23

March 10, 1958

Dear Kittredge,

I have let two weeks go by since receiving your extraordinary letter of February 22, but you gave me such a jolt with talk of Dracula’s Lair. I hope you know what you are getting into—whatever it is. I confess to being consumed with curiosity, and am exercised that you tell me no more. Yet, given the long hiatus last year in our letters, I feel, paradoxically, a pressure to bring you up to date on my affairs. I am going through my own kind of heavy moral duty.

I suppose I am thinking of my work with Chevi Fuertes. With the exception of a vacation in Buenos Aires that he took with his wife at Christmas, I have seen him at least once a week for the last fourteen months. The Groogs have developed a great taste for Chevi’s output, and they monitor my reports carefully. He is far and away our most significant penetration into the Communist Party of Uruguay, and a measure of his importance can be seen in how my war with the Sour-balls was brought to its formal close. A cable came from the Right Gobsloptious Baron—where did you ever get that word? (Was it at the age of eleven playing jacks on Brattle Street, your pigtails flying? Gobsloptious—my God!) J. C. King sent the following to Hunt: COMMENDATION CONFIRMED RE AV/AILABLE’S DEVELOPMENT OF AV/OCADO.

Hugh’s virtuosity is unparalleled. The Commendation did the job. Soviet Russia Division was obliged to recognize that a flutter test at this point would poke a very rude finger into the grand eye of J. C. King. So they withdrew. Hunt, concomitantly, has been cordial as hell ever since, and promises to take me along on a visit to an estancia one of these weekends. To certify this intention, he is teaching me to play polo on a practice field out in Carrasco. Do you know, human perversity being a bottomless pit, I like him more for liking me more!

In fact, I’m a little taken with myself. King’s praise may have been stimulated by Hugh, but the language did enable me to reflect back on these fourteen months, and yes, I think I have brought in enough good work on Chevi to, yes, rate the Commendation.

You may then inquire why I have written so little about my top agent. I suppose I have kept away because the job consists of adding up small pieces of information gleaned from Chevi’s tasks at the PCU (Partido Comunista de Uruguay), and I did not wish to bore you.

All the same, in these fourteen months, Chevi has moved up the rungs of that organization. His wife may be the leading woman in the Uruguayan Party, but Chevi has become her effective equal. He may even be ranked, overall, in the top twenty of Uruguayan Communists, and could one day become titular head of the whole shebang. Already, we have access to the thinking of the leadership.

Of course, the reason he has risen so quickly is that the Station made it possible. You may recall that nearly a year ago we had Chevi plant a transmitter in the PCU’s inner office. It was a five-minute job consisting of no more than the replacement of a porcelain wall outlet with our bugged duplicate—an enterprise calling for no more than a screwdriver. Still, it was squeaky work and had to be done under combat conditions, that is, in the ten minutes that Chevi’s associate was down the hall using the john.

At the time, we debated whether it was worth endangering AV/OCADO, but decided that the prospective take balanced out nicely with the relative security of the caper. Chevi showed neither emotion nor enthusiasm. He merely insisted that his weekly stipend be raised from fifty dollars to sixty. (We settled for a bonus of fifty bucks and a five dollar a week raise.) Then he brought the chore off without incident, and we have been receiving the product ever since, although the transmission is often garbled. Since Chevi, however, does not know how spotty our equipment has proved, he assumes we get it all and that motivates him to be scrupulous in what he tells us about the deliberations of upper-echelon PCU.

Moreover, the dispatch with which he carried off the wall-outlet job helped to convince us that he had turned a corner. This often happens with agents. Their early hysteria is replaced by effective calm. In consequence, Hunt decided to advance his career in the Partido Comunista de Uruguay. Marvelous, isn’t it? Easier to get Eusebio Fuertes promoted than myself.

Kittredge, this exercise in applied intelligence isn’t altogether pretty. We don’t go in for wet jobs—at least, not down here, although I won’t speak for Dracula’s Lair, whew!—but our route did get dirty enough to stop in Pedro Peones’ office. Reunited with Libertad La Lengua, Pedro was cordially inclined to entrap a couple of PCU officials for us. They were stationed higher than Chevi and very much in his way. So, a kilo package of heroin happened to be found in the car trunk of the selected PCU official (the drug on loan from Peones’ narcotics squad). The other Communist was arrested for driving under the influence and then being so rash as to attack the pursuing officers. (After being splashed down with a bottle of liquor, he was then smashed repeatedly, I fear, in the face. That was to show evidence of the battle he started with Peones’ cops.) While the PCU knew their people were being framed, there was little they could do about it. The first accused was held without bail for allegedly dealing in a large quantity of drugs, and the second was beaten badly enough to be severely demoralized. Replacements had to be found for their jobs.

Now, these victims (if it is any consolation to them) happened to be chosen with considerable care. You might even say the operation was designed by Sherman Porringer. I am beginning to see some relation between Oatsie’s carefully painted eggshells and the delicacy he brought to this project. Hunt provided the go-ahead—“See what you can do about getting Chevi promoted”—but Porringer put it all into place. Elegant selection of target was what Sherman was hunting for. As he saw it, the key mistake would be to knock out the man directly above Chevi. We had to allow that the PCU would be bright enough to assume Pedro Peones was doing our muscle work, and so their suspicion was bound to fall on the man who was in line to fill the gap. All right, then, reasoned Porringer, look not only for a good man to knock out, but get one whose immediate inferior is not well respected, thereby disposing of two obstacles for the price of one. This double disruption, even though located several rungs up the ladder, would have to benefit Fuertes before too long.

On the drug bust, Peones’ victim was a PCU leader of unassailable integrity, but his assistant had a gambling problem, and so was brought to trial by his Party peers on an accusation of collaboration with Peones. Before it was over, the man resigned his office.

Some months later, the second arrest produced comparable results. Chevi had advanced four rungs through our efforts.

Crucial to Porringer’s design was that we maintained immaculate hygiene in relation to Peones. Pedro was never given a reason for either arrest, and we even discussed with him attacks on several other Communist officials including Fuertes. Our assumption was that Peones’ police office had already been penetrated by the PCU. The best way to obtain Chevi a clean bill from his own Communists, therefore, would be to add his name to Peones’ list of intended PCU victims. Indeed, Chevi was soon warned by the Party hierarchy that Peones was looking to entrap him.

Fuertes began to talk, therefore, of the threat to his safety. “I would hate,” he told me, “to be beaten up by Peones’ duros for being a Communist when, in fact, I am a betrayer of Communists. The punishment would fit too closely to the crime.”

“You possess a sense of irony.”

“I would hope it is loyalty, not irony, that I will discover in you. Can you tell Peones to stay off this body?” He tapped his chest.

“We only have limited influence with the man,” I said.

“Verdad? That is not what I hear.”

“We have tried to set up a relationship, but have had no success.”

“Unbelievable. Who can pay Peones more than you?”

“For whatever reason, Peones pursues his own course.”

“You are saying, then, that you will not protect me from police goons?”

“I think we can exercise some influence.” When he laughed at this, I added, “We are more law-abiding than you would ever believe.”

More recently, Chevi has become suspicious of his rapid Party advancement. A few months ago he said to me, “It is one thing to betray my coworkers, but another to shoot them in the back.”

Still, Chevi has changed considerably. I think. For one thing, he is now high enough on the slope to sniff the air of the summit, and that has been tonic to his ambition. For another, his identity has altered.

Kittredge, either his Alpha or Omega has taken over from the other. He has put on more than thirty pounds, and has grown a prodigious handlebar mustache which, in company with the plump pouches beneath his eyes, has given him a jolly piratical South American look. He makes you think of an overweight gaucho riding a skinny horse. With Roger Clarkson, he was always on the run for women; now, he is a glutton for food. AV/OCADO is taking on the shape of his name. The largest disagreement we face these days is where to meet. He hates the safe house. May heaven help me if I forget to stock the icebox! He wants tapas and beer, steak and bourbon, and—speak of peculiarities—raw onions with good Scotch! Plus desserts. Dulces. Even the sound calls to mind a stream of half-frozen delights sweetening the parched canyon of the throat. He talks while eating. His pieces of intelligence come forth best as food passes in the opposite direction. He punctuates tidbits of information by sucking in small jets of air to clean the spaces between his teeth. At times he acts as gross as Peones. And he keeps coming back to one theme: that we meet more often in restaurants. I have increasing difficulty in refusing him. For one thing, the denizens of our high-rise apartment house muster an astonishing number of rich widows and well-to-do retired tarts, and they study everyone who comes up to their floor. Each time the elevator stops, doors open a crack all up and down the hall. Eyes peek at one voraciously. These ladies must have expected a comfortable old age where they could pull back wooden shutters and set their accumulated bosoms on a worm-eaten second-story windowsill while they observed life in the common street below. Instead, they are now marooned on the twelfth floor and can only keep an eye on who goes in and out of each apartment. Needless to say, Fuertes is also aware of this, and claims it is dangerous. The word could be out among the neighbors that our apartment is kept by El Coloso del Norte, and, besides, he might be recognized. He has lived almost all of his life in Montevideo.

I take up the problem with Hunt and he is furious. “Tell the son of a bitch to shove his reports in a dead drop. We’ll pick them up with a cut-out.”

“Howard,” I protest gently, “we’ll lose a lot if I can’t talk to him.” I pause. “What about moving to a more secluded safe house?”

“All safe houses present problems. His real bitch is the ambiente. That goddamn furniture! I can’t get requisitions for decent stuff. Economies in the wrong place. I hate tacky government mentalities. A posh safe house is a good investment if you can only convince the powers that be.” He stopped. “Wigs,” said Howard. “Tell him to put on a different disguise each time.”

“Won’t work,” I said, “with his mustache.”

“Just tell the cocksucker to shape up. Treat him like a servant. That’s the only language agents really respect.”

Exiting from this interview, it occurs to me that I may now have put in more hours in the field than Howard. In any event, I certainly know better than to follow his advice. As a practical matter, never treat an agent like Chevi any worse than a younger brother. And most of the time I cater to him. Part of that derives, I know, from my incomplete ability, as Hugh would put it, to toughen up. Damn it, I feel for my agent. Chevi does manage to penetrate into all those close places in oneself where you chart the rise and fall of your ego. (Query: We’ve never talked about Alpha Ego and Omega Ego and their inner relations. That’s a whole study, I know.) Chevi, I suspect, is treating me like a younger brother all the while I am trying to treat him like one. As one example of how he attempts to keep me in place, he loves to speak of his two years in New York when he lived with that Negress in Harlem. She turned tricks, and was on drugs, and encouraged him to be her pimp. After a time, he changes his story and confesses that he actually took on the job. He tells me hair-raising tales about knife fights with other pimps. I don’t know how much of it is true—I suspect he is exaggerating—indeed, I would guess he avoided knife fights, but I just can’t swear to any of this. He does have a few facial scars. Be assured, however, his tales serve their purpose: I feel inferior to his sophistication. On the other hand, we are always in one or another spiritual contest to see who will end up brother superior.

Lately, I’ve been having my troubles in this direction. Howard’s concept of emblazoning MARXISMO ES MIERDA in six-foot letters on every available town wall has escalated into a small war. If Marxists have their own kind of religious feelings, then connecting Marxism and shit to each other certainly awakens something explosive. The toughest leftist street gangs in Montevideo come from the dock area, and their leaders are high cadre in the MRO, an ultra-left group. Such boys are tough. In fact, they proved so rugged that our kids in AV/ALANCHE were getting chewed up by the street fights. It was no fun, I tell you, to sit in my car a half mile away, and hear nothing but a brief “Emboscada!”—ambushed!—over my walkie-talkie, then, fifteen minutes later, see the team come straggling back with an unholy number of bloody heads—four out of seven one night. Then, worse: one boy in the hospital, soon another. Howard called on Peones to beef up our troops with off-duty cops handsomely paid from the Special Budget. Well, AV/ALANCHE won a few fights, only to see the MRO come back with reinforcements of their own. These nocturnal encounters have grown into medieval battles.

In the last year, a small operation of seven kids who did their wall painting once a week, and fell into a skirmish perhaps one night a month, has grown into a series of massive encounters with thirty or forty people on either side using rocks, clubs, knives, shields, helmets, and one bow and arrow, yes, such items were actually found on the street after the last ruckus we won, and finally, a boy on our side was killed about a month ago. Shot dead through the eye. Peones ran a dragnet through two working-class neighborhoods, Capurro and La Teja, searching for the gun and the gunman, and informed Hunt that the killer was taken care of without a trial (which we are now free to believe or disbelieve), but, as you can see, the character of the event is significantly altered. Peones keeps two police cars waiting in the wings to charge in should the battle go poorly. AV/EMARIA, with their infrared camera, were actually used on one occasion to patrol up and down the surrounding streets photographing any and all youths approaching the scene, an absurdly over-weighted venture (speak of expense!) which Hunt did call to a halt once he saw that the results, apart from the labors of identification, were technically inadequate. (You couldn’t discern the faces on the film, let alone identify them.) I could have told him as much.

At any rate, the MRO is now on the offensive. YANQUI A FUERA! is getting painted on many walls, and in good Catholic neighborhoods, too. The MRO people seem to have a better sense of where to strike than we do. Hunt decides that one of Peones’ cops must be secretly aiding the MRO, and wants Chevi to furnish us with detailed information on the MRO cadres so we can get more a line on this.

Fuertes refuses the request outright. He is a serious agent doing serious work, he says, and we are asking him to inform on street youths. “My pride is that I betray those who are situated above me, not beneath me.”

“Ayúdame, compañero,” I exclaim.

“I am not your compañero. I am your agent. And insufficiently paid.”

“Do you think you will get a raise by refusing us?”

“That is a matter of no significance. You will, in either case, continue to treat me like a puppet, and I will attempt to exert whatever autonomy is left to me.”

“Why don’t we cut through the crap and get to the bone,” I tell him.

“Quintessentially American. Get to the bone.”

“Will you fulfill our request?”

“I betray big people. Stupid, stuffed-shirt bureaucratic Communists who have sold out their own people for the power they can now exercise at a desk. They are upper filth, and I associate myself with them every day, and become an upper bureaucrat like them. But, I do not delude myself. I have betrayed my people and my roots. I am a viper. Nonetheless, I am not so degraded that I wish to poison those who are smaller than myself. The MRO street boys who come out from La Teja to fight at night are nearer to me than you can ever be. I grew up in La Teja. I was cadre myself in the MRO during university days. But, now, as an entrenched bureaucrat in the PCU, I no longer have the contacts you need. You see, the MRO does not trust the PCU. They view it as too established and too penetrated.”

Well, at least I have a plausible report to bring back to Hunt. I am writing it in my mind as I listen: Profound internecine mistrust between MRO and PCU. Cannot determine Left police sources without penetrating MRO.

That will use up a month of debate between Station and Groogs. By then, Hunt may be on to something else, or—and now I have an inspiration. The key to working with Chevi is to save mutual face.

“All right,” I say, “you will not do it, and I will not threaten you. I accept your version; PCU and MRO lack umbilical connection.”

“Put that in the bank,” says Chevi. He bends toward me and whispers, “They hate each other.” He giggles.

“All right,” I say, “point made. Now, I want you to help me. My people are going to need a penetration into the highest places in the MRO.” I point upward with my finger to emphasize that I am in tune with the AV/OCADO ethic of punching up, always up. “I want you to provide me with a list of possible high personnel for penetration.”

This is the kind of bargain that can be struck.

“I will need two weeks,” he says.

“No, I want it for our meeting next week.” I am thinking that I will get together with Gordy Morewood and go over the names Chevi brings in. Gordy may even know how to make the approach. All this will take months, but my rapidly aging young backside will be covered. Oh, Kittredge, this was the moment when I knew I was a Company man.

“Next week,” Chevi agrees.

With that, he stepped into the hall, raised his hand in greeting, I suppose, to the retired tarts peeking out at him, and, waddling just a trifle in obedience to his increasing avoirdupois, made his way to the elevators.

That son of a bitch. I can assure you, he probably had the names already. By the next week, he came forth with a short list of three figures in the MRO, and Gordy Morewood was on the stick. In turn, by the following week, Fuertes had asked for a raise. And will probably get it.

Yes, Masarov has been only one element in these busy days. Write to me. I need it.

Love,
Harry