Читать книгу An Affair of State - Harry Hart Frank - Страница 19

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On the day that the Bulgarian Communists tried and executed Kenov for no greater reason than that he led the opposition, Matson called Jeff into his office. “Well, Baker,” he asked, “what do you think of things? Still anxious for the Balkans?”

“Yes, I still want to go,” Jeff said.

“You saw the dispatch about Kenov?”

“Yes, I saw it.”

“He was a friend of mine,” Matson said. “A good friend. Just as good a friend as any friend I have here in Washington. And he was a gentleman. He’s been in my home a dozen times. Furthermore, he was a good public servant. He devoted his life to raising his people out of ignorance and poverty. He opposed the Nazi tyranny, and he opposed the Red tyranny, and now those damn beasts have killed him.”

“They’re bastards, all right. But do you think all of them are bastards?”

“Enough of them are bastards so sometimes I agree with those who say we can’t be far wrong in wiping out the whole bunch, while there’s time.”

“You can’t kill two hundred million people.”

“Wouldn’t have to. Just kill thirty or forty million, and hang the New York radicals from every lamppost on Fifth Avenue. That’s what people are saying and perhaps that’s the only answer.”

“Isn’t that genocide?” Jeff said. He knew he should be quiet. “Isn’t that advocating the same thing for which we condemned the Nazis? Incidentally, for which we condemned some of them to death?”

Matson seemed whiter than ever, as if all the blood had fled from his face and hands to feed the hot ball of anger inside him. “I’ll take my chances on being condemned,” he said. “We are engaged in a struggle for survival—our world against theirs. You have been picked as one of the men to go out in the front line. You should have no doubts.”

Jeff had to say it. “But I do have doubts. I’m confused. I feel like I’m wallowing around in a swamp and can’t find my way out. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong any more. Poor Winant must have felt like this, only worse, because he knew so much more than I know and I find that the more I know the more I’m confused.”

He knew he had mentioned Winant because Dannenberg had said he looked something like Winant, and his subconscious had been considering Winant—and Winant’s suicide—ever since. He knew now how dismayed he had been when Winant killed himself, and then Jan Masaryk killed himself. Their deaths had made him feel exactly as if he had lost an older friend out of his platoon. He knew neither of them, yet their deaths were personal.

Matson had been doodling a set of round noseless faces across his blotter. He punctuated them with grim little mouths before he spoke. “What you’ve just said proves I was right. I don’t mind telling you that you’re in my Division in spite of my protests. In times like these men of your temperament should be sent to Madagascar or New Zealand, whatever their experience. The Secretary insisted you go to Europe, and Dannenberg gave you to me.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jeff said.

“I’m glad to have you, so long as you behave. You’ve been picked for Budapest, and you’ll go to Budapest next week, and by God you’ll go as a soldier. You’ll take orders and carry them out.”

“Yes, sir,” Jeff said, because there wasn’t anything else to say.

“I mean that literally,” said Matson. “The Legation in Budapest is on a quasi-military footing. We now consider the Embassy in Moscow as nothing more than a garrison under siege, from which there can be few sorties for intelligence and information. But Budapest is a listening post and observation post deep inside the enemy lines. Exactly what you’ll do there is up to Admiral Blankenhorn, as Chief of Mission. Maybe he’ll let you work under Keller. Maybe he’ll make you stable boy. I don’t know.”

Jeff knew from the cables that Fred Keller had arrived in Budapest a month before, and that his title was Special Assistant to the Minister. No reference to his work ever appeared in the cables. Matson guessed at Jeff’s curiosity. “This is extremely confidential,” he said. “It is probably the most confidential work going on in my area. You will have to know about it sometime, so I might as well tell you now. Mr. Keller is forming resistance groups inside Hungary. If it works out there we’ll try it in other countries. We call this experiment the Atlantis Project. You know—Atlantis, the bridge between the continents. When war comes, we’ll have an organization in Europe.”

“When war comes?” Jeff said.

“Yes. War must come. I know it’s not diplomatic to say it, but I’m a realist.” He spoke with the finality of one who has stated the world is round. Jeff knew there was no use arguing, then or ever. Not with Matson.