in October, so there figure to be a few gatherings in the garden underneath our side windows before cold weather sets in. Obviously, we have to find the proper tenants pronto. But, where do we get them? We don’t want to rely on Peones for this.

Hunt decides to collar Gordy Morewood, and soon we have a father and mother installed in the villa with their thirty-year-old daughter. They’re vintage Jewish refugees from the Nazis and came to Montevideo in 1935 or thereabouts. Their name is Bosqueverde, which is changed from the original German, I assume. Grunewald may have been the original. Never altered Hyman to Jaime, however. So it’s Hyman Bosqueverde, and his wife is Rosa. Daughter is Greta. They call her Gretel. They are a timid, very retiring couple with a shy, plain daughter, but very close to one another. If the daughter sneezes, the mother shivers. I know all this because Howard has made me their Support Officer.

You see, none of us dare speak to the Bosqueverdes in English (a pity since their English is not bad), but it would be a total giveaway if the KGB had miked the villa. The solution, therefore, was to use me. While my German is not great, I believe I can get away with laying a heavy Spanish accent over it. We hope the assumption will be—if, that is, the KGB is listening—that I’m some Spanish friend of the Bosqueverdes trying to improve his accent.

At any rate, my duties here are simple and small. In return for living in the villa rent-free, the Bosqueverdes are obliged to keep someone near the movie camera and tripod from six in the morning until dark. Since the daughter works as a librarian, I assume she puts in less time than the parents. I visit every third or fourth night to bring over new film and carry back exposed reels. We get the take developed in a safe lab, and I then put in my hours with a movie projector and screen studying the arrivals and departures from the front gate of the Soviet Embassy, ready to attach a new number to each new face. Then the film is pouched up to Cockroach Alley, where Soviet Russia Division has the capacity to recognize faces and attach dossiers to them. As we receive their findings, life becomes more interesting. One of the faces, for example, belonged to a high-level KGB man. He came to the Embassy a couple of times, left again on each occasion after a half-hour visit, and then flew back to Paris, which we were able to determine via AV/ OUCH-2 in Passport Control. Of course, we don’t know why he made his visit, but SR Division has one more straw for their giant nest.

The garden parties are another matter. Two have been photographed so far, and I run the reels with as much absorption as if I am sitting on the bank of a lake at evening and can’t stop studying the light on the water. It’s a curious image to use because the Bosqueverdes are not skillful photographers, and the result is close to bad home movies with a telephoto lens thrown in. The pans are abrupt enough to make you feel as if a wrestler is throwing you half across the ring. Still, I study the footage over and over for clues to Soviet Embassy personnel relationships, and can’t begin to tell you how absorbing that is. I feel as if I’m watching a film by Roberto Rossellini. I’m tempted to relate more, but would rather wait until the next garden party, which is scheduled for this Saturday. Personnel from the American Embassy have actually been invited, and while the Ambassador won’t go, Hunt may fill in for him as First Secretary, and I could be brought along as Assistant to the First Secretary. How surrealistically splendid it will be if I am present at the party talking to Russians, knowing all the while that I will be able to study them later at leisure. Howard is weighing the pros and cons. He is afraid that if they are indeed tapping the villa they may recognize my voice. I’ll give you his conclusion next week.

For now, let me describe our tenants. They live, as I say, rent-free, and Hyman ekes out his income by giving Hebrew lessons to a few young Jewish pupils who are getting ready for their Bar Mitzvah. Apparently there is a substantial Jewish community in Montevideo. I am absolutely fascinated by these Bosqueverdes. They are the first Jewish family I have ever visited, and everything they do is of interest to me. Almost always when I go over at night, they are drinking tea in glasses, and often are eating some kind of light supper. Sometimes it’s cold herring in sour cream with onions, and the smell, while not disagreeable, does permeate the room. They always offer me food and I always refuse it (since my instructions are to get into no long conversations with them and certainly no verbal transactions about reels and equipment. They know enough to hand over the product silently).

Sometimes one of Hyman Bosqueverde’s students will be studying with the old man in an alcove removed from the camera, and I listen to the mutual recital of Hebrew as if all the words are magical. The man and the boy both wear skullcaps, and that seems equally arcane to me. Think of it! They are getting ready for a Bar Mitzvah in the midst of all this. As I go out, the old lady buttonholes me near the foyer and whispers directly into my ear in a strong German-Jewish accent, “Please, you should take the best care of Mr. Morewood. He works so hard for you.”

“Ja,” I say, “sí, ja,” and I smile and leave with the exposed reels rattling in my paper bag. (Which also has a loaf of bread sticking out of it.) And I am back on the street and sauntering along for three blocks to my pool car, taking a couple of leisurely stops en route to see if perchance I’m being followed. So far—nichts! Good enough. I have the feeling that the villa is not tapped. The Sovietskys simply don’t feel the need to keep up to anything like their standards in Berlin.

On the drive to my hotel I keep thinking about the Jews. They are only one-eighth of me but I have this peculiar whole response to them.

Time for bed. Give my love to my godson, and to you and yours.

Harry