35

IT WAS THE LAST LETTER I RECEIVED FROM HER IN URUGUAY. FOR MANY months, I would open my eyes with the uneasiness of those bereaved who awaken in the morning without being able to tell themselves at first what is wrong. They know only that someone is gone. Then memory presents itself like a hangman at the door.

She had spoken of loving me. That made it worse. I could not have mourned her more if she had been my bride. A pall descended over work. My correspondence with Kittredge had allowed this far-off Station to seem part of the ongoing history of the world. Now it was merely a far-off Station. Deprived of my audience, I felt as if I were perceiving less. No longer did each small event take its place in an ongoing scenario. In desperation, I commenced a diary, but it, too, became matter-of-fact, and I gave it up.

Attempting to rise out of such torpor, I used my accumulated leave to visit Buenos Aires and Rio. I walked for miles through lively cities, and drank in elegant cocktail lounges and at high, stand-up plank tables in steamy smoking drinking holes. I traveled like a ghost without fights or encounters. I visited famous brothels. I was for the first time aware of the distaste for men that one could find on the mouths of whores. When I came back to Montevideo, I went up the coast to Punta del Este and tried to gamble, but found myself too parsimonious. Bored, I could not even say for certain that I was bored. I even had a last night with Sally.

Sherman Porringer and Barry Kearns, having finished their tour in Uruguay, were going back to Washington for reassignment. There were good-bye parties. At one of the last, four days before departure, Sally Porringer said to me, “I want to visit you.”

“In years to come?”

“Tomorrow evening at seven.”

She had had her baby, a boy whose resemblance to Sherman was thankfully complete. “Yes,” she said, “bygones are bygones and I want to see you. For Auld Lang Syne.” She had power over a cliché. So we had a last wall-banger on the bed of my little room. She was still angry, and lay stiffly beside me before we began, but her practical nature won out. She was not a bridge player for too little. Never pass on a playable hand.

In the middle, I discovered myself listening to the sounds we made, and realized that I was comparing them (and somewhat critically) to the climactic duets of Zenia Masarov and Georgi Varkhov. I even entertained the hypothesis that the Soviets were taping Sally and me. That did stimulate my inner life for a day or two. Could the Russians process the tape in time to get it to Sherman before his departure? Would Porringer and I throw a stitch across the wound and stand together in public for a last farewell? We owed that much to Masarov and Varkhov, who kept demonstrating their ability to work together (since neither had gone back to Moscow).

After Porringer and Kearns were gone, replacements came in (who deferred to me as a knowledgeable veteran). Then Howard Hunt had a bereavement. One night when he and Dorothy were at a country-club dance in Carrasco, the Embassy watch officer telephoned to say that Howard’s father had died. Hunt left in the morning for Hamburg, New York, and was a somber fellow on his return. I began to like him more genuinely. He had his grief and I was living with my sorrow. It was agreeable to sit in each other’s company. Either one of us could serve as poultice to amputated sentiments in the other. I came to understand Howard a little better. Early one morning when I had driven over to Carrasco to deliver a couple of economic research papers on South America that I assumed he would pass on to Benito Nardone, he took me out for a walk while breakfast was being prepared. Across the street from his villa was a Catholic lycée. Hunt’s two daughters, dressed in white blouses and wide black floppy bow ties, accompanied by the Hunts’ Argentine governess, were entering the school door. He waved, and said to me, “You have to love a woman to convert to Catholicism for her.” The corners of his mouth turned sour. “My father,” he said, “was still getting used to the idea of his son as a Catholic.” Howard shrugged. “There is a heap of intense feeling back there in America. Somewhat anti-Roman, wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you believe it reaches into our domain? Concerning, that is, decisions on placement?”

“Well, I would hope not,” I replied.

He sighed. He was having his troubles with Ambassador Woodward. I never did learn whether Howard’s money derived from royalties on his early novels and subsequent wise investments, or had come in from Dorothy’s side of the marriage. There was no question, however. He did live better than the average Chief of Station, and Ambassador Woodward was now envoying such criticism through the State Department and over to the Agency. Hunt learned that his scale of living was being attacked as too opulent for a man supposed to be no more than First Secretary at the Embassy.

Last year, I might have filled more than one letter to Kittredge with the unexpected turns of such an office game. Inhabiting a depression, however, was, I discovered, not unlike camping out on the marble floor of a bank. Sharp sounds damped into murmurs, echoes told you more than clear speech, and you always felt cold. While I was party to Hunt’s side of the trouble, and even wanted Station to triumph over State, that was about all the team spirit I could muster.

At this point, J. C. King, Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, came down on a visit, and closeted himself with Hunt. One could not labor in the vineyards of Western Hemisphere Division (which extended from Mexico to Argentina) without picking up a few stories about J. C. King. I already knew, by way of Porringer, that the Colonel had lost an eye on Utah Beach, won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and amassed a fortune after the war. It was Porringer’s tale to tell: “King decided that the people of Brazil would go for condoms. ‘There’s no demand for contraceptives in Brazil,’ everybody told him, ‘it’s a Catholic country.’ Well, King was just stubborn enough to go against the smart money and he built the first condom factory south of the Amazon. Put down his own savings, borrowed more, and who could believe it? Condoms took off in Rio de Janeiro like jet planes. King,” said Porringer, “is now one of the wealthiest men in the Agency, and has a slew of plantations on the Panaga River in Paraguay.”

I would never have divined all this without the briefing. The Colonel was tall, showed a pronounced limp, wore an eye-patch, and was so soft-spoken that he seemed almost hollow. There could be no explanation for him without Alpha and Omega.

I expect that Colonel King’s wealth did Hunt no harm. Ambassador Woodward had put such phrases on the record as “flamboyant preening, unsuitable for government servants.”

“You must have had to put up a strong defense,” I told Hunt afterward.

“I didn’t defend myself,” said Howard. “I attacked. I told Colonel King how effective I had been in getting Nardone in. Why, at the victory party on election night, I was the only American official to be invited from the Embassy. Woodward had even predicted that Nardone could not win. The only way he ever did get to meet Benito before the inauguration was to ask this humble servant to arrange the introduction. Mr. Woodward cannot forgive me for that favor. You may be certain I got my story across to J. C. King. ‘Woodward can go to blazes,’ he said before he left. He didn’t even admonish me to lower the profile. In fact, the Colonel says he has an interesting prospect for me.”

Soon after, Hunt was called to Washington. On return, he invited me once more to Carrasco for dinner, and in the study, over brandy—no longer did I smoke cigars—he told me of the new order of business. “Just when you think your luck is down, it takes a turn. I’ve been invited to participate in a major move. This one will be a lot larger than Guatemala.”

“Castro? Cuba?”

He pointed his index finger at me to show I was on target. “We’re going in for a jumbo move. Cuban exiles to win back their land. Hellaciously covert.” The light in his brandy snifter seemed to be radiating from his face. “I’m to help stage it. Before we’re done, we will stock more groceries than the Agency has ever put up on the shelf. Yet, all sequestered. Fabulously sequestered. Ideally, there won’t be one overt piece of evidence to show U.S. involvement.” He ran his finger around the rim of the glass long enough to induce a clear note. “Would you care to come aboard as one of my assistants?”

“I can’t think of anything I would like more,” I said. I meant it. Under twenty wrappings of apathy, I felt a first stirring of anticipation. Part of my depression might well be due to not knowing where to go after Uruguay. No longer could I see myself in one of Harlot’s mills. To live in Washington, and avoid Kittredge? No. I said to Hunt, “I would very much like to work with you.” Yes, the fires of the vow gave promise of blazing in me again.

“Let me state from the outset,” said Hunt, “nothing is going to be off-limits on this one.”

I must have shown some lack of clear focus, for he brought his head forward and mouthed the next few words. “It might get wet out there.”

I nodded silently. “All the way?” I murmured.

He took his time before pointing a finger to the ceiling.