Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it. Copyright © 1991 by Norman Mailer All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in 1991 by Random House, Inc. Portions of this work were originally published in Rolling Stone. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: HARCOUBT BRACE JOVANOVICH, INC., AND FABER AND FABER LIMITED: Five lines from "The Waste Land," which appear on pages 27 and 28 of 'Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot. Rights throughout the world excluding the U.S.A. are controlled by Faber and Faber Limited. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Limited. the new republic: Excerpts from "Unofficial Envoy" by Jean Daniel, December 13, 1963, and excerpts from "When Castro Heard the News" by Jean Daniel, December 7, 1963. Copyright © 1963 by The New Republic, Inc. Reprinted by permission of The New Republic. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 9290052 ISBN: 0345379659 Text design by Holly Johnson Cover design by James R. Harris Cover photography by Armando Ysidro Reyes Manufactured in the United States of America First Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition: September 1992 10 987654321 TO JASON EPSTEIN H A R L 0 T 'S GHOST on A LATE-WINTER EVENING IN 1983, WHILE DRIVING THROUGH FOG along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago. In the spring, after the planting of corn, the younger braves and squaws would leave the aged to watch over the crops and the children, and would take their birchbark canoes south for the summer. Down the Penobscot River they would travel to Blue Hill Bay on the western side of Mount Desert where my family's house, built in part by my great-great-grandfather, Doane Hadlock Hubbard, still stands. ' It is called the Keep, and I do not know of all else it keeps, but some Indians came ashore to build lean-tos each summer, and a few of their graves are among us, although I do not believe they came to our island to die. Lazing in the rare joys of northern warmth, they must have shucked clams on the flats at low tide and fought and fornicated among the spruce and hemlock when the water was up. What they got drunk on I do not know, unless it was the musk of each other, but many a rocky beach in the first hollow behind the shore sports mounds of ancient clamshells, ground to powder by the centuries, a beach behind the beach to speak of ancient summer frolics. The ghosts of these Indians may no longer pass through our woods, but something of their old sorrows and pleasures joins the air. Mount Desert is more luminous than the rest of Maine. Even guidebooks for tourists seek to describe this virtue: "The island of Mount Desert, fifteen miles in diameter, rises like a fabled city from the sea. The natives call it Acadia, beautiful and awesome." Beautiful and awesome. We have a fjord in the middle of Mount Desert, a spectacular four-mile passage by water between promontories on either side. It is the only true fjord on the Atlantic coast of 4 NORMAN MAILER North America, yet it is but a part of our rock-hewn splendor. Near the shore, peaks rise abruptly a thousand feet to afford sailing craft the illusion of great mountains, and our finest anchorage, Northeast Harbor, is in summer a dazzle of yachts. Perhaps it is the nearness of our mountains to the sea, but silences are massive here, and summers have an allure not simple to describe. For one thing, we are not an island to attract people who follow the sun. We have almost no sand beach. The shore is pebble and clamshell strand, and twelve-foot tides inundate the rocks. Washed by incoming waves are barnacles and periwinkles, rockweed mussels, Irish moss, red seaweed, dulse. Sand dollars and whelks lie scattered in the throw of the surf Kelp is everywhere and devil's-apron often winds around one's ankles. In the tide pools grow anemone and sponge. Starfish and sea urchins are near your toes. One walks with care over sharp stones. And the water is so cold that swimmers who did not spend childhood vacations in this icy sea can hardly bear it. I have lolled in the wild green above the reefs of the Caribbean and sailed over purple deeps in the Mediterranean, I have seen the inimitable mist of hot summer on the Chesapeake when all hues blend between the sky and the bay. I even like slate-brown rivers that rush through canyons in the West, but I love the piercing blue of Frenchman's Bay and Blue Hill Bay, and the bottomless blue of the Eastern and Western Way surrounding Mount Desert--indeed, one's" affection for the island even shares the local accent. As decreed by the natives', one spells it Mount Desert, but the pronunciation is Mount Dessert. The view is as fine as sugar frosting to a New Englander's eyes. I speak in hyperbole, but then who cannot on recalling such summer beauties as "the astonishing color of our rocks at water's edge. They are apricot, then lavender, and pale green, yet in late afternoon they become purple over the whole, a dark royal violet is the color of the twilight shore seen from the sea. That is our island in August. Beach heather and wild rose grow near the salt marsh grass, and in our meadows white-throated sparrows spring from one decaying stump to another.. The old hayfields smell of redtop and timothy, and wildflowers bloom. The northern blue violet and the starflower, the wood sorrel and the checkerberry, painted trillium and wild geranium, golden heather and Indian pipe grow in our bogs and fields and on the sunny slopes of our mountains in the seams between ledges of rock. Down by the marshes are swamp candles andjewelweed. Once, when I was a boy (for I studied the names ofwildflowers then) I found the HARLOT'S GHOST 5 white-vein orchid in some swampy woods; it was greenish-white, and lovely, and as rare as the moon entering eclipse. For all its tourist traffic come July, Mount Desert is still possessed of a tender yet monumental silence. If one would ask how the monumental can ever be tender, I reply that such words recall us to the beautiful and awesome. So am I tempted, when caution deserts me, to describe my wife, Kittredge. Her white skin becomes luminous in any pale meadow; it also reflects the shadows of the rock. I see Kittredge sitting in such shadows on a summer day, and her eyes have the blue of the sea. I have also been with her when she can seem as bleak as the March storms that strike this island. Now, in March, the fields are dun, and the snow, half-gone, will be stained in the morning with the stirring of the mud. In March, the afternoons are not golden but gray, and the rocks are rarely burnished by the sun. Certain precipices become as grim as the endless meditations of granite. At winter's end. Mount Desert is like a miser's fist; the dull shell of the sky meets a leaden sea. Depression sits over the hills. When my wife is depressed, no color stirs in my own heart, and her skin is not luminous but hooded in pallor. Except for snowy days, when island lights still dance off the frozen rock like candles on a high white cake, I do not like to live in late winter on Mount Desert. The sunless sky weighs over us, and a week can go by when we do not speak. That is loneliness kin to the despair of a convivial drinker who has not poured a glass for days. It is then that ghosts begin to visit the Keep. Our fine dwelling is hospitable to ghosts. The house sits alone on an island, not ten acres of spread, just a stone's throw--literally one long throw--off the western shore of Mount Desert. Called Doane, after my great-great-grandfather, it is subject, I suspect, to visitations. While islands, according to my wife, are supposed to be more acceptable to invisible spirits than to such peculiarly apparent manifests as ghosts, I think we break the rule. Out on Bartlett's Island, somewhat to the north of us, is the all-but-certified ghost of Snowman Dyer, an eccentric old fisherman. He died on Bartlett's in 1870 under the roof of his spinster sister. Once, as a young man, he had bartered five lobsters for a small Greek tome that belonged to a classics scholar at Harvard. The work was the Oedipus Rex and it had an interlinear trot. The old fisherman. Snowman Dyer, was intrigued so much by Sophocles' words in literal translation that he attempted to read the original Greek. Not knowing 6 NORMAN MAILER how to pronounce the alphabet, he contrived nonetheless a sound for each character. As he grew older, he grew bolder, and used to recite aloud from this unique tongue while wandering over the rocks. They say that to spend a night in the dead sister's house will bring Snowman Dyer's version of Greek to your ear, and the sounds are no more barbaric than the claps and groans of our weather. A corporate executive from Philadelphia, Bingham Baker, and his family now inhabit the house and seem to thrive on the ghost--at least, all the Bakers look pink-cheeked in church. I do not know if they hear the moan of winter in Snowman Dyer's voice. Old Snowman may be the ghost ofBartlett's Island, but we have another on Doane, and he is not so agreeable. A sea captain named Augustus Parr, he owned and occupied our land two and a half centuries ago. There are allusions to his habits in an old sea-diary I have found in the library at Bar Harbor, and one voyage is cited "durying whych Farr ingaged in pracdze ofpiracie" and boarded a French frigate in the Caribbean, took its cargo of Cuban sugar, put the crew to sea in an open boat (except for those who would join him), and beheaded the commodore, who died in naked state because Fan- had appropriated his uniform. Then Augustus was so bold in later years as to have himself buried on his northern island--now our island--in the Frenchman's dress apparel. I have never seen Augustus Farr, but I may have heard his voice. One night, not long ago, when alone in the Keep, I came out of a dream to find myself conversing with the wall. "No, leave," I said boldly, "I do not know if you can make amends. Nor do I trust you." When I recall this dream--if it was a dream--I shiver in a way I cannot repeat at other times. My flesh shifts on my back as if I am wearing a jacket of lizard skin. I hear my own voice again. I am not speaking to the plaster in front of me but to a room I feel able to see on the other side of the wall. There, I visualize a presence in a tattered uniform sitting on an oaken and much-scarred captain's chair. An odor of corruption is in my nose. Out on the mud flats, or so I hear through the window--I do not dare to look--the sea is boiling. How can waters boil when the tide is out? I am still in my dream but watch a mouse streak along the floor, and feel the ghost of Augustus Farr on the other side of the wall. The hair stiffens on the back of my head as he descends the stairs to the cellar. I hear him going down to the Vault. ' Underneath the cellar, it was originally a dugout built by my, father after the Second World War when he still owned the Keep. He prided himself on being the first American to take in the consequences of Hiroshima. "Everybody needs a place where he can get under it all," said my father, Cal Hubbard, two years before he sold our property to his second cousin, Kittredge's father, Rodman Knowles Gardiner, who in turn gave it over to Kittredge on her first marriage. In the time Rodman Gardiner had it, however, he decided to go my father one further and was the first man, so far as I know, in this part of Maine to have a cinder-block fallout shelter complete with canned goods, bunks, kitchen, ventilation fans, and at the entrance, two corridors set at right angles to one another. What that ninety-degree turn has to do with keeping off nuclear radiation I cannot say, but there were curious fashions in early fallout shelters. It is still there for us; a family embarrassment. Up in Maine you are not supposed to protect your life that much. I despised the shelter. I let it molder. The foam rubber of the bunk mattresses has gone to powder. The stone floor is covered with nothing less than an old slime. The electric light bulbs, long burned out, are corroded in their sockets. Let this not give too false an idea of the Keep. The floor of the Vault—so the fallout shelter came inevitably to be named—is ten feet below the main cellar, which is, itself, a large, clean, stone chamber. The main floor and second story and full attic of the Keep are kept in reasonable order by a Maine woman who comes in every day the weather permits when we are there, and once a week when we are gone. It is only the Vault that is left untended. That is my fault. I cannot bear to let anyone go down to it. If I open the door, a mad dank odor comes up from below. It is no rarity for subcellars to be dank, but the odor of madness is another matter. On the night when I emerged from my dream to encounter Augustus Farr, on that night when I became convinced I was not dreaming and heard him descending the stairs, I got up from bed and attempted to follow. This was not an act of bravery so much as a product of endless conditioning in the special art of converting one's worst fears to fortitude. My father told me once when I was an adolescent, "If you are afraid, don't hesitate. Get right into the trouble if that is the honest course." It was a hypothesis on the art of courage that I had to refine considerably in bureaucratic wars where patience was the card to play, but I knew when fear proved paralyzing that one had sometimes to force a move or let one's soul pay up. The honest 8 NORMAN MAILER course on encountering a ghost was clear: Follow him. I tried. My feet as cold as a winter corpse, I started down the stairs. That was no dream. In front of me, doors slammed in a fury. "I will not return until I do," I thought I heard a voice cry. By the time I descended to the first cellar, my resolve had run out. At the entrance to the Vault a presence as malevolent as any dark creature of the sea seemed to be waiting below. My courage was now not large enough to take my legs down the last ten steps. I stood there unmoving, as if some part of honor would be safeguarded if I did not flee, but stood in place to accept the wrath of whatever it was. I will say it. I lived in the intangible embrace of that malevolence. Then, Augustus--I assume it was Augustus--withdrew into the depths of the Vault and I felt free to retreat. I went back to my bed. I slept as if drugged by the most powerful oftranquilizers. Since that time I have not gone to the Vault nor has Augustus come to me. Nonetheless, the Keep was altered by his visitation. Possessions get broken now at an alarming rate, and I have seen ashtrays slide off tables. It is never so dramatic as in the films. Rather, it is sly. You cannot say to a certainty that your coat sleeve did not brush the object nor that the old floor does not have a tilt. It could all have happened through natural causes, or just about. Dealing with such phenomena is like trying to ascertain the facts when talking to a consummate liar. Things keep turning into other things. The wind outside our windows seemed quicker than ever to show its cardinal points: sinister, or saintly, soft or shocking. I never listened to the wind so much as after the visit of Augustus Fan-', and the sound of oars would come to me although no boatman was visible. Still, I could hear oarlocks groaning, and bells rang out from chapels on the main island where, so far as I knew, no towers stood to hold the bells. I would listen to the gate swinging in a high wind and plaster falling behind the laths. Small beetles with shells as hard as 12-gauge shot came out of the sills. Every | time I went through my books in the library, I could swear a few had | moved, but of course the cleaning woman often passed through, or| Kittredge, or even myself. No matter. Like a chill pool in a warm hal Farr was about. Yet, for all this, the Keep was not spoiled. A ghostly presence not always dire. Kittredge and I, being childless, had space to let in i large a house. Fan- was a mighty diversion, not unequal to living wi< a drunk or a crazy brother. If he remains as a phantom I cannot swe I have seen, still I would speak of ghosts as real. Some ghosts may be re HARLOT'S GHOST 9 embarking a year later, in March of 1984, on an overnight flight from Kennedy Airport, New York, to London, with a connection to Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow, I kept reading and rereading the dozen pages of typescript that described my former home on Doane Island in Maine. I did not dare to cease. I was in a state of anxiety that gave promise of growing unmanageable. Those dozen pages were the first chapter of what I had come to call the Omega manuscript. I had another, an Alpha manuscript, which once took up twelve inches in a locked file cabinet next to my desk at the Keep, a work that could boast of more than two thousand typewritten pages, but it was formidably indiscreet, and so I had committed its bulk to microfilm, and consigned the original sheets to a shredder. The Alpha manuscript was with me now, all two thousand frames of microfilm on two hundred strips of ten flames each which, laid by sets into glassine sleeves, were packed snugly within an eight-by-eleven-inch manila envelope. I had concealed this slim, even elegant, package, not a quarter of an inch thick, in a recess of a special piece of luggage I had owned for years, said medium-size suitcase now riding in the cargo hold of the British Airways plane that was taking me on the first leg, New York to London, of my flight to Moscow. I would not see it until I was ready to unpack the bag in Russia. My other manuscript, however, the Omega, a moderate one hundred and eighty pages, so recently written that I had not converted it to microfilm, still existed as typescript in the attache case beneath my seat. If I had spent the first hundred minutes of this trip in limbo, which is to say, there in the middle of Economy, dreading my arrival in London, my change of planes, and, most certainly, my eventual terminus in Moscow, I felt unable to explain to myself why I had embarked in the first place. Like an insect rendered immobile by a whiff of poison spray, I sat in my chair tilted back all three inches of rearward slant available to the Economy tourist and read the first fourteen pages of the Omega manuscript one more time. I was in that half-stupor where one's legs are too massive to move. All the while, nerves jumped like light-up buttons in an electronic game. Nausea was my neighbor. Due for arrival in London in another few hours, I felt obliged to read the rest of Omega, all of one hundred and sixty-six pages of typescript, after which I would tear up the sheets and flush away as many of them as the limited means of the British Airways cropper on this aircraft would be able to gulp into itself, then save the rest for the sturdier gullets in the men's room attached to the Transit Lounge at Heathrow. Visualizing the whirl of these 12 NORMAN MAILER I have introduced you, I was half certain I would soon be in a wreck. I felt caught in invisible and monstrous negotiations. It seemed-- suspend all logic--that dreadful things might happen to others if I stayed alive. Can you understand? I do not pretend: I think something of the logic of the suicide is in such thoughts. Kittredge, who has a fine mind, full of apercus, once remarked that suicide might be better understood on the assumption there was not one reason for the act but two: People may kill themselves for the obvious reason, that they are washed up, spiritually humiliated down to zero; equally, they can see their suicide as an honorable termination of deep-seated terror. Some people, said Kittredge, become so mired in evil spirits that they believe they can destroy whole armies of malignity by their own demise. It is like burning a barn to wipe out the termites who might otherwise infest the house. Say much the same for murder. An abominable act which, nonetheless, can be patriotic. Kittredge and I did not talk long about murder. It was a family embarrassment. My father and I once spent close to three years trying to assassinate Fidel Castro. Let me return, however, to that icy road. There, if my sense of preservation kept a light touch on the wheel, my conscience was ready to crush it. I had shattered more than a marriage vow. I had broken a lovers' vow. Kittredge and I were fabulous lovers, by which I do not intend anything so vigorous as banging away till the dogs howl. No, back to the root of the word. We were fabulous lovers. Our marriage was the conclusion to one of those stem myths that instruct us in tragedy. If I sound like the wind of an ass in whistling about myself on such a high note, it is because I feel uneasy at describing our love. Normally, I cannot refer to it. Happiness and absolute sorrow flow from a common wound. I will give the facts. They are brutal, but better than sentimental | obfuscation. Kittredge had had but two men in her life. Her first.! husband and myself. We began our affair while she was still married^ to him. Some time after she betrayed him--and he was the kind o man who would think in terms of betrayal--he took a terrible fall H a rock climb and broke his back. He had been the lead, and when went, the youth who was belaying him from the ledge below pulled along. The anchor jerked out of the rock. Christopher, adolescent killed in the fall, was their only child. Kittredge could never forgive her husband. Their son was six and not especially well coordinated. He should not have been Ie HARLOT'S GHOST 13 that particular rock face. But then, how could she forgive herself? Our affair sat over her head. She buried Christopher and watched over her husband during the fifteen weeks he was in the hospital. Soon after he came home, Kittredge chose to get into a warm bath one night and cut each other wrists with a sharp kitchen blade, after which she lay back and prepared to bleed to death in her tub. But she was saved. By me. She had allowed no communication since the day of the fall. News so terrible had divided the ground between us like a fissure in earth that leaves two neighboring homes a gaping mile apart. God might as well have spoken. She told me not to see her. I did not try. On the night, however, that she took the knife to her wrists, I had (on a mounting sense of unease) nown up from Washington to Boston, then to Bangor, and rented a car to go on to Mount Desert. I heard her calling to me from caverns so deep in herself she was never aware other own voice. I arrived at a silent house and let myself in through a window. Back on the first floor was an invalid and his nurse; on the second, his wife, presumably asleep in a far-off bed. When her bathroom door was locked and she did not reply, I broke in. Ten minutes more would have been too late. We went back to our affair. Now there was no question. Shocked by tragedy, certified by loss, and offered dignity by thoughts we could send to one another, we were profoundly in love. The Mormons believe that you enter into marriage not only for this life but, if you are married in the Temple, will spend eternity with your mate. I am no Mormon, but even by their elevated measure, we were in love. I could not conceive that I would ever be bored in my wife's presence either side of the grave. Time spent with Kittredge would live forever; other people impinged upon us as if they entered our room holding a clock in their hand. We had not begun in so inspired a place. Before the disaster on the rock face, we were taken with each other enormously. Since we were third cousins kissing, the tincture ofincest enriched the bliss. But it was--on the highest level--qualified stuff. We were not quite ready to die for one another, just off on an awfully wicked streak. Her husband, Hugh Montague--"Harlot"--took on more importance, after all, in my psyche than my own poor ego. He had been my mentor, my godfather, my surrogate father, and my boss. I was then thirty-nine years old and felt half that age in his presence. Cohabiting with his wife, I was like a hermit crab who had just moved into a more impressive carapace; one was waiting to be dislodged. 14 NORMAN MAILER Naturally, like any new lover in so momentous an affair, I did not ask for her motive. It was enough that she had wanted me. But now, after twelve years with Kittredge, ten in marriage, I can give a reason. To be married to a good woman is to live with tender surprise. I love Kittredge for her beauty and--I will say it--her profundity. We know there is more depth to her thought than to mine. All the same, I am frequently disconcerted by some astonishing space in the fine workings other mind. Attribute it to background. She has not had a career like other women. I do not know many Radcliffe graduates who went into the CIA. Item: On the night twelve years ago when we first made love, I performed that simple act of homage with one's lips and tongue that a good many of our college graduates are ready to offer in the course of the act. Kittredge, feeling some wholly unaccustomed set of sensations in the arch from thigh to thigh, said, "Oh. I've been waiting years for that!" She soon made a point of telling me I was the next thing to pagan perfection. "You're devil's heaven," she said. (Give me Scotch blood every time!) She looked no older on our first night than twenty-seven, but had been married already for eighteen and a half of her forty-one years. Hugh Tremont Montague was, she told me (and who could not believe her?), the only man she had ever known. Harlot was, also, seventeen years her senior, and very high echelon. Since one of his skills had been to work with the most special double agents, he had developed a finer sense of other people's lies than they could ever have of his. By now he trusted no one, and, of course, no one around him could ever be certain Harlot was telling the truth. Kittredge would complain to me in those bygone days that she couldn't say if he were a paragon of fidelity, a gorgon of infidelity, or a closet pederast. I think she began her affair with me (if we are to choose the bad motive rather than the good) because she wanted to learn whether she could run an operation under his nose and get away with it. The good motive came later. Her love deepened for me not because I saved her life but because I had been sensitive to the mortal desperation of her spirit. I am finally wise enough to know that that is enough for almost all of us. Our affair commenced again. This time, we made an absolute of love. She was the kind of woman who could not conceive of continuing in such a state without marriage. Love was; a state of grace and had to be protected by sacramental walls. 1 She felt obliged, therefore, to tell her husband. We went to Hughs HARLOT'SGHOST 15 Tremont Montague and he agreed to divorce. That may have been the poorest hour of my life. I was afraid of Harlot. I had the well- founded dread one feels for a man who can arrange for the termination of people. Before the accident, when he was tall and thin and seemed put together of the best tack and gear, he always carried himself as if he had sanction. Someone on high had done the anointing. Now, stove-in at the waist, conforming to the shape of the wheelchair, he still had sanction. That was not the worst of it, however. I may have been afraid of him, but I also revered him. He had not only been my boss, but my master in the only spiritual art that American men and boys respect--machismo. He gave life courses in grace under pressure. The hour that Kittredge and I spent together on either side of his wheelchair is a bruise on the flesh of memory. I remember that he cried before we were done. I could not believe it. Kittredge told me later it was the only time she ever saw him weep. Hugh's shoulders racked, his diaphragm heaved, his spavined legs remained motionless. He was a cripple stripped down to his sorrow. I never lost the image. If I compare this abominable memory to a bruise, I would add that it did not fade. It grew darker. We were sentenced to maintain a great love. Kittredge had faith. To believe in the existence of the absurd was, for her, a pure subscription to the devil. We were here to be judged. So our marriage would be measured by the heights it could climb from the dungeon of its low beginnings. I subscribed to her faith. For us, it was the only set of beliefs possible. How, then, could I have spent my most recent hours this gray March day slopping and sliding on th'e over-friendly breast and belly ofChloe? My mistress's kisses were like tany, soft and sticky, endlessly wet. From high school on, Chloe had doubtless been making love with her mouth to both ends other friends. Her groove was a marrow of good grease, her eyes luminous only when libidinal. So soon as we subsided for a bit, she would talk away in the happiest voice about whatever came into her head. Her discourse was all of trailer homes (she lived in one), how ready they were to go up in flames, and of truckers with big rigs who ordered coffee while sitting on enough self-importance to run the Teamsters. She told anecdotes about old boyfriends she ran into'at the town lunch counter. " 'Boy,' I said to myself, 'has he been shoveling it in! Fat!' Then I had to ask myself: 'Chloe, is your butt that far behind?' I put the blame on Bath. There's nothing to do here in winter except eat, and look for hungry guys like 16 NORMAN MAILER you," at which she gave a friendly clap to my buttocks as if we were playing on a team together--the old small-town sense that you heft a person's worth--and we were off again. There was one yearning in my flesh (for the common people) that she kept at trigger-trip. Skid and slide and sing in unison, while the forest demons yowl. I had met her in the off-season in the big restaurant where she worked. It was a quiet night, and I was not only alone at my table but the only diner in my section. She waited on me with a quiet friendliness, much at home with the notion that a meal that tasted right for me was better wages for her than a meal that tasted wrong. Like other good materialistic people before her, she was also matemalistic: She saw money as coming in all kinds of emotional flavors. It took happy money to buy a dependable appliance. When I ordered the shrimp cocktail, she shook her head. "You don't want the shrimp," she said. "They've died and risen three times. Take the chowder." I did. She guided me through the meal. She wanted my drinks to be right. She did it all with no great fuss--I was free to stay in my private thoughts, she in hers. We talked with whatever surplus was in our moods. Perhaps one waitress in ten could enjoy a lonely customer as much as Chloe. I realized after a while that on pickup acquaintance, which was never my style, I was surprisingly comfortable with her. I stopped off again at the restaurant on another quiet night and she sat and had dessert and coffee with me. I learned of her life. She had two sons, twenty and twenty-one; they dwelt in Manchester, New'i Hampshire, and worked in the mills. She claimed to be thirty-eight,' and her husband had broken up with her five years ago. Caught her cheating. "He was right. I was a boozer then, and you can't trust a boozer. My heels were as round as roller skates." She laughed with; enough good humor to have been watching her own pornographic, romp. We went to her trailer. I have an ability developed, I believe, my profession. I can concentrate on what is before me. Inter-offi flaps, bureaucratic infringements, security leaks, even such assaults i the unconscious as my first infidelity to Kittredge, can be ignored have a personal instrument I think of as average, a good soldier, a dt as vulnerable as any other. It throbs with encouragement and dro^ "with the oncoming of guilt. So it is testimony to the power of ( concentration and to Chloe's voluptuous exposures (call it a cri against the public pleasure for her to be seen in clothes) that, consid HARLOT'S GHOST 17 ing the uniqueness and magnitude of my marital breech, there was only a hint of sag from time to time in the fine fellow below. I was starved, in truth, for what Chloe had to offer. Let me see if I can explain. Lovemaking with Kittredge was--I use the word once more--a sacrament. I am not at ease trying to speak of it. Whereas, I can give all away in talking about Chloe; we were like kids in the barn; Chloe even smelled of earth and straw. But there was ceremony to embracing Kittredge. I do not mean that we were solemn or measured. If it did not come to real desire, we might not make love for a month. When it happened, however, it certainly did; after all our years together, we still flew at each other. Kittredge, indeed, was as fierce as one of those wood-animals with claws and sharp teeth and fine fur that you can never quite tame. At its worst, there were times when I felt like a tomcat in with a raccoon. My tongue (once key to devil's heaven) was rarely now in her thoughts--rather, our act was subservient to coming together, cruelty to cruelty, love to love. I'd see God when the lightning flashed and we jolted our souls into one another. Afterward, was tenderness, and the sweetest domestic knowledge of how curious and wonderful we were for one another, but it was not in the least like getting it on with Chloe. With Chloe it was get ready for the rush, get ready for the sale, whoo-ee, gushers, we'd hit oil together. Recuperating, it felt low-down and slimy and rich as the earth. You could grow flowers out of your ass. Driving that car, my heart in my teeth, and the road ice in my ice-cold fingers, I knew all over again what Chloe gave me. It was equality. We had nothing in common but our equality. If they brought us up for judgment, we could go hand in hand. Our bodies were matched in depth to one another, and we felt the affection of carrots and peas in the same meat soup. I had never known a woman so much my physical equal as Chloe. Whereas, Kittredge was the former consort of a knight, now a crippled knight. I felt like a squire in a medieval romance. While my knight was off on a crusade, I entertained his lady. If we had found a way to pick the lock of her chastity belt, I still had to mount the steps. We might see lightning and stars, yet the bedroom remained her chamber. Our ecstasy was as austere as the glow of phosphorescent lights in Maine waters. I did not see Creation; rather, I had glimpses of the heavens. With Chloe, I felt like one more Teamster with a heavy rig. 18 NORMAN MA.ILER On a night of driving so unsettled as this--sleet on the cusp of freezing--there -was no way to meditate for long. Rather, thoughts jumped up before me. So, I saw that Chloe had the shape of a wife, and Kittredge was still my lady. In most affairs, a kiss can remind you of many a mouth you have known. It lubricates a marriage to have a wife who reminds you of other women as well. Many a connubial union is but the sublimation of orgies never embarked upon. With- Kittredge, I had hardly been enjoying the promiscuity of making love. to one woman who might serve as surrogate for many. < Once, about a month after we were married, she said to mef "There's nothing worse than the breaking of vows. I always feel as if the universe is held together by the few solemn promises that are kept. Hugh was awful. You could never trust a word of his. I shouldn't tell you, darling, but when you and I first began, it was such an achievement for me. I suppose it was the bravest thing I'd ever done." "Don't ever be that brave with me," I said, and it was no threat. At the uneasy center of my voice, I was begging her. "I won't. I won't ever." She would have had the clear eyes of an angel but for a touch of mist in the blue. A philosopher, she was always- trying to perceive objects at a great distance. "No," she said, "let's! make a pledge. Absolute honesty between us. If either of us has anything to do with someone else, we must tell." ;1 "I pledge," I said. "My God," she said, "with Hugh I never knew. Is that one of the reasons he clung to that awful name. Harlot?" She stopped. Harlot, whatever he was doing at this moment, was in the wheelchair now. "Poor old Gobby," she said. Any compassion she still held for him was in this nickname. "Why is the name Gobby?" With Kittredge, there was a time for everything and I had never asked her before. "God's old beast. That's his name." i "One name, anyway." | "Oh, darling, I love giving people names. At least, people I car^j about. That's the only way we're allowed to be promiscuous. Giv|j| each other hordes of names." m Over the years, one by one, I had learned a few of them. HuglJJ had a fine mustache, trim pepper-and-salt. It belonged on a Britisqj cavalry colonel. Kittredge used to call him Trimsky. "Just as bright af Leon Trotsky," she'd say, "but ten times as neat." Later I found oi*l| she was, this once, not original. It was Alien Dulles who first chrifr^ HARLOT'S GHOST 19 tened him thus. That was when Hugh was working for the OSS in London during the war. Apparently Duties repeated it to Kittredge at her wedding. Kittredge had been mad about Alien Duties ever since meeting him at a Georgetown garden party her parents took her to during the Easter vacation other sophomore year in Radcliffe. Ah, the poor Harvard men who tried to spark Kittredge after Alien Dulles kissed her on the cheek for goodbye. Following the nuptials, she took to calling Hugh Tremont Montague by Trimsky. He gave her monikers in return. One was Ketchum, for Ketchum, Idaho (since Kittredge's full pedigree was Hadley Kittredge Gardiner, first name taken from Hadley Richard- son, Hemingway's first wife, whom Kittredge's father, Rodman Knowles Gardiner, met in Paris in the twenties and thought was "the nicest woman ever encountered"). It had taken its own good time for me to learn a few metamorphoses of my beloved's names. Ketchum, avoiding Ketchup, was transmogrified into Red--which was perfect, and stuck for a period, since Kittredge's hair was raven-black (and her skin as white as your best white marble). I also knew a lover's pain when Kittredge confessed that Hugh Montague, on notable nights, would call her Hotsky. Did people in Intelligence shift names about the way others move furniture around a room? In any event, Gobby was the postmarital a.k.a. "I hated," said Kittredge, "the idea that I couldn't trust Gobby's personal honesty. You do pledge, darling? We will have honesty between us?" "We will." My car went into a severe skid, much longer now in memory than it takes to tell. The wall of forest on one side stuttered up to me, and my front end yawed when I spun the wheel, whereupon car and I rushed viciously across the lane toward the other wall of pines at the far shoulder, now suddenly the near shoulder. I thought for a moment I had died and become a devil, for my head seemed put on backwards: I was looking down the road at the turn I had just come out of Then, as slowly as if I were in a whirlpool at sea, the road began to revolve. Interminably. I could have been a spot of dust on a turntable. Presto!--car and I were moving forward again. I had skidded ninety degrees to the right, then had spun the other way through a full three-sixty counterclockwise, no, put on ninety more degrees to find myself going straight at last, a full one-and-a-quarter, four-fifty-degree 20 NORMAN MAILER turn. I was beyond fear. I felt as if I had fallen out of a ten-story window, landed in a fireman's net, and was now strolling around in a glow and a daze. "Millions of creatures," I said aloud to the empty car--actually said it aloud!--"walk the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep," after which, trundling along at thirty miles an hour, too weak and exhilarated to stop, I added in salute to the lines just recited, "Milton, Paradise Lost," and thought of how Chloe and I had gotten up from bed in her trailer on the outskirts of Bath a couple of hours ago and had gone for a farewell drink to a cocktail lounge with holes in the stuffing of the red leatherette booths. Just after the potions were brought, I knocked one over in a conversational sweep of my arm, and the glass shattered into intolerable little bits as if nothing much was holding together any longer. Whereupon Chloe and I both fell into an uncharacteristic brown spell, and were gloomy when we said good-bye. Infidelity was on the horror of the air. Now I pondered those millions of creatures who walked the earth unseen. Did they whisper in Kittredge's ear as she slept, even as once they had called out to me on that long-ago day eleven years back when she grew ready to cut her wrists? Who ran the espionage systems that lived in the ocean of the spirits? A spy needed thoughts as narrow as lasers to rouse no stir. How did an agent making copies of secret papers week after week, year after year, keep from himself the awful fear that this spirit sea of misdeeds might seep into the sleep of the man who could catch him? I passed a phone booth in a rest area and stopped the car. I was in a panic to speak to Kittredge. Abruptly it seemed that if I did not reach her at once, every last barrier between my mind and hers would be down. What can be closer to the ages of old-ice than one corroded, pockmarked phone booth on a freezing highway in Maine? I had to raise the operator, and she had trouble repeating the number of my credit card. I was stamping my feet to keep warm before the machinery of the Bell Company was able to stir itself out of chilly sleep. The phone rang four, five, six times, and then I leaped with love at the sound of Kittredge's voice and, on the instant, recalled how my heart had once lifted equally with joy one dark night alone in a canoe in Vermont, when, behold! a galaxy of light lit up every ripple on the black waters of the pond as a full harvest moon rose exactly in the notch between two steep round hills. Druid certainties left their flush HARLOT'S GHOST 21 then on my heart. I knew a curious peace. So did Kittredge's voice now give ease to the stricken tunnels of my breath. I felt as if I had never heard her voice before. Let no one say I did not love my wife if after eleven years of marriage I could still discover her wonders. Most speaking tones come into my ear through filters and baffles. I hear people monitoring their larynx to purvey warmth and cold, probity, confidence, censure, approbation--we are phony voices if only by a little. After all, one's speech is the first instrument of one's will. Kittredge's voice came out of herself as a flower opens out of its bud, except I never knew which bloom would be first. Her voice was as amazing in anger as in love--she was never on guard for the turn other own feelings. Only those who walk about with the notion (it can be modest) that they are an indispensable part of the universe can speak with such lack of concern for how they sound to others. "Harry, I'm glad you called. Are you all right? I've been full of forebodings all day." "I'm fine. But the roads are terrible. I'm not even to Bucksport." "Are you really all right? Your voice sounds as if you just shaved off your Adam's apple." I laughed as madly as an embarrassed Japanese businessman. It was her claim that I would have been as dark, tall, and handsome as Gary Cooper or Gregory Peck if not for my prominent Adam's apple. "I'm all right," I said. "I think I needed to talk to you." "Oh, I need to talk to you. Can you guess what arrived today? A telegram from our friend. It's demoralizing. After being nice for so long, he's now in an absolutely deranged mood." She was speaking of Harlot. "Well," I said, "it can't be as bad as that. What did he say?" "I'll tell you later." She paused. "Harry, promise me something." "Yes." I knew by her tone. "Yes," I said, "what's your foreboding?" "Drive most carefully. There's a very high tide tonight. Please call me when you get to the dock. The water's roaring already." No, her voice concealed nothing. Tones were flying in many directions as if she were working a dinghy buffeted by chop. "I have the oddest thoughts," she said. "Did you just have a bad skid?" "Never a worse," I answered. The windows of my telephone 22 NORMAN MAILER booth might be iced up, but perspiration was collecting on my back. How near to me could she get without encountering the real hurly- burly? "I'm all right," I went on. "I expect the worst weather is over. It feels that way." I took a chance. "Any other odd thoughts flying around?" ^'I'm obsessed with a woman," she said. I nodded intently. I felt like a boxer who is not certain which hand of his unfamiliar opponent he should respect more. "Obsessed with a woman?" I repeated. "A dead woman," Kittredge said. You may believe I took relief. "Is she family?" I asked. "No." When Kittredge's mother died, I woke on more than one night to see Kittredge sitting at the side of the bed, her back to me, talking with animation to the bare wall on which, with no embarrassment, she could perceive her mother. (How much this had to do with my warped dream--let us call it such--about Augustus Fan- is, of course, anyone's good question.) On these earlier occasions, however, it was clear: Kittredge was in some sort of coma. She would be wide awake, but oblivious to me. When I would tell her in the morning of such episodes, she would neither smile nor frown. My account of her actions did not disturb Kittredge. It seemed fitting to the nocturnal fold that there would be occasions when those of the dead who had been near to you could still speak. Of course her son Christopher had never come back, but then he had been smashed. His death was different. He had fallen into the bottomless abyss of his father's vanity. So his demise had been rendered numb for all. In this fashion, Kit- tredge reasoned. Kittredge had Highland blood both sides, and you have to know how Celtic a few Highlanders can be. Not all of the Scotch content themselves with devising controls for the law, the banks, and Presbyterian practice; some take a cottage on the interface between this world and the next. They do not blow those bagpipes for too little., "Do you want to tell me," I now asked, "about this woman?"?; "Harry, she's been dead for ten years. I don't know why she iS trying to reach me now." "Well, who is it?" HARLOT'S GHOST 23 She did not reply directly. "Harry," she said, "I've been thinking about Howard Hunt lately." "Howard? E. Howard Hunt?" "Yes. Do you know where he is?" "Not really. Someplace quiet, I guess, picking up the pieces." "Poor man," she said. "Do you know I actually met him first at that party long ago when my parents introduced me to Alien Dulles. Alien said, 'Here, Kitty, meet Howard Hunt. He's an absolutely nifty novelist.' I don't think the Great White Case Officer had top powers in literary criticism." "Oh, Mr. Dulles always went in for superlatives." "Didn't he?" I had made her laugh. "Harry, he said to me once, 'Cal Hubbard would be the Teddy Roosevelt of our outfit if it weren't for Kermit Roosevelt.' Lord, your father. ltfits\" She laughed again, yet her voice, honest as a brook full of the quick lights offered by moving clouds and pebble bed, was in shadow now. "Tell me about the woman." "It's Dorothy Hunt, darling," said Kittredge. "She's come right out of the woodwork." "I didn't realize you knew her well." "I don't. I didn't. Hugh and I had the Hunts once for dinner." "Of course. I recall." "And I do remember her. An intelligent woman. We had lunch a few times. So much more depth than poor Howard." "What does she say?" "Harry, she says, 'Don't let them rest.' That's all she says. As if we both knew. Whoever them may be." I didn't reply. Kittredge's dismay, delicate but pervasive, leaped over the wire. I almost asked: "Did Hugh ever talk to you about the High Holies?" but I did not speak the thought. I trusted no phone entirely, certainly not my own. While we had said nothing to get any big wind up, still one did one's best to keep all conversation under some kind of damage control. So, now I merely said, "That's curious about Dorothy," and added no more. Kittredge heard my shift of tone. She, too, was aware of the telephone. There was always, however, her perverse sense of the wicked. If there were monitors on this call, she would offer them a heaping plate of confusion. Kittredge now stated: "I didn't like the message from Gallstone." • 24 NORMAN MAILER '•hit did it say?" Gallstone—you may have guessed—was one morena^ for Harlot. e^, it was delivered. That awful handyman, Gilley Butler, was s anoing ^ ^y ^^ ^^ evening. He must have taken our dinghy and ^oss, then presented me the envelope with a raffish grin. He as awtu]jy drunk, and acting as if the heavens would undulate should evet smuggle me into a cave. I could See by his attitude that somebody p^y ^^ much too much to deliver it. The most awful ^atlo^ came off him. Superior and sort of sleazy all at once." •lit," I repeated, "did your message say?" ^e hundred seventy-one days on Venus. Plus one on leap year. "^ months to do it all." "l4 ne can't possibly be right," I replied, as if I had comprehended ^^ord. "^ever." e finished by telling each other that we missed each other, leaking ^ ^ ^ ^yQuid be years rather than a couple of hours before we "^t again. Then we hung up. So soon as I was back in the car, I 00 a worn paperback of T. S. Eliot's poems out of the glove ""^Pattment. The eight months mentioned in the telegram referred 0 e fifth poem in the volume. We had agreed to add the number e month—March was the third month—to the number of the poen1' Venus was a garnish to distract attention, but 571 plus one, by our Nvate convention of subtracting five hundred, gave me the ^^ty-first and seventy-second lines of the fifth poem, which was— dare I confess it?—"The Waste Land." To any qualified person who ^Ue same edition of Eliot's selected poems, it would be no great orK to break our code, but only Harlot, Kittredge, and myself knew whl(^ book was in our employ. Here was Harlot's message—lines 71 and 72: ^Tmt corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? He had done it again. I did not know what Harlot meant, but Q Hot like it. I had supposed we were enjoying a truce. In the year just after my marriage to Kittredge, when ex-husband ^gh Montague lived through the nights of the long knives, he had ^t off hideous telegrams from his wheelchair. On our wedding da^| ^^e the first: "Lucky are you for the dice roll eleven. You must bi; HARLOT'S GHOST 25 each other 528 times plus two and save the sheets--A Friendly Heap" translated into: Your shadow at mornings striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. That succeeded in coloring our wedding night. Now, after all these years, he was sending personal messages again. Perhaps I deserved no less. My nostrils still reeked criminally of Chloe. Of course, cruelty can be a cure for tension when visited on a guilty man. (So says our penal system.) Harlot's message, sinister as the fog--"that corpse you planted last year in your garden"--enabled me to climb onto the same plateau as the difficulties of the weather. I was at last ready for each little breakaway of the tires. I could think while my reflexes did the driving, and given the fruits of our call, I had a bit to go over. I was trying to decide whether Kittredge had a clue to the High Holies. I had certainly not told her, and now it was reasonably clear that Harlot hadn't either. Her voice had been too unknowing about Dorothy Hunt. Kittredge certainly appeared to be wholly unaware that Harlot and I had joined forces. Having all this much to go over in my mind, I obviously needed the ruminative powers offered by an easier journey. So, I appreciated the change in weather as I passed through Belfast where Route 1 joined Route 3. For now, the air was a crucial degree warmer, the sleet had eased to rain, and the roads, if wet, were free of ice. I was able to settle into my thoughts. In the special file on the High Holies, Dorothy Hunt occupied a manila binder. OMEGA-3 south OF THE potomac, JUST BELOW washington, THE virginia woods were not well treated by the profit-taking of the last ten years. The wildland swamps had been drained and covered with asphalt, quartered with superhighways, studded with corporate implants--I speak of office buildings--and blindsided by molecule-like chains of condominiums. The parking lots in summer are now as bilious as natural gas. I was no lover of the development of the humid environs 26 NORMAN MAILER where I had worked for so long. And the drive from the Langley gate out to Harlot's farmhouse was traffic-jammed for all fifteen miles. His place, a pre-Civil War small beauty which he purchased in 1964, used to stand alone on an old dirt road lined with maples, but now that the four-lane had been built, the house was left on an off-highway eyebrow just twenty yards from where the trucks blasted by. A depressing metamorphosis. It did not help that after his accident, the interior had had to be partially gutted to install a ramp permitting him to propel his wheelchair from the first floor to the second. All the same, not many occasions in my life had been more momentous than the summer day in 1982 when Harlot had invited me to work again with him. "Yes," he had said, "I need your assistance so much that I will forgo my true innings." His knuckles, huge as carbuncles, fretted his wheelchair forward and back. Harlot's call to new work was well timed. At Langley I had been in the doldrums. I was sick of walking the corridors. At Langley we had corridors not unreminiscent of the fluorescent pedestrian routes in a huge airport--we even had a wall of glass looking on the central garden. One could pass hundreds of doors on any corridor, all color- coded, leaf green, burnt orange, madder pink, Dresden blue, designed by a pastel-minded coordinator to bring cheer and logic to our cubicles. The colors were to tell you what kind of work was done behind the doors. Of course in the old days--let us say twenty and more years ago--a number of the offices were being run undercover, so the color' of the door was misleading. Now only a few such doors were around. I was bored with that. My office door practiced no deception these days. My career (and my wife's) might just as well have been ended. In fact, as I will soon explain, Kittredge and I were not often in Washington anymore, not nearly so much as we stayed at the Keep. For a long time I had been walking a treadmill of no advancement under five Directors of Central Intelligence, no less than Mr. Schlesinger, Mr. Colby, Mr. Bush, Admiral Turner, and Mr. Casey, who, when he passed me in the hall either did not know me, or chose not. to greet me by name (after more than twenty-five years in the Company!). Well, who could not see the shadow? Two former Chiefs of Station at two Third World republics, now back at Langley and ready i for retirement, shared my office--what was left of my office. They served as my case officers--in this case, editors--for the books I oversaw and/or ghosted. They had reputations as burnt-out cases, much like me. Their reputations, unlike mine, were deserved. Thorpe HARLOT'S GHOST 27 was drunk at ten in the morning, and his eyes were like marbles, full of pep. They bounced, if they happened to meet your gaze. The other. Gamble, had a stone-dead expression and was of late a vegetarian. He never raised his voice. He was like a man who has flattened twenty years in a state penitentiary. And I? I was ready for a quarrel with anyone. It was at exactly this time, when disaffection was collecting in my pores like bile, that Harlot summoned me to his rump office at the farmhouse in Virginia, much as he must have .called in several other men like myself, still ambitious enough to know rage that their careers were in irons, yet old enough to suffer the knowledge that their best years were committed and gone. Who knows what Harlot cooked up for the others? I can tell you what he talked about with me. We, at CIA, had gone through some considerable suffering on the exposure of the Family Jewels in 1975. Maybe a few bushmen in Australia had not heard how we labored to rub Fidel Castro out, but by the time the Senate Select Committee to Study Intelligence Activities was done inquiring, there were very few bushmen. The rest of the wdtid had learned that we were ready to kill Patrice Lumumba as well, and had gone in for LSD experiments in brainwashing so exuberantly that one of our subjects, a Dr. Frank Olson (on government contract), had jumped out a window. We hid the fact from his widow. She spent twenty years thinking her husband was an ordinary suicide, which is onerous for a family to believe since there are no ordinary suicides. We opened mail between Russia and the U.S. and closed it again and sent it on. We spied on high government officials like Barry Goldwa- ter and Bobby Kennedy; we had all of those activities advertised in the marketplace. Since we are, at CIA, a proud and secretive people, we felt not unlike a convention of Methodist ministers who are sued by a fine hotel for infesting the bed linen with crab lice. The Company has never been quite the same since exposure of the Family Jewels. In its wake, many of our top men had to go. Harlot, however, could hardly be dismissed in these, the worst of times, since he had accumulated too much sympathy at Langley for his gallant perambulations down the hall in his wheelchair. He was allowed to stay and fish the eddies. He could work on matters that would attract no attention. Of course, it was generally agreed: Harlot, too, had been left to molder. Seven years later, however, he was calling me to action. "I ask us, Harry boy," he said, "to forgive the spears we've left in one another. 28 NORMAN MAILER There is a scandal forming that will prove worse than the Skeletons"--which was his term for the Family Jewels. "I'd estimate about as much worse as Hiroshima was an order of magnitude beyond Pearl Harbor. The Skeletons decimated our ranks; the High Holies, if not excised, will cut us right out of the map." When he said no more, I stepped back. "I like the name," I said. "High Holies." "A good name," he agreed. Whereupon he did a quadrille with his wheelchair, to and fro, wheel to one side, wheel to the other. He was in his late sixties by now but his eyes and voice belonged to a man who could still charge the troops. "I vouchsafe," he said, "that few things ever perplexed me as much as Watergate. We had so many ducks in the White House pond. As you have reason to know, I put in one or two myself." I nodded. "All the same," Harlot went on, "I wasn't prepared for Water- gate. That was an extraordinarily dippy operation. Nothing adds up. I had to conclude we were being entertained not by one master plan, no matter how ill conceived, but three or four by different parties. All managed to collide. When the stakes are high, coincidences collect. Shakespeare certainly believed that. No other explanation for Macbeth or Lear." He had succeeded in irritating me. At this moment, I did not wish to discuss Macbeth or Lear. "Call the break-in at Watergate act one," he said. "Good first act. Full of promise. But no answers. Now comes act two: the crash, six months later, of the United Airlines plane 553 from Washington to Chicago. It's trying to land at Midway Airport and falls short in the most unbelievable fashion. The plane rips up a neighborhood of small houses not two miles shy of the airport, and in the process kills forty-three of the sixty-one people aboard. Do you know who was on ; board that plane?" "I suppose I did once." "The half-life of your memory retains no trace?" "Obviously not." "Dorothy Hunt is the most significant passenger to perish.' held up his hand. "Now, of course, Watergate had not yet cracky open. This is December 1972, a couple of months before Senarf Ervin and his committee open shop, and quite a few weeks before (^ wallah, James McCord, is to sing his first note. Long before John Dej tunes up. Howard Hunt had, you must remember, been breaking ai HARLOT'S GHOST 29 of noxious wind up White House way to the effect that, in his immortal words, he would not be a patsy, and Dorothy Hunt was certainly tougher than Howard. In a tight spot, you'd give her the pistol." I shrugged. The point was moot. I had worked for Howard Hunt. "Still!" said Harlot, "that's an awful lot of cannon to kill one bee. Scores of people dead. Who could have done it? Not the White House. They wouldn't mug an airplane. After all, the White House couldn't even give Mr. Liddy a fatal dose of the measles, not even at his invitation, nor did they put the fatal ray on Dean, nor on Hunt, nor on McCord. How, then, could they have given the go-ahead to something so wholesale as this plane crash? It could be sabotage. The White House is obviously aware of such a possibility. The same Butterfield who will later confess to the Ervin Committee that Rich- ard Nixon taped everything but his trips to the loo is moved over to the Federal Aviation Administration, and Dwight Chapin of CREEP goes to United Airlines. The Nixon palace is obviously positioning itself against a runaway investigation. I think they also suspect us. Nixon, as an old China lobby hand, knows all about the plane that blew up years ago when Chou En-Lai was supposed to be on board. So he understands. We know how to sabotage a plane--they don't. It poses a frightful question. If flight 553 to Chicago was buggered in order to get Dorothy Hunt, then she had to be holding on to no ordinary piece of information. You don't demolish twoscore civilians in order to terminate one lady unless she is in possession of an ultimate." "What do you say is ultimate here?" I asked. He smiled. "I always," he said, "refer to my own values when trying to solve these matters. What would get me up for that? Well, I reasoned, I would embark on such egregious slaughter if the target, Mrs. Hunt, knows who was behind the Kennedy assassination, and I cannot afford to let that get out. Or two, Nixon or Kissinger is a KGB mole, and target has the evidence. Or three, elements among us have managed to dip into the Federal Reserve pond." "What has the Federal Reserve to do with Dorothy Hunt?" "Good Harry-boy, take a look at who else was in the Watergate Office Building back there in June 1972. The Federal Reserve kept an office on the seventh floor just above the Democratic National Committee layout. What makes you think McCord was bugging the Democrats? He could have been using the ceiling of the sixth floor to 30 NORMAN MAILER put a spike-mike into the floor of the seventh. McCord is not merely a religious monomaniac, you know. He happens to be talented. "Try to conceive then of how long I've been brooding on these matters. It's years since Dorothy's crash. Yet I do keep coming back to the Federal Reserve. If a few of us were tapping into the seventh floor then, maybe we are at it still. Advance information on when the Federal Reserve is going to shift the interest rate is worth, conservatively, a good many billions." He leaned forward. He whispered into my ear. Two good words. "High Holies," he said. Then he turned his wheelchair toward me. "I have loads of stuff for you to do." We shook hands on it. We would be rogue elephants together. As I suspected, he was persona non grata in many an office where he needed a look at the files, and I still had access. Under one ghost's name or another, I was helping on a few pro-CIA spy novels which were not as popular as they used to be--not the pro-CIA jobs, any- way--as well as overseeing one or two scholarly works, not to mention dashing off an occasional magazine piece on the new invidiousness of the old Commie threat. Will it help to explain that under various names I dealt with commercial publishers as agent, author, freelance editor, and even had my pseudonym on several books I did not write so much as midwife for others? Of course, I did a few jobs as fall ghost myself. If a prominent evangelist took a trip to Eastern Europe or Moscow, intermediaries called on me afterward to boil the sap of his taped meanderings into homiledc American for the patriotic subscribers of Reader's Digest. I mock my published work, and that is fair. My serious work had cost me more. Indeed, I was by now my own semicomic legend at Langley. For years, ever since my return from Vietnam, I had been working, first at Harlot's behest, then--after the rupture--on my own, over a monumental work on the KGB whose in-progress title was The Imagination of the State. Great hopes had been attached to this book early by Harlot, and by others. The job, however, was never honestly begun. Too monumental. Notes proliferated, yet over a decade and more the actual writing hardly progressed. I was bogged down in confusions, lack of desire, and too many petty literary jobs. A number of years ago, in secret with myself--I did not even tell Kittredge--E gave up The Imagination of the State in preference to the literary woriel I really wished to do, which was a detailed memoir about my life ititj the CIA. This book progressed apace. I had already, in the couple of days I could give to it each week, been able to describe my childhoodn " c ? -- -- "^^-^""^^^^""'^-"SS'^Ssi"3^'' f1^^ ^^ % ?' S ^"o'ftf3- 3"5p;'art"3'-"^B^^^?'T8-H' 3"o^?5/^f»t^' 3o ^ ts-ii?, g"i^^?'e.!^-?S|g?-<--es?^gsl8s-§i:s^s 'i ^nr3 1 ^iwim^H^Wh^^i ^ I if^ r ^ j Mi r mi^lf^ ^i? 1^ ^ I ?r -; e ^-is^^ozs.i^ri^^g^^i gisiris = ? pounds b" e. o'sg.8!?^-^!,:^-!*^^3"!?-^6' l°s-S-°'g « I s-i ; =' B-^rHsg^^-rfi-s^^i ^"^E^3"! ^ fl -j I ? ijl^ri^rit13^^?^ ^^ir.s . § 9 F;' ;: & 3 I -3 s - ff. i- 9 pounds l^'g " ? - S s § " - S- &-&. ^ y ^1 i I ^H-irl^^^iEl?!!!^ sriti.'s - "fc -- i ii.,x.l^irgHj.tr^|!, i^-j^j -" " 1-1 3 3 0 !4 54 NORMAN MAILER people (whether born as Scotch-Irish, Ukrainian, Italian, or Lithuanian) would have put the ethnicity behind--we look to be one breed. We are what our vocational environment has made us: American Intelligence. It grated on me a little that I, who belonged to a pretty good kennel, had, at this point, with my professional life awash (not to dwell on my muddied clothes), less of the look than Rosen. His neat, medium-sized body and close-cropped gray hair, short sharp nose, tight upper lip (which always looked as if it were being squeezed against his capped front teeth), even his silver-rimmed eyeglasses fit the gray suit he was wearing about the way a foxglove sits in the sconces of its stalk. All the same, I was glad to see him. To find that my inquisitor (whom I must have been awaiting for months) was as civilized a top cop as old Ned Rosen, allowed me to feel--there is no end to the logic of these organizational matters--back in the Company again. "It was a bit of a jaunt to get to your woods," he said. How he had improved since the old days. When we trained together, Rosen, who had been Phi Beta Kappa at Columbia, Mensa, et cetera, had also been--in a word--adenoidal. His nasal intelligence kept boring forward. He was a fellow to be rejected by in-groups before they even formed. Now, he was married to a nice gray Episcopalian lady with whom, in fact, I had once had a memorable date in Montevideo, and he had obviously learned a lot from her. The nasality had metamorphosed into the resonance of a high government official. "Yes," he said, "you look damp, and I'm not dry." Enough of the warm-up, however. "Did you telephone Kittredge tonight?" I asked. He took his pause, more in decorum than caution. "About Hu Montague?" "Yes." "Harry, I didn't telephone her. I brought the news." "When?" "A while ago." He must have arrived not long after I had made my call from t Bell Telephone icebox on the coast road. So he had been here wh^H I came back. His walkie-talkie people had heard me approachlJJB through the woods, had heard, conceivably, how my teeth wfl^H chattering with cold as I tried to find the key for my door. TUB would have reported this to the small button he kept in his ear. HARLOT'S GHOST 55 I got up to stir the fire and was able to verify that, yes, in his right ear was a buff-colored earpiece. "What have you been doing since you arrived?" I asked. "Trying to think." "Where were you doing this?" "Well, for the most part--in one of the guest bedrooms." He took a puff on his pipe. "Are those your ladies-in-waiting outside?" "One would hope so." "I counted two." "In fact," said Reed, "there are three of us out there." "All for me?" "Harry, it's a complicated business." "Why don't you invite them in?" I asked. "We have other guest rooms." He shook his head. "My men," he said, "are prepared to wait." "Expecting more people?" "Harry, let's not play ping-pong. I have to discuss a situation which is out of hand." That meant no one at Langley had a clue what to do next. The tour I had made, Luger in fist, was still working like a spansule, calming to anxiety. I felt as if my wits had returned. Clear and overt danger was the obvious prescription for my spiritual malformations. "Ned," I asked, "would you like a drink?" "Do you keep Glenlivet?" "We do." He chose to go on about its merits. That was annoying. I did not need to hear any of the palaver he had picked up while motoring about Scotland and its distilleries one summer vacation with his gray Scotch bride. Withdrawing a bottle from the den cupboard, I served our Glenlivet neat--screw him if after all that praise he secretly wanted ice. Then I said, "Why are you here?" I could see he wanted to enjoy the fireplace and the Scotch a little longer. "Yes," he said, "we have to get to it." "I'm honored that they sent you," I told him. "I may be dishonored in the morning," he replied. "This trip is on me." "Not authorized?" 56 NORMAN MAILER "Not altogether. You see, I wanted to arrive quickly." "Well," I said, "we won't be playing ping-pong, will we?" It was out of character for him not to cover his delicate behind; no one knew better than Rosen that we can be the most paper- haunted bureaucracy of them all. So there are times when we pay a lot of attention to getting the right paper. We feel happier when unorthodox actions can be traced to a piece of the stuff. If, from time to dme, we are obliged to move without a program, statute, directive, memo, or presidential finding, it is a naked feeling. Rosen had no paper. "I hope you are prepared to get into it," he said. "You can start up," I said. As a way of assent, he gave a grin. Since he was keeping his pipe in his mouth, it resulted in a grimace. "Did Kittredge," he inquired, "provide any details about what she heard vis-a-vis Harlot?" "I'm afraid my wife was not coherent." "Harlot," said Rosen, "left his house three days ago, went out alone in his boat, which, as you may know, was not uncharacteristic of him. He was proud of his ability to skipper that boat solo, physical disability and all. But he did not return. This morning, the Coast Guard found the craft drifting, checked its registration, and called us. Would you believe it? The boat papers listed the Langley personnel office extension as the telephone number to ring for next of kin! Meanwhile, the body of a man in a considerable state of disrepair washed up on a mudflat in Chesapeake Bay. Coast Guard was notified, and soon after my office was on the scene. Just before lunch today." "I understand you're calling it a suicide." ; "We will probably call it that. Hopefully, the press could decide that's worth no more than an obituary." "Is it murder?" "Can't say. Not yet." "How did you get here?" I asked. "Did you fly to Bar Ha Airport?" "In my plane. I have added a pilot's license to my small assort! of virtues." "There's always something new to 1'eam about you, Reed." My praise, you would think, was edged, but he couldn't he from showing his pleasure. Once after Richard Helms had rescue< few of Hugh Montague's less savory chestnuts from a congressiot HARLOT'S GHOST 57 inquiry, Harlot, in recognition of the debt, was quick to offer the Director a large compliment. "You, Dick," Harlot had said, "are so aptly named. One small craft after another to skipper through the fearful breeze." That was a little thick, I thought, but Helms, who looked as much to the point as an ice pick, and was certainly on guard around Harlot, still couldn't keep from beaming at such homage to his now masterly moniker. Later, Harlot remarked, "Depend on it, Harry, the vanity of the high officeholder never bottoms out." Ergo, I had gone my way to put Rosen on automatic feed. I was thinking to catch him while he was munching. "As you were flying up here," I inquired, "you didn't stop off in Bath, Maine, did you?" He went so far as to take his pipe out of his mouth. "Most certainly not." He took his pause. "I must say," he added, "the thought occurred to me. We are on to your friend Chloe." "Was it the FBI who paid her a visit tonight?" "Not by way of us." "How about the DEA?" "Ditto. I could swear." "Who, then, ransacked her trailer?" "What?" He seemed genuinely surprised. "She called me. In panic. By her description, it was a thoroughgoing, insulting, highly professional job." "I'm at a loss." "Why are you interested in her?" I asked. "I don't know that I am. Is she relevant?" "Ned, if we are to speak of my so-called friend Chloe, work with the facts. I happen to have coffee with her sometimes when I pass through Bath. And Chloe and I have no carnal knowledge of one another. Not at all. But, Ned, I'm desirous to know"--yes, the Glenlivet (after the Bushmills, after the Luger) was having an unanticipated effect; the good Scotch was making me testy--"yes, tell me, pal, what the hell has Chloe got to do with anything? She's just a waitress." "Maybe yes, maybe no." I was corning around the buoy a bit late. "Did you opera lovers tap the phone here in this den? I did have a phone call from her tonight. So what?" He held up his hand. I realized I was too angry. Was guilt getting into my voice? "Ease off, Harry," he said, "ease off. Presumably your ( 58 NORMAN MAILER , phone call with Chloe is on tape one place or another. I just didn't have the means to tap into you directly. Nor," he added, "the desire. I didn't come here to strap you to the table and whip out the proctoscope." "Although you wouldn't mind a conversation in depth." "I'd like to go equal to equal." "Do you know what is in the back of my mind right now?" I asked. "The High Holies." Rosen was showing how unequal we were after all. "Reed," I told him, "I don't know all that much about the High Holies." "Not by yourself, you don't." But we both knew: Much that was meaningless to me might be a gift for him. He sipped the last of his shot glass, and handed it over. "Let me drink a little more of this splendid Scotch," he said, "and I'll get into kilts." I managed to smile. It took a considerable rearranging of the local passions in my mouth. "This has to be a hellish occasion for you," he said. "Whether you:, believe it or not, it's a hellish occasion for me." i Well, now we were talking about the same thing. He must have ; some idea of how much paper I had carried out ofLangley. I had an I impulse to tell him it had not proved bothersome to that complex?! fellow, my conscience. In truth, it was amazing. While there might be'| a day when I would have to pay up on these accounts, I virtually! looked forward to the occasion. I have a lot to tell you, Ned, I nearly told him now, of my feelings in this matter: I feel righteous. Instead, I chose to be silent. Rosen said, "Harry, you've been n as a boil for years. Maybe with reason. When a marriage breaks I think one has to say, 'Don't judge. Only God can apportion fault.' We're all married to the Agency. If you're ready for a sepa tion, I'm not the one to sit in judgment. Not on you. Over the yea you've done work that would put us all to shame. Such bold and ' turned stuff." I was trying to conceal my unprecedented pleasure. "Bold well turned" had left me outrageously agog. Just as vain as a I official. Rosen followed up by saying, "I'll tell you in confidence whatever lifting you've done, and I believe we have pretty good I on these rampages by now, still, fellow--" his voice had never HARLOT'S GHOST 59 more resonant--"on my word, the sins are venial." It was his way of telling me to cooperate. Rosen over the years must have supplied Harlot with a good deal of stuff the Office of Security preferred to keep for themselves. Venial sins went on all the time. Information slipped through the cracks between State and us, Defense and us, NSC--yes, especially NSC--and us: we were merely good Americans who had invested in Leak Gardens. Mortal sins were another matter. Mortal sins delivered papyrus to the Sovietskys, an incomparably less humorous business. While Rosen could not be absolutely certain that I was on the lower end of the venial-mortal scale, he was nonetheless making covert promises. Resignation from the service might be in order, he had all but said, rather than trial and/or discharge. Obviously, he needed my help. The questions surrounding Hugh Montague's death were going to be orders of magnitude more vital than any of my peccadillos. Perhaps it was just as well that I would have Ned for my interlocutor rather than some high-ranking Security baboon who would not know how many generations of Hubbards it had taken to shape the dear, shabby quiddities of the Keep. OMEGA-8 the LIGHT FROM THE FIREPLACE WAS REFLECTED IN HIS EYEGLASSES. I even saw the logs nicker as I spoke. "Let's take it for granted," I said, "that my separation from the service will be equitable." I do not know if my voice sounded inadmissably smug in its assessment, or if Rosen had been playing me with a well-chosen fly, but now I could feel him taking in slack. His thin lips took on the severity of a bureaucrat about to land his trout. "Let us assume," he said, "that concerted cooperation will permit separation on equitable terms so far as relevant guidelines allow." Not everyone could speak bureaucratese. I nodded scornfully. I realized I was drunk. That didn't happen often these days no matter how much I drank, but you do get to feel competitive about your command of the tongue after more than twenty-five years in the government. "Subject," I told him, "to appropriate conjunction, we will engi- 60 NORMAN MAILER neer a collateral inquiry out of the competing contingencies." I said this to get that highly domiciled little smile off his face, but he merely looked sad. I realized that Rosen was as full of liquor as myself. We had been running a small rapids on the great river of booze. Now the drop was over. The river was calm. He sighed. I thought he was about to say, "How could you have done it?" but instead he murmured, "We're not ready to make deals." "Then where are we?" "I'd like your overview." I took a sobering swallow of Scotch. "Why?" "Maybe I need it. We're in the middle of a disaster. Sometimes you see things more clearly than me." "All right," I said. "I mean it," he said. I began to think he did. "What do we have?" I asked. "You are holding a body that is Harlot's body?" "Yes," he said, but reluctantly, as if ready to deny his own affirmative. "I assume," I said, and I took another sip of Scotch before bringing my voice down this gravel path, "the remains are damaged and swollen by water." "The body, ostensibly, belongs to Harlot." We were silent. I had known it would not be routine to speak of Harlot's death in any fashion, yet was still surprised at the engorgement of my throat. Sorrow, anger, confusion, and a hint of hysteria at my own confusion were all groping alike for a safe spot in my larynx. I discovered that it helped to look at the fire. I studied a log as it glowed into incandescence before collapsing softly upon itself, and I began to mourn Harlot--along with all else! Yet mortality, we learn from every sermon, is the dissolution of all matter, yes, all our forms flow down to the sea, and Harlot's death was entering the . universe. So, too, did my throat feel less impeded. | I discovered I did want to talk about Harlot's death. No matter,! how much had taken place this evening--or was it precisely becausi?,l of all that had happened?--I felt as if I had finally retreated to tl middle of myself, to the clear logical middle of myself, and if n emotional ends had been consumed, so was the middle stronger. drunk ten minutes ago, I now felt sober, but then drunkenness is tl abdication of the ego, and mine had just surfaced like a whale. I fi| a considerable need to recognize all over again just how sane I coi HARLOT'S GHOST 61 be, which is to say, how lucid, how logical, how sardonic, how superior to everybody's weaknesses, including my own. Did Rosen look for analysis? I would give it to him. Something of the old days was coming back to me—the sense the two of us used to share of being Harlot's best and brightest. And certainly his most competitive. It did not matter any longer how tired I was, I felt tireless in the center of my brain. "Ned, the first question is whether it's murder or suicide." He nodded. To myself I thought: Suicide could only mean that Harlot had been playing for large stakes and lost. The corollary was that the High Holies were mortally disloyal to the Company, and I was, therefore, in no small trouble. "Keep going." "If, however. Harlot was murdered," I said, and stopped again. Greater difficulties commenced here. I chose an old CIA saw: "You don't lance a boil," I told him, "without having some idea where the drainage will go." , "Of course," said Rosen. "Well, Reed, if Harlot suffered a hit, do the sluiceways point east or west?" "I don't know. I don't know whether to look for the King Brothers or closer to home." He exhaled from the tension of having carried this by himself all these hours. "It can't be the King Brothers," I said. He tapped the stem of his pipe against his teeth. It would be the next thing to mutual kamikaze if we and the KGB ever began killing each other's officers. By unspoken covenant we didn't. Third World agents, perhaps, and an occasional European, but not each other. "No, not the Russians," I said, "unless Harlot was working a double game with them." , Rosen sighed. "On the other hand," I proposed, "it could be us." "Would you expatiate on that?" Rosen asked. "Harlot was riding one hypothesis fairly hard. He had decided there was an enclave among us using our most classified information as a guide to buy, sell, and invest all over the world. By his estimate, these covert finances are larger by now than our entire budget for Operations." "Are you saying, then, that Harlot was killed by Agency people?" 62 NORMAN MAILER "They stood to lose billions. Maybe more." I was partial to the thesis. For Harlot's sake and for my own. If] was the good sentinel on guard against massive internal con-updo then to have worked with him might cast an honorable light on it Rosen, however, shook his head. "It's not productive to go ind direction yet," he said. "You don't know the worst-case scenaii There's a hell of a roadblock in front of your thesis." I poured a little more Scotch for both of us. "You see," said Rosen, "we are not, in fact, sure it's Hado remains. Not what washed up in the Chesapeake." "Not sure?" I could hear the echo in my voice. " "We have what purports to be Montague's body. But the labs ca] give 100-percent probability to the cadaver. Although the specificiti are respectable. Good fit for height and weight. On his third fing» left hand, a St. Matthew's ring. The face, however, is no help at all Rosen's pale gray eyes, usually unremarkable, now looked awftf bright behind his eyeglasses. ' "I couldn't get myself to tell Kittredge," he continued. "The 6 and head were blown off. Shotgun muzzle pressed against the pala Probably a sawed-off shotgun." I did not wish to contemplate this image longer than I had 1 "What about Hugh's back?" I asked. "There is a severe back injury on the body. No perambulari functions would be possible." He shook his head. "We can't positive, however, that it's the Montague injury." "Surely you have Harlot's X-rays on file?" "Well, Harry, you know Harlot. He had all records transferr from his hospital treatment center to us. He would never allow infi mation about himself to repose anywhere out of the domain." "What do his X-rays tell you?" "That's the roadblock," said Rosen. "The X-rays can't found." He took his pipe out of his mouth and scrutinized the pro ress of the char in his bowl. "We have a first-rate headache." < HARLOT'S GHOST 63 OMEGA-9 I COULD ANTICIPATE rosen's NEXT QUESTION: have YOU, harry Hubbard, removed Harlot's X-rays from the file? The trouble was, I couldn't give an answer. I had no recollection of ever bringing anything to Harlot from his medical file. My powers of on-demand recollection, after thirty years of drinking, could show a gaping hole or two. It was not impossible that I had forgotten. More likely someone eke had done the lifting. I could have been merely, one of a number of mules carrying bales of papyrus from Langley out to Harlot. For that matter, the loss of the X-rays could be attributed to FMWP--pronounced as foam-whip---our in-house acronym for Files Mislaid Within Parameters. The CIA had been expanding for close to four decades in spite of--or was it due to?---foam- whip. One could never assume a missing file to have been filched in mortal sin. The removal was more likely to be venial--plucked to protect some officer's self-interest, or assigned to the wrong department on its way back to the nest, or, for that matter, a young file clerk, distracted over a dubious romance, could have plunked the papers into the wrong folder, the wrong box, or now that we were computerized, down the chute on an off-key. The user-friendly computers employed by our common folk were as ready to take you off the road as the steering wheel of a fat old four-door sedan. In short. Harlot's X-ray files were not now available. "We're also having some trouble locating his fingerprints," Rosen now told me. "Although that may not matter. The fish got to the ends of his fingers. Which is interesting. There is a substance, some equivalent of catnip, but solely for fish, that could have been painted on the fingertips. Which got the catfish nibbling in the desired place. On the other hand, fish do nibble at extremities. So it could be for natural reasons." He dipped into an attache case he had sitting beside him on the floor, and handed over two eight-by-ten glossies respectively of a left hand wearing a ring, and a right hand. "Would this be recognizable?" Perhaps it was the pallor of the black-and-white tones in the photograph, but the hands could have belonged to anyone, they were identifiable only as the puffed-up mitts of a man who had been in water much too long. And the tips of the fingers were indeed frayed 'to the bone. 64 NORMAN MAILER "I asked Kittredge if she could make any identification from this, but she became distraught," Rosen said. Yes, distraught. The moment when I begged her to let me into the bedroom came back in all its rags of woe. How she must have suffered at the sight of those enlargements. Harlot's hands--once so deft. Kittredge's grief became a little more comprehensible to me. It was--cruel paradox--that her torment had nothing to do with mine: Her suffering had a separate existence. This occurred to me in the way that a physicist might encounter a new and offensive proposition in his field: It did not matter how much I loved Kittredge, no guarantee was returned that she could love me. That was the offensive proposition. Did Einstein, facing the quantum theory and a universe of chance, feel any more of an unholy stir? I am a professional, however. It is the operative word. It was time again to remind myself. One's body must be in the appointed place. Hung over or well rested; friendly or boiling with bile; loyal or treacherous; fit for the task or conceivably incompetent; one is, nonetheless, a professional; one shuts off the part of one's mind that is not8' appropriate to the task. If what is left does not have enough to manage the job, one is still professional. One has shown up for work. "Harry," said Rosen, "not all of the face is lost." I could hardly follow him. Then I did. "What was left for us?"*- "The right lower jaw. All the teeth on that side are absent. Except'' for the last two molars. That checks out. Harlot used to wear a bridge | on his right lower jaw anchored to the same two molars." "How do you know about this bridge?" "Well, my friend, we may not have his general medical records,! but the dental file was found. On those X-rays, one of the two molaft shows a small gold inlay. So does the cadaver. In fact, the filling OW the dead man matches astonishingly well to the Montague Xrays.t "Astonishingly well? Why not assume you have Hugh Mot (ague's funeral to prepare for?" "Because it doesn't feel right to me." He put out his hands apology as if he had been debating this through the afternoon « technicians in the laboratory. I realized he might be alone in suspicions. "I can't help it," he said. "I don't like the product.'^ He filled his pipe and lit it. I did not care to speak while h^ refueling. I suppose I have been annoyed by pipe smokers att| working life. We do not have as many now in the Company a Alien Dulles' day when the Director's old Dunhill became part of HARLOT'S GHOST 65 role model for a good many of us, but how many of my hours have been spent inhaling a colleague's pipe? "Can you tell me why," he asked at last, "it doesn't feel all that good?" "It's the only path through the evidence," I said. He knew it. I knew it. Harlot had taught us: Partial evidence which leads to but one conclusion is to be distrusted. Categorically distrusted. "I think," he said, "that a cosmetic deception may have been brought off." "Can we put the ball back on the playing field?" I asked, and had the passing thought--my mind seemed afflicted now by passing thoughts--that it was, after all, amazing how so many of us still spoke the way advertising people used to carry on twenty and thirty years ago. I think we are equal in some way--we, too, may not know whether an assertion is true or egregiously fraudulent. Run it up the mast and see if it waves. Many of our ventures were dependent on metaphor. I digress, but I did not wish to engage the enormity ofRosen's suggestion. There was no alternative, however. I tasted my Scotch. I said, "Ned, are you proposing that a dental technician worked on another man's mouth skillfully enough to convert those two molars into facsimiles of Harlot's? And did it in advance of his death?" "Not impossible." Rosen was excited. Harlot might be over the horizon, but the game was before him. "This," he said, "is what we have so far. Hugh Montague's dental X-rays were done a couple of years ago. At his age, teeth grind down and shift. So it isn't as if someone had to find a man of the exact age and size who also had two molars identical to Harlot's. You just need molars that are close. Obviously there would be no great problem in producing a precise copy of the gold inlay." "Would the dentist be working for the King Brothers?" "Yes," he said, "it would have to be. We could lock in on some person whose physical specifications are near enough to be satisfactory, but we could hardly deal with the rest of the job. I postulate that we have been presented with a highly worked-up KGB special." "Are you," I asked, "really claiming that they found some seventy-year-old Soviet prisoner and proceeded, after much dental work including possibly the extraction of all the other teeth on that half of the lower jaw, to go ahead and very carefully break the old fellow's : spine in just the right place, and then mend him back to health, 66 NORMAN MAILER smuggle him into this country, take him down to Harlot's boat, carefully shoot off his head to leave no more than the two facsimile molars, and then consign him to Chesapeake Bay long enough to puff up the rest of the remains, while they hang around through it all to be able to nudge him back to shore? No," I said, answering my own question, "I'd rather believe Harlot is dead, and you are holding the remains." "Well," he replied, "it would be a demanding operation. Even for the KGB. With all their patience." "Come," I said. "It's worthy ofFeliks Dzerzhinsky." Rosen stood up and poked the fire. "They would never go to such lengths," he said, "unless the stakes were very large. Let's go back to the worst-case scenario. Suppose Harlot is in the hands of the King Brothers?" "In the hands of the King Brothers and alive?" "Alive and happy," said Rosen. "Happy and on his way to Mos" cow." I certainly didn't wish to give Rosen any help at this point. Where; could this thesis leave me? Yet, my mind with all its conditioned! reflexes for twisting a hypothesis until it broke or took on form—wej treated hypotheses not unlike the way Sandy Calder used to bend wire—now bent Rosen's line of thinking into the next turn, and did so, I suspect, for no better reason than to improve on his scenario. The need for superior acumen is also an uncontrollable passion. "Yes,";, said, "what if Harlot is alive and happy and on his way to Mosco\ and doesn't want us to be able to conclude whether he's alive • dead?" I had gained a step on Rosen. We did not even have to speak i it. For Harlot to defect was as huge a one-man disaster as the CI could conceive. Even Bill Casey might recognize that it was larg than Nicaragua. Yet if it took a good many qualified people a year < more, we could still assess the damage—call it the meltdown—oft mess that would leave us in. If, however, we did not even kn< whether he was actually dead or, to the contrary, was educating;^ King Brothers about us—which would be the education of the c a bottle of rum, said one old wooden placan 21 west zwei u^p funfzigste strasse, said a painted street sign Oh,' I said, "is ^at German, Dad?" "Fifty-second Street," he told me. We were silent. "How do you li^ ^ Matthew's?" he said "Okay." "Better than Buc^ey7" "It's tougher." "You're not goi^ ^ flunk out?" "No, IgetB's." "Well, try to get a's. Hubbards are expected to get A's at St. Mart's." We were silent. I began to look at pother sign hanging over the bar. It obviously enjoyed its misspelling. ^ose saturdays and sundays, it said. i I we had one sup^or hell of a lot of work lately," he said. | I guess," I said. |, We were silent. / His gloom was like ^e throttled sentiments of a German shepher^ on a leash. I think I w^ something of a skinny version of him, but f believe he always saw <^ry bit of resemblance I had to my mother during the first five min^, of^ery one of our meetings, and I even came to understand ove^- ^e years that she might have done him a real HARLOT'S GHOST 107 damage. There was probably never a human he wished to kill more with his bare hands than this ex-wife; of course, he had had to forgo such pleasure. Blocked imperatives brought my father that much nearer to stroke. Now he said, "How's your leg?" "Oh, it's recovered. It's been all right for years." "I bet it's still stiff." "No, it's all right." He shook his head. "I think you had your trouble with the Grays because of that leg." "Dad, I was just no good at close-order drill." Silence. "But I got better." The silence made me feel as if I were trying to push a boat off the shore and it was too heavy for me. "Dad," I said, "I don't know if I can get A's at St. Matthew's. They think I'm dyslexic." He nodded slowly as if not unprepared for such news. "How bad is it?" he asked. "I can read all right, but I never know when I'm going to reverse numbers." "I had that trouble." He nodded. "Back on Wall Street before the war, I used to live in fear that one bright morning my touch of dyslexia would make the all-time mistake in the firm. Somehow, it never did." He winked. "You need a good secretary to take care of those things." He clapped me on the back. "One more lemonade?" "No." "I'll have another martini," he said to the bartender. Then he turned back to me. I still remember the bartender's choice of a keen or sour look. (Keen when serving gentlemen; sour for the tourists.) "Look," my father said, "dyslexia is an asset as well as a loss. A lot of good people tend to have dyslexia." "They do?" Over the past term a few boys at school had taken to calling me Retardo. "No question." He put his eyes on me. "About ten years ago in Kenya we were going for leopards. Sure enough, we found one, and it charged. I've hit elephants coming at me, and lions and water buffalo. You hold your ground, look for a vulnerable area in the crosshairs, then squeeze off your shot. If you can steer between the collywobbles, it's as easy as telling it to you now. Don't panic and you have yourself a lion. Or an elephant. It's not even a feat. Just a measure of inner discipline. But a leopard is different. I couldn't believe what 108 NOR-MAN MAILER. I saw. All the while it was charging it kept leaping left to right and back again, but so fast I thought I was watching a movie with pieces missing. You just couldn't get your crosshairs on any part of that leopard. So I took him from the hip. At twenty yards. First shot. Even our guide was impressed. He was one of those Scotsmen who sneer at all and anything American, but he called me a born hunter. Later I figured it out for myself: I was a good shot because of my dyslexia. You see, if you show me 1-2-3-4, I tend to read if as 1-4-2-3 or 1-3-4-2. I suppose I see like an animal. I don't read like some slave-- yessir, boss, I'm following you, yessir, 1-2-3-4--no, I look at what's near me and what's in the distance and only then do I shift to the middle ground. In and out, back and forth. That's a hunter's way of looking. If you have a touch of dyslexia, that could mean you're a' born hunter." He gave my midriff a short chop with his elbow. It proffered enough weight to suggest what a real blow would do. "How's your leg?" he asked again. : "Good," I said. "Have you tried one-legged knee raises?" The last time we had been to lunch, eighteen months ago, he had prescribed such an exercise. "I've tried it." "How many can you do?" "One or two." I was lying. "If you're really working at it, you would show more progress." "Yessir." I could feel his wrath commencing. It began slowly, like the first stirring of water in a kettle. This time, however, I could also sense the effort to pull back his annoyance, and that puzzled me. I could not recollect when he had treated me to such courtesy before. ; "I was thinking this morning," he said, "ofyour ski accident. You; were good that day." "I'm glad I was," I said. We were silent again, but this time it was a pause we couk inhabit. He liked to recall my accident. I believe it was the onl^ occasion on which he ever formed a good opinion of me. When I was seven, I had been picked up at school one Friday i< January by my mother's chauffeur and driven to Grand Central Sw tion. On this day, my father and I were going to board the weekent HARLOT'S GHOST 109 special to Pittsfield, Mass., where we would ski at a place called Bousquet's. How the great echoes of Grand Central matched the reverberation of my heart! I had never been skiing and therefore believed I would be destroyed next day flying off a ski jump. Naturally, I was taken over no such towering jump. I was put instead on a, pair of rented wooden slats, and after a set ofnear-fiascoes on the long rope-tow up, attempted to follow my father down. My father had a serviceable stem turn which was all you needed to claim a few yodeling privileges in the Northeast back in 1940. (People who could do a parallel christie were as rare then as tightrope artists.) I, of course, as a beginner, had no stem turn, only the impromptu move of falling to either side when my snow plow got going too fast. Some spills were easy, some were knockouts. I began to seek the fall before I needed to. Soon, my father was shouting at me. In those days, whether riding, swimming, sailing, or on this day, skiing, he lost his temper just so quickly as first returns made it evident that I was without natural ability. Natural ability was closer to God. It meant you were wellborn. Bantu blacks in Africa, I came to learn in CIA, believed that a chieftain should enrich himself and have beautiful wives. That was the best way to know God was well disposed toward you. My father shared this view. Natural ability was bestowed on the deserving. Lack of natural ability spoke of something smelly at the roots. The clumsy, the stupid, and the slack were fodder for the devil. It is not always a fashionable view today, but I have pondered it all my life. I can wake up in the middle of the night thinking, What if my father was right? Soon he grew tired of waiting for me to get up. "Just do your best to follow," he said, and was off, stopping long enough to call back, "Turn when I turn." I lost him at once. We were going along a lateral trail that went up and down through the woods. Going uphill, I did not know how to herringbone. I kept getting farther behind. When I came to the top of one rise and saw that the next descent was a full-fledged plunge followed by an abrupt rise, and my father was nowhere in sight, I decided to go straight down in the hope such a schuss would carry me a good way up. Then he would not have to wait too long while I climbed. Down I went, my skis in a wobbly parallel, and almost at once was moving twice as fast as I had ever traveled before. When I lost my nerve and tried to switch to a snowplow, my skis crossed, dug 110 NORMAN MAILER into the soft snow, and I wrenched over in a somersault. There wa no release to the bindings in those days. Your feet stayed in the skis I broke my right tibia. One did not know that at first. One only knew more pain thar ever felt before. Somewhere in the distance my father was bellowing "Where are you?" It was late in the afternoon and his voice echoec through the hills. No other skiers were coming by. It started to saw and I felt as if I were in the last reel of a movie about Alaska; soon th< snow would cover all trace of me. My father's roars were, in thi; silence, comforting. He came climbing back, angry as only a man with a powerful sun-wrinkled neck can be angry. "Will you rise to your feet, yoi quitter," he cried out. "Stand up and ski." I was more afraid of him than the five oceans of pain. I tried to get up. Something, however, was wrong. At a certain point, my wil was taken away from me completely. My leg felt amputated. "I can't, sir," I said, and fell back. Then he recognized there might be more than character at issu( here. He took off his ski jacket, wrapped me in it, and went down th< mountain to the Red Cross hut. Later, in the winter twilight, after the ski patrol had put on ; temporary splint and worked me down to the base in a sled, I was pu in the back of a small truck, given a modest dose of morphine, anc carried over some frozen roads to the hospital in Pittsfield. It was on< hell of a ride. By now, well into the spirit of the morphine, the pail still rasped like a rough-toothed saw into my broken bone each tim< we hit an evil bump (which was every fifty yards). The drug enablec me, however, to play a kind of game. Since the shock from ever bump shivered through my teeth, the game became the art of no making a sound. I lay there on the floor of the truck with a waddec ski jacket under my head and another beneath my leg, and must hav< looked like an epileptic: My father kept wiping froth from my mouth I made, however, no sound. After a time, the magnitude ofrn^ personal venture began to speak to him for he took my hand an< concentrated upon it. I could feel him trying to draw the pain froQ my body into his, and this concern ennobled me. I felt they could test my leg off and I might still make no outcry. ; He spoke: "Your father, Cal Hubbard, is a fathead." That may b< the only occasion in his life when he used the word in reference t< HARLOT'S GHOST 111 himself. In our family, fathead was about the worst expression you could use for another person. "No, sir," I said. I was afraid to speak for fear that the groans would begin, yet I also knew the next speech was one of the most important I would ever make. For a few moments I twisted through falls of nausea--I must have been near to fainting--but the road became level for a little while, and I succeeded in finding my voice. "No, sir," I said, "my father, Cal Hubbard, is not a fathead." It was the only time I ever saw tears in his eyes. "Well, you silly goat," he said, "you're not the worst kid, are you?" If we had crashed at that moment I could have died in a happy state. But I came back to New York in a cast two days later--my mother sent chauffeur and limousine up for me--and a second hell began. The part of me that was ready to go through a meat grinder for my father could hardly have been the poor seven-year-old boy who sat home in New York in his Fifth Avenue apartment with a compound fracture surrounded by a plaster cast that itched like the gates of sin. The second fellow seethed with complaints. I could not move. I had to be carried. I went into panic at the thought of using crutches. I was certain I would fall and break the leg again. The cast began to stink. In the second week the doctor had to cut the plaster off, clean my infection, and encase me again. I mention all this because it also cut off my father's love affair with me nearly as soon as it had begun. When he came over to visit--after an understanding with my mother that she would not be there--he would be obliged to read the notes she left--"You broke his leg, now teach him to move." Allowing for his small patience, he finally succeeded in getting me up on crutches, and the leg eventually mended, just a bit crooked, but it took too long. We were back in the land of paternal disillusion. Besides, he had more to think about than me. He was happily remarried to a tall, Junoesque woman absolutely his own size, and she had given him twin boys. They were three years old when I was seven, and you could bounce them on the floor. Their nicknames--I make no joke--were Rough and Tough. Rough Hubbard and Tough Hubbard. Actually, they were Roque Baird Hubbard and Toby Bol- land Hubbard, my father's second wife being Mary Bolland Baird, but rough and tough they promised to be, and my father adored them. 112 NORMAN MAILER Occasionally I would visit the new wife. (They had been marri( four years but I still thought of her as the new wife.) It was just a tr of a few blocks up the winter splendor of Fifth Avenue, that is to sa an education in the elegance of gray. The apartment houses we lilac-gray, and Central Park showed field-gray meadows in winter ai mole-gray trees. Since finding myself on crutches, I no longer ventured from n apartment house. In one of the later weeks of convalescence, how ever, I had a good day, and my limb did not ache in its cast. I afternoon, I was restless and ready for adventure. I not only we: down to the lobby and talked to the doorman but, on impulse, set o to circumnavigate the block. It was then the idea came to me to vi; my stepmother. She was not only large but hearty, and succeeded times in making me think she liked me; she would certainly tell n father that I had visited, and he would be pleased I was mastering tl crutches. So I decided to attempt those five blocks uptown from 73; to 78th Street and immediately went through a small palsy the Hi time I put my crutches out from the curb down six inches to d gutter. This small step accomplished, however, I began to swb along, and by the time I reached their apartment house, I was me talkative with the elevator man and pleased with how much plucis was showing for a seven-year-old. At their door a new maid answered. She was Scandinavian ai hardly spoke English, but I gathered that the nurse was out with d twins and "the Madame" was in her room. After some confusion tl new girl let me in and I sat on a couch, bored by the wan aftemoc sun as it reflected on the pale silk colors of the living room. It never occurred to me that my father was home. Later, mu< later, I would gather that this was about the time he had given up r broker's slot in Men-ill Lynch to volunteer for the Royal Canadian A Force. To celebrate, he was taking the afternoon off. I, howeve thought Mary Bolland Baird Hubbard was alone and reading, ar might be as bored as I was. So I hopped across the living room ai down the hall to their bedroom, making little sound on the pi carpet, and then, without taking the time to listen--all I knew W that I did not wish to return home without having spoken to somi one, but would certainly lose my nerve if I waited at the door- turned the knob, and, to keep my balance, took two big hops forwa on my crutches. The sight that received me was my father's nak< back, then hers. They were both pretty big. They were rolling arour HARLOT'S GHOST 113 on the floor, their bodies plastered end to end, their mouths on each other's—if I say things, it's for want of remembering the word I had then. Somehow I had an idea what they were doing. Importuning sounds came out of them, full of gusto, that unforgettable cry which lands somewhere between whooping and whimpering. I was paralyzed for the time it took to take it all in; then I tried to escape. They were so deep in their burrow they did not even see me, not for the first instant, the second, nor even the third as I backed my way to the door. Right then, they looked up. I was nailed to the door frame. They stared at me, and I stared at them, and I realized they did not know for how long I had been studying them. For heavens, how long? "Get out of here, you dodo," my father roared, and the worst of it was that I fled so quickly on the crutches that they thumped like ghost-bumpers on the carpet while I vaulted down the hall. I think it was this sound, the thump-thump of a cripple, that must have stayed in her ears. Mary was a nice woman, but she was much too proper to be photographed by anyone's memory in such a position, let alone a slightly creepy stepson. None of us ever spoke of it again; none of us forgot it. I remember that in the time it took to reach my mother's apartment, I generated a two-ton headache, and it was the first of a chronic run of migraines. This pressure had been paying irregular visits from that day. Right now, here at lunch, I could feel it on the edge of my temples, ready to strike. Now, I cannot say that these headaches were responsible for the ongoing fantasy of my childhood, but it is true that I began to spend many an afternoon after school alone in my room making drawings of an underground city. It was, as I look back on it, a squalid place. Beneath the ground in a set of excavations, I penciled in clubhouses, tunnels, game rooms, all connected by secret passages. There was an automat, a gym, and a pool. I giggled at how the pool would be full of urine, and installed torture rooms whose guards had Oriental faces. (I could draw slant eyes.) It was a warren of monstrous and cloacal turns, but it brought peace to my young mind. "How are your headaches?" asked my father at the bar at Twenty- One. "No worse," I said. "But they don't get better?" "They don't, I guess." "I'd like to reach in and pull out what's bothering you," he said. It was not a sentimental remark so much as a surgeon's impulse. 114 NORMAN MAILER I shifted the subject to Rough and Tough. They were no Knickerbocker Grays, and doing well, he told me. I was tall for n age, almost as tall as my father, but they gave every promise outstripping me. As he spoke, I knew there was some other matter c his mind. It was his inclination to pass me tidbits about his work. Tl presented curious debits to his duty. In his occupation, you we: supposed to encapsulate your working life apart from your family. C the other hand, he had formed his reflexes for security, such as th< were, working for the OSS in Europe during World War II. Noboc he knew then had been all that cautious. Today's secret was ne: week's headline, and it was not uncommon to give a hint of what 01 was up to when trying to charm a lady. Next day, after all, an airplai was going to parachute you into a strange place. If the lady were ma( aware of this, well, she might feel less absolutely loyal to her husbar (also away at war). Besides, he wanted to fill me in. If he was not an attentive parer he was at least a romantic father. Moreover, he was a team man. I- was in the Company and his sons ought to be prepared as well: Will Rough and Tough were a foregone conclusion, he could hardly swe on me. "I'm all riled up today," said my father. "One of our agents Syria got shot on a stupid business." "Was he a friend of yours?" I, asked. "Neither here nor there," he replied. "I'm sorry." "No, I'm just so goddamn mad. This fellow was asked to obta us a piece of paper that wasn't really needed." "Oh." "I'll tell you, dam it all. You keep this to yourself." "Yes, Dad." "One of those playboys at State decided to be ambitious. H< doing his Ph.D. thesis on Syria over at Georgetown. So he wanted* present a couple of hard-to-get details that nobody else has. He p through a request to us. Officially. From State. Could we furnish t poop? Well, we're green. You could grow vegetables with what thi scrape off our ignorance. We try to oblige. So we put a first-ri Syrian agent on it, and there you are--lost a crack operator becal he was asked to reach for the jam at the wrong time." ; "What'U happen to the fellow in the State Department?" < "Nothing much. Maybe we'll slow down a promotion for t) idiot by talking to a guy or two at State, but it's horrifying, isn't it? Our man loses his life because somebody needs a footnote for his Ph.D. thesis." "I thought you looked upset." "No," he said quickly, "it's not that." Then he hoisted his mar- tint, stepped off the stool, raised his hand as if calling a cab, and the captain was there to bring us to our table which was, I already knew, in his favored location against the rear wall. There my father placed me with my back to the room. At the table to my left were two men with white hair and red faces who looked like they might have gout, and on the right was a blond woman with a small black hat supporting a long black feather. She was wearing pearls on a black dress and had long white gloves. Sitting across from her was a man in a pencil-thick pinstripe. I mention these details to show a facet of my father: He was able, in the course of sitting down, to nod to the two gentlemen with gout as if, socially speaking, there was no reason why not to speak to one another, and freeze the man in the pencil-stripe suit for the width of his stripes while indicating to the blond lady in black that she was blue ribbon for blond ladies in black. My father had a gleam in his eye at such times that made me think of the Casbah. I always supposed a Levantine would come up to you in the Casbah and give a flash of what he had in his hand. There!—a diamond peeked out. That made me recollect Cal Hubbard rolling with Mary Baird on the carpeted floor, which in turn caused me to look down quickly at my plate. "Herrick, I haven't seen a superior hell of a lot of you lately, have I?" he asked, unfolding his napkin, and sizing up the room. I wasn't too happy being placed with my back to everyone, but then he gave a wink as if to suggest that he had his reasons. It was incumbent on his occupation, as he once explained, that he be able to eye a joint. I think he may have picked up the phrase from Dashiell Hammett, with whom he used to drink before word went around that Hammett was a Communist. Then, since he considered Hammett smarter than himself, he gave up the acquaintance. A loss. According to my father, he and Dashiell Hammett could each put down three double Scotches in an hour. "Well, there's a reason I haven't seen a lot of you, Rick." He was the only one to call me Rick, rather than Harry, for Herrick. "I have been traveling an unconscionable amount." This was said for the blond woman as much as for me. "They don't know yet whether I'll 116 NORMAN MAILER be one of the linchpins in Europe or the Far East." Now the man in the pencil-stripe suit began his counteroffensiv He must have put a curve on what he said, for the woman gave a lo intimate laugh. In response, my father leaned toward me across tl table and whispered, "They've given OPC the covert operations." "What's covert?" I whispered back. "The real stuff. None of that counterespionage where you drir out of my teacup and I drink out of yours. This is war. Withoi declaring it." He raised his voice sufficiently for the woman to he the last two phrases, then dropped back to a murmur as if the best w; to divide her attention was to insinuate himself in and out of h hearing. "Our charter calls for economic warfare," he said in a high shaped whisper, "plus underground resistance groups." Loudly: "Yc saw what we did in the Italian elections." "Yessir." He enjoyed the yessir. I had broadcast it for the blond lady. "If not for our little operation, the Communists would have take over Italy," he now stated. "They give the credit to the Marshall PI; but that's wrong. We won in Italy in spite of the money that w thrown around." "We did?" "Count on it. You have to take into account the Italian eg' They're an odd people. Half sharp, half meatball." By the way in which the man in the pencil-stripe reacted, suspected he was Italian. If my father sensed that, he gave no sig "You see, the Romans themselves are civilized. Minds quick as stile tos. But the Italian peasant remains as backward as a Filipino. ] consequence, you mustn't try to motivate their self-interest to crudely. Self-esteem means more to them than filling their bellie They're always poor, so they can live with hunger, but they don want to lose their honor. Those Italians really wanted to stand up I us. They would have derived more pleasure spitting in our face ths sucking up to us with their phony gratitude. Nothing personal. T( Italians are like that. If Communism ever takes over in Italy, thoj Red wops will drive the Soviets just as crazy as they're driving uSj I was feeling the wrath of the Italian man next to me. "Dad,.| that's what you think," I blurted out, scurrying to save the pea first edition ofSkeat's Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, ad truth, it wasn't bad. There was a time when I could not only ocate the roots of a word in Latin and Greek, but enjoy the exotic rams and tubers that come to us from Scandinavian and Celtic. I warned of English words derived from Italian by way of Latin, as well s of Portuguese from Latin (auto-da-fe and binnacle), and French out 'i Portuguese from Latin (fetich and parasol), and French out of Spanish 'm Latin, and Portuguese out of Spanish and Dutch derived from 146 NORMAN MAILER Latin (cant and canal and pink), and German from Latin, and Fn from Late Latin, and German out of Hungarian from Serbian fron Greek from Latin, all to be tapped for hussar. I learned crossbred French out of Spanish from Arabic from Greek--alembic is on< ward--and I will not go on at length about English that came I from Low German, Dutch, Slavonic, Russian, Sanskrit, Magyar, brew, Hindustani. Harlot, by his lights, was getting me ready for < The theory? Why, look to the tendrils of other tongues that grown their way into English. Thereby one might develop a tast the unspoken logic of other lands. Of course, I saw it all as preparation. For the next four years courses and the friends I made, were all there to contribute to mission as a CIA man. If I had any conflict over my future occupa it was on spring nights in New Haven, after an occasional and frus ing date with a girl, when I would tell myself that I really wishc become a novelist. Brooding upon this, I would also inform m that I did not have sufficient experience to write. Joining CIA w give me the adventures requisite to working up good fiction. I was certainly single-minded. I see myself in junior year bt the Yale-Harvard game, drunk at Mory's with my peers, holdinj silver bowl high. I "was obliged to keep drinking Green Cup for as as my table would continue to sing, yes, how I drank and how chose to sing. The song was long, and I would not quit until th< bar of music was sung, and sung again. Words I have not thought of in thirty years come to me out o pale, sunlike glare of the interior of that large silver punch bo^ quaffed Green Cup at Mory's and around me in a ring of te: luminated voices, the song cried on: It's Harry, it's H, it's H makes the world go round. It's Harry, H, that makes the world go round. Sing Hallelujah, sing Hallelujah, Put a nickel on the drum, Save another drunken bum, Sing Hallelujah, sing Hallelujah, Put a nickel on the drum, Save another drunken bum, Put a nickel on the drum, And you'll be saved. HARLOT'S GHOST 147 They paused for breath but I had to keep drinking. Oooh, I'm H-A-P-P-Y to be FRdoubleE, F-R-double-E to be SAVED, S-A-V-E-D from the bonds of SIN, Glory, glory Hallelujah, Hip, Hooray, Amen. And I, drinking that sweet, potent, noxious, liquor-hallowed Green Cup, swallow into swallow, giving my soul to finish the bowl, knew that angels watched me as I drank, and if I drank it all before the song was done, we would beat Harvard tomorrow, we would serve our team from the stands. We would be there to offer our devotion, our love, our manly ability to booze with the gods at Mory's. Only gods drank to the depths of a silver bowl. We would ring Yale Bowl with the might of our mission at Yale, which was to defeat Harvard tomorrow. God, didn't I guzzle it down, and the score next day, in that November of 1953, was Yale 0, Harvard 13. I WAS INTRODUCED TO kittredge TOWARD THE END OF JUNIOR YEAR at Yale. Just before Easter vacation, a summons came by telegram: COME MEET MY FIANCEE HADLEY KITTREDGE GARDINER. SPEND EASTER AT THE KEEP WITH KITTREDGE AND JEAN HARLOW. ^ Back to Doane. I had not been to the island since my father, in paced of the money a couple of years ago, had pushed and cajoled his we brothers and single sister into agreement on the sale. Why his unds needed replenishment remained one more family mystery. toiong the Hubbards, windfalls, disasters, and outright peculation rere kept at a greater distance from the children than sexual disclo- »re; all we knew (and it was talked about in whispers) was: "A damn >ame. Got to sell the Keep. Boardman's idea." My father walked out for two weeks that summer with a mouth as tight as a South nerican dictator under palace arrest. I hardly cared. I loved the Keep s than the others, or so I thought. It was only over the next summer, uch I spent at loose ends in Southampton with my mother, getting 148 NORMAN MAILER drunk with new, rich friends I did not like, and banging tennis b; through August days, that I came to understand what it was to lose t splendor of afternoon silences over the Maine hills. The call to go back to the Keep was then agreeable; the opport nity to see Harlot spoke of more. I was still like a girl who fell in lo with a man who went away to war. If he had not come back for thi years, no matter. The girl went on no other dates; she did not ev accept telephone calls from nice boys. I was in love with CIA. I am one of those types--is it one in t( or one in fifty?--who can give up just about all of life for concenfa tion upon a part of life. I read spy novels, made island hops from we to word in Skeat, attended foreign-policy forums at Yale, and studi photographs of Lenin and Stalin and Molotov, of Gromyko a: Lavrenti Beria; I wanted to comprehend the face of the enemy eschewed political arguments about Republicans and Democra They hardly mattered. Alien Dulles was my President, and I would a combat trooper in the war against the Devil. I read Spengler a brooded through my winters in New Haven about the oncomi downfall of the West and how it could be prevented. Be certain tl under these circumstances I sent Harlot a telegram that I was on t way, signed it Ashenden (for Somerset Maugham's British spy), a drove my car, a 1949 Dodge coupe, up from New Haven all the w to the back side of Mount Desert, where I found the house not at as it used to be. I do not know if I care to describe the changes. I would need add a treasures-in-trash catalogue to the insights of a geologist: Gen< ations ofHubbards had left their strata. We used to have oak whatni in corners, and blonde-wood Danish in the Cunard; one fine ( drafting table at the Camp had come down to us from Doane Hadio Hubbard (who also left us punctilious drawings of a proposed lookc tower one hundred feet high that he once planned to build on t southern head of the island). Along the walls were hordes ofwashe out framed photographs, spotted, glass-cracked, oak-mitred, coi down to us from the 1850s on. Then there were the color prints, la sun-faded, of Matisse, Braque, Dufy, Duchamp--all introduced- my mother. They had been kept, even if she never came back. oh up on a wall, things remained; it was a summer house. No warsa selection went on--merely an accommodation of accumulation. 'B beds were a disaster area, summer-cottage pallets. Lumpy, brokfl spring mattresses with old ticking, wooden bureaus with thick pad HARLOT'S GHOST 149 scored by fingernail scrapings to attest to hot bored summer afternoons; spiderwebs on casement windows, birds' nests under the eaves, and mouse droppings in many an unused room were the price we paid for that much spread of house. Rodman Knowles Gardiner and his wife fixed it up when they bought it from us. Kittredge's father, being a Shakespeare scholar (distantly related to the famous Shakespearean George Kittredge, also of Harvard), knew enough about the unwinding of plots to stipulate later in the deed of transfer to the couple for a wedding present that in the event of Kittredge's divorce from Hugh Montague, she was to own the Keep without impediment. Which is how I returned to living in it. By way of Kittredge. But that was in time to come. Now in the Easter of my junior year at Yale, more than two years after the closing with the Hubbards, Dr. Gardiner and his wife had certainly spruced up the Keep. Retired from teaching, they moved some of their best Colonial furniture from their Cambridge home to Maine. There were drapes on the windows now and the walls bore Dr. Gardiner's collection of nineteenth-century Victorian paintings. The bedrooms had new beds. At first sight I hated it. We now looked like a New England hostelry of the sort that keeps the temperature too high in winter and screws down the windows. I spent a difficult two hours after my arrival. Neither Hugh Montague nor his fiancee were there--instead, I was received by the eminent Shakespearean and his wife, -Maisie. They endured me; I suffered. He was a Harvard professor of a variety that may no longer exist. Dr. Gardiner was so well established that there were tiers to his eminence. Stages of his personality, much like assistants in a descending chain of command, were delegated to conversation. We spoke of the Yale and Harvard football teams of the previous fall, then of my category in squash--I was a B-group player--and of my father, whom Dr. Gardiner had last seen with Mr. Dulles at an annual garden party in Washington: "He looked very well indeed--of course, that was last year." "Yessir. He still looks well." "Good for him." As a tennis player. Dr. Gardiner would not have let you enjoy rallies during the warm-up. He'd drive your innocent return crosscourt and leave you to trot after it. Maisie was not conspicuously better. She spoke of the flower garden she would put in this May; she intoned in a dreary ifnonethe- 150 NORMAN MAILER less dulcet voice against the unpredictability of spring weathi Maine. She mentioned the hybrids she would plant; when I on mention of some wildflowers to look for in June and July, sh( much interest in me. Conversational pauses expanded into exten of silence. In desperation, I tried to charge into Dr. Gardiner's ci of strength. I expatiated on a term paper (for which I had receive A) on Ernest Hemingway's work. The consciously chosen iroi the later style showed, I said, that he had been enormously influe by King Lear, particularly by some of Kent's lines, and I quoted : act one, scene four, "I do prefer ... to love him that is lovci converse with him that is wise and say little, to fear judgment, to when I cannot choose, and to eat no fish." I was about to add, ": keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, deliver a plain message bluntly," but Dr. Gardiner said, "Why cem yourself with the copyist?" We sat. After a stretch, Kittredge and Hugh Montague came in the twilight. They had been--it was a very cold Easter--ice cl ing on parts of the lower trail of Gorham Mountain. Nice I Kittredge assured me, and she looked full of red cheeks and Chrisi She was lovely beyond any measure I had for a woman. Her hair was cut short like a boy's, and she was wearing pants a windbreaker, but she was the most wonderful-looking girl. She c have been a heroine out other father's collection of painted Vicb damsels, pale as their cloisters,-lovely as angels. That was Kittred except that her color today after the afternoon's ice climb w startling as a view of wild red berries in a field of snow. "It's wonderful to meet you. We're cousins. Did you know tl she asked. "I suppose I did." "I looked it up last evening. Third cousins. That's no-man's- if you get down to it." She laughed with such a direct look (as speak of how very attractive a man younger than herself might she liked him) that Hugh Montague actually stirred. I knew;' enough yet of jealousy, but I could feel the wave that came overt him. ^ "Well, I must tell you," she said, "all the while Hugh was«j us up this dreadful pitch, I kept saying I wouldn't marry him ufi| promised never to do such a thing to me again, whereupon Mj 'You and Harry Hubbard are in the same boat.' He banishes us eij from his grubby art." HARLOT'S GHOST 151 "Actually," said Hugh Montague, "she's a little better than you, Harry. All the same, it's hopeless." "Well, I should hope so," said Maisie Gardiner. "Fool's play to risk your neck on ice." "I love it," said Kittredge. "The only thing Hugh would bother to explain was, 'Ice won't betray you until it does.' What a husband you'll make." "Relatively secure," said Hugh. Rodman Knowles Gardiner had a coughing fit at the thought of his daughter in marriage. At precisely that moment Kittredge said, "I believe Daddy thinks of me as Desdemona." "I don't see myself," said her father, "as a blackamoor, nor espoused to my daughter. You have rotten logic, darling." Kittredge changed the subject. "Never did any ice climbing?" she asked of me. When I shook my head, Kittredge said, "It's no worse than the awful thing they do to you at the Farm when you have to leap out of a mud ditch and scramble up a link fence in between sweeps of the searchlight." She stopped, but not in caution, more to calculate when I would be eligible for that chore. "I guess you'll be getting into it year after next. The fence is modeled on the Grosse-UUner barrier in East Germany." Hugh Montague gave a smile with no amusement in it. "Kit- tredge, don't practice indiscretion as if it were your metier." "No," said Kittredge, "I'm home. I want to talk. We're not in Washington, and I'm tired of pretending through one blah-blah cocktail party after another that I'm a little file clerk at Treasury. 'Oh,' they , say, 'what do you file?' 'Oodles of stuff,' I tell them back. 'Statistics.' They know I'm lying. Obviously, I'm a madwoman Spock. It stands it." "What stands out is how spoiled you are," said her fiance. "How could I not be? I'm an only child," said Kittredge. "Aren't 'ou?" she went on to ask. "By half," I said, and when no one responded, I felt obliged to ive a summary explanation. She appeared to be fascinated. "You must be full," she said, "of ^hat I call ghost-overlays." She held up a marvelous white hand as if he were playing traffic cop in a skit at a charity ball. "But I promised "Wrybody I would not theorize this weekend. Some people drink too 'uch. I never stop theorizing. Do you think it's a disease, Hugh?" 152 NORMAN MAILER "Preferable to drink," he offered. "I'll tell you about ghost-overlays when we're alone," she dared to me. I winced within. Hugh Montague was possessive. If she sr nicely at me, he saw the end of their romance in her smile. Ultim; he was right--it is just that lovers condense all schedules. What w take us more than fifteen years looked like immediate danger. On the other hand, he was bored. Carrying on a convers: with Rodman and Maisie Gardiner was equal to taking dinner room where light bulbs keep going off and on. Most of the tun talked as if there were rules against logical connection. During d I kept track of a few remarks. Ten statements were uttered owe minutes. Three belonged to Dr. Gardiner, two were by Maisie, i by Harlot, one from Kittredge, one from me. There are lirni memory. I offer a reasonable substitute. Rodman Knowles Gardiner: "I've got Freddy Eaves at the 1 yard looking out for a new spinnaker." Maisie: "Why do the royal purple zinnias slip into blight so r more readily than the cosmos zinnias?" Hugh Montague: "There was word of a major avalanche y< day in the Pyrenees." Kittredge: "If you would give the purple zinnias a bit less m Mother . . ." Maisie: "Is Gilley Butler a reliable handyman, Mr. Hub! Your father, Cal Hubbard, says to watch out for him." Myself: "I should listen to my father." Montague: "They weren't carrying avalanche cords so the b are not recoverable." Dr. Gardiner: "The spinnaker ripped in the Backside Rega had to finish with a jenny. Half as much headway." Montague: "Three cheers for making the honor roll a Harry." Dr. Gardiner: "I'm going to fill the martini shaker." S Kittredge and I had, nonetheless, one hour alone. She derolj it. On Sunday morning, coming back from Easter Mass, with afl| to wait for Maisie's cook to serve us Sunday dinner, she forcl situation. "I want Harry to show me the island," she said to fl "I'm sure he knows the nooks and crannies." A lack ofplausi quivered in the air. It would not require a guide to find nool crannies on our small island. HARLOT'S GHOST 153 Hugh nodded. He smiled. He held out his hand like a pistol, thumb up, forefinger extended. Wordlessly, he fired a shot at me. "Keep those nasal passages clean, Herrick," he said. Kittredge and I walked in kelp and sea wrack on the pebbled shore. Near us reared the unseen presence of Harlot, a stallion over the field of our mood. "He's awful," Kittredge said at last and took my hand. "I adore him but he's awful. He's raunchy. Harry, do you love sex?" "I would hate to think I didn't," I said. "Well, I would hope you do. You are as good-looking as Montgomery Clift, so you ought to. I know I like sex. It's all sex with Hugh and me. We have so little else in common. That's why he's jealous. His Omega is virtually void of libido and his Alpha is overloaded." I did not know as yet that she had been consorting with these two principalities, Alpha and Omega, ever since the concept first came to her four years ago. Now I heard of them for the first time. I would encounter those words again over the next thirty years. "What makes it worse," she said, "is that I'm still a virgin. I think he is too, although he won't offer a conclusive word about it." I was twice shocked, once at these astonishing facts, and again that she would tell me. She laughed, however. "I take a True Confession pill every night," she said. "Are you a virgin. Harry?" "Regrettably," I replied. She laughed and laughed. "I don't want to be," she confided. "It's 'absurd. It isn't as if Hugh and I don't know each other's bodies rather well. In fact, we know them perfectly. We're very much naked together. That kind of truth binds us. But he insists on waiting for marriage to consummate the last part." I "Well, you'll be wed soon, I guess." I "In June," she said. "We were supposed to gather up a few final clans this weekend, but Daddy and Hugh when put together are lopeless. Worse than two relics in an old folks' home trying to make ;onversation with each other's dentures." It was my turn to laugh. It went on for so long that in embarrass- nent I sat down. She sat beside me. We perched on the southern head >i the island and looked down Blue Hill Bay to the cold Easter sun tuning over the remote Atlantic. "Hugh may be the most complicated person I've encountered," pie said, "but this weekend he's ridiculously simple. He's in a thun- 'ring grouch because we can't get together at night. Daddy insisted 154 NORMAN MAILER on putting me in the room next to Mother and him. So Hugh is fi apart. He's outrageously priapic, you see. Back in Washington he me all the time. I hope you don't mind hearing this, Harry. I'vi to talk." "Yes," I said. I didn't know what she was talking about. The seemed to contradict each other. "How can he be on you," I a; "if you're both virgins?" "Well, we go in for what he calls 'the Italian solution.' " "Oh," I said. I didn't know anymore. Then I did. It was p cally painful to contemplate what she allowed him to do. Nor c I conceive how it connected with all her soap and sunlight. "Actually," she said with the quick, rising zephyr of a Rad girl, "I love it. It's debauched. To be a virgin and yet feel so wai Harry, it's opened a purview on the Renaissance for me. Now how they could observe the Catholic forms and yet live in near-mortal violation of so much. That's not the unhealthiesi proach, you know." "Do you talk this way to everyone?" I asked. "Heavens, no," she said. "You're special." "How can that be? You don't know me." "I only needed one look. Before it's over, I said to myself going to tell this man everything. You see. Harry, I love you.' "Oh," I said. "I guess I love you too." I did not have to prel The thought of Hugh Montague as a satyr hot on her back lei feeling criminally wounded. I might as well have been the cuckc lover. I hated how her confidence had reached so easily to the center of me. "Of course," she said, "you and I are never going to do any( about it. We're cousins, and that's what we'll always be. D( friends. At worst, kissing cousins." She gave the littlest examp such a kiss to my lips. That too went all the way in. Her moutt the scent of a petal just separated from the flower. I had never; near a nicer breath. Nor one with more surprises. It was like pi up a great novel and reading the first sentence. Call me Ishmae "Someday," she said, "after Hugh and I are tired of each < maybe you and I will have an affair. Just the passing kind to gw of naughty pleasure." 5 "Kissing cousins," I replied hoarsely. ^ "Yes. Only now. Harry, I need a good friend. I need oris pure stink. Somebody I can tell everything to." HARLOT'S GHOST 155 "I'm incapable of telling all," I confessed, as if I had numerous adventures meticulously secreted away. "You are buttoned up. It's what I brought you out of the house for. I want to talk about your ghost-overlays." "Is that phrase from your psychological theories?" "Yes." "My father told me you're a genius. Alien Dulles says so." "Well, I'm not," she said petulantly as if the stupidity of the supposition doubled every likelihood of great loneliness. "I have a brain that's marvelously empty when I'm not using it. So it allows thoughts to enter which other people would sweep away. Don't you think the heavens often reach us with their messages just as fully as dark forces below tickle our impulses?" I nodded. I would not have known how to argue with this. But then, she was not looking for a debate. By her change in tone, I could sense that she was in a mood to expound. "I've always found Freud uncongenial," she said. "He was a great man with bushels of discoveries, but he really had no more philosophy than a Stoic. That's not enough. Stoics make good plumbers. The drains go bad and you've got to hold your nose and fix them. End of Freud's philosophy. If people and civilization don't fit--which we all know anyway--why, says Freud, make the best of a bad lot." She had obviously given this speech before. She must have to 'explain her thesis often on the job. So I took it as a mark of friendship that she was willing to outline it for me. Besides, I liked listening to her voice. I felt she would give this lecture because she wanted us to ,be closer. And felt a pure pang of the nicest kind of love. She was so beautiful, and so lonely. Wildflowers in her hair, and blue sneakers on (her feet. I wanted to hug her, and would have, if not for a sense of "Tie prodigiously long shadow of Hugh Montague. "Philosophically speaking," she went on, "I am very much a lualist. I do not see how one can not be. It was all very well for pinoza to postulate his Substance, that wonderfully elusive, meta- raysical, metaphorical world-goo he employed to bind all opposites >gether and so be able to declare himself a monist. But I believe he 'as scuttling the philosophical bark. If God is trying to tell us any- "ing, it is that every idea we have of Him, and of the universe, is dual. Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, good and evil, birth and death, ly and night, hot and cold, male and female, love and hate, freedom to bondage, consciousness and dreaming, the actor and the oh 156 NORMAN MAILER server--I could add to such a list forever. Consider it: We are i ceived out of the meeting of one sperm and one ovum. In the instant of our existence, at the moment of our creation, we brought to life by the joining of two separate entities; how very n unalike they are. Immediately, we start to develop with a right and a left side. Two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two lips, two se teeth, two lobes to the brain, two to the lungs, two arms, two h; two legs, two feet." "One nose," I said. She had heard this before. "The nose is only a work of. surrounding two tunnels." "One tongue," I said. "Which has a top and a bottom and they're awfully diffen She put her tongue out at me. "Five fingers on each hand." "The thumb is in opposition to the others. The big toe use be in opposition to the foot." We began to laugh. "Two testicles," I said, "but one penis "It's the weak link in my theory." "One navel," I went on. "You're awful," she said. "You're implacable." "One head of hair." "Which you part." She ruffled my hair. We almost kissed a| It was delicious to be flirting with a third cousin who was a coup years older than me. "Try to be solemn," she said. "There's really more evidena duality than singularity. I decided to take the next step. What ift are not only two nostrils, two eyes, two lobes, and so forth, but psyches as well, and they are separately equipped? They go thr< life like Siamese twins inside one person. Everything that happel one, happens to the other. If one gets married, the other is ak^n) the ride. Otherwise, they are different. They can be just a > different, like identical twins, or they can be vastly different, like I and evil." She stopped for a nearer example. "Or optimisMj pessimism. I'm going to choose that because it's somewhat ea^ discuss. Most things that happen to us have optimistic overtone<, pessimistic possibilities. Suppose Alpha and Omega--for those a^J two names I've finally applied to these two psyches--one has t0| them some kind of name, and A and Z is much too cold to§ HARLOT'S GHOST 157 with--so, Alpha and Omega. It is pretentious, but one does get used to it." "You were going to give me an example," I said. "Yes. All right. Let us say that Alpha tends to be optimistic in most situations, whereas Omega is inclined to pessimism. Each experience that comes their way is interpreted with different sensitivities, so to speak. Alpha picks up what might be positive in a specific situation; Omega anticipates what could be lost. That divided mode of perception operates for any duality you wish to invoke. Take night and day. Let me propose that Omega is a little more responsive to nocturnal experiences than Alpha. In the morning, however. Alpha is better at getting up and going off to work." As if to prove the presence of Alpha and Omega within herself, her intimacy, so innocent and audacious at once, had by now drawn back, and the pedant had appeared. One would have to win both sides of this woman. It also occurred to me that I Was not being very loyal to Hugh Montague, but what the hell, that might be my Omega. "I just don't see," I said, "why the two must react differently all the time." "Remember," she said, holding up an instructor-like finger, "Alpha and Omega originate from separate creatures. One is descended from the sperm cell. Alpha; Omega from the ovum." "You are saying we have a male and a female psyche inside ourselves?" "Why not? There's nothing mechanical about it," said Kittredge. "The male side can be full of the so-called female qualities, whereas ', Omega can be an outrageous bull of a woman just as virile and muscular as a garbage collector." She gave a merry look as if to show jtthe return other Alpha. Or was it Omega? "God wants us to be as various and faceted as kaleidoscopes. Which looks to the next point: Hugh and I agree on this: The war between God and the Devil usually ?oes on in both psychic entities. That's as it should be. Schizophrenics 'end to separate good and evil altogether, but in more balanced people, God and the Devil fight not only in Alpha, but in Omega as well." ' "There seems to be endless capacity for strife in your system." ^ "Of course there is. Doesn't that fit human nature?" I" "Well," I said, "I still can't see why the Creator desired such a lomplicated design." 158 NORMAN MAILER "Because he wished to give us free will," she said. "I agree Hugh on this as well. Free will amounts to giving the Devil i opportunity." "How can you know that?" I blurted out. "It's what I think," she said simply. "Don't you see, we h; true and real need for two developed psyches, each with its superego, ego, and id. That way, one can feel some three-dimen; ality, so to speak, in our moral experience. If Alpha and Omeg quite unalike, and, believe me, they often are, then they can upon the same happening from wholly separate points of view why we have two eyes. For the same reason. So we can esri distance." "Account for this," I said. "When our eyes become too diffi from each other, we need glasses. If Alpha and Omega are aw different, how can a person function?" "Look at Hugh," she said. "His Alpha and Omega must be apart as the sun and the moon. Great people, and artists, and extra' nary men and women have dramatically different Alpha and On Of course, so do the feebleminded, the addictive, and the psyche Something in the certainty other voice was making me doj "How do you account, then," I asked, "for the difference betwci artist and a psychotic?" "The quality of inner communication, of course. If Alpha Omega are incredibly different, but can manage all the same to ex their separate needs and perceptions to each other, then you hv extraordinary person. Such people can find exceptional solut Artists, especially. You see, when Alpha and Omega don't comn cate, then one or the other must become the master or thel standstill. So the loser becomes oppressed. That's a desperately ficient way of living." "Like totalitarianism?" "Precisely. You do see what I'm talking about." I was awfully pleased to hear that. Encouraged, I asked: "VI a healthier person have an Alpha and Omega about as different as Republicans and Democrats? Agree on some things, disagdj others, but work it out?" I She beamed. I had brought out her better side. The wicked! was in her eye again. "You're wonderful," she said. "I do lovS; You're so direct." ^ "You are making fun of me." | HARLOT'S GHOST 159 "I'm not," she said. "I'm going to use your example with some f those dummies I have to give explanations to." "Don't they love your ideas? I can see where Alpha and Omega ;U us a lot about spies." "Of course. But so many of the people I work with are afraid to •ust it. I'm just a girl to them. So they can't believe that this could rove the first reliable psychological theory to explain how spies are ble to live with the tension of their incredible life-situations, and in ict, will not only bear up under such a double life, but indeed, go )oking for it. I nodded. She had termed me direct, but I was wondering if her lode of presentation might not also be somewhat too unadorned. r. Gardiner walked her up to bed. It would also take years before I arned--how many little confessions was Kittredge eventually to lake!--that Dr. Gardiner had a preferred means of connubial union: j : was to investigate Maisie while she slept. Kittredge discovered her ither's habit when she was ten. She peeped and saw it all. In sleep, laisie, a wanton of Morpheus, made cries like a bird. Husbands and wives have been known to discover that their parate childhoods are curiously linked: Kittredge and I had both en our parents in the act of love. Or, more to the fact, we had, etween us, seen three of our four parents. Titus and Lavinia, taken )gether, had lost three of their four hands. The allusion is meaning- ss, I am certain, except that numbers command their own logic, and iUgustus Farr may have been on a promenade that night while Dr. lardiner and his somnolent Maisie were transported to those underworlds that dwell beneath the navel. 6 RETURNED TO THE keep IN june FOR THE MARRIAGE OF hadley Jttredge Gardiner to Hugh Tremont Montague. My father and ^pmother, my brothers, my uncles, aunts, and cousins, were there in ae gathering of good Maine summer families. The Prescotts and the 'eabodys came, the Finletters and Griswolds, the Herters, and the 'laces. Even Mrs. Collier from Bar Harbor together with half of the w Harbor Club took the crooked twenty-mile journey west across ?e fifteen miles of the island to the back side. Contingents were 'sent from Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor, and David RockeIcr attended. Desmond FitzGerald was in view, and Clara Fargo 'omas; Alien Dulles flew up from Washington with Richard Bissell fQ Richard Helms, Tracy Bames and Frank Wisner, James Angleton 162 NORMAN MAILBR and Miles Copeland. One of my cousins, Colton Shaler Hubl who liked to see himself as the operative definition of a wag, heard to say, "Drop a bomb on this shindig and U.S. Intelligen gone to smithereens." It is no part of my intention to expatiate on the floral arra ments chosen by Maisie, nor the sober character of our Episc church, St. Anne of the Trinity in the Woods (which has been qu criticized since the turn of the century for its penurious Presbyti air), and I am certainly not equipped to describe the niceties of wedding-gown brocades. I speak of the nuptials because they i firmed my suspicion that I was in love with Kittredge, and that pn to be the most inexpensive, self-sustaining, and marvelous lo young man could attach himself to. For a long time, it cost mi more than the luxurious enrichment of my self-pity, which was moted on the day of the wedding from the spiritual equivalent sigh to the deepest mahogany melancholy. I was in love wi beautiful, brilliant girl who was married to the most elegant incisive gent I had ever met; there was no hope for me but, oh love was beautiful. Mr. Dulles seemed to agree. Soon after we assembled back a Keep for the wedding party, he stood up and (very much ii function as Director ofCIA) gave the first toast. I still remember delicately he held his glass yet with what a sense of gravity. "The Greco-Roman concept of the healthy mind in the he; body is personified by our good and brave colleague, Hugh Trer Montague," were Dulles' first words. "Indeed, if it were not fo] one prodigality he shares with me--no, let me say in whici surpasses me--at squandering the once rich crop of his hair, we c speak of the perfect fellow." Polite but happily unweighted lauj passed gently through the room. "For those few of you who are connected to the legends of his heroic exploits in OSS during the let me say that you must take it on faith. His feats, for the pre remain in the bailiwick of the highly classified. For equally ( cause, I cannot begin to describe the work he does now except td that he is always threatening to become indispensable before he is.! properly middle-aged." Sweet, light laughter. "Nonetheless, fora sterling attributes, he is still the luckiest fellow in the world. I marrying a young lady of incommensurate beauty who, if I cM grow portentous on so festive an occasion, has also become by di inspiration, talent, and study, a psychological theorist of a powel I HARLOT'SGHOST163 persuasion to inspire all Jungians and confound all Freudians. When she was still an undergraduate at Radcliffe, I happened to be shown her senior thesis and it was a wonder. I break a little confidence by saying I was quick to tell her, 'Kittredge, your thesis is a marvel and I can promise you that some of us just might need it. You, Kittredge, are coming aboard.' How could a young lady, confronted by such admiration, not give assent? I, holding this cup for the toast, raise high my heart as well. God bless you both. May He sanctify your marriage, handsome, half-bald Hugh Montague, and our own Hadley Kittredge Gardiner, here with us, yet remaining on such close terms with the divine." Afterward, I had been introduced in a rush as the Director was leaving, and there was time to receive no more than a foursquare handshake and the friendliest smile. "Your father is one whale of a fellow, Harry," he said with eyes to twinkle at all the rich findings between the lines. Mr. Dulles, I decided, might be the nicest man I met at the wedding. My impatience to hook up with CIA was hardly less lively. Of course, I was also feeling the presence of many men whose ' names had been legends to me ever since my father began to speak of them in the intimate tones reserved by a god for fellow gods; such names as Alien and Tracy, Richard and Wiz, Dickie and Des, were already installed in an amphitheater of my mind. While none of these personages was as handsome as my father, many were as tall, or as forceful; their persons offered the suggestion that one should not impinge on them for too little. They had bottom. "Something in me," said their presence, "is inviolable." I gave up the last semester of my senior year at Yale, making a quick decision right after the wedding to enroll immediately in Sum1, mer school so that I could graduate at midterm in January and thereby 'apply to the Company six months earlier. It was a Sacrifice, the first conscious one I had made, for I was comfortable at Yale, liked my rooms, and still had the idea from time to time that I might want to ispend a year after college writing fiction. I even had the means to gvrite late at night for I had carefully chosen no classes that began jbefore 10:00 a.m. I also had friends of all the shades and affiliations you jOiake after three years at a good college, and was otherwise ensconced. even had some small chance of making the Varsity Eight after slaving t crew the last three seasons. By my lights, I was giving up a lot. Yet wanted to. If I wished to serve my country, I could start best by 164 NORMAN MAILER. making a sacrifice. So, I went to summer school, and was gradu eight accelerated months later onto the slushy streets of Washin; in early February, a midyear diploma-holder, a bear cub without 1 But I was proud of my sacrifice. I will not describe the tests I took for admittance. They \ numerous, and classified, but then, given the Agency officers ' may have been enlisted in support of my application, I suppc would have had to do poorly not to get in. Of course, you were expected to do well. Only a few out ofe hundred who applied were able to make it all the way through thi tests, the personality tests, the lie-detector, and the security quest naire. I remember that in the Personal History Statement, there the question: On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your dedicati< this work? I put down a five and wrote in the space allowed comment: / have been brought up to face ultimates. "Explain yourself," said the interviewer. "Well, sir," I said, and I had been waiting to make this speed feel that if I had to, I could stand trial before an international tribul When my interlocutor looked at me, I added, I thought not adroitly, "The point I'd like to make is that although I am a re person, I am ready to get into activities where I might have to s trial for my country, or, if it ever came down to it, die for ultii purposes." I had more trouble with the he-detector. It was the test to di Although we were warned not to talk about it with applicants' had already taken it, we met with them as soon as possible aftci drear event; usually they said as little as they could and consu: prodigies of beer. I still see my polygraph interview in transcript. It is an imagi transcript. What the interviewer and I said to one another at the ( cannot be what I now remember. I offer a false memory, then, b is imprinted. The face of the interviewer has, in recollection, beci long-jawed and bespectacled; he looks as gray as a personage black-and-white film. Of course, we were installed in a dingy-vi cubbyhole off a long crowded hall in an edifice called Building 1^ the Reflecting Pool, and much of my memory of those wintry a is, indeed, in gray and white. ;| I offer what I recollect. I do not vouch for anything inj reconstructed transcript other than its ongoing psychological KS for me. HARLOT'S GHOST 165 interrogator: Ever had a homosexual experience? applicant: No, sir. interrogator: Why are you having such a large reaction? applicant: I didn't know I was. interrogator: Really? You're giving the machine what we call a flush. applicant: Couldn't the machine make a misinterpretation? interrogator: You are saying you are not homosexual. applicant: Certainly not. interrogator: Never? applicant: Once I came close, but held off. interrogator: Fine. I can read you. Let's move on. applicant: Let's. interrogator: Get along with women? applicant: I've been known to. interrogator: Consider yourself normal? applicant: You bet. interrogator: Why am I getting a nutter? applicant: You're asking me to volunteer a response? interrogator: Let me rephrase it. Is there anything you do with women that community consensus might consider out of the ordinary? applicant: Do you mean--unusual acts? INTERROGATOR: Specify. applicant: Can I be asked a specific question? interrogator: Do you like blowjobs? applicant: I don't know. interrogator: Overlarge response. applicant: Yessir. interrogator: Yessir what? applicant: Yes, to the blowjob. interrogator: Don't look so unhappy. This won't keep us from accepting you. On the other hand, if you were to lie in this test, it could hurt you a lot. applicant: Thank you, sir. I understand. I get a whifFofthe old perspiration. I was lying to the lie-detector: had still not lost my cherry. Even if two-thirds of my class at Yale Quid probably say the same, anything was better than such confesjyn. How could a CIA man be a virgin? Down the line, I would learn 166 NORMAN MAILER that many another applicant lied to protect the same green secret. Tl was all right. The tests were looking to screen out men who might vulnerable to blackmail. Well-raised college graduates, howev claiming more amatory experience than they'd earned could be 3 cepted just as they were. During those weeks of testing, I lived in the YMCA and shar meals in drugstores with other applicants. They, for the most part, h come from state universities and had taken their majors in govei ment, or football, or languages, in foreign affairs, economics, statisti agronomy, or some special skill. Usually, one of their professors h had an exploratory conversation with them, and if interest was the they received a letter that spoke of an important government can with foreign duties, and were told to reply to a post office box Washington, D.C. I pretended to have been approached like the others, but giv my lack ofgov, ec, pol-sci, or applied psych, I pretended to have mst some studies in Marxism instead. None of my new acquaintani knew much about that. I got away with it until I met Amie ros( whose father was a third cousin of Sidney Hook. Rosen, in hom^J perhaps, to this family tie, had read Lenin, Trotsky, and Plekhano his adolescence, not, he assured me, to become an advocate of ideas, but to set himself up as their future antagonist. As he pu me one morning over pancakes and sausage, "From the word knew the cockamamie elements in V. I. Lenin." Yes—Rosen, ors. Phi Beta Kappa, Columbia. I disliked him to the quick. For those four or five weeks, my life in junction with applicants was spent in promenade from one processing buildii another in the I-J-K-L complex, a set of four long buildings in ; that ran from the Lincoln Memorial for more than a quarter along the Reflecting Pool toward the Washington Monument gray and barren winter mornings those buildings looked not w unlike pictures I had seen of Dachau, same long, two-story shed went on forever. We were jammed into quarters thrown u government offices during the Second World War. Since w other facilities dispersed over many a side street, and in many'! old house, special bottle-green government buses took us from 1 ing to building in Foggy Bottom. We filled out questionnail^B walked in self-conscious groupings, obviously inductees. All the while, I pretended, as I say, to be just like my new In truth, so dislocated was this existence from all I had known ; HARLOT'S GHOST 167 that I tell myself a stranger in my own land. Such feelings were most likely to come over me in the course of listening to a lecture in one of our ubiquitous classrooms with its beige walls, blackboard, Ameri- can flag in a stand, and its dark gray stain-compatible carpet and portable lecture chairs with their small one-arm writing tables attached. My classmates showed the same good American crew cut as myself (good for at least 80 percent of us), and if our collective demeanor was somewhere between the YMCA and the Harvard Business School, it did not mean I was yet like anyone else. I was discovering how little I knew about my countrymen, at least those who were trying like me to get into CIA. Nor did I feel altogether real to myself. That, on reflection, was a familiar wind in my lonely harbors. Occasionally I voyaged out to the canal house in Georgetown which Kittredge and Harlot had bought in the first year of their marriage, and such evenings were full of stimulation for me. Some of their dinner guests were grand. Henry Luce was there one night, and he took me aside long enough to inform me that he knew my father. Mr. Luce had white hair and hugely heavy black eyebrows. His voice. turned husky as he said to me, "It's a wonderful life you're going to have. Momentous decisions, and the best of it is that they will count! I've worked on occasion on endeavors much larger than myself or my own interests, and I can tell you. Harry, since we share the same diminutive, whether from Herrick or Henry, that there's no comparison. Doing it for the larger dream is what it is all about. Harry!" Like a reverend, he did not release me until he took his hand from my shoulder. Nor could I pretend to myself that I was ungrateful for the speech, since after evenings at the Montagues, I would go back to my ^brother dogs at the Y to find them worrying where the next bone was oing to be thrown. I, however, would feel like a radioactive dog. I rould glow within. I had seen the Company, and it was there. The ^IA was not merely long, shedlike buildings, or the dead-tank smells f people crowded into impossibly small office spaces, nor leering iquisitors who strapped belts and instruments to your body; no, CIA /as also a company of the elegant, secretly gathered to fight a war so oble that one could and must be ready to trudge for years through lie mud and the pits. Ah, those evenings at the canal house! Indeed, ' was Harlot who was the first to tell me I was in, certified and in, on w day after my last test. My roomies at the Y would have to wait "ee more days to obtain as much knowledge, and I suffered with the 168 NORMAN MAILER secret I could not relate to them, and so discovered that holdi confidence when one wishes to let it out is comparable to thirstin; a shot of liquor on an awful day. After acceptance, we reported one morning for our orients lecture. Perhaps a hundred of us were taken by bus from the 9th S Personnel Pool to an old five-story house with a Queen Anne behind the State Department. There we crowded into a small I ment auditorium. A man sitting up on the stage whom I would I taken for an Ivy League professor stood up to welcome us and "In case any of you are wondering, you will now be working CIA." We laughed. We applauded. He strode across the stage to an on which a cloth was draped. Whisking the sheet away, he rev( the first of our scrolls--an organizational chart. With a pointel informed us that the Agency had three Directorates which coul envisaged as analogous to three sister corporations, or three regirr of a division: "The Directorate for Plans oversees covert action gathers intelligence. It directs spies. Learn a new word. Plans spies, even as you would run a business." Since espionage and c< terespionage were Harlot's province, and covert action belonge my father, the Directorate of Plans was nine-tenths of CIA for Then he went on to speak of the Directorate for Intellige which analyzed the material gathered by Plans, and the Directorat Administration, "which keeps in order the management of the two directorates." Needless to say, I had no interest in either. "Gentlemen," he continued, "you one hundred and t men"--he looked about--"or, if I avail myself of the indispem tool of precision, you one hundred and one men and two we have been chosen for the Directorate of Plans. That is a fine j to be." We cheered. We stood up and cheered him, but not for because next, Alien Dulles, now Director of Central Intelligi came through the curtains to speak. On this day, Mr. Dulles 1) genial, courteous, even benign warmth of the sort that would ®i you to believe in any establishment with which he was assod whether bank, university, law firm, or branch of government. DM in old tweeds with leather patches for the elbows, a nifty bow (a( pipe in hand, his spectacles as bright with reflected light as intelligl itself, he was quickly successful in giving all one hundred plus of lit same impression he had given me at the wedding. HARLOT'S GHOST 169 "Being with you here at the beginning, I can all but promise that you will have lively, worthwhile, exciting careers." We applauded. "Winston Churchill, after Dunkirk, could only offer the gallant British people 'blood, sweat, toil, and tears,' but I can promise you dedication, sacrifice, total absorption, and--don't let this get out--a hell of a lot of fun." We whooped. "You are all in Plans, an uncommon group. You will live, most of you, in many countries, you will doubtless see action, you will--no matter how tired and weary--never lose sense of the value of your work. For you will be defending your country against a foe whose resources for secret war are greater than any government or kingdom in the history of Christendom. The Soviet Union has raised the art of espionage to unprecedented heights. Even in dmes of so-called thaw, they wage their operations with unflagging vigor. "In order to catch up, we are in the process of building the greatest agency for Intelligence the Western world has seen. The safety of this country depends on no less. Our opponent is formidable. And you, here, have been chosen to be part of the great shield that resists our formidable foe." You could feel the happiness in the room. No matter the small basement stage with its American flag to one side, we shared, at this moment, the warmth of a venerable theater as the curtain descends to a momentous conclusion. He was hardly finished, however. It was not Mr. Dulles' style to end on a major note. More agreeable was to remind us that we had been accepted into a fellowship; our privileges entitled us to hear a story at the expense of the leader. "Years ago," he said, "when I was as young as most of you, I was »osted by our foreign service to Geneva during World War I, and I emember one particularly warm spring Saturday in 1917 when I was n watch for the morning duty. There was little to do in the office, nd all I could think about was tennis. You see, I had a date for tennis plat afternoon with a young lady who was lovely and comely and peautifully composed ... a veritable knockout!" f Who else could speak in such a way? In this pre--Civil War Basement which might, more than ninety years ago, have heard cannonading to the south. Alien Dulles was telling us of Geneva in 1917. 'Just before midday my phone rang. A most heavily accented jOice was on the line," said Alien Dulles, "a man who wanted a wponsible American official to speak to. Verantwortlich was the word he 170 NORMAN MAILER used. He gave his speech in the worst German. One of those inn tuners, I decided. Someone with a tale of petty woe bound to te in the worst accent possible. "Now, the only American official at the Embassy that mon who happened to be remotely verantwortlich was myself. Was I gc to play tennis with a lovely English girl, or was I going to eat sai kraut with some Russian emigre?" He paused. "Tennis won out. I never saw the fellow." We waited. "Too late I learned who the man happened to be. The voice < the dreadful German accent, frantic to talk to a responsible Ameri official, was none other than Mr. V. I. Lenin himself. Not long 3 our phone call, the Germans sent Mr. Lenin across Bavaria, Pro Poland, and Lithuania in a sealed train. He arrived at the Fin] Station in Leningrad to bring off in November of the same i nothing less than the Bolshevik Revolution." He paused, givin( sanction to become hilarious at the size of Alien Dulles' miscue; "Al," a voice cried out, "how could you do that to the tea) It was my first glimpse ofDix Butler. His face was unforgetta His head, his massive jaw and neck, his full mouth were as stroi formed as the features in a Roman bust. Dulles looked pleased. "Profit by my error, gentlemen," he s "Reread your Sherlock Holmes. The most trivial clue can prove most significant. When you are on duty, observe every detail. Do damnedest fine job you can do. You'll never know when the sh< turns up an unexpected gem." He canted his pipe back into his mouth, parted the stage curta and disappeared. Our next speaker offered business. Burns, Raymond James "] Jim" Burns, case officer: Japan, Latin America, Vienna. He woul( our instructor in an eight-week course on World Communism., was also captain of the pistol team at Plans. He would, he told welcome anyone interested in improving his aim. s A man of medium height, he was there for us to study. Hex; short, reddish-brown hair, a trim build, and regular features wW unforgiving twist. His mouth was a short straight cut. He was weal a brown jacket, a white shirt, a narrow brown tie, light pink-fcl trousers, and sunglasses shaded brown. His belt had three nati horizontal stripes, brown, tan, and brown. His shoes were brown cream and as pointed as his nose. He wore a heavy ring on his left h HARLOT'S GHOST 171 and clicked it on the podium for emphasis. He had one decoration, a maple-leaf pin in his buttonhole, a spot of gold. I was feeling full of Mr. Dulles' adjuration to observe each detail. Ray Jim hated Communists! He stood on the podium and pinned us with his eyes. They were bullet brown, a deep lead brown, near to black, a hole impinging on you. He looked us over, one by one. "There's a tendency these days," said Burns, "to give a little leeway to the Communists. Khrushchev is not as bad as Stalin; you're going to hear that. Of course Khrushchev was called the Butcher of the Ukraine in his earlier days, but he's not as bad as Stalin. Who could be as ruthless as losefDjugashvili, alias Joe Stalin, the purge-master? In the U.S.S.R. they have a secret police that has no parallel to us, no comparison. It's as if you boiled the FBI, the Agency, and the state and federal prison systems into one big super-equivalent of the CIA, but lawless, unrestrained, ruthless! Their police--some of whom are even supposed to be in Intelligence--are kept busy purging millions of their own poor citizens, sending hordes of them by the million out to Siberia to die under forced labor and near starvation. Their crime? They believe in God. In the Soviet Union, you can slice up your 'grandmother before they'll rate your crime on a par with believing in the Lord Almighty. For the Soviet think-police know how the force of God stands in their way, resisting all those Red dreams of world conquest. To that purpose the Red devotes his evil genius. You can't 'begin to conceive of what we are up against, so don't try to understand Communists by the measure of your own experience. Communists are ready to subvert any idea or organization which is a free expression of the human will. Communists look to invade every cranny of every ^person's private activity, and seep into every pore of democratic life. |I say to you: Be prepared to fight a silent war against an invisible lerny. Treat them like a cancer loose in the world body. Before you 'e done with this orientation course, you will be on the road to "fusing their attempts to confuse world opinion. You will be able to iunterattack subversion and brainwashing. You are going to come But of your training as different men"--he peered about--"and, ing as they rationed me to one joke, two different women." We laughed that he had been good enough to release the tension, I then we stood up to cheer him. He was one of us. He was not, ' Mr. Dulles, a little above the fray, but one of us. Since Ray Jim > dedicated, we too could aspire to such clarity of purpose. Of course I was not taking close account of myself. Mr. Dulles was 172 NORMAN MAILER much nearer to my understanding. Ray Jim came out of that middle of America which goes from west of the Hudson ou( Arizona, that huge tract which, in comparison to the neatly ten garden of my education, was a roadless desert, but I did not wisi say to myself that I did not know my own country. In the heat of the standing ovation we gave Mr. Burns, we w administered the Vow. Standing under the grand seal of the Cl/ the center of the proscenium arch, our hands upraised, we w inducted formally and legally into the Agency, and swore not to sp without permission of what we learned, now and forever. That is a solemn vow. I have been told of Masons, inactive years, who will nonetheless impart not one detail of the rites of fraternity, not even to their sons. Some equivalent of that fidelity n have entered us. My fear of retribution was lashed at that momen my sense of honor. I might just as well have been commingling blood with another warrior's. A sacred (and sweet) pang of emol came to me on this instant of induction. If not for the peril; hyperbole, I would say that my will stood to attention. This vow was not diminished by our training. It constrains 01 mind to describe the awesome loyalty that soon developed. To { away our secrets was to betray God! A mighty syllogism! I must this oath still retains some of its essence after close to thirty years in Agency. Of my own actions, I recognize that I am obliged to t( good deal. I will break through--if need be--but I still feel inhibit at discussing our seminars in the use of such agents of influence abr as could be found among native lawyers, journalists, trade union and statesmen. I will, however, describe our tradecraft as it was then. Mos these methods have beensuperseded, so it is relatively safe to go about such matters. They are the stuff of spy novels. Besides, I ma well confess, it is what I enjoyed the most at the time. Course economics and administrative procedures made me fearfully dro< I got my marks, and was able to spout the stuff back, but my true 1 was tradecraft. I was not in the CIA to become a bureaucrat hi hero. So if this memoir is a tale of development, my purpose ma| served if I relate my instruction in picking a lock and all the ®< wonderfully amoral techniques of my profession. '^ All the same, I must take one more pass at our instruction in! evils of Communism. Such studies may have lacked the zest oftri craft, but they managed to convince me that any mischief we c0 HARLOT'S GHOST 173 'ork on our evil opponent left us clearly on the right side. I think that 'as the allure of tradecraft. Is there any state more agreeable than ving and working like a wicked angel? Well, I had far to go. Let me demonstrate. SOUT FOUR WEEKS AFTEK I TOOK THE VOW, I HAD BECOME SO MA- wned in the repetitions of Raymond James Burns' course in World ;ommunism that I made the mistake of yawning in class. "Hubbard, am I boring you?" Ray Jim asked. "No, sir." "I'd like to hear you repeat what I've just said." I could feel my father's temper stir in me. "Look, Mr. Burns," I ad, "I'm not bored. I get it. I know the Communists are treacherous, id double-dealing, and use agents provocateurs to try to subvert our bor unions and work double-time to befaddle world opinion. I now they have millions of men in their armies getting ready for wid domination, but I have to wonder one thing ..." "Shoot," he said. "Well, is every Communist a son of a bitch? I mean, are none of iem human? Isn't there one of them somewhere down the line who kes to get drunk just for the fan, say, of getting drunk? Must they Lways have to have a reason for what they're doing?" I could feel by the shift in the class that I was by now marooned »Harry-Hubbard-Land, population: 1. "You've told us," I went on, that the Communists condition people to the point where they can only receive approved ideas. Well, I don't really believe what I'm going > say next, but for the sake of argument"--I was obviously preparing W a graceful exit--"would you say that we're receiving something of ? same nature, although different in degree, and, of course, demo- trie, because I can speak in freedom without reprisals." "We're here," said Ray Jim, "to sharpen your instincts and your luties of critical reasoning. That is the opposite of brainwashing. gecious political reasoning is what we're on the lookout for. Find it I" uproot it." He was striking the palm of one hand on the back of p other. "Now, I like your example," he said. "It shows critical pities. Just carry them farther. I'm willing to accept the idea that 174 NORMAN MAILHR there's a dedicated Communist here and there who might j hard-on without Party approval, but I'll tell you this. Before long got to decide. Is it his career, or his dick?" The class laughed with him. "Hubbard," he stated, "you ca; all of the Soviet people into three categories. Those who have in a slave camp, those who are in a slave camp now, and those are waiting to go." I now rejoined the fold by saying, "Thank you, sir." One night, visiting the Montagues at their canal house, I brc it up with Hugh. He didn't take long to reply. "Of cours< question is more complex than good stalwarts like old Ray Jim w have you know. Why, we're debriefing a Soviet defector right who's obsessed with one fellow he destroyed, a silly drunk whom encourage to booze up in some black hole of a bar in Siberia. So r anti-Soviet sentiment was milked out of the drunk that not onl poor wretch but all of his family were sent off to a camp. All of' harmless. But our defector had a quota of arrests to make, in the way New York police are given parking tickets to hand o\ revolted him. A human Communist, so to speak." "Let me ask a stupid question," I started. "Why are Comnu so awful?" "Yes," he said. "Why?" He nodded. "It's very Russian I awful. Peter the Great once beached a small fleet of his on the of some large lake in Pereslavl. Then he didn't go back to the for thirty years. Of course, his beautiful boats had just about rotte on the muddy lakeshore. Peter's rage is captured in a formal d ment. 'You, the governors of Pereslavl,' went his pronunciam 'shall preserve these ships, yachts, and galleys. Should you neglec obligation,' "—here Harlot's voice rose in imitation of his id Peter the Great—" 'you, and your descendants, will stand to answ He nodded. "Extreme, would you say?" I nodded. "Normal. That is, normal to the pre-Christian view of tt Christ not only brought love into the world, but civilization, wl its dubious benefits." ^ "I don't follow you." I "Well, as I seem to recollect telling you, Christ adjured» forgive the son for the sins of the father. That's amnesty. It openc scientific world. Prior to this divine largesse, how might a man to be a scientist? Any error which proved an insult to nature < HARLOT'S GHOST 175 ring disaster down on his family. The Russians are spiritual, as every Russian will rush to tell you, but their Greek Orthodoxy gagged on iat gift from Christ. It would have wrecked the tribal foundations. brgive the sons? Never. Not in Russia. The punishment must remain reater than the crime. Now they want to march forward into tech- ology land, and they can't. They're too spooked. Deathly afraid of ;rrible curses from Mother Nature. If you sin against nature, your ans will perish with you. No wonder Stalin was a total paranoid." "In that case," I said, "the Russians ought to be easy to over- ome." "Easy," said Harlot, "if the retarded parts of the Third World ave a true wish to enter civilization. I'm not sure they do. Backward ountries may dream of cars and dams, and rush to pave their swamps, ut it's halfhearted. The other half still clings to pre-Christian ealms--awe, paranoia, slavish obedience to the leader, divine punish- aent. The Soviets feel like kin to them. Don't sneer altogether at lullseye Burns. It is awful over there in the Soviet. Just today a paper rossed my desk about a sect of twelve poor Doukhobors who were ounded up in some alley of an outlying town in some poor half- argotten province. The present Soviet leaders know the potential 'ower in a dozen starved clerks and workers. Lenin and Stalin and 'rotsky and Bukharin and Zinoviev, all of that top layer, were also a igtag circle once of impoverished clerks. In consequence, the KGB loesn't cut down the sapling, it looks to extirpate the seed. That has iuge effect. Suppose I hand you a six-chamber Colt with one round n it, spin the barrel, and say, 'Now for Russian roulette.' The chances a your favor are five to one as you pull the trigger, but in your heart t will feel no better than even money. Indeed, you probably expect o die. Ditto with extreme punishment. Let it fall on twelve individu1s, and twelve million will shiver. Bullseye Burns is not so far off the nark." 8 ; UTER EIGHT WEEKS OF mr. burns' COURSE IN THE recreation AND fervices Building on The Communist Party: Its Theory and Tactics, I !°uld offer exposition on the organization and tactics of the Comin^ni, the Cominform, the Cheka, the GPU, the NKVD, and the KGB 176 NORMAN MAILER in each of its twelve directorates. If the material required mernoi tion of long, inhospitable lists, be certain I devoted the same cone tration a medical student gives to his lectures out of the unholy fr that should he fail to store away one item, a future patient m perish. It was tough. Burns stuffed us like sausage. Word pa through the class that he had once been a counterintelligence ma' the FBI. No surprise if we had to store away such memorabili "The Eleventh Directorate of the KGB, also called the Guard Di torate, is responsible for safeguarding the security of the Praesidiui the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R, who had never found it routine to pay attention while suffe: instruction, was now trying to reorganize my nervous system. We were also introduced to the machinery for routing mess through the hierarchy of our offices, and learned how to writi government language (no small matter!). We took instruction in t to compartmentalize an agent's dossier, biographical material in file, reports on his activities in another. We, too, in future, wouli given our separate cryptonyms for different transactions. Harlot j at one time, as he later confided to me, eight, one of which: DEUCE. Running an operation in Africa, the tag became : DEUCE, LT to indicate that Africa was the theater. Another jo Vienna would list him as RQ/DEUCE, RQ for Austria. Later, du the Austrian endeavor, for one or another reason, he might metan phose into RQ/GANTRY. Like a lazy body after a week of workouts, my mind, imbibing all this input, felt stiff and sore and 1 with new sensation. I thought the change of name itself ought t< enough to alter one's character--ZJ/REPULSE should call for a ferent personality than MX/LIGHT--my thoughts took sensi turns. Perhaps it was due to my sexual virginity, but I was nov pervasively libidinous that I could even take pleasure in such coi as Locks and Picks, Flaps and Seals, or Reversibles. Best of all was mnemotechnic we were provided for recalling telephone numi Intimations of buried wealth streamed into strange corners of psyche. I was very young. I loved, for example. Flaps and Seals, tha unsealing letters. Methods ranged from the use of a teakettle spoil the way over to highly classified chemical swabs. By whatever me I enjoyed the moment when the flap, supposedly protecting inviol contents, relaxed its grip. The small sound elicited by that act ] duced what I thought was a private reaction, but the instructor f HARLOT'S GHOST 177 ibead of me. "Ever hear of the chorus girl who was horny?" he asked >ur class. "She did a split and stuck to the floor." We moaned at our >wn merriment. Then came Reversibles. In preparation for shadowing a man, we )racticed quick changes. We would dart into a vestibule off the Jassroom, doff our raincoat, turn it inside out, and reappear (eight .econds allotted) in a tan Burberry rather than a blue waterproof, a irnple enough matter, but even as shifting one's cryptonym called brth a new potentiality for oneself, so was there a shiver ofmetamor»hosis in this alteration of appearance. I could say, to stretch a point, that we were being schooled in ninor arts of sorcery. Are not espionage and magic analogous? I took mholy enjoyment in the stratagem for memorizing a phone number ?nce that process was mastered. Of course, no immediate gratification yas found at first, since there was much stress on the need to concen- rate. We would stand at the front of the class and an accomplice walking past us would whisper a telephone number, and move on. another trainee would come up from the other side to offer one more lumber. As the exercise grew more demanding, we built to as many is five telephone numbers at once. Finally, we were put into competi- ion: Our winner managed to retain nine of ten numbers. (I was, by he way, that winner--which still provides a freshet of recollected ?lory.) The point, from which I digress, is that this technique, so full of :ension in class, became agreeable on the edge of sleep. The seven ligits of a telephone number became a boudoir. That may be worth expounding upon. We were assigned a spe;ific color for each number. White represented zero; yellow was 1; preen equaled 2; blue, 3; purple, 4; red, 5; orange, 6; brown, 7; gray, i; black, 9. Next, we were asked to visualize a wall, a table, and a lamp. If the irst three digits of the telephone number were 586, we were to Mcture a red wall behind a gray table on which was sitting an orange amp. For the succeeding four numbers, we might visualize a woman 0 a purple jacket, green skirt, and yellow shoes sitting on an orange thair. That was our mental notation for 4216. By such means, 586- r2l6 had been converted into a picture with seven colored objects. Coday, in training, the area code has to be added. Now, the room has t window to look out on sky, water, and earth, a woe my class did not |iffer. I think of brown sky, red water, and blue earth for the area code 178 NORMAN MAILER 753, an interesting day for Gauguin! We, however, had to visualiz more at the sound of 436-9940 than a purple wall, a blue table, an orange lamp. Our lady—Yolanda was the name we gave her- in the purple room witt-i the blue table and the orange lamp; she wearing a black jacket, black pants, and purple shoes as she inst; herself on her white chair: 436-9940. It seems like the long around, but I became so proficient at these equivalents that I saw 1 so soon as I heard numbers. We can skip over lock-picking. Those simple but elegant sw we employed are still marked secret, and for a Junior Officer Tra like myself, able to find sexual stir in the flap of an envelope, what to be said for cracking a door? That was primal stuff. Each lect took entitlement to one off-key joke, and for this course, our inst tor was there to tell us: "If you can't figure out a way to get this 1 pick into this old lock, well, fellows, I don't know what you'l when you get older." I never did use lock:—picking until 1972 when I had all but for ten the techniques. Then I used it in the White House, and twk five minutes, once to open a door, once to open a desk, but th down the road. Codes is next on my list, but I do not care to get Codff either, for its study took up a good many hours during wi and spring in Washington, and it is certainly too technical a sub I will say that it was so sealed a curriculum that even the cryptogra labs were an introduction into the logic of real security: barred ^ dows on either side of the hall; credentials necessary in every sect receptionists and armed- guards; even food-servers for the special packaged sandwiches i:ai the cryptographer's cafeteria were chi because they were bliand and so could never identify any of workers in Codes by ph. otographs if, perchance, the K.GB turned of them. Let me move to a more agreeable discipline. Anyone who read a spy novel is famiLa.ar with dead drops, but active instruction it practice is another matter. All twenty-three trainees in my claS our homeroom, and fiL ed down the corridor past the bulletin bi notices to the men's lavatory where, predictably, ritual jokes do with one another again until meeting once more on a new job. I speak of Amie Rosen or Dix Butler, it is because I saw a lot of >em later. Camp Peary, however, could have turned out badly. I had been it, by the luck of the draw (unless my father's hand was present), into training platoon of ex--football players and ex-Marines. If I did well ' the more sedentary classwork, and Rosen even better, our physical Sts were severe. While I was adequate at weapons, found map 186 NORMAN MAILER reading a piece of cake and forty-eight-hour survival treks in the fo around Camp Peary, offering, after summers in the Maine woods, undue demand, I found myself hopelessly inhibited at silent strik( could not throw myself into the state of mind required to tiptoe behind a trainee while I whipped a ribbon (in substitute for a \ garrote) around his neck. When it was my turn to serve as sentry flinch before the cloth even touched my skin. My Adam's appi prominent Hubbard pride, was in its own panic at getting crunct Dirty fighting went better. It was not difficult to simulate breal a man's fingers, stamping on his feet, cracking his shin, sticking tl fingers into his larynx, one finger into his eye, and biting whatever' available. After all—these were dummy moves. Boxing was done on our own time at the gym, but we all felt unspoken imperative not to avoid it. I hated being hit on the a One blow was enough to switch me over to all that was wild-swinj in my makeup. Besides, I was afraid. Whenever I caught my oppol with anything harder than a tap, I'd blurt out, "Sorry!" Who>,i fooled? My apology was to hold the other man off. I could not k a left hook, and my jab flew out with no force, or left me lungin balance. My straight right was as round as a pork chop. After a I accepted the inevitable, and proceeded to mill as best I coul men who were something like my own weight, and learned t punishment everywhere but on my nose, which I so protected was always getting hit on -the brow. Boxing left me with heac equal to college hangovers, and my worst humiliation was with Rosen, who was as scrappy as a cornered and wholly franti Nothing he bounced off my head and body made a dent into th< envelope of my adrenaline, but it was infuriating to realize d- might even have won the round. One night at the Club, I ended up drinking with our b instructor, who had the odd name of Reggie Minnie. He was th< one of our teachers that we found impressive. The verdict i| training group had soon gone around: Good men in the Agency too valuable to use for teaching. We received the culls. however, was special. He fought in a stand-up classic stance, been a Navy boxing champ during the war. He had also been to an English girl who was killed in a car accident, a fact to because he was the driver. His sorrow was complete; it was as been dipped into a tragic rue. This loss permeated every ; ^ organ cell, left him, indeed, a complete man, all of one pifi^B HARLOT'S GHOST 187 ole tincture of loss. He spoke in a gentle voice and Ustened to every rd that everyone said, as if words were as much of a comfort as -m clothing. While he sipped his one beer and I had three, while we drank in twilight and explosions still kept going off in the woods while men a twenty-four-hour exercise dashed in for a quick shot and dashed I complained about my ineptitude at defense as if it were a uliar phenomenon, some hopeless relative to my body. He then made a remark I never forgot. "You have to learn how lit," he said. "It'll give you more of a sense of when the punch is ning at you." I thought a good deal over the next few days of the cousin who 1 knocked me down to one knee when he was eleven and I was e, and how I had not risen to fight him back but merely watched od fall from my nose to splash down on the ground, and with each ip, wished for it to be his blood. Now in the gym, when I worked the heavy bag, something of that vast and near to long-lost rage ie back to me, and I tried to embody a bit of such hatred into each ich I gave the bag. How well it worked, I do not know. I got better as time went on, : then, so did everyone. I may have gained a few strides on the rest. the least, I began to handle Rosen with ease. What did more for was parachuting. From the day they first brought us to the thirty- ht-foot tower, I was ready. Four stories above the ground, I would p through a mock-up of a C-47 hatch--our instructor called it the len-door policy"--and jump into space with my parachute harness i parachute) attached to a spring cable. I was back to leaping off the cony in Maine--when STOP! the cable and harness jerked us to alt, and we swung above the ground. Some of the ruggedest men our class would throw up before making their jump. It was even better when those few of us considered best in these arises were allowed to practice accuracy jumping at a nearby :>ort. I found that I was relatively free of fear, even of the fear I ght have packed my chute incorrectly. I thought it was not unlike ing: Some understood it, some never did. In Maine, I used to show Bt the family called a spiffy nostril for the yaw of the wind to port ttarboard, but the signs were subtler passing through air. Still, the ?ulation of the trees gave a clue to the wind vector, and I became |ugh of an adept to steer my parachute onto a target during night IPs. The sky could be black and the whitewashed landing circle 188 NORMAN MAILER below appear no more phosphorescent than the minuscule pre of a barnacle on a rock deep underwater, but I made the circle as as any man in our group. Veteran covert-action officers kept coming back to Camp ] for this special parachute training, so I cannot make the claim ( was the best in our class, but I was among the best, and the first ( pleasures was to be clearly superior to Dix Butler. He had the f time on the obstacle course, was unapproachable at dirty figt surprisingly silent as a putative assassin, and a beast at boxing. No but Minnie could work with him. He was also the unofficial wrestling champion at Camp Peary, and once succeeded in takil everyone in the Club at the time, twenty-two men was the c instructors and heavies among them, and it did not take long. I could top him every time, though, when it came to hittinj parachute target. It proved unbelievably grievous to his idea of self. Rage came off him like a ground wave. The irony is that he ought to have been proud of his parachi He began with a large fear of airplanes. Later, after we knew better, he explained it one night in the Club. While he usually d drinking in a group, for he liked a quorum to give resonance ) stories, Rosen and I were his pets, and on occasion, he drank with us. I expect his motive was clear. Rosen and I were lavas first and second at book work. Butler, surprisingly good in the room, could nonetheless recognize our superiority there. I thh saw us as members of the Eastern establishment which, from his of view, was running just about everything in the Compan consequence, Rosen and I became the field studies available. 0 other hand, he was hardly without contempt for us. He loved t us how to live. "You fellows would not be able to comprehend i strong man, ha, ha. Why is he so afraid of flying? Horseshit. I what I call superior-athlete fear." He stared at us hard, then wii warning, grinned, as if to feint us off our feet. "Neither ofyo) comprehend what goes on in an athletes skull. You think like sf writers. They observe, but do not comprehend. The clue to a suf athlete is that he is telepathic." Butler nodded. "Some of us alsq the power to hypnotize moving objects, no, not hypnotize^ appropriate word is telekinesize. When I am properly keyed, I ca only read which play is next in my opponent's mind, but telekinesize a football." "Divert it in its path?" asked Rosen. LOT'S GHOST 189 "By one foot at least on a long pass. And when a punt hits the 'crowd, I can affect the bounce." "You're crazy," said Rosen comfortably. Butler reached forward, took Rosen's upper lip between his thumb and forefinger, and squeezed. "Cut that," Rosen managed to cry out through the grip, and to my surprise, Butler let go. Rosen had an odd authority, not unlike the way a spoiled but very self-assured young boy can command a fierce police dog. Up to a point. "How could you do that?" Rosen complained. "We were just having a discussion." "They don't teach it here," Butler said, "but that's the treatment for quieting an hysterical woman. Grab her upper lip and squeeze. I have used it in motel rooms from the time I was sixteen." Another toke of beer. "Goddammit, Rosen, don't you people in New York have the foggiest conception of manners? An hysterical woman calls me crazy, not a man talking to me." "I don't believe your claims," said Rosen. "It's delusional. Telekinesis cannot be measured." "Of course it can't. Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty applies." We laughed. But I was not unimpressed that Butler could cite Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty. '; ' 'My fear of airplanes," said Dix Butler,' 'derives from the fact that I am always looking to raise the ante. The first time I got on a plane, it was a ten-seater with no partition between the pilot and the passengers. I tell you, I just had to play some games. Before long, there is old Dix putting his mind into the pilot's fingertips, and thereby getting the plane a bit whippy. Well, the pilot overcame that in turn by his will. |You can move other men's matter just so much with your mind--it's |a highly inefficient interpersonal mode," and here he looked at us pcross the table, his yellow-green eyes as childlike and solemn as a lion ?n a tender moment, full of a poet's sweet awe at the wondrous ^nations of movement, and said, "All right, what do I do now that lis pilot's hand is on guard, why, I start to listen to the plane. It's old, id its two motors are wheezing out their lungs with every buck and 'ck--man, my ears get into the vitals of that ship. I know how little would take to set the motors on flame or crack the wing at the root. lothing is holding that flying machine together but the mental rength of every one of the passengers and the pilot praying to keep fold of their paltry existence. And there I am, in the middle, a maniac. 190 NORMAN MAILER My existence is larger than myself. I've been in car wrecks, been at. There's a no-man's-land out there between the given anc immense, and it has a set of rules very few can follow. All I knc that I am not sufficiently afraid of death. It is a transcendental ex ence that calls to me right through the foam of this piss-taster's b Can rational shit-heads like the two of you comprehend that? you, the mad scientist in me was ready to experiment. I want( wreak a mischief on the inner machinery of that plane. You b believe that the desire was powerful. Why, the little washed-out i sitting around me in their passenger seats were so fearful of losing they never had, an honest-to-God life, that I had to pull myself from exercising my powers. I could truly visualize those plane m' catching fire. I still believe that by my mental efforts, I could started such a blaze. In another moment, I would have. But I p myself back. I saved the plane from myself. Gentlemen, I was from the effort. My forehead had sweat on it the size of hailstones my liver might just as well have been stomped on by a platoc Marines. I had to crawl off that misbegotten flying flivver whei landed. And I have been afraid of planes ever since. Afraid o inability to restrain my evil impulses." Beer. A pause. Another i low. One could visualize the stately flow of the beer down his g equal in solemnity to the sure sweep of a conductor's baton. I had no idea if he was serious or had merely been telling 01 his tales, always and dependably extreme, but I suspect it was the t for him at least, since I believe he told it to purge himself, in r the way I had given my confession to Reggie Minnie. Next da' began to make progress in his parachuting techniques, even as I b to move up in boxing until I even dared to get into the ring with and mustered enough character not to mumble as I put in my me piece, "Take it easy, will you. Butler?" It was an interesting three minutes. We were using headgea fourteen-ounce gloves, but his jab was heavier than a straight from any other trainee, and the first left hook I caught sen. half-across the ring. I I was in a panic. Only the sight of Reggie Minnie in my c< made me stay in with Butler and accept the bombardment to mfjt I felt brain cells blinking out in full banks each time his jab rari my forehead. When, once or twice, he chose to catch me M| straight right, I was taught all I needed to know about electricity voltage discharged in my brain would never be discharged agal LOT'S GHOST 191 ; middle of it, I began to understand for the first dme what a serious Jete must feel, for I had reached a place where I was ready to live the maelstrom. I no longer wished to quit. I had found peace in mbat. Blessed feeling! Damn the damage! Whatever little futures •re being wrecked in me forever were not going to count against s fortification of my ego. Of course, I knew the bell would ring, and the three minutes >uld be over. My vast determination to take whatever onslaught the ds would loose was attached to a three-minute contract. Just as well. lOther three minutes and I might have been in the infirmary. Later, itching Butler blast away at the trainee closest to him in weight, I is appalled at the power of his punches. Had Butler been hitting me it hard? I made the mistake of asking Rosen. "Are you kidding?" he said. "He carried you." I offer that in partial explanation for my dislike of Rosen. 10 UR TRAINING FOR THE LAST TWO WEEKS WAS GIVEN OVER TO fun AND vnes. Introduced to surveillance, we were formed into three-man ims that practiced tailing an instructor (our Target) through the eets and stores of Norfolk. This involved a good amount of fast dking, and a great deal of standing in front of windows that could fer a clear reflection of the street. Our leader, the Point, was sup- ised to stay close to the Target while Liaison and Reserve watched emate exits in buildings. We had signals to direct each other back d forth: Stop, Go right. Go left, Speed up, Slow down, were iicated by such actions as removing our hat, leaning against a wall, )pping by a fire hydrant, blowing one's nose, tying one's shoe, d—the abominable favorite—cleaning your ear with a forefinger. ; Our signs broke down. Before long, we were waving at one Other, and running at a half-trot. Rushing into a department store faind Target, we invariably lost him to an elevator. If Point did nage to sight Target again, Liaison or Reserve had been lost on one the turns. When, sooner or later. Target would finger Point, the ne was over. Every hour on the hour, we returned to the steps of 'rfolk City Hall to take on another Target. That night at the Club, drinking turned into a spree. Practical 192 NORMAN MAILER jokes abounded. Dix and one of the detonation experts set i compressed air cartridge in the toilet connected by a wire to their of the bar. There was a fifteen-minute wait for in-phase resolution, when Rosen finally went to the toilet to take, as he made the mis of announcing, "an ungodly dump," Trigger nicked the switch. ( tridge went off. Geyser splashed Target clear off the seat. Ros clothing was so drenched that he cut back to his barracks for a ch< of denims. "Surveillance is working at Camp Peary," became I battle cry. Meanwhile, more bona ride explosions went off on night den tion exercises in the woods, and night parachutists landed, and i with blacking on their faces rushed in, quaffed a beer, rushed Years later, on my way to Vietnam, I was invited to a movie se an old Yale classmate, now a producer, and so was able to wati battle being filmed. It was a bit of preparation for Vietnam, ar certainly reminded me of the Farm. War consisted of special efl going off from time to time; that was more in the nature of the e than death. "Death is the price you pay for enjoying a real war," of our more hard-bitten instructors said, and I thought of that nights when I was having a good time in Saigon. Now I felt like a kid on one of those endless August even when the late fever of summer games keeps one running into house and slamming the door on the way out. Our surveilli exercise might have been nerve-wracking, humiliating, and just al wholly unsuccessful, but the hysteria peculiar to the work was er ing now. We had, after all, been active in the next thing t( honest-to-God movie. Shadowing a man felt as odd as a dream Another victim walked into the bathroom of the Club, sat on throne, and came out soaking wet. We laughed, and something in commotion of waters got into the rest of the night. Rosen joine again in dry clothes. Drunk on beer, he made the mistake ofsa to Butler, "That was a crazy thing to do to a buddy. You're lopsid "Punk," said Butler, "spread your cheeks. I'll teach you ' sided." 1 He said it within the hearing of everyone around. Rosen, i usually presented a small but iron face to his persecutors, hovere) the edge. "Dix, you are not quite human," he managed to sayi with something like dignity, walked out of the club. Butler shod head. "Hubbard, I was just treating him like a brother," he sai< "I wouldn't want to be your brother," I said. HARLOT'S GHOST 193 "Hell, my older brother used to corn-hole me until I hit him up side of the head with a rock. I was fourteen. What did your older brother do?" "I only have younger brothers." "Corn-hole them?" Dix asked. "No." "Weren't man enough?" "My brothers are twins. It's confusing." He laughed. He clapped me on the back. He had a light in his eye that put perspiration into the palms of my hands. To my surprise, however, he sighed. "Oh, well, Amie will recover. The question is: What about me? I'm getting too old to be a legend." I don't know how much of this scene with Butler carried over, but things did go wrong with Rosen on the night we tried to cross the East German border (Camp Peary version). For one thing, it had rained through the day. The woods were muddy, the air swarmed with midges. Our night sky was clouded. We had to proceed by compass alone, a slow procedure prone to error. We were working on a well-prepared scenario. If there was a climax to training at the Farm, and one course that received superior instructors and good preparation, it was Escape and Interrogation. Over i,the last three weeks, each of the trainees in my group had been given ?the role of a West German agent infiltrated into East Germany. We had each had to absorb our own West German biography, then add a detailed East German cover story. This second biography we were obliged to memorize even as a West German agent would have had to if he were infiltrating into East Germany. We were, in conseIquence, prepared to speak of the jobs we had held in East Germany, |of family and school history including those of our near relatives killed > the Second World War, and we were supplied with the dates arresponding to major Allied bombing raids on our alleged home- wn, Mannernburg. Rosen and I, renamed Hans Krull and Wemer lug for the exercise, had been memorizing hundreds of details over ie last few weeks. At this point in time--so went the prearranged scenario--our vest German principal sent out an alert to us in East Germany: ransmissions from our radio were being picked up. We had to make fun for the West German border. The last two miles would traverse tt East Gen-nan wood which happened to correspond to our own ?irginia thicket. If we succeeded in getting over the fence unob- 194 NORMAN MAILER served, then our cover stories would not have to be used (althou were still expected to volunteer for an interrogation as if we hac caught--in order not to miss the experience!). Any chance to u; more gracious option, however, was unlikely. We were not ex]: to make it over the fence. Few did. I wanted to. I had gathered from Harlot that not only were j at the Farm put into one's 201 file, but also a five-letter code gro that had much critical bearing on the future career. While you have a fair idea of how well you had done at the Farm, the five. group could advance or exclude you from exceptional posts highest marks, I was just about certain, would be given for g over the fence: There would be another concealed rating, no c on how well one did in the interrogation. Rosen and I did not get off to a good start. By the tin reached the ditch adjacent to the East German fence, our fatigue- imbued with a noxious muck. Filthy and unmanned, we had to every thirty seconds as a searchlight swept the dirt road and fei front of us. Every minute or so, aJeep went by in one direction other. During one of these irregular intervals, we were suppo; scramble up the mudbank, climb the fence, go over the barbe< at the top, and drop fourteen feet down to the other side. TTu the rules of our game, was freedom! Rosen seemed demoralized. I think he was desperately afr the barbed wire. "Harry, I can't do it," he muttered. "I can't it." He was sufficiently frantic to infect me with his fear. "You goddamn Kike, get your ass over," I shouted. It half-throttled cry, pulled back even as I was saying it, but it was between us forever, a small but permanent dent in my view ofi as an essentially decent fellow. The searchlight went by. Sobbing fatigue, we scrambled up the vile mud bank, hit the fence, star climb, and were transfixed--also forever--in the glare of the a light as it returned, stopped like the angel of death, and rested? In but a few seconds, an armed Jeep with two guards drove| machine gun trained on our bodies. We had flunked. So, ft matter, would most of the class. Even the Big Ten jocks. The e| was not designed to make East European agents of us, but tj insight into the kind of horrendous experience some of oukj agents might undergo. "I Since the guards were wearing East German uniforms, th| proved to be the only element in the charade that did not HARLOT'S GHOST 195 ithentic. We were manacled and driven at high speed along the irder road to a whitewashed cinder-block building. Inside, was an sle down the middle and a series ofwindowless interrogation cells on ther side, each cell about eight feet square and containing no more ian a table, a couple of chairs, and a strong lamp with a reflector that ould soon be directed into our eyes. The interrogator spoke English ith such an intense German accent that, willy-nilly, one found icself copying him. I had never seen any of these men at the Farm, id learned only later that they were professional actors on contract ork to the Company; this contributed to disrupting one's anticipa- 3ns; everything was becoming more real than I expected. Since the interrogators moved from room to room questioning :her trainees as they were brought in, one was left by oneself for nger and longer periods. Given the alternation of intense interroga- on and glaring white-walled silence, I began to feel a sense of ^location as the night went on. My cover story felt awkwardly idged, a mind jammed into my mind. During questioning, the cover ory became nearly all of me. I learned that a role could become more vid to an actor than his own life. Why hadn't I realized how .lintessential was preparation? Each detail in my imaginary life upon hich I had failed to meditate sufficiently now became an added eight. For I could recall certain details only by an act of will. In Mitrast, every item I had been able to meditate upon in advance ;came alive to me. My cover story had put me in the vocational hool at Mannemburg near Leipzig right after the Second World fsa, and I had been able to imagine the pervasive stench that came irough the school windows from the rubble of charred humans, dead its, crumbled stone, and garbage—my voice sounded good to me hen I spoke about my studies there. ' "What was the name of the school in Mannemburg?" my inter- icutor asked. He was dressed in a black Volkspolizei uniform and sid an impressive sheaf of papers. Since he was also dark in complex- in and had a shock of heavy black hair and a dark beard, I found it ifficult to think of him as German until I remembered that the Nazi -udolf Hess had also had just such an iron-blue pallor to his shaved teeks. ' "Die Hauptbahnhofschule," I replied, "was my school." "What did you study there?" "Railroad trades." "Graduate?" 196 NORMAN MAILER "Yessir." "How did you get to school, Wemer?" "I walked." "Every day from your home?" "Yessir." "Remember the route?" "Yessir." "Name the streets you took." . I recited them. Not only was the map clear in my mind b knew from photographs taken soon after the war how the sti ought to look. ; "On your route, Herr 'Plug, it was obligatory to take the Scl heitweg?" -^ "Yessir." "Describe the Schonheitweg." I could see it before me as I spoke. "It was our grand avenfl Mannemburg. The Schonheitweg had an island of grass betwee^ two directions of traffic." ^ "Describe this island." - :i "It had trees." ,"What kind of trees?" "I do not know the names." .; "Were any of these trees cut down?" "Yessir." "Why?" "I don't know," I said. "How many traffic lights on the Schonheitweg?" "Maybe two." "Two?" "Yessir, two." "Near which traffic light did they cut the trees?" ; "The second light on my way to school." "In which year did they cut down the trees?" "i "I don't remember." | "Think, Werner, think." >| "Before I graduated in 1949." r! "You are saying they cut down the trees in 1947 or 1948?1 "Probably." | "Do you recognize this picture?" " "Yes. It is of the intersection at the second traffic light ori HARLOT'S GHOST 197 fchonheitweg. Before they cut down the trees." He pointed to a building near the intersection. "Do you remem- er this?" "Yessir. Postwar. The Mannemburghof. A new government nilding." "When did it go up?" "I don't know." "You don't remember the construction?" ,,, -, • ,, "No, sir. "You passed every day on your way to school, but you don't -member the construction of the only new government edifice in our town?" "No, sir." "But you saw it every day on your way to school?" "Yes, sir." "Was 1949 your last year at school?" "Yessir." , "In 1949, the Mannemburghof had not yet been constructed." "It hadn't?" "No, Wemer." "I am confused." "It was erected in 1951. And the trees were cut down in 1952." I was in a panic. Was the memory I had developed for my East German biography at fault, or was the interrogator lying to me? He now inquired about my work in the railroad yards. Again, I ras presented with small but definite discrepancies in the names and ices I had memorized: A locomotive repair shop to which I had been ;nt as clean-up man was located not at the east but the south end of »e yards, and when I insisted it had to be in the east because I could anember the sun coming up in the morning, my interrogator left me tone for half an hour before coming back to ask the same question gain. i Fortified by every photograph I had studied, I formed a picture of te town ofMannemburg in my mind, but it was incomplete. As in 'painting by Lany Rivers—whose work, after this interrogation, ICver failed to fascinate me—there were blank spaces to my Mannem- pi'g. As the hours of questioning went by, edges began to blur. "Why were you climbing the border fence, Wemer Plug?" "I did not know it was the border." "Despite the barbed wire at the top?" 198 NORMAN MAILER "I thought I was in a government park. Me and my partner v lost." "You were in a forbidden area. Did you know that?" "No, sir." "Mannemburg is only five kilometers east of the border." "Yessir." "You are aware of that?" "Yessir." "Yet you walk through the woods that lie to the west ofM nemburg and are surprised to find a fence." "Me and my partner thought we were walking to the east, not west." "Wemer, you were found with a compass on your person.'' were not lost. You knew if you could climb the fence, you woul< in West Germany." "No, sir." "Where would you be?" "It was a prank, sir. We bet each other who would be the firs get over." "You are a stupid fellow. Your story is sickening." He stooc and went out. In chess, if one studies openings carefully enough, one can pla^ equal terms with a far superior opponent for the first eight or tei twelve moves, for as long, that is, as the opening has been analy After that, one is, as they say in chess, "out of the book." I was out of the book. I had an acquired background anc acquired biography, but I did not have a good explanation ofw had tried to climb the border fence in the middle of the night. My interlocutor came back, and began to question me as if first colloquy had not taken place. Once more I was asked which' the trees were cut down on Der Schonheitweg. Again, I was inte gated on my claim that the railroad foundry was in the east yard. I of my errors began to seem larger. I do not know if the ac confirming false details was responsible, but I began to feel as i questions were related to a dentist's drill, and soon the nerve w( be touched. To my horror, I began to contradict myself. Now It to claim that I must have blundered by error into West Genna* must have gone across a portion of the border that had—coul be?—no fence, then had wandered through the woods wanting return to East Germany, and so had climbed the fence on the Wes HARLOT'S GHOST 199 ide, and was descending on the East German side in order to go back o work in the morning like a good citizen of the German Democratic republic "just when the soldiers found us." "Your sweat stinks with your lies. When I come back, Flug, I yant the truth or I will give you a couple of hot ones." He was lolding a rubber truncheon, and he slapped it against the table. Then ie left. Outside my eight-by-eight-foot white cement-block room, a >rison din was building. The interview cells along the corridor had illed, and the most curious condition began to prevail. I do not know fthe tempo of these interrogations was accelerating in anticipation of he arrival of the dawn we could not see through the windowless vails, but even as my questioner left me with the suggestion of dire remedies, so did I become more aware of cries from other cells. One captive was cursing audibly, "I don't know, I don't know. fou've got me deranged," he shouted. Another was whispering, but o loudly I could hear: "I am innocent. You have to believe I am nnocent," and from the farthest room down the corridor, one of the iolicemen was whipping his truncheon against the table. "No more, »o more," someone cried out. Then I heard Rosen. "This is outrageous," he was saying in a :lear voice. "I do not care what my partner claims. You have confused lim and terrified him. We only climbed the fence to be able to see he lights ofMannemburg and thereby find our way back. That is my itory. You may have shaken my partner, but you do not faze me. You :annot intimidate me with threats of violence. Never!" The thwap came back from the cell at the far end of the corridor. "Confess," said Rosen's interrogator. "You are not a citizen of he German Democratic Republic." "I am Hans Kriill," said Rosen, "born in Mannemburg." "You are a piece of filth. TeU the truth or we will use the filth that :omes out of you to stuff your nose. Why did you try to climb the fence?" ; "I am Hans Kriill," Rosen repeated. Now two truncheons were being used, one at each end of the corridor. r My sense of reality had not disappeared, but it was frayed. We l^ere in Camp Peary, not East Germany, but I did not feel safe. Even p a casual vacation trip can remind one that death, too, is a journey, P did I now feel as if insanity did not exist across the sea from reality, 200 NORMAN MAILER but could be visited on foot. It was down the road. My ears had never seemed more acute. I could hear Rosen; ing in his irritating, supercilious, nasal whine. Yet I could also he: enormously developed sense of self-importance, ugly as gross ri but nonetheless his kind of strength. "You are trying to throw n the track," he was saying, "and it will not work. I submit my ca the legal guarantees substantiated by Order of Law 1378, Div Three, Chapter B, in the new Constitution of the German D< cratic Republic. Look it up. It is there. My rights are being ( grossed." Yes, he had risen to the occasion! What a diversion! Nov interrogator was out of his book! Later I would learn that Rose preparation, had gone to the Farm library three nights earlier to! the new Constitution of East Germany, thereby picking up enou offer this exceptional gambit. My interlocutor came back. Again, he began to question me the beginning. I was led from detail to detail about the year the were cut down on Der Schonheitweg. Again, we passed throug railroad foundry and the aborted climb of the chain-link fence "It was because we were lost," I said, "and I wished to loci the lights ofMannemburg." "Your partner has told that story already. We have disprove "I am telling the truth." "Earlier you claimed that you did not know it was the bor "I knew it was the border." "You lied to me before?" "Yessir." "Why?" "I was frightened." "You claim you blundered into West Germany through ai fenced portion of the woods, and were now climbing back intc Germany." "Also a lie." ; "And now you are climbing the fence to look for the lig? Mannemburg?" '| "That is the truth." > "You have confessed to lying, but now you tell the truth?, "Yessir." ; "In fact, you are a liar, and an agent of the West German gcr ment." I HARLOT'S GHOST 201 A siren went off. It resounded through the corridors and cells of fae building. My interrogator gathered his papers and sighed. "It's over," he said. "It is over?" "I wish I'd had another fifteen minutes." He looked angry. In- leed, he still looked like a policeman. "Well, it's been weird," I said. "You did all right," he said. "I did? How do you know?" "I could kill you. When you make me feel like a cop, you've been pod." I stood up. "Yeah, you can go," he said. "There's a truck to pick you up." "I think I'll walk back to camp. Is that okay?" "Sure. You've got the day off now." "I think I need the walk." "You bet." We shook hands. I did the two miles back to the parade ground and the barracks. ^ew trainees were taking their first jumps through the mock-up of he C-47 door on the thirty-eight-foot tower. In another six hours my raining would be over and I would go back to Washington to work n the I-J-K-L by the Reflecting Pool; then, presumably, I would be issigned overseas. As I made my way to the cafeteria for breakfast, I eit an epiphany near. I had passed through a dark wood full of midges md ticks, was captured in fatigues filthy with the slime of a border litch, my fingers raw and newly scabbed from the chain-link fence, ny eyes aching from the glare of the reflector lamp in an eight-byiight-foot cell, and I had told lies all night in the face of prodigies of track on a contrived memory, yet I felt clean and fall of the virtue hat greets one at the end of a rite of passage. It had been the most Reciting eight hours I had spent in CIA; I had never been so happy. something in these hours of interrogation confirmed my training. I lad found the realm where I could spend my working life. To labor !Very day for the security of my country appealed to every breath that Iras deeded over to one's sense of the responsible and the appropriate. s for the other side of me, not yet worldly enough to go seeking for iritual explorations and carnal adventures, it could be fascinated all >e same by the arts of deception and the war against evil. It was (Crtainly intrigued with games and the no-man's-land of those who 202 NORMAN MAILER were ready to play such games. So it was also in accord. I ha epiphany. Happiness was that resonance one knows in the heart the ends of oneself come to concordance in the morning air. 11 the CANAL HOUSE PURCHASED BY hugh montague AFTER HIS ding to Kittredge was situated on the bank of the old Chesapeali Ohio Canal that passes through Georgetown. This waterway recall correctly, was a thriving artery in 1825, floating down i load of coal from Appalachia to the Potomac, the barges then t back with a cargo of such assorted sundries as flour, gunpowder, of cloth, and axes. After the Civil War, however, the canal coi longer compete with the railroads. The mills on the riverbank long been empty, the locks were still, and the canal bed was a ti Hugh's house, built as a stable for tow mules, was also gracec a second-floor loft where bargemen could sleep in the hay. The building, already renovated by successive owners when the \ tagues purchased it, had something like seven or eight rooms, an become a modest but charming house for those who could child-sized chambers and low ceilings. One would have assume Hugh and Kittredge were too tall for the place, but the canal revealed a side of them I might not otherwise have perceived nature of their separate professional tasks had this much in con: Their labors were often lonely, and rarely void of anxiety. Sc tucked themselves into their canal house which they called--no surprise--the Stable, and if there was a century-old effluvium of and mule-balls embedded in the floorboards, why, the better. ness was their connubial marrow. Since they were both, as I discovered, tough with a dollar, I think it helped that their litd had cost but $10,000. (Late in 1981, in a stroll one aftemd Georgetown, I discovered that the house, sold by them in 196 several times again by subsequent owners, was now up to nothil than an asking price of $250,000. That had to inspire somi reflections on the changes in our American republic these.' years.) ; It also provided a half hour of melancholy. The Stable cam* to my memory as it used to be in 1955. HARLOT'S GHOST 203 t I used to love their small living room, small dining room, and very all study for Hugh. In those former mule mangers, Kittredge owed something of her father's inclination for collecting antiques. yen a childhood in Boston and Cambridge, she had to perceive ashington as a Southern city. Why, then, not look for rare originals colonial cabinetmakers from Virginia and the Carolinas? Listening her speak of her acquisitions, I became half-familiar with names I d never encountered before, and was not to meet often again: Such lonial artisans as Thomas Affleck, Aaron Chapin, John Pimm, Job )wnsend, Thomas Eife, went in and out other conversation until I \ not know who had designed what, nor from where. I could hardly concerned whether her cherrywood dining table and handwrought airs with doe feet (which were, indeed, touchingly carved), her plar sugar chest, her planter's table, her candlestand, were choice nples from North or South Carolina. It was enough that they had digree. Like show dogs, these pieces were not the same as other asts. In the dining room on a panel between the mantel and the epiace was a scene, neatly painted, of woods and houses and the oal; whiskey taken by the fire, then fortified with her pate, could te awfully good. Harlot's study was another matter. Kittredge had furnished it to i choice, and I, feeling a pang at how well she understood his desires, Sered sentiments of disloyalty to Hugh in the midst of all my honest clings. Since there were no two people I cared for more, I had an aght into the true attraction of treachery. It felt as bright as a spring if Treachery helps to keep the soul alive—a most awful thought! hat if it is true? Harlot's study consisted of not much more than a massive dark k desk and a leviathan of a chair. Victorian furniture, circa 1850, iviously satisfied Harlot's idea of a companionable style. A taste for e substantial gave solemnity. Harlot would explain, to the subterra- an and lewd endeavors of the period. That is a large thought for one See of furniture, but his grand seat was of mahogany and nearly five "t tall. The top of the chair-back was framed by a gothic arch full quatrefoil fretwork. When you consider that this chair-back had en added to a sturdy Chippendale design for the arms, seat, and legs, b result was as baroque as a cathedral rising from an English manor. " The other rooms I never saw. Let me correct myself. The kitchen •s an old pantry off the dining room with its share of cast-iron pots d trivets, and I was in there often, chatting with Kittredge while she 204 NORMAN MAILER cooked for the three of us, but Harlot had an upstairs library never asked to enter, and they had two or three bedrooms whe loft used to be. I was not invited to stay over. Perhaps they had a honed householder's fear that if I achieved entrance upstairs, I; work up some way to live with them. What evenings we had! While I never went over without phoning first, and there were more than a few nights when they out, or had company they did not choose to have me meet, encountered an odd collection of people at their small dinners deed, I was too young to know how curious and mutually un; some of their dinner guests were.) The columnist Joseph Also one, proved to be overpoweringly patriotic, even for me, and I say he breathed heavily whenever military or Company matters discussed. The thought of young American men in such pursui obviously moving to him. Alsop also proved prodigious in his bery. I was paid no attention until he discovered that Boar Hubbard was my father, and then Alsop asked me to dinn< invitation which I, suddenly acting much like Cal, took pleasi refuse. Actually, I was lonely on those evenings when I did not t welcome at the Stable. Graduated from the Farm, I had been bu with four other Junior Officer Trainees in a furnished apartmi Washington. One or another roommate was invariably preeir the living room in an attempt to seduce his date, usually a sec from the I-J-K-L, and I, looking to think a few things through long walks at night. No wonder, then, if invitations to the Stable meant much t I felt not unlike an unemployed curator who, once or twice a • is permitted to visit the museum's private collection. There w doubt Harlot knew extraordinary people. Since many of them 1 do with OSS, I never judged by appearances. One hard-lookinj with a limp and an off-accent who talked about horses all night t out to have been one of the guerrilla leaders of the Chetnila Mikhailovitch group that lost to Tito. I was impressed with his | manners. When he toasted Kittredge—which he did frequent^ not only raised his glass but curved his knee, as if the good leg a bow and he was flexing it. Another guest was a formidable oil with a grand manner, porcelain blue eyes, and white hair, i Bavarian, half-Italian countess who had run an undergrouni HARLOT'S GHOST 205 jsc in Rome for Jews during the Occupation. Twice Kittredge had a girl there for me, each the younger sister Radcliffe classmates, and both young ladies proved no better than t petting on a couch somewhat later that night in my crowded Jtment. We got awfully drunk to do it, and roommates would ne through the door or go out, and my romances were without igs. I was becoming seriously concerned about the intensity of my ual dreams compared to the lukewarm manifestations of it I was e to offer the dating world. One evening the Montagues had a guest who most certainly •ught out the best in Harlot. Given the size of the dining table, they rer sat down to more than six, and this night we were four, but it iked like five. Their guest was a red-faced British general six feet en inches tall, of magnificent bearing, with four rows of ribbons six hes wide on his chest, and he sat at his quarter of the table and nk all night and nodded wisely to all Harlot said. It seemed he had :n in the SOE, and served on sister missions with the OSS, para- iting into France with Harlot. After which they became, as he put "good fellow sots" in London. Since the General contributed no •re than his immaculate and immense presence, his lineage—which nt back eleven hundred years—his title, Lord Robert, and his oarkably impressive uniform which he wore, he murmured, "in tredge's honor," conversation was left to Harlot. He did not flag. ad never known anyone to speak as well on so many matters; if riot had a conversational vice, it was his preference for monologue. Robert suited him. "What," the General asked, after listening to ler matters for a half hour, "is the history of this place? Looks iint. What do you call it? Georgetown? Has to've been named after e of the kings, hope not the Third." That was Lord Robert's igest speech of the night. Harlot reimbursed his guest with a disqui- on on Georgetown after the war—the Civil War. "Nothing but nps and government corrals and a few bone factories. An awful lot the horsemeat put into tins for the Union troops was processed just ew streets down. You can still smell dead animals in the fog." i "Hugh, you can't," said Kittredge. "Darling, I can sniff them out," said Hugh, the reflections on his glasses dancing from the candlelight. 'It must have been an awful place for a little while," admitted redge. "Full of diphtheria and brothels." 206 NORMAN MAILER. I had the distinct impression that Lord Robert perked up; horses one hundred years gone might not waken much appetit old brothels did! "All the same, it was a thriving work town," said Hugh, " flour mills and corn mills, and hammers hitting the adze in the ers' shops, a good sound." "Good," agreed Sir Robert. "Saws and planing machines," Hugh went on, "anvils di away. Such stuff. On a still night, I can hear echoes. RaucoUl Canalmen fighting. A few of those taverns have made it all th down to our time, and boys like Herrick, who work in the g(; ment, go to drink there now." "What did you say your name was?" asked Lord Robert."Herrick Hubbard, sir." "His father is Cal Hubbard," said Harlot. "Yes, a man of very strong opinions, your father," said Robert, as if mental life on his own promontory six feet seven i high offered few people who would voice their opinions up t( "Hugh has got it wrong," Kittredge said. "Georgetown it be, for the most part, a darling place. The houses had porticol gabled dormers. Slathers of gingerbread in the eaves." "Kittredge, you miss the essence," said her husband. "Do I?" Two spots of anger showed in her cheeks, an unhappy co was the first time I had seen her looking harsh. It gave me a se the reason they did not invite me to sleep over: They would ne space to raise their voices. Hugh, however, was not about to go to war with the Genei myself as linesman and judge. "She's right," he said, "so am happen to be talking about opposite ends of the town." "Never knew a place that didn't have its up street and its d< Lord Robert said. i "Yes. Funny story. I was reading about Georgetown last ni a local history." Hugh began to laugh. His mirth was plet you in." Despite what you just said?" I was as suddenly hungry for secrets FR1;212 NORMAN MAILER about Dr. Schneider as a hound called back from his food. "Well," said Harlot, "there's no remedy. Perhaps you'll him for yourself one of these days." He took a puff again. enjoying my frustration. "Harry," said Harlot, "keep the fai 12 let ME DESCEND FROM THE HEIGHTS OF harlot's CONFIDEN( to the low information of how I spent my working day. finished training with high hopes for my immediate future spent many a night at the Farm discussing the best station to to; if the merits of Vienna and Singapore and Buenos Aires anc and Moscow, Teheran, Tokyo, Manila, Prague, Budapest, : and Berlin had been weighed for their qualities as the most In for commencing one's career, I, in common with most ofr was assigned to a job in Washington, D.C. Then came another disappointment. I was not selected fc the foreign desks. That was the usual prelude to getting an post. An assistant to the Iran Desk in Washington could assum learning the ropes for Teheran. Ditto for the Congo Desk Japanese, the Polish Desk, and the Chilean. It was generall' among Junior Officer Trainees at the Farm that if you had in Washington, Assistant to the Desk Officer was the best ji Now, I was not an ambitious young politician, but I had of my mother's social sense to know I had been invited to th party. I landed in the Snake Pit, also known as the Boilei and/or the Coal Bin. On an unrewarding job, synonyms pr< In a huge room whose fluorescent lights droned away unde tively low ceiling, in the very small draft of a few modest ai tioners situated in little windows on a far-off wall, we burn maneuvered around one another down aisles that were ah narrow for their human traffic. It was hot, unseasonably!! October. On either side, six feet high, were old-fashioned; cabinets with shelves and file boxes. ;! We had a Document PLoom next door, a large chamb|] with stacks of papers as yet unfiled. The stacks grew to the ce^§ names encountered in each pamphlet, station report, aged magazine reference, newspaper reference, trade journal, orbfl HARLOT'S GHOST 213 • )sed to be set down on a card with a summary of the information ined. After which, the card could be filed, and the document j more permanently. The theory at the core of such labors was able to look at all the information available on any person the pany might be interested in. By such means, telling profiles could rmed. t was chaos, however. Documents accumulated faster than we 1 card them. The Western Hemisphere Division was soon six :hs behind their tower of paper in the Document Room; Soviet ia was four months back; China (given the difficulty of ideo- s) a year and a half. For West Germany, to which I was assigned, three months were in arrears. It was enough, nonetheless, to ; stress to every endeavor. I spent much of my time squeezing my down aisles, or wiggling my fingers into a file box. Once in a ;, there was honest panic. One morning, for instance, the Chief se in West Berlin sent a cable requesting vital information on one iVILDBOAR. Since hordes of such requests came in, and the >ver of personnel at my low level was considerable, such chores assigned by lot—you took the cable on the top of the pile at the ning Queries Desk. Fhen you worked your way through traffic, doing your best not Hide with the body, its nose in a file, that was blocking your path i the aisle. The odor of sweat was ubiquitous. It might as well been summer. The air conditioners had small lungs, and each one clerks—were we better, for all our training, than clerks?—was ing his own anxious stir. It was not enough to find WILDBOAR ;hiefofBase, Berlin; one had to find him quickly. The cable had frantic: NEED ALL RECENT ENTRIES ON VQ/WILDBOAR. URGENT. iTS. Yes, the Chief of Base had signed it himself. had had to wait in Records Integration Office down the corridor btain access to the PRQ-Part I/Part II/201-File Bridge-Archive, h hopefully was up to date and so could tell me who VQ/ DBOAR might be. On this morning, VQ/WILDBOAR did late into Wolfgang-from-West-Germany, last name unknown, ddress Wasserspiegelstrasse 158, Hamburg. That, at least, was a fBack in the Snake Pit, I could continue my search through the Ie boxes—each twenty inches long, each containing something ghteen hundred index cards, stuffed with Wolfgangs who had iufficiently inconsiderate to provide us with no last name. Wolf- ?who offered the courtesy of a last initial, a Wolfgang F., or a 214 NORMAN MAILER Wolfgang G., took up another three file boxes. Wolfgangs ^ whole last name occupied ten. I did not know that so many Wol were interesting to us in West Germany! Then I discovered they were not. My WolfgangfromHai had been entitled to one card in the Snake Pit for the occasi which he was arrested in 1952 after heaving a brick during a demonstration in Bonn. Yet he had nothing less than fifteer entries, carded from fifteen separate West German newspapers reprinted the same West German wire service story. Absolutely uable stuff on my Wolfgang might well be lying somewhere Document Room at the other end of this interminable shed, but not yet been carded. I was, by now, irritable. In the lunch break, back a cable to the office of Chief of Base, West Berlin. not Al SATISFY REQUEST FOR RECENT ENTRIES RE: VQ/WILDBOAR. SEND I address. ku/cloakroom. It was my first cable out. My first use own cryptonym. At end of day, an answer was routed back to me. cable (SERIES RB 100 A). TO KU/CLOAKROOM: MOST RECENT, REPEA' UNDERLINE, MOST RECENT INFORMATION ON VQ/WILDBOAR IS C ESSENTIAL, REPEAT, ESSENTIAL. FILE-RAT, ARE YOU INEPT? COi WITH YOUR OWN BETTER ADDRESS. VQ/GIBLETS. The Chief of Base in Berlin was famous for his short fuse. had no idea where to look. If I didn't respond to his cable, I conceivably receive a Notice of Censure. It left me full of uns' rage at Harlot. Why had I been left at the Snake Pit? Others training group were sited already at some of the best desks in ^ ington. Rosen was in Technical Services, a supersecret plum that due to his performance on the night of interrogation? Wors Butler, as I learned by way of Rosen, was actually operating ' West Berlin. Just when my mood felt condemned to brood throug night--where is Wolfgang, and what would I do tomorrow?-'' ceived a phone call from my father. Heading up something tlj unnameable in Tokyo, as I learned from his first remarks, .1 reporting back to Washington after a visit to stations in 1 Singapore, Rangoon, and Djakarta. "Join me for dinner," right off. "We'll celebrate your release from the Farm. Montaf be there." "Terrific," I said. I "would have preferred to see my fathet| "Yes," he said, "watch Hugh tonight. He knows I've got fl HARLOT'S GHOST 215 i lot of doings in the Far East. He'll be dying to know. Keep an i away from Hugh, and he carries on like you're picking his Icet." Well, we had a rich dinner at Sans Souci, and a good deal of icuvering did go on between CaJ and Harlot. I could hardly follow shoptalk about Sumatra, and SEATO, and the rigors of getting a ; intelligence out of Singapore without ruffling the Raj. When lot asked, "How do you plan to hold Sukamo's feet to the fire?" father leaned forward, touched my elbow with his, and replied, igh, that's just what we won't get into." "Of course not. You'll listen to some total fool out there who's ering every base and hasn't idea one on how to proceed, but you I't take a chance with me." "Hugh, I can't." "I see where it's leading. I sniff it. You're going to try to photo- )h Sukarno in one of his circuses." "Throwing no stones," said my father, "he's certainly got a few ig" "You're on squander-time. It's madness. You can't trap Buddhists a sex. They place it somewhere between eating and evacuating. : of the comedy of what goes in and comes out. You'll need more i photographs to get Sukamo into your pouch." "The only alternative is the Colonels," said my father. "I don't iw that they're honest dinner guests." Such talk went on. I certainly couldn't swear to what they were testing, but I thought it wonderfully interesting. Before too many rs went by, perhaps I, too, would carry on such conversations. Of course, I was not enjoying the evening altogether. I was still iread of tomorrow's search for Wolfgang, and my stomach was '. Harlot and Cal had taken, after the smallest acknowledgment, no her recognition of my last six months of training, and my graduat from the Farm. Nor had they given me room to talk about my tent condition. After three martinis, I had begun to pack veal de into my gorge with a red burgundy whose nature seemed complex than my own. Add Hennessey, and the attempt to e a Churchill with panache, and what I had hoped would be a of celebration (and possible explanation for why I had been oned in the Bunker) was now becoming a long march of gas- (testinal fortitude. I lost interest in Sukamo and how they would |his feet to the fire. 216 NORMAN MAILER Beneath it all, I was feeling the same sure resentment my always stirred. Sad cry: He had no desire to see me for myself I was his adjunct to business, pleasure, or duty. So, despite my pi discomforts, heavy as thunderclouds, I felt the same rush oflo' father could also stir in me when he said at last, "I'm really wait hear about you, boy." "There's not much to tell." "He's in the Snake Pit," said Harlot. By my father's pause, I could tell this came as unexpected mation. "Well, that's a hell of a place to have him." "No. It's advisable." "You put him there?" "I didn't keep it from happening." "Why? Did he do that badly at the Farm?" "No. He landed in the top quarter of his class." "Good." "Not good, adequate." All this, of course, was being said in front of me. "Then why do you have him in Files?" "Because it's a holding tank, and I plan to send him to I That's an interesting place right now." "I know all about Berlin. I agree. But why isn't he work West German Desk?" "Because it can be fatal to young fortunes. Four promisin have come and gone from that slot in the last three months. F chews them up before they have time to learn." My father nodded. He puffed on his cigar. He sipped his bi He took this much time to say in effect that he was a Far Easterr and did not know all that much about what was closer to hoi "I want," said Hugh, "for you to write a letter to Harvey. j for Harry. Tell him what a great son you've got. Harvey respect Cal." 3 This Bill Harvey, I could recognize, was the same Chief 0 West Berlin, who had called me a file-rat. Why did Harlot; should work for him? I was, despite the last full lecture impartffl canal house, not without suspicions. | Perhaps my unhappy stomach could not hold its own ba8 much longer. I told them of Harvey's cable. ( "I'm no longer," I said, "exactly anonymous. He knows^ HARLOT'S GHOST 217 ruy named KU/CLOAKROOM who didn't produce what he nted on VQ/WILDBOAR." They laughed. They could have been brothers for the way they ghed together. "Well," said Cal, "maybe KU/CLOAKROOM ought to disap- »» IT. "Exactly," said Harlot. "We can drink to the new fellow. Got a ference in the christening?" "KU/RENDEZVOUS?" I proposed. "Much too salient. Get over into the gray. Let's start with KU/ )PES." I didn't like ROPES any more than CLOAKROOM, but I :overed it didn't matter. It was explained to me that just as launed money grew cleaner with each new bank, so did each change ;ryptonym remove you farther from the scene of a fiasco. My new ptonym would soon be altered from KU/ROPES to DN/FRAG- iNT, then, over to SM/ONION. Last stop: KU/STAIRS. Harlot ;ed down these names with little self-congratulatory clicks of the igue, while my father chuckled in approval. They were cooking a li. "I don't know how it works," I protested. "Worry not. Once I get this through, odds against discovery will up to something like ten thousand to one," said Harlot. It still seemed to me that all it would take for Mr. William Harvey, iefofBase in West Berlin, to find out who KU/CLOAKROOM s, would be to ask the West German Desk in Washington to get my 1 name over to him in a hurry. No, my father assured me, it couldn't happen that way. (Why? "Because," said Harlot, "we are dealing with bureaucrats." "Harvey?" I asked. > "Oh, no. The people between Harvey and you. They won't see f reason to violate their rules of procedure. If West German Desk fe at Headquarters is asked to furnish the identity ofKU/CLOAK- *OM to Chief of Base, West Berlin, they must apply first to fee-Archive, who, in turn, will reply that KU/CLOAKROOM Just been given a shift to KU/ROPES. Well, that means delay for K: German Desk. Any alteration ofcryptonym invokes a seventy- -hour elapse before translation can occur. This protective regula 218 NORMAN MAILER tion is a perfectly good one, by the way. Such a change took presumably, for some valid purpose. At this point. West Gerrnai probably decides to wait the required three days. It's a minor ; after all. They're just accomodating Harvey. He's over in Berii West German Desk is working for West German Station in I "Doesn't Base in West Berlin have priority over West G Station in Bonn?" I asked my father. "Don't know about that. Bonn does have the Soviet Division." He frowned. "Of course, Berlin, on balance, co more important. Only we're not talking about real clout. dealing with bureaucracy, and that's a whole other kingdom.' "Count on it," said Harlot. "If Bill Harvey insists on imn processing of his request, which is highly unlikely, because he's to be mad at somebody else by tomorrow—it's another da) all—West German Desk still won't be able to satisfy him di They will have to go a step higher to Bridge-Archive:Control. there, they will meet a STOP. I will have put it in. STOP w 'Wait your seventy-two hours.' If they don't want to, they h take it up even higher, to Bridge-Archive:Control—Senior. that is a committee. Bridge-Archive:Control—Senior meets o emergencies. I happen to be on the committee. One never pn on Bridge-Archive:Control—Senior unless one can prove exC nary need to know." He puffed with complete happiness on his Churchill. "Obv you're safe enough for seventy-two hours. In the interim, v switch your cryptonym from KU/ROPES to DN/FRAGN' That means West German Desk, far from discovering wh< CLOAKROOM is, will have to recommence the process to Ie; identity of DN/FRAGMENT. They're still not near anythin see." "DN," said my father, "is the digraph for South Korea." "Yes," said Harlot. "KU/ROPES has gone to South Koi become DN/FRAGMENT. On paper, at least. Of course, an Of cryptonym puts a two-week hold on Bridge-Archive. By thefl vey, we can predict, will be well on to other things. Noneth<3 a matter of pride, I believe in carrying these matters out progi Harvey, for any reason, becomes obsessed with finding out •w( are, which is always a possibility, and waits out the two v^ promise that at the end of such interval, you will be shifted < London as SM/ONION. Still on paper, of course. A fortnight i LOT'S GHOST 219 yvn the road, we will bring you figuratively back from London to U.S., which, dear boy, you have not left in the first place. But 'U have you back working as KU/STAIRS. Total write-off for rvey at that point. He will see that a signature is on this business. It 1 tell him to lay off. He's obviously tampering with something. No linary file-clerk gets three cryptonyms in one month including kets to South Korea and London with protective STOPS from dee-Archive: Control. So it's our way of saying to Bill Harvey: Bug Big guns are in place." It seemed clear enough to me. I would be safe. But why go to h pains? My father must have been enough of a parent to read my cerebra- tis. "We're doing it because we like you," he said. "And because we like doing it," said Harlot. He nudged the ash m his cigar onto a clean plate as carefully as he might roll an egg h his forefinger. "I'll also have to get," he remarked, "KU/ OAKROOM expunged from your 201. Then there'll be no rec1 at all." "I appreciate the troubles you're taking on," I said, "but, after all, ommitted no crime. It's not my fault if the Document Room is ded in backlog." "Well," said Harlot, "the first rule in this place, if you value size of the future contribution you want to make, is to protect uself when young. If some mogul sends a request for informan, supply it." "How? Do you tunnel through ten thousand cubic feet ofunded documents?" "Wolfgang was a student in a street gang, and he moved around >t. You could have made up a report that kept him moving a little re. Send him to Frankfurt, or over to Essen." "Maybe," said my father, "Rick should still do that." "No," said Harlot. "Too late. It won't work now. Too much pntion will be paid to the false information. But the point for my |son to recognize is that in the beginning Harvey was not asking d serious inquiry." 'How can you be certain of that?" I asked. 'If Chief of Base in West Berlin is not aware of the frightful uition of the Snake Pit, he is incompetent. William King Harvey M incompetent. He knew, given the chaos, there would be noth- ip to date on VQ/WILDBOAR. I would say he sent the cable, 220 NORMAN MAILER and put his name to it, mind you, to scorch some of his pec Berlin. They probably lost contact with Wolfgang. It's a slap face for them if our file system here has to do the job when tr in place over there. If you had provided some fiction for Woli travels, Harvey could have used it to stir up his principals am agents. 'See,' he would tell them, 'Wolfgang has gone back to ] fart.' 'Impossible,' they might answer. 'He's too recogniza Frankfurt.' 'All right,' Harvey could have answered, 'get crackil find him.' " I could not keep myself from saying, "What if it was urg find Wolfgang? What if he"—I showed, I fear, a wholly spirit—"what if he was about to pass some nuclear secrets on Russians?" "It doesn't matter," said Harlot. "We've lost it at that We're lumbered. The world ends because the Document rooi impacted mass." My father took a long look at Hugh Montague and somethi: exchanged between them. Harlot sighed. "In fact," he said, "t one larger-than-life secret in West Berlin, and I may have to 1 in on it before you go over. If you don't have any idea ofwh; you could get in Harvey's way." He sighed again. "It's a thous one that Wolfgang has nothing to do with larger-than-life, bu does, we'll know about it soon enough." "How?" Hugh sniffed another measure of that air of the judicious a corrupt which is common to courtroom corridors and cigars, an "We'll get you out of the Snake Pit tomorrow, and on to inl training in German." That was all the answer provided. 13 y after DINNER, MY FATHER PROPOSED THAT I STAY WITH HIM ^ night. He was living, he told me, at a friend's apartment offl| and 16th, "an old hand in an old apartment," my father said in^ and when we went up, I was struck with how shabby v^| furnishings. It spoke of small income for an old hand without^ funds; it also reminded me of how pinch-fisted we Hubbaraj be. My father was certainly able to afford a decent hotel, yet HARLOT'S GHOST 221 k: here instead--I hardly knew if he was saving expense money for 3IA or himself. On second look, however, I realized his story was true. The spartan lack of amenities--one gray sofa, two gray rs, one old carpet, one pitted metal ashtray on its own stand, no .es, and a bureau with cigarette burns, a refrigerator, as I soon avered, with three beers, a tin of sardines, a box of crackers, and -empty old jars of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise--was ugh to tell me that no one was living here. There was no personal cer. Not one picture or photograph. This couldn't be a friend's tment. We were in a safe house. I was visiting my first safe house. orally my father would choose to stay in one. It fit the loneliness iked to wrap around himself whenever he was not back in his yo home with warm reliable Mary Bolland Baird Huobard. My father now waved me into one of the two dusty armchairs, brought forth from a kitchen cupboard a half bottle of cheap ;ch which we drank with water, no cubes. He had turned on the gerator, however, and it was humming loudly enough to discour- any microphone hidden anywhere about. I was, at this point, ily sensitive to the possible presence ofsneakies, inasmuch as one he courses back at the Reflecting Pool had been in electronic eillance, and I wondered if my father's quick tapping ofhisfiniails against the end table by the side of his chair came from ^ousness, fatigue, or his long-trained habit to send out sufficient e to discourage any but the most advanced listening devices. Of rse, I had even less idea whether I was being too paranoid or fficiently so. "I want to talk to you about Hugh and Bill Harvey," said my er. "Hugh means a good deal to me, but I have to tell you--he's perfect. It's damnable, because he's almost perfect, if you know it I mean." "I don't." "Well, when people get up to 98 percent, it hurts out ofpropor- ' if they can't reach those last two points. Hugh may be the best S-we have in the Company. He's the most brilliant, and certainly (of the more scholarly, and he has guts. He's a real cross between Sther and a mountain goat. Don't get him angry, and don't dare to leap." Yessir," I said, "I have a very high opinion of him." I don't mind if he takes his own leaps, but I'm not sure he isn't g you to go along with him on this one." My father threw up 222 NORMAN MAILER his hands as if to apologize for not being able to tell me mon "Does any of this concern the larger-than-life secret?" I ; He coughed heavily with an unhappy subterranean sou considerable mucus must have been ravaging his powerful che father was still in his late forties, but the sound of this cough with the gravel of booze and nicotine, seemed to have come ; much older man concealed within that powerful body. "Yes," 1: "Hugh should not have brought the matter up. I know I we: you, and I wouldn't even if I could because I don't want you t the responsibility of holding such a weighty secret, a true sei state. Tell me, then, why Hugh figures he can feed it to you of your orientation?" There was obviously no answer to that. "He will certainly tell you," my father went on. "Don't this to a soul, but he lets more secrets out than anyone in his p< ever should. It's as if he's making a bet on his own judgment. I si it gives him the grandest feeling." I think my father may finally have had his fill of drink, for 1 feel him meandering away from me in his mind. Then he sat u a jerk. "The point is, Hugh has no right to trust anyone. Nc Philby. You've heard about Kim Philby?" "A little," I said. I was trying to recall Lord Robert's con: on the subject. "Philby came very near to being Hugh's nemesis. Philby thick with Burgess and Maclean. Ever hear of them?" "Wasn't it a newspaper story? They were British Foreign stationed over here, weren't they?" "Damn right," said Cal. "When Burgess and Maclean pulle disappearance back in 1951 and ended up in Moscow, everybod divided into camps. Did Philby tell Burgess and Maclean to d( or did he not? Old friends weren't speaking, not if one thought was guilty and the other didn't." ) "Which camp were you in?" ;.ij "Pro-Philby. Same as Hugh. Kim Philby was a friend of| and he was a friend of mine. We used to drink together in 3 during the war. You'd swear Philby was the peachiest Englishfl ever met. Had a stammer. But very funny when he couldi words out. Which he could, when drunk." After which ex, suddenly went silent. ^ I waited, but he said no more. Then, he yawned. "I'm fl HARLOT'S GHOST 223 i in," he said. "I caught this bug in Djakarta--a hellzapppper of a r. I wonder what it looks like under the microscope." He smiled uperiority to his own physical defects, and added, "Let's not get ) Kim Philby now. It's too depressing. The point is, Hugh ended looking pretty bad when it was over. The anti-Philby people irly won out. That was Bill Harvey's doing. When Hugh tells the y, and I think he will if you ask him, he'll pretend to be half-fond larvey. He has to. By now, we're just about certain that Philby was rking for the KGB. So Hugh has to say half-decent things about rvey. Don't believe him. He hates Bill Harvey." Then why am I being sent' to Berlin? I wanted to ask. "All the same," said my father, as if I had in fact spoken aloud, aiin's a good idea. I will write that letter. You could use some ghing up. Bill Harvey's the man to give it to you." With that, I was left to turn in for the night. There were two ^le beds in the next room and sheets and blankets of a sort. I lay re listening to my father cry out from time to time in his slumber, iort barking sound, and I finally slept in a half-coma which corn- need with visions of Bill Harvey through Kittredge's eyes. She had tainly described him once. "We know a man in the Company, Eul person, who carries a handgun in a shoulder holster even when comes to dinner. Isn't that so, Hugh?" "Yes." "Harry, he's built like a pear, narrow shoulders and a relatively ;k middle. His head's the same way. Pear-shaped. He has goggle s. An absolute frog, this man, but I couldn't help noticing--he has prettiest little mouth. Small and nicely curved. Very well shaped. ^amour-girl's mouth in a toad's face. That sort of thing gives even 're clues to Alpha and Omega than the right and left side of the ; " Had it been Bill Harvey who confronted me at the edge of sleep? Ad a curious experience that night, and it was far from wholly pleasant. I felt West Berlin coming nearer to my life. My first pgn tour awaited me. Even this grim safe house with its olfactory > of old cigarettes and wet cigar butts, its memories of men waiting sther men to arrive, was a harbinger of the years to come. My uness could serve much purpose. The mean appurtenances of our : apartment, spectral by the streetlight that came through the low shades, as brown by now as old newspapers, gave me a sense ny my father chose to stay here rather than at a hotel. A safe house 224 NORMAN MAILER was the emblem of our profession, our monk's cell. Perhaps tha why my father had produced the transparent fiction that this i friend's apartment. In the act of penetrating his cover story, I \\ see a safe house with eyes of discovery. Many a rendezvous in Berlin would look like this, I supposed, and I was to prove rig Let me describe the bizarre vanity of the meditation that folio Lying in this habitat, I felt equipped to travel through dark space engage in deeds not free of the odor of burning sulphur. A few away was my father's troubled body, and I, sensitive to the sp( that would bring a man as strong as himself to cry out in ba sounds as though to warn off nocturnal enemies, thought ofm taste for caverns, including that underground city of excavated ri whose plans I had drawn as a boy. That brought me to conteni once more the cavern in my own head. It had been left in pla whatever half-formed monsters of harsh tissue or imperfect flesi been uprooted from my brain. Did that unfilled volume now dra* toward many a strange situation I would yet encounter? At that moment I thought of Harlot with whole admiratiol believed that our work could shift the massive weight ofhistorica by the only lever our heavens had given us, the readiness to damnation in our soul. We were here to challenge evil, negotia snares, and voyage out into devious activities so far removed froi clear field of all we had been taught that one could never see the at the end of such a crooked tunnel. Not when one was in the mi On just this thought, I fell asleep. I did not know that my re had produced a kind of revelation. The larger-than-life secret of Berlin alluded to on this night was nothing less than a fifteen- dred-foot tunnel dug in holy secrecy, under Harvey's superv into East Berlin for the purpose of tapping Soviet military head ters' long telephone lines out to Moscow. 14 s • /• I WAS TO HEAR MORE ABOUT bill harvey BEFORE I LEFT. harlcm only provided me with a full account of the fateful party in Wall ton that Kim Philby threw for Guy Burgess, but entrusted me—- as my father had predicted—with all the fathoms-deep hush- about William King Harvey's tunnel. That, I thought, was a HARLOT'S GHOST 225 ewell gift: Harlot was taking me into the inner house of the Com- ny. I new from Andrews Air Force Base to Tempelhofin West Berlin i a Douglas C-124. A fat, four-motor Globemaster called "Old iakey," it shook like an old radiator. You mounted this plane from ramp in the rear, and those twenty of us who were on our way to u-ope. Air Force personnel for the most part, were sent up into the rgo well, forward of the vehicles and crates that would be loaded on :er. Strapped into our seats, we faced to the stem and looked down i cargo whose neatly packed contents took up considerably more from than ourselves, and seemed, by comparison, more respected in ;atment. The flight took nine hours to Mildenhall, in England, where we ipped for another nine hours before moving on to Mannheim and ;rlin. I was on that plane, or waiting for it to go up again, a total of renty-four hours, and the interior was unheated, and had no view. itared at electrical cables on the cabin walls. It was the longest trip. ' After attempts to read in the poor cabin light had failed, and inversation with men on either side of me had ground down (for I as discovering again how circumscribed was conversation with peoe who were not in the Agency), I reached at last, somewhere in the iddle of the night, an island of contemplation sufficiently removed Run the grinding of the airplane's motors and the vibration of the bin to allow me to dwell on my last memory of Washington, a rewell dinner with Harlot, again at Sans Souci. .' He told anecdotes all night, rilling me in on what he obviously msidered the true flavor of the Company. Yes, Herrick, went his esentation, you have discovered after all that training with modey structors, and demoralizing days on the files that, yes, we plod, we ess up, we go in circles, we expand too quickly here, and are out of there, but it's the people who count, the one hundred, two hun- vd, at most five hundred people, who are the active, lively nerve of e Company. All those thousands of others are but the insulation we fed, our own corps of bureaucrats there to keep the other Washing- to bureaucracies away from us. At the center, however, it can be lendid. I' "The only real problem," he said, looking into his brandy, "is to of the Devil when you see him. One must always be on the lookout ^someone like Kim Philby. What a devil! Have I ever given you the on Harvey's night at Philby's party?" 226 NORMAN MAILER He knew he hadn't. He was launching another anecdote. I have been the Hennessey, but a vein in Harlot's forehead be^ throb prominently. "I don't know," he said, "if any Englishrnai came over here from MI6 or the British Foreign Office was ever popular than Kirn Philby. A good many of us got to know him ai London during the war, and we took up the friendship again wt arrived in 1949. We used to have the best lunches. He was sh^ strangers because of that frightful stammer, but such an agreeable Something sandy about him, the hair, the jacket, the old sp< pipe. He drank like a loon, never showed it. You have to respec It suggests an intensity of purpose when you can handle all that i Harry, I forswear sentimental exaggeration, but Kim Philby quality the English do produce in many of their best people. It their own person embodies everything that's first rate about country. And, of course, we had the word. Kim Philby was boi head up MI6 one of these days. "Now, it wasn't altogether as good-fellow as that. Durir war, MI6 used to treat us as if we OSS were good-natured oaf did well to kneel at the feet of British savvy. They gave us a snobby time. 'You chaps may be the plutocrats, but, don't you 1 we still have this.' And they would lay a finger to their templi were awfully in awe of them. We were so young at Intellij When Philby came to Washington in '49, it was still like tha were expanding the Company every day, and it was obviol British were going to end up in our shadow, but, oh, that litd of the head, that paper-thin smile. They had it. I used to stud; Philby. Such filigree; There was his poor country to our wealth' and him stammering half the time, yet even the best of us competitive minus when we had to go face to face. "The thing about Kim—my God, just in saying his name cover I'm still egregiously fond of Philby—is that he was auda True wit resides in audacity. You have to know when to break from the book move. After the British Foreign Office sen| Burgess to Washington as First Secretary, Philby invited Guy toj in with him. Now, looking back on it, I still don't compreheCjl the Russians dared to work with Burgess. He had to be th| improbable KGB asset. He was, as you may have heard, a holy, I mess, a homosexual of the worst sort, a bully on the prowl for ^ fellows ready to turn queer. 'I'm going to plunder you,' is the K look that came off Guy Burgess. You did not measure his drink; HARLOT'S GHOST 227 isses, but by bottles. He also smoked like a Rube Goldberg filthy- cotine machine. Besides which, he wore white clothes considerably atted with his last half-dozen meals. He was half as grand as Ran- >lph Churchill, and had manners absolutely as bad. One has to expect iglishmen from good families to be awful with waiters. I think they e seeking to pay back all those Scotch nannies who used to shovel )rridge into their mouths. But Burgess was the worst. 'See here, you oody fucking fool,' he would bellow at the nearest waiter, 'are you cretin, or merely presenting yourself as hopelessly inadequate?" ugh, imitating Burgess, spoke loudly enough to have embarrassed us Sans Souci had been empty, but dinner clamor was our security. "Philby would always reassure us, 'Guy has been suffering rough the most frightful aftereffects of his car accident, poor Guy.' lilby would say, 'Guy is talented, but his head is bb-b-banged-up, >u see.' Philby made it sound like a war wound. The loyalty of one rit for another! "Well, enter Bill Harvey. He had the curious luck to be invited Philby's one night in spring 1951 for a large dinner. Everybody was ere, Harvey, Burgess, hoards of us and our ladies. J. Edgar Buddha most came, but then he heard about Harvey's being invited and did )t show. Bill Harvey, to bring you a little more into the picture, was that time very much en route to becoming our in-house pet. Since ;en, he's become considerably more than a toy. But at that time, we ved him. We'd taken him up. His handshake was even clammier an his pistol butt, but he was our FBI man. To get started in isiness, we had, of course, done our best to raid the Bureau, and gned on a few of their agents, among whom Harvey was the cream. ou know, he'd helped snag the Rosenbergs. J. Edgar Buddha never rgave him for quitting the marble halls of Justice to come over to us. hen to make matters worse: Harvey, what with old contacts at FBI, as obtaining a lot of back-drawer information from the Bureau that e could use. FBI deserved no less. They had been poaching on CIA nsdictions in six or seven countries along about then. In fact, they Pre hoping to kill us in our infancy. It was inhumane! Why, Alien Ules could hardly get through to Buddha on the phone. 'Tell me,' t once asked Hoover, 'what is CIA doing to offend you so?' ' " 'Mr. Dulles,'J. Edgar replies, 'tell Bill Harvey to quit pinching in-stuff.' ? "Well, that puts Harvey into our graces. Naturally, Philby invites P1 and his wife, Libby, to dinner. Bill Harvey was married to Libby 228 NORMAN MAILER then. I could have warned Philby not to give such an invitation. not sanguine about the social prospects. When you put a plain lik Harvey alongside a fancy like Guy Burgess, Heaven may not b< to help. "Well, we all start drinking. Harvey can go round for round Burgess. So can Libby. Harvey's wife is out of Indiana or Kent some agricultural seat, a sexy-mousy girl with no presence at all,'. except for a huge horse-laugh that's so bad it could only belon| duchess. No scullery maid would ever be allowed to guffaw in fashion. Whoopee! We all get five yards under. It's a revel. Harvi been boasting up and down Foggy Bottom that he has had s intercourse every day of his life since some such tender age as tv So help me. If it can't be his wife, he implies, it might be yours Libby is not only kissing everyone at the party—'Here's mud in eye,' she keeps yelling—but is also carrying on with, of all p< Guy Burgess. Guy even takes his hands off the boy he's towed to play bumper-cars with her rump. Under it all, is this desp pervasive wash of what I call social sorrow. It's insufficiently recog as one of the major passions. Harvey and Libby are full of social, because in relation to the rest, they know damned well th amount of rump-bumping is going to lower the real barriers. "Burgess starts to brag about his powers as a caricaturist. me,' asks Libby. 'Oh, I'll do that, darling,' says Burgess. He m; sketch of Libby. Shows it to me first. I pride myself on keeping wits together—but I tell you. Harry, I wasn't able to say a •' Burgess drew Libby too well. There she is in an armchair with h( apart, skirts up, her fingers right where they'll be—he's even c her pubic hair with detail. An expression on her face you mistake. It's how she must look at avalanche time. Burgess is a pe ent devil! "Now, just as I take this drawing in. Burgess whips it froi hand, and passes it around. Most people are decent enough to p< more than a quick peek, but no one, by now, really wants to b» We've put up with a lot from Bill Harvey. We are, in fact, surprii ready to witness his woe. He walks across the room, intercep' drawing, and—I thought his heart would burst. I also passed thi an instant when I expected him to draw his gun. I could fe< impulse clear across the room. Holding on to himself with an' of will worthy of a boa constrictor's embrace, he seizes Libby's hi by now, she's seen the drawing, too, and is wailing—and wall HARLOT'S GHOST 229 th her. I have never witnessed any look of hatred equal to the bolt 11 Harvey threw at Burgess. 'I wish,' says Bill, 'I wish . . .' He can't 1: it out. Then he does. 'Choke on a nigger's cock,' says Bill Harvey, d is out the door. " 'The man has just given his blessing,' says Burgess. "A month later Burgess is called back to London. From there he ickly decamps with Sir Donald Maclean for parts unknown, but, of urse, it can be no place but Moscow. Maclean, also stationed in nerica, has had the most god-awful high clearance at Los Alamos. , the question now was Philby. Could he possibly be working for ; Soviets? We can't believe that. I tell you, he's too nice. I am hardly spared, I'll confess to you. I even got out a three-page memo more less to exonerate Philby. Noblesse oblige. I was less witting then. y memo also spoke of Burgess: I related that Guy joined us at lunch .e day in a soiled white British naval officer's uniform, wholly shaven, and proceeded to carry on about 'the damned exaggera- ms and over-claims in the technical data on American Oldsmobile's )od-sucking new Dynaflow transmission!' Burgess knows a lot out automobiles; he tells me as much. Also, Burgess brags of having en to bed on countless occasions with Philby's male secretary. It's tually an FBI memo, those three pages. Gossip, no grit. But Philby, i balance, comes through my audit with more credits than debits. "At this point, if not for Wild Bill Harvey, Kim might have ;athered the storm. Possibly, given a few years, he could have M-ked back into MI6's good graces. Who, after all, ever heard of the 3B allowing two of their agents to live in the same house? Kim must innocent of everything but bad judgment. "Harvey, however, had his own memo to write. He had been itting together fifteen- and twenty-hour stretches on the files. That's ways the other side of Harvey. Hard work. He was also pulling in latever he could obtain from the best FBI counterintelligence. FBI d cracked a few Russian codes they were not about to share with i but, old FBI buddies being what they are, Harvey did obtain one jviet intercept thatJ. Edgar had been keeping under his monumental Jt, and it made reference to a high British mole. The specifications wn Philby well enough for the powers to accept Harvey's version »er than mine. 'Take back your Philby and try him,' CIA tells MI6. lich they now had to do, much as they hated the prospect. Philby a draw at his MI6 hearing. No incarceration, but was obliged to Poor Kim. I say 'poor Kim,' and yet, if he's guilty, he's the ( butler CAME BY IN A jeep TO PICK ME UP AT tempelhof airport. ce again I would share accommodations with four Junior Officers, I Dix was one of them. A few blocks off the Kurfiirstendamm, in at must have been a substantial neighborhood before the war, our rtment was on the fourth floor of a six-story edifice, the only iritation still standing on its side of the street. In the stairwell, feorate moldings full of cracked plaster gave way to plasterboard > at the higher landings. Parquet floors showed swatches oflino- i. It was in accord with my first impression of Berlin--dusty, y, half-patched, gray, depressed, yet surprisingly libidinous. I felt avity on every street corner, as real to me as vermin and neon |its. ^ I do not know if I can anbrd even one more reference to my sex S (which was still an empty ledger) but these days I was reacting to C presence of sex like a devil's imp in a sealed cylinder. As I came pthe landing ramp from "Old Shakey," I had a unique experience. fust sight of the close-packed working-class streets surrounding bpelhof produced an erection in me. Either the air or the architec- »was an aphrodisiac, and panoramas of West Berlin went flying by ^window like wartime newsreels of bombed cities. I saw buildings "very stage of restoration or demolition, half-destroyed, or going in rubble-cleared lots that revealed the sheared-off backs ofbuild- 1 from the next street. Billboards, bulldozers, cranes, trucks, mili- ; vehicles, were everywhere. It seemed one year after the war, not As we drove along, Dix was discursive. "I like it," he said. "West lers have the quickest minds I ever ran into. New Yorkers are ng compared to these people. I was trying to read a German paper on a park bench the other day, and this small neat dude in 234 NORMAN MAILER a pinstripe suit, professional type, is sitting across from me. He up in perfect English, 'See that policeman over there?' I lool cop, one more hefty Kraut. 'I see him,' I say. 'What's it to yo 'I bet,' says the stranger, 'that cop shits like an elephant.' Then 1 back to his newspaper. Berlin, Hubbard. They can tell you hi cop squats. Compared to them, we are sparrows picking seeds the horse-balls, and the horse manure is everywhere. It's all ex' General Gehlen who runs BND for the West Germans is o; used to be financed by us." "Yes," I said, "I know that." Was it ten years ago, sitting a at Twenty-One, that my father had spoken of a German genei had been able to strike an agreement with U.S. Army Intel after the war? "Yes, I heard of him," I said. "He also," said Butler, "got the word out to all the fell< Nazis who worked with him on the Russian front. A lot oftho jumped at the chance to find a good-paying job in postwar Ge After all, the work is easy now. Anybody in your family wh himself in the East Zone can furnish you information. But tl right. Analyze the SSD, and you'll find East German Conu running it at the top, and half the Gestapo underneath. It's all I: friend, and I'm having the time of my life." Butler did not offer a word on what my work might be. I' to discover such details bit by bit. For my first few days in Berii occupied with obtaining accreditation for my cover job, and tonym: VQ/STARTER. Considerable time was left to spend once-grand and now cavernous apartment. The furnishings de me. The bed in which I slept had a monumentally heavy mat damp as an old cellar, and the pillow bolster could have been m for a log. I could see why Prussians had stiff necks. The subst; leaky throne in the bathroom was two-tiered, offering a ft within the bowl. Not since infancy had one been obliged to much attention to what one had just accomplished, a testai decided, to the love of civilized Germans for primitive studil My cover job proved so clerical I hesitate to describe iM desk in a Department of Defense supply unit and was expi show up once a day to make certain that no papers requil administrative disposition had by any mischance been routed^ me. The quarters were cramped, not so cramped as the Snaktf tight enough for my relatively empty desk to look inviting' legitimate workers. Before long they began to take squatter* HARLOT'S GHOST 235 the second week, not only my drawers but my tabletop was being iropriated. Warned in advance that CIA personnel working in State nartment or Department of Defense offices inspired resentment, I , still not ready for the intimacy of the irritations. By the end of the and week, I made a point of sweeping from my desk all the luthorized paperwork, and dropping it into one large carton which ft in the aisle when I went out to lunch. There was a hush in the im as I returned. That afternoon, a committee of three approached me. Following venty-minute conference on the merits of the situation, my desk > divided, by mutual agreement, into zones as fully demarcated as :lin under four-power occupation. Our treaty probably worked better than most, but no one in this ,ce was ever at ease with me again. It hardly mattered. I needed no are than a place where people whom I could not inform of my real rk might get in touch by phone or mail. My more legitimate labors were performed Downtown. That was name of a shed surrounded by barbed-wire fence, one of the nerous Company offices. The rest were located, by no particular ic I could untangle, all over the city, including Chief Harvey's me, a large white stucco house which not only doubled as an office :, under heavy sentry guard, was fenced about and sandbagged. Its chine-gun emplacements trained fields of fire down the neighbor; streets. The place was certainly a redoubt, and might have kept the ; flying for a few hours if the Russians came over from East Berlin. I spent my first week on the telephone at Downtown, aspiring in ' intensely crammed German to pick up surveillance reports from ' doorman, the barman, the headwaiter, and the portier of each ding hotel. In the beginning, it had not been routine for me to he a phone call on the basis of a quick orientation by a colleague-- last, I had colleagues!--and begin true spy work. So, for a time it »fan. Yes, the doorman at the Bristol, or the Kempinski, or the Am t> would tell me (usually in English considerably better than my tman) yes, of the four people whose activities he had been asked tvatch, Karl Zweig, for one, had stopped by in his Mercedes to pay sit to room 232. The doorman would have the name of the apant of room 232 when I called again that afternoon. Heady stuff. ^ as if I had, at last, entered the Cold War. After a few days of checking twice daily through my long list of waiters and barmen for their pieces of information, the task 236 NORMAN MAILER brought my early enthusiasm down to the sober responses we to a chore. Nor could I always divine whether Karl or Gottfi Gunther or Johanna was East German or West German, one ( or one of theirs. If the barman had overheard a conversat interest, I had to dispatch a memo to the appropriate desk. . officer with more experience than myself would be sent out to < the bartender. Indeed, I did not even know yet whether this wa by way of a drink, or both men repaired to a safe house. Be it sa Dix Butler was doing such work. My new ambition was to get telephone (where I was beginning to feel like a man who sole for classified advertising) and get out, be a street man. On I stayed, however, at my telephone for ten days, unti came for me to report to FLORENCE at VQ/GIBLETS. VQ LETS, I knew already, was Base Chief William King Harvey's the white stucco fort I had heard so much about. Harvey, colleague on the next telephone informed me, thought ofthii guarded house as Little Gibraltar, or Giblets, and FLORENC "C.G."—Clara Grace Follich was her name. She was Willian Harvey's new wife. "Wonder what it's about?" I asked. "Oh, you're on the Ivory Soap trolley," he said. "C.C around sooner or later to all the new people on base. Looks over." I learned quickly enough about the trolley. C.G. had been a in the WACs and administrative assistant to General Lucien Tr Now married and semiretired, she watched over the maintena the safe houses. She and I took a tour of Berlin that day in a t van with no identifying flag or marks, and I carried towels and and toilet paper and caustic cleansers, plus beer and wine and and sausage and cartons of cigarettes and boxes of cigars up flij stairs or in and out of old elevators with clanging gates, and to' soiled towels and sheets (leaving food remains and trash and; bottles for the chambermaid), and so serviced something liktf safe houses in as many neighborhoods. If three of them were n< clean with Swedish blonde-wood furniture and picture winc| new apartment houses, four looked just like the seedy stainedj hideout my father had taken me to in Washington. .1 C.G. was not a woman with much small talk, but then yo| rarely in doubt of where her mind might be. She had a practicei at taking inventory of what was left in each safe house, and I B HARLOT'S GHOST 237 t she gave a different knock to each entrance door before inserting key, presumably to alert any case officer inside who might be briefing an agent. At no place, however, on this day was there a ponse. Seven safe houses, empty of occupants, were in this fashion >cessed. "I know what you're thinking," she said when we were done. hat's a lot of safe houses to be lying idle." "I guess I was telling myself something like that." "When we need them, we really need them." "Yes, Major." "You didn't see any chambermaids today, Hubbard?" "No, ma'am." "If you had, you would have noticed that they are not spring .ckens. Can you tell me why?" "Well, if one of our agents has to hole up for a few days, and the imbermaid is young, he might get into a relationship." "Please expand on that." "Well, suppose one of the KGB agents who are trained lovers"-- had been given orientation about such KGB agents--"was to ;rcise a hold on the chambermaid, why, the KGB could obtain all ids of access to the safe house." "Believe it or not," she said, "you're one of the few juniors to derstand that right from the get-go." "Well, I think I've had more than the average background," I lunteered. "My father is an old OSS man." "Hubbard? Not the Cal Hubbard." "Yes, Major." "My husband knows your father." ; "My father has a lot of respect for your husband." All the while, ras wondering if Cal had sent his letter. I decided he had. There was liething in the way she said, "Not the Cal Hubbard." | 'I'm going to talk to my husband about you," C.G. added. ^ No call to visit the Chief came back over the next week. In ttpensation, my work grew more interesting. Another Junior Of' came to us from the States. Since I was senior to him, if only by weeks, he was soon on my telephone, and I was moved to agent ic, where I kept a log on which Communist officials were travel- back and forth from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany last Berlin. This involved using agents' reports, and so offered a picture of our network of observers in East Berlin: taxi drivers, 238 NORMAN MAILER newsstand operators off the Unter den Linden, the Friedrich and the Stalin AUee, our East Berlin police—how many Vopc in our pay!—our East Berlin hotel personnel, even a towel bo\ one important East Berlin brothel. This variety of input was fi by daily reports from just about every established madam ir Berlin. In 1956, there was as yet no Berlin Wall, and so officia the Eastern bloc were always crossing over for an evening of tures in the West! These were passive networks. Any recruiting of new agei beyond the purview of my job: I could not even say whetl information we collected went back to Washington and the ment Room, or whether our people in West Berlin were i implementing new actions because of what was learned that i A call came through at last. VQ/BOZO wished to see mi BOZO was William Harvey. As was VQ/GIBLETS-1. As w COLT. The cryptonym changed with the place where yoi going to meet Mr. Harvey. VQ/GIBLETS-1 was the private o his home; VQ/BOZO his main office off the Kurfurstendam; VQ/COLT was the turnaround in back of his house. He had 1 tennis court paved in asphalt to provide a quick turnaround fo cles and limousines. Should the message be signed off as VQ/( one had to be ready to tear up in one's Jeep, jump out, and Ie Harvey's moving (and armored) Cadillac. Of course, that c always happen. I had heard stories about juniors like myse dashed over to the tennis court on the call from COLT, whip]: of their vehicle on arrival, jumped into his Cadillac, and then forty-five minutes for Chief to saunter out of GIBLETS (whic I add, even bore a physical resemblance to him when he won usually did, his bulletproof vest). Still, there could be that or when you came roaring up twenty seconds late. Today, in the main office at BOZO, it would be easier, were scheduled to see him. How many was another matter. I) in a private cubicle, the size of a walk-in closet, you waited in is until your call came; then you were led by a secretary down an corridor to his door. The idea, presumably, was that none oft arrivals, case officers, American officials, and/or West German < were supposed to get a look at one another. Waiting in that cubbyhole, I tried to prepare myself. I ha warned that Mr. Harvey would probably be sitting behind h desk with his coat off, the butts of his two revolvers poking fi HARLOT'S GHOST 239 lulder holsters. It was also legend, however, that he would never »ear in public without his jacket, no matter how hot the day. Sweat oht lave his cheeks like water on a horse's belly, but FBI training t-e you decorum forever; he was not about to expose those shoulder (sters to the public. I had also been warned that soon after meeting him, he might take t either gun, spin the cylinder, remove the bullets, pull back the mmer, aim in your direction, and click the trigger. My father had narked that only an ex-FBI man could be party to such opera. On the other hand, we were all, by Mr. Harvey's orders, obliged carry firearms when out on an operation, no matter how minor. ie Russians, it was estimated, had pulled off twenty kidnappings in cst Berlin over the last year. Of course, the victims were Germans. ie KGB had not abducted any Americans, no more than we had fficked with them, but if the Soviets were going to break this rule, leemed to be Harvey's assumption that he was the man they would pose. I was not old enough to know how pervasive such a fear could come. All I felt, when led into his office, was his power to intimi- te. There were enough firearms on the wall to fill a gallery in a iseum. Harvey sat at his desk, a phone to his ear, vest unbuttoned, ; butts of two revolvers growing like horns out of his armpits. Wide the middle, he looked heavy enough to waddle when he walked, d he reeked of gin and Sen-Sen tablets. Nonetheless, he gave an impression of strength. Rage came off n. He hung up the phone and looked at me with one full wad of ipicion. I had the instinct to guess that he looked at each new man the same way. We knew more than we were supposed to know, d he wanted to find out what it was. Of course, he was right. A moment later, I knew exactly how ich knowledge was too much. I had been told of the Berlin tunnel, d I knew about Guy Burgess' drawing of his ex-wife, Libby. I had ce been KU/CLOAKROOM. I had reason to feel uncomfortable. Harvey nodded. A cop has his preferences, and one of them is to set people who are aware of his force. By looking uneasy, I had just teed the first test. From those small, well-curved lips, advertised in vance by Kittredge, issued his voice, a low, resonant burble. I had lean forward in my seat to hear Base Chief Harvey speak. "My wife says you're okay," he stated. 'Oh, she's a fine lady," I answered quickly. Too quickly. His 240 NORMAN MAILER suspicion of me was in order: My instinctive reflex was to William Harvey. C.G., I had already decided, was from the Mi and there is a prejudice buried as deep as a taproot in the Hi fold. Midwestemers can have their share of virtues, but the fin< are all accounted for by the time western Massachusetts reache York State. All the same, C.G. had approved of me. I was enough of to think it was one of the best things about her. Then I took a; look into Harvey's protruding bloodshot eyes. I was dealing w ordinary husband. Jealousy was as natural to him as bread and It was ill founded. For all her friendliness, C.G. sent out oh instruction: She was a married woman. Of course, I was not at try to tell him this. I had just noticed on top of each of the thre safes in this office three prominent thermite bombs. At his rigt was a panel with many buttons. Within his drawer must bt buttons. On the desktop were a red phone and a black-and- striped phone that looked not unlike a landing craft just come i Mars. I did not know which one of these buttons and instn could trigger the thermite bomb device, but it was evident -to i the room could be set ablaze in two-fifths of a second. "Yeah, kid," he said, "she likes you." He breathed a bit h his eyes fixed on me with the intentness that accompanies a ma wants to take a drink but is holding off. "She don't like man "Yessir." "Do not say 'yessir' around me unless you're feeling insi nate. 'Yessir' is what people say when they think you're full' but are still ready to put their tongue up your ass." "Okay," I managed to get out. "I called you in here for a talk. I need a couple of junior a couple of jobs for me. But I'd rather find such capability amateur, not two." I nodded. I had never wanted to say "Yessir" so much in i "C.G. seems to think you can do it, so I looked up your 20 training grades are respectable. For me there's only one beeper i file. You went from training to Technical Services but no sre than my pistol for his firepower. The driver had a shotgun tnount between the front seats, and the security man in the ger slot next to him held a Thompson submachine gun. I would ttore than once that a tommy gun was, for close range, Mr. 246 NORMAN MAILER Harvey's weapon of choice. "Part of my FBI heritage," he inform you. Now, as if he had already said too much in hearing others, Chief Harvey pressed a button to raise the glass divider 1 the front seat, then murmured in his low voice, "We have what be a security problem. I'm putting you to work on the prelimiq "Terrific," I said. ; "Just paper-chasing," he said. "Here's the summary. A B named Wolfgang, a student, a Bohemian, one of our petty-fiy nized some street riffraff a couple of years ago to throw a few at the Soviet Embassy in Bonn. It made the wire services. Sine we assume that Wolfgang's been doubled." "By the East Germans, or the KGB?" ; "Probably East Germans. Half the Krauts on our payroll a feeding the SSD. Take that for granted. It's all right. Halftheiri are working for us. It's no big deal either way. A thousand sn cost more, if you try to check out all their stories, than the infon is worth." "I see." I was thinking of the work I had been doing the L weeks. . "They're like insects," he said. "In quiet times, they fee< directions. It's not worth watching. But if a swarm of insects su start moving in unison, what do you deduct?" "A storm is coming?" "You have it, kid. Something big and military is on the ^ the Russians ever decide to take us out of West Berlin, we'll ki advance. That's what the small-fry are for—big clambakes reached forward, took a cocktail shaker out of an ice bucki poured himself a full martini. It was hard not to watch the way 1 it, for his wrist reacted to every bump in the road with more si than the car springs. The glass never lost a drop. "All right," he said, "we keep in loose touch with Wolfgai he checks in periodically with us. As I say, petty-fry. I do noi sleep at night thinking about Wolfgang. Not, that is, until we flap. VQ/CATHETER, as you've gathered, is our most sensiti of security. I won't even allow the men who work on it to chunk of strange." • "Chunk of strange?" "A piece of ass. Too risky, security-wise. If any of them g a one-night stand, they are on order to furnish a detailed re] Security in the morning. Well, there's one law of bureaucracy y LOT'S GHOST 247 int on: The more you protect yourself against an eventuality, the ye it will eventuate. One of our kids turns out to be a closet nosexual. He comes to us and admits to having sex with a German ow. Name of the chunk: Franz. What does Franz look like? ling, insignificant, slim, dark. That description narrows it down to iut four hundred East Berlin agents. West Berlin agents, and known ible agents. We can muster photographs of most of this group. it's a large number of photographs to make our sissy-boy go ough. We need him back at work. He's a specialist and we can't >rd to lose his time. Except now he confesses to a little more. 'Yes,' tells us, 'Franz did inquire about the work I do. Naturally, I uldn't tell him a thing, but Franz wanted to know if my job had thing to do with VQ/CATHETER! Then, Franz says it's okay to ; to him because he has clearance from the Americans. He, too, is rking with them!' " This was worth a serious sip of the martini. "You better believe," 1 Harvey, "that we put our specialist through a sweat. He must 'e looked at three hundred photographs before he narrowed it yn to Wolfgang. Wolfgang is Franz. So we pored through our log the Thirty-Day Back-Index, and our Thirty-OnetoSixty-Day :k-Index, and then the Sixty-OnetoOneHundred-andrenty, and there's not one report has come in to us lately from ilfgang. That can hardly be. Wolfgang used to be an active little ik. He liked being on retainer. Now, all we have are some chits ich we have not yet paid because he's sent them in from Hamburg. it Berlin. What develops, on examination, is the kind ofadministra- ; nightmare you're always fearing. Our files grew so quickly that used up the space allotted for them. So some intermediate-level lole at the Ukraine decided to fly the contents of the Thirty-, the ty-, and the Hundred-and-Twenty-Day Back-Index to Washing1, AH we had to do was rent one more building here, and we could te kept the stuff on hand, but the little lords of the budget do not w that. Building rentals are local. Budgetarily speaking, you can't nd two dimes on rental when there's only one in the cup. Air 'ght, however, is another matter. Air freight is tucked into the Air He budget, not ours. Air Force doesn't care what we spend. Billaires do not make a count of their dishwasher's pimples. In conse'nce, a lot of files were sent off at one stroke of a pen by some Dmpetent in the Ukraine who did not check with my office. All knew was that he had to find new file space for BOZO. He must 248 NORMAN MAILER have thought he was doing me a favor. Can you believe it? branches and bags of potentially crucial material were air-fr over to the Document Room back at Cockroach Alley in o obtain a little more room here." Another sip on the martini. "So we have to find Wolfgan faggot in CATHETER could have given more away to W than he now cares to remember. Only Wolfgang can't be foun dead, or underground? He does not contact his case offic responds to no signals. Maybe Wolfgang has slipped over to t with news about CATHETER? It's a long shot, but I send a < the Snake Pit. Maybe they can find something on Wolfgang. behold, I get back a snotty reply. Just what I needed. 'from conditions in the Document Room, et cetera . . .' Whoevci obviously did not realize the significance of a cable signed by of Station. I may be Chief of Base, not Station, but find I Station in the world that counts for as much as Berlin Base.: in the front line of the Cold War, except they don't seem to kill back in Foggy Bottom. They don't alert the newcomers to tt I am obliged to deal with bureaucratic backbiting in the shape < indescribable turd named KU/CLOAKROOM. Ergo, I get r gun a few motors. I decide to blow KU/CLOAKROOM off he is sitting on." "Wow," I said. "Nothing to what's on the menu next, kid. I ask West ( Desk in Washington to supply me with the identity of th CLOAKROOM and they come back with the news that ] Archive will be anti-forthcoming for seventy-two hours. Yol them. Seventy-two hours. It's due to a change in cryptonym. T. of a bitch CLOAKROOM knows he is in fucking trouble. 11( German Desk to get Bridge-Archive to kick over the Seven) hour Elapse and furnish Immediate Translation. Desk has to knc angry. They send back a cable: will concur. Only they can' can't concur. By procedure, they have had to move up tod Archive:Control, and someone there has put in a STOP.; believe it. I'm facing forces. Wolfgang is in hiding, his rec< buried in the Document Room, CATHETER is conceivably gered, and somebody who may just turn out to be a mole STOP on my search. I don't think there are twenty men( Company who have sufficient clout to put STOP on me. Ye< HARLOT'S GHOST 249 has. Eighteen of those twenty, at the least, have to hate my guts he best reason in the world. My family may not be quite up to levation of theirs (although it's good enough stock, thank you) God, kid, my brain works faster,"--and he emptied his martini and turned it upside down--"yes, STOP, when expanded prop- reads: STOP HARVEY." ^e exhaled heavily. He glared at me. "Well," he said, "you have low when the other side has won the first round. Whether it was ; to frustrate me, to protect Wolfgang, which is the extreme and isome possibility, or to safeguard CLOAKROOM, who may be ; kind of intermediary, I can see one thing: CLOAKROOM is my target. Other answers will be obtainable once I get my hands im." He sighed. "The trouble with being Chief of Base is that week you get caught up in the crisis of the week. Other matters Bie sidetracked. Besides, I know enough not to go up against ge-Archive:Control--Senior with half a deck. One needs to coli few high cards. For one thing, if forces are protecting CLOAK- 3M, they'll take him through two or three cryptonyms. In that of shell game, you have to be able to concentrate on your :dve. I don't have the time. You do. As of now, you are pro;d from gofer to junior troubleshooter." : hesitated to speak. My voice might not be faithful. I nodded. 'We'll use a two-pronged attack," he said. "First, you crank up Vest German Desk at the I-J-K-L. They're still on the titty. Total aucrats. They can't wait for spring to paper-bag their lunch nd the Reflecting Pool. Those people are soft as plop. They md to unrelenting pressure. Get them on the trail of CLOAK- DM's shift of saddlebags. It'll take time. They will want to drag feet. So, you keep shoving it up their ass. Give a poke every ile of days. I'll throw in a nigger-dick from time to time. Bridge- ave:Control may be able to lay a Seventy-two-hour Elapse on new cryptonym for good old CLOAKROOM, but sooner or they'll run out of holds." 'But as you said, won't they put it into Bridge-Ar;:Control--Senior?" I had a moment of panic, wondering if he Id think I was picking this up too quickly, but he was moving on. They will. Bridge-Archive: Control--Senior is inevitable. But ien, we ought to have some funny facts. We may lose at Senior-- i one committee I have minimal input with--but, all the same, 250 NORMAN MAILER we will have dropped a very bad smell in those marble hall; egg-shaped fart, in fact, will be floating around in the perfurn< teach those guys to fuck with me." "Sir, may I speak frankly?" "Save time. Just talk." "If I understand, you are saying you will never obtain the of CLOAKROOM. Whoever managed the changes is, you bel as I follow you--a member of Senior. He will also be on the w by then. Is it okay for you to have a determined enemy wh< can't even find out who it is?" "Hubbard, you miss the point. Senior is not composed of< They'll have a good idea at their end of who might be playin game for them. And whoever it is will lose a few inches of he his peers. That's my payback." "Won't you lose also?" "Kid, I invite anybody to trade punches with me. We'll see standing at the end." "I have to hand it to you, Mr. Harvey. You're not timid "Working under Hoover, you pinned a little fear on you every morning when you went in to work. I got tired of tha "What kind of man isJ. Edgar Hoover?" "A low, cowardly, ungrateful son of a bitch. Excuse ir speaking of a great American." He burped and filled his marri again. "All right," he proceeded, "I said we were going to two-pronged attack. From one side, pressure all the way up to; on the other, let's see how good your own network is." "Sir?" "I have a hunch that KU/CLOAKROOM is a recent train has to be. His cable was that stupid. You might even know want you to get in touch with a few members of your training at the Farm. Before long, you ought to be able to pick up a desc of who was assigned to the Snake Pit." I could feel perspiration starting behind my ears. "I can obtain a couple of names," I said, "but will I be* request their cryptonyms from Bridge-Archive? That looksJ odd request for a junior to put in." ' "Candidly, it's not even comfortable for me to ask for td cryps from Bridge-Archive. Not unless we score. And, of c< don't know that in advance. I certainly don't want to attract bei HARLOT'S GHOST 251 ion on a dud mission. But, kiddo, we won't go to Bridge- jive. We'll use the Bypass." "I'm not familiar with the Bypass," I said. ["You're not familiar with the name," he said, "but you're probamait of the process. None of you juniors ever admit to revealing ^ saddlebags to each other, yet half of you go around collecting in like autographs. Studies show: Half of the Americans in combat he Second World War couldn't fire at an enemy soldier. Too ch of the Ten Commandments in their nervous system. And half new people in this cockeyed Company can't keep their own et. Treachery comes with mother's milk." He reflected. "And ,er's bullshit." That was worth a sip. The martini glass did a [y-doodle over some bumps. "Just call in your favors," he said. *t those saddlebags from your friends." He nodded. "By the way, it was yours?" "You know that, Chief. It's VQ/STARTER." "I mean, what was it in TSS? Don't keep trying to tell me that you il't have one." "I'm sorry, sir. I can't reveal it." He nodded. "Wait'U we torture you," he said. 3 iLIN, SEEN THROUGH THE DARK WINDOWS OF chief harvey's lillac, provided at high noon a vision of late afternoon shadow. ;pale lots cleared of rubble, and the amputated backs of buildings iented themselves in hues of lavender-gray, the official tone for ed glass in bulletproof limousines. It might be a sinister view of the rid, but on this particular morning, I saw little enough of it. I was ng too much attention to each word Bill Harvey uttered. As Mr. Harvey finished laying out those procedures I was to use a venture that could only produce success by the final entrapment nyself, the voice to come out of my throat, if hoarse, did not betray further. I felt not unlike the way I would soon feel on being able ?et into bed with a woman for the first dme. It might be strange, sex was an activity I had been waiting to engage in for a long time. 252 NORMAN MAILER A part of me told myself: "I was born to do this. Being a doubl is natural for me." I was under no illusion that I was anything better. Hugh Ti Montague and William King Harvey might serve the same ft I was already a different person for each of those men; that \ essence of the condition. To be a double agent working fen Germans and East Germans might be more dangerous, but vt BND against SSD, or Montague versus Harvey, one's balances equal to one's 'wit. An unholy stimulation. Of course, my inner life had its ups and downs. Back at m outright rage at the unfaimess of things passed through me so in that I had to go to the men's room and pat cold water on my fa in the mirror above the sink no strain showed. Looking bach was the seamless Hubbard expression. My older cousin, Colton Hubbard, custodian of the family legends, once said, "With 1 ception of Kimble SmaUidge Hubbard, and possibly your there's nothing particularly special about the rest of us. We' about down there with I'homme moyen sensuel. Except for one j Herrick. We Hubbards never show a thing. It's a bossy adval tell you." For practical purposes, he was right. In the midst of perturbation, an alert young man looked back at me from the i life in my eyes, optimism on my mouth. I thought of other oc when I had felt calm within, rested, and full of life, but my ref appeared sullen, as if yesterday's fatigues were still on my skin. I assume that the agreeable face I now presented to the min protective coloration? One did well to look lively when exh That night, ready to step away from a few of these con< went out with Dix Butler. We made the rounds of his nigt Over the last couple of weeks, I had traveled with him at nigh enough to pick up a sense of how he worked. He had a cor every club we visited. Of course, he had not recruited them, not been in Berlin long enough, and his German was inadeqi such a purpose, but his job put him on the scene. He served as a between two of our case officers at BOZO and those of our C petty agents who could speak English. If Dix enjoyed full cov< one of our business subsidiaries, presenting himself to the nativ' American executive from an import brewery—"Just call me' salesman, Putzi,"—the staff at the clubs we visited had small: clouding their clear Berlin minds that Dix Butler, cover name HARLOT'S GHOST 253 (for Sam Huff, the New York Giants linebacker), was anything ione more species of CIA man. (The axiom that intelligence officers and agents must be kept apart, ilcated in me throughout training, did not, as Dix warned, seem tpply in this milieu. Not only was he highly visible, but anyone j talked to him would come under suspicion from Germans who e anti-American. Since his agents did not seem to mind, I was am most of his people had been doubled by the SSD. Dix, however, was without concern. "It oughtn't to work, but it s," he said. "I get more information from my boys than any other cer, CIA or BND, working these streets." "It's tainted." "You'd be surprised. A lot of agents are too lazy to lie. They end telling more than they're planning to. They know I can shake it n them if I have to." "Dix," I began. "Huff," he said, "is the name. Randy Huff." "Everything you get from them is, at the least, steered by the D." "Put away the book. My people are earning a living. They're et stuff. Of course the BND runs them. You don't think West man Intelligence would encourage us to get down and dirty with Kraut that didn't belong to them first? It's a comedy. Everybody lying for information, the British, the French, the West Germans, Soviets. We happen to be paying the most, so ourjob is the easiest. ec the subway and go over to East Berlin, to Cafe Warsaw. That's place where they all hang out--agents, informers, contact men, Buts, couriers, principals, even Russian and American case officers. dents go scurrying from table to table looking for the best price. st Berlin may be a spy market, but East Berlin is a bigger joke. trybody is doubled and tripled. You can't even remember if they're posed to be yours or theirs, and you know, buddy, it doesn't ter. They make up the stuff if they don't have it." >"Aren't you concerned that the SSD is polluting your input?" | "The SSD can't begin to pay what we do. Besides, I know who's (king for them, and I know what to feed them." He was bored |» this, just as bored as any lawyer giving legal information to his |*ds on Sunday. "Forget it, Charley Sloate,"--which happened to toy cover name at the Department of Defense desk--"just look at redhead over there!" 254 NORMAN MAILER We were in the Balhaus Resi at a corner of Grafenstrasse, am afraid it is exactly that legendary place where telephones every table. You can call a woman across the room by dialing he number. The process worked equally well in reverse, and our ] kept ringing. Women wished to speak to Dix. He was executn cut off any female who could not converse in English. For thos< the advanced course was waiting. "Angel," he would say, "wave your hand, so I'm certain Ii whom I'm speaking to." A blond lady across the room would now wag her finger ii^ smoke. "You're fabulous," he would tell her. "Don't thank me. I truth." All this while, he would be drumming his knuckles c table. "Helga. A nice name. And you say you are a divorcee.^ for you. Could you answer a question for me, Helga?" "Yes?" "Would you care to fuck?" "Don't you get slapped a lot?" I asked him once. "Yes," he said, "but I get laid a lot." If Helga hung up, he would shrug, "One dried-up wildc; "What if she'd said yes?" "I might have lubricated her screech." Women did not always say no. He made dates for later. S times he kept such dates. Sometimes his mood turned bitter at th idea of women. He'd get to his feet and we would move to ai club. At Remdi's, on Kantstrasse, the categorical imperative ^ obtain a ringside table and use the fishing poles furnished I management to lift pieces of loose clothing from the stript Homage to Immanuel Kant! We'd drop into the Bathtub on ] berger Strasse, a cellar pit for jazz, then on to the Kelch in . Strasse. There, a great many men dressed as women. I hate( hated it with all the Puritanism lurking in the family blood, but enjoyed it. Then we would move on. He was always in conven a hand on a girl's hip, a piece of paper going into his pocket! waiter, a whisper from the hatcheck girl, a quick notation in t which he ostentatiously tore off to send to the bartender. Seem displeased I was at his technique, he began to laugh. "Go back' manual on black propaganda," he said. "That bartender is world the East Krauts. Pure SSD. I want to embarrass him." So it went. One night out offered enough excitement to fi LOT'S GHOST 255 fcasies for a month. Yet I went along on his rounds several times a iek. I na(^ never had such a sense of ferment in myself. I did not pw it we were in a cellar or a zoo. Life was promising precisely ;ause life had become dark and full of evil. We were in West Berlin j surrounded by Communist armies on all sides—we might live for ay or a century, but vice twinkled like lights in an amusement park. ie night a middle-aged waiter said to me, "You think this is some- ng now?" I nodded. "It is nothing," he said. On impulse I asked, "Was more going on when the Nazis were re?" The waiter looked at me for quite a while. "Yes," he said. "It was [ter then." . I was left wondering how it was better. At far-off tables, people ght be depressed, but around us, a fever was rising. Dix's physical ;sence was never more overpowering than at 1:00 a.m. in a Berlin ib. His features, merry and cruel, his blond hair, his height, his ysical force, his clear-cut lust for plunder must have spoken to that ler, victorious time when the dream of godlike power imbued with ;an magic lived in many a Berliner's mind. Dix always looked as if had never been in a better place at a more appropriate time. One might have supposed that with the number of women who ne his way, I would have caught some of the overflow, but as I soon covered, I was not ready. I had never been in so many situations to int out how terrified I was of women. I had always thought it was ; best-kept secret of my life. I had even managed to hide it from fseV. Now I was obliged to recognize that I was afraid of young lies who looked no more than fourteen, and of women remarkably sserved at seventy, and we need not speak of the spectrum between. » know that some of these working girls, divorcees, single women, d wives on the loose wanted me aroused the same kind of panic I ;d to feel in my first years at the Buckley School when I did not ow how to fight, and so believed I might be seriously injured for 1 little. Now it seemed to me as if sex were the fiercest human nsaction of them all; one gave away large parts of oneself in order receive one knew not what, and the woman could walk off with ur jewels. Your spiritual jewels. I exaggerate my fear in the hope to plain it. When a woman sat next to me on those nights, I felt the ist abominable, if well-concealed, panic. Something in my soul snied about to be stolen. I might give away secrets God had en- isted to me. This was even more devout, I must admit, than the 256 NORMAN MAILER Episcopalianism imbibed at St. Matthew's on the true force of( courage, and responsibility. On the other hand, I still felt competitive toward Dix Bi don't know if it was the cold showers of prep school, or the ' in the family synapses, but it irked me not to be able to enter tl against him on the field of female conquest. I wanted to be a boast that I would yet be more of an artist at making love tha Randy Huff, but the Hubbard common sense was also in my wa reason I had until now been able to evade these terrors was due simple fact that in college I had spent my dme paying attention t who for one reason or another were never available. This ironi was now obliged to be cast as well on my love for Kittred trapdoor had been opened to my dungeon. I hardly wished to face to face with the depth of the problem now; it defaced the p I liked to keep of myself as a well-balanced young CIA office I had to put some face, however, on this obvious rejecdor the women who came my way. Any tale I might offer to the that I wished to stay faithful to a girl back home would open every harassment in Dix Butler's book, so I told him I had a we disease. Clap, I muttered. "You'll be all right in a week." "It's a strain resistant to penicillin." He shrugged. "Every time I caught a dose, I'd get evil," t me. "I used to love sticking it in a woman, drip and all." He fix with a look. There was, as always, an extraordinary light in t when he talked about how low he was. He never looked splendid than at such times. "You know, that was when I woi my damnedest to get into respectable women's pants. I loved tl1 I was passing on my infection. Do you think I'm crazy?" It was my turn to shrug. "I attribute it," he said, "to the fact that my mother left my and my brother and me when I was ten years old. My father w hell of a drunk. Used to beat the bejesus out of us. But whend older, we would count up how many of Dad's bitches wei around with behind his back. I hated those bitches for never pi me--when you think of all the women resident on this card one good mother. Old King Bill, over on his little hill in GB is the nearest I ever.came to having a decent mother. Only, d him I said that. He'll start to look at the overruns on my pc(| Don't want to get into that." I HARLOT'S GHOST 257 Dix mixed pleasure with official rounds and charged off his per- nal bar bills. When he offered to put in for my expenses as well, I fused. The rules he broke were not there for me to bend. From the ritude of the more sober officers I had worked with Downtown, it ok no wise man to see that unauthorized use of one's expense count would be a bad debit to get listed on one's 201. We were ' med up to cheat enemies, not our own folk. Dix acted, however, as if his status were privileged. He showed ore disregard for rules than anyone in CIA I had encountered so far. n the night I spent with my father in Washington, I had talked about ix, but Cal was not impressed. "One like him comes up every, onth from the Farm," he remarked. "A few get through. Most go )wn in flames." "He's exceptional," I told my father. "Then he'll end up running a small war somewhere," Cal replied. I was interrupted from thinking of this conversation when Dix marked, "What's on your mind tonight?" I was not about to confess was the assignment to unmask KU/CLOAKROOM. I merely oiled and looked around the Balhaus Resi. What a polyglot of iman resources! I had never seen so many people with odd faces. Of mrse, to be a Berliner was not unequal to having one's features set a slant—the collective physiognomy was reminiscent of the sharp Iges on a cabinetmaker's tools (not to speak of the entrepreneurial int you could find in the dullest eye). The band at one end of the mce floor had the mien of musicians who have played through the miing of the Reichstag, the death ofvon Hindenburg, the rise and 11 of Adolf Hitler, the Allied bombardments, the Occupation, the eriin Airlift, and they had never had to change expression. They 'ere musicians. In ten minutes the set would be over and they could noke or go to the bathroom—that was more meaningful than his- Ty. Now, having played their way through such American hits as Doggie in the Window," "Mister Sandman," and "Rock Around ic Clock," which last succeeded in chasing even the most libidinous i the bourgeoisie off the floor—I was thinking that only prosperous tnnans with stiff collars could bring to vice the dignity of a serious touit—the band moved on to an oompah waltz with a tuba. That, turn, swept all the wildly dressed young criminal element back to Mr tables, plus all the younger women with pink and purple wigs. The telephone rang at our table. An American girl across the (°ni wanted to talk to Dix. She had dialed his number on the 258 NORMAN MAILER assumption that he was German. "Hello, honey," he said. "Y it wrong. I'm an American, but that's all right. We can still f "I'm coming over. I want to learn what kind ofyo-yo ta. you." She was big and fair, with large features and a rangy body.: gross measure of animal husbandry—were the shades of Nazi n dictating my thoughts?—she would have made an appropriat for him. Her name was Susan, Susan Blaylock Pierce, and a gone to Wellesley and was working in the American Consul addition to the beer-import enterprise, Dix had cover from Sta when he chose to speak of working there, Susan Pierce nee( more than five minutes to poke through his qualifications. Randy Huff, or whatever your name is, I will tell you, somebo< at the Consulate must be sick and tired by now of looking ji empty desk." ' "I'm just a field hand, ma'am," he said. I could see she ' choice for tonight. She had a horsey laugh and argued doggedtj the merits of English saddle over Western. "Who wants to 1 some big slob slumped over a horse?" she said. "Some people need an animal for work, instead of to sh their ass, lady." "You," she said, "should have been a little ogre with w; He loved that. Marks of status rang in his mind like a cash r I heard the bell sound for Wellesley, and for Susan Blaylock He surprised me by his next gambit. "Would you care to long story about me?" he asked. "No." "Lady, cut some slack. This story is special." "All right, but not too long," she said. "At the age of fifteen," Dix declared, "I was in excellent I lied about my age to get into the Golden Gloves in Houst< I won my weight division. Sub-novice. I hardly drank. I ran sf: a day. I could do one-arm chin-ups, one-arm push-ups. Susafl me a feat, I could perform it. I could have run for president sophomore class in high school if I wasn't from the wrong"' everything you ever saw. But I was happy. I was going with i girl who had blue eyes and fifteen-year-old plump little turti-ri When Susan Pierce showed her annoyance, he said, "Don't fended. They were innocent, those tits. Weren't even all sur ey were there for. I loved that girl, Cora Lee, and she loved me. It is beautiful." He took a sip of his drink. "One night I broke training to take Cora Lee to our big dance U Laney's, to show her off. She had to be the prettiest girl there. ney's was always jammed with the best riffraff. Funky place. You iuld no sooner leave your girl alone than put a piece of meat on a ite and ask somebody else's dog not to look at it. But I didn't mind I had a fight, and I sure wanted a beer. I hadn't had a drink in a onth. Training. So I was thirsty. I placed Cora Lee on a bench and .d, 'Honey, don't let any man sit down next to you. If they want to we trouble, tell them to watch out for Randy Huff.' Then I left her d went to the bar and bought two cans of beer. Since I had my own lurch key, I told the bartender not to open them. I brought those us back ice-cold. Hard as rocks. I was saving them until I could sit ;xt to her, and feel her sweet little thigh nuzzling mine when the first > of beer went down. "What did I see instead? A fellow with his arm around her. Cora ie was looking at me in pure panic. "He was huge. I was big, but this old boy was huge. He had a face >u could put up against the bumper of a flat-bed truck and the face me could push the truck uphill." Susan began to chuckle. "I was >t demoralized, you understand. I was boss of my own equipment, ank you. So I said, 'Fellow, I don't know if you are aware of this not, but that happens to be your arm on my girl.' " 'Well,' he said, 'what are you planning to do about it?' "I smiled. I gave a dumb country-boy grin like I had nothing to >but get lost. Then I hit him in the face with the bottom end of the II beer can, him sitting down, me standing up. I hit him with the jht arm that did those one-arm push-ups. The end of the beer can dented a circle from the top of his nostrils to the middle of his rehead. It broke his nose and laid vertical cuts over both eyebrows. P looked like a cross between a bat and a hog." ? We were silent before this memory recollected in tranquility. > "How do you think the fellow responded?" Butler asked. I "How?" asked Susan. fc "He sat there. He didn't blink particularly, and he didn't move. fcjust smiled. Then he said, 'You want to play? Let's play.' What do |" think I said?" I don't know," she said. "Tell me." 260 NORMAN MAILER "I said, 'Fellow, you can have her. You can have her.' I ; running." Full pause. "I started running and I haven't stopped s Susan Pierce laughed as if something very far within ha caught on fire. "Oh, golly," she said, "oh, golly." Then she kis; cheek. "You're cute. You're such a fool, but, do you know,' cute." Proprietary lust for him appeared in her face. After a few minutes, it was obvious there was nothing me me to do than say good-night. On my way to bed I could fi explanation why his story had appealed so greatly to her. It imp me, however, that he had told the same story once to a group at the Farm, and it had had a totally different ending. He had run away. He had stayed in and taken the beating of his life again huge old boy, but afterward he had made love to Cora Lee foi July and August. I was depressed. I had had dates with girls like Susan Pie through college and we would drink beers together. Nothing more. Now he was going to seduce her in one night. Was it I I did not believe girls like Susan would make love that quickh in America. On such thoughts, I fell asleep. 4 at 4:00 A.M. A GALLON OF german BEER TOOK THE RIDE C Valkyries through my urinary tract. Awake, after two hours ofu sciousness, I felt marooned in a neon desert of the night—sober wholly electrified. The reality of my situation came down ( again, and the hours I had spent slogging away at beer with Butler lay on my heart like a mustard plaster. William Harvey \ the trail of KU/CLOAKROOM. I did my best to calm this panic. Before I left for Berlin,; Montague had succeeded in taking my cryptonym through il second, and third transmogrifications. In the course of sending! length of the Reflecting Pool over to Intensive German, he h managed to expunge any paper trace of Herrick Hubbard's pi in the Snake Pit. My 201 now put me in Technical Services S the same period, and Technical Services was mined, layeri veneered with security. My immediate past had been effective! dered. ' HARLOT'S GHOST 261 All this Harlot bestowed on me as a farewell present. Now, none it seemed that substantial. I was suffering from the worst form of anoia a man in my profession can undergo--I was suspicious of my >tector. Why had Montague chosen such a convoluted path? What Heaven was I escaping from? My inability to satisfy an impossible £ in the Document Room could certainly have resulted in a diseeable letter being put into my 201 from Chief of Base, Berlin, and t would have done my future advancement no good. How could :h harm compare, however, to the damage of discovery now? riot could weather a flap--it would all go into the portfolio of his nmodious achievements--but I, if not asked to resign, would tainly have to live under a professional shroud. I dressed and took the U-Bahn to the Department of Defense. I i clearance there to the key for a secure phone. Staring out upon last of the night, the Department of Defense all deserted around at that hour, I made a call to the secure phone that Harlot was horized to keep at the canal house in Georgetown. It was midnight Washington. Looking down the long hall of this empty office, I ird the sound of his voice, scrambled electronically, then recon- uted--which gave it the hollow timbre of words heard through a ig speaking tube. Quickly I explained my new assignment. His reassurance was n. "You, dear boy, hold the strings, not King William. It's droll to put on the trail of oneself. I wish that had happened to me when fas your age. You'll use it in your memoirs, supposing we ever get emissive about memoirs, that is." "Hugh, not to disagree, but Harvey is already starting to ask what id for four weeks at Technical Services." : "The answer is that you did nothing. You have a sad story. Stick to You were never assigned. You never met anyone but the secretary 10 guards the first waiting room. Poor boy, you were on the edge of itrseat waiting to be assigned. It happens all the time. Some of our best Biees expire injust that manner over at TSS. Say.. ."Hepaused. "Say |t you spent your hours ducking out to the reading room at the |rary of Congress." "What did I do there?" Anything. Anything at all. Specify something. Say you were ling Lautreamont in preparation for taking a good whack at Joyce. ^ey will pursue it no further. He is not interested in reminding iclfhow devoid he is of culture. He may bully you a bit, but in 262 NORMAN MAILER. his heart he will know that people like Harry Hubbard do jus left-handed things as delve into Lautreamont while waiting for; ment at TSS." "Dix Butler happens to know I was in the Snake Pit." ; "Whoever this Dix Butler is, give him some definite impi that the Snake Pit was your cover. Don't say it. Let him conn the idea himself. But I promise, you are worrying needlessly, t is much too busy to pursue your activities down into the i Merely furnish him a bit of progress each week on the seal CLOAKROOM." He coughed. It made a barking sound over the hollow cei the secure phone. "Harry," he said, "there are two choices Company. Worry yourself to death, or choose to enjoy a little'' tainty." He seemed about to hang up. I must have laid one harsh note, however, on the empyreal calm, for next he said, "You remember our conversation cone VQ/CATHETER?" "Yessir." "That project is the most important thing in the world to H If he starts pressing you on CLOAKROOM, nudge him b CATHETER." "I'm supposed to know nothing about CATHETER but t a cryptonym." "Bill Harvey is broad-gauge paranoid. Such people think a. tionally. Speak of the Holland Tunnel, or of Dr. William Harvf must certainly know that the noble namesake charted the circi of the blood back in 1620, but if by any chance our Base C ignorant of the greater Harvey--never expect too much from! man and you will never be disappointed--why, get him to tl: blood vessels. Arteries. Before long his thought will slide back tunnel. You see, Harry, Bill Harvey believes that one day he' running the Company, and VQ/CATHETER is his ticket t Desk. He won't get there, of course. He will certainly self-dt His paranoia is too high octane. So just divert him." '" "Well, thank you, Hugh." "Don't feel sorry for yourself. If you're obliged to take' chances before you're ready, all the better. You'll be twice as g< your next job." I got through the day. I sent a cable to West Berlin D Washington, notifying them that Chief of Base wished to re; HARLOT'S GHOST 263 cryptonym of KU/CLOAKROOM through Bridge-Argve:Control. I even wondered for the first time if Control was a irson, an office, or a machine. Then I called Dix Butler and arranged , go out with him that night. So soon as we met, he told me in issing about Susan Pierce. "It was a wall-banger," he said. "I figured e would go for my tale." "Is that why you told it?" > "Of course." "Was that the real story? You told another version at the Farm." "Don't stare at me in judgment. I steer an anecdote to suit the cne." "Why? Does it work? Is there a psychology of women?" ; "Your dick is sixteen years old." He hooked my forearm with his st two fingers. "Hubbard, admit it. You don't have a dose." i "I might." 5 "What if I conduct you to the men's room for an examination?" "I won't go." He began to laugh. When he stopped, he said: "I wanted a piece r Susan Pierce. But I had to recognize that my initial approach was den with error. I was presenting myself as too sure of myself. You )n't make it with that kind of girl unless she can feel some superiority iyou. So I tried to make her feel sorry for this dude." "How did you know she wouldn't be disgusted?" "Because she's arrogant. Shame is one emotion that girl never ants to feel. She has compassion for that. Like, if you fear blindness, >u usually develop some feeling for blind people." I had a closer question I wanted to ask: "How was she in bed?" he inhibiting hand of St. Matthew's, however, was at my throat. The Bt of continuing to see oneself as appropriately decent is that such iquiries are not permissible. I waited, all the same, for his account. in some nights, after listening to a slew of sexual particulars, all Ithcoming from him to me, I would return to the apartment while t went off on one or another meeting. It was then I could not sleep. ly loins were stuffed with his tales. ? On this night, Dix did not say any more about Susan. Was it kause he felt close to her or because it had been unsatisfactory? I was |covering how much of an intelligence man I was becoming-- [iosity leaned on my gut like undigested food. All the same, Dix stayed away from revelations. He was in a state xceptional tension tonight and repeated more than once, "I need 264 NORMAN MAILER action, Herrick." He rarely called me by my full first name, and he did, the ironies were not attractive. I could hardly explain l that an old family name was reinvigorated when given to you a; name and could even prove fortifying when you filled out a sigi So I said nothing. While I would never have to suffer being g by the upper lip like Rosen, there might be some other prici night, he was drinking bourbon neat rather than beer. "I'm going to fill you in, Hubbard, about me," he said, "bu you pass this on or you'll be sorry. Fucking sorry." "Don't tell me," I said, "if you don't trust me." He was sheepish. "You're right." He stuck out his hand to Again, I felt as if I sat next to an animal whose code ofbehaviot in no good balance on his instincts. "Yes," he said, "I paid for n away from that dude with the beer can. I paid, and I paid. 11 wake up at night sweating. I stank. No bearing is ever as bad depths you plumb in a nadir of shame." He used the word like acquisition. "I have learned the resonance of verbal surprise,' expected him to add. "I felt so bad inside," he said instead, "that I started to st; to my father. And he was one man I had always been afraid < I nodded. "He wasn't a big man. He was blind in one eye from an ol( and he had a bad leg. But nobody could take him. He wouldn't it. He was a bad old dog. He'd use a baseball bat or a shovel. Wl it took. One night he got abusive to me and I laid him out punch. Then, I tied him to a chair, stole his handgun and a cai ammo, put all I owned in one cardboard suitcase, and was c door. I knew just as soon as he worked himself loose, he woulc at me with a shotgun. I even took his car. I knew he wouldn't that. Just wait for me to come back. "Well, dig it, Herrick, I entered on a life of crime. Fifteel half years old, and I learned more in the next year than most2 acquire in a life. The war was on. The soldiers were far frorm So I became the stuff women looked to. I could have pai| nineteen, and that helped. I would hit some new good-sized t) the morning, and drive around until I could pick the store to hit I would choose the bar that was right for me. I'd hang in with jd good soaks drinking their lunch until I'd found the right woman, depending on my state of mind. Did I want to learn wise and greedy older person, or was I hankering to instruct 5sv in the' art °f ^ust? Depended on the day. Sometimes you just »k what you could get, but I did leave a countless number of isfied women behind me in Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois. I was ;an and sweet, and that is a difficult combination to improve upon. "I couldn't have enjoyed life more. I'd pick up a girl or a woman, j then I would park the car on a side street, ask the lady to wait lile I visited a friend for some money, and I would walk around the rner, get into the first car whose door was unlocked, jump the lition, drive over to the store I'd selected, slip a stocking on my face t as I walked in the door, and would hold up the proprietor and ipty the cash register. The best time to do it was two o'clock. No ichtime customers then, and the cash register full of the noontime es ready to go to the bank. In one minute, I'd be back in my stolen -, face mask off, and two minutes later, I was depositing the stolen back around sdll another corner from my own car, at which point . return to my daddy's heap, get in, and tell the new friend, 'We're ed for money now, honey.' Sometimes we'd even hear the sirens ing around the business district as we left town. 'What's that?' she mid ask. 'Beats me, Mrs. Bones,' I would tell her. I'd choose a irist cabin camp before I was ten miles away, and I'd hole up with ; female for twenty-four hours, or whatever interval she could mage. Six hours or forty-eight. We'd eat, drink, and fornicate. lose robberies were equal to injections of semen. You're raking in ; goodness from people when you stalk right over to their holding d take it from them. "I never tried to save any of that money. Once I got so lucky I liked out with eight hundred dollars from a single cash register, and are wasn't any way to spend such a sum on a girl and drink, so I ught a good used Chevy, and sent my father a telegram. 'Your car larked on 280 North Thirtieth Street in Russelville, Arkansas. Keys der the seat. Don't look for me. I'm gone to Mexico.' I giggled like coney-bird writing that telegram. I could see my old man on his up leg searching for me in Matamoros and Vera Cruz, every low r. One of his teeth was like a broken fang." There were more stories. Robbery followed robbery, and each 1 was described for my benefit. "I don't want to get your clap Ting around too much, Hubbard, in your poor detumescent young te, but this lady's pussy ..." He was off. I knew everything about ttale anatomy except how to picture it truly. A grotto of whorls and plets glistened darkly in my imagination. 266 NORMAN MAILER Then his life altered. He lay over in St. Louis for a few r and lived with a couple of newfound buddies. They wouh parties, and exchange girlfriends. I could not believe their indiff to questions of possession. "Hell, yes," he would say. "We i take turns putting our dicks through a hole in a sheet. The girls then give samples of oral technique. You'd have to guess will was on the chomp. Not easy. Leave it to chicks. They could mi styles. Just to confuse us." "You didn't mind that your girl was doing such things to a guy?" I admit to asking. "Those chicks? Incidental. Me and my buddies did jobs to; We shared a half-dozen houses we thoroughly looted. I c you--there's nothing like home-burglary. Better than robbing; It ticks off crazy things. Cleans out any settled habits you believe you have. For example, one of these dudes always used a shit right on the middle of the carpet in the master bedroon you, Herrick, I understood it. If you'd ever entered a mediun house in the middle of the night, you'd know. It feels large. Y aware of every thought that's ever passed through those wall might just as well be a member of the family. Me and my two b had a bond that was closer than any girlfriend." Now he fixed n by staring into them, and I was obliged to nod. "None of this i passed on--you hear me?" I nodded again. "People ask abou he said, "tell them I served in the Marines for three years. It's tn fact. I did." "Why?" "Why?" He looked at me as if I were impertinent. "Becal: have to know when to make your move. Hubbard, in years to keep an eye on my path. I talk a lot, but I get it done. Som people who brag the most are the ones who accomplish the They have to--they'll look like fools if they don't. Since the pany is a clam-bar, I expect to have enemies up to here," r raising his hand well above his head, "but I will prevail. Comp; why? Because I commit myself wholly to an endeavor. Yet know when to move. These are contradictory but essential* The Lord grants them to few. We were being pulled in," he ^ without transition, "every week by the police. They had nod| us, but they kept putting us into lineups as cannon fodder. 1 picnic to be in a lineup. The people who are trying to recov< memory as to who robbed them on their own street corner all HARLOT'S GHOST 267 terical. They could select you by mistake. That was one factor. The er was my sixth sense. The war had just ended. Time to move. So ^t drunk one night and enlisted in the morning. Lo, I was a Marine. ree years. I'll tell you about that sometime. The rest is history. I got : went to the University of Texas on the GI Bill, played linebacker 011949 to 1952, and thereby--help of certain alumni--was able to id being called up as a reserve for Korea, to which I could have ie and come back in a coffin or as a hero--I know such things--but id my eye on professional football. I finished college and tried out the Washington Redskins, but I smashed my knee. Whereupon I owed Bill Harvey's advice and signed up with my peers--you and rest of the intellectual elite." "Is that when you first knew Bill Harvey?" "More or less. He liked my style of play on special teams. I got tter from him when I was still with the Redskins. We had lunch. u could say he recruited me." Butler yawned suddenly in my face. ubbard, my attention is wandering. My tongue is turning dry." He ed around the room, his restlessness licking at my calm. Then he aaled, and we left for another bar. If the evening proved in the end be without incident, I attribute it to the wisdom of the Germans. ey knew when to leave him alone. I found it a very long night. I lid not get away from the knowledge that the search for KU/ ,OAKROOM was going to be with me through every drinking at and hangover for quite some time. iBLES WERE SENT BACK AND FORTH. I WAS ABLE TO INFORM mr. rvey that KU/CLOAKROOM had been changed to KU/ROPES. »w we had to decide whether to wait seventy-two hours to pick up ' next shift of cryptonym, or put a push on Bridge-Ar|Ve: Control. Harvey told me to wait. Three days later, I was able bform him that we were in South Korea, courtesy ofDN/FRAG- ;NT. ' That is going to hold us up for two weeks," he said. "I can," I offered, "hit Bridge-Archive hard." Already, I was ttining to count on a contrary reaction to every move I proposed. No," he said. "I want to mull this one around. Just initiate a 2:^ 8 2 K2^?r| "^O.S-SSg^g! ^rrsi^^; g 3- S - g^ - &- " p ; ^5a>goo^e--<' oSSEL^S^g^; llMtl' ^11 sir^.^j^ s'l^^l^ § § ^ Er2c|^ S. .3rtS;&!^&n(^ ^^^ S 5^ g.o si ^L&-p-^&.&-s a g g 5'S ^i-g,?--"! 1:1 S-^ ^l^^s : g;:l"a>t§&g^^ "R-^ ^|S.^S S ^"g.U^ o §o^ gfr § ^ S ^ ^ ^n 0-^ ^ ^^g.s 3 g - s &--^ ^ ^ 3 e. ?? 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'8 < S-g ?"»; e , ::s.& Sla^-S.8 ^ g-^i-g || ^ Hl^ii-'^St^HtHftirHSili : ^^§-R-^ s ^1^18-3 9 3-^ ^5^ 5-^| ?^ J-r' ?|3 ' 5' 9 S g 1 ^ § ,;1 a g S-| §. 3- q:^- ^. R- S S-^ § S " 1- 3 5- a 2'2 g ^ ^ ^^. 3 ? § ^ ^ ^ o " y l-a-S-^^S'S-^SS.S^a ° 53TOoQOEi.^"cK-§&-°§g^gl^?q.-aoas3§y33^ ^ ^3y^£.CS.?r&-^MS ^^fe^'^o^^^g^sgi.SS-^ „ ^S^sJ^^S.Sg^g^^Qg^Ql^^^^n ^ /2?^(r:'C&-CSy^5.QW_>^3g?<;E 55cLn>g.oS.g:'iuMarfQ-!x!y2S-a^^M y fl„(B^S^^&M^g;n>rt»,rtSgg-r^5>o^"l&-ig^!3-oF g )?1^°" s- g r?T?-§ s-^s-^^ ^s^ l a s" ^s^1^ 5^^r^ j^fl^^j^irii§i"i I II|S fj I? 1^1 .^Ij.il^l^ll -^ ,,^ ^^t7a^?£..5.^^^^,g^sg.^^^r 270 NORMAN MAI LER remark was limited to Mr. Dulles, my father. Harlot, and Di Harvey did not ask for substantiation, but contented himse replying: "It's biologically adaptative." "Explain that, would you. Chief?" I was managing at last use "sir." "Well, the work assigned to the kids in this particular c unnatural. A young stud likes to know what's going on. But the be told. It takes twenty years to shape a trustworthy intel operative. Twenty years in America, anyway, -where we all that everybody from Christ--our first American--on down newspaperboy is trustworthy. In Russia or Germany it takes minutes to get a new operator ready to trust nothing. That's v go into every skirmish with the KGB under a handicap. Tha we even have to classify the toilet paper in the crap house. W keep reminding ourselves to enclave the poop. Still, you can't many limitations on the inquiring mind. Hence, we tell tales. the way to pass a big picture down in acceptable form." "Even if the stories are indiscreet?" "You've put your finger on it. We all have a tendency to t much. I had a relative who was an alcoholic. Gave it up. touched the stuff. Except once or twice a year, he'd break do off on a toot. It was biologically adaptative. Something worse probably have happened to him if he didn't break out and < guess I believe that in the Company it's good once in a while if gets told over a drink." "Do you mean that?" "Now that I've said it, no! But we are living in two s Intelligence and biology. Intelligence would permit us to tell i unauthorized. Biology suffers the pressure." I--Ie nodded at 1 words. "Of course, there are discemable variations in our to Angleton is a super-clam. So is Helms. Director Dulles may tali too much. Hugh Montague, way too much.'* "How would you classify yourself, sir?" I "Clam. Three hundred and fifty days a -year. Magpie I weeks in summer." He winked. I I wonder if this was not a prelude to informing me abtij CATHETER. I think he was beginning to find. it difficult to| to me every working day yet not be able to brag about his I one achievement; besides, I -was developing a need to kiW presence certainly got in the -way of CATHETER-related c<| HARLOT'SGHOST271 tions on the car radio. So there came a day when I was given clearance, and a new cryptonym, VQ/BOZO III-a, to classify me as an assistant in the high-clearance shop of BOZO himself. It took another week to get to the tunnel. As I had surmised, Harvey made his visits at night, and often with visiting military celebrities, four-star generals, admirals, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Harvey did not bother to restrain his pride. I had not seen such pleasure in an achievement since my father introduced me in 1939, at the age of six, to William Woodward, Sr., whose stable had won the Kentucky Derby with Omaha in 1935. Four years later, Mr. Wood- ward was still glowing at the mention ofOmaha's name. In turn, Harvey was not about to downgrade the beauty of his operation. I heard him describe it for the first time on an evening which commenced with me riding shotgun in the front seat of BLACKIE. We had a three-star general in the rear (who was, so far as I could make out, on a tour of NATO facilities for the Joint Chiefs) and Mr. Harvey took pleasure in interrupting our drive on a side street ofSteglitz. We pulled into a parking shed, changed the Cadillac for a bulletproof Mercedes, and took off again with Harvey now behind the wheel, his driver riding shotgun, myself in the rear with the General. "Finger the turns," said Harvey, and his driver thereupon took up the duty of giving directions; we drove quickly through the outskirts of Berlin with much doubling back on side streets to make certain there was no tail. Twelve kilometers soon became twenty, and we passed through Britz and Johannisthal twice before coming to Rudow and its open fields. All the while. Bill Harvey kept telling the General about problems faced in the building of the tunnel, sending this monologue over his shoulder. I was hoping the General's hearing was good. Familiar with Harvey's voice, I could barely pick up his words. Since the General managed, however, to share a rear seat without giving any acknowledgment that I was present, 1 soon began to enjoy his difficulties with this muffled orientation. The General reacted by helping himself to the martini pitcher. "This was the only tunnel to my knowledge that had a sister tunnel built at the White Sands Missile Proving Ground in New Mexico to a length of four hundred and fifty feet, as opposed to our fifteen hundred feet, and for one reason," said Harvey nonstop. "The ?soil bears comparison to the white-pack sand soil we were facing in »AltgUenicke. The softness was the problem, said our soil engineers. 272 NORMAN MAILER What if you dig the tunnel, putting in one steel ring after ano support it all the way, but the disturbance to the earth produce small depression on the surface? That could appear as a rogue- a photograph. We can't have an unaccountable phenomenon sr up in the Soviet's aerial surveys. Not when we're tunneling in Berlin." "There was a lot of concern about that at the Joint Chiefi the General. "You bet," said Harvey, "but, what the hell, we took a c didn't we. General Packer?" "Technically speaking, it's an act of war," said the Genei penetrate another nation's territory whether by air, sea, land, 01 case, from below." "Isn't that a fact?" said Harvey. "I had a selling job 1- Christmas. Mr. Dulles said to me, 'Can we refer to this b.ehen little as possible in writing?' " Harvey kept talking and driving ing his tires through many a tight turn with as much aplon symphony man clashing his cymbals in a well-timed accord. "Yessir," said Harvey, "this tunnel demanded special sol We had close to insuperable problems of security. It's one tl build the Taj Mahal. But how do you slap it together in such that your next-door neighbors have no clue? This sector of the is heavily patrolled by the Commies." "What was it that somebody did with the Taj Mahal?" asl General in a half-voice as if he could not decide whether it prove more embarrassing to be heard or unheard. Having set dc glass, he then, on reflection, picked it up again. "Our problem," said Harvey, "was getting rid of the imn construction product—tons of soil. To dig the tunnel we excavate approximately fifty thousand cubic feet of dirt. That' than three thousand tons, equal to several hundred average true But where do you dispose of that much earth? Everybody in has 360-degree vision. Every Kraut can count. Heinie is' lott| supplement his income through the power of his observationa| say you spread your dump all over West Berlin and thereby reor, we exchanged our shoes for boots with heavily cushioned soles id put all our loose change away. A finger to his lips, as if he would aw all errant echoes into himself, Harvey led us along the duckwalk. lie hypnotic, magnetic--I now called it the honorable--vertigo con- lued. Lit by an overhead bulb every ten or twelve feet, the tunnel retched out before us to the vanishing point. I felt as if I were in a torn of mirrors whose repeating view took us to infinity. Six and a if feet high, six and a half feet wide, a perfect cylinder, nearly fifteen adred feet long, the tunnel took us down a narrow aisle between f walls of sandbags on either side. Amplifiers, set at intervals on the dbags, were wired into lead-sheathed cables that ran the length of tunnel. Harvey whispered, "Carries the sap from the tap to the ket." Where's the tap?" whispered the General back. 276 NORMAN MAILER "Coming attractions," Harvey replied as softly. We continued to walk with one carefully weighted step ; another. "Do not stumble," we had been warned. Along the re we passed but three maintenance men, each isolated on his i watch. We had entered the domain of CATHETER. It was a chu I told myself, and immediately submitted to a chill on the back of neck. CATHETER had its indwelling silence; one might as well 1 been proceeding down the long entrance to a god's ear. "A churcl snakes," I said to myself. Our path proceeded not much more than a quarter of a milej I felt as if we had been walking along the tunnel floor for the best of a half hour before we came to a steel door in a concrete frairi maintenance man accompanying us brought forth a key, tum< lock, and pressed four numbers on another lock. The door openei silent hinges. We were at the terminus of the tunnel. Above usi a vertical shaft rising some fifteen feet into the dark. I "See that overhead plate?" whispered Harvey. "Right abo' where we made our connection to the cables themselves. Tha one delicate deal. Our sources told us that the KGB sound engi at Karlhorst sealed nitrogen into their cables to guard against mo and had attached instruments to monitor any drop in nitrogen sure. So, just about a year ago, right up above us, you would been able to witness a procedure comparable in delicacy and te to a world-famous surgeon going in for an operation never I attempted." Standing next to him, I tried to conceive of the ima late anxiety experienced by the technicians when the tap wen the wire. "At that instant," said Harvey, "if the Krauts had checking the line, it would have shown up on their meters. Ji a nerve-jump. So, ultimately, it was a crapshoot. But we bro off. Right now. General, we are connected into 172 such Each circuit carries eighteen channels. That's more than twe hundred military and police phone calls and telegraphic me; we are able to record at once. You can call that coverage. "You fellows," said General Packer, "are getting good this back home." "Well, I'm glad to hear the level of appreciation is risil "The Joint Chiefs won't be handed anything but good s me." "I remember," said Harvey, "when the Pentagon use 'CIA buys spies to tell them lies.' " HARLOT'S GHOST 277 "No, sir, not anymore," said General Packer. On the ride back, Harvey sat in the rear with him, and they shared pitcher ofmartinis. After a while, the General asked, "How do you idle the take?" "The bulk of transmissions are flown back to Washington." "That much I know already. They took me on a tour of the >siery Mill." "They took you there?" "Room T-32." "No right to open it up to you," Harvey said. "Well, they did. They gave me clearance." "General Packer, no offense intended, but I remember a time ien high clearance was given to Donald Maclean of the British reign Office. Why, in 1947 he was issued a non-escort pass to the omic Energy Commission. J. Edgar Hoover didn't even rate such .ass in 1947. Need I remind you that Maclean was part of the Philby ig and has been reliably reported to be making his home in Moscow ;se days. No offense intended." "I can't help it if you don't like it, but the Joint Chiefs did want know a few things." "Such as?" "Such as how much of the take is kept here for immediate )cessing and how much goes back to Washington. Are you in a sition to give us twenty-four hours' notice if the Soviet army is idy to blitz Berlin?" I heard the soundproof window partition going up behind my is in the Mercedes. Now I could not hear a word. I leaned toward ; driver to light a cigarette, and managed a look at the rear seat. ley both appeared considerably more choleric. When we stopped at the parking shed to switch cars again, I heard B Harvey say, "I won't tell you that. The Joint Chiefs can kiss every (are inch of my ass." Now, reinstalled in BLACKIE-1, two new martinis poured from Cadillac decanter, Harvey kept his partition raised. I was able to no more until the General was dropped off at his hotel, the y. Harvey immediately lowered the glass to speak to me. ere's a general for you. General Asshole. Stays at the Suhvoyyy." said it as if he were trundling an English accent over a notable P- "I once was taught that generals were supposed to stay with 278 NORMAN MAILER their troops." He belched. "Kid, you seem to be the troops. I you like little old CATHETER?" "I know how Marco Polo felt discovering Cathay." "They sure teach you juniors what to say in those New 1 schools." "Yessir." " 'Yessir'? I guess you're telling me I'm full of shit." He again. "Look, kid, I don't know about you, but time-servers ] General scratch my woodwork. I didn't happen to be in i during World War II. I was too busy chasing Nazis and Corn for the FBI. So the military dogs irritate me. Why don't we ' floor with some serious booze and recuperate?" "I never turn down a drink. Chief." 6 once WE WERE BACK IN GIBLETS, AND INSTALLED IN HIS room, Mr. Harvey's fatigue offered its manifest. He would & as we were talking, the glass undulating in his hand like a ti summer breeze. Then he would awaken with a well-timed s\ his wrist to compensate for the near spill of his liquor. "I'm sorry my wife couldn't stay up tonight," he said, as 1 out of a ten-second snooze. She had greeted us at the door, made our drinks, and tiptt but I could feel her moving about upstairs, as if, after my de she would come down to steer him to bed. "C.G.'s a wonderful woman. Top of category," he said. The injunction not to say "Yessir" cut off the easiest resf many of his remarks. "I'm sure," I said at last. "Be double sure. Want to know the kind of individual:! I'll give you an idea. A woman living in the Soviet sectorict on the doorstep of a Company officer down the street. Righ| his home! I won't tell you the fellow's name because he wen^ a lot of flak. Why did this East German woman pick a CIA ml did she know? Well, you can't clear yourself on a crazy drop? so let's forget his side of it. What's essential is that the won note. 'I want my child to grow up free.' Enough to turn y<> strings, right?" HARLOT'S GHOST 279 "Right." "Wrong. You don't take anything for granted. Not in our work. jt my wife says, 'This baby could have been dropped on us from eaven. I won't let her go to an orphanage. Bill, we have to adopt ;r.' " He shook his head. "Just the night before, I was sitting with .G. looking at an East German TV newsreel to see if I could pick 5 a couple of clues about their order of battle from the outfits who ere in their military parade—never feel superior to your source, no atter how mundane—and one of their bands went by. An entire atoon of glockenspiels. I looked at the ribbons they put on those ockenspiels—real Heinie froufrou—and I said to C.G., 'Why don't ey hang prison-camp skulls on these instruments, ha, ha,' and next iy, she picks me up on it. If I hate the Sovs all that much, she informs er then it's my duty to adopt the baby." He burped, gently, sadly, ndly. "Make a long story short," he said, "I have an adopted baby lughter. Phenomenal, right?" "Right," I said. I did not wish to echo him in order to be mtradicted again, but he just grinned and said, "Right. My daughter lovely. When I get to see her." He stopped. He looked at his glass. Fatigue is your mother in this kind of work. You'd think it was a aste of time with the General, but it wasn't. You know why I was lling CATHETER so hard?" "No, Mr. Harvey." "The Director asked me to. I received a call from Alien Dullesjust its afternoon. 'Bill, fellow,' he said to me, 'give their three-star eneral Packer the tour. We need to fluff a few feathers.' So I idicated myself this evening to selling CATHETER to General sshole. Do you know why?" "Not yet, exactly." 1 "Because even the Joint Chiefs' flunkies live high on the military og. They have battleships to visit and nuclear warning systems. It's trd to impress them. They're used to touring underground facilities luge as a naval station. Whereas, we have just a dirty little tunnel. M we're picking up more intelligence than any operation in history. ty nation, any war, any espionage endeavor ever. Got to remind Cm of that.' Got to keep them in their place." "I could hear some of the things you said in the car. You were tainly keeping him at bay." "It wasn't hard. The fact of the matter is that he didn't really want a ' Know what we're picking up. Right here in Berlin we don't 280 NORMAN MAILER spot-check more than one-tenth of one percent of our total t; that's enough. You can re-create the dinosaur from a few bon< tibia. What we know, and the Pentagon hates to hear this, is state of the railroad tracks over on the Sov side of the line throi Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland is execrable. Only word foi their rolling stock is worse. The Russians just don't have thi choo trains to invade West Germany. There's not a blitzkrieg for years. Well, I hate to tell you how tight the Pentagon w on that news. If Congress ever got wind, it could strip the t billions of dollars in tank contracts yet to be allocated. And Packer happens to be in tanks. He's touring NATO scared. 0 Congress won't even get wind unless we break a little over direction, and we won't fart unless the Pentagon goes out oftt to insult us. Because the bottom line, Hubbard, is that it's improper that Congress be given any inkling. They're too ir to public reaction. And it is a mistake to reveal any Russian w to the American public. They do not have the appropriat ground in Communism to appreciate the problem. Do you p then, the parameters of my double game? I have to scare the Pi into thinking that we might shoot their future budget ducks r of the water, when actually, I'm prepared to protect said du< I can't let them know I belong to their team, or Pentagon wor us. Anyway, it may be academic. Junior. The Hosiery ^ General Asshole was talking about is already two years be translating the gross product we send them from CATHETI we've only been in existence one year." He fell asleep. The life in his body seemed to move over glass, which perambulated further and further out to the side i weight of his extended arm woke him up. "Which reminds me," he said. "How are we doin CLOAKROOM? Where is he now?" "In England." "From Korea to England?" "Yessir." i "What's the new cryp?" i "SM/ONION." | Harvey sat up straight for a moment, put down his drink, f reached over his belly to his ankle and raised his pants leg.^ sheath knife strapped to his ankle. He unhooked it, drew it, art to pare his fingernails, all the while looking me over through HARLOT'S GHOST 281 t eyes. It had been a couple of weeks since he had put me to inning in his presence, but now I could not say if he was friend or He grunted. "I guess," I said, "SM/ONION may be a way of telling us to keep ling the layers." "Fuck that noise." He set down the knife to knock back half of sw martini. "I don't intend Co wait another two weeks to discover t this son of a bitch has still another cryptonym. Either he's a .vyweight, or somebody's in total panic of me. I smell VQ/WILD- »AR in the woodshed." "Wolfgang?" "You bet. Do you think Wolfgang could be with ONION in idon?" He mused on this long enough to snort. "All right. We're ng to tie you in to a couple of our effectives in London. Tomorrow ming, you start calling them. IfKU/CLOAKROOM assumes that can hide in London, he is going to learn what a ream-job is all >ut." "Yessir." "Don't look so unhappy, Hubbard. Hard work never killed an lest intelligence operator." "Check." "See me here for breakfast seven o'clock." With that, he put the knife back in its sheath, picked up his glass, 1 fell asleep. Sound asleep. I could be certain of this because the id that held his martini did a quarter-roll of the wrist and emptied t his drink on the rug. He began to snore. WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT. I HAD SEVEN HOURS BEFORE THE RITES OF ?curion would commence. On leaving GIBLETS, I made a quick ' sion to find Dix Buder and drink the night through, and the first of this proposition took considerably less time than the second. ht off, I came upon Dix in a small club we frequented off the fiirstendamm, a place called Die Hintertiir. There was a girl in this ' Door who would dance and drink with you, and a lady bar- t whom Dix liked. She had jet-black hair, not an everyday t in Berlin, even if it was dyed hair, and offered a look of 282 NORM.AN MAILER exceptional sophistication for a small bar with one waiter and agent in sight. I judge it was the luxury of being able to drink \ an eye on business that brought Dix here, plus Maria, the bar He was uncharacteristically polite with her and never tried an Herculean approach than to ask occasionally if he might see her to which she invariably responded with a mysterious smile as a nial way of saying no. The other girl, Ingrid, had dyed red h; available for a dance, or for sitting with you and hearing your tr an office nicely complemented most evenings by one or anoth( German businessman in from Bremen or Dortmund or Mair pendably, such a fellow would buy Ingrid's time for a couple o of slow dancing, perfunctory conversation, and heavy silenc would hold his hand, she would tell stories, and occasional!'' him laugh. I was invariably impressed with the balance b supply and demand. Almost never was Ingrid free, but such ^ tempo of the Back Door, seldom were two businessmen seek company at the same hour. By now Ingrid was my pal. We flirted between customers, a little--she was encouraging to the idea I might improv alternately practiced German and English with each other. Oc ally she would ask, "Du liebst mich?" "Ja," I would reply. In a foreign language, it was not diS agree that one loved somebody when one did not. In turn, h( mouth, primed with all the trade wisdom that love is a gritty tion, spread into a wide and slightly maniacal smile. "Ja" she re and held up her thumb and forefinger an eighth of an inch apai liebst mich ein bisschen." She had a gutty voice which I enjoyed, employed it with precision, laying each German word like a t( on my cloudy understanding. I eventually learned that Ingrid was married, lived with h band and child plus a few cousins and brothers in her mother' ment, and wanted to get to the United States. Dix told me as "She's looking to hook an American." All the same, I enjo] occasional kiss of congratulation when I showed a little rhytha dance. Nor would she take remuneration from me. I was descai the German businessmen as her "Schatz." | Now that I had become the official sweetheart, I was en( hear gossip. Ingrid informed me that Maria was kept by a rich! tor. When I relayed this to Dix, he promptly returned a did HARLOT'S GHOST 283 'he gent that Maria shares her apartment with," he said, "happens be a rich middle-aged woman. That's why I can't score." "Why do you try?" "I'm asking myself" His restlessness ratcheted up another notch. I was deciding that e Hintertiir was too quiet for him tonight, when the door opened j Freddie and Bunny McCann came in. Freddie (middle name ipps, Princeton, '54) was my replacement Downtown, precisely the low who had learned my job so quickly, and all because--I some- ies thought--he was nice. He had put himself in my hands. He had ,sted me. It is not difficult to instruct when there is no unhappy estion about your motives. So I liked him and his manners. He was :n taller than me, but weighed somewhat less, and if he had a irtcoming for certain kinds of Agency work, it was that he was too viously an American official. His wife, however, would be even more visible. She had a mane beautiful dark hair and the loveliest face. Her eyes were blue. I tifess, she reminded me ofKittredge. In any event, they were much too well-suited a couple to impinge Dix Butler at this hour. I could see by the tentative look on their irital face as they came over to sit with us that they were disapinted by the lackluster air of the joint, the empty tables, the absence vice. It was my fault. Freddie had called during the working day to i if I could recommend a bohe for quiet drinking, "a place with a ie authentic Berlin mood." Assuring him that no such entity ex- id--"they're all circuses or morgues"--I came around to suggest? the Back Door, "where you can, at least, breathe and speak. The ly bartender might be a novelty, and the girl who's available for ices," I was low enough to brag, "pretends to have a crush on me." "Well, it certainly sounds authentic. We've been cooped up. inny's cousin. Bailey Lawton, is in the Consulate here, and he's just out trapped us on the banquet list. Solemn stuff When it comes to Icanizing a chicken, the Germans are quite our equal." ' "The Back Door might amuse you," I said. "I thought you said it was Die Hintertiir." "It is," I told him, "but they also repeat the name in English. (fat on the sign." I wish that had warned him off. Never did my favorite, if dim, iering hole look so third rate. 284 NORMAN MAILER "What did you say your name was?" Dix asked as soon as I die's wife sat down, and repeated, "Bunny Bailey McCann." It not unlike the way he would say Herrick. "What does Bunny stand for?" he asked. "Actually, it's Martita." "Martita Bailey McCann. A nice name," he said. "Thank you." "Good to-and-fro in the consonants." "Are you a writer?" "Actually, I'm a poet," Dix said. "Do you publish?" "Only in magazines that look for doggerel." "Oh." "Oh." Freddie laughed. I did a bit to join him. "What are you drinking?" asked Dix. "Scotch," said Freddie. "Water, side." "Two Scotches," Dix called out to Maria. "Make it the Sc from Scotland." "Thank you," said Freddie. "I suppose they put flavoring in ] alcohol and serve it up if you let them." "I don't know," said Dix. "I can't drink the stuff. I don't uf stand Scotch." "That's an odd remark," said Freddie. "The liquor we put into ourselves is called spirits. I like to Is which spirits I'm putting into myself." "Terrific," said Fred McCann. "I've used the word all my and never thought about it once. Spirits." "I think about it a lot," said Dix. "Good for you," said Bunny. ; He looked at her. "Actually, I learned about Scotch the othet In this place. From the bartender over there. Maria. I asked her, is it about guys who drink Scotch?' and she said, 'You do not & I said, 'I do not know.' 'Oh,' she said, 'that is not so hard. Gu^ drink Scotch have given up.' " There was a pause. "I suppose the shoe fits," said Freddie McCann. "Nonsense, darling," said Bunny, "you never give up. N something worthwhile." She looked at me. Her eyes were clea were lovely eyes and they were asking, "Is this y out good fri HARLOT'S GHOST 285 "Well, I don't know," said Freddie, "that I throw a large amount weight." "You're beautiful, Mrs. McCann," said Dix. "Your husband .ist be lucky." "Would you believe it if I told you I'm just as lucky?" "I wouldn't," said Dix, "believe it for a minute." Freddie laughed. "Hear, hear." "Here's the Scotch," said Bunny, and drank half of her glass at a lp. "I think you may as well bring another," she said to the waiter. "Yes," said Freddie, "another round." "In fact, I would go so far," said Dix, "as to say that your husband bloody fortunate." "I would suggest," said Bunny, "that you shut your trap." Dix knocked off the rest of his bourbon. We sat in silence. "Yes, ma'am, you bet," he said into the silence. When no one plied, his unanswered presence began to use up more of our oxygen. "You bet what?" she said. He was not about to give up. "I bet you and me," he said, "could ink those two under the table." "I would bet the heaviest drinkers in the world come out of utmouth," Freddie said. I had to honor him for trying. "I met one low in Hanover at the Princeton-Dartmouth game my sophomore ar who used to drink so much that I don't believe he had any mental ;ulties left, except, that is, for the more basic motor functions. His itemity brothers used to take exams for him so he could remain in hool and win bets when they got into drinking contests with the her fraternities. I saw him again last year, and he was gone." "Pal," said Dix, "you've written your letter. Mail it." Freddie McCann did his best to laugh. I could see he still had hie outside hope that Dix might be part of the authentic ambiance •this bar. '' "Would you mind if I danced with your wife?" Dix asked. ' "I believe it's up to her." k "She'll say no," said Dix. "You're absolutely right," said Bunny. No, fellow, your wife doesn't want to dance with me. It could ome a habit." "Now, what are you trying to tell me?" said Freddie at last. "That you're fucking fortunate." "Bnough," I said. 286 NORMAN MAILER "No, Harry," said Fred, "I can speak for myself." "I don't hear you very well," said Dix. "This is becoming a little implausible," said Fred McCann. you to remember. There are Germans here. We are supposed an example." "I think your wife has the most gorgeous hair," said Dix, a ran his hand, not quickly, but not so slowly that she could re time, from her brow to the nape of her neck. I stood up. "All right," I said, "you can apologize. To myjh It is odd, but at that moment, there seemed no physical punisi I might have to suffer which could prove equal to watchin; Butler beat Fred McCann half to death. Dix stared at me. He stood up and a body-wave of heat cai him. It altered the light in the room. At that moment, I woulc testified to the existence of the human aura. His was three se hues of red. With all I had been taught about hand combat in tl year, there was, right now, so little I knew in comparison to h he decided to hit me, he would. The only question was whetl would. If we die in violence, does a demon come to greet us same red light? Now--and I may as well testify to this as well--the light to green, a dull and burned-out green. The air felt scorched. I a voice stirring in Butler's throat before speech came forth. "Ai telling me that I have been out of line?" "Yes." "And owe your friends an apology?" "Yes." "Tell it to me again," he said. I hardly knew if this was a challenge or a request to save him fraction efface. "Dix, I think you owe my friends an apology,". He turned to them. "I'm sorry," he stated. "I beg the paB| Mr. and Mrs. McCann. I was out of line." ; "It's all right," said Fred. I "Grievously out of line," he said. 'f "It's accepted," said Bunny Bailey McCann. 4 He nodded. I thought he was going to salute. Then he gt me by the arm. "Let's get out of here." He called to Maria, "PK drinks on my tab," and propelled me toward the door. I had clipped vision oflngrid looking at me with wise and tender co» HARLOT'S GHOST 287 8 ;ANNOT COUNT HOW MANY ALLEYS WE TRAVERSED. the GHOSTS OF ng-gone buildings rose out of every bombed-out plot. Here and ere was a light in a window. In some schoolboy year, I might have coded with adolescent melancholy on the life to be revealed in each ch room. A couple fighting, a child ill, a man and a woman making we , but now in this hooded city of sewers and empty spaces, where telligence was forever for sale, I saw instead behind each illumined indow shade an agent in transaction with another agent, BND with ;D, SSD with KGB; and there, in the far building to the left with ; one light, was that a safe house that belonged to us? Had I helped stock it on the day I made the rounds with C. G. Harvey? I do not low if the emanations of the dead had altogether ceased to stir "neath the Berlin rubble, but I had never been more aware of the )nes compacted in this city. Butler did not say a word. Walking along at his quick pace, I felt m coming to some decision, but what it was I had ho idea until I cognized that our route was coming about and we were returning a long circle to the Kurfurstendamm. I now felt tied to him in all ie protocols of violence. He would not injure me provided I accommied him, but I must convoy him through the night. Six or eight blocks from the lights of the Ku-damm, he turned to another alley. "Let's look up one of my sources," he said. He 'oke beneath a streetlamp, and there was a smile on his face I did not ce, as if the first of my payments had commenced. It was the most sculiar smile, evil, I thought, yet he had never looked so young. Set set," he muttered, and banged on a heavy wrought-iron gate in ie wall of a small building. A doorman in a black leather overcoat and black leather cap came out of a room on one side of a short arched tanel behind the gate, took a look at Butler, slid the latch, and pened the door to a passageway on the other side of the arched Buiel. The doorman did not look happy to see Butler. We walked Wn some stairs to an empty cellar room, crossed it, opened another or, and were in a bar. It was the way I had envisioned it would be - ever got into night combat. You might be running across a dark Id and then all the world, would come to light at once. Men in every ^ of costume were walking around. Some were flushed, some were JP> and many were sweating profusely. More than half were stripped 288 NORMAN MAILER to the waist, and a few were walking around in ajockstrap and The odor of ammonia was everywhere, harsh, sour, and fie disinfectant. I thought a bottle ofLysol had broken, but the smi too many properties of the flesh. The odor, I realized, was urini presence of urine prevailed. It stood in puddles on the floor ar gutter at the end of the bar. Beyond was a wooden rack, an naked men, about five feet apart, were pinioned there. A fat G in an undershirt, his pants hanging low by his suspenders, his fly was urinating over one of the men. It was a long urination. Th in the undershirt had a cigar in his mouth and a half-gallon of I one hand, his penis in the other. The flush of a heavenly suns on his face. He urinated upon the body and face of the fellow end of the rack as if he were watering every flower in the g Then he stepped back to give a little bow to the sounds of ap from those who watched. Two other men came forward, e; urinate in concert on the other naked man. I could not cease k at the two humans harnessed to that frame. The first was a w ugly, scrawny, and craven. He winced as the fat man pissed of he shivered, he trembled, he closed his mouth and ground hi; as his Ups were deluged, but then, doomed to betray himsi suddenly gaped his mouth wide, drank, sputtered, choked, be; sob, began to snicker, and to my horror aroused a stirring of( in myself as if he were supposed to be there for urinating upc His partner, equally in bonds, did not look like a wretch, creature. Caught in the crossed streams of two dark, intent Germans who appeared to be sharing one black leather costume the first wore nothing but the jacket, and the second, the pant other naked figure was blond and blue-eyed, with a Cupid's i and a deep cleft in his chin. His skin was so white that his anki wrists chafed in his bonds. He gazed at the ceiling. He seemed ered from all the people who pissed on him. I felt as if he lived: place where humiliation has ceased to exist. Something of the concern Ingrid had bestowed in her last look on me now forward into my drunken stirrings. I wished to wipe this you'd off and set him free, or at least I had such thoughts until I cam to myself long enough to recognize that this cellar existed--it u did exist! I was not alone in some theater of my mind. In thi moment, I was full of the panic to flee. I .felt as if I must, abal must, decamp from here, and immediately, but even as I loot Dix, he came into view beside the male couple who form) HARLOT'S GHOST 289 jinplementary halves of the one black leather outfit, moved them to feet to the side by the fact of his presence, unzipped his fly, and rinated on the blond boy's thighs and calves without spleen or lust, ;rfunctorily, like a bored priest whose fingers have ceased to feel the [imanence of the holy water; then, Dix's presence intimidating the ennan couple to put up their waters altogether, he now bent for- ard, watchful that neither his body nor his clothing touch the blond yy, and whispered in his ear, inclined his own ear to listen, and when lere was no reply, the creature off in some rapture of the pits, Dix ipped him professionally, once, then twice, repeated his question, id when there was still no answer, said, "Next time I'll fry your ass, Tolfgang," and stepped away, walking like a show horse between the uddles, hitched a thumb at me, and we departed. "Damned drugged bastard," he said as we hit the air. "Totally senseless tonight." "You know him?" I asked. "Of course. He's my agent." Some part of me was ready to ask lore questions, but I could not go on. I felt as if I had taken a bad 11. "I don't believe what I saw," came out in a hoarse little croak. He began to laugh. His mirth echoed in the small canyon of the ley, the back of six-story buildings close upon us from either side. 7e debouched into a street, and his laughter went caterwauling away from him on the wind. "The goddamn people I'm associated with," e said aloud, but if I thought he was referring to the cellar bar, his ext few words removed the error. "Are we supposed to conquer the ..ussians with personnel like you and McCann?" "I'm not a street man," I said. "That's where the war is fought." "Yes. In that bar." "Half of our agents are queer. It comes with the profession." "Do you pretend to be one of them?" I found the courage to say. "I use them," he told me shortly. We did not talk for a while. We walked. When he spoke again, he had come back to the subject. "I lon't think you received my point, Herrick," he said. "Agents lead double life. Homosexuals lead a double life. Ergo"--had he picked ergo from me?--"agents are often homosexual." 'I would judge that homosexuals are just a small part of it." "You would judge," he jeered. "You choose to believe what you pnt to believe." What are you telling me?" No blow taken in boxing at the Farm 290 NORMAN MAILER had left me as numb in so many junctions of the mind. I need drink, but not to relax, rather to return to myself again. I was ch in my mind, chilled in my heart, and not without the beginning some lively disturbance below. The nearness of sex to urine and i seemed a monstrosity, as if some mongoloid of the Devil had I there at the Creation dictating nether anatomy. The smell of dr prevalent in these nocturnal Berlin streets, was in my nose. "What are you telling me?" I repeated. My discomfort shifting as if we were playing at musical chairs and one of my bi views of myself had just lost his seat. He stopped at a door, took out a key, let himself into a s walk-up apartment building. I did not care to follow, but I did. I k where we were. It was one of C. G. Harvey's safe houses. Once inside, installed in our chairs, holding glasses of boul neat, he looked at me and rubbed his face. He did this slowly carefully for several minutes as if domiciling his temper. "I've never talked to you," he said. "You haven't?" "Not as a friend. I've merely offered facets of myself." I made no reply. I drank. It was as if I were starting to drin over again. The liquor set loose a coil of thought in me, and I b to ponder the creature named Wolfgang whom Butler had pronto fry. Was Wolfgang, beatific Wolfgang, the same fellow know Franz? Described by Mr. Harvey, he had been slim and dark course, hair could be dyed. "One difference between you and me," said Butler, "is tl understand our profession. You have to be able to turn yourself ir out." "I am aware of that," I said. "You may be aware of it, but you cannot do it. You get stu( the middle. Your asshole is tight." "I believe I'm ready to drink up and leave." | "Your asshole is tight," repeated Butler. He began to laug! all the times I had heard him laugh tonight, none sounded so i warring parties to his own balance. "They're crazy in this ftt Company," he said. "They give a polygraph test to all of us. 'as. homosexual?' they ask. I never met a closet homosexual who c6( lie to a polygraph. I'll tell you what they need in this Company initiation rite. Every Junior Officer Trainee ought to be order pull down his pants on graduation day. Get his asshole reamed HARLOT'S GHOST 291 fise superior. What do you think of such a thesis?" "I don't believe you would submit to it yourself," I said. "I've had my initiation. Didn't I tell you? My big brother used to om-hole me. From the time I was ten till I was fourteen. Then I nocked him down, and he stopped. That's what they mean by white •ash, Herrick. Now, I do not believe there is any man in the Com- any who could stick it up me against my will. No one has the hysical force." "What if they had a gun?" "I would die first." He smiled at me. "All the same, taking it up ie ass, out of one's own free God-given choice, may be another latter. Call it the next thing to yoga. Frees the associations. Readies ou for the street." "Maybe I'll never be ready," I said. "You dumb, smug, superior son of a bitch," he said. "What if I wre to push your face into the carpet, and manhandle your cherry ants off your cherry ass? Do you think I'm strong enough?" It was not routine to speak. "I think you're strong enough," I said, ad my voice was weak in my ear, "but you don't want to." "Why?" "Because I might kill you." "With what?" I was silent. "With what?" "With whatever it took." "How long," asked Butler, "would I have to wait?" "Till whenever. Till I would do it." "Do you know, I think you would." f I nodded. I could not speak. Too much fear was in me. It was as El had already committed murder and did not know how to escape. F "Yes," he said. "You could shoot me in the back afterward." He cindered this. "Or even in the front. I'll say that for you. You might oot me if I took away the only thing that is yours. The poor little terry in your asshole. I wish you had something more to hold on •—you might not be so desperate." If my father had uttered those words they could not have been ore painful. I wanted to explain that I might be better than that. I sieved in honor, I wanted to tell him. Certain kinds of honor could W be lost without demanding that one consecrate oneself thereaf- •no matter how unsuited and unprepared—to a life of revenge. I 292 NORMAN MAILER knew, however, that I could not express this aloud. The words w never survive in open air. "Well," he said, "maybe old Dix is not going to go in for bre; and entry. Maybe old Dix is wrong and ought to apologize.' weighed this. He weighed his glass. "I was wrong," he sail apologize. I apologize for the second time tonight." But he looked as intent and full of ungovernable tension as He took a long swallow of his bourbon. I took a short one ofr happy for its heat. Now Butler stood up. He undid his belt buckle, opened his t and stepped out of them. Then he dropped his jockey shorts. H< swollen, but without an erection. "There's two kinds of sexual b( for between men," he said. "Compulsion and mutual regard. second does not exist until the first is attempted. So I decidt frighten you into putting out for me. But that don't work. So, I can respect you. Come," he said, and he reached forward and my hand, "take off your clothes. We'll do some good things to other." When I did not move, he said, "You don't trust me, do you answer to my silence, he smiled. "Let me be the first," he said he bent over nimbly, put his fingertips to the floor and then his k and raised his powerful buttocks to me. "Come on, fuck-head, said, "this is your chance. Hit it big. Come in me, before I come in you." When I still made no move, he added, "Goddamnit, I it tonight. I need it bad, Harry, and I love you." "I love you too, Dix," I said, "but I can't." The worst of it was that I could. An erection had risen out know not what, from puddles of urine on a cellar floor and German slobbering his beer, from the buried loves of my life, bonds of family and friends and all the muffled dreams of Kittn from naked-ass locker rooms packed into the constrictions o memory, and the recollection of St. Matthew's Arnold, except were no fat sweet buttocks, but two clumps of powered meat bd| ing to my hero who wanted me up his ass, yes, I had an erecdo was right. It was my chance to hit it big. I could steal somethf his strength. And knew that if I did, I might live forever on thi of sex. But he had told the truth. I was too timid to live in such< He could leap from woman to man to woman, on top, on go or hang from his heels. He was pagan, an explorer of cavern columns, and I happened to be the piece of human work he v» HARLOT'S GHOST 293 side himself tonight. For what, I hardly knew. Was it a fiber from e spine of New England? Something he had missed? I felt for him. calked around in front, knelt, kissed him once on the mouth, stood ) quickly, stepped to the door, unhooked the chain, and felt an )ligation to turn around and look at him one more time, as if in lute. He looked back at me and nodded. He was sitting on the floor. Out in the street, wind flayed the cheeks of my face. I walked ang quickly. I knew I had not gotten out unscathed. "I love you, ix," were the words that would come back to me, and I writhed at e squalid echo they would soon acquire. Instinct took me to Die Hintertiir. Stalking night streets with a full ection must have served as my vector. An empty taxi passed, and though I needed to walk, on impulse I hailed him and thereby rived at the nightclub just as the steel shutters were coming down, id Ingrid, small pocketbook held in one of her square hands, short id ratty fur coat on her shoulders, was shivering on the curb in the 00 a.m. winds. Without a tremor of hesitation, and the most perfect nile on her face as if this coincidence of our meeting was but the first ate in a romantic symphony whose composer could only be Herr istory, she came right into the cab, gave an address, and offered the .11 seal other lips to mine. I went all the way back in my mind to the •ep school instructor who \\aAglommed me, but this was the night for [ch recollections to turn in their foundation. I was all over her in the ick of the cab and could not stop kissing. "Oh," she kept saying in ime mixture of English and German, "maybe you love me more ian a little," and the repetition ofein bisschen (so much like "ambi- an") kept one small part of me in a state of standoff amusement while ie rest was taking in the iron-corded fatigue other legs and shoulders ter a night of dancing, absorbing all other pent energy, good and ill, to my fingers and my hands. We were necking and petting and ipping and grabbing and nipping one another like two exercise achines set loose upon one another. Since my education into the terstices, locks, and patents of a girdle was only now commencing the age of twenty-three (Ingrid may have been slim, but she was Brman—in consequence, she wore a girdle), I was making frantic Oculations whether to mount some central attack in the back of this b, or to countermand the address she had given and take her to my srtment, my bed, and the inevitable waking up in the morning to i hung-over embarrassment of having to stumble through the cover Bes of my fellow CIA men. Already I could hear their guarded 294 NORMAN MAILER good-moming while they debated the dubious wisdom of brine this outside source (female) and sitting her down en famille linoleum-covered breakfast table. I was still running such calcu] through the decision mill of my bourbonified brain when we up at the address she had given to the cabdriver and it was an all food mill in full view of the street, two blocks off the other end Kurfurstendamm. In that place, I quickly received one more education on. and its nighdife. Half the people in this place were familiar to had seen them in one nightclub or another over the last week. they were having coffee and American hamburgers, or schnap cognac, or beer, or pig's knuckles and sauerkraut, or applesau< potato pancakes, or gin and tonic, or Coca-Cola, or patissei pastrami, or roast duck—a hell of an unlikely place, and brigh I saw again some of the starched businessmen who had been d. at Remdi's and the Bathtub and the Kelch, their collars wilted Prostitutes who were familiar, plus a few of the all-night divorce Helga were there, and to my disbelief, nothing less than t German I had seen not more than an hour ago whose pants had from his suspenders. He was neatly powdered now, having g suppose, to just the kind of all-night barbershop that would co ment this all-night emporium of food and drink, and, indeed, next moment, I saw the wretch. He, too, was bathed and powi Dressed in a gray suit and vest, he wore steel-rimmed spectack looked like a clerk with spavined cheeks and a large appetite: r- devouring a plate of beans. Ingrid, all the while, was hugging her fur coat and my b< one, proclaiming to everyone who watched that she had bagf American. Ingrid was also eating an enormous "Grilled Americ Westphalian ham, tomatoes, and Muenster cheese. I sat beside twitchy detumescence while she slogged down a vast mug of thereby communicating to me in twenty minutes how profs one might, over twenty years, come to dislike the eating habi mate. Poor Ingrid. The Back Door, as she put it to me 1 toothsome grin, never allowed their help enough of food an<| to produce more than a goat turd for the other back door. <| night, therefore, in which my own sphincter had almost plj prominent role, insight came over me at last: I was in the presa German humor. Die Hintertiir. I got it. A nightclub for asshc She finished her meal. We found cabs waiting outside. Wi HARLOT'S GHOST 295 tie to another address she gave. It proved to be a cavernous cheap otel in another bombed-out working-class quarter of Tempelhof, id the night clerk took an unconscionable time studying my passport id hers, and finally returned Ingrid's with a muttered German insult could not catch. I begged her to explain, and in the rise of-the .If-service elevator which took us up at a creak and a hitch past one [aster-dusted floor after another she managed to translate. "American fhore-bitch fucker" was something like how it went, but if there is universal harmonium of consonants and vowels, it certainly sounded roise in German. It affected her mood. We came to our floor and walked down an choing cavernous hall. She took the key, whose prominent handle ras the size of a phallus itself, and opened the door to a room as cold ad damp as the night outside. The overhead bulb in the ceiling may ave offered twenty-five watts. One standing lamp offered another ich bulb, and the bed presented a coverlet in the full palette of ntropy. That may be described as not-brown, not-gray, not-green, ad it was long enough to wrap around a bolster as heavy as a ailed-up rug. We started to kiss again, but with less fever, and she shivered. You have zwei Mark?" she asked. When I found a coin, she put it ito a gas meter, came back to me for matches, lit it, and stood by a re which came up in a blue whispering flambeau behind artificial )gs. I felt the weight of the city. All of Berlin was now contained for ie in the image of a gargoyle straining to move a boulder up a ope--no vast originality at this hour!--and then I embraced her gain, and we shivered with that side of our bodies which was not lasted by the fire. I did not know how to proceed. The girdle seemed more formi- able than ever. Sobering up, I was all too near to nothing at all, but iy erection, holy prime factor, was intact. It had been waiting for ears. I felt as if long-dead Hubbards were gathering about. In this hostly room, so much more suited for laying out a corpse than lying n a living body, a filament of desire rolled around in me, hot and lolated as a wire in a heating coil. Yet it must have warmed some junimal ardor in her because now she was kissing me back, and after Unoment, with a muted reluctance as grave and stately as a formal pocession, we moved the four steps to the bed, and she lay down on jte edge of it, gave, presto, a few deft snips and snaps to the yoke of J6 girdle, unhooked her garters so that each falling stocking inspired 296 NORMAN MAILER one more thin filament of desire--these unkempt stockings reir cent of a pornographic daguerreotype, circa 1885, which had la through my boyhood in some old tin box of my father's up in M Maybe my father had guarded it through his boyhood. One ] family log to throw on the fire. By the light of the twenty-five-watt bulbs, I saw revealed, a out preliminary, my first vagina. As if I were robbing a house ani not wish to tarry, I opened my pants, to which she gave a gru pleasure at the readiness of my erection. I, however, taking an< look at that repository of female secrets, was tempted to drop t< knees and pay homage until my eyes were sated of their fonnii curiosity, but, child of good decorum, I did not really dare to loo] long, and was certainly afraid of this vagina's superior relation ( with all its folds and recesses) to secrets of human state I could not contemplate. Therefore, I placed the head of my cock will thought it should go, shoved, only to hear another grunt, no reproach, on which she took me by her hand, and guiding me two deft fingers, put her other hand against my chest as I starti plunge. "No, Harry, verwundbar! I'm sore. Go easy, go easy. Yo mein Schatz, liebster Schatz--soldier boy." And she opened her siere which had a catch at the front I had never thought to lool and at the sight of those breasts, which were a little depleted bt the same, breasts, the first naked ones ever seen so near to r plunged, and came back, and plunged again, and had a picture now entered the land of sex (where far-off universes of the mind I suppose, implode) had, yes, a picture of Alien Dulles talking b us on the day of our initiation about a girl on a tennis court. Ti plunged and came back, and plunged again, and realized I was t a cunt. It was another world, and all at once: The inside other was one's first station in heaven, but another part of me was offci What mean auspices--what a foul initiation! I hardly liked the < in this stale cold room. A thin avaricious smell certainly came up; her, single-minded as a cat, weary as some sad putrescence oft(lSi So I hovered between, half a lover entering the hypnoril love, and half an onlooker doomed to observe myself in the. I love. On I sawed, back and forth. % Soon she was moist and did not wince each time I plunged, (I it that she winced less? I must have made love at ferocious| because the powers of displeasure were certainly growing^ wretched room and yes, this poor and hungry girl who loved mei HARLOT'S GHOST 297 ie outside first--America first! I moved in two worlds at once, in leasure, and in lack of pleasure, and it kept me moving. I did not dare > stop or all erection could be gone; then there came a few minutes rhen the sweat stood on my neck. In this chill half-heated icebox of chamber, standing, feet on the floor, while a strange young woman ras laid out before me on the bed, no heat gathered in my loins. I was )st in a perpetual-motion machine, I was in the purgatory of desire, nd I humped and I pumped beneath a pall, on and on, until the image fButler's knotted buttocks came back to me again, and the perpetual lotion machine staggered, took a loop, then a leap, and the filaments fheat began to revolve in me and my body to quake with the onset fthe irreversible. Pictures other vagina nickered in my brain next to nages of his ass, and I started to come, and continued to come, and 3 come from the separate halves of me, and had a glimpse of the ndless fall that may yet be found on our way into the beatitudes. We shared a cigarette. I was feeling a good bit better now. ichievement was my portion. Gloom might still reside in the outer caches, but half the world was better than none. I adored Ingrid, and id not feel a thing for her. At the end, I had been all alone in myself. low , she nuzzled my nose with her fingertip as if we were newly- feds and she was examining the features to face her in years to come. Tien she spoke: Tomorrow at work she would inform Maria. That yas the sum of her first speech. Ingrid was filing territorial rights. "What will you tell her?" I asked. Maria, in secret, was my reference, and it occurred to me that if Ingrid spoke well of me, 'erhaps Maria would take another look. "If she asks, I will say"--and she intoned the next words with pecial clarity--"schwererArbeiter, abersusser," and Ingrid offered a kiss. It did not seem to me that the mysterious Maria would be particutriy intrigued by a hard worker who was sweet. The dawn was coming at the window. Ingrid would now go back 0 her husband, to her child, her mother, her brothers, and her ousins, and I would have time to change, take a bath, and go to work. 298 NORMAN MAILER 9 I NEVER DID GET TO SLEEP NEXT DAY. A TAXI RIDE AT DAWN DRC Ingrid off at the shabby seven-story apartment house where she 1 then a stop at my apartment, a shower—I was off to my job. If I had hope that Bill Harvey could have forgotten his last co; sadon with me, it was at once dispelled. Before I filled my coffee from the um, the buzzer rang, and Chiefs low voice reverberat my ear. "Start the London push with these fellows," he said furnished me three cover names: Otis, Carey, Crane. "Appi them in that order. Otis is an old friend. Has the clout to do th< Carey's a hard worker and will produce. Crane is less experience a go-getter." "Chief, do you want me to put all three on the job?" "Hell, no. Take the first one who is available. Tell him it's \ a couple of Brownie points." He hung up. I had by now developed enough sense of Company secur anticipate the difficulties. If Berlin Base wished to speak to Stati London, or in Paris, or, for that matter, in Japan or Argentina, telephone traffic had to be routed through the hub in Washing!' was out of bounds to go around the rim. If the procedure was i consuming, I undertook it nonetheless with no disdain. Exposi the shenanigans of the cellar bar had led me to see why fo outposts of the Company were not encouraged to communica reedy with each other. Given the amount of deviant behavior i world, communications along the rim could become damnabi posed—far safer to feed all messages into the hub and out agai So I was soon engaged in the webwork of prearranging teler calls from Berlin to Washington to London, and spent the mo putting in requests to speak at specific times that afternoon on s phone installations at London Station with Otis, Carey, and C By early afternoon, I reached cover-name Otis in London "What the hell is this," he asked, "and who are you? My t pinning donkey tails on my ass. He thinks I'm looking to traiM Berlin." I "No, sir, it's not like that at all," I told him. "Big BOZO, B needs a helping hand in London. On a minor matter." J "If it's minor, why didn't Bill use a fucking pay phone and t be minor. We don't know." "What's your name?" "Sloate. Charley Sloate." "Well, Charley boy, tell me, what made Harvey think of me?" "I don't know, Mr. Otis. He said you were an old friend." "Bill Harvey doesn't have old friends." "Yessir." "Who are you, the flunky?" "A rose by any other name," I managed to say. Otis began to chuckle. "Charley boy," he said, "do me a favor. 'alk Bill Harvey's little project around the corner and kick it in the s." "Yessir." "I'm going to break a rule of two months' standing and have a artini before five." "Yessir." "Bill Harvey. Jesus!" He hung up. While I did have some idea that SM/ONION was not going to ; found in London, I still had to proselytize Carey or Crane into orking on our request; otherwise, I could face Base Chief Harvey ith a report that I had nothing to report. ' I prepared, therefore, to speak to Carey, the man described as able i produce. I told myself that Carey would not know the rank of barley Sloate and I must address him as an equal. I had certainly been o meek with Otis. It was a firm preparation, but Mr. Carey was not in London. His Cretary, however, was pleased to be talking over a secure phone. Chis," she said, "is the first time for me, Mr. Sloate. I hope you ttti't take it personally, but you sound like you're down in a well. Do lound sort of ghoulish too?" "We will improve on closer acquaintance." "You're funny." "Thank you." "May I say whatever I want to over this phone?" she asked. "It's safe." "Well, Mr. Carey is in America. Can he assist you from there?" "I don't believe so. When's he coming back?" 300 NORMAN MAILER "Oh, it's at least a couple of weeks. He and his wife are g< a divorce, and he's over there to divide the property. It's a dif time for him." "Could you do something for me?" I asked. "I'd be glad to." "We're trying to locate a Company man who's been assign London. All we have is his cryptonym." s "Mr. Sloate, I'd love to be of help, but that kind of access is c to me." "Yes, I thought it might be." "In fact, I received a reprimand from Mr. Carey because I v careful enough. You won't repeat this?" "No." "Well, once or twice, I let slip his real name while talking ( colleagues, and that is a negative mark. I knew they were aware ( selfsame real name, so I wasn't as properly careful as I should been about cover." "I have trouble with such stuff too," I said. "You're nice." She paused. "Will you ever get to Londdfi We chatted about whether I would ever get to London; assured me that it was a good place for Americans. I was down to Mr. Crane, the go-getter. On the assigned tin ASTOR (Approved Secure Telephone Rendezvous), I encoun the voice of the man who would indeed help me. "Yes," he said, "Crane on the line. I've been waiting. How BOZO?" "Well, he's fine. Working hard." "Great man. You tell him I said I would do anything he v and this is before I even know what it is." "He'll enjoy your trust in him." "Tell him I've learned a little more about poker since he toq down to my BVDs." f. "Is that a warning not to get into a game with him?" , "Mr. Sloate, you'll learn at the feet of a master. And you W! for it." He cleared his throat. Over the secure phone, it sound a motorcycle starting up, and I thought of the myriad of d< scrambling and unscrambling themselves to the sound. "Hit riq the task," Mr. Crane said. "Harder the better." "Person in question has been trying to locate one of our p a Junior Officer Trainee, who's been recently assigned to Londc HARLOT'S GHOST 301 yp is SM/ONION. We don't know his cover name or names." "That should be the adverbial duck soup." He laughed at his own lalifier. Given our instant amity, I laughed with him. Now, we unded like two motorcycles riding around in a large barrel. "Need it today?" "Preferably." "Did you pick up any refills on this umbilical?" he asked. "Yes. We have Repeat-Access at 1800 to ASTOR." "Way to go. I'll call on the minute at 1800." It was now a quarter to four. I had time to reach Harlot. To enter s secure telephone, there would be no need for ASTOR. I would speaking directly to Washington. At BOZO, however, one still id to log in every secure telephone call, and I did not want to use ^am King Harvey's logbook for such a call. It would be necessary, erefore, to take a trip over to the Department of Defense where I 11 kept my desk even if I had not approached it in three weeks. On e other hand, DOD was half across the American sector from OZO, and we were almost in the rush hour. Moreover, their phone ight be in use. I decided to carry this operation as far as I could on y own. Crane came back on the line at six. "I won't," he said, "give you ;finitive returns until tomorrow, but we don't seem to have an ^4/ONION. Nor a scallion. Nor a rutabaga. Not in London town." "Does London include all of Great Britain?" "You don't think the Brits invite the Agency into every village ith a mill, do you? London is about all of it. We've got a Consulate it in Manchester." He stopped. "Plus Birmingham. A bloke in iinburgh. Ditto Glasgow." He grunted. "I appreciate your effort," I said. "I hope our troubles didn't ipinge on your afternoon." "Well, I thought I was going to have to stand up my golffournie, but this is London. The drizzle turned into a downpour. No >lf. Nothing lost." "That's swell," I said. h "Charley Sloate, let me tell you. Our check-out will continue non-ow, but bozo's target is not going to be found on teacup son to some one-thousand-year-old color guard in Edinburgh. "get ought to be right here in London. However, we've pursued ih inquiry already. Negative." "Check." 302 NORMAN MAILER "Where does that leave us?" "My principal still wants SM/ONION," I said. "Afte ONION can't have an SIN unless he's in England." "Technically, he can't." "Technically?" "We're secure on the penmanship, right?" "You mean this phone?" "I mean this is ex officio. You're not memo-ing any of our pa I assume." "I wasn't intending to." "All right. Hear this: Cryptonyms can develop a life of their But, I never said that, Charley Sloate." "I follow you." "How important is all this, anyway?" "I can't tell you because I really don't know." "Inform our friend that I am ready to step up the search. W keelhaul our files with search vouchers into the defunct cryptc of personnel who are still with us in London. That's a big load of London Chief may query Headquarters, D.C., as to why Berlit has a meatball up its giggie. Does His Bigness want the oniol much? I'm happy to do the work if he does." "I'll see him tonight." "Good. Hear from you in the morning." "By the way," I said, following an inspiration I had not o even an instant before, "is there some possibility that SM/ONK on detached duty to the English?" "You mean Liaison to MI6?" "Well, something of that order." "Can't be Liaison," said Crane. "All the saddlebags at L were checked out today." "Might ONION be in a more committed activity?" I "Special duty?" He whistled. Over the secure phone, it sq like a bear wheezing in a cave. "I don't know if we can penetra cover. Yet, that could be the answer." ^ In the evening, I had five minutes with Bill Harvey. ^ taking C.G. to the opera. He was also swearing as he finished'!! ing his studs into a starched and pleated shirt. "Total tap-out, you're telling me," he growled. "No. Mr. Crane did have one interesting lead. He ONION may be on special duty with MI6." HARLOT'S GHOST 303 "Fearsome," said Harvey. He started to shake his head. His gm came up. Extracting a wet-tipped stub of a cigarette from his his hand wobbled over to a standing ashtray and released the butt. torso shook from the cough. The taffy machine started. He ked his product into the ashtray to follow the cigarette, and like ch it slid its way down the standing tube to the cuspidor at the from . His suspenders hung to his knees. I mention such details .use in Harvey's presence it took that much to make you aware of hing more salient than the workings of his mind. "This is a true son of a bitch," he said, "if it has real wings." He jed. "Sit down. C.G. and I may just have to get to the opera a few utes late. I have to think it out. Look at what this scenario signifies. :, an alleged file clerk is shifted all around Washington, then is shot to Korea, slipped back to London, and now is placed on special ' to MI6. We could be talking about a bang-and-bust specialist had tucked onto a siding in the Snake Pit for a couple of weeks. y not? A demolition expert hidden in the Snake Pit? But what did »low up so imprecisely that they have to send him flying around world? What is his connection to me? Why is he now in England king for MI6? Could it have any tie-in to Suez? Shit! I happen to Wagner, believe it or not, and I'm not going to hear much ngrin tonight. Are you free to meet me here after the opera?" "I'll be on hand." "SM/ONION assigned to MI6. I have a lot to kick around." So did I. I descended to my cubbyhole office in GIBLETS, put ay papers on the floor, set the alarm for 11:00 p.m., and went to ? on my cleaned-off desk. This evening nap allowed me to recover from my hangover, and roke with good appetite and a desire to see Ingrid. I had hardly , however, to make myself a sandwich from the icebox in GIB"s kitchen before I could hear the motor ofBLACKIE-1 coming c to the paved turnaround in the rear of our sandbagged villa. By look on Mr. Harvey's face as he came into the galley, his bow tie his dinner jacket open to show the handles of his revolvers, I gave tny notion of getting over to Die Hintertiir in the next hour or k Well, we arrived so late we had to promenade down the aisle just 'e the overture commenced," he said. "C.G. is plenty irked. She ' running that kind of gauntlet. Those Krauts hiss at you. The tedest sound. Little pissy noises. Psss! Psss! I had to squeeze by an 304 NORMAN MAILER old biddy in a diamond tiara, and she was .w^-ing away, so I pered, "Madame, we are the sons and daughters of Parsifal." I was obliged to return him one blank look. He grinned. "When in doubt, sow confusion. Strategies of I Volume One." "I heard today about your rep in poker." "Which unqualified son of a bitch let you on to that?" "Mr. Crane." "He means well, but he can't play. If I claim any edge at the it is that occasionally I can read a mind." He burped. Mr. Harvey utterances were like guided tours to his alimentary canal. "Hubbard," he now said, "I like my mind to be clear. impedance." "Yessir." "This situation with CLOAKROOM. It's lodged in my br it or isn't it penny-ante?" "I suppose that's what we're trying to find out." "The worst obsessions," he said with some gloom, "begir the smallest things. Hell, the brain even has the same hue as an ( By which logic, every obsession is a putative pearl. All the while listening to the music, I was also running down my options. I've up on any big American bang-and-bust man whom the Bri grooming for Cairo. The Brits would never accept the idea tt have better technical personnel than they do. Too much prid< "Where does that leave us?" I asked. "Ready to do it by the numbers. I broke my own rule to In these matters, you weigh hypotheses, you don't juggle them don't start with your largest possibilities. You paw over your scenarios first. Check?" "Check." "All right. The very smallest. Let's say the whole thing is a from day one. It involves no more than some poor asinine kit has a rabbi. Some rabbi high enough upstairs to know the'| KU/ROPES. Was somebody trying to tell me something rigbi the start?" He paused, he took a beat just long enough for iil| to lose its beat, and then went on. "Let's assume, if this is the cit| cloakroom's poor performance on the cable concemingjj gang was an accident. I took to this possibility for a while bfitj was simple. I'm a great believer in Ockham's Razor. Did the^j you that at Yale?" HARLOT'S GHOST305 I nodded. Before I could offer my contribution, he stated, "The iplest explanation that covers a set of separate facts is bound to be correct explanation. Check?" he asked. "That's about it." Actually, Ockham's Razor, as I remembered it, nt: Plwalites non est ponenda sine necessitate--excess cannot exist hout necessity--but I wasn't about to substitute my erudition for He burped ruminatively. "Our simplest scenario does not, how- ;r, manage to tell us why so much effort has been put into protect- CLOAKROOM. So I reject it. Too small. Something else is ng on. Is CLOAKROOM part of a team? If so, what kind of rig they rolling? First subhypothesis: They are the Let's-Give-theifttoBillHarvey gang. Larger subhypothesis: One of our kingfish D.C. is working a Berlin caper and it involves Wolfgang. I'm :luded. That makes me nervous. Wolfgang is one loose end, and I y be the other. Let's say it's time for a drink." He got up, went to the icebox, took out the makings, and mixed atch ofmartinis: He filled his shaker with ice, poured in a quarter h of Scotch, poured it out, then loaded the pitcher with gin. "The it Chicago hotels make it this way," he informed me. "The bar at ; Ambassador, and the one at the Palmer House. You have to use ad gin. The Scotch adds that no-see-um flannel taste you're look- ;for. Slips the job down your gullet." He drank off his first fill, gave glass another, and passed me one. It did slide down. Smooth fire, eet ice. I had the disconnected thought that if I ever wrote a novel rould call it Smooth Fire, Sweet Ice. "To resume. You enter my mental life this afternoon with Mr. uie's hypothesis. SM/ONION may be in MI6. Ingenious. That tainly explains why we can't locate him at London Station. But it »gs me off into my worst vice: premature intellectual ejaculation. I stoo excited by hot hypotheses. If I ever went to a psychiatrist, he'd cover that I want to fuck an elephant. I have fucked, parenthetically taking, everything else. Female, that is. But these martinis will have t writing my memoirs before long. It's the passing blaze when the 'hits your system. I am not off the track, Mr. Hubbard, merely ng on steam. Those Heinies were awful at the opera, psss, psss." sHe lay back for a moment and closed his eyes. I did not dare to 6.1 knew if I put all my mental efforts into concentrating upon his d to fall asleep, and failed to hypnotize his spirit, I would be good lot much more once he opened his eyes. 306 NORMAN MAILER "Very well," he said, "I reject the idea of a demolition e? loan to MI6. For all I know, the British are now planting bomi Nasser's balls, but, as I say, they would not use one of our men and, in addition, it takes us further away from Base Berlin through Lohengrin I was marching myself in the other directio I can't explain what kind ofCIA man could be inserted so far MI6 that he's untraceable by us, I employ an old Hegelian acquired back in law school: Turn the premise upside down. this slippery slime-ball Senor Cloakroom-RopesFragmentC a young undercover operator for the English who has man bore his way into the CIA?" "A mole? A mole working for the English?" "Well, they just about managed that once with Bur^ Maclean. I don't even want to get into Mr. Philby. It'll ru martinis." "But those men weren't working for the English. Th< KGB." "All Europeans, if you scratch them, are Communist. that. Potentially Communist. There is no emotion on earl powerful than anti-Americanism. To the rest of the world, i is the Garden of Eden. Unmitigated envy, the ugliest emotion all." "Yessir." He took another refill from the martini pitcher. "Let us a group in MI6 was able to insert a small self-contained netw our ranks." He burped tenderly, reflectively, as if his stomac be entering a regime of peace. "Go ahead," he said, "pla; advocate." "Why would the English go to such lengths?" I asked. "E continue to pool some information with them? I think th more to lose if such a venture were ever exposed than the possibly gain from infiltrating us." : "They're still in pretty bad odor with Washington. ^ forgive them for building a royal pavilion to cover Philby's ai it was their way of saying, 'Our worst Englishman means rn< than your best detectives.' At present, we have stuff theyr know that we won't trust them with. We can't. Not so Ion are fatally inept at spotting KGB penetrations into their highc If I hadn't been there to sniff out Philby, he could have cli the way to the top. He was penultimate level already. The HARLOT'S GHOST 307 we demonstrated this ability time and again to recruit young En- shmen for lifetime jobs. The best young men. It's as if you, Hub- rd, had been made by the KGB back in college, and joined the rency precisely to work for the Russians. Ugly to conceive, isn't it? ir all we know, it's going on right now. This much, I do postulate. ie tricky Brits have the motivation to get into our fanciest plumb- t. It would give them a way of expressing themselves. Creative stards. Even if such an English mole is only loyal to Britain and ver to the Soviets, we're still hanging by our fingernails. Because let ere be one KGB agent working near the top ofMI6, and he will get aid sooner or later that they have a mole in our midst. He will find way to obtain the product and pass it on to the Sovs." I was appalled how my inspired suggestion to Mr. Crane that A/ONION might be attached to MI6 had now been transmuted to a threat to the West. "Fearsome," repeated Harvey. "Awesome. But I'll find out. lere are a couple of Brits in this town who owe me beaucoup ?ors." "I don't see it," I said. "If the British have placed a mole in the ompany, why would they call him back to MI6?" "Oh, they can slip him out again. Keep one step ahead of us--as ey have already. I expect they panicked. Once I got on the trail, they cided to tuck him back into MI6 for safekeeping." "As of now," I said, "this is your leading hypothesis?" "As of now." He stopped in the middle of sipping his martini. iut what do we do next?" he asked. "That's what I don't know." "Why, we return to the old hypotheses. We plod through them ?in. One by one. From the simplest to the most elaborate. Only an npty hypothesis fails to improve on second look." : "Check." ' "So I, Hubbard, am going back to the smallest. Do you recall it?" "Yessir." I «T1 ** ' Expatiate. 'Whole thing a fiasco from day one." "And?" he asked. Involves some poor kid who has a rabbi on high." Now he looked me in the eye. Over the last few weeks, I had f-n waiting for this. He was renowned for his ability to look at you i he were already dead and you would soon be. His gaze offered 308 NORMAN MAILER no light, no compassion, no humor—just the dull weight of ev handed suspicion. I bore up under this examination, but by the time he looked av my hangover had returned. The gin so recently added to my bl had gone bad. Nonetheless, I took another drink. "Yes," I said, " was your first hypothesis." "Right. I asked you to separate out any juniors you knew \ went from the Farm to the Snake Pit. Then, I told you to acquire tl cryps through the Bypass." "Yessir." "Have you done that?" "I may have been remiss." "All right. I know how busy you've been. We're all ren Tomorrow, however, you get on the talk-box to Washington, bring me back names." "Check." "Did you ever set foot in the Snake Pit?" Was this the crux? Some instinct told me to say "Yessir." "Yes," he said, "I've heard you were seen on those precinc "Well, I barely set foot there," I said. "I guess we can s however, with me." "What was your cryptonym on the days you went into the sb Pit?" "Don't you remember, sir? I told you that I can't reveal saddlebag. It's from Technical Services." "Nonetheless, you walked into the Snake Pit with your cl tonym." "Yessir." "Would they have a record of that?" "I have no idea. I did sign an entrance book." "I could probably triangulate your cryptonym from that. But save time. Unreel your last set of remarks, will you?" His eyes V now as calm and open as window glass. 3 "Well, sir, all the while I was waiting for clearance at Techj Services, I was instructed to use the Snake Pit for job covert roommates in Washington were under the impression that I g there to work every day. In fact, to implement such cover, I was g a pass to enter Snake Pit premises, and for a couple ofmornings'i try to look busy. I'd take out a file, walk it down the corridot,^ HARLOT'S GHOST 309 lack. I guess it was analogous, you could say, to my so-called job e at the Department of Defense." "Which of your fellow trainees did you happen to run into on se excursions?" "That's what I can't remember. I've been racking my brain. I i't recall a soul." That, at least, was true. I was the only one from training platoon to be sent there. "But you yourself did no real work in the place?" "No, sir. None." "All right. Let's call it a night." "Yessir." "Make those calls to Washington in the morning." "Done." I started to leave. He held up a hand. "Hubbard, at present, I •scribe to the MI6 hypothesis. But I still am going to take a hard ik at you. Because this is the first occasion on which you've told me t you expended a little shoe leather in the Snake Pit." "I'm sorry about that, sir. Will you believe me. It was so minor, ever thought about it." "Well, don't stand there looking like Judas Iscariot. You've irked at your job for me. I don't turn on people for too little. Only ien they flunk a he-detector test." "Yessir." I got out of the room without rattling the knob. My inclination look for Ingrid had disappeared. It was Harlot I needed. There was choice now but to get myself over to the Department of Defense, i use the secure phone. For the first time since taking a course at : Farm, I employed evasive tactics, riding a taxicab from GIBLETS to Charlottenburg where I got out and walked for half a mile ore doubling back on my route in another taxi, which took me thin a few blocks of Defense. It was, I discovered, impossible to be tain that one was not being followed. An empty street took on dows, a taxi ride at night was dazzled by the reappearance of certain k. I made the determination that I was 80-percent certain I had not i followed, even if my emotional state was ready to put it at even ley. Harlot, whom I had the luck to reach with no delay, was home pinner. He listened to my account, paying particular attention to pisode with Butler and Wolfgang, then to my conversation with 310 NORMAN MAILER Crane, and my distorted confession to Bill Harvey about the Pit. I considered telling him about Ingrid as well since it was u: she would not occasionally have information to sell, but I chc to. First things first. "All right," he said when I was done, "Harvey is obviously attention to the largest and smallest scenarios, MI6 and yoi boy." The "dear boy" brought its own metallic hum to the phone. "Yes," I said, "I've come to that conclusion, too." Myvoic have been croaking its way through the Scrambler-Descramb] a squall of gulls. "I'm going," said Harlot, "to tip the scales in favor of MI6. a friend there. He'll come through for me. Harvey will be p toward our British compeers for the next couple of days." "What will happen when he can't find out who it is?" "He'll come back to you." "Yessir." "I'll tap into Bridge-Archive, meanwhile," said Harlot obtain a few cryptonyms you can claim to have picked up fn Bypass. Just a few harmless Snake Pit drones. We'll choose typ< are more or less your contemporaries, so as to keep Harvey con you're taking care of his assignment. Do you, by the way, hap know anyone's cryptonym?" "I do," I said, "but is that fair? A friend's career could be inj "It's never going to get to that. I have just made a decisid are in this bouillabaisse because of me. Since I have legitimate pany business in Berlin, with Mr. Harvey no less, I'm coming I did not know whether to take this news as a promise of or the guarantee that my fortune had just slipped a little forth peril. "For the nonce," he said, "do get Mrs. Harvey to talk abfj husband's decision to move from FBI to CIA." "She wasn't married to him then," I said. "I certainly know that. I just want to obtain a notion of I Bill Harvey told her. Try to keep the lady close to the detaia a sneaky on your person." v "I don't know if I could feel right about that," I said|| treated me well." HARLOT'S GHOST 311 "You sound like the little sister I never had," said Harlot. "Hugh, with all due respect, and I respect you ..." "Harry, you're in a hard game. As of this moment, I would hope u cease whimpering. Your conscience led you to this profession. 5W you are discovering that your profession will oblige your con- ence to see itself all too often as deplorably used, contemptible, ocious, mephitic." "Mephitic?" "Pestilential. I would not be in the least surprised if iron, assuming in has sentiments, feels much the same way when it is obliged to nsign its sulphur to the furnace in the course of being annealed." "I'll do it," I said. I did not know if it was a matter of steeling my nscience, or whether I was privately pleased by the assignment. mething new seemed to be stirring. "Get the details," said Harlot. "The more details, the better." "She's a closemouthed woman." "Yes, but she does love her husband. Or so, at least, you tell me. 'ery injustice visited on him, therefore, must be packed into her anory. Once the closemouthed start to speak, you can find yourself i the face end of a cataract. Since J. Edgar Buddha seems to have en his usual gracious self in the manner he told Bill Harvey to get it, do work on her sense of outrage." "Please give my best to Kittredge," I said. "Of course." "Hugh?" , "Yes?" > "What if I were to locate Wolfgang? Assuming that the cellar-bar low was Wolfgang." "Good point, Harry. Prepare the ground. I may want to look him er myself." >•• "When will you be here?" ? "Figure on a week at the outside." As we hung up, it occurred to me that the situation could come ssue in much less time. No matter. I was too excited to sleep. Instead, I went in search of rid, but it was her night off, and Die Hintertiir was empty. I sat at ^bar and flirted with Maria who, in turn, teased me about Ingrid. had obviously received her report. • "That's all right," I said, "I'd rather be with you." 312 NORMAN MAILER Maria returned her mysterious smile. I do not know what ai her, but two days later, along with everything else, I came dowi a dose ofgonorrhea. 10 at THE MILITARY INFIRMARY WHERE I WENT FOR TREATMENT, Dix Buder. It was the first time I had encountered him since oui on the town, and he offered a quick guide to sexual etiquett reference was made to the episode in the safe house. For socia poses, it did not exist. Instead, he offered a joke about our n ailment, and I was relieved that he took it lightly. I didn't. hesitated to come to an American infirmary because my name i be recorded. On the other hand, our regulations carried serid merits for failure to report a venereal disease. Ostensibly, no nti of this visit would go into my 201, but I was dubious. If I did choose the official route, it was due to the m orientation given Junior Officers on reaching Berlin. We were was inadvisable to seek out a West Berlin doctor since one never when such a person might not also be an East German agent. Th kept an up-to-date list of State Department and Agency pers< Since local doctors had to report all venereal diseases to West; health authorities, and since such files might as well be regan open to the East German police, your case could end in the ha: the SSD. They could blackmail you because of the failure to ; your infection to the Agency facility in the first place. That pro1 be one convincing argument. All the same, it violated a sense of privacy to introduce CIA infected member. I wanted to be alone in all my shame and pr was, despite, all, a manly disease!) and I did not wish to ofB particulars of my night. At the infirmary, moreover, I was as! name the woman who had passed it on to me. "I don't knd replied. "There've been a few." $ "List them." I a I delivered a few names--an imaginary EUi, Rathe, QH Regina, Marlene--and located them in different bars. ? "Better slow down with your sex life," said the medic. "You're only young once." I H A R L HARLOT'S GHOST 313 I "You come back venereal again, and it goes on your 201. Second ie puts the tag in the file." "Check." I was tired of saying "Check." Dix Butler's presence reassured ' He had come to the infirmary, too, and knew presumably how act in this sort of matter. "Did you ever mention to Bill Harvey that I was at the Snake :?" I asked as we were sitting in the waiting room. ""I did." "When?" "Three, four days ago. Uncle Bill phoned to ask me." "You know, I was only over at the Snake Pit to establish cover." "Is that a fact? What were you covering?" "You won't repeat it?" I said. ) "Not unless there's another inquiry. I'll tell you, boy, I take my d from Uncle Bill. He picked me for this slot over a bagful of other inees." "Well, I was over at Technical Services." "With Rosen?" i "I never saw Rosen." "I keep getting letters from Rosen. Long as manuscripts. He goes . about his work. It's certifiably insane. He spent time watching a lore in San Francisco through a one-way mirror. She had to slip Ferent drugs into Johns' drinks to see which drops would get the pe to blab the most." "Would you let me look at Rosen's letters?" "If he's fool enough to put it in writing, why can't I show it to u?" 1 And, presumably, since I was fool enough to tell Dix about my > at Technical Services, he would see no reason not to repeat it to Bvey. I felt as if I had brought off a nice pocket-sized maneuver. ' I was encountering a few changes in myself. If I had fallen from "or with King Bill, I did not feel weak so much as the possessor of eculiar kind of strength. I do not know if the annealing of my science from iron to steel was already well begun, but I felt not ke a soldier who has trained with considerable trepidation for a r> is now in combat, and finds it, to his surprise, a superior life. One Id be dead in a day, or in an hour, but one's worries, at least, were e. One's senses were alive. Small relationships took on meaning. ^ght never see Ingrid again, but the urge to protect her was 314 NORMAN MAILER instinctive. Combat, I was discovering, left me close to laughti full of sorrow for the brevity of my life (in this case, my care' I was feeling cool. Harvey had established my new status on the morning af last nocturnal telephone conversation with Hugh Montague. ' he told me, "I'm putting a crimp in your access." "Yessir." "Can't say how long this will ride. I hope it's resolved There is one piece of luck for you, anyway." "Sir?" "Crane was on the line at eight this morning. He spent I two days arguing with MI6. At first they gave no return. The assured him there was not one drop of onion juice on the floor! Six hours later, 6:00 a.m., London time, they woke him up phone call to his home. 'Hold off,' they told him, 'it's compi Can't say more.' " "So SM/ONION is in MI6," I said. At a minimum, Hari made one crucial phone call. "Looks like it, don't it?" Harvey said. "Well, sir, I'll hang out in chancery as long as you want but I can't see—" "Kid, hold your water." "Mr. Harvey, if there's nothing more forthcoming from M there probably won't be, I could be out on a limb for keep might as well saw it off now." "Don't estimate what I can and cannot determine." I had an inspiration. "May I advance a guess?" "You probably won't get an answer." "You're going to put MI5 onto MI6." Of course. He know any number of people in MIS from his days in the FB "I may take a reading or two," he confessed. I was amazed his new suspicions, that he would tell me this much, and yet.l if I understood him. He liked me. I had been a good pupil. Hi forever asking me to expatiate, the truth was that he did a g6^ of it himself. ;l| By late afternoon. Harlot moved again. A cable came to B Washington listing the names of three people who worked Snake Pit. Their cryptonyms accompanied them. It decoded as ITY EQUALS SMITH, RUNDOWN EQUALS ROWNTREE, EASTER I O'NEILL. KU/CHOIR. S j HARLOT'SGHOST315 , KU/CHOIR was one of my old Washington roommates, Ed rordon. I was appalled at the open nature of Harlot's message and the ffectiveness of the move. Ed Gordon, if queried, would of course eny that he had sent the cable, but, indeed, who would believe him? imposing he had satisfied my request for a few Bypass cryptonyms, 3iild he admit it? Poor Ed Gordon. I had never liked him much. He ras half-bald at twenty-eight, had a deep blue shadow from a heavy card , shaved twice a day, and had spent a lot of time at Villanova ebating whether to apply to CIA or FBI. He was also pedantic and ;fused to lose an argument. Poor Ed Gordon. His testicles could be »st in this argument. Yes, I felt as hard-nosed as a combat veteran. Jid good. I had food to feed King Bill before concluding work for ie day. He looked over the three cryptonyms, and grunted. "How id this stuff reach you?" he asked. "Sir, you don't want to know." "Maybe I don't." He handed them back. "Can you get any lore?" he asked. "Not from my primary source." "Try for a secondary. My Washington people can eyeball a couple f these boys after we vet their files. But since the real actor looks to e over at MI6, it will have to wait. I'm taking off tonight to see a man l southern Germany." I had the notion that Bill Harvey was going to Pullach, just below lunich, where General Gehlen kept the BND Headquarters. "You won't be airborne for long," I said. He shook his head. "I'm driving. It can be done at night under we hours, checkpoints and all, but you have to keep to 150, 160 ilometers most of the way. The martinis don't hurt. A little sleep, and 31 be ready for my man in the dawn." "I wish I could go with you," I blurted out; "Kid, let's not get delirious." "Who do you have for my replacement?" p "There's one backup I always count on." | "C.G.?" » "She's coming along." He made a point of shaking hands with f£- "See you in a couple of days. Have some product for me." 1 "Mr. Harvey?" "Yessir?" "Please don't tell C.G. that I'm persona non grata." "Kid, you're a fucking prize," he said. 316 NORMAN MAILER I left him at his desk under the thermite bombs. They wen as familiar to me as the expressions of lugubrious relatives. I had not, however, been back at my apartment for more I few minutes when the phone rang. It was Harvey. "Pack a baj said. "You're coming." I started to thank him, but he cut me down. "Hell, no," h< "it's not me. It's the fellow I'm going to visit. He requested bring you along. Says he met you in Washington." "He did?" Now I couldn't conceive of who it was. Might Harlot? Had he arrived and gone directly to BND Headquarters he, in effect, declaring our liaison? Harvey's next speech, how took this supposition away. "How you met him is more than I can figure out," he said. Kraut don't get to Washington that often." 11 we DIDN'T LEAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT. there LOOKED TO BE DIFFICI in refueling. Harvey did not wish to use any of the U.S. Milita stations on the route since some--particularly at night--were im by civilian Germans, nor did he take to the idea of an imprompti at some army base where we'd have to wake up one or another S Sergeant to get the key to the storage tank. "Last time, I lost an that way," he grumbled. "The goddamn key was in the Serg pants, hanging on a hook in a whorehouse." "Bill, must you make a history out of everything?" asked The problem was that we couldn't fit enough five-gallon jer into the trunk of the Cadillac, and Harvey wouldn't strap any i outside of the car. "A sniper could hit us with an explosive bi "Bill, why don't we go by airplane?" she asked. . <1 "We have a couple of German mechanics at the air base. fl easy to sabotage a plane. I ought to know." | Maintenance welded a bulletproof auxiliary tank into theE and with two hours lost to that, and an hour waiting ou) last-minute papers, we took off with Mr. Harvey riding sN while C.G. and I were in the rear. ^ It was, as he had promised, a fast-moving trip. The checkpur-legged split. Dead inside a minute. All behind glass." "'I'd like to get to the people who killed the dog," said C.G. One poor dog less, okay," said Harvey, "but one image seared 318 NORMAN MAILER on our retina forever. No length the Sovs are not prepared to "The BND enjoys that sort of thing too," C.G. insisted. "Now wait a minute," said Bill Harvey, "you're malignir Herrick Hubbard's friends who invite him down to Pullach f weekend." "Chief, I swear to you, I don't know what it's all about," "Here, take a look at this," he said, passing over a five-by- index card covered front and back with single-spaced typing. '" the way I want my research presented in case I ever drop a comt assignment on you. Skip the heavy history. Just the nuggets. ' things. Like a box in Time magazine." By the illumination of the rear seat light in the Cadillac, 1 REINHARD GEHLEN Now President of BND formerly known as the Org. Hea quarters in Pullach, on the banks of the Ysar, six miles sou of Munich. Originally a small compound of houses, huts, ai bunkers. Built in 1936 to house Rudolf Hess and staff. La( the residence of Martin Bormann. After WWII U.S. Milita Intelligence appropriated it for Gehlen. General establish his combined office and abode in "The White House," large two-story edifice at the center of the original estate. the ground-floor dining room of the White House, w murals are unchanged from Bormann-Hess era. Big-bosom German ladies braiding ears of corn into garlands. Sculptui of young men in gymnastic stances surround the fountain the garden. At present, Pullach has added many modem buildinj 3,000 officers and personnel work there at present. Gehlen is 5'7", nearly bald. Appears slim in earlier phot graphs. Now putting on weight. Often wears dark glass* Has very large ears. Wears noiseless rubber-sole shoes. highly family-oriented. | Cryptonyms: The only one available to us is Dr. Schnei^ No first name available. Gehlen is reputed to wear vari^ wigs when traveling as Dr. Schneider. ' '^ Could this be the man I had met at the canal hoU!J Schneider? The little man with the large ears who had crooril HARLOT'S GHOST 319 arlot's every move on the chessboard? My mind was agog. Now, I iew the meaning of agog. "Gehlen's boys used to have a swan," said Harvey, "who was lined to swim toward an ultrasonic signal. Under its wings, the Org wed a couple of waterproof plastic pouches. The swan would glide ross Glienicker Lake from Potsdam to West Berlin, carrying papers the pouch, take on new instructions, and sail back under an East erman bridge where the Russian sentries used to toss it pieces of •ead. That's what I call a courier." "Love the story," said C.G. "On the other hand," said her husband, "in the old days when ehlen's Org was expanding every month, the Krauts suffered from ironic lack of funds. Gehlen used to cry big tears to us. He'd claim ;'d given up all that U.S. Military lucre to sign a contract with CIA, id now we weren't forking over the gold fast enough to suit him. ^ell, in fact, we were paying out a fortune, but it wasn't enough. reedy bastard. Not to enrich himself, you understand, but to build 3 the Org. So, Gehlen got word out to his General Agencies." "What are they?" I asked. "About the equivalent of our Stations, only situated in every tajor German city. 'Enrich yourselves,' Gehlen told the General gencies, and then he would get on the phone with some of his old lends in the U.S. Army. When it comes to a study of American )rruption, go back to the chicken and the egg. Which came first? he U.S. Army or the U.S. Mafia? Anyway, Gehlen and our boys >ok up this fiduciary maneuver. The General Agencies hand over a )uple of petty SSD agents to the American Military PoUce who iherwise wouldn't know an enemy spy if he was confessing. Now, i return for feeding our boys with a few doormen on the Soviet tyroll, the MPs pay back the local General Agency with truckloads ("American cigarettes. The Org promptly sells these cigarettes on the iack market to get the funds to meet their Friday payroll. Then, as ion as the Org has walked off with the cash, the MPs confiscate the Uckload and return the cigarettes to the Org, who promptly sell icm again to other black marketeers. The same ten thousand cartons [Camels get resold five or six times. That, my friend, was in the late pries, before I got here. The good old days." "Tell the story about General Gehlen and Mr. Dulles," said C.G. Yeah." He grunted and was silent. I could feel him resisting the 320 NORMAN MAILER impulse to tell me one more tale. Had he just remembered that in disfavor? "Tell it," repeated C.G. ''All right," he said. "Did you ever hear of Major General 1 Trudeau?" "No, sir." "Trudeau was the head of U.S. Army Intelligence a cou years ago. When Chancellor Adenauer visited Washington in Trudeau managed to get a word with him. He unloaded on G Trudeau had the moxie to tell Adenauer that the CIA should i supporting a West German organization run by an ex-Nazi. Sh< hit the world press, that could be very bad for all concerned. j{ Adenauer. He's no lover of Nazis, he tells Trudeau, but in Gi politics, you can't make a three-egg omelette without one rotten. One ofAdenauer's people now passes this conversation Gehlen who thereupon complains to Alien Dulles. Our Directoi it over to the White House and informs President Eisenhowe General Trudeau is kicking American interests in the chops. " 'I hear,' Eisenhower tells Dulles, 'that this Gehlen ofyoi nasty job.' " 'Mr. President, there are no archbishops in espionage, Alien. 'Gehlen may be a rascal, but I don't have to invite him club.' "Well, a battle royal ensued. The Secretary of Defense ai Joint Chiefs of Staff were on Trudeau's side. Yet, Alien won, Foster Dulles always gets the last word into the President's ear. deau was sent out to some fly-boy command in the Far East. I it put a scare into Gehlen, however. He must have conclude German money was safer than American. A year later, he cow the Adenauer people to put the Org into German service. Nc have the BND. End of tale. Enough of enriching your mind. T< kid, what do you know about our pal?" I had been waiting for the question through each of these] dotes. He had a habit of telling a good story with all the col force of a lion sitting on his paws. Then--swipe!--you were; the meal. 'i "I don't know much about the man at all," I said, but throttle ensuing silence was obliged to add, "I'll give you any details I" "Yes," said Harvey. "Details." I?! "I met him at the house of a friend of my father's. He wai HARLOT'S GHOST 321 >r. Schneider. I hardly talked to him. He played chess with the host. m amazed that he remembered me." "Who was the host?" "Hugh Montague." "Is Montague a good friend of your father's?" "I don't know how friendly they really are." "But friendly enough to invite you to dinner?" "Yessir." "What did Montague talk to Schneider about?" "Not much. Schneider presented himself as a concert pianist. He layed one recital, he claimed, for Wilhelm Pieck, the East German resident. He said Pieck was a barbarian with low tastes. He liked to ;ave his official residence in the castle--I don't recall the name." "Schloss Niederschon-something?" "Yes." "Good." "Pieck would leave the official Schloss and go to a room in the uvants' quarters where he would take off his shoes, put on slippers nd old workingmen's clothes, and cook his evening meal. Old cab- age soup, cold noodles, pudding for dessert. He'd eat it all off the une tin plate, the pudding mixed up with the noodles. I remember rendering how Dr. Schneider could learn all this by playing an ifficial concert for Wilhelm Pieck." "What else did Montague and Gehlen talk about?" . "Chess." "By the way, here's a verified photograph of Gehlen." He passed ae a photostat of a snapshot. "Just to make certain that Schneider quals our man." ; "He was wearing a white wig that night, but, yes, I would make .positive identification." ' "One hundred percent?" e "I'll go one hundred." | "Good. Gehlen and Montague talked about chess in your pres- ce. Nothing else?" "I spent most of the evening talking to Mrs. Montague." "Kittredge?" "Yessir." "What about?" "Chitchat." "Expatiate." 322 NORMAN MAILER "Sir, if I may say, I feel more comfortable with Mrs. Mon than with her husband. We talk about everything under the < think we were laughing together in the kitchen because of the 1 noises Dr. Schneider, I mean. General Gehlen, was making wh played chess." "How long have you known Montague?" "I met him at his wedding to Kittredge. She was close t family, you see. Her father bought my family's summer house. then, I've seen Mr. Montague socially once or twice." "What do you think of him?" "An iceberg. Nine-tenths under." "Oh, isn't that true," said C.G. "Well, we now," said Bill Harvey, "have a general pictur fails to explain why Gehlen asked me to bring you along to Pull "Kittredge and I are third cousins," I said. "If she mendonet a family relationship to Gehlen, he may wish to reciprocate the tesy. Your briefing says he's very family-oriented." "Are you saying Kittredge requested that he invite you?" "No, Chief. Just that Gehlen must know who's working fo at GIBLETS." "On what basis do you come to that conclusion?" "It's my impression that everybody knows everything in Be "Son of a bitch, yes." For whatever reason, that caused him to cease speaking. H the ability to end a conversation as effectively as if he had turni a light. We drove in silence while he drank alone from the j martinis. Flatlands gave way to rolling country but the hig curved little and there was no traffic. At Braunschweig we Ie Autobahn and drove along two-lane roads, the driver reducil speed to ninety miles an hour on the straight, seventy throug curves, and down to sixty through each village we traversed. Q rhea and fast car trips, I was discovering, did not accommodaCfe other. Yet my desire to urinate was overcome by my lately ao knowledge of the price. Near Einbach we picked up the All again and went along at one hundred and twenty miles an h< Bad Hersfeld, the back roads began once more, and an endlei of turns in hill and forest and village took us to Wiirzburg ^ better road went on to Niimberg and the beginning of the last of Autobahn to Munich. There, at an all-night gas station, 4:3( HARLOT'S GHOST 323 morning, Bill Harvey spoke again. "I need a pit stop," he said. We parked in the shadow behind the gas station. "Check out the men's room and the ladies' room, Sam," he told the driver. When Sam came back, and nodded, Harvey got out and motioned to me. "How about you?" he asked C.G. "Long trips never bother me," she said. He grunted. His breath came across the night air on a riser of gin. "Come, kid," he said heavily, "just you and me and the shit-house walls." He picked up his attache case and handed it to me. Although Sam had presumably scouted the premises, Harvey withdrew one of his guns from the shoulder holster, turned the knob on the bathroom door and threw it ajar with one smooth pass, sighted I in from that angle, crossed the open door space too quickly to be hit , by any but the fastest trigger, sighted from the reverse angle, and (satisfied, now entered, wheeled, squatted to scan the floor, threw iopen the stall doors, then smiled. "Sam is good at checkout, but I'm .better." He did not settle, however. He carefully lifted the cover on each water tank, peered into the inside, took a coiled wire from his pocket, ran it a foot up the flush tunnel of each bowl, and finally let his breath. "I have one bad dream," he said as he washed off the ;. "I'm trapped in the men's room when a satchel bag full of demo i off." "That's a bad dream." He burped, unzipped his fly, turned his back to me and unleashed I'urination worthy of a draft horse. I took the next stall, waited like i dutiful inferior for my own laggard waters to enter their small sound : his heavy one, and did my best not to wince as a hot wire went t urethral passage in compensation for the pus-laden stream out. I do not think the paucity of sound accompanying the [ ejected was lost on him. ^-id," he said, "your story is weak." t's weak because it's true." I almost cried out from the pain of urination. My member was swollen abominably. "That's one hell of an instrument you have there," he said over shoulder. [ did not explain why it was twice its normal size. 'Speak softly and carry a big stick," he said. Theodore Roosevelt," I replied. "I believe that was his foreign 324 NORMAN MAILER "I happen to have a little dick," said Harvey. "Luck ofthi But, boy, there were years when I knew what to do with it. Gu little dicks try harder." "I've heard about your rep, sir." "My rep, hell. I was merely a cunt-lapper of the most di; sort." But before I had time to be prodigiously embarrassed 1 he said, "It's your reputation I want to know about. Did you ev Kittredge?" "Yessir," I said, lying right through the pain ofwirethil He lifted his free hand and clapped me on the back. "I'm he said. "I hope you gave it to her good. Was she a cockeyed ^ in bed?" "Fabulous," I muttered. My gonorrhea served me an und lightning bolt. "I might have had a whack at her myself if I hadn't giver all that. Loyalty to C.G. mit lots of hard work--that's h< operation runs these days. So, I'm glad you laid the wood to he I hate that son of a bitch Montague." I was discovering the secret of an escape route. You four making the effort to escape. "I hate him too," I said. To m added, "Forgive me, Hugh." I did not, however, feel that disloyalty. Harlot, after all, had encouraged me to find my ow through the crux. "Have you talked to Kittredge lately?" Harvey asked. "Yes." "When?" "A few days ago. After you lost confidence in me. I guess to complain about my troubles." "That may be forgivable." He gave a last thwack to his pei it back in his pants, even as I was concluding my small tortu said, "Do you think she could have been the one to call Gd "It might be," I said. "Dr. Schneider certainly acted like crazy about her." '[ Harvey yawped suddenly. That is to say, he belched 3 Under the dangling light bulb, his skin had gone. pale, and he| of perspiration. I think it was an honest spasm of his mucM system. He went on speaking, however, as if physical discomfit an element of the given, like heavy air in a railroad coach. He ( "If she called him, it makes sense. Gehlen would probably do a for her. Yes, I can live with this one." Now, he seized me by t HARLOT'S GHOST 325 nd dug each one of his stubby fingers, strong as iron bolts, into my riceps. "Are you loyal to Gehlen?" he asked. "I don't like the fellow," I said. "Not from what I saw. I assume fl get to know him well, I will like him even less." "And me? Are you loyal to me?" "Chief, I'm ready to take a bullet for you." It was true. I was also ready to die for Harlot, and for Kittredge. \nd for my father, conceivably. I was ready to die. The thought of acrificing myself was still as large an emotion as I could find. The )roctor in my personality, however, that young clean of probity in- tailed by the canons of St. Matthew's, was horrified at how easily I ;ould succumb to large acts of'lying, and outrageous expressions of ;xcessive emotion. "Kid, I believe you," he said. "I'm going to use you. I need stuff mi Gehlen." "Yessir. Whatever I can do." He bent over, his breathing heavy, and opened the attache case. 'Take off your shirt," he said. Before I had time to question his purpose, he removed a small plastic tape recorder. "This is the best sneaky we've got," he said. "Here, let me tape t on." In two minutes, his fingers fast and deft, he taped the recorder to he small of my back. Then he installed a switch through a small hole ie slit in my pocket and ran a wire through a buttonhole in my shirt :o which was attached a small white button which was, I realized, a Microphone. He handed me an extra tape. "You've got a total of two lours, one hour each tape. Get everything Gehlen says once we're here." "Yours, Chief." "Now leave me alone. I got to throw up. It's nothing personal. ^omit once a day, you keep the doctor away. But leave me alone for hat. Tell C.G. I'll be back in ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. I got to take iy time with this. Oh, Jesus," he groaned as I went out the door, and iheard the first caterwaulings come up from his belly. Back at the car, Sam was overseeing the transfer of gas from the j?serve tank to the main, and C.G. was alone in the rear seat. "How long did he say?" asked Sam. "Ten minutes." "It'll be twenty." Sam looked at his watch. "Every time we go 326 NORMAN MAILER down to Pullach he wants to break the record, but we're going ( tonight. It's a shame. No ice. No fog. No delays for constructic detours. He's going to ask why we didn't cut any minutes offc time. I can't say it's 'cause he fucks around in the pit stop." That was the longest speech I ever heard from Sam. "Well," I said, "it's a crazy night." "Yeah," said Sam, "tell it to the Marines." He strolled over door of the men's room and stood guard outside. Back in the rear seat with C.G., it occurred to me that iflu a current in human affairs, one had to ride on its tide. My han< into my pocket to activate the switch to the sneaky. "Is Bill all right?" she asked. "He will be in a few minutes," I said. "If people knew how hard he worked, they would undersfc eccentricities," she told me. I wanted to warn her not to utter a word; I was eager to m late every speech she offered. Bright was the inner light of t martini on my moral horizon. "I guess he's never been understood well enough," I said "Bill has so many gifts. It's just that the Almighty never pn him with the simple talent not to make needless enemies." "I suppose he's taken on his share," I said. "You may well believe that." "Is it true," I began. "No," I said, "I won't ask." "You can. I do trust you." "I'm going to ask it then," I said. "I'll answer if I can." "Is it true thatJ. Edgar Hoover did not like your husban "I would say Mr. Hoover didn't treat him very fairly." "Yet Bill Harvey worked hard for the FBI." When she c reply, I added, "I know he did." i Her silence was only to control her indignation. "If it hadri for Bill babysitting Elizabeth Bentley all those years," C.G. sai would never have heard ofAlger Hiss and Whittaker Chami Harry Dexter White, and the Rosenbergs. The whole slew. S a lot to do with exposing that gang. That, however, did not W< Hoover up toward him. J. Edgar Hoover likes to let his bes( know who is the boss. His secretary. Miss Gandy, who is cetft more than her master's voice, is perfectly capable of sending of Censure to a top operator if he happens to come into the D HARLOT'S GHOST 327 ffice with one spot of dust on his shoes. This, mind you, after ten ys out in the field." "Did that ever happen to Mr. Harvey?" "No, but it did to two of his friends. With Bill it was worse. human, I would characterize it. The Company doesn't ever treat its •opie the way the Bureau did." "Did Mr. Hoover actually fire Mr. Harvey?" "No, Bill could not have been fired. He was too well regarded. j. Hoover wanted to put him in purdah, however, and Bill was too oud. So, he resigned." "I don't believe I've ever heard the story properly." "Well, you have to understand that Bill was sort of depressed in ose days." "About when was this?" "The summer of 1947. You see. Bill had put in an immense nount of work trying to penetrate the Bentley network, but no •amatic success, so to speak. It would all come out later and Joe IcCarthy would get the credit, but in the meantime, Bill was burning e candle at both ends. Which I attribute to his deep unhappiness ith his wife Libby. They married awfully young. Bill, you see, was pounds son of the most esteemed attorney in Danville, Indiana, and Libby as the daughter of the biggest lawyer in Flemingsburg, Kentucky. I y>w only what Bill tells me, but that marriage, according to him, did mtribute to his woes." "Yes," I said. I was beginning to appreciate Montague's remark iat closemouthed individuals, once under way, do not stop talking. "Bill's critical troubles with Mr. Hoover go right back to one 'ecific night in July 1947. Bill went to a stag party out in Virginia ith a few FBI friends and had to drive back after midnight in a heavy instorm. He slowed down for a large puddle in Rock Creek Park, id a vehicle passing in the other direction was inconsiderate enough i race by. Bill's car was deluged with so much water that his motor nked out. He did manage to coast to the curb, but there was a foot Water all around him, and he was exhausted, poor man. So he fell cep at the wheel. It was his first good sleep in weeks. He didn't frke till 10:00 a.m. And no police car bothered him either. Why •uld they? He was parked properly, and the puddle had receded. ice his car was able to start, he just drove home to Libby. But it was late. Libby had already phoned FBI headquarters to tell them that "al Agent William K. Harvey was missing. She was hysterical 328 NORMAN MAILER enough, or mean enough, or scared enough—I won't judge I hint at suicide. 'Bill has been so despondent,' she told the Bun course, that went right onto the record. When Bill phoned in later to tell the Bureau that he was at home, intact, the Bureau s you're in trouble. You see, the FBI expects an agent to be rea If you're not where they can find you, you're supposed to call ii two hours. Bill had been out of touch for nine and a half hours which period the Bureau had mistakenly supposed he could I tacted at home. That was a big point against him. Then there i potential embarrassment. What if a police car had stopped an< tioned Bill while he was asleep? What if he had been arreste Hoover sent down the worst memo: Serious reexamination of Agent Harvey's occupational readiness is advisable in the 1 wife's deputation that Special Agent Harvey has been more despondent for considerable periods. "Bill dared to carry the fight right back upstairs. These exact words he wrote to the FBI inquiry: 'My worry is the worry that would come to anyone who has dealt as intimately •w Communist problem as I have since 1945.' The aide fro; Hoover's office who was conducting the investigation actually memo up to Mr. Hoover saying that Bill had always been ( rating of Excellent, and no administrative action should be tak< Hoover just told the aide to write another memo. This on 'Special Agent William K. Harvey is to be transferred to India on general assignment.' " "Cruel," I said. "It broke Bill's heart. If the Agency hadn't been there to a to come over, I think he might have been truly despondent. At this moment, Mr. Harvey returned with Sam, got in t and we started out again. I clicked off the sneaky. 12 . | i bill harvey FELL ASLEEP ON THE nurnberg-munich auhj and was so heavy-eyed in the dawn that C.G. insisted on chetl at a hotel, rather than meeting General Gehlen for early brealj the elevator. Chief grimaced. "Let's grab thirty minutes ofst and a shower." J HARLOT'S GHOST 329 The thirty minutes became one hundred and thirty minutes, then an hour more. Not until noon did Harvey and I get to Gehlen's office. The General did not look a good deal like my recollection of Dr. Schneider. The absence of the white wig showed a high forehead, and his mustache was gone. He looked no more than fifty years old. His lips were well chiseled, as were his long nose, his nostrils, his small chin. His thin hair was combed straight back. Only his ears remained as large as I remembered, and continued to give him much resemblance to a bat. But I had no time to wonder why General Gehlen had chosen to be in disguise at the canal house. He pointed at me with a quick finger, and said, "Delighted to meet again." I noticed that his pale blue eyes were strikingly different. The left was aloof; the right eye belonged to a fanatic. I had not noticed that much before. "Gentlemen," said Gehlen, "first things first. Is your young man approved for relevant levels of clearance?" "You invited him, didn't you?" said Harvey. "To dinner, perhaps, to reciprocate for a fine dinner, yes, but not to dine out on what I say here." "He stays," said Harvey. I did not know if Chief's loyalty was to me, or to the sneaky. "So be it," said Gehlen. "He will remain unless you decide it is unwise, or I deem our colloquy concluded." "Yes," said Harvey, "we take it step by step." "Have a smoke," said Gehlen. He took out a pack of Camels, extracted three cigarettes, and laid them on the desk in front of Harvey. "Dear Bill," he asked, "which ^one of these coffin nails might distinguish itself to you?" Harvey examined the offering. "Can't tell without the lab," he lid. "Why don't you," suggested Gehlen, "light the one on the left? we full puffs. Then, put it out." "It's your toy. You take it through the hurdles." "Well, if you are not in the frame of mind to pick up on a sporting hance, I must." The General lit his prize, took the puffs, put it out, "d handed the long stub over. ; Harvey stripped the cigarette paper carefully. On the inside was .message. Chief read it, nodded casually, as if not much impressed, pd handed it over to me. A short, neatly printed communication was visible: 330 NORMAN MAILER base chief Berlin to pullach to discuss security of catheter "Good guess," said Harvey, "but that is not why I am her "All the same, are we able to discuss CATHETER?" He lo at me. Harvey waved a hand in my direction. "Hubbard is cleare( "Then sooner or later you will tell me the motive for this y "Affirmative." "Let me now, hear what I am doing so unhappily." "Kidding is kidding," said Harvey, "but I want you to get ass off my pillow." Gehlen giggled suddenly. It was a high-pitched giggle y leaped like a trapeze artist from grip to flying grip. "I will rernei that. I must remember that. English is the treasure, a—what do phrase it?—the treasure trove of rude and grossly vulgar remarks are—isn't it so?—bissig." "Biting," I said. "Ah, you speak German?" said the General. "You are o< those rare birds among your countrymen familiar just ein bisschen our foreign tongue." "Don't count on it," said Harvey. "I will not. I will put myself in your hands by limping aloi my lame English. May I hope it is not also halt and blind." "It's practically perfect," said Harvey. "Let's go to backgrou "Yes. Educate me, then I will educate you." "We may even be in the same place." "Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag," said General Gehlen. "Two hearts and one beat," I said hesitatingly after a look Harvey. "Can we agree," said Harvey, "on your losses in East Gen these last six months?" ^ "I think your young man's valiant efforts in German are ct ing, but I am not prepared to discuss material relevant to BN© 1 he is among us." "What," asked Harvey, "do you think we talk about in B I could not remember Chief Harvey discussing the BNI me, but Gehlen shrugged, as if that must be an undeniable ifdt able fact. "All right," he said, "we have had our losses. May 11 HARLOT'S GHOST 331 )U? Before I and my Org entered the picture, 90 percent of all merican intelligence concerning the Soviets proved false." "Your statistic goes back to 1947. We're in 1956. In the last year, )ur Eastern networks have been devastated." "Such ravages are more apparent," said Gehlen, "than actual. The :uation in Berlin tends to misguide one's estimate. Admittedly, Her- i shows interpenetration between BND and SSD. I would have to am you myself if you did not warn me. The mixture of information id disinformation could approach the chaotic unless"--he held up ie fine finger--"unless one possesses my foundation in the tradition .'interpretation." "You know how to read what you get and I don't?" "No, sir. I am saying that Berlin is a study in the use and abuse .'counterespionage. It is an evil city when there are more double ,'ents than agents. Double espionage is equal in difficulty, I always y, to Kubismus. Which planes push? Which ones pull?" "Cubism," I said. "Yes," said Harvey, "I got it." He had a fit of coughing. "It is 3t," he said thickly, "your handling of double agents that bothers ie. We have a little saying in my office: If it calls for an expert to indie one double agent, Gehlen will take on three and triple them." "Triple them. Yes. Yes. I like that. You are a demon with your MMpliments, Mr. Harvey." Again I heard that odd intake of breath, mewhere between moaning and crooning, that Dr. Schneider had chibited once over a chessboard. "It is not your abilities we question," said Harvey, "it is the iddamn situation. You now have a large number of BND operatives i West Germany who have no instruments to play in the East. A large rchestra with no sheet music. So your boys are getting into mis- Uef." '' "Whatever are you saying?" asked Gehlen. "I'm calling it as I see it. In Poland, you've taken a whipping from >e KGB; in Czechoslovakia, you have bogged down; and now the »D has rolled you up in East Germany." Gehlen held up a hand. "Not true. Simply not true. You are inched in gross misapprehensions. That is precisely because you ten with one ear, not two. Take away your CATHETER, and you deaf, blind, and dumb. Since you do not have reliable Intelligence your own in Germany, you contracted with the English to con 332 NORMAN MAILER struct CATHETER. With the English, Mr. Harvey! The Englis are so feeble a presence these days that they cannot even sl Philby on the wrist." "Let's leave the British out of this." "How can you? British Intelligence is a sieve. MI6 mighl well be based in Moscow. It would be more convenient for ev< As for MIS, well, I will sit down with you on one of these day we are absolutely alone and fill you in on their real masters. MI so healthy as they pretend." "Are you? Am J?" "You may be the worst. With your CATHETER! To . entirely upon intelligence received from such an outrageously ( tended venture. To live with a paucity of corroboration fi-oH sources! It is like going into an enemy hospital, lying down c bed, and hoping that the intravenous they pump into you is g not strychnine." "I'm the one who's studying the input," answered Harve' my professional reputation is committed to the validity of thi uct. I testify to the primacy of the conversations we tap into, mine of stuff, Gehlen. You'd love to see it. You'd wallow ii "I should, indeed, have the opportunity. I am the only m; on our side who has the accumulation of experience to interpr is there. My skin starts to crawl when I think of the insights ' obliged to miss because you do not possess the background, ; backup personnel, nor the German patience to put your hindt into a chair and sit there for a year if that is what it takes to c( with the well-balanced answers. All the same, I can think mys the nature of this operation. Boxes and cartons of transcripts fro CATHETER always accumulating because CATHETER new spewing and spitting out tapes. Rooms full of dejected people your Hosiery Mill, yes, your room T-32 in Washington, a] poor people trying to make sense of it. And from that, you pit you please, and choose to ... to sneer, no, to ... to ..." and heS at me, "anschwdrzen. Translate, please." ,i "I don't know," I said. I was in some panic. "Pinch ni( asked, i, "Yes," said Gehlen, "denigrate us. Denigrate us with yd much biased selection of useful-for-you trinkets out of a moul ore. We at the BND are not in the dire straits you paint us> HARLOT'S GHOST 333 agents of a caliber," said Gehlen, "that no one can match. At the Soviet Union desk--" "You mean III-f?" asked Harvey. "I mean right in our III-f, I have one superior soul. At counterespionage, he is outstanding." ; "The fellow you call Fiffi?" "Yes. You know what you know, and I know what I know, so you have heard about Fiffi. You might give your eyeteeth to have Fiffi. He produces for us what others cannot. Here, Harvey, you are the great American in Berlin, you know every secret of the city, but one. You cannot tell me anything dazzling about KGB Headquarters in Karlshorst, can you? There they are, the sanctum sanctorum of the KGB for all of Eastern Europe, right across the line in East Berlin, not twelve kilometers away from you, yet what can you tell me that I cannot learn from an air photograph?" General Gehlen walked over to what looked like a very large rolled-up movie screen on the wall. From his pocket, he took a key, .inserted it with ceremonial precision into a lock on the case enclosing the screen, and pulled down a carefully drawn plan in many colors about eight feet wide by six feet high. "Karlshorst," said Gehlen, "from soup to nuts. My bird Fiffi has acquired his information of this .place feather by feather, straw by straw. He updates it. He adds to idetails. I can, at present, point out for you by name each parking space 'on their lot for each KGB officer. Here," he said, moving his finger with a quiver of pride and much sense of ownership, to another area, "is the lavatory used by General Dimitrov, and this"--he now walked .his fingers over the plan--"is the conference room of the East German Ministry of State Security." p "We," replied Harvey, "obtain transcripts of telephone calls %omg from that room to Moscow. But, proceed! Tell me about the hairs they put their Red asses on," said Harvey. "We, by way of Fiffi and his informants, can give a comprehenive weekly report on the state of SSD and KGB intelligence opera- tons, while you are still packing up mountains of undigested slag and upping them over in cargo planes to the Hosiery Mill. The rapier, t the avalanche, let me remind you, is the appropriate instrument Intelligence." "I believe your Fiffi is the best thing," said Harvey, "since Phineas Bamum." 334 NORMAN MAILER "I believe I understand the reference. It is insulting. Ever in Fiffi's map ofKGB headquarters that we have been able to co rate is exact." "Of course it is," said Harvey. "It's too exact. The K handing it to Fiffi. I can't believe this. You Krauts go craz' shit-holes. Just because you know where General Dimitrov dr< load in the morning, you think you're holding the crown jewel pretended to ponder this. "And your other big act," said Harv< face was getting a good deal of color now. "Washington! Let's g that. You've been sending beaucoup material to Washingtoi your high source, as you term him, in the Central Committee Socialist United Party. I don't believe you command that kind in the highest ranks of the East German Communists." "Dear Mr. Harvey, since you do not have ingress to my fil< certainly cannot demonstrate how my output is fiction." "Your large assumption, buddy. I might just have a songi the BND. Maybe I know what kind of all-out bluff you're run "You have a source in the BND? It is a comedy how sources we can put into focus concerning your show at Berlin "Yes," said Harvey, "I'm sure you know which one i juniors has just gotten a dose from a German fraulein, provid< junior has been idiot enough to go to a private doctor. But n people are clean. My office is sanitized. You do not have the picture." "I ask you to invite your friend Mr. Hubbard to leave us ale a moment." "No, we take it as it comes," said Harvey. "I've already dis this with my aide, and it's shocking. I know you've been Washington that CATHETER can be penetrated." "Of course it can," said Gehlen. "Of course it can. CATHJ is so unstable that even hoi polloi of the lowest sort, the riffc trash of the agent pool in Berlin can pick up items on CATH1 One day, at one of our minor desks in Berlin, who walks in fi< street but one of the lowest Berlin riffraff, a piece of total abomCl He knows something about something, he announces to us,| wants to sell it. My man at the desk in Berlin knew nothini CATHETER that morning, but by evening, once he had I debriefing your piece of filth, he knew too much. My mal running to me in Pullach by the night plane. I had to emphstf solemnity of the classification for him. He is reliable, my man,. HARLOT'S GHOST 335 ,t talk about CATHETER, but what are we to do with your ittom-level agent? He has a history to terrify a psychiatrist." "Let me see if we are talking about the same fellow," said Harvey. the father of this so-called riffraff was a pornographic photographer ho worked for Nazi officials in Berlin?" "Continue as you will." "And the photographer ran into a little trouble?" "Say what you mean." "In 1939, he was put into a mental hospital for murdering several 'the young women he had photographed." "Yes, he is the father of the agent in question." "The agent is young?" "Yes." "Too young to fight in the war?" "Yes." "But not too young to be a Communist, an anarchist, a student volutionary, a possible SSD agent, a homosexual, a cellar-bar per- ;rt, and now he is committed to you and to me." "To you. We wouldn't touch him." "I'll trade with you. We call him Wolfgang. Cryptonym WILD- OAR. What do you call him? Now that he's walked into your Bee?" ^'Actually, his name is Waenker Liidke and the name he gave you, Wolfgang, is too close, in its consonants, to his real name, how herwise? Agents have no sense." "And the cryptonym?" "I am already familiar with the cryptonym WILDBOAR that mi office bestowed on him. So I do not feel obliged to exchange on tis item. You cannot expect me to give something for nothing?" "You didn't complain in time," said Harvey. "A bargain is a Tgain." "So, you have to possess our cryptonym? For part of your stamp Uection? Here--RAKETENWERFER. You like it?" i "Rocket-launcher," I translated. ; "You give your word as a German officer and gentleman that you | telling the truth?" asked Harvey. I Gehlen stood up and clicked his heels. "You honor my sense of nor," he said. ? 'Horseshit," said Harvey. "I happen to know that you flew over Washington with this tale about Wolfgang. You wanted the Na 336 NORMAN MAILER tional Security Council to decide that CATHETER had beer trated. You tried to scourge my backside. I happen, however, to the real story. This so-called riffraff, this Wolfgang, happens to of your best Berlin agents. You had the consummate gall to st( onto one of our people working in CATHETER." "You dare not advance this scenario. It will not hold." "You, General Gehlen, being one of the eighteen Intel officers, American, English, and German, privy to the concep CATHETER . . ." "That was originally. By now, it's one hundred and eighte< hundred and eighteen." "Keep to my point. You, General Gehlen, were in a posi put one of your best penetration agents onto one of my CATH technicians." "How would I know who are your technicians? Have ^ security at all?" "General, now that the BND has messed up in East Ge your Berlin officers have so little to occupy them that they h eye on every last one of my Berlin people. Child's play for point your pervert of an agent at my sorry little faggot of a, cian, get the two of them photographed in the act, then squeeze my sick little fuck-up of a fellow into telling just < about CATHETER so that your top agent, my WILDBOA your RAKETENWERFER, can go into your General Agec fool some deskman there, thereby giving you credibility eno run screaming to Washington with the tainted scenario y tried to palm off on me." "Diabolical slander!" shouted Gehlen. "How dare you mislead the Joint Chiefs and the Nadona rity Council about my operation?" Harvey bellowed. "I must warn you," said Gehlen. "I do not have a high to for being screamed at. Not in the presence of junior assistant "Let me lower my voice," said Harvey. "It seems to me < nitty-gritty right here--" A. "Nitty-gritty?" asked Gehlen. fc "Die Essenz," I said. »| "The essence," said Harvey, "of the matter is that my M technician may be a pervert, but he was also enough of an hc| American to confess to us that Wolfgang was trying to mulct thi out of him. So, Wolfgang didn't get information. Not unless ^ HARLOT'S GHOST 337 m. Here, therefore, are the alternatives. Either you lied to Washing- n in the first place, and CATHETER is secure. Or you primed ^Ifgang with the essence. If that is so, I will bring you up on charges ith your own Chancellory." "My dear sir," said General Gehlen, coming again to his feet, roll are free to get up and give your chair a break! I can assure you. needs it." With that, he pointed to the door. It was the end of the meeting. Back in our limousine, Harvey oke only once. "Mission accomplished," he said. "Gehlen is ared." 13 W WAS LEFT TO DRIVE BACK WITH THE VEHICLE. we RETURNED TO eriin on an Air Force plane and Bill Harvey was as silent as if curfew id been imposed. C.G. sat next to him and held his hand. So deep as his reverie that he soon began to utter .fragments of ideas into the }en air. "Yeah . . . won't work . . . tricky payoff. . . don't add up , . fry Wolfgang's nuts ..." That was the limit of the sounds that ime out of him for the first half hour after takeoff. Then he spoke last to me. "Get that tape off your back." I nod^ded. In the rear of the cabin, I removed the apparatus, and turned to them. So soon as I handed over the tape recorder, how- rer, Harvey raised his protruding bloodshot eyes. "Kid, how many pes did I give you?" : "Two, sir." "Where's the other one?" "In my travel bag." "Get it." "Mr. Harvey, it's in the car with Sam." The bag might be, but the ' of C.G.'s voice describing Mr. Hoover's relations with Mr. ^vey was in my pocket. His telepathic powers must have been going their ruminative 'nd, for he growled, "There isn't anything recorded on the backup I, is there? No incidental remarks?" "No, sir." "Just a good clean empty tape?" "Has to be." 338 NORMAN MAILER "Let's see what you have here." He turned on the beginn the interview, and ran the fast-forward to Gehlen's last speed recording, however, was muffled and offered odd doublings oi nance. Sometimes it sounded like the creak of a rocking chaii "At the Farm, they didn't teach you to sit still when i wearing a sneaky?" "Well, sir, they didn't." "What I hear best is the twitches in the crack of your ass. "Do you want me to do a transcript?" "Is there a typewriter in your apartment?" "Yessir." "I'll drop you off there." "Wouldn't it be easier at the office?" "Yes," he said, "but I'm dropping you at your apartment commenced a careful study of me after this remark. "Hubbard," he said, "do yourself a favor." "Yessir?" . "Don't leave your apartment." I looked at C.G. She merely nodded. None of us spoke f rest of the flight. Nor did he say good-bye when his car left me door. Three hours later he telephoned. "Done the transcript?" he; "Halfway through." "Can you read the voices?" "Eighty-five percent." "Try to do better." "Yessir." "Sam phoned in from Bad Hersfeld. Trip report is routin BND is following him." "Yessir." "I told Sam to inventory your traveling bag." I "Of course, sir." "He found no tape." I was silent. "Provide an explanation." r "Sir, I have none. I must have lost it." | "Stay in your apartment. I'm coming over." 1 "Yessir." ^ As soon as he hung up, I sat down. A fiery twinge passed t the canal of my urethra, sharp as a needle from hell. I had been HARLOT'S GHOST 339 J penicillin in so much quantity that any unpleasant thought was ficient to make me retch. I was in a pit of gloom, exactly one of 5se deep and dripping caverns that the dark shadows ofBerlin streets m to propose as one's final lot. My apartment worsened this mood. iad never spent any time in the place. With the exception of Dix [tier, my other roommates and I were almost wholly dissociated, ce we were invariably off at work, away at play, or asleep in our >arate bedrooms. I knew the scents of their shaving soap in the :hroom better than their voices. After three hours, however, of instructing my way through Harvey's interchanges with Gehlen, ould no longer keep to my seat. I began to explore the apartment d learned more about my roommates in twenty minutes than in two inths. Since I have not stopped to describe them previously, I will t elaborate on them now except to say that there was a unique mbination of neatness and slovenliness present in each of them. One low, a code clerk, Eliot Zeeler, punctilious in appearance, had a lolly slovenly room with stale underclothes mixed up with stale ;ets and blankets in a tangle with shoes; another had all of his ;ss--dried orange peels, sweatshirts, newspapers, unopened mail, ick-ringed coffee cups, laundry cartons, beer bottles, whiskey bots, wine bottles, an old toaster, a discarded golf bag, and a ripped Ister--all carefully piled into a pyramid in one corner of his am--a social light was this fellow, Roger Turner, well turned out every party and function that the social resources of the State partment, the Department of Defense, and the Company could 'er in West Berlin. I used to pass him coming or going in his dinner ket. His bed, however, was made, his windows were spotless hich meant he went over the panes himself), and his room was maculate except for that pyramid of detritus. By contrast, Dix ider's room was as formally kept as a midshipman's quarters. I said myself, "I'm going to write Kittredge a letter about all of this," but inking other brought me back to Harlot, and thus to Harvey, and f own present and intimate mess. No wonder I was studying the ier and disorder of my roommates--I must be looking for a few idelines to my own. Never did the dilapidated and once prosperous tensions of these large rooms with their heavy doors, massive tels, overhanging window-moldings, and high ceilings bother me ^re. The death of ponderous, middle-class Prussian dreams per- ^ated the odor of these color-deadened carpets, these stuffed chairs »h broken arms, the long bier of the living-room sofa with its claw 340 NORMAN MAILER feet, one missing, replaced by a brick. "Couldn't any of us contemplated the commonweal long enough to put up a paint a poster?" I asked myself. Harvey appeared. He had a neat knock. Two quick raps ( door, a pause, two quick raps. He came in with a look for each rooms much like a police dog sniffing through a new abode, tr down on the broken couch, and took a Colt revolver out of 1 shoulder holster. He rubbed his armpit. "It's the wrong holste said. "The regular one for this piece is over at a Kraut shoer Being resewn." "They say you own more handguns than anyone in the pany," I offered. "They can go kiss my royal petunia," he said. He lifted thi from where he had set it beside him on the couch, broke it revolved the cylinder, took out the bullets, looked at each on each one back, closed the breech, pulled back the hammer far ei to turn the cylinder one round over, then eased the hammer b his thumb had slipped, the gun would have gone off. This cere succeeded in lifting me right out of my depression and in adrenaline. "Do you want a drink?" I asked. He belched for reply. "Let's see the Gehlen transcript." H< a flask from his breast pocket, nipped it, offered me none, and back in his jacket. With a pen that wrote in red ink, he correct errors I had made. "For conversation like this," he said, "I have recall." "It's a faculty," I offered. "You did a decent job." "I'm glad." "All the same, you are marooned in dogshit." "Chief, I really don't understand. Does this have to dc SM/ONION?" "Your nifty little scenario does not seem to be holding u MIS man in London thinks Crane was offered a carrot by M started chewing on it." He belched again and took another n^ his flask. "You dumb stupid son of a bitch," he said, "how di get into all this?" t| "Chief, bring me back on course. I can't follow." >| "You are insulting my intelligence. That's worse than d| disloyalty. Have a little respect." | "I do. I have a lot." | HARLOT'S GHOST 341 "Certain games cannot be tried on me. Know what you need for ; profession?" "No, sir." "An understanding of light and shadow. When the light shifts, the dow had better conform. I kept shifting the lights on Gehlen and shadow didn't move properly. Almost, but not right." "Will you explain?" "I'm going to. You work for the wrong people. You have poten- . You should have hooked up with Uncle Bill right here. Like Dix . I've needed a good inside man for years. It could have been you. iw, it can't. Don't you see, Hubbard, how obvious it was to me that nebody collateral to the immediate picture had to have told Gehlen let you stay in the room? Gehlen made moves to get you out, but y weren't real. The shadow didn't conform to the light. Do you ieve Gehlen would allow that much talk about the END in front i Company Junior? Do you think an old fox like Gehlen couldn't it a sneaky on a beginner like you? Buddy, if I had really needed •anscript, I would have put the sneaky on me and hid it in a way t would never be picked up. I put it on you to see if he'd choose flush it. He didn't." "You're not suggesting that I am linked in any way with hien?" "You are somewhere in the floor plan." "Why would he ask for me to be brought down to Pullach if he re working with me?" "Double gambit, that's all. Hubbard, there's a time to talk. It's ting close for you." ^'"I'm bewildered," I said. "I think games are going on, and I don't sn know which piece I am. I have nothing to tell." ^ "I'll give you something to digest. You are under surveillance. 'u dare not leave this apartment. You have my permission to go iedy crazy here. Drink all you want. Get the DTs, and then come roe. In the interim, offer up a little prayer. Every night. Hope and iy that CATHETER stays secure. Because if it blows, people are Pg to be up on charges all over the place, and there is no way you h t be one of the candidates. You could end with your keister in tilitary can." SHe stood up, returned his Colt to the holster that chafed, and left alone. I tried to compose myself by going to work on a transcript ^•G.'s tape. 342 NORMAN MAILER It took a couple of hours, and I had barely finished before tt of my roommates arrived from work. Then, for the next cou hours, they were coming and going. Roger Turner was engage< American girl who worked for the overseas division of Genera tors in Berlin, and he was excited. Her parents, in Europe on; were meeting him tonight. Dressed in a pinstripe gray flannel £ occasion, he was taking them to a cocktail party at the Danisi bassy; Eliot Zeeler, out to improve his colloquial German, was way to the UFA Pavilion on the Kufu to see Around the World in Days, which had just won an Academy Award, and was being sented, Eliot assured me, with German subtitles, thereby offer enjoyable means of improving one's colloquial competence. wish to accompany him? I did not--I didn't tell him that I coi My other roommate. Miles Gambetti, whom I rarely saw, phoi to ask if there were any messages. He had described himself on tl occasion we talked as a "glorified bookkeeper," but Dix upj that. "He's the accountant who watch-dogs our Berlin proprit The KGB would take a crack at Miles if they knew what he "Why?" "Because once you pick up on how the money is allotted, yi draw a good picture. KGB can name our banks here, and our a the religious groups we fund, the magazines, the newspapci cultural foundations, probably even the journalists we pipe int they have a window on the labor union officials we own. Bu much do we allot to each? That shows the real intent. Hell, if KGB, I would kidnap Miles." I was thinking of this conversation now that the night was i and I was alone in the apartment. Indeed, in curious fashion, I to Dix's remark, and pondered the work arid functions of Gambetti (who had a most neutral presence, neither handson ugly, neither tall nor short) because I now needed some sense size of all our activities, not only in Berlin but in Frankfurt and, in Munich, in all the Army bases where we had dummy working all the American consulates in Germany, all the corporations!! we might have a man or two, I needed some sense of my work^l and in its place, not large, not damned, not doomed. So I prayjj Chiefs powers of exaggeration equaled his bulk and I waiij passing mote in his eye. Alone in the apartment, I felt as alone 36 ever been. "^ Dix dropped by to change his clothes. He was off for the ev{ LOT'S GHOST 343 Ie invited me along. This time I explained that I was restricted to uarters. He whistled. He looked sympathetic, so sympathetic in fact iat I began to distrust him. He was Harvey's man, I reminded myself. who had always been able to calculate my loyalties and the loyalty fthe members of my family as closely as a table of organization (so iat it never mattered if you liked a particular cousin or not--dependig on the preordained relation you would call upon, or pay out, whatever sum of loyalty was involved) now felt as unattached as a ubble in a bowl of soup. I also knew that loyalty was of small concern to Dix. Tomorrow e might turn me in, but tonight he could feel compassion^ "You had to fuck up big," he said, "to buy a house arrest." "Can you keep it to yourself?" "How not?" He repeated this with pleasure. "How not?" That ad to be a new phrase. Picked up from a drunken Englishman, no oubt. A month ago, he had traded quips with a Russian tank colonel t the Balhaus Resi who spoke only enough English to keep saying Of course! Vy not?" Butler had loved that. You could ask him nything for the next two days. "Will we win the Cold War?" Should we have Irish whiskey with our coffee?"--dependably, he rould reply, "Of course! Vy not?" So I knew now that I would hear How not?" for the next week--if there was a next week. I might be oming to the end of all such weeks as this. I might be out of a job--I »w my father's eyes. I might be in jail--I saw my mother's picture hat m visiting day. I was like a man who has been told by his doctor that lie disease is, all odds carefully reviewed, incurable. This verdict keeps etuming in quantum packets. One plays solitaire, one chats, one stens to music--then, the dire news washes back like haze over one's aood. I clung to the five minutes Dix Butler would be in the apartment. "Well, what is up?" he insisted. "I've thought it over. I can't tell you. I'll fill you in when it's tvei." I "All right," he said, "I'll wait. But I am wondering." He looked jady to leave. "Anything I can do for you? Want me to bring Ingrid Jirer?" I "No," I said. He grinned. 'If you run into Wolfgang," I said, "talk him into coming here." "Dubious." 344 NORMAN MAILER "Will you try?" "Since you ask, yes." I had the feeling he would not try. "One more thing," I said. I felt as if someone who had lived, in this large apartment for years had died here, and it had been a and lingering death. No one had been at peace in these rooms i "Yes, one more thing," I said. "You mentioned that you wou me see Rosen's letters." "Why do you want them now?" I shrugged. "For diversion." "Yes," he said, "that's right. All right." But I could see h< reluctant. He went to his room, closed the door, came out, locke door, and handed me a thick envelope. "Read it tonight," he "and when you're done, slip it back under the sill." "I'll read in this room," I said, "and if anybody unfamiliar kn anyone official, that is, I'll put the letter under your door before to answer." "Approved," he said. 14 Dear Dix, Well, here I am on hotshot duty in TSS, and there you are, ho number one to the big man in Berlin. Congratulations. Th training group PQ 31 is doing all right for itself, even ifPQ t stand for peculiar--which is what I can say about my work now. procedure for this letter and any other I send you, is BAP (will case you forgot is Bum After Perusal). I don't know if work at deserves to be as hush-hush as is presented to us here, but it is cert a special place. Only geniuses need apply--how did they ever you? (Before you get too pissed off, recognize that I mean it.$ overseer for all us Mensa types is Hugh Montague, the old legend, and he's an odd one, remote as Mt. Everest, confident a I can't imagine what would happen if you ever tangled wit! Anyway, TSS is but part of his demesne, which I deliver as a gift V love of big words. (Demesne is the etymological origin ofdomar is, the lands belonging to the Lord_/or which he pays no rent.) Mori so far as I can see, pays no rent. He reports only to Duties. Overi Sanctum Sanctorum (true meaning of TSS), we tend to be saw LOT'S GHOST 345 r opinions of everybody, but on Montague, we agree. Unlike many the Company, he is no dedicated brown-noser. Which reminds me. Are you the guy, confess! Are you the y who wrote on the latrine wall at the Farm, "Rosen is the anagram • Noser, as in Brown-Noser. Keep your nares clean, Amie." That e ticked me off, I admit it. I'm sure it was you, you see, because of ; use of "nares." Dix, you are one cruel son of a bitch. I know how ich I value our friendship because I choose to forgive you. I would t forgive anyone else. But I want you to recognize that the allega- in is unfair. Because, whatever I am, abrasive, unfeeling of the sore 3ts of others, too pushy (New York Jew with a lot to do—I know!), t whatever I am, whatever my faults, I am not a brown-noser. In :t, I defeat myself by being rude to superiors. We're alike that way. id I do not forgive most people who bitch me. I like to think they e to regret it. Anyway, I don't want to be boring on this. I recognize your ibition. I even believe that some day, we two outriders, very much i the flank, having not been born with a silver espionage spoon in ir mouth like Harry, may own two big pieces of the Agency. Equal Montague and Harvey when our time comes. Montague fascinates me. I've only seen him a few times, but i wife is an absolute beauty, and they whisper around here that she's e only true genius the Company has got, in fact, they say she's made eud twice as complicated as he used to be, although of course that's rd to believe. One of the Company ills I'm beginning to observe is o much self-exaggeration of our own worth. We're not in a position measure ourselves, after all. In any case, nobody can say to a rtainty what Hugh Montague does. His working moniker—-I don't lieve it's a cover name or cryptonym, or any one of the variants for ble use—but they do call him Harlot. I guess it's because he's solved in so many things. A true demesne. No rent, no bureaucratic countability. He's got his own piece of Counter-Intelligence which ives the Soviet Russia Division crazy, and then, he has other people otted all over the Company. His enemies in TSS say he's trying to ' a Company within the Company. Dix, you have to spend dme in "shington to learn the ropes. You see, in theory, the Company, treaucratically speaking, is all posted territory, but Dulles is soft on 1 OSS heroes and friends, and besides, he doesn't really like bu- ucracy. So he creates independent movers and shakers. Knights- "Bnt, he calls them. They are empowered to cut across categories. 346 NORMAN MAILER Harlot is most definitely a Knight-Errant. They say he is lookei as the spook's Spock in the Company. The inner poop that over at TSS (where we're supposed to know\) is that Dulles sp him as "Our Noble Phantom." Dix, I have to hand it to you. to laugh in the beginning at the way you were gung ho about words, but I'm beginning to see the light. Where I went to I everyone knew the words, so my education may have left me too complacent about the real powers of vocabulary. I'm be^ to think Ie mot juste is the Archimedean lever that moves the At least, this is true for the Company, I swear. Back to TSS. I find ah unholy desire to tell you ab< worst fiasco we ever had, which is why this letter has to be Ulto It could fry my kishkes if read by the wrong eyes. Do not bothe: the meaning of kishkes. That is argot from Yiddish and will a nothing you're interested in. I mention it only because the n head of TSS is named Gottlieb, and kishkes is the only Jewish ever heard him use. Of course, they assigned me to him--I gue figure we have something in common. Well, not all that much Jews are deep in tradition like my family, which is half rel orthodox, half socialist--typically Jewish, ha, ha--but someJ in the other direction. They become mirrors of their culture me!) Like Disraeli, the British Prime Minister under Queen V born of Jewish parents, but they say he had the best uppi English accent of anyone in the British Isles. Well, Gottlieb is like that except he's cosmic in scope ested in everything. Odd! He lives on a farm outside of Wast and gets up every morning to milk his goats. The farmhouse its< to be a slave cabin, but Gottlieb is a Sunday carpenter, so enough now to house his family. Mrs. Gottlieb, incidentally, sp childhood in India. That may be the explanation for the goat; the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries. Gottlieb also raises mas trees. And he has a clubfoot, but loves all the same to- dance. He's only a chemist with a degree from City College, I nonetheless a genius. Which is why in summary he sounds Ulq ing but pieces and parts. I must say, he messed up. Of courses genius can when in concert with another genius like Hugh M<| It actually happened three years ago, but it's still the worst-keg at TSS. You can't go out with a colleague for a drink and go| intimate without being told The Story. I find it interesting. < some principle of reverse-morale here. Montague is so elevat HARLOT'S GHOST 347 think The Story makes him human for us. Of course he only failed ( a judgment call. He put his bet on Gottlieb, and Sidney did the unage. Here's the gen. (Old OSS word for poop.) Three years ago the ie rumor at TSS was that the Sovs had synthesized some magic drug. 'hey could not only control the behavior of their agents, but could x a spy's memory to self-destruct upon capture. They also had ,-hizophrenia-inducing chemicals to free their agents from all moral ancems. Isn't this what Communism is all about anyway! The magic rug is in the ideology! Anyway, Gottlieb had come upon a physical ibstance that turns a few corners in schizophrenia. It is called lysergic ;id diethylamide, LSD for short, and TSS people harbor the hope iat it will become our wonder drug, since present techniques of ebriefing enemy agents are too slow. Alien Dulles wants a chemical )igot to turn a defector on and off. Kind of a truth cocktail. LSD ispires one to tell the truth. Now, it's hard to be sure, Dix, because I only acquired this t several removes, but Gottlieb seems to have had a honey of a leory, worked out in collaboration with Mrs. Montague and her leories. It is built on the premise that the psychic wall which schizohrenia builds to close off communication between opposite parts of ie personality is composed of an immense number of lies, and the uth is encysted behind it. Any drug that can induce schizophrenia light also, if used on a start-stop-start-stop basis, induce enough of a ibration in the lies of that schizophrenic wall to shake it and, conceivbiy, crack it. More normal people, in contrast, only choose the lies iat will keep their ego intact. By the Gottlieb-Gardiner theory, a efector's wall, whether psychotic or normal, can be shattered by the se of LSD. First, however, Gottlieb had to test the compatibility of SD to his purpose. He and a few colleagues tried it on one another, ut they were aware of the experiment. Unwitting LSD recipients rere what was needed. So, one night at a small cocktail party a TSS researcher aanaged to slip a dose of LSD into a pony ofCointreau that a contract dentist was drinking. The victim was not witting of the experiment. ?ow, I don't know his name--that fact is sealed, but let's call him ''hat he is--VICTIM. As it turned out, he did not react well. VICTIM returned to s home in a state of agitation. A very disciplined man, he fought the 'ects of the LSD. No symptoms of overt derangement presented 348 NORMAN MAILER themselves. The only manifestation was that he could not sleep. he began to tell his wife that he had made terrible mistakes. 0 could not specify what they were. After a couple of days, he ' agitated that Gotdieb sent him to New York to see one < psychiatrists. Gottlieb's own deputy stayed with VICTIM in a York hotel room. VICTIM, however, got worse and worse. F right in front of his keeper, he took a running dive through a window and crashed ten stories to his death. They gave his wide children a government pension, and Gottlieb got away with a s the wrist. Montague sent a memo to Dulles: Formal punis] would tend to interfere with "that most necessary spirit ofini and outright enthusiasm so prerequisite to this work." Dulles di a personal letter to Gottlieb scolding him for poor judgment, 1 copy of this letter--at least so goes the gen--ever landed in Gol file. Sidney is in fine shape at TSS these days. I had a strong reaction to the letter. I could read no furthe fear that I was being used by Harlot in careless fashion had jus confirmed. VICTIM kept falling in my mind. I had to reach a secure phone. Harvey had told me I wa being watched, but that was not certified, and Butler on i occasions had been caustic about the weakness of our surve: personnel. It might be worth a chance. I put on my coat and we the door. Immediately, I let myself back in. I had not only for to slide Rosen's letter under Butler's door, but had neglected away C.G.'s transcript and tape. These tasks accomplished, I we again, with considerably less confidence in my clarity of mine A cab came by as I reached the curb, and I jumped in. V not gone a tenth of a mile before I realized that this taxi coul( been waiting on the street expressly for me. So I paid him off, up an alley, turned in the middle to see if I was being followe leaped in my heart as a cat jumped off a backyard fence. Nothing stirred, however, and so far as I could see by the lig came into the alley from the back windows of tenements ofii side, nothing was in sight. So I walked back to where I had 0 the alley, and the cab I had paid off was still waiting. I strolledi) catch the driver's eye and he gave me a casual Berlin turn of his I leaned into his window, however, and said, "Zwei HersS ein Schlag!" At which he started his motor and drove away qi HARLOT'S GHOST 349 This comedy proved felicitous to my mood. I no longer felt I was eing followed and stepped along briskly for half a mile, occasionally oubling back on my steps. Then I took a cab directly to the Depart- ient of Defense, signed and made my way along the hall to the secure hone. At the canal house, Kittredge answered. "Harry, is it you?" she ,ked hesitantly, and added, "Do I sound as odd?" Her voice was uted by the scrambler. "Well, how are you?" I asked. My leg was beginning to quiver at ie risk of expressing more. "Oh, God," I told myself, "I'm hopelessly i love." Even a cruel distortion other voice gave me pleasure. "It's forever since you've been away," she said. "I miss you utrageously." "So do I." "I can't hear you," she replied. "You sound underwater. Am I ressing some wrong button?" "Haven't you used this kind of phone before?" "No, it's Hugh's. I wouldn't dare go near. I thought it was him ailing. He's in London, you see. Left yesterday." "Can you help me to reach him?" "Harry, I'm amazed he even told me which continent he's on." "So you don't know if he's coming to Berlin?" "He will. He asked if I had any sweet word to pass on to you. Sive him milk baisers,' I told Hugh." She began to laugh. I decided she couldn't possibly have said that. "When Hugh calls," I limited myself to saying, "tell him that we ave to talk. It's urgent." "Don't be surprised," Kittredge said, "if he drops in on you first. hit, Harry . . ." ? "Yes." {• "When you see him, don't complain. He hates complaints." i "Well," I said, "I won't." Speaking to her, my troubles did not " m as near. "I have wonderful news," she said, "which I'll impart to you on 'etter occasion." "Give me a hint." "Well, before too long, I'm going on leave of absence." "To do what?" Oh, Harry," she said, "just think of me as being in Hong Kong." Was she going undercover? Into Asia? I had instant visions of 350 NORMAN MAILER Kittredge in some opium den with Russian and British and Cl operators. "Will I see you?" "Tell Hugh to take you back with him." "He can't do that. I would have to get clearance from Hai "Hugh does not look at obstacles in the way others do," shi At this point, the Scrambler-Descrambler must have start spark, for a great deal of static came over the line. We said goo in a series of staccato echoes. "Good-bye, can you hear me? ( bye." As I came out of the main door of the Department ofDefi could see two men in dull gray overcoats standing about one hu feet apart on the other side of the street. I took a sharp left and v at a good pace to the corner. There I wheeled around abruptly. had not moved. I turned the corner and peeked back. They sti not moved. I walked down the block, then retraced my steps to peer a: the corner again. The two men were gone. I started to walk at ra but now with the most overpowering certainty that I was not w a tail. I must have been in the hands of experts, however, for nothing. If I had a sixth sense it was certainly not located betwci ears. A cab was going by and I took it. On the way home I thou looking for Wolfgang. I had no idea what I would do when I him, nor did I have much sense of whether he would prove an my fortunes, to Bill Harvey's or, for that matter, to General Gel I wanted to see him, however--if only to initiate an action. The came over me as powerfully as hunger for a cigarette on the da are giving them up. Of course, I did not know where to Wolfgang. I could never find the alley of the cellar bar nor probably, its neighborhood. The place had been a distance c Kufu, and good luck to all the miles of alleys and bombs housing off the Kufu. I gave up the idea with all the pain ofrelin* ing a true vocation--I felt not unlike a saint who has failed Uli the mountain chosen for his revelation. ? I also contained a feeling, however, dull as lead, but indu weighty, that I should hurry home. The actual sight of my, however, increased anxiety, for on the block, a respectful Q from my doorway, were the same two men who had been ^ HARLOT'S GHOST 351 tside the Department of Defense. Of course, there was nothing to about them but go up to my apartment. Five minutes later, the phone rang. "Glad you're in," said Harlot. "You didn't seem to be half an ur ago." "I was in the loo. Can't hear the phone from there." "Well, I'll send a car. The driver is called Harry. Harry will pick Harry. In twenty minutes." "I'm not supposed to leave the premises," I said. "In that case," said Harlot, "I authorize you to go downstairs. Be ampt." He hung up. 15 WAITED THROUGH AN ODD TWENTY MINUTES, ALL TOO AWARE OF w the films one had seen could, on occasion, command as large a rt of one's brain as family and upbringing. I expected the two men i the street to knock at any moment on my door. I waited for Bill u-vey to arrive. I could also visualize Dix Butler coming into the ing room accompanied by Wolfgang. Ingrid now entered the ovie of my mind with the clear announcement that she had quit her isband for me. I listened with whole attention to the oaths of a drunk the street below, but nothing ensued. Just the hoot of a lout. Time ;nt by. When the twenty minutes were almost gone, I took C.G.'s aiscript and went downstairs. Harlot drove up in a Mercedes. "Get in," he said. "I'm Harry." e moved for only a few feet before stopping beside one of the men the surveillance team. "It's all right," he told them. "Go home »w. I'll call you as soon as I need you." i Then we accelerated down the street. "I'm debating whether we n talk at my hotel," he said. "It's reasonably safe and they don't (actly know who I am, although it never pays to underestimate ane in Berlin, as I'm sure you've discovered by now." We drove in silence for a time. "Yes, let's go there," Harlot ided. "We can drink in the Lounge. There's no way the manage- it would ever put up with the installation of any bugs. The wood- 'k is too precious. In the bedrooms, yes, but never the Lounge, not 352 NORMAN MAILER at the Hotel Am Zoo. It's an old place," said Harlot, "and n reconstructed. The portier is an exceptional fellow, I can tell Why, the last time I was here, there were no places availabi commercial planes flying out of Berlin. And, for reasons of no cor to you, I did not wish to use the Air Force. Not that week. So I a the portier to see what he could do. Two hours later, I came by his and he was beaming. 'Dr. Taylor,' he tells me, 'I managed to gel the very last seat out of Berlin, Lufthansa, this afternoon. In Ham you will connect with Scandinavian Airlines directly to Washing He was so obviously pleased that I had to ask him how he did it.' he said, 'I told the ticket office that you. Dr. Taylor, are the far American poet, and it is absolutely essential that you be able to ai the Gisenius concert in Hamburg this evening! The rest is Scandinavian Airlines has boodles of seats for America. You wi able to stretch out.' Yes," said Harlot, "that sort of skill is disappe all over the place." "And Dr. Taylor was your cover name?" "Obviously." He seemed annoyed that I had not enjoyed his more. "What impresses you about the choice of Dr. Taylor?""Schneider is the word for tailor. Are you that close to Geh] Harlot looked to be at a rare loss. "Do you know," he sai< could have been unwitting." I made no reply. I was not sure of anything I felt. "Well, added, "Gehlen is awful, and I really can't bear that slippery sc complacency you find in ex-Nazis who've gotten away with it.' carry such a subtle strain of self-pity. But all the same, Harry, I ^ with Gehlen closely. He's good at his job, and you have to re; that. The task is Sisyphean in its difficulties." "I'm not sure he's all that good anymore," I said. "In my opil he is no longer a match for Harvey." "Oh, dear, you will always be loyal to whomever you worl It's that Cal Hubbard strain. Pure bulldog. Except you're mistalt happen to have gone over the transcript Gehlen sent me, and I promise you, given what each man had to lose and gain, Gehletti off well. Harvey was an impetuous fool to tip his hand on Wolfgi "I still don't understand how you can put up with Gehle "Oh, anyone else with such a life would show no rede qualities. I choose to breathe on the ember of humanity I see little German." HARLOT'S GHOST 353 We had come to the hotel. He left the car for the doorman, and steered me directly to the Lounge. "I had," I said as soon as we sat down, "a talk with Mrs. Harvey. It's here in this transcript. I think it's what you want." He pocketed the papers and the tape without looking at them. That annoyed me. I may have been reluctant to do the job, but I wanted to be praised on how well I had brought it off. "She's loyal to her husband," I said. "So I don't know that you'll find whatever it is you're looking for." He smiled--was it condescendingly?--and brought forth the pages he had just put away, reading them with an occasional tap of his finger. "No," he said on finishing, "it's perfect. It confirms everything. One more arrow in the quiver. Thank you. Harry. Good work." I had the feeling, however, that if I had not nudged his attention back to the transcript, he would not have looked at it for quite a while. "Is it of real use to you?" I persisted. "Well," he said, "I've had to move without it. In the event, what with a few things speeding up, I have had to proceed on the assumption that C.G. would say just about what she did say. So, we're all right. Now, let's have our drink--two slivovitz," he said to the waiter coming up. It obviously did not occur to him that I had no love for the drink he ordered. "I want to get you ready for the next step," he said on the waiter's departure. "How much trouble am I in?" "None," he stated. "For certain?" ; "Ninety-five percent." He nodded. "Tomorrow morning Bill | Harvey and I have an appointment." "Will I be there?" "Most certainly not. But it will go the way I expect it to go, and the late afternoon, you and I are booked to take the Air Force luttle to Frankfurt and connect there with Pan American overnight >r Washington. You'll be one of my assistants until we decide what su should do next. Congratulations. I cast you into the pit and au've survived." "Have I?" 'Oh, yes. You don't know how opposed was your father to the ^ea of sending you to Berlin. But I told him you'd come out all right, 354 NORMAN MAILER and better prepared. Of course, you mightn't have gotten throi without me, but then you wouldn't have been parboiled if I hai been the chef." "I don't know that I'm altogether out of it yet." My gono gave a mocking twinge. As I sipped my drink, I rememberec liquor was supposed to be antipathetic to penicillin. To hell with There was unexpected warmth in the slivovitz. "I'll get you a room at the Am Zoo for tonight," said Harlot. you have a lot of things at your apartment to take home with y "Only the clothes I brought. There hasn't been time to anything." "Go by your place tomorrow after I've seen Harvey, and d packing then. After all, if Harvey finds out tonight that you've Ie premises, he could send a couple of baboons to pick you up." "Yes," I said. I was feeling anesthetized by the liqueur. : thought I was full of a good many feelings for Bill and C. G. Ha but now they did not seem to exist. I didn't know the beginni what I was doing, nor would I now know the end. Intelligence did not seem to be theater so much as the negation of theater. khov once said that an audience who saw a hunting gun abov mantel in the first act expected it to be fired by the last act. No hope for me. "Why are you opposed to CATHETER?" I asked. He looked around. CATHETER was still a dubious subje conversation in a public room. "There's a movement now in climbing," he said, "that I at nate. A team tackles a straight wall that offers no holds. But the] along a hand-drill and screw a bolt into the rock. Then they themselves up and drill a hole for the next bolt. It takes weeks something major, but any farm boy who can bear the drudgery becomes an important climber. There's your CATHETER, whispered. "I must say that your friend General Gehlen did not like CATHETER was able to tell us. Especially what it had to di about the weaknesses of the East German railway system." No^ whispering. s' "The state of East German railroad yards is not what Comirij is about," said Harlot in reply. I "But isn't it our priority in Europe to know when the S might attack?" LOT'S GHOST 355 "That was a pressing question five or six years ago. The Red onslaught, however, is no longer all that military. Nonetheless, we keep pushing for an enormous defense buildup. Because, Harry, once we decide that the Soviet is militarily incapable of large military attacks, the American people will go soft on Communism. There's a puppy dog in the average American. Lick your boots, lick your face. Left to themselves, they'd just as soon be friends with the Russians. So we don't encourage news about all-out slovenliness in the Russian military machine." "Bill Harvey said virtually the same thing to me." "Yes, Bill's interests are contradictory. There's no one more antiCommunist than Harvey, but on the other hand, he has to keep speaking up for CATHETER even when it tells us what we don't wish to hear." "I'm confused," I said. "Didn't you once say that our real duty is to become the mind of America?" "Well, Harry, not a mind that merely verifies what is true and not true. The aim is to develop ideological mind. Mind that dwells above the facts; mind that leads us to larger purposes. Harry, the world is going through exceptional convulsions. The twentieth century is fearfully apocalyptic. Historical institutions that took centuries to develop are melting into lava. Those 1917 Bolsheviks were the first intimation. Then came the Nazis. God, boy, they were a true exhalation from Hell. The top of the mountain blew off. Now the lava is starting to move. You don't think lava needs good railroad systems, do you? Lava is entropy. It reduces all systems. Communism is the entropy of Christ, the degeneration of higher spiritual forms into lower ones. To oppose it, we must, therefore, create a fiction--that .the Soviets are a mighty military machine who will overpower us |unless we are more powerful. The truth is that they will overpower is, if the passion to resist them is not regenerated, by will if necessary, very year, every minute." "But how do you know you are right?" He shrugged. "One lives by one's intimations." "And where do you get them?" "On the rock, fellow, high up on the rock. Well above the plain." 'ie drained his slivovitz. "Let us get some sleep. We're traveling 'morrow." As he said good-bye in the elevator, he added, "It's a very early 'eakfast for Harvey and me. Sleep until I call." 356 NORMAN MAILER I did. My faith in his ability was large enough to let me. Ai I was confused as I put my head to the pillow, well, confusion, w profound, is also an aid to slumber. I did not stir until the phone r It was noon. A long sleep had come to me with the reprieve. "Are you awake?" said Harlot's voice. "Yes." "Pack. I'll pick you up at your apartment in exactly an hour. hotel bill is paid." Then, he added, "You are going to learn a things in the next year." My education commenced not a minute after I returned to apartment. Dix Butler was alone and pacing about in a fearfully mood. "What's happened to Harvey?" he asked. "I've got to see 1 and he won't even pick up the phone." "I don't know a thing," I said, "except that I'm going home and clean." "Give my respects to your father," he said. I nodded. There was no need to explain that on this day might also take into account my godfather. "You," I replied, "s somewhat upset." "Well," he announced, and this was all the preamble he ofEe "Wolfgang is dead." I thought my voice was coming forth, but it wasn't. I as "Violent end?" I did manage to say that. "He was beaten to death." Silence came down on both of us. I worked at packing. Sei minutes later, I stepped out of my bedroom to ask, "Who do think did it?" "Some old lover." I went back to my valise. "Or," said Butler, "them." "Who?" . s! "BND." "Yes," I said. "Or," said Butler, "us." ' "No." " "Sure," said Butler, "it was Harvey's order, and this arm. I dJJI "I'll send you my new address in Washington," I told hirilj "Or," said Butler, "it was the SSD. In matters like this, y< upon Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He said, 'Whom? Whom does this fit?' " HARLOT'S GHOST 357 "I don't know whom," I said. "I don't even know what was lappening." "Isn't that the God's truth?" replied Dix Butler. 16 )N THE FLIGHT ACROSS THE atlantic, harlot WAS IN A SPLENDID nood. "I must say," he told me in the confidential tone of a clean >assing on a rich whisper at commencement, "it proved to be quite i meeting with your friend BOZO." By the twinkle in his eye, however, I had the uneasy intimation would not be satisfied by how much he would impart. A merry light n Harlot's eye often ended .as a mote in mine. "Well," he said, "never forget--Bill Harvey began as an FBI man, cd they do tend to be paranoid about their personal safety. How :ould they not? J. Edgar Hoover is always offering the prime exam- >le." Harlot dropped his voice even more for the next. "I've heard hat Hoover won't allow his driver to take a turn to the left if he can ilso get there by making three right turns around the block. When- 'ver I used to ponder Bill Harvey's odd behavior with those pistols, would usually decide J. Edgar Buddha had infected him. One day, towever, not too many months ago, not long before we arranged for roll , dear boy, to go to Berlin, I had an intuition: What if those damn )istols were not just Bill Harvey's passages of paranoia? Suppose they were, in fact, a real response to some true danger? What if he had nanaged to get into something bad?" Harlot extended his forefinger. (Give me a vigorous hypothesis every time. Without one, there's lothing to do but drown in facts. » "So I looked into Harvey's file. Right there, in his 201, is a full jccount of how he was obliged to resign from the FBI. You know the ory. You recorded all that stuff from C.G.'s own Ups. But I can see the way you nod your head that you recall it all. So do I. Every tail that C.G. imparted to you proved to be precisely the same as the tsion in his 201 file. I anticipated that would be the case when I put feu on to C.G. in the first place. Consider what it means. Her version events, as related in 1956, coincided perfectly with his account in p47 when he first came to the Agency. It's as if an overlay had been ed over the original version. He obviously spoon-fed the 201 358 N 0 R • M A N MAILER version to his new bride when they got together, and I suspt reinforced it by repeating the same story to her from time to There's the clue. One of the few rules you can count on in our is that a story will conform in every detail to its earlier versior if the initial account has been artfully fabricated and careful peated." "That's all very well," t said, "but when you arrived in I you couldn't know whether I had had the opportunity to sp< C.G." "I was coming over," said Harlot, "ready or not. Your sitt was obviously falling apart. Besides, there was all that friction bel Harvey and Pullach. Gehlen was playing an awfully fancy gam I had to take the trip even if I had no more in hand tha preconceptions. So C.G.'s transcript proved to be wonderfully fi ing. A talisman. I kept it in my breast pocket all through breakfas Bill. It gave me further conviction that I knew the man I was d with. "Harvey and I had our meeting, by the way, in the Lounge Am Zoo. He knew I wouldn't meet him on Harvey home turi my hotel would normally have been seen in the same light. E must have calculated that with all his assets, he could slip a sneak the Lounge. After my little talk with you, however, I spoke I hotel management and arranged for my two surveillance men to all of last night in the Lounge. While they could not do any \ for me, at least no one of Harvey's people was going to slip aw down the flue. We met next morning, therefore, with no rec( devices available to either of us other than what paltry instrurnei could bring in on our own person." "How could you ever tape Harvey?" I asked. "He must known you were wired." "I had a sneaky on me I did not expect him to locate. A KG the Russians have been testing in Poland. You install it in th< lowed-out heel of your shoe. Battery, microphone, the work we're ahead of ourselves. Point is that breakfast—Campari and* sants for Bill, one soft-boiled egg for me—didn't tarry too long^jl amenities. We soon moved over to the opening insults. 'Hey, W he tells me, 'I cut my teeth on dark-alley operations in Hell's Kl while you Oh-So-Socials were eating crumpets with English bti Ho, ho, ho!' Tells me he's a three-martini man at lunch, 'a dw double, and a double, ho, ho, ho!' I ask him which gun he's layi LOT'S GHOST 359 the table. He says, 'It's not the gun, it's the hollow-nose bullets. I'll change my gun,' he informs me, 'before I'll change my shirt.' " At this point. Harlot took a few pages of transcript from his breast pocket, peeled off the first two, and held them up. "Well," he said, "it's there now. Typed it myself soon as he left. Always get your tapes on paper as quickly as you can. It clarifies what happened. As I look at this little text, I keep thinking of Bill's buttercup mouth, so much at odds with the vile spew he spits. Oh, was he primed to go! He thought he had me." With that, he handed over the first two pages. "Figure out the dramatis personae for yourself," he said. son-in-law: Now that we've bicycled around the mulberry bush, tell me, why breakfast? ghoul: I thought it was time to see who was holding the cards. son-in-law: That's good. You're talking about cards and I'm ready to talk about egg on your vest. ghoul: Don't believe I'm the one who's dribbled. son-in-law: You are covered with protege juices. Your protege is, to be precise, in one fuck of a lot of trouble. You see, I know who SM/ONION is by now. Protege confessed. Aren't you ashamed of yourself? ghoul: When I decipher what you are mumbling about, I will subject myself to your moral examination. son-in-law: Well, I send this in the open: I'm ready to bring . charges on you and General Bat-Ears. For endangering CATHETER. Would it interest you to know I have proof? At this moment, a certain piss-bar pervert named Wolfgang ' is in custody. He is being debriefed. He has told us a lot. ghoul: Nobody has confessed. Nothing to confess to. This Wolf- gang person is not in your custody. I received a call at 6:00 a.m. from the south of Germany. The so-called piss-bar pervert is dead. (Long silence.) son-in-law: Maybe a lot of people are going to be nailed to a lot of masts. ghoul: No, friend. That's jawboning. Even if you and I were to go head to head with the hand you are holding and the hand you think I am holding, you could do no better than bring both of us down. Nothing could be proved. Both parties 360 NORMAN MAILER irretrievably tarnished. So let's talk instead about the ca actually am holding. They're stronger than you think. could not squeak through if you were fluttered. I had come to the bottom of the second page of the transc "Where," I asked, "is the rest?" Harlot sighed. I must say the sound was as resonant as a lovi note on a woodwind. "I recognize," he said, "the extent of curiosity, but I cannot let you see any more. You will have to wa the rest of the transcript." "Wait?" "Yes." "For how long?" "Oh," said Harlot, "years." "Yessir." "You may appreciate it more in time to come. It's rich ehou He looked about the plane and yawned fiercely. This seemed tt tion sufficient for him. "By the way," he said, "I settled the bill a Am Zoo. Your share, breaking down the Deutschmarks, comi thirty-eight dollars and eighty-two cents." I started to write a check. The sum was a third of my we salary. "Doesn't the Company cover things like this?" I asked. "For me, yes. I'm traveling. But Clerical will contest your Zoo chit. After all, you have a stipend for your lodging." Of course, he could have put it on his account. I remembel night when Kittredge and I were doing dishes at the canal house a bar of laundry soap. "Hugh," she murmured to me, "may hav< leanest wallet in the Company." "Yessir. Thirty-eight seventy-two," I said. "Actually, it's thirty-eight eighty-two," he said, and wid transition, added, "Do you mind if I elaborate on a point t: attempting to make last night?" , "No," I said, "I'd welcome it." If I had been hoping tt something more about Harvey, I received instead a sermon 0, subtleties of evil in the realm of Communism. All the while? obliged to listen, my balked curiosity remained as painful as a vC! twinge. ; "I would remind you," said Harlot, "that the true force < Russians has little to do with military strength. We are vulneral them in another way. Burgess, Philby, and Maclean proved it, HARLOT'S GHOST 361 you conceive how badly it sat in me that Bill Harvey was right about that gang and I was wrong? Yet I had to recognize that Bill perceived something I missed, and in time it became one abominable thesis: The better your family, the more closely you must be examined as a security risk. For the Russians are able to get their licks in on whatever is left of the Christian in many a rich swine. It goes so deep--this simple idea that nobody on earth should have too much wealth. That's exactly what's satanic about Communism. It trades on the noblest vein in Christianity. It works the great guilt in us. At the core, we Ameri- cans are even worse than the English. We're drenched in guilt. We're rich boys, after all, with no background, and we're playing around the world with the hearts of the poor. That's tricky. Especially if you have been brought up to believe that the finest love you will ever come near goes back to the sentiments of Christ washing the feet of those same poor people." "How would you feel," I asked, "if I said these things? Wouldn't you wonder which side I was working for?" My thwarted curiosity still lay like lead on my stomach. "If I thought I was on the wrong side," he answered, "I would feel obliged to defect. I do not wish ever to work for evil. It is evil to recognize the good, and continue to work against it. But, make no mistake," he told me, "the sides are clear. Lava is lava, and spirit is spirit. The Reds, not us, are the evil ones, and so they are clever enough to imply that they are in the true tradition of Christ. They are the ones who work at kissing the feet of the poor. Absolute poppycock. But the Third World buys it. That's because the Russians know how to merchandise one crucial commodity: Ideology. Our spiritual offering is finer, but their marketing of ideas proves superior. Here, those of us who are serious tend to approach God alone, each Fus, one by one, but the Soviets are able to perform the conversion i masse. That is because they deliver the commonweal over to man, of God. A disaster. God, not man, has to be the judge. I will always elieve that. I also believe that even at my worst, I am still working, ways working, as a soldier of God." We were silent. But I could take no comfort sitting beside him in lence. "Ever read Kierkegaard?" I asked. I wanted so much to drill ne small hole into the steel plate of Hugh Montague's certainty. "Of course." "What I get from him," I said, "is modesty. We cannot know the 'oral value of our actions. We may think ourselves saintly at the exact 362 NORMAN MAILER moment we're toiling for the Devil. Conversely, we can feel unh< and yet be serving God." "Oh, don't you know. All that is subtended by faith," said hu{ "The simple subtends the complex. If not for my faith, I could wii a damned good Kierkegaardian dialectic. Why not say that t U.S.S.R., because it preaches atheism, is in no position to corn religion? So, unbeknownst to itself, it is the true bulwark of G( Religious conviction in a Communist environment has to be lun nous in its beauty. After all, you have had to acquire it at such persol cost. Russia, therefore, has the social climate to create martyrs a saints, whereas we spawn evangelists. Harry, give in to Kierkegaar dialectic just once and you're in a lot of trouble. It's worrisome, 1 possibility that we will all be terminated in a nuclear opera does ma our average citizen go all out for pleasure. The truth is that the W builds pleasure palaces faster than churches. A secret desire begins grow: Maybe there will be no judgment! Should the world blow i God's faculties will also be atomized. Such may be the unconscM belief. So, the quality of work deteriorates. Everywhere, work det| orates. Eventually, that has to hurt us much more than it will hurt' Russians. Lava has no need of quality." He sighed again—a 1< meditative note on the instrument of his voice, and was silent, tl cracked his knuckles. "In any event," he said with a smile, "it is v to celebrate a victory by reviewing morose thoughts. That keeps; devils away." He reached over and thumped my knee. "I'm nervoi| he added, "because I feel twice blessed. That, dear boy, is asking| it. You see, quite beyond my good morning with Harvey, th<| another matter. I'm your godfather, am I not?" "Yessir." "Been a good one?" "Superior." "Well, now, return the favor." "Hugh?" "Yes. In about seven months, Kittredge and I are going a child. I want you to be the godfather." The plane flew on. "That's splendid news," I said, "and a great honor." "You are Kittredge's choice fully as much if not more are mine." "I can't tell you how I feel." ; HARLOT'S GHOST 363 I was numb. I felt nothing. I wondered if I was going to die before I found out what happened with Bill Harvey. Indeed, it would take more than eight years before I would get to know the contents of the full transcript. R T THREE WASHINGTON thirteen DAYS AFTER I CAME BACK TO THE united states, A russian patrol located our tap on the Altglienecke-to-Moscow cable. If I .had still been in Berlin, reverberations from the loss of the tunnel .would have been all around me; in Washington, the event was only »far-off rumble. I had returned to a series of changes in my daily life. The first was in relation to Kittredge. As putative godfather, I was :ow all but a member of the family. At times, I felt like a first cousin fno particularly healthy sort--which is to say that we felt awfully ealthy with each other. Pregnant, she was more of a flirt than ever. )n greeting and on farewell, she would kiss me with moist lips. I Brdly knew how to measure such affection. Collegiate lore at Yale ad hardly been as authoritative as the sexual wisdom of St. Mat- tiew's. There, boys who had gone in for the heaviest petting over mmer vacation would come back in the fall to instruct those of us is fortunate: When a girl's lips are wet, and stick to yours just a little, hy, fellow, a full-fledged sexual attraction is brewing. It was brewing. Kittredge, nearly always a happy sight to my eyes, id never appeared more beautiful than in these first months of egnancy. Her fine features were now enriched by the livelier colors ; her character. I could feel the woman within--by which blank teck of a phrase I try to pass over the more intimate grasp I now had ' what it might mean to go to bed with Kittredge. My night with rid had given some necessary dollop of gross sophistication--I f that Kittredge was not only this ineffable array of the loveliest lers and graces, but had a body that could shape itself to mine and ' was the gross wisdom) this body might even offer up its secret !)r; I assumed that would prove superior to Ingrid's stingy, catlike Sehase on the cosmos. i Yes, I was in love, if love is the happy condition of feeling one's 368 NORMAN MAILER hours remarkably well spent even when one does no more thai company with the beloved and her husband and listen to a player while it offers such musical events as Leopold Stokowsis dueling the New York Philharmonic through Boris Godunov. Harlot's contention that Moussorgsky gave infallible insights ir turmoil of late czarist Russia. Kittredge's taste these days inclined more to My Fair Lady. had come to Washington that this was the ticket for the seas Broadway, and pregnant Kittredge was now uncommonly int< in hot tickets. To counter Moussorgsky, she gave us Lerni Loewe. We listened to "I Could Have Danced All Night' Montague finally asked, "Does a pregnancy circumscribe you : much?" "Hugh, stow it," said Kittredge, and the predictable two rei came to her white cheeks. "Darling," he said, "you never seemed to care about d until now." And I, traitor to their hearth, was happy that I understood 0; other better than he, and hoped she knew it. All the same, he was certainly taking close care of my careel not been back half a week before he arranged to get me into In< Spanish. I was being moved onto the Argentina-Uruguay Desk Western Hemisphere Division as my preparation for transfer station in Montevideo. "Why Uruguay?" I asked. "Because it's small, and you will learn a lot." Since Montevideo had to be thousands of miles away, occurred to me that he might want his godson somewhat sq from his wife after the baby was born. "You need a place to learn your trade," he told me. "Uru fine for that. You'll come to know the diplomatic community a few Russians, run a few agents, get a feel for the nuts and go) looking down the line to years ahead when you'll be workin closely with me. But first you have to pick up the grammar** everyday housekeeping that goes into Station work and somi dos and don'ts in espionage proper." ' I confess that if I had heard espionage and counterespion^ more than a hundred times in the last year, I still did not kn< I had mastered the distinction. "Can I train with you now, "while I'm at the Uruguay Desk?" HARLOT'S GHOST 369 "Yes," he said, "but you'll have to wait. I won't be starting up the mrsdays until we get back from the Keep this summer." "That's two months away." "Time spent at the Argentina-Uruguay Desk will be invaluable." Perhaps it was. I did not think so at the time. I was too busy >orbing whole fat loose-leaf books of geographical, political, ecomic, cultural, and trade union material. Soon enough, I learned that uguay was a small coconut-shaped nation on the Atlantic coast, and nsiderably farther to the south than I had expected, for it was iged between Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay was temperate in mate--hurrah!--void of jungle--fine with me!--the Switzerland South America--ugh!--a semisocialist welfare state--paugh!--a id of pampas and cattle with only one large city, Montevideo; the tire country, somewhat under four million people, lived on the port of beef and hides, mutton and wool. Most of my labor at the Argentina-Uruguay Desk went into ding and decoding cables. It was relevant work for it introduced me operations I would soon be handling myself. For the rest, I slaved 'ay at Intensive Spanish, suffered the heat of Washington through ie and July, waited for Harlot and Kittredge's three weeks at the ep to be over and his mysterious Thursdays to commence, and lused myself in the interim by copious speculations about the ap- irance of the officers and agents at the Montevideo Station. Since r cable traffic used AV/ as the digraph for Uruguay, we did not have put up with such broken-backed orthographic presences as SM/ WON or KU/CLOAKROOM; now we could employ AV/ ANCHE, AV/ANTGARDE, AV/ARICE, AV/ENGE, AV/ TOR, AV/OIDANCE, AV/OWAL, AV/OIRDUPOIS, AV/ OCULAR, and, my favorite, AV/EMARIA. You never knew. /7ANTGARDE could be a bellhop, and AV/EMARIA a chauffeur a foreign embassy. I could, of course, given my desk accreditation, we checked their cryptonyms against the 201 file we kept in one (ner of the large office room that constituted our ArgentinaUruty Desk in Cockroach Alley, but there was no need to know, and it too new to push it. Older desk officers were introducing me to iplex tasks grudgingly, as if they might lose a piece of their sub- 'ce. I was content to wait. It was calm work after Berlin, and I had U interest. The summer in D.C. was hot. The Thursdays were tt I waited for. They were certainly talked about. Over lunch in the cafeteria one 370 NORMAN MAILBR hot day, two senior officers, friends of Cal, offered me d evaluations: "Much ado about nothing," said one. "He's so 1 it's unholy," said the other. "Why, you don't know how fo you are to be selected." The class, now in its third year, had been commenced as a s on Thursday afternoons for some of Harlot's staff plus young who had been recommended for a few of his projects. Tho; Low Thursdays, but once a month, on what soon came to bi the High Thursdays, important guests showed up by invitatior visiting professionals whose Company labors had brought the to D.C. from various lairs abroad. On all occasions, we would meet around the conference Hugh Montague's outer office, a large room on the second floe yellow brick villa that Alien Dulles used for his headquarters. 5 on E Street, well away from the Reflecting Pool and Co< Alley, it was an elegant building larger than most of the embassies in Washington. Harlot was one of the few high-i officers to work in such proximity to Dulles, and so an added 2 brought to the occasion by the importance of our surrou Indeed, Alien Dulles would keep popping in and out, a beepe breast pocket prodding him back to his own office, and i remember, he made a point of letting us know that he had just off the phone with President Eisenhower. The lectures on High Thursday were, of course, the most tional. Harlot's voice became even more commodious then, could not have been more unabashed in his use of rich syntax much one learned directly, however, is not easy to measure. I no assignments. He might recommend a book from time to til never pursued our diligence, no, it was more a matter of sow seeds. A few might sprout. Since the Director himself was n our peripatetic guest but had obviously given his imprimac would often nod at the sheer wonderful glory of the subject-- one could almost hear Mr. Dulles say, "this wonderfully shrej metaphysical and monumental world of Intelligence itself!"-? no vast acumen on my part to recognize that come a High T^ Harlot would teach our group from the top down. His preferaj to stimulate his equals: On such occasions, the rest of us coul^ ble how we might. Low days were of more use to us. Then, th< served, as Harlot once remarked, "to rev up the Mormons.3 were five of them, Ph.D.s from state universities in the Midyflj HARLOT'S GHOST 371 y were always taking notes, always in crew cut, white shirt with >rt sleeves, pens in the breast pocket, dark thin ties, eyeglasses. They iked like engineers, and I recognized after a time that they were the ley slaves over in Montague's counterespionage shop at TSS, ma- )ned in prodigiously demanding tasks of cryptography, file-search- ;, estimate-vetting, etc. To me it reeked of the Bunker, although viously more purposeful, more lifelong--you could see it in their es: They were signed up for a career of the highest level of clerking. fas, I admit, snobby, but then, as the son of a Bold Easterner, and is, by titular descent, a Junior Bold Easterner, Ivy League out of dover, Exeter, Groton, Middlesex, or Saints Paul, Mark, or Mat- w, how could I not begin to feel well installed while listening to igh Montague? At full throttle on a High Thursday, he could ploy rhetoric that was equal to high adventure. Since memory, for its vicissitudes, can also be immaculate, I am tempted to swear that, ird for word, this has to be close to the way he offered it. "An understanding of counterespionage presents difficulties to itch we must return again and again," he would remark, "but it Ips for us to recognize that our discipline is exercised in the alley ween two theaters--those separate playhouses of paranoia and licism. Gentlemen, select one rule of conduct from the beginning: 10 much attendance at either theater is imprudent. One must keep fting one's seat. For what, after all, are our working materials? Facts. e live in the mystery of facts. Obligatorily, we become expert servers on the permeability, malleability, and solubility of so-called rd facts. We discover that we have been assigned to live in fields of tortion. We are required to imbibe concealed facts, revealed facts, picious facts, serendipitous facts." Rosen had the temerity on this particular High Thursday to errupt Harlot long enough to ask, "Sir, I know the meaning of the »rd, but not its application here. What are serendipitous facts?" "Rosen," said Harlot, "let us search for the answer." Harlot used. I was all too aware of the way he played with the name. There i been just a hint of mournful woe in the long o of Rosen. tosen," he said, "assume that you are on a tour of duty in Singapore ft a scrumptious blonde, a veritable bagatelle, happens to knock on T hotel room door at 2:00 a.m., and she is--let us say it is 90Cent verifiable--not employed by the KGB, but chooses to knock fuse she likes you. That, Arnold, is a serendipitous fact." j Guffaws popped forth. Rosen managed to smile, indeed, I felt his 372 NORMAN MAILER gleam of happiness at arousing the wit of the master. "I thri derision," said his manner. Harlot resumed. "Gentlemen," he declared, "in the moi vanced regions of our work, sound judgment is paramount. apparently unsuccessful operation that we are trying to analy more than an error by our opponents, a bureaucratic fumble, a or, to the contrary, do we have before us an aria with carefully c dissonances?" He paused. He glared at us. Just as a great actor ca the same soliloquy to beggars or kings—it does not matter—t here to expatiate on a theme. "Yes," he said, "some of you, 01 occasions, will be in an unholy rush toward the Theater of Par others will leave their name at the Cinema of Cynicism. My est< Director"—he nodded in the general direction of Mr. Dulles- sometimes assured me that I hold forth at times too long o Paranoia House." Dulles beamed. "Oh, Montague, you can tell as many stoi me as I can on you. Let's assume there's nothing wrong with cion. It tends to keep the mind alive." Harlot nodded. Harlot said: "The man with talent for cour pionage, the true artist,"—now using the word with as much n of his voice as an old Russian lady saying Pushkin—"draws i paranoia to perceive the beauties of his opponent's scenario. He for ways to attach facts properly to other facts so that they : longer separated objects. He tries to find the picture that no 01 has glimpsed. All the same, he never fails to heed the warni: cynicism. "For cynicism has its own virtues. It is analogous to the o wells up from every crushed seed, every damn plan that went wi Sitting near Alien Dulles on this day, I heard him grunt in pie It was a small but enjoyable sound. "Hear, hear," he said soft! I heard him. "Do not," continued Harlot, "attempt to compr the K.GB, therefore, until you recognize that they have some1 most flexible and some of the most rigid minds in intelligence! and their people clash with each other, even as some of ours havj known to do. We must always feel the play offerees in our opp^ scheme. It teaches us to beware of divinations that are too CO) hensive, too satisfying. Cynicism teaches you to distrust the p| you may feel when previously scattered facts come into a nice RJ If that happens just a little too quickly, you may have come upol HARLOT'S GHOST 373 rst hint that you are dealing with a precalculated narrative. In a word, isinformation." Advanced were the High Thursdays, awfully advanced for the oWs. I would ponder some of his conclusions for many a year. If lontague's method of discourse on such days threw the more inexerienced of us over such high hurdles as the Theater of Paranoia and ie Cinema of Cynicism, he could on any Low Thursday return us to ie threading of a rusty nut to a dirt-grimed bolt. Indeed, the first day fthe first Low had us working for two hours to construct a scenario n the basis of a torn receipt, a bent key, a stub of pencil, a book of latches, and a dried flower pressed into a cheap unmarked envelope. 'hese items, he told us, happened to be the pocket litter left by an gent under suspicion who had decamped in unholy haste from a imished room. For two hours we fingered these objects, brooded pon them, and offered our theories. I forget mine. It was no better ian the others. Only Rosen was to distinguish himself that day. Once 11 the others had finished their expositions, Amie continued to look nhappy. "In my opinion," he said, "too many pieces are missing." "This is the sum of your contribution?" asked Harlot. "Yessir. Given the paucity of facts, no viable scenario is avail- ble." "Rosen," Harlot told us, "is on the nose. These objects were sleeted arbitrarily. A correct solution does not exist." Explanation: The exercise was to alert us to the risk ofautointoxiation when formulating scenarios. Deductive passions could be )osed all too easily by a dried flower, a cheap envelope, a stub of encil, the bent key, the torn receipt for $11..08. Our first lesson had een designed to make us aware (in retrospect) of any subtle discomirt we had ignored in the course of working up our explanation. Respect that subtle hollow," Harlot told us. "When a scenario feels bsolutely right, it is usually right, but if your story feels almost right, Ctjust a little empty, well, then, it's all wrong." The next Low, he Md us, would be devoted to espionage itself. Espionage, plain and pnple, as opposed to counterespionage. 374 NORMAN MAILER 2 back AT THE farm, THERE HAD BEEN A COURSE CALLED ACBI^ cmitment; it gave no clear picture of the reality. Montague moi quickly from conventional formulations to the marrow. "Espiol he told us, "is the selection and development of agents. That < comprehended by two words: disinterested seduction." Taking his pause, he added: "If you see me as an advoc unbridled carnality, you are in the wrong room. We are speak disinterested seduction. That is not, if you reflect on it, physica psychological. Manipulation lies at the heart of such seductior "In our Judeo-Christian culture, therefore, difficulties arise nipulation is Machiavellian, we say, and are content to let the judge the matter. Yet if a good man working for his beliefs is not to imperil his conscience, then the battlefield will belong to thosi manipulate history for base ends. This is not an inquiry into me so I pursue the matter no further than to say that a visceral detes of manipulation is guaranteed to produce an incapacity to find, and run them. Even for those of us who accept the necessity, i prove difficult. There are case officers who have spent their w< lives in foreign capitals but cannot point to a single on-site agen managed to recruit. Such failure tends to produce the kind ofu piness you see on the face of a dedicated hunter who dependabi to bag his deer. Of course, the odds in certain countries are very against us." I do not think any of us were too bothered by the ic manipulation at this point. To the contrary—we wondered: ^ we be able to do the job? We sat there in a mixture ofanticipatic worry. "At this point," said Harlot, "you may be thinking: So incr a purpose, so difficult an achievement! How do I begin? Rest) what assured. The Agency knows better than to depend on yo| instinctive efforts. Recruitment is usually the product of the tiq care that is spent in studying each prospective client or target. example, the condition of steel production in a certain country; ests us, then a cleaning woman who has access to the wastebad a high official in machine-tool production can, for the moment, us better than a high functionary in Agriculture. There is logic! work, and to a degree, one can instruct you in it." HARLOT'S GHOST 375 Everyone nodded profoundly, as if we had come to the same conclusion. "Today, we will place ourselves in a specific milieu," Harlot said. "Let us suppose we are stationed in Prague, yet can only speak a minimal Czech. How is one to cook the omelette when the pan has no handle? Well, gentlemen, we have a support system. In the labyrinth, we are never alone. It is not expected that you, personally, will try to handle Czech agents who speak nothing but their own tongue. Obviously, there has to be an intermediary whom we can employ, a working native. This fellow is called a principal. The principal agent is the Czech who will solicit his countrymen for you. You will merely guide his work." "Sir, are you saying that we don't really get out in the field?" asked one of the Junior Bold Easterners. "In the satellite countries, you won't get out," answered Harlot. "Then why are we studying recruitment?" he asked. "To be able to think like a principal. Today, in fact, working in company, we will try to perceive ourselves as one such principal. All of you will now convert into one imaginary Czechoslovakian, an official in the Prague government who has already been recruited by the Agency. Now he--by which, of course, we now mean I, our surrogate principal--is trying to bring in a few more Czechs from nearby government offices. Manipulation commences. The first clue to effective manipulation happens to be the cardinal law of salesmanship. Would any of you be familiar with that precept?" Rosen's hand shot up. "The customer," he said, "doesn't buy the Iproduct until he accepts the salesman." "How do you know that?" f. Rosen shrugged. "My father used to own a store." "Perfect," said Harlot. "I, as the principal, am there to inspire the utative agent--my client--with one idea. It is that I am good for his ceds. If my client is a lonely person with a pent-up desire to talk, ^hat should be my calculated response, therefore?" "Be there to listen," said several of us at once. "But what if I am dealing with a lonely man who dwells in iolation out of personal choice?" , "Well, just sit beside him," said one of the Mormons, "enjoy the |uiet." "Clear enough," said Harlot. "In doubt, always treat lonely peo- as if they are rich and old and very much your relative. Look to 376 NORMAN MAILER provide them with the little creature comfort that will fatten share of the will. On the other hand, should the client prove to social climber who gnashes his teeth at the mention of every party he was not invited to, then sympathy won't get you n Action is needed. You have to bring this person to a gala gather Harlot snapped his fingers. "Next problem. The client has just fessed to you a secret or two about his sexual needs. What wouk do about that?" Savage, a former football player from Princeton, said, "S them." "Never! Not in the beginning." We were at a loss. Discussion circulated aimlessly until Hark it off. "Confess to similar sexual needs," he said. "Of course assumes our client is not a homosexual." We laughed uneasily. right," said Harlot, "I will provide an easier example: Supposi client is ready to be unfaithful to his wife. Not an uncommon pos ity in Czechoslovakia. Well, you, good principal, do not try to vide him with a mistress. Do not complicate the relationshi adding so dramatic and unstable an element as a mistress. In . . . well, what does one do? Rosen?" "I'm temporarily at a loss." "Savage?" "Ditto." "Hubbard?" It seemed to me that the answer had already been prov "Perhaps you should confess to the same longing yourself?" "Yes. Hubbard listens to what I say. Confess to similar si needs." "But we still don't know," said Rosen, "what to do if the cli desires are frankly and actively homosexual." We went around the room again. It was my day in class. This I had a small inspiration. "I think you should show sympathy identity," I said. "I "Keep on," said Harlot. ^ "I suppose you could say that while not a homosexual yd you do have a younger brother who is, so you understand the ri "Well," said Harlot, "we now have an approach. Let us a{ to other vices. Suppose the client happens to gamble?" i The most effective response, we agreed, would be to tell hi* one's father also gambled. HARLOT'S GHOST 377 We moved on. What if the client wanted to get his oldest son ;cepted at a prestigious university? The principal might then have to ill on influential friends. Some preparations took years. "One has, however," said Harlot, "to keep a firm grasp on the itrinsic problem. An exceptional friendship is being forged. One is :ting as generously as a guardian angel. That can arouse suspicion in ie client. He has to be aware, after all, that his job deals with ovemment secrets. Your official might be as suspicious as a rich girl nth a plain face who is being rushed by an enthusiastic suitor. Depend n it. Espionage has its parallels to matchmaking. Ministers sitting on \ree secrets are the most difficult to woo. One more reason to focus n the easier target--the petty official. Even in such modest purlieus, owever, you, as the guardian angel, have to be ready to dissolve the lient's distrust as it forms. It is reasonable to assume that the client, i some part of himself, knows what you are up to, but is amenable 3 your game. Now is the time to talk him into taking the first ;ep--that same first step which will lead him into becoming an spionage agent. The success of this transition--term it the pass-- epends on one procedure so well established that it is a rule of thumb. )o any of you have a contribution?" We were silent. "I guess one has got to move slow," said a Mormon. "No," said another Mormon, who had done missionary work in tie Philippines, "fast or slow, make it seem natural." "You're on track," said Harlot. "The rule is to reduce the fama." "Is this always true?" asked Rosen. "None of what I tell you is true," replied Harlot. "At this point, pu are being provided with scenarios to substitute for your lack of Experience. Out in the field, count on it, your agents are going to act j» unforeseen patterns." 1< "I know that," said Rosen. "It's just I have this idea that the pass, (you call it, can make matters more dramatic." 'Only in counterespionage," said Harlot. "In time, we will take ook at that arcane subject. For now, however, keep the transition west, uneventful, dull. Reduce the drama. Request something toor. Your purpose, at this point, is not to net information, but to flx your client's conscience. A salesman, as Mr. Rosen's father can I doubt tell us, wants to keep a potential buyer from wondering 378 NORMAN MAILER whether he really needs the product. What procedure is analog our circumstances, Hubbard?" "Do not let the client recognize how much he's getting i "Good. You, the principal, are there to allay anxiety. Wai soup slowly. 'Look, friend,' you might complain to your buddin agent, 'when I want to speak to someone in your office, the m is not available. I cannot pick up the phone and call them—I h send a letter. No wonder our socialist economy creeps along. could let me borrow your department's telephone registry fc night, it would make my work so much easier.' Well, how c client refuse after all you've done for him? It is, after all, a n request. The intraoffice phone book is thin. One can slip it in torn lining of one's overcoat. So the client brings it out to yoi you get it copied immediately, and return it early the next m< before work. Now what do you do?" We were silent. "You let a week go by. If any anxiety was aroused in the c tender breast, it should have settled. Now, ask for a bit more your friend let you have a look at X report? You happen to kno this X report is sitting on one of the desks in his bureau. N< weighty, just something your boss would be pleased to see. It advance your boss's interests to have such information availa him. "An unhappy sigh from the client," said Harlot, "but he ; The report is carried out in his briefcase that night, and is retun him in the morning. "The major shift, however, is yet to come. In order for the to develop into a reliable agent willing to work in place for years now is necessary?" Rosen had his hand up. So did the Mormons. Soon, eve around the table but myself had raised his hand. I was the only 01 to realize that the next step would lead our new agent into money for his services. ' "It is easier," said Harlot, "than you would suppose. Just as a woman prefers to receive kisses and gifts, rather than kisses 9 your just-hatched agent won't mind being paid for his sins.'a corruption warms the chill. Remember, however, that hypoi indispensable here. Keep to the model of the young lady< presents before you get around to money. Avoid any hint ofdl HARLOT'S GHOST 379 y off, for instance, some old nagging debt of the client. Just one are favor. "Sooner than you would believe, our novice agent is ready for a are orderly arrangement. If he senses that he is entering into a eper stage of the illicit, money can relieve some of his anxiety. For iininals, this is always true, and an agent is, at the least, a white-collar .minal. In our case, he has just emerged from an orderly but hitherto (satisfactory middle-class life. Money becomes awfully attractive ien one is perched on the edge. Strike your bargain then. You, as e principal, can bring in an offer from your boss. In return for g-ular removal of selected official documents, a weekly stipend can arranged." Harlot nodded. "An interesting period commences. Our novice's ;ret work now provides him with excitement. If he is middle-aged, in could say he is having a fling. If young, he might actually be mulated by discovery of this potentiality for deceit in himself." Here, Harlot looked around our conference table. Did I have the ipression that his eyes rested just a little longer on mine? His gaze oved on. "I cannot repeat often enough," he said, "the importance this regular cash stipend. It must, however, not be so large as to ow up in a bank account, or a new home. Yet it has to be enough quiet anxiety. Again, we rely on a rule of thumb. A good measure to peg the supplements at not less than one-third and not more than le-halfofthe agent's weekly salary. Regularity of payment serves the me purpose here as dependable meetings with a lady-love. Hysteria, ways ready to flare up, is abated to some degree by predictable rformance on your side. Questions?" One of the Mormons put up his hand. "Can you afford to let the ent become witting of who he is working for?" "Never. If you are able to manage it, don't let him know it is the ompany. Especially in an Eastern satellite. His anxiety would be cessive. If, for example, he is a Czech Communist, let him acquire e notion that he is working for the Russians. Or if, like a few Slovaks Enow, he is an Anglophile, you might slip across the idea that MI6 funding all this. If he likes to see himself as a spiritual descendant of ^derick the Great, nominate the END. Question?" 'What if the new agent doesn't want to take money?" I asked. hat if he hates Communism so much he wants to fight against it? cn't we abusing his idealism?" 378 NORMAN MAILHR •whether he really needs the product. What procedure is analogc our circumstances, Hubbard?" "Do not let the client recognize how much he's getting ir "Good. You, the principal, are there to allay anxiety. Wan soup slowly. 'Look, friend,' you might complain to your budding agent, 'when I want to speak to someone in your office, the nu is not available. I cannot pick up the phone and call them—I ha send a letter. No wonder our socialist economy creeps along. I could let me borrow your department's telephone registry foi night, it would make my work so much easier.' Well, how ca client refuse after all you've done for him? It is, after all, a m request. The intraomce phone book is thin. One can slip it int torn lining of one's overcoat. So the client brings it out to you you get it copied immediately, and return it early the next mo before work. Now what do you do?" We were silent. "You let a week go by. If any anxiety was aroused in the cl tender breast, it should have settled. Now, ask for a bit more. your friend let you have a look at X report? You happen to knot this X report is sitting on one of the desks in his bureau. No weighty, just something your boss would be pleased to see. It i advance your boss's interests to have such information availal him. "An unhappy sigh from the client," said Harlot, "but he a; The report is carried out in his briefcase that night, and is return him in the morning. "The major shift, however, is yet to come. In order for the i to develop into a reliable agent willing to work in place for years, now is necessary?" Rosen had his hand up. So did the Mormons. Soon, evei around the table but myself had raised his hand. I was the only on to realize that the next step would lead our new agent into t money for his services. ' "It is easier," said Harlot, "than you would suppose. Just as| a woman prefers to receive kisses and gifts, rather than kisses s4 your just-hatched agent won't mind being paid for his sins. ^ corruption warms the chill. Remember, however, that hypoq indispensable here. Keep to the model of the young lady.| presents before you get around to money. Avoid any hint ofth^ LOT'S GHOST 379 ay off, for instance, some old nagging debt of the client. Just one lore favor. "Sooner than you would believe, our novice agent is ready for a lore orderly arrangement. If he senses that he is entering into a eeper stage of the illicit, money can relieve some of his anxiety. For riminals, this is always true, and an agent is, at the least, a white-collar riminal. In our case, he has just emerged from an orderly but hitherto nsatisfactory middle-class life. Money becomes awfully attractive /hen one is perched on the edge. Strike your bargain then. You, as ie principal, can bring in an offer from your boss. In return for ;gular removal of selected official documents, a weekly stipend can e arranged." Harlot nodded. "An interesting period commences. Our novice's ;cret work now provides him with excitement. If he is middle-aged, ou could say he is having a fling. If young, he might actually be imulated by discovery of this potentiality for deceit in himself." Here, Harlot looked around our conference table. Did I have the npression that his eyes rested just a little longer on mine? His gaze loved on. "I cannot repeat often enough," he said, "the importance f this regular cash stipend. It must, however, not be so large as to Now up in a bank account, or a new home. Yet it has to be enough 3 quiet anxiety. Again, we rely on a rule of thumb. A good measure i to peg the supplements at not less than one-third and not more than ine-half of the agent's weekly salary. Regularity of payment serves the une purpose here as dependable meetings with a lady-love. Hysteria, [ways ready to flare up, is abated to some degree by predictable erformance on your side. Questions?" One of the Mormons put up his hand. "Can you afford to let the gent become witting of who he is working for?" "Never. If you are able to manage it, don't let him know it is the company. Especially in an Eastern satellite. His anxiety would be xcessive. If, for example, he is a Czech Communist, let him acquire lie notion that he is working for the Russians. Or if, like a few Slovaks ilcnow, he is an Anglophile, you might slip across the idea that MI6 funding all this. If he likes to see himself as a spiritual descendant of rederick the Great, nominate the BND. Question?" "What if the new agent doesn't want to take money?" I asked. "hat if he hates Communism so much he wants to fight against it? "en't we abusing his idealism?" S-K-"sS38S-S^S5-??^5' g" 3-"§- S-Sg^'l-S eg ^ || ^llJl^gl^H^I ^ S ^T S ^ § S- ^ I § ^- . - .1-3 . -^^-^Sg^a-^ca^^^^ZS-S^^^^^"^! ^^- S'" ^s ^ >.?-^ 5' § 5^ S^tlliiliUS^pl'llllil^itilr. g- s^^^^ol^lllls^^^lSl-^oS i"^il^? 3^-sS^^ s I ?llli l^rli^ip1 1 ^^i^ l1i|y z I l^litii^ Is chilli, i llliX ; ? |Ss3s^g^!?s!gg^'ggaig.SS-?8 e|^-s^| s- .ra^s s i ihi?! iHl^ir^i^? Hsr-5^ g ^iis > b ^!|§1^|§ lil^ f-3. ||1 |1^1|.1 | 1^1 z i 11 111 n^.ii h^|i1 ^.If, ^ i I 11 ^ li! i ll'P ^ i ^ti^lli illl t4l^ H ll: " ^s^^s^^S^g'^So13 ^""a"^ s^-ogo"^ a §-i gs. EP. ^.I^S-Slsi^ll-^l? ^t^l^^ J-^S?!? ^ §^ ^ " §.a^«S.^?^§^s"^^ ^l^i^i 3.-^l?§.§- i ^ s^ l^iilltltii'lSitilllStmiiltii. ^"?^'^rS§s^a&&S%^^"^£9^^^?7^^!"§^^S5a^l ^^.^g-s > ^Issg.s-l^-sss-li^igs^ ^gg^^^.^.l^^^s^:! ^ 23" cS'igri^-^criff.-^&rT^^er.Ss1 ^^PcKS^^-^^^^iiK^^ S^ ^I^^Bi's-^llls^s^s-s-^p-l s.^1^1^s-§l&^l^&^ " ^^^^^.^.S^^^^^^^S^s;- g- ^o^s-g-^^S^Sc^S-Sip o Hi i Hi iilll[Wi4il | il? |srjl^|i|^l| : US ^B-^ie'l^i^ s- f-l-il-SIIS-sl^ti^'|il . l^l ^hBiili^^l fr ^il-iil Hils^- ^s- ° y^P ^?'S5Sygy&.o-^«^|^ ^ I'ff^^^S-S^^S^^ " ^^S- ^ I ; iii 1 IN lit i|| jpjrl 1|| | III S?rS &-S§Sy&-§%2.5oo ^^ ^ 3 ^^S3^o^F"SS.3- ^5^ S-%s K-S^Boa-nS^o^oa-^i'' ^ ^^t^Ft'^^&s^^S^-S aoqT 382 NORMAN MAILER other. The agent, furnished with a dead drop, leaves his papers picks up his instructions. On those rare occasions when it is cruci; the agent to talk to the principal, a meeting is arranged in a safe h( but since this is time-consuming in a hostile land, they usually apart. The principal is out breaking ground with new clients. "This, gentlemen," said Harlot, "is espionage—a middle- activity that depends on stability, money, large doses of hypocris both sides, insurance plans, grievances, underlying loyalty, con inclinations toward treachery, and an immersion in white-c work. See you next week. Before too long, we will come to r damnable stuff—counterespionage. That is where we say farew< white-collar mentality." He waved at us and walked from the r< 3 that NIGHT, rosen AND I WENT TO harvey's restauran' going out to dinner together after the Thursdays was now a hab came from no growing affection. I had arrived, however, at the ( conclusion that Rosen was at least as smart as myself, and knew more of what was going on in the Company. He had not managed to strike up an acquaintance with a variety of experts many a desk, but had kept up a. correspondence with everyon knew in the field. One ofRosen's heroes, paradoxically, was Ei Hemingway (paradoxically, I say, since what kind of welcome w Arnie have gotten if Hemingway did not even cotton to Re Cohn?). No matter, Rosen knew Papa's sayings, and believed th; intelligence officer, like a novelist, should have a friend in e occupation: research scientist, bartender, football coach, accoun fanner, waiter, doctor, so forth. Ergo, Rosen worked his tables ii Company cafeteria, and never seemed to worry about the size Q greeting. Half of what I knew about Agency secrets, hush( fiascoes, or internal power struggles among our leaders came' him, and I noticed that Hugh Montague was not above inviting . to dinner once a month. "It's like examining the contents of avat cleaner," Harlot once complained. "There's an abundance oflin you can't ignore the chance that you'll find a cufflink." 'i A cruel estimate, but for me, Rosen's tidbits were undel HARLOT'S GHOST 383 iteresting. He could, for example, fill me in on Berlin. Dix Butler ad been writing back to him, and I heard a lot about Bill Harvey, yho apparently did not even get three hours of sleep these days. That yas the word from Dix. Contemplating the red flock wallpaper in iarvey's Restaurant, I was taken with the serendipity of the occasion. )ne was dining in an establishment founded a century ago by a man \nth the same last name; now, at the other end of the restaurant I saw tiatl. Edgar Hoover was in the act of being seated with Clyde Tolson. had even been able to observe that the Director of the Bureau iroceeded to his table with the heavy grace of an ocean liner. Having icard from C.G.'s lips of the simple inhumanity of Mr. Hoover, I ould contrast his massive sense of self-importance with the kindly, imping, gout-ridden gait of Alien Dulles. Rosen whispered to me, "Did you know that Hoover and Tolson re lovers?" I misunderstood him. "You mean they have a roving eye for romen?" "No! They are lovers. With each other." I was shocked. After Berlin, this was upsetting stuff. "That's a little oo horrendous to contemplate," I told him. Whereupon Rosen went back to Harvey. Did I want to hear more ? I did. "One joke making the rounds," said Rosen, "is that Wild Bill ;eeps getting teased about his adopted daughter. His friends tell him he ought to be given a medical examination. The KGB could have lanted a subcutaneous sneaky before they deposited the baby on the borstep. Harvey becomes tight as a tick. The possibility eats at him. t's implausible, but Harvey's under a lot of strain these days." "You heard this from Dix?" "How not?" .' "Is he faring well?" "Says to tell you Berlin is glum now that the tunnel is gone." At the next High Thursday, Harlot would also speak of CATHETER. His guests that day were the most impressive single gathering re were to have at any of the seminars. In addition to Mr. Dulles, rank Wisner was there, and Desmond FitzGerald, Tracy Bames, »wrence Houston, Richard Bissell, Dick Helms, Miles Copeland, id there were four or five unfamiliar faces who I could see were fecncy moguls. The set of their shoulders, so quietly supporting one 384 NORMAN MAILER or another unholy weight, spoke of elevated rank. Rosen whisp that this lofty gang would all be moving offafterward to a dinner / Dulles was giving at his home for Harlot. This was one time when I knew as much as he did. In morning, there had been an unexpected visitor at the Argent Uruguay Desk. The future Chief of Station for Montevideo stoj by for a chat. Transferred from Tokyo in July, he had come intc office one morning when I was out on an errand, had introdi himself around, and promptly disappeared. "You won't see him again till Christmas," said Crosby, my tion chief. As with other long-emplaced deskmen, nine-tenths o knowledge was on the dark side. So I heard a good deal about my COS before I met him. His name was Hunt, E. Howard Hunt, he was putting in his Washington time paying calls on Dire Dulles, General Cabell, Frank Wisner, Tracy Bames. "Maybe he has to," I said, "as new Chief of Station." "That's right," said Crosby. "Chief of Station, and he hasn't < hit forty. Probably wants to be DCI some day." I liked Hunt when I met him. Of medium height, with a j, trim build and well-groomed presence, he looked semimilitary. long pointed nose had an indentation just above the tip that sugg< a good deal of purpose in his trigger finger. He certainly came i to the point. "I'm glad to meet you, Hubbard," he said. "We've got a 1< house to keep in the upcoming tour. In fact, I'm on the wicket i now trying to talk a few of our Company tycoons into letting us up the Station. They all cry, 'Hide the wampum. Howard Hu raiding us again!' But it's the truth, Hubbard. In Intelligence, secret way to spell effective is M0N-EY." "Yessir." He looked at his watch with a gesture that had as many fine m as a well-timed salute. "Now, fellow," he said, "we're going t to know each other well, but for the nonce, I'm asking for a b( "Yours." j "Good. Get me an invitation to Hugh Montague's thin) afternoon." S "Yessir." I wasn't sure I could fulfill his request. When he sa hesitation in my response, he added, "If you come up short,'' always go over the top. It's no stretch to say that Director Dull< Dickie Helms are friends of mine, and I know they'll be there HARLOT'S GHOST 385 "Well, that is the sure way to do it," I confessed. "Yes," he said, "but I'd rather owe this favor to you than to Mr. Dulles." "I understand," I said. "Get me into the dinner as well," he added. When he was gone, I called Harlot's secretary, Margaret Pugh. "I don't know if we want to invite Mr. Hunt," she said. "He's trying to breed up." "Could you see it as a favor to me?" "I know." She sighed. The sound told me much. She was sixty years old and professionally stingy. I had, however, whenever we spoke to one another, done my best to improve her day, and she did keep accounts. "I'm in the mood to hear a good joke," she said. "Tell me one." Crosby had furnished a two-liner that morning, but I wasn't certain it could qualify as good. "Why won't Baptists," I asked her, "make love standing up?" "Why won't they?" "Because people might think they were dancing." "Oh, you are wicked," she said. "Oh, dear, oh, dear." But she sounded merry. "I'm going to do it," she decided. "I am going to enable Howard Hunt to mingle with his betters. When Hugh looks at the guest list—which he pretends not to-—I will tell him that it was all my fault, and that I did it to start you nicely in South America. Harry, don't confess that it originated with you. Not under any circumstances. Hugh does not believe I can be suborned. I'm serious," she said, as if she could perceive me smiling—which I was—"you i have to hold the line." "I swear." "He has no humor about his friends getting through to me." "I swear." ' "Oh, you don't know," she said, "how much I'd like to charge you for this." 386 NORMAN MAILER ll 4 "last WEEK," SAID harlot, "WE TOOK A TOUR THROUGH ESPION In that field, the basic building block is fact. Today, I look to entci more complex world of counterespionage which is built on lies. should we say, on inspirations? The actors in this kind of venture to be adventurers, aristocrats, and psychopaths. Yet, these perso compose but half of the team. Their less visible counterpart is n up of a support system ready to devote ceaseless attention to d< Scoundrels and scholars, we see, are in collaboration. The difficu cannot be underestimated. Just as an honest man feels safe until he (since his habits for consorting with untruth are few), so is a liar se until he is so unwise as to be honest. One cannot trap a total liar. can say, for example, that he and a young lady were at the o Tuesday night sitting in box 14, and when you tell him th: impossible since box 14 happens to belong to a good friend ofy who was definitely present on Tuesday night sitting alone there, i always does, why, then, your liar will look you straight in the eye, tell you he never said he was in box 14 on Tuesday night, it was 40, and say it with such authority that you believe him. The liai as simple a life as the honest man." I was struck with the resonance of the mirth that came forth f the nabobs. They laughed as if good humor on this subject was of some private preserve. . "Counterespionage, of course, does not permit the luxur unbridled prevarication. On the contrary, we tell the truth almos of the time, but tell it under the umbrella of a great lie: We pre) that the agent bringing our Company secrets over to our oppone in their employ when, in fact, he is one of ours. That is unobstru counterespionage. It is encountered, however, more frequent!' theory than in practice. We and the KGB have both gotten so g that it has become difficult to he successfully to each other. Sho< Polish defector approach us with the desire to be spirited ov( America--well, as a good many of us know, we tell him to eat transatlantic wings by remaining at his ministry in Warsaw as our; for a couple of years. Let us say he accepts our bargain. The mrth. It's all done with the State Department pouch. Absolutely utight." She nodded at what must have been the look in my eye. Yes," she said, "I suppose I am asking you to break the law. But not ;ally, darling," and Kittredge gave one of her kisses, a fell, wet, issing cousin of a full kiss. "Write the'longest letters you can," she dd. "Put enough in to get us hanged." She gave the oddest laugh, i if nothing in all the world could be as sensuous as conspiracy itself. I didn't look at her note until I was on the plane. It was but a few nes long: ast address your pouch envelope to Polly Galen Smith, Route ^R-105-MC. Once the pouch reaches Washington, your letters rtll be delivered to a post office box in Georgetown that Polly still olds but has passed over to me, key and all, since she has obtained ft additional box for her own use. Hence, she won't ever know lio is writing to me. Besitos, Kittredge ART FOUR ONTE VIDEO 19561959 Montevideo Sunday, October 14, 1956 Dear Kittredge, I haven't been out of this city since I arrived. From the little . I've been told at the Embassy, our work is often heavy enough to call for sixty- and seventy-hour weeks. The consequence is that Monte- .: video, with its one million people, half the population of Uruguay, is | all I'm likely to get a look at for a while. I My hotel, the Victoria Plaza, a brand-new red-brick edifice, (.all of sixteen stories high, looks, I fear, like a cardboard carton on end. |"That's where the action is," E. Howard Hunt advised me before I | left, and 1 assumed that my future Chief of Station would know, and es, there is action of a sort--businessmen of various nationalities in he hotel bar looking to make deals. Since I can barely afford the oom, I've spent my time walking about. You see, on Thursday when arrived, my superiors, all two of them, were absent on Company msiness, and Porringer, the man who met me at the airport, told me 6> look around until Monday and get the feel of the city, because I youldn't have a chance later. He was too jammed right then, he ided, to install me properly. Wonderful. I have the feeling this is the last weekend I am oing to have free until Christmas. My cohorts in our small wing of e Embassy up on the second floor have the look of Hugh's Morons. Hellishly overworked individuals. Well, it's also hell to be alone in a country. I've been so tired ni walking all day that I fall asleep right after dinner--no nightlife report as yet--then up again in the morning to stroll around again. Duld you believe it? I find Montevideo half beguiling. That is an tievement since, to the casual eye, it's nothing remarkable. For that 412 NORMAN MAILER matter, most of Uruguay looks to be of modest interest. It can boas of no Andes; indeed, it hardly has hills, and there's nothing of the grea Amazonian jungle. Just rolling plains and cattle. Montevideo itself i a seaport on the estuary of the River Plata where it enters the Atlantic and a lot of silt from the riverbottom separating Uruguay and Argen tina colors the water a clay-gray brown, not in the least reminiscen of the blue Atlantic we know in Maine. Nor does the port amount t< much. It looks like Mobile, Alabama, or Hoboken, New Jersey; al industrial harbors look the same, I guess. Access to the docks is mostr interdicted, so you can't wander down to where they unload. Any way, the port seems dingy. Winches scream in the distance. The main street, called the Avenue of the 18th of July, is fill of bustle, and has a predictable plethora of stores--nothing specia about the main street. An occasional plaza sports a bronze general cm a horse. All right, I know you're ready to comment--what is uniqri about Montevideo? And I answer: Nothing, until you learn how d look. At this point, I put aside what I had written. It was not a livt enough letter to satisfy my lady. ' Montevideo October 14, IS Dear Kittredge, ' You wouldn't know you were in South America, at leastsj by my preconceived idea of this continent. There's no heavy foal and very few Indians. Apparently, they all died off from infect^ diseases brought in by the first Europeans. So, on the street yott a Mediterranean population--Spanish, with an underwriting of| ian. Earthy, serious-looking people. The older architecture, Sf baroque and Spanish colonial, is not inspiring unless you devel eye for little surprises. This land has a spirit I could not locate t came to me: I feel as if I'm living in an ink drawing of Italy : eighteenth century. I suppose I am thinking of the sort ofprii find in old English travel books--a lonely hiker rests on a knc contemplates an empty landscape. All is in repose. The ruin crumbled gently and live in peace with the edifices that still stand. Tipie is a presence high in the sky, hardly moving. Eternity has come to rest at noon. For example: the Legislative Palace. During the week, all governing takes place here. It is as large as a railroad station and looks like a cross between Versailles and the Parthenon, yet in front of this hugs wedding cake, at the debouchment of the grand and empty avenue of the Libertador General Lavelleja, stands one policeman ^essed in the hat and cape of a Paris cop. One bicyclist rides by. It js Sunday, but even so! On a side street off this edifice, a small plump ^ap in a blue workingman's smock is entertaining kids with an credible foot-and-forehead species of juggling with a soccer ball. It spenis medieval. On the next street a beggar sits on a box, his swollen foot stretched out before him. Now, of course, there's all sorts of bustle in parts of town. The stores have inames "^ ^a an^ Marbella--merely to sell clothing! Hordes of materialistic-looking shoppers are out on Saturday. Carcasses hang everywhere in the butcher shops, and bloody as hell. In fact they eat so much meat in this land (238 Ibs. a year per capita!) that you can smell barbecue grease on every street corner. It gets into everything you eat, fish, chicken, eggs, all those great galloping beef on the pampas. Yet this smell of the griddle is not the element I find unique- ^tls ^ *:'ac^ streets. Montevideo is spreading out all the time, and the old parts don't get rebuilt, merely repaired in a fashion. Most of the natives here are not living in history as we know it. When I left Washington' everybody was concerned with Hungary and Suez and the presidential campaign; now I feel far away from the world's trouble-In Montevideo, all the public clocks seemed to have stopped. It is always 9:00 and 2:30 and 5:21 in different parts of town. Not much onthe scale of world history is ever going to happen, evidently, in Urug"ay. The trick, I expect, is to know how to live for the sake of living- for example: the cars. They love automobiles here. You see old vehi^es of every make and twenty-year vintage. They keep patching and repainting them. I think the owners can't afford enough paint ito do th^ entire job at once, so they start with a half-pint and cover Sthe worst rust SPOt first with ^atever pigment is available, usually about en^S^ta ^P "P half of one door. Then a month later, another patch of f"st pops out. If they can't find the old paint can, they put E 414 N 0 R M A 'N MAILER on another hue. After a while, the cars clatter by like Joseph's co many colors. What verve! I must say they prance like prize bulls fair. In many neighborhoods, however, the streets are peace spooky. The other end of the world may be rushing along, but nc some poor block of shabby houses where the only vehicle in sig an old olive-drab Chevy sporting bright yellow and orange splot< Such silence prevails that I feel as if I'm in a wood. A boy in the distance is wearing a yellow sweater, same hue as the bright ye someone splashed on the old olive-drab car. Another old car another old street, is jacked up by the front end, its hood lifted so that it looks like a duck quacking. It has been repainted a bril off-blue. Above it, on a battered old balcony, laundry is dryii promise you, Kittredge, one of the shirts is the same off-blue a; car. I think when a land is sheltered from the storms of his) smaller phenomena take on prominence. In a Maine meadow tected from winds, wildflowers pop up in the oddest places as if I only purpose is to delight the eye. Here, down the length of one commonplace, nineteenth-century building, I see an ongoing pa of stone and stucco: brown and gray-brown, aquamarine, olive-j and tangerine. Then lavenffer. Three foundation stones in rose.Ji the cars reflect the sediments left in old paint cans, so, under the s pervasive city-color is this other subtler display. I begin to suspect these people keep an inner eye on their street, and if a unique p of moss-green has been put on a sign, then there, at the far end o block, someone chooses to paint a doorway in the same hue ofgi Time and dirt and damp and peeling plaster work their inter-wast into the view. Old doors fade until you cannot determine whethe original was blue or green or some mysterious gray reflecting from the spring foliage. October, remember, is like April here ir Southern Hemisphere. In the Old City, on a street that runs down to the wa edge, the gray claylike beach is deserted. At the bottom ofthis.;| is an empty plaza with a lone column standing against the sea-fl they have selected the spot to prove that De Chirico knows hffl paint? So often in these lonely landscapes, one sees a solitary f| dressed in mourning. 4 The old city, and the medium old city, and the city they! put up in the last fifty years are all, as I say, quietly crumbling. ^ HARLOT'S GHOST 415 reams must have gone into the construction of all these baroque whirls and turns and whorls and fenestrations. On the commercial a-eets are bay fronts and wrought-iron balconies, round windows, val windows, ogival, and Gothic and art-nouveau windows, and roof ialustrades with broken pediments. Iron gates lean in various stages of lisrepair, old doors are bereft of pieces of their molding, and laundry angs in the apertures of grand windows. Kittredge, forgive me for going on at such length after being There only a few days, but, do you know, I never had an opportunity 3 enjoy Berlin, or even look at it. I know you were expecting a little more substance, but a good rule to follow in these matters is to make ertain that one's means of sending a letter actually do work. Yours devotedly, Herrick I didn't receive a reply for two weeks. Then came a short note. 'Dispense with the excelsior. Send the dry goods. K." 2 WAS HURT. I DID NOT REPLY. as I FORESAW, THE NEXT COUPLE OF yeeks went by with a great deal of work at the Embassy, and the only hanged in my personal life during this period was to transport myself nd my two suitcases from the Victoria Plaza Hotel to the Cervantes, considerably cheaper hostelry, situated next door to a fleabag. In the arly hours of the morning, sounds came up from the gutter of bottles leaking. ? Then came a second note from Kittredge. November 13, 1956 :ar Harry--forgive all. Some days I feel like Catherine of Russia. or Hugh. Poor Herrick. It's all the fault of the impatient child I ar- An imperious spirit will dwell among us before long. In the terim, know that on rereading, I thought your dance of the half-pint put cans was fun. Will you buy me one of those gaily painted autos Christmas? We miss you terribly, Hugh without knowing it, I 416 NORMAN MAILER more than making up for both of us. A dear spirit is among missing. Do write me a nice letter full ofshtuff. Detail the daily dr if you will. Your number one. Kittn p.s. The routing for mail works perfectly at this end. I assume it's c at yours. November 16, 1 Dear Catherine of all Russia, How I prefer the kiss to the knout! Since you ask for working day, I'll give it. We're an unhappy station. That is bee we are waiting for E. Howard Hunt to arrive. The present Chit Station, Minot Mayhew, is an old Foreign Service officer who loads of seniority and so was able to sign on in 1947 with the Agt at the level of Chief of Station. He has been at that level ever si doing stints in Bolivia and Paraguay. Now Mayhew is waituij retire, and does nothing. No social functions. Not much Agency w He comes in at nine with the rest of us, and by ten is usually ovi his stockbroker's. Everyone agrees, however, that he is nifty at aspect of his job: He keeps up decent relations with the Ambassa I've heard horror tales, as I'm sure you have, of how strained relat can get at an Embassy when the Ambassador looks upon the Chi< Station with a jaundiced eye. Here, however, due to Mayhew, w left at peace in our portion of the second-story wing. The Amb; dor, Jefferson Patterson, understands Spanish, but can only speak i a stammer, so Mayhew, whose cover title is First Secretary, fields si of the Ambassador's work with Uruguayan officials. Mayhew has been instrumental in bringing over, via diplomatic pouch, so equipment for a Catholic team in Montevideo. Other than that rating is close to zero. Our real direction comes from the Dq Chief of Station, an ex—World War II Marine Lieutenant with v, neck named Augustus "Gus" Sonderstrom. Augustus must have ( a very tough guy once, but has now gone, not to seed, but to | belly. He tends to give his all to golf, and it's not as silly as it soil At the country club, he brings along our Operations Officer or Q munications Officer to play in foursomes with various local govl ment and business types. That establishes a climate for favors. I HARLOT'S GHOST 417 Russians, despite an injection of new KGB types called "joy-boys" (who wear London suits instead of Russian burlap bags), are not yet competitive in golf and tennis. So, Gus Sonderstrom's social contacts with Uruguayan golfer-officials often lets us hold some good cards. On the other hand, we need all the help we can get. The President of the Uruguayan government, Luis Batlle, represents the Colorado Party, which has won every election here for the last hundred years. Socialist-oriented, the Colorados spend and spend. Uruguay is a true welfare state--which may be why it's so peaceful and crumbling. This Luis Batlle is anti-American and at the moment is working out cattle and hide deals with the U.S.S.R. I was thrust into all this on my second day of real work in the Embassy, which, by the way, is a splendid white mansion. Vaguely antebellum, it has a veranda fronted by two-story white wooden columns, and is situated on nothing less than the Avenida Lord Ponsonby, next to a park so beautifully laid-out that it could only have been designed by a Parisian landscape artist, circa 1900. In this part of Montevideo, rest assured, nothing crumbles. Our Embassy is as spotless as Navy whites, and Sonderstrom in our first interview wants to know about my tennis game. Seems we need one more good player for the country club intrigues. Did I bring a racket, Gus wants to know. Well, so soon as my father heard of my assignment to Uruguay, he sent a stiff warning by way of one of his rare letters to me: I was told to avoid the golf and tennis circuit! The idea, according to Cal, is that younger officers who put in their time in this manner must have control of their technique. If you're courting a foreign diplomat, let His Specialness take the set, whereas if you're teamed with your Chief in doubles against a State Department pair, then don't, for God's ake, let the Agency down. "You, son," Cal wrote to me, "haven't, n my opinion, that kind of concealed mastery. I like your fast serve ivhen it goes in--it's got heart'.--ditto the overhead, but your backhand can't speak back to any opponent who knows how to insult it. ;So stay away from tennis--you'll drop too many points in other places." Recognizing the wisdom of this, I told Sonderstrom that I pidn't even know how to find the handle on a racket. When he Brought up golf, I said, "Sir, the one time I got out on a golf course, shot a five, first hole." "Fantastic," he said. "Yessir, and a thirteen and a fifteen on the next two. By then, 418 NORMAN MAILER I had lost all my golf balls." Actually, I'm better than that, but I w about to tell him. "What sports are you good at?" asked Sonderstrom. I said boxing and rock climbing appealed to me. That i care of it. Gus grunted and said there weren't too many rod Uruguay and any boxing I did had better not be in bars. I coul< he was going to squeeze a little more golf and tennis out of the off available to him at present, and leave me to carry their excess lot desk work. On the other hand, now that I was, in his eyes, a be he wasn't going to be snide about it. He's really out of shape. One result, I expect, of being laggard on golf and tennis is I've caught an all-night chore from one of the Operations Offi (Yes, he plays tennis!) Maybe it's just the job they pass on to newest arrival. The irony is that it's the task I enjoy the most bee it has a whiff, at least, of cloak-and-dagger, although don't get mi It's only for one night a week, and couldn't be more untypical of I spend the rest of my working time. Called AV/ALANCHE, it's a modest operation invol seven teenagers from a local gang of more or less decent right-i Catholic youths. They are in the work for the ideological satisfac and the excitement, and, certainly, the money. We pay each oft the equivalent often bucks a night. Their task is to go out under c of darkness once a week to deface Communist posters, and { our--that is, their--Catholic party slogans over the Red ones. Sc times, we put up new posters where our old ones have been def by Communist gangs. I confess I like the action, and I like the '. although I will confess that I have been out there on the street AV/ALANCHE just once and then only by dint of convincing S( erstrom that it might be my duty to pick up some feel for the Actually, active participation is considered too chancy for the Agi since our seven kids in AV/ALANCHE run occasionally into a to bunch from the MRO, who are very tough fellows indeed, ultra ists who believe in armed insurrection. Not only do street fights b out, but there are arrests. If I were picked up on such an occasid the police, it could be in the hands of the wrong arm. It seerffl flies of Montevideo come in political flavors, left or right. Depen^ the. precinct. (We're in South America, after all.) Sonderstroq lowed me to set up my credentials with these kids by going ovS{ once with them, but afterward he forbade it. "I didn't sleep til| got back," Gus told me next day. I had returned at 5:00 A.M.' HARLOT'S GHOST 419 called him at his home, per instructions, leaving him vastly relieved that I had no fracas to report. All the same, the tension is there. Think of it! Scuttling around the streets in an old truck, working by flashlight as occasional stragglers and drunks pass at two in the morning. Are they lookouts for the Reds? We were defacing PCU posters (Partido Comunista de Uruguay), and that meant going on sorties into work- ing-class neighborhoods. At two in the morning, those barrios are as silent as cemeteries. It brings back that time in adolescence when adrenaline throbs in your limbs like your first taste of booze. Now, however, on an average Tuesday run with my gang, I position myself a half mile away in one of our radio cars, then keep in contact with AV/ALANCHE-1 through his walkie-talkie. He actually prefers this arrangement. A tough, wiry kid with the greatest head of thick powerful black curls, AV/ALANCHE-1 reassures me that they're better off if I am free on the perimeter to take off and get them bail or hospitalization if things should go wrong. Sonderstrom, however, tells me to drive by afterward and make certain they did the job. I obey him, but am unhappy about it. These kids are taking risks while I'm secure in my radio car; yet I, in effect, must proceed to distrust them. All the same, Sonderstrom, who usually looks like he's smelling a bad cheese, is not all wrong. Occasionally they complete no more than half a job before they get nervous and decamp. Then, unhappily, they neglect to tell me. I make note of that, but still pay them. If it gets worse, I'll confront AV/ ALANCHE-1. For the rest, however, my daily work is not all that enthrall, ing. In the beginning, the Agency must have been afraid there would ; not be enough tasks to keep us occupied, since our work can often be (a bit intangible, and the country seems huge. (All countries, even modest ones like Uruguay, are huge when you are only a handful of people in an office.) So, a method was developed to make certain that Here is always a great deal to do. Sample day: I come in at nine, have my coffee, and start reading the local 'apers. Given my Spanish, that could take two hours, but I push it rough in thirty minutes. Slowly over the weeks, the nuances of the olitical situation become clearer to me. Of course, I also discuss the olitical personalities and local events with my other two Operations 'fficers, and the Communications Officer, plus our Station Adminis?tive Assistant, who is Mayhew's secretary. Kittredge, that's the sum 420 NORMAN MAILER of our people in the Station office! Outside the Embassy, we can ; boast of two skilled operators on contract--details to be fumisi later. As my office cohorts go over the daily news together, I p up what I can from the Senior Operations Officer, Sherman P ringer, who is the most knowledgeable about Uruguayan politics. that stuff in training that failed to interest me--labor unions, 1( party maneuvering, etc.--is now the meat of daily discussion. After local news analysis, we peruse all the overnight ca traffic, our own first, followed by a thorough look at our associa intake since we never know when we will have to fill in. If, example, my fellow Operations Officer, Jay Gatsby (do you beli the name?--he's one of the most colorless people I've ever met!^ out on a golf foursome with Sonderstrom and, lo and behold, Gatsl number-one agent, AV/IDITY, calls in, I obviously have to kno' bit about Gatsby's projects. All right, incoming cables digested, we compose our o going messages, which we also circulate round-robin so that all witting of what is being sent out. Along with phone, and an un pected turn or two, lunch is on us soon enough. In the aftemoo) put in considerable time studying the travel movements ofUrugua' officials, many of whom are Communist sympathizers who visit Pc guay, Brazil, or Argentina for meetings with party colleagues th< We also find a surprising number of trade missions to the East Eu pean countries and the U.S.S.R. Our agent AV/OUCH, in U guayan Customs at Carrasco Airport, keeps an eye on si movements. Our files build. But time! It all consumes time. Have dinner one evening with AV/OUCH (who is a seedy little family n pleased to get a fancy meal), I talked him into recruiting an agent I going to call AV/OUCH-2. It got me thinking of Hugh's Thursd; I'm afraid the Station doesn't have any major agents in serious gove ment work as yet, but it certainly isn't difficult to pick up the p< ones. It's just money. AV/OUCH-2 will be eager to exploit his ( in Passport Control to take note of those Uruguayans who are retU ing with visa stamps from target countries. a Of course, after we locate these local Communists, there d| remain the question of what to do about it. Mayhew's lack of initial hurts. I'd like to try turning a few of these Uruguayan Commui| into double agents, but Sonderstrom tells me to wait until E. tiovl Hunt arrives, i HARLOT'S GHOST 421 Let us say it is 3:30 p.m. in our office by now. Be certain, we are now going through the dossiers of the foreigners who will attend our Embassy function tonight. We have to be ready to warn the Ambassador of any dubious Embassy Row guests. Finally, by way of AV/ERAGE, our Uruguayan journalist (who works the society beat), we keep track of who is being invited to other embassy affairs. It can be worth something to know that a Uruguayan official, secretly a PCU member, is on the guest list at the British Embassy. Is he being wooed by the English, or taking them for a ride? If the latter, do we send warnings? By sundown, one or two of us may have an agent to meet at a safe house or a cafe. (I'm not up much on that, yet. Alas!) Then, evening work commences. Since I'm not putting in hours at golf or tennis, and do have a dinner jacket and tails, it's incumbent on me to be present at American and foreign embassy functions. That's droll. In Berlin, I never went to one cocktail party. Here, I'm out every night. My tails, incidentally, bring out the sardonic in Sherman Porringer: He declares that I am a State Department man using the Company for cover. One mighty wit is Porringer. Sherman Oatmeal, my private name for this good fellow, is another owl-eyed Ph.D. from Oklahoma, blue-jowled even with two shaves a day, another quintessenrially dank example of our heroic Agency propensity for bottomless work. He is also Sonderstrom's old reliable. Porringer has the largest caseload, the unhappiest wife, the most comprehensive sense of Uruguayan politics, and--I have to admit--is kind of creative compared to the rest of us at initiating new operations. He is, however, desperately jealous of my ability to give a competent performance at parties and dances. Oatsie goes to his number of such affairs, but cuts the Long kind of figure. Essentially unathletic, he has compensated by irious stints of weight-lifting (keeps his own barbells at home), and, i consequence, is overdeveloped on top, somewhat concrete-posted n bottom. He takes a lady onto the dance floor and steps about in "ritual pain. Being one of these wholly disciplined Ph.D. mentalities ^ho need only to define their will and they will follow it, he is used > telling each limb what to do. Choppy seas for the partner. ; Meanwhile, I cavort a little with his wife, Sally. She's a ^row-minded twit, I fear, hates Uruguay, won't learn Spanish, ?veighs not too attractively on the stupidity of the servants here, but >e does know how to dance. We have fun at that. I must say, it's a Russian woman I suppose I've seen. Very feminine (if a touch pli with raven hair and the largest black eyes. In turn, Zenia hi undeniable eye for the men. Exchanging glances with her is missing a step going downstairs. What a jolt! Boris, by the way, s< the most sympatico of the Russian legation, a good-sized bear Russian, albeit a touch scholarly in mien, clean-shaven young with a mane ofpepper-and-salt hair and a sad, wise, agreeable ex] sion, as if you could really talk to him. The others, for the mosti are brutes, or London-suited joy-boys. 'I Do you know, there's so much to tell and so little tinM now 2:00 a.m., I'll try to pick up this letter tomorrow night. I rej thinking over what I've written, that my life couldn't be more dj ent than it was in Berlin. -There I knew what it was to be premadf old. Now I feel young, but ready to take charge of a few things. ^ was right. Here is the place to develop. 5 I will not mail this letter until I finish it tomorrow nig HARLOT'S GHOST 423 can't get over the shock I'm telling you so many proscribed things. I feel as if I'm shattering sword and vow--some such semi-occult romantic malaise. And all for the higher vow of my lady's hand. Damn it, Kittredge, are you a Soviet agent to have so entrapped me? H. p.s. Actually, I feel no undue anxiety on committing all this to the mails. Your pouch routine impresses me as secure. 3 November 17, 1956 (after midnight) Dear Kittredge, Trying to convey the feel of these Uruguayan spy grounds seems equal, at times, to tracing a vine through a thicket. How, for example, can I delineate AV/OIRDUPOIS? He is Gordon "Gordy" Morewood, one of our two contract Operations Officers, an old hand who worked for the British in Hong Kong during the thirties and has since put in contract stints with us in Vienna, Yugoslavia, Singapore, Mexico City, Ghana--God, you'd think the man would be fascinating--always out there by himself, never working inside a Station, just taking on jobs like a private detective and being paid for them. Well, Gordy is a huge disappointment when you meet him. He's a small, ;dour Scotchman about sixty with a gimp leg (arthritis, I believe, not gunshot) and a splenetic disposition. A sour bad ad for old spies. All Be seems to care about is his per diem which he inflates unconscionably. fhis man eats well off his expense accounts, and Minot Mayhew efuses to have anything to do with him. That costs us a good deal of clephone time. Gordy is always on the line asking for the Chief of anon, and we have to stall him out and take the abuse. He's capable i saying (and he has the most nasty thin voice), "Look, dear young Wee, you are altogether incapable of hiding the fact that Mayhew is luking around the Embassy right now and must be reached by me. cannot speak to you. You are too low on the pole." As I write this, he sounds interesting, but he isn't. The voice roes forth in a distracted whine. He always wants more money, and t pestering us thoroughly, knows he will obtain a decent fraction of 424 NORMAN MAILER the new and extra amount. He is certainly adept at using his cov jack up his expenses, and fields an honest-to-God import-es business in the center of town. It's the perfect setup for Morew who imports just about enough gourmet items for the Embassy ( missary to make any close accounting of his finances impossible. Administrative Officer, Nancy Waterston, a sweet, plain, bi hardworking spinster, absolutely devoted to Minot Mayhew--fi better reason than that he happens to be her boss--is also devoti Sonderstrom because he runs the Station, and to the rest of us bei we're doing our patriotic job. Needless to say, she loves the Corn more than church or kin. You can imagine how neat she is, and fussy. Gordon Morewood will drive her, we fear, into nervou haustion. She pores over his accounts, but he has managed to w a web that entangles every one of her good accounting princip have seen Nancy Waterston close to tears after a session with G on the phone. He is always moving on to new projects, new bills, receipts, new out-of-pocket expenses. There is no way she can up with his divagations from accepted bookkeeping practice. C she was desperate enough to importune Mayhew to authori» dispatch of a top-flight auditor to Montevideo, but Mayhew, wi his detestation ofGordy, nonetheless wouldn't put her request o: wire, which makes me suspect that Gordy is somebody's darling in Foggy Bottom. Over separate beers with Sonderstrom, Porri; Gatsby, and the Commo Officer, Barry Reams, I've heard Gordy's position is sacrosanct. We cannot say good-bye to hirr Moreover, we can't afford to. He's very good at his job would not, for instance, have a mobile surveillance team EMARIA-1, and 2, 3, 4), consisting of four off-duty taxi dri without Gordy. He trained those fellows himself (at a 100pe: override for us, we reckon, on the hours of instruction), but at we have them in place and they do bring results. Left to oufm what with our paperwork and our fifty-fifty Spanish (50 perce what we say and hear is comprehended), how could there be thCjl wherewithal, and savvy to train mobile surveillants? We'd ban bring in a team from Mexico City or D.C., speak of expense^ So, yes, the fact is that we can't afford to say good-bS Morewood. He's the only consummate professional among iKj when a real problem comes up, we have to call on him.' fl This time it involved an operation that we characterij cumbersome. We were looking to get a Uruguayan official wh^ HA-R LOT'S GHOST 425 become a Russian agent arrested by the Uruguayan police. Not at all automatic. But let me take it in order. Over a month ago, just before I arrived, we received an alert from Western Hemisphere Division that gave us reason to be interested in a gentleman named Plutarco Roballo Gomez. A year ago, the FBI reported that Gomez, serving then in New York on the Uruguayan Delegation to the UN, was playing footsie with the Soviets. Now that Gomez is back in Uruguay, and is well placed in his Foreign Ministry job, we decided to call on Gordy to find out a little more about him. Gordy has learned that Gomez gambles nightly at the casino in Carrasco, and always needs money. On Tuesday nights, however, he does go to visit his mother at her home near Parque Jose Batlle y Ordonez, which is the large park adjacent to our Embassy. We ordered in our mobile surveillance team. AV/ EMARIA-1, 2, 3, and 4 took turns trailing Gomez's car. On the last trip to his mother's house, Gomez drove into the park, got out of his vehicle, and went for a walk. The paths being sparsely lit, Gordy was able to trail Gomez discreetly on foot, but gave up such pursuit when his target disappeared into a clump of bushes. A few minutes later, Gomez emerged, and crossed to a nearby path where he righted a park bench that had been tipped over, obviously a signal that he had serviced his dead drop. After which, Gomez left the park and drove home. On the following Tuesday, just after dark, we staked out the area around these bushes. Porringer, Sonderstrom, and Morewood had a considerable wait, but at ten in the evening, a man Sonderstrom recognized as an attache at the Russian Embassy came sauntering along, inserted an envelope into the hollow cleft of a tree, and, strolling by the same park bench, stopped just long enough to knock it over. Gomez appeared in the next quarter of an hour, took the envelope from the dead drop, righted the park bench, and went back to his car. Much of the following week was spent in discussion of what to do. Cable traffic mounted. There was considerable discussion about whether to keep using Morewood. He had charged us a good deal already on these matters, and besides, Sonderstrom has his pride. So, .instead of enjoying a Friday afternoon foursome with the Chief of {Police and his assistant, Gus just took them to lunch. Over coffee, gSonderstrom introduced the defalcations of Plutarco Roballo Gomez. ie Chief of Police, Capablanca (yes, same name as the old Cuban 426 NORMAN MAILER chess champion), was even angrier than his deputy, Peones, a offered to spit in the milk of Gomez's mother. Plans were made catch Gomez in the act, then arrest him. Sonderstrom came back the Station in an excellent mood. Not Porringer. Before long, he a Sonderstrom were going at it. Their voices carried through a clos door. Soon, the door flew open and Sonderstrom waved in Gats and Barry Kearns and myself to monitor the debate. I would guess wanted reinforcements. Porringer argued that Gomez was one of President L Batlle's hand-picked proteges, and so the Chief of Police would make the arrest. Sonderstrom agreed this was a bothersome element in t equation. "Still, you learn something about a man while playing g< Capablanca hates missing a shot he should be able to make. I see c Chief of Police as a professional." "My instinct," replies Porringer, "tells me to go slow." "I don't know that we can," says Sonderstrom. "Capablar is laying in the first steps right now. We can't make him look lib fool to his own people." "That's right," said Gatsby. "Latins are as high on saving fi as Orientals." "I agree," said Keams. "In South America," Porringer said, "the jefe can alw; change his mind. It just means his money is coming from a ni direction." "Who," asked Sonderstrom, "is in favor of going for t arrest?" Keams' hand went up, and Gatsby's, and Sonderstrom's, course. I was ready to follow suit, but some instinct held me bai Kittredge, it was the oddest sentiment. I had the feeling Porringer v right. To my amazement, I voted with him. I am linked with Oats Well, we had an answer. On the next Tuesday, I couldn't jt my associates on stakeout in the park because that is the night | AV/ALANCHE, but I certainly heard about it afterward. Son<| strom. Porringer, Gatsby, and Keams spent a couple of hours inJj appropriate bushes with a squad of Uruguayan police. The Rusal attache came sauntering in about the same time as on the previt occasion, which is poor tradecraft. (The local KGB obviously feeH enough away from Moscow to be pretty casual about security.) In 9 event, he went immediately to the dead drop, primed it, tipped o1 HARLOT'S GHOST 427 the bench, and left. By radio came the word that Gomez had parked his car, was approaching on foot. He was actually within twenty yards of the tree when a police car, top light revolving, sirens screaming at the moon, came tearing down a park road toward the stakeout. Gomez, of course, took offinstantly. With a great blast of tire dust and screech, the patrol car stopped right by the tree. Out stepped Capablanca. "Oh," exclaimed our law and order worthy, striking his forehead with a mighty sledgehammer of a hand, "I cannot accept this. The radio told me that our man was already apprehended." In the general confusion. Porringer managed to slip over to the dead drop and withdraw the envelope. Next day, Sonderstrom presented it at the Central Police Station. The note listed each document that Gomez was supposed to photograph in the following week. Sonderstrom stated that this ought to be enough to commence a full-scale investigation. No, sir, we cannot, Capablanca told him. It is now obvious that some unknown foreign power was indeed spying on the Uruguayan government, but, then, nations always spied on host nations. One needed more than evidence such as this to proceed. Owing to the unfortunate lapse in communications on Tuesday night, for which he, Salvador Capablanca, would take full responsibility, he could see no way to move against Plutarco Roballo Gomez. He would, however, keep an eye on him. I can hear Gordy Morewood cackling away! It is now 3:30 a.m. and I am tired. I'll sign off, and wait for your next letter. Do write soon. Besitos, Herrick 4 HREE DAYS LATER, AN OPEN COMMERCIAL CABLE CAME FROM harlot. NOV. 20, 1956 CHKISTOPHBR, EIGHT POUNDS ONE OUNCE, BORN AT WAL- TER REED ARMY HOSPITAL AT 8:01 A.M. MOTHER FINE, SENDS LOVE, FATHER TRANSMITS FOND REGARDS. MONTAGUE 428 NORMAN MAILER NOV. 21, 1956 SPLENDID NEWS. GODFATHER BEWITCHED. HAS I raided my checking account and ordered four dozen lor stemmed red roses to be sent to Walter Reed by way of the Ager Commissary in Washington. Then I went home early from we stretched out on my mattress (which reeked of insect repellent), a stayed in bed at the Hotel Cervantes from six in the evening to six the morning feeling as if I had been stomped on by a platoon Marines. Indeed, I did not write to Kittredge until a letter came from 1 about a month after the birth of Christopher. I no longer knew-- ever did!--what she wanted from my letters, and I did not recogn the calm, hardworking young man who stepped forth in my har writing. He had rattled on about his work as if he knew it inside ( when, indeed, he only pretended to. Was that how I wished to seen? The birth of Christopher mocked such vanity. December 20, 19 Harry dearest, My child is a month old today and I, who was raised by) father to believe that iambic pentameter is the only suitable meter the passions of murder and love, have decided to throw over dictates, and become a devotee of the one-step. Thirty days o Christopher weighs eight pounds, five ounces. Is fed every four hoi Is as beautiful as the heavens. Like a fixated witch, I stare at t blue-eyed creature with his minuscule hams of hands, pink and suc< lent. Watch! They seek his mouth. I examine his incomparable alab ter skin. My ears dwell on his gurgle of innocence. But I know bett All these corny palimpsests ofinfantitude hide from us the fact ri infants look bitter, mean as rue, and eighty years old in the first mini they're born, and are covered with enough welts and streamer! blood to have been in a car crash. Of course, that face soon disapped not to be seen again for eighty years. At present, Christopher shin like an angel cherub. I am the only one to remember where he caj from--that "shuddery penetralia of caves." ', Does the phrase toll a bell? The only time I attended a Hi Montague Thursday, Hugh was talking about the ineffable intent HARLOT'S GHOST 429 tions ofcounterespionage. Leave it to my doughty warrior, he actually said, "Our studies move into penetralia. We search for that innermost sanctum, 'the shuddery penetralia of caves'—for which inimitable phrase, gentlemen, I am indebted to a Mr. Spencer Brown who is so quoted in the OED." At that moment. Harry, I didn't know if my mustachioed Beau Brummel was the acme of audacity or asininity. I did think it was crass to oblige all you young crew-cuts to listen to such smelly stuff. I didn't go back to the Thursdays. I am becoming more and more like my mother, especially these days. I look at Christopher and am transported to bliss, then, as quickly, am dropped right back into the darkness of our human roots—damn shuddery penetralia. Harry, I can't tell you how much your generous letters have meant. Station work, for all its mediocre sleazy contacts and its tedium and frustration, still seems more sensible than all those highly slanted endeavors with which Hugh keeps himself and his helpmate, me, busy. So, don't stop writing. I love the details. Some ofyour items nourish me through the worst ofthep.p.d. 's. Yes, p.p.d.'s. You, male lummox, probably don't know that I am speaking of postpartum depression. You can't conceive of how ill equipped a new mother is at shaping up for the daily grind until you go through these doldrums. Even when I lift my baby out of the crib, and this warm little tenderness of spirit is in my arms, I bawl. For I begin to realize the cost and the beauty of motherhood. Everything within me is being rebuilt on new terms, and who knows how stem and exacting these terms will prove? Hugh comes in from some twelve-hour flap at Technical Services, sees me in the teary mopes, claps his hands, says, "Dammit, Kittredge, Christopher is thirty days old. That's long enough [to put up with one leaky faucet of a woman." Well, I want to kill him. It's simple again. I bless Hugh in my divided heart because anger does lift you up for a while, but, oh, Hugh s such a large part of the p.p.d. 's. As are you. I read your letters, all there, '•verything given to me, and think, "Why can't I dwell among these diot station men with their sacred procedures?" So I start to miss you. keep writing. I do enjoy your epistolary gifts. Your detailed sendings ng light and shadow to the dreamlike two-dimensionality on which ^feeble work is projected. Besitos, estupido. Yours, formore Spic-talk. Hadley K. Gardiner Montague (Mrs.) t- The roses were aces, bearcat, corkeroo! Mille baisers. You are the rest gnat's whistle. 430 NORMAN MAILER 5 Jan. 3, Lovely mother, I can't keep from studying the snapshots you enclose. C topher's cherubic sense of himself pushes right through the ; iodide. I must say he looks a good deal like Winston Churchill that delights me. Not every day does one become surrogate godf to Old Winnie! I also thank you for my Christmas present. It's summer now, but the gloves will be most useful come July. I'm glad the got to Walter Reed. Did the brooch arrive, however, at the St Don't tell me I was extravagant. Perhaps I was, but so soon as I lo into the antique shop window, I had to buy it for you. The oma spoke to me of heavy old Uruguayan gentility, and yet, I don't 1; why, it reminded me of some inaccessible part of you. Can possibly comprehend what I mean? In any event, don't coun extravagant. In truth, I wasn't. My mother, to my amazement, ha» sent me a voluptuous check--it even felt plump and lustful ii bone-dry wallet. (Since I sympathize with your passion-toknc will not torture you needlessly.) Five hundred smackers! Sent; with a one-line note--"It's Christmas, so do it up properly, darii She didn't even bother to sign. Her stationery is her signature. I say I feel uncharacteristically full of love for her. Just as one gro^ resign oneself one more time to her basic stinginess of sentimen she knows what you are thinking, and comes across with a fla." stroke. Someday I will write a Charles Lamb-like essay on The J titudinous Vagaries of the Bitch. Well, I certainly must be full of gelignite and lyddite, l and soup, to speak of my mother in such fashion. (Actually, I resist listing these explosives. I hear them all the time.) We St hands certainly don't use the stuff very often (once a decade?), b( do know how to throw the cordite and nitro jargon around. Bafijj is the latest favorite. Obscene enough to do the job. We ns^i passed through a host of Christmas parties these last two week^ of the married couples (which involves Mayhew, Sonderstrom,| ringer, Gatsby, Keams) plus Nancy Waterston and myself as sri giving an evening at their homes. I, still ensconced in my affl fleabag hotel, reciprocated by inviting four couples and Nancy ^ T ' S G H 0 S. T 431 ston (Mayhew doesn't show up at any party but his own) to dine, all ten of us, in the grand and overpriced dining room of the Victoria Plaza. In the course of after-dinner drinks, we all got off for some silly reason on bang juice. Kept passing the term around, looking for new connotations--which came down, predictably, to the old connotation. But we had a merry time formulating such bang juice toasts as: "Blessings and bang juice to Augustus Sonderstrom, our own Gus, banging his big woods andjuiced-up irons, and may all the bang juice be wiped off his hard-hitting putter," yes, it got as elaborate and stupid as that. From Porringer, of course. Anyway, I had one insight into Sally and Sherman late that evening. At the end of dinner, about the time we were all thickening up--you can't call it sobering up--they happened to be alone for a moment at one end of the table, and she was looking sour, and he was full of bilious, much-compacted anger. (I know he had to be upset that his elaborate golf-and-bang-juice toast did not go over.) So the Porringers sat there like a warning to all who might contemplate marriage, old before their time. It's awfully sad, because she has a perky little face. Maybe she was a cheerleader in high school, for certainly she has a nice body. At any rate, I began to notice what the Porringers were doing with their napkins. It told the tale. Sherman had squeezed his piece of linen and released it, squeezed it and released it (with his thighs, I assume) until now, laid on the table, it looked like a piled-up thundercloud. Hers, to the contrary, appeared to have undergone a regimen of successive flattenings from the palm other hand. Still, the cloth kept -rising. Her poor trapped heart? I think the Porringers are both from the Southwest, college weethearts perhaps, I seem to recollect that he went to Oklahoma tate. The point to this, I expect, is that each of them touches me in ne oddest way. Ever since I voted with him against Sonderstrom, his elations toward me have been a study. Stop-and-go. Brusque; fiendly. Highly critical of my work, followed by a clap on the back. juperciliously superior, then helpful. I, in turn, don't know if I like to any better. I mention this because he did pass on a plum of a job »me. Right in front of Sonderstrom, he said, "Rick can field this one ter than Gatsby, and you and I just don't have the time." Do you know, I realize that all of this letter has been a Mnble to a serious decision. Everything I've disclosed up to now be seen as venial, but if I fill you in on the new job, and am 432 N-ORMAN MAILER discovered, I'm in the soup. As are you. So, let us wait a coupli days. I'll write again before the week is out. It's 3:00 a.m. once m Apologies for this abrupt ending. I have to think this out for my It's of too much consequence to rush into. l( H I was not telling the truth about Sally Porringer. We had be an affair, and it was already into its second week on the night I inv my good Agency associates to dinner. So, the sadness I felt on wa< ing Mrs. Porringer flatten her napkin was more complex than sin sorrow, and not without a tinge of fear. I lived among trained obsi ers, after all, and the affair, if ever discovered, would look dreac Having helped me to get an important assignment, Sherman Porrii had been given a set of horns for Christmas. Nonetheless, I fell asleep with no difficulty. Encountering cold center of myself was not unreassuring. It suggested that I m be well equipped for the more difficult tasks I would face. I certa felt cold enough to recognize that a very small part of me, which nonetheless quintessential, would never forgive Kittredge for ha^ another man's child. Jan. 5, 1 Dearest Number One, I've weighed out the contingencies. As you may have s posed, I am going to tell all. Our operation is called AV/OCADO, if it works as well as we hope, there's a good deal of entree. I supi you could say it's in fulfillment of one of our two major objecri Ideally, according to the Missions Directive, the Priority is to effe penetration into the Soviet Embassy, and next Priority is to get; the higher ranks of the PCU. (That last, if you recall, is the Urugui Communist Party.) S Well, this second objective is well along. Thanks to i"j ringer, it's become my baby. I'm inheriting a Priority Task, and! going to take you into it, for I may need advice farther down the. I can tell you—I don't want any repetition of that embarrassing B period when I was on the secure phone every other day with mutual friend. This time I am going to bring the job off on my 4 HARLOT'S GHOST 433 Let me provide the filler. Did I mention that we have two contract agents? Besides Gordy Morewood, there is Roger Clarkson. He's also done good work for us, and his cover is excellent. He not only works for the most prestigious public relations firm in Monte- video (which handles the accounts for most of the U.S. corporations here), but has put in a lot of time with the local AngloAmerican drama group. You would think that is not a particularly fertile place to pick up our kind of information, but it certainly is where the winds of gossip blow. Many upper-class Uruguayans gravitate to the Montevideo Players on the pretext that they wish to improve their English, whereas, actually, the Players has become a classy arena for the great South American upper-middle-class sport--infidelity. Roger Clark- son has served as our facsimile of a KGB joy-boy. He's tall, good- looking, straight nose, blond hair, Princeton--a splendid example of what we're advertising to the rest of the world. In the course of his activities, he's picked up a lot of what is going on at the Legislative Palace. No great haul, but indispensable bits to corroborate or refute the information we receive from our heavier sources--the usual Uruguayan legislators, journalists, businessmen, etc. Some months ago, Roger came in with a big one. Eusebio "Chevi" Fuertes popped up at the drama group. Chevi is almost as good looking as Valentine, Roger assured us, at least if you are ready to discount a somewhat chewed-up Latin street face. Fuertes, who comes out of Uruguayan working-class stock, went to the University of the Republic here, then married up into a middle-class family of local lawyers and doctors, part of the Montevideo radical establishment. At present, Fuertes is a member in good standing of the PCU, ;ditto his wife. He is, however; no stable hardworking Communist, but, on the contrary, is somewhat taken with himself, and is pulled in many directions. For example, he quit his university studies some years ago, and with no money went off to New York. (Only agreed to many his wife after he came back a year later.) She is apparently a jvholehearted party-liner who has already risen high in the local ranks. everyone, including her husband, expects her to become one of the CU's national leaders in ten years. She's a lawyer, polemicist, funconary, and her family has, as I say, an old radical tradition. Chevi, by contrast, pretends to be a loyal member but secretly I't bear whole aspects of the Party, the discipline, the self-sacrifice, 1 the patience required to obtain power. The year he spent in New 434 NORMAN MAILER York seems to have affected him eccentrically. He returned to guay admiring America and hating it, but cocky from the experi' It seems among other stints as dishwasher and short-order cool waiter, he was also some kind of unwilling consort—"never a pi he assures Roger—to a Harlem whore. All this has been learned by Clarkson and passed on to seems he and Fuertes get along famously. They have even do dated a couple of the ladies in the Montevideo Players. To use a p I've recently learned—they run together. Roger, who remains a ably modest concerning his cachet with the local actresses, expl; that studs (speaking of new words!) often run in parallel. So, Clai and Fuertes are fascinated with each other. I confess to equal fascination. I'm learning how much yo pick up about a man by studying reports. Clarkson, who keeps ; ship, has been feeding detailed memos to the Station after each ning spent with Fuertes, and I, having been assigned to take when he leaves for America (which is just a couple of weeks a1 read everything Roger turns in as if it were "Gerondon" or Re brance of Things Past. Clarkson's no stylist—he's not, dear God, posed to be!—but the material, considering my oncoming relati it, certainly proves stimulating. Fuertes, very clever and very s cious, is always on the alert against manipulation. He has sta insights into Clarkson, then spasms of rage against American imp ism which alternate with gouts ofvitriol against Uruguayan Con nists. He most respectfully declares his love for his powerful wif< soon allows that he resents and detests her. He loves Clarkson yet he'll leave a knife in him someday should Clarkson ever betray that is, prove to be a CIA agent. This is Fuertes' declared suspici our Roger. In a bar, on their last meeting after rehearsal (the Mi video Players are now doing Paul Osbom's The Vinegar Tree), (. not only accused Clarkson of working for the Agency but state< he must be in the CIA since it was well known that 50 percent ( Agency's contract people were employed by American public tions firms. < All this while, Chevi, despite such outbursts, has been < ing closer to Roger. Chevi's real desire, he now announces, is ti over his problems—as between men. Those problems, he declar) acute in the region of emotion. (Don't you enjoy the fonnaJ Latins bring to English?) His hatred of the Communist Party in^ guay is una enormidad, he confesses. Of course, on other days, itj HARLOT'S GHOST 435 oviet Union that gets berated. They have betrayed the world revolu- on. Next night, he goes back to blaming the lust for power of the Iruguayan leaders, and the stupidity of the rank and file. They are not 'volutionary, but bourgeois, he declares. Communism in South Jnerica has degenerated into a hobby of the intelligentsia, a virulent ver of the decaying middle classes. The villains of every revolution, from Robespierre to the present, have revealed their attachment to ie middle-class umbilicus. There are times, Roger allows, when he in't keep up with Fuertes. Should Clarkson try, however, to put in a good word for the J.S., Chevi bombards him with polemical abuse. Capitalism feeds on ie excrement of progress. The people of the United States are dispos;ssed of their souls. Capitalists are pigs. Pigs in limousines. He says at ie end of one of these sessions, "Since I know you work for the ;entral Intelligence Agency of the United States of America, and are ware that my wife and I are members of the Partido Comunista de Jruguay, and that I am unhappy in such a role, why do you offer no reposition?" "Because I'm goddamned if I can trust you!" Roger is not only bold enough to make that reply, but is irthcoming enough--or is it scrupulously responsible enough?--to iclude it in his Summary of Jan. 2 Meeting with A V/OCADO. (Need- :ss to say, Sonderstrom does not leave that little speech uncensored n its way to Argentina-Uruguay Desk, God, they would have irown the book at Clarkson.) Roger was accoutered with a sneaky that night. Of course, his ;cording was garbled a bit, but Clarkson, like a good soldier, filled in Mne of the blanks. He claims to have respectable ability at recalling onversation, and calls the result "fortified transcription." For certain, e has produced a document that I think enough of to reproduce for ou. ^ * av/ocado: You do not comprehend me. You are too insulated. j That is how Americans fulfill their soul-destroying functions. av/uncular: Why don't you just cut the crap? av/ocado: St, Senor,. I am full of crap. But how may I cut it? You desire to make an offer to me, yet you dare not. av/unculak: Have a heart, friend. How am I to begin? You don't trust yourself av/ocado: That is no less than the truth. I am a man who lives 436 NORMAN MAILER in an anguish that is self-perpetuated. I am lacking in pi nor. Do you comprehend pundonor? av/uncular: You are never lacking inpundonor. You, amigo, death-guts. av/ocado: I thank you for the sentiment. You speak like a fr But I cannot trust the authority of your sentiments becau the cono del sur, a man must live for his pundonor. He mu prepared for mortal confrontation. Yes, every day of hi; Do you know? It is a comedy. Uruguayans live to be ei; Whether or not we face our death-guts, we live to be eij We are comico, my friend. (Long pause.) You do not con hend me. What can be the value of a friend if he is no generous spirit of comprehension? You, however, i North American. You are looking for an edge. A grip or Go fuck yourself. av/uncular: Hey, let's have another drink. It'll make you i mellow. av/ocado: For people such as you, I must spell it out. av/uncular: Have it your way. av/ocado: Spell it out, or spit it out. These are the establi modes of communication for Americans, verdadf av/uncular: We're no good. av/ocado: Now I know it. You are CIA. It is in the logic of responses. I utter scathing insults upon you and your cou and you, a proud and virile North American, do not i lenge me to step outside this bar. av/uncular: Would you challenge me if I insulted Urugui av/ocado: There would be no alternative. Kittredge, this is the clearest part of the conversation. < the next ten minutes, it became too garbled for Clarkson to res Then, he must have shifted his seat, because their exchanges came through again loud and strong. Here is more of the f become files. Nothing is more demoralizing than to creep one's ngers over hundreds of folders trying to chase down a confirmatory xt that comes to seem less and less essential as the lost hour slips by. 7ell, I won't make you suffer with me. There is also infernal cable traffic with the Groogs. They're rifled that Soviet Russia Division, with all its maniacally suspicious opie, will come charging down the hall if we decide that AV/ ^ADO is a KGB dangle. So, without quite admitting it to our- Hves, we're looking to decide he's not, and what he tells us does fit ' fact list. At least so far. Of course, we haven't asked him yet to 444 NORMAN MAILER bring back something we can really use, and when I propose that do, I'm shot down at once. Until we are confident he is not a clan we don't dare to show what we are looking for, since that could 1 the KGB. Besides, Sonderstrom informs me, it is still too danger Chevi is not yet ready, and we must not imperil our agent needle; I'm becoming impressed with Gus. Big, bald, red-faced ex-Mar yet his underlying passion is to be virtuous. It makes me think at Americans. You know, the French, they say, have a passion financial security, and the English, according to my father, care < about manners. You can be a swine and get away with it if y manners are either good, or, better, interesting. But in America, have to be virtuous, don't we? Even the pimps and the drug de; have their code, I hear. Roger certainly felt virtuous, going of marry his moneybags princess. Didn't want the poor ugly girl to of a broken heart. So, Sonderstrom. He worries about doing his with decency. Even to throwing a golf game properly. Maybe it's ] and I'm sipping too much fundador, but suddenly I love Americ I can't say that I always do at the office. The inquiries AV/OCADO keep coming from the Groogs. It seems Fuertes is agent-of-the-month, worldwide--I joke--but he is large enougl excite unholy interest back at Headquarters, and I am the one ^ talks to AV/OCADO, I know what he looks like. I am the point\ course, I tell myself, this is nothing to how they're debriefing Re right now in Washington.) Anyway, we move forward like an phant on clogs. I don't think you need worry yet about any qi perils to my career. What with the Groogs and Upper Whar (Western Hemisphere Division) and Soviet Russia Division, known as the Sourballs, nobody will allow me to get into troub I will tell you something that may amuse. Maybe not. cable presence most feared here, although not one inquiry has c( from it, is an odd desk under the mysterious umbrella of your c TSS. It is called GHOUL. That office, or eminence, or whatey< is, reports only to Mr. Dulles. I hear via Porringer that even the Sd Russia Division is leary of GHOUL. Should this mysterious desk! suspect that AV/OCADO is a KGB dangle, our lives down here| become unmitigated cable hell. I'm told we'll be on the Encdj Decoder twelve hours a day answering questionnaires. | Of course, I presume to know who GHOUL is. I LOT'S GHOST 445 I left the matter there. I hardly knew what I was up to, but, then, I was feeling wicked. I wanted to tell Kittredge about Sally Porringer and knew I couldn't, yet, all the same, I decided to try. Recognizing that I might change my mind in the middle of composition, I took up this theme on a new page. 7 Intermission for coffee mdfundador 2:00 a.m. Kittredge, Brand new subject. Please save judgments until you've read all. What I have to tell will not, I pray, affect our friendship. You see, I am now embarked on what may yet prove an ongoing affair. While in Washington you were always trying to find some attractive young lady for me, the woman I'm now meeting on the sly--this slippery cliche certainly has the feel of it!--is, I fear, not suitable. In fact, she is married, has two children, and is the spouse, worse luck, of one of my colleagues. All right, I know you'll ask how it began, and who she is, and I'll reply that she is Sally Porringer, the wife of Oatsie. Let me give the facts. It began one evening about a week before Christmas after a party at Minot Mayhew's house. Our Chief of Station, having received word that E. Howard Hunt is finally coming to replace him toward the end of January, threw a I farewell party for himself in the form of a Christmas gathering. He I invited the Station folk and wives, plus a number of his State Department cronies, plus an even larger number of relatively--I aught--undistinguished Uruguayan businessmen and their wives, d I must say it proved nothing remarkable, what with all the tier Christmas parties going on. For that matter, Christmas down here is curiously discordant. at sense of a rose-chill to winter twilight, sweet as fine sorbet, is sed in the heat of summer. One is angry and compassionate in "sts. I mention this because Mayhew's party in his well-appointed se, filled with career mementos and hacienda-type furniture (arm- with steer's horns), and paid for, no doubt, with his stock 446 NORMAN MAILER market profits, did improve once he sat down to the piano. "E\ man I know," my father told me once, "has an unexpected ski Mayhew's is to sing and play. He led us through all the expected. did "Deck the Halls," and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "N Noel," "Jingle Bells," "Silent Night," of course, and then somewl- in "0 Come, All Ye Faithful," there was Sally Porringer next to : her arm around my waist, and swaying in rhythm as we and th other people sang along with Mayhew. I'm no great vocalist, you know. There are all too m inhibiting influences ravaging my impulse to utter golden notes, I have a little bass in me, and so I get along. Sally, however, elucid. something better from my voice. I don't know if it was due to the that I had never before swayed rhythmically while singing, but I h< my voice coming forth, thank you, and this freedom to sing and the beauty—not of the words, so much, but all the nuances and tin of an ice-cold rose-sweet time of year—was going through me ag I felt as if it was really Christmas, even in Uruguay. I had the epiph I always wait for as December descends into its climactic week,' feeling so hard to live without through most of the year—the con' tion (I whisper it) that He may really be near. Well, I was transported just enough to be fond suddenly o my cohorts and their wives, and I thought of all the sweet solemn < of country, duty, rich endeavor, and one's dearest friends. Most oi I thought of you, because I can often feel that Christmas is near to again by recollecting your beauty—there, I've said it—and then, e as I'm singing out, "0 come, let us adore Him," I look down and Sally Porringer's face and she smiles back with a warmth and en< that is part of my own sudden good voice, and I liked her for the: time. After the carols, we sat on the sofa for a while, and I asked a question about herself. She gave me a considerable amount of life story in return. Her father was a rodeo rider, but drank too va and left her mother, who remarried a nice grain-and-feed man. S and Sherman knew each other in high school (Stillwater, OklahoJ! went on to Oklahoma State in the same class, but never saw mud each other the first three years. He was a grind, getting all kind academic honors, and she was on the cheerleaders' team. (I wasf about that!) I took a second look at her then. She's pretty enoug in no striking way, small turned-up nose, freckles, pale green (S sandy hair, a slightly harried housewife in her present cast, but I c| HARLOT'S GHOST 447 see how it must have been ten or twelve years ago. She was probably healthy and vivacious then, and was having, as she now indicated, some kind of all-out affair with one of the football players. I expect he ditched her, since in senior year Sherman and she found each other and were married after graduation. I knew I was now expected to reply in kind, but I didn't feel like raiding my own meager cupboard. So I sat there, and smiled, knowing I had to come up with something. Will you believe it? I went on and on about discovering Skeat at Yale, and I expect she did her best to keep from falling asleep in disappointment. A minute later, just as we were about to move away from one another, Sherman came up. He was Duty Officer tonight at the Embassy. That meant he had to take his car to work and was leaving now. She wanted to stay on. I, being equipped for the evening with a Chevrolet two-door from the Embassy motor pool, offered to drop her off on my way back to the Cervantes. I hardly wanted to, I would just as soon have departed right behind Porringer—I did not like the idea of those paranoid eyes staring at me through the malign screen of his thick spectacles, but she looked so sad at having to leave that I stayed. A little later, I danced with her. Minot Mayhew was now playing all kinds of what I call Charleston rags, although I know the term is not accurate for dances like the Shag and the Lindy and the Lambeth Walk. I didn't know how to do them, but she did, and we had fun. When he played a couple of slow foxtrots from the thirties— "Deep Purple" and "Stardust" are the ones I remember—she danced just a little too intimately, I thought. It was the sort ofsemiflirtatious . stuff that's acceptable, I suppose, if the husband is still in the room. Which he wasn't. Then, Barry Keams, our Commo Officer, cut in—to my relief. When I sat down, however, I was irked because she (Seemed to be enjoying herself just as much with Barry. Sally was right there with me, however, on the turn of the party tide, and we left together. On the drive back to Montevideo worn Carrasco, I searched for subjects to discuss, but we were silent. fcwas feeling the same kind of tension I used to have years ago at the Keep playing kissing games with the neighbors' girls; there was that iwful silence as you marched out of the room with a girl. I remember hat I always felt then as if I were passing through the woods during (thaw and every sound of melting water had the composure of a •-seeing purpose. 448 NORMAN MAILER So soon as I parked in front other house, she said, "Di around the block." I did. The Porringers were living in a small stucco house one of the medium-income, medium-horizon, only-slightlycn: bling streets in an anonymous area back of the Legislative Palace. E1 in summer, the streets are relatively deserted, and the block behind house was distinguished by several empty lots. We parked, and waited, and I did nothing. Then she reached around to lock the dc and close the windows. I still did nothing. I think my heart beating loud enough for her to hear it. I did not really want to m love to her, and I did not want to cuckold Sherman Porrinj although there was, I admit, some dirty little rise somewhere do there. Then she said, "May I ask you a personal question?" "Yes," I said. "Are you a queer?" "No," I said. "Then why won't you kiss me?" "I don't know." "Prove to me you're not a queer." "Why do you think I am?" "You talk so upper-class. Sherman says you're a prep-sch kid." I plunged. She went off like a firecracker. I confess to y Kittredge, I didn't know that women could be so passionate. This last sentence betrayed what I had known from the beg ning--I was not going to go to conclusion. The carnal details w not to be put into a letter. So I sat back in my chair, looked out hotel room window at the grim building across the street from I and recalled how her lips had kissed mine as if our mouths wei combat. Her hands, free of any conceivable embarrassment, ho< onto the buttons of my fly. Her breasts, which she soon freed 0 brassiere, were in my mouth whenever she had need to lift her s to breathe, and then, to my horror, as if a long string ofundergrt ammunition dumps in the sexual field of my fantasies were all d detonated at once, she twisted, quick as a cat, bent down,! wrapped her mouth around the prow of my phallus (which seenn me at that moment not only larger than I could ever remembee HARLOT'S GHOST 449 worthy of the word phallus) and proceeded to take into her mouth the six, eight, nine, eleven jackhammer thrusts of the battering ram she had made of me. Then, in the midst of the extreme ejaculations of such ammo dumps blowing up, she added insult to injury and stuck her finger without a by-your-leave up my anus. I had obviously had one good Oklahoma cow-poke of a fuck, and we hadn't even had sexual intercourse yet. That was remedied in surprisingly little time. I decided Lenny Bruce knew less than he imparted on the inner logic of the second time. Only one far-off part of me could possibly be working for the ego bit. The rest was hell-bent on enjoying all I could, as much as I could, as fast as I could, and yet, how I was repelled! It seemed manifestly unfair to raid the treasury of sex. In the middle of all my elation, exuberance, sexual wrath, and jubilee, in the midst of all my sense of something awfully strong in each of us smacked totally up against one another, there was the long, faint, elevated horror that Kittredge--for whom I had saved myself; Ingrid did not count!--was forever removed from my first taste of all-out frenzy and lust. I had always assumed this kind of heat could only arrive at the end of the deepest sort of love affair, and with momentum as gravely joyous as the mount toward elation in a majestic orchestra embarked on a mighty symphony. Sex with Sally was a football melee with bites and bruises and chocolate squashed in your crotch. By my third ejaculation, I was weary other. The car windows were clouded, our clothes were a wadded-up joke, and I hardly knew if I was a stud or a rape victim. Drawing away from her, I managed to induce us to get our clothes together. Sally half-unwillingly. Her kisses--how cruel is the after-shade of desire!--had begun to seem leechlike. I wanted to get home. I could not leave her at her door, however, like a package delivered by someone else. "I'll call you soon," I said, and felt all the powers of extortion being worked on me. "Oh, you better," she said. "That was groovy." Groovy! I had been offered the key to my country. I was now a arter member of that great, unknown middle land of America that was prepared to defend. And felt a great relief as I drove off because 0 far as I knew, no pedestrian had passed our automobile on that *oely street. The risk of what we had undertaken was just becoming to me. Well, I had seen her since, of course. Once at her home while the 450 NORMAN MAILER children were out with a babysitter--a dreadful clammy occa when we fornicated in fear that Sherman in full deployment o: paranoid powers would pop home, and we had certainly done bi in the Cervantes despite carnal heats on a mattress that smelle disinfectant. Finally, I dared all the gods of precaution and took to the safe house above Pocitos Beach, where we coupled in a c by the twelfth-story window looking down on the passing traffic the clay-colored waves. No, I decided, it would have been hopeless to write about ac this to Kittredge, and I put aside the pages I had written about S Because I could not ignore the part of myself, however, that pie; for some kind of confession, I conceived of a tale to close the j= Intermission for coffee and^wna 2:00 a.m. Kittredge, Brand new subject. What I have to tell will not, I hope, a: us grievously, since our relation is dearer to me than any loyalt pleasure I could find on the banks of the Rio Plata. You must bel that. I hope you will not be shocked if I confess that after many w of the most intense suffering from sexual abstention, I have at lasi bound to go to one of the better brothels here, and after a wee two of the inevitable winnowing out of choices, concerning will will regale you someday, I have now settled on one Uruguayan in the Casa de Tres Arboles, and have what yet may prove to b arrangement with her. It makes sense to me. While you will always be the ne; embodiment I can know of the ineluctable quest, so do I also un stand that you and Hugh will be together forever, as indeed should be. There is no one I know closer to greatness than Hi Forgive such sententiousness, but I just want to say that I love you Hugh together as much as I adore you separately, which, mathefl cally, is like trying to equate finite numbers with infinite suni come to full stop: All I wish to say is we must be truthful witfaj another as best we can, and I just had to have a woman. I know thf no conventional reason to ask your forgiveness, but I do. And;! innocent, I confess. I hope you won't think that the next observi is facetious or in any way impinges on your work, but I have fi that Alpha and Omega are indispensable as tools ofunderstandiri HARLOT'S GHOST 451 the sexual relationship. Sex with love, or sex versus love, can be handled so naturally by your terminology. I even presume to say that at present my Alpha and Omega are most asymmetrically involved. Very little, or maybe no Omega is present in the act--a good, fine part of me cannot bear the woman, the prostitute, I have chosen. My Alpha, however, if Alpha is, as I assume, full of clay and low mundane grabby impulses, well, obviously, my Alpha is not wholly unengaged. I went on with the letter, spinning careful false tales of the mood of the brothel and finally signed off, not knowing whether I felt vicious or wise in using my original if now unsent letter about Sally as a guide to the false tale, but I knew myself well enough to feel a certain contentment at my guile even as I was falling asleep. It occurred to me with the last of my drowsing spirits that I might not be as unlike my mother as I had once supposed. 8 The Stable Jan. 26 Dear Harry, I was awfully annoyed by your last letter. It isn't the brothel. Of course, you have to explore some of the good and bad experiences these women have to offer. I confess that I did go into a silent tantrum of sheer envy at the way you men are free to explore your sexual curiosity and alter yourselves in the process. I hope not for the worse. Yet what is freedom ultimately but the right to take serious chances iwith one's soul? I do believe that somewhere in sexual excess--at least gjfor good people, brave people--there is absolution. Am I babbling? ^o I sound like that smelly old libertine, Rasputin? What a swath he 'ould have cut with some of the Washington ladies I know! At any rate, I'm still annoyed with you. First, for shipping off ibious pieces of jewelry whose history you are insensitive to, and >w for coming in like an overfed bull to trample over my terminol- " It left me grateful for the first time in moons that my theories, all effective purposes, are sealed in TSS and I am no household ie. Because I do not dare to think of how the nuances of Alpha and 452 NORMAN MAILER Omega would be crunched by the magazine public when even expose a gross misconception of what it's all about. I will lecture you, then, one more time. I promise not to on too long. The key principle in Alpha and Omega is that they not to be seen as the equivalent of containers for the psyche, the to the left collecting whores and business routines and baseball ga: and drunken evenings, while the other broods on philosophy reads your mail. That's the pitfall for everyone. They start to see it way. As two carry-all bags. Put part of your experience into one, of part into the other. Nothing to do with it. I am saying: Multiply by two complexities of human personality. Postulate two complete and ferent persons in each of us. Each of these characters is more or equally well developed. Trickier to grasp is that each is as complex wholly elaborated as what we usually think of as a complete perso: ity. So, Alpha and Omega can not only be neurotic, but possess power to form vastly different neuroses. (That dire situation is course, reserved for terribly sick people.) All right, I next postulate that one of them. Omega, 01 nated in the ovum and so knows more about the mysteries--cone tion, birth, death, night, the moon, eternity, karma, ghosts, divini) myths, magic, our primitive past, so on. The other. Alpha, creatur the forward-swimming energies of sperm, ambitious, blind to all its own purpose, tends, of course, to be more oriented toward en prise, technology, grinding the corn, repairing the mill, building bridges between money and power, und so weiter. Given these highly delineated and separate personalitie Alpha and Omega, we should be able, if we possess the skills--wh alas, we do not at present--to separate them out from the mil confusion with which we pretend to analyze individuals. In psycl ogy, we try to understand patients by the aid of schemata that are e( to plumbing systems (Freud), or blunder about on the assump) there is only one psyche and it is oceanic (Jung). Harry, I am bq ning to think that the world is filled with geniuses, but only a| survive. The rest perish in the desperation of having to repeat th| selves. (Since I am certainly no genius, perhaps I will endure.) I'll certainly must repeat, over and over, that Alpha and Omegas individual people. Each Alpha, each Omega, is different fron| others. One Omega can be artistic, night-dwelling, a seer; ano| Omega can be Omega only in name, even as you can find a Sicl( HARLOT'S GHOST 453 I suppose, with blue eyes, a cheerful manner, and blond hair. Ditto for Alpha. Sometimes Alpha and Omega borrow or steal each other's properties. They are, after all, wed together like the corporeal lobes of the brain. They can influence each other, or spend their lives in all-out strife for power over the other. The model is marriage. Or, if you prefer, the Republicans and the Democrats. Or the Czarists and the Bolsheviks—is that why the Russians tear themselves apart, and get drunk all the time? Your Chevi Fuertes is a superb example of Alpha and Omega in constant tug of war. You say it yourself when you remark that he is 51 percent with us and 49 percent against, and functioning in great depression. All right, Sir, fundamental concepts in place, let us take up your whorehouse capers. "Very little or maybe no Omega is in the act," you write squiffily, as if you were a parson trying not to sniff his fingers after touching a dog turd. Then you are crass enough to go on about Alpha and his grabbles. God, you are a farce. Forgive me if I'm rude, but I'm also becoming aware of how irascible is the territorial imperative in me. So, don't make weak gropes at my terminology. The point about sex is that both Alpha and Omega enter the act and digest the separate experiences they receive. Indeed, they digest them as individually as two people at a play for an evening can sit side by side and come away with separate critical reactions. And somewhat different memories of what they saw. When you say, therefore, that, Omega was not in the act, you reveal merely that in sexual matters, Alpha is ruling your ship with an iron hand. Alpha does not listen-to any of Omega's variant interpretation of the experience. This is analogous to fascism. Your smug acceptance of a full half of sexual indifference in yourself is a way of stating that you, ^unbeknownst to yourself, are a sexual fascist. There, it's true, and I'm (glad I said it. ' Do you find me vengeful? I'm a mother now. Each time Christopher begins to scream in the middle of the night, and this has Tuppened on several inexplicable occasions since your brooch popped up in the mail, I have been ready to curse you, and once almost did, ?ut then didn't—curses are a serious matter with me. hour later—I've just fed Christopher Now I'm fond of you again. I just gave Christopher the best 1 both my temperamental jugs, and he seemed to like it. We drew °ser and closer and by the end were spanning little universes. His gers kept tapping my breast like a fat man rubbing his own belly 454 NORMAN MAILER after a good meal. This never happened before. Suddenly I realized I'm in debt to you. I was sweet with baby because my nasties had been liberated by writing a letter go to wound you in all your soft places. Well, as Hugh might say: time you toughened up. I will reveal that I've been keeping a plum for you in abso velvet wrappings. You won't believe how fortunate you are. H and I decided a couple of weeks ago to find out a little more at your Chief of Station Designate, so we invited Howard Hunt, anc wife, Dorothy, to dinner. Oh, Lord and sweet peas, do I have stu tell you. Now, you must wait for the next letter. My husband's is in the lock. After midnight Hugh, for once, is asleep ahead of me, and I want to pre you with your plum. Not instantly, however. You do need the background.,"' see, Howard and Dorothy were invited to dinner as part of Montague Plan. Hugh never does anything without a reason. W this is certainly not one of his charms, I confess I'm amazed at 1 often he can get me to carry on like a loyal subaltern, considering 1 spoiled I was when we commenced our marriage. I do end up wi ing away for his notions, grand or silly. In this case, concerning Hunts, Hugh, while not about to admit it, did resent the n legendary High Thursday when his peers came-so close to pullinj their palace revolt. I've never talked to you about this, but there i unspoken War of Succession going on as to who, eventually, replace Alien. The old boy's gout is getting more frequent ii attacks. The next question obviously is who will replace him? Is: be a bang-juice paramilitary and propaganda specialist, a Wisneri Dick Bissell? Or, says Hugh to me, do we try to remember what ^ all about, and continue to gather intelligence? Since we're not supposed to fight those small nasty wars the Joint Chiefs are a looking to pass on to us, Hugh keeps tugging on that side of which is responsive to espionage and counterespionage. Hugl the Russians are preparing deceptions on a grand scale, and the 1 tunnel, for example, may have been stage-managed by a KGB' in MI6 from the beginning. Of course, I don't know when my ice-climbing goat is going to find time to mine that Berlin mou| HARLOT'S GHOST 455 of files. He has so many urgent tasks. My father used to be a prodigious worker, but Hugh does put him to bed. Yet, with all this work load, and me coming to term with Christopher last fall, why, no matter, "Let's have some candidates over to dinner," he said to me soon after the near-fiasco of the High Thursday. In consequence, a group of worthies has been arriving in twos and fours for dinners twice weekly ever since you've been gone. Hugh's passion is to find someone in the line of succession who will be reasonably sympathetic to his purposes, and by now he has been able to take a look at just about all of the leading possibilities for the next Director. Poor Hugh. Having gotten everywhere by his excellence, he's now telling himself that he should play politics. He may be right. Once Alien goes, the Succession becomes all important to our Montague. Hugh's present role is perfect for his talents. Only a romantic like Alien Dulles could ever have set Hugh up in the role that Alien, if younger, would have chosen for himself. You spoke half- facetiously about GHOUL. Oh, dear boy, GHOUL! I've told Hugh , a hundred times to change it to GATES or MANSIONS or MEWS, but no, his grottos call for GHOUL. Well, GHOUL is top-drawer. Am I drunk? I'm sipping a fair lot of sherry as I pen away on this. Hundred-year-old sherry makes me love the very wood of the table I'm writing on. So there we have Hugh and Alien with GHOUL-- both boys got their wish. A sanctum sanctorum for two. ghoul's outer office, however, contains scores of super-equipped specialty people with super-secret files all working for Hugh, one nonattribut- able step removed from Alien. They are ferreting out little trouble spots all over our Company universe, and Alien's successor must prove Fable to comprehend the value of GHOUL. So, Hugh invites people over to size them up, and his present but glum choice is Dickie Helms. I Helms will never come down with two feet on one side of a dividing hne until he's located all the shoes on either side. On the other hand, ielms will be inclined, thinks Hugh, to support the continued exisence of GHOUL. Well, by the time we used up every likely in-town GS-18, 'ugh had developed a taste for the game and we started inviting some Ccond-rank people to cast new light on the top-drawer faces. That l?as when I decided to put all this up for some use by my team. "Let's t>ve Howard Hunt," I said. "Do you mean E. Howard Hunt?" Hugh asked. "How will 456 NORMAN MAILER we address him? As E? E Howard? How Eee?" This is Hugh's pm humor. That is why you never see public signs of it. He's about funny as a hee-haw cowboy. Don't forget--Hugh, along with all e could ride a mustang before his legs were long enough to reach pedals on his kiddie bike. Just a Colorado cowboy. I talked Hugh into inviting How Eee. Pointed out to my b that Hunt was in on the Guatemala move. Hugh thinks that may prove to be the most catastrophic American victory of all. Smash oxymoron, and you will encounter the Light! Yes, darling, catastro^ victory. Hugh feels it has pointed us in the wrong direction for deca to come. He wouldn't speak to Alien for weeks after the Agency, Hunt and some of his pals, got Arbenz pushed out. So I had to 1 Hugh into studying Mr. E. Howard Hunt, and wife. Darling, I can't go on. I'm not being a bitch. I will fir tomorrow. Don't know why I got into the sherry. Yes, I do kn< I'm revealing too much, and feel unfaithful to Hugh. But I do -w secret letters from you and must pay the price. On that note, I exc myself. Christopher is stirring. 9 January 28th, I* Harry Dear, I didn't mail yesterday's letter until I could reread it. It's; as bad as I feared. Indiscreet, but didn't we agree to be just that? Now, to the occasion. E. Howard Hunt. It's clear after first five minutes that Hugh and I have invited to dinner a v ambitious man; Afterward, we agreed that if there's anything in> world Mr. Hunt wants in years to come, it is to be DCI. This dd is, I hope, more pathetic than frightening. ( "No hard feelings, I hope," is the first bloody thing Hunt as he came through the door. 1 "Dear boy," replied Hugh, though he can't be more than years older, "no hard feelings about what?" :! "The ruckus. I'm afraid I opened a birdbath for you < certain Thursday." "Howard," said Mrs. Hunt, "Hugh Montague may HARLOT'S GHOST 457 thought of other matters since." She did it nicely. She's tough. Dark--I found out she's one-eighth Sioux--and determined. I wouldn't be surprised if she's the engine behind Howard's ambition. Hugh could have left it there, but he's a pertinacious dog. Self-imposed civility is as agreeable to him as dysentery, "Why, Mrs. Hunt," he said, "Howard is right. I haven't stopped brooding. I assumed it was all part of a clockwork plot, and they wound Howard up." Can you conceive of this conversation opening our evening? But Howard is breezy. "No sir," he replied, "I did it on my own. You are looking at an honest-to-God espontaneo. That's my vice." "Have a drink," said Hugh, "we'll measure vices." I was debating whether to booze a little--would the relaxation sweeten my milk more than the liquor would sour it? Afloat in such primary questions of motherhood, I hate the first twenty minutes of any of these evenings. But Hunt is a talker. By the time we sat down to dinner, I could see that this was his event-of-the-week. Harry, I have to tell you that in no way am I a snob except for the endless amusement of it. It is fun to observe a climber trying out new steps on the slippery slope. Nothing makes such people more nervous than to be observed, and of course, I'm not all that encouraging from my catbird seat. I offer an assortment of blank smiles. Soon enough, he makes the mistake of bragging about his family background, which is, in the main, New York State. Although I grew up in Cambridge, my father happens to be good old stock from Oneonta, N.Y., and that, while nothing to make you hold on to your hat, is still leagues above Hamburg, the particular suburb of Buffalo where the heraldic seat of the Hunts, bless all, was located. Now, Howard does have a few credentials. You may be certain he trots them out. His ancestor. Captain James Hunt, served in the Revolutionary War, and Hunt's Point in the Bronx is named after him. "That's so sweet," I say. Tomorrow I expect he will look up my pedigree and discover Maisie and the ancient relatives on the Mayflower. Mr. Hunt goes on, and of course, the closer we listen, the more he swings on his own noose. It's a cruel business. He was kind of pleased with his family facts until they hit the light of our cold hearth. His father and mother, for instance, sang in the Comell Glee Club. "Oh," I say, "terrific. Your father must have loved Comell." 458 NORMAN MAILER "He did. One of the tragedies of his life is that I chose to to Brown. He was the sort of man, however, never to express disappointment." "Good fellow," said Hugh. "Yes. Dad, I warrant, is no fool. Said to me once, 'I'm on your work, Howard. I didn't become a Thirty-second Degree Mas for too little, did I?' " "How odd," said Hugh, "My father was also a Shriner.' "Let's drink to that happy coincidence," said Howard. "Why not?" said Hugh, "why not?" But I winced. Hi never talks about his father. It brings back the fatal night. Of coui Hugh can ride right over such rocks without suffering visible scratc on the hull. "Yes," he said, "my father was a secretive man"—a of his wine—"and my mother." Second sip. This warmed Howard. He knew he had been tendered so small favor by the master. I believe Hunt is not without psychic gi His next remark was certainly aware of sudden mortality as an app priate topic. He began to talk about a plane crash. Last summer, Hunts, scheduled to return to Washington from Tokyo, lost tl sleeping bunks on the overnight passage due to a booking error. Sin as Howard put it, "I am not one to subject my family to infel accommodations when the government has already coughed up stimulus for proper treatment, I chose to postpone our depart inasmuch as a later flight did have bunks available. Lo, the discern finger of Kismet!" concluded Howard in the mildest voice, as ii discount any outsize claim to magical selection. "Do you know, first plane went down in the Pacific? All passengers lost." I think there was a hint of special pride in the way he told story, as if Providence peered through the smog of mankind k enough to spare E. Howard Hunt and family. After all, they do h; large roles to play. There it is. He isn't so much outrageously ambitious as fil with the idea that he's anointed. Be certain, therefore, in all yi dealings with your new boss, not to lose sight of this belief he hiH himself. If he weren't half attractive, the man would be intoleral Too confident for too little, i Item: The Hunts occupied a house in Tokyo designer Frank Lloyd Wright. Not bad for a Chief of Covert Operations North Asia. (Howard's highly titled job, so far as I could make 0 consisted of propaganda, public relations, and leaving stink-bomb HARLOT'S GHOST 459 Communist meetings.) Hunt, by the way, calls them Who-Me's. "Who-Me's?" I ask. "Yes," says Howard. "If they ask, 'Did you leave that odor7' you answer, 'Who? Me?' " He then laughs at his own explanation, with an involuntary whinny, a snaffling sort of sly, skinny laugh. (I think he considers it the appropriate response to genteel humor about the anus.) I naturally am more interested in being given some idea of what it was like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house, but he doesn't respond directly to such questioning. His pleasure comes from the name: Frank Lloyd Wight. Goes on to describe the moon gate, the courtyard, the garden with granite shrines, and the deep lily pond. "It was, of course, lovely," said Howard, "but upon due consideration, and the assurance by the Japanese gardener that the lilies would eventually grow back, we pulled them out and converted the pond to a swimming pool that could serve the children." "Didn't you hesitate," I asked Dorothy, "over the lilies?" "Well, I did," she said. "I didn't," he said. "Not as soon as I knew it was feasible. Not for a moment. Children's needs precede aesthetic considerations." As you can see, he's a bit of a menace. When he speaks of his daughter Lisa, for instance, it is all too often by her full name. Obviously likes the euphony of Lisa Tiffany Hunt. "Her birth," he tells us, "is inscribed in the Civil Register of Mexico City, where she was born while I was establishing the first OPC station in that region for Frank Wisner. As a result, Lisa is on the Consular List of Americans born abroad, and belongs thereby to a special and insufficiently recognized natural club of birth." Just as I've come to the conclusion that this is pretty heavy going--Consular List, my suffering little toe!--why, he crosses me up «;.by adding in a faintly spiteful voice, "Of course, some Americans in foreign settings are just out for the oofah." "Oofah?" I ask. "Jack and stack. Stickum." When I am still blank, he translates, "The simoleons, the shekels." I remember that he's already spoken of money as "the stimulus." I expect he has an astonishing jnumber of synonyms for good old filthy lucre. It seems he's not only ganointed, but wistfully greedy, and all too keenly aware of the ecoJnonuc sacrifice we make in working for the Agency. He just can't Pgure out how he'll ever be oofy, and opulent. All the same, I may be laughing at Howard Hunt a little too 460 NORMAN MAILER much. He can be as stuffy as turkey stuffing, but he's sly for all th He's going to love having you on board. He even told Hugh tha friend of his at Brown had gone to St. Matthew's and was on t soccer team Hugh used to coach. "I remember him," said Hugh. "Tried hard. Slow feet." Living with a man in holy matrimony is analogous to taki a course in human mechanics. Hugh, I have discovered, has gears his voice box. They tell me when he is ready to take over t conversation. "I hear you did a nice job of preparation in GuatemaL he now said. "It killed me," answered Hunt, "to be taken out before t real op began, but the powers that be insisted my job had be accomplished and I was now needed in Japan." "Well, the powers did lend you that Frank Lloyd Wri( house for consolation," said Hugh. "Hardly compensatory," said Hunt. "It's nettling to hear, away in Tokyo, that your former assistant was actually invited over the White House and congratulated by President Elsenhower for i fine work. Most of that fine work was mine." "I heard from my more elevated sources"—Hugh's relial effective reference to Alien—"that the President was effusive. "' take that country with just a few hundred men! All that sleight-f hand!' " "I'm glad you can understand how I feel," said Hunt. "Well, before we quaff the cup of eternal friendship," s< Hugh, "let us put it to the test. What would you say if I remark tl your famous operation was, in my opinion, a gross error. Americ interests would have been better served if we had allowed Arbenz build up a little Communist state in Guatemala." For all his desire play politics, Hugh is not capable of it. "What you're saying," said Hunt, "seems awfully liberal me." "Say behind my back that I wish to bugger little boys, but not suggest that I am liberal. I loathe the faintest emanation ofC« munism. It is a cancer in full metastasis on the body of the West! world." l "Hear, hear," said Hunt. "My sentiments are being nil elegantly expressed. Aren't they, Dorothy?" 1 "Of course," she said. FH A R L "But, sir, if it is HARLOT'S GHOST 461 "But, sir, if it is a cancer, why not operate on it? Whenever 'and wherever you can." "Because each cancer is a study in its own anomaly," said Hugh, "and world Communism is a weak cancer. You see, Howard, it got into metastasis before it asked itself whether it was ready. It doesn't have the inner wherewithal to fight those cancer wars on every front. Guatemala was, potentially, a desperately expensive proposition for the Soviets. They would have had to invest in that country, supply it, and probably end up feeding it. Their economic system is altogether unsuited for such a job. A huge inefficiency would have been sent to succor a dwarf inefficiency. Why, we could have cost the Russians a pretty penny. And if they had been so foolish as to invest real force, we could have pulled off your surgical incision then. That would have exposed them to serious mockery around the world." "Wouldn't it also increase the danger of a nuclear war?" asked Dorothy. "Nuclear scenarios must never be linked to small-scale foreign operations. Nuclear war will come, if it ever does, from another factor altogether." "Would you name it?" Dorothy asked. "Despair. World despair. Nuclear war is mutual suicide. A husband and wife make a pact to kill themselves only when they ' believe they do not have the right to continue to exist. They are spoiling too much. Whereas, in the real world, no two countries are ;as vain as the U.S.S.R; and the U.S.A. Neither of us can believe for ; a moment that we could spoil anything. But if I decide that I am wonderful, and it's the other fellow who is the mess, I guarantee ou, Mrs. Hunt, I will not embrace him in a deadly grip and jump iff the fatal bridge. I will try to get rid of the beast by other means." "By starving the Russians out?" she asked. "Exactly. Exhaust their wherewithal. Entice them into places hat use up Soviet energies to little avail. Just think of a million Red "roy soldiers in Mexico. What chance would they have against us in land war?" "I wouldn't want the numbers to get that high in our back- ard," said Hunt. They never would," said Hugh. "The Russians are not 462 NORMAN MAILER that stupid. Would we try to put a million soldiers into Ea Europe? We certainly didn't make the move in Hungary, did Yet we can afford a serious war far better than the Soviets. I re We should have left Guatemala alone. They would have built third-rate Communist state that would soon have been lookir us for aid." "I can't agree, sir," said Hunt. "I believe we must s varmints between the eyes before they grow up to raid our crc hate Communist rats wherever I find them." Harry, he was seized, as he said this, with the most pec intensity. His voice was as husky as a boy getting ready to kiss a and if he felt close to murder, and I would say he did, it was virtuous, if not wholly manageable, emotion. I saw it then. Do you know, Harry, I fear our lovely o try has become a religion. Joe McCarthy only dipped his finger the bowl of the new holy water. It's not the cross but the flag d going to stir all those larger feelings people can't live without. In any event, Hugh had heard enough by now to d< that Hunt could not be bent to any of his uses. So my hus diverted the conversation over to real estate values in Georgeti about which Howard and Dorothy, as one might expect, kill lot. I keep thinking of you working with this odd, semi-ins] man as your future boss. I think Hunt is going to love you. Snol the slope always will. Before the evening was done, he let us Is that Dorothy was not only one-eighth Oglala Sioux, but desce from the John Quincy Adams family on mother's side, and the Bi min Harrison family on the father's end. (He made another poi saying, "President Benjamin Harrison"--I suppose this august i does not register for all.) "There," he might just as well have claimed, "is our little tit to your fat tat, Miss Mayflower." Howard Hunt keeps his kickers for the end. Be sure to tell n about him. ; Yott ^1 HARLOT'S GHOST 463 1.0 hunt ARRIVED IN montevideo IN ADVANCE OF kittredge's LETTER, and I had formed my own impression by then. Jan. 29,1957 Dearest Kittredge, Well, our new Chief of Station disembarked yesterday with his family: wife, two daughters, son, maid, and Cadillac from the SS Rio Tunuyan. Mayhew leaves in a week--which can't be too soon for any of us, including Mayhew. Long live the new Chief! God, Hunt and his wife, Dorothea, came in like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zeida. Twenty-two pieces of luggage, all monogrammed with an E.H.H., no less. Plus untold furniture and cartons. All this related to us by Gatsby (speak of serendipity), who was deputied to go with Mayhew to the pier and take him through Customs. (We would all have gone but Agency policy is, of course, not to call all that much attention to new arrivals.) The Hunt entourage, staying at present in a suite at the Victoria Plaza, are already looking for an appropriate home in Montevideo's best suburb, Carrasco, ten miles out of town. Great changes are going to take place in the Station. We know that. Hunt appears guiet and affable, but stimulates a room by entering it. He is obviously, and with total happiness, full of himself. It's his first stint as COS. Can't write any more at this point. Will finish tomorrow. f Harry By the next day, however, her letter was in my hand, and I ecided to wait on mine. We were considerably apart on Hunt, and t did not wish to receive another lecture. Station work, after all, had come more interesting from the day Hunt came in. Even before Mayhew had departed (and that did not take the ual month, but was accomplished in seven working days), we had eady learned that our new COS was going to be active among us. deed, he gave a full address to the troops, all six of us, counting 'ncy Waterston, on the day after he landed, and we listened with 464NORMANMAILER rising hope as we sat in a semicircle around him in the office. "Ever since I came back to Washington from Tokyo," said Hi "I've been studying this Station, and I can warrant that there wil changes. Before we get, however, down to analysis and rectificati I want you to know the Agency credentials of the man you will working for. This is my first full Chief of Station slot, but I feel hi^ qualified and will lay out why. On graduation from Brown Univel in June 1940, I chose to enlist in the U.S. Naval Reserve, ' program, and after a speeded-up program at Annapolis, went out midshipman in February 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor, the destroyer Mayo. At sea, I suffered a combat-related injury climi an ice-coated turret ladder during a general quarters alarm in North Atlantic in early December 1941, and the injury was sen enough to give me an honorable medical discharge. Since I can se< your faces that you are ready for more intelligence, I will state that injury was groin-related, but had no permanent effects. Praise Lord, I can still pass the ammunition." We laughed. Even Nancy Waterston. It might have been a si joke to others, but it was a large one to us. We already knew m about Hunt than we had ever learned about Mayhew. "While recuperating, I wrote a novel, East of Farewell, which accepted by Alfred A. Knopf, Publishers. Soon after, Life magaa named me their South Pacific war correspondent to replace J< Hersey in such places as Bougainville and Guadalcanal. Back in Is" York in 1943,1 enlisted in OCS, was commissioned, and not too I after, went into OSS training. Assigned to China, I flew over Hump, and found myself in Kunming when the war ended. A s ofscreenwriting in Hollywood soon followed, and from there I w to work on Averell Harriman's staff in Paris for the Marshall Plan, before long was recruited by Frank Wisner to join the Office ofPo Coordination. Have any of you heard of a brilliant fellow nar William F. Buckley, Jr., who's now chief editor of a magazine founded himself, The National Review7" 't We nodded. •| "Good. It's worth being familiar with that magazine. Buckler my assistant in Mexico, and damn good. Might be with us still ii magazine world had not called to him. After Mexico, I was posVt Washington as Chief of Covert Operations, Southeast Europe E sion. That meant Desk at Headquarters and related trips to AtB Frankfurt, B^ome, and Cairo. Then, I was transferred to the Pn HARLOT'S GHOST 465 ganda and Political Action Staff for the Guatemala op, where with three hundred men and--I will say it myself--a brilliant psychological and radio communications campaign, we succeeded in getting the Arbenz government to decamp. Moses designed the march into Israel, but he never got there. I, speaking as a poor man's Moses, also did not enjoy, at first hand, the fruits of my design. I was already en route to Tokyo to handle Covert Operations in North Asia Command, where I did my best to confound, confuse, dismay, and dishearten every effort of the Chinese Communists to spread their propaganda throughout Japan and South Korea. "That brings us to the present. In Washington, at the ArgentinaUruguay Desk, I could not help but be aware that there's a feeling this Station is not a mainstream activity. Well, let me pass one bit of advice. There are no small jobs in our life. South America, in my opinion, is the land of musical chairs. You never know which leader is going to lose his seat next. Any Station in South America can become a center of high Agency focus. We are going to bring initiative, therefore, to the Uruguay Station of a like that has not been seen here. By the time we're done, the going remark back at Headquarters will be, 'Yessir, Uruguay is the tail that wags the South American dog.' " We gathered around him afterward and pumped his hand. I recognized that I was happy. My desire to work was alive again. ^ March 5, 1957 Herrick, ^ Six weeks have gone by since my last letter. Are you now the |age of Montevideo, or just the King of the Brothels? Please advise. Kittredge March 27, 1957 Harry, I detest owing money or favors to anyone. I loathe it even ore when people I care about are in debt to me. Silence is the tiencement of debt. Kittredge Montague 466 NORMAN MAILER April 5, 1' Dear Kittredge, Yes, yes, no and no, yes, no, and yes. You may pick am the above answers to your questions. Yes, I am the king of brothels, no, I am not; yes, Mr. Howard Hunt is mad about me, he is not; yes, I miss you, no, I don't; I'm too busy to think. Take this as an apology and trust me. I will write a long Ie in the next ten-days. Your own H p.s. I just realized that Howard Hunt, but for his beloved E, is H.H., and God, are we different. Hugh, Harvey, Hunt, and Hen Hubbard. I've always thought H was the most peculiar lettci English, and cite for evidence that the Cockneys never came agreement with it, and they're a practical people. H is the si presence in "ghost" and the capital proprietor of Heaven and Hel is half-silent as in half, and changes error to horror. p.p.s. As you see, I'm. as mad as you are. I dispatched the letter before second thoughts could comrnei Then I went back to my hotel room and tried to sleep, but the sh reeked of Sally, formaldehyde, and me. She always left behind a str odor of herself, half carnal and half grudged out of existence by deodorants, which didn't always take care of the job. I hardly knew what to do about Sally. We were more intin than our affection for each other. And my derelictions of duty w increasing. If Porringer was working triple-time under Hunt, I ti rime out from my own double-time to arrange a meeting with Cl Fuertes which I knew would not take place. I had not notified h Instead, I saw Sally. A week later, I did as much again. Profession speaking, it was easy to conceal. Agents often missed meetings. I horses, they bolted at the sight of a leaf blowing by. I had to file b< reports, but they were routine, and bought two hours each rime l Sally in my bedroom at the Cervantes. I, waiting for her, would; my clothes off, and my bathrobe on; she, knocking on the door a tap followed by two taps, would be out other shoes and offwid skirt even as we embraced in the first other powerful kisses. 't1 sandwiches" I would have labeled them if not in the mood, but ] I- HARLOT'S GHOST 467 usually in the mood, and, naked in a streak, we grappled toward the bed, stealing handfuls of each other's flesh en route before diving down into the song of the bedsprings, her mouth engorging my cock. There are a hundred words, I suppose, for a penis, but cock is the one that goes with fellatio, and her open marriage with lust, abandonment, and sheer all-out hunger for Hubbard's Yankee prong gave that fellow a mind of his own, a hound off his leash, a brute pillaging the temple other mouth, except who could call it a temple?—she had confessed to me in one of our postcopulatory conversations that from high school on, she had had a natural appetite, or was it thirst, for this outpost of the forbidden, and. God, it was out of control by the time she came to me. I, in my turn, was developing tastes and inclinations I did not : know I had. Before long, she was presenting her navel and pubic hair toward me, and I, facing the contradictory choices of domination or I equality, found my own head reaching to explore her sandy, almost I weedlike bush. I am cruel enough to mention how wild and scraggly, it looked because that came to mean little. It was the avid mouth behind the hair that leaped out to a part of me that did not know it existed until I was licking and tonguing away with my own abandon which I had never known could belong to my critical lips until they opened into the sheer need I knew to jump across the gap from one bare-ass universe to the next. The only way I ever felt close to Sally Porringer was when her mouth was on my cock and my face was plastered into the canyon between her legs. Who could know what tfungs we had to tell each other at such times? It was not love we ^exchanged, I expect, but all the old bruises and pinched-off desires— how much there was of that! Lust, I was deciding, had to be all the st excitement of releasing the tons of mediocrity in oneself. (Then, •erward, when alone in my bed, I would wonder if new mediocrity d been ingested just as much as the old had been purged.) I was covering that I had the gusto of a high school athlete and the chill mates of a man so noble in perception of each unhappy nuance as S. Eliot. Say this for the act. When we rose dripping from the sweet and ir mire of feeding on each other, my copulation came pounding 'pily out of me. To fuck fast was to throw one's heart into the *ch and pound enough blood to the head to banish Thomas ^s of the Eliot family. One gunned the motors of one's soul and sugar of one's scrotum—what a joy to discover that Hubbards also 468 NORMAN MAILER secreted scrotum sugar—up, up, over the hill, and into the unch ble empyrean beyond. That vision seemed to disappear almost as; as it afforded its glimpse. I would be happy for a while to know ] a man and that she wanted me and I gave her pleasure. Soon enc she would be stirring once more. She was riot insatiable, but enough. By the third time, I would be thinking again ofLenny Bi and the worst of all this passion was not its successive blunting, bu knowledge that when we were done, we would not know ho' talk. We were about as essentially happy with each other in situation as two strangers who attempt to make conversation train. Whatever the shortcomings, two days later, I would want again. It was hardly an environment in which to write to Kittre but some jobs have to be done. April 10, • Dearest Kittredge, Your delineation of Howard Hunt was of no uncertain to me, even if I plead guilty to being the clod who did not ackm edge this earlier. But, Lord, angel, I have been busy. You have } glimpse of the social side of EH2 (which is what we call Mi Howard H. on occasions when he is not around) but we have 1 living with the professional end of the man, and he is a martine work. That is, the work he inspires us to perform. He takes a h time off to play golf, and hunt and fish. We, in turn, have to en suspending judgment, because his outside recreation is invariably: important Uruguayans. Having taken over Minot Mayhew's roll stands in as nominal First Secretary of the Embassy at all those di matic functions, which, if you remember, Mayhew used to pass c Sonderstrom, Porringer, and myself. So, that's one change. Hoi and Dorothy (who handles social credits and debits like a chiefs tor, and manages the Embassy party life with skill comparable to admiral steering the fleet) have already taken over an astonishi large part of Montevideo society. We worked and scraped uS Mayhew (via Sonderstrom) to eke out a few useful relationship^ Hunt puts all this to shame. He is off every weekend at some| estancia in the pampas hunting for perdiz and working his Amfll charm on very rich landowners. As a small corollary of this,l ^ HARLOT'S GHOST 469 thrown out the old intriguing AV/AILABLE and AV/IARY style of cryptonymming (if you'll forgive my coining one more awful word) and has announced that any term we desire can now follow AV. His saddlebags, for example, come in as AV/HACENDADO. It's a great switch for us tradirionalists down here, but, do you know, he's right. There aren't that many AV words left, and according to Hunt, we're going to need plenty for the operations he plans to set up. Needless to say, most of the new ops are still in the planning stage, but I mock him not. He laid out his credentials first day in the office. Normally one would get tired of listening to a man talk about his deeds, but Hunt left me feeling wistful for my own lack of an exciting life. While I know he can't have done as much as Cal or Hugh, by God, he has had adventures and served in interesting places. All the envy I felt as an adolescent that I missed the OSS has come back. Hunt made me realize how young I am, and how much life experience you need to be a proper Chief of Station. So I ate up what he had to tell us. Kittredge, if you want to comprehend our scene here, forbear quick criticism. Men are more impressed by an action- filled life than women. On the second week after taking over, Howard made another speech to the effect that there was a power elite in Uruguay whom he had to cultivate: "There may be times when you will think I came down here on good Company money to hunt and fish up a storm for myself Nothing is farther from the truth. I want you to trust me, so I'll be frank. Yes, I do take pleasure in hunting and fishing. But, get it straight, men. These influential Uruguayans are also rod and gun folk. They like a man who can ride and shoot with them. A man who jean bring in a fighting fish on sporting line. Hell, I may even go up o the Argentine Andes to ski with them come this July. But know ^hat I'm up to. Envy is poison in a Station, so fix on this fact: A ation Chief is always working. In the midst of any social gathering, ) matter how prestigious, I will be pursuing Company business. End sermon, gentlemen. Gather round. I have a small assignment for Hi." Whereupon, he handed out copies of the same communication all of us. It read: NGECL RBNEL XYEDE LYNYE SYRPJ NJLVS BFYED BXNBF DOLPN UDBUS BULZE YSGGD NPZVD MORYE ILPLU 470 NORMAN MAILER Kittredge, that's not even half--there are thirty-six of t five-letter groups--but I promise you, I'm tired of copying it. wouldn't give us a one-time pad, said it was a clear one-for-spec one, and we could work it out on the periodicity of the letters. " text deserves it," he said. "Lose an hour this afternoon, and learn a what we're all about." Well, you know, we were rusty. A clear one-for-one is hard to decode, but it takes time. Porringer and Keams were driving force, and I put in my share. Sonderstrom sat in the corner looked like he was going to have a stroke. I have never seen Gus' so red. He's all thumbs on deciphering--even hates to use the coder-Decoder--and, of course, we did not have the use of on( this. Our COS had given us back-to-school homework. Here was the readout: IFTHE UNITE DSTAT ESIST OSU IVELO NGSTA NDING AMERI CAN NCEPT SOFFA IRPLA YMUST HER And here again, enough is enough. When we were d Porringer insisted on reading aloud: "If the United States is to sw long-standing American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must lea, subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophistic and more effective methods than those used against us." "My Aunt Mary," said Sonderstrom, "he had us decoding Doolittle Report." Kittredge, can you imagine? Who among us is not fan with such holy text, but Howard had us picking up the peas w knife. Next morning, on the wall above each of our desks, N, Waterston, following his order, had tacked an eight-by-ten piec white cardboard to the wall of each of our cubicles with the five-1 groups, all thirty-six, neatly typed. Presumably, we are to do cur's for the rest of our two or three years here with the Doolitde Ri staring at us in that Simple-Simon code. I didn't know whether ( was a genius in the making, or a third-rate malefactor. The DoO Report! We had fun over beer that evening. "I promise to subj sabotage, and destroy our enemies," one of us would begin, "by^ clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods," the se< would take up, "than those used against us," would solemnly < HARLOT'S GHOST 471 nde the third. After which, Porringer, Keams, and myself would lemnly recite, "Why ell are why ell--eks dee effdee en--be why are why," which is how the letters in the last three five-letter oups do sound. Barbarically collegiate, I know, but we were having n. I even liked Porringer. He is an incisive type. He told me, londerstrom is looking to get relocated." "How do you know?" "I know." That was over two months ago--oh, Kittredge, I see now w long it's been!--and I can only tell you that Porringer was solutely right. Four weeks after Hunt came down to us from the reat White North, Sonderstrom managed to get himself transferred Angola. It was tough on his wife, a fat Irish lady who hates hot imates and loves to sit on stuffed sofas--the wicker of cool African miture is going to leave a checkerboard on her bland buttocks, I ar--but Angola was the only place that could use a Deputy COS imediately, and Sonderstrom has, he tells us, a real shot to move up i COS at the same Station after a year. Poor Sonderstrom. I'm not are he has a real shot. He speaks no Angolese--whatever it's called. nd once he thought he would replace Mayhew. I've come to recog2e how tough the Company can be, which is, of course, as it should ;. In any event, I'm now not so much impressed by Porringer's umen as depressed by my lack of same. Of course Sonderstrom ould look to move. Hunt has taken over all his functions, golf and 'cial work, plus all the things Gus didn't and couldn't do, such as iltivating very rich ranch owners in the pampas. Moreover, it was ear by the end of Hunt's first month that he had struck up a tighter, 'ugher relationship with Salvador Capablanca (the untrustworthy hief of Police of the Gomez adventure, remember?) than Sonder- from ever did. According to Porringer, Hunt seized the nettle. Took ie Police Chief out to lunch, as any First Secretary of the American mbassy might (remember--this is Hunt's cover title), but right after rffee, in answer to Capablanca's condescending, "Mr. Secretary, Vw tell me, sir, how can one be of service for you?" Hunt replied, Easy, Salvador, just tap a couple of embassy lines for me. Soviet, Slish, East German, Czech. That should be enough for starters." Porringer says Capablanca lost his poise. "Oh, then . . ." he said, "oh, then . . . you are . . ." "Yes, I'm CIA," said Hunt. "You don't think I really look one of those flapdoodles in the State Department, do you?" 472 NORMAN MAILER Flapdoodle was apparently one great choice of a word. Capabk laughed as much as if he were having lunch with Bob Hope. (Incid tally, that's what Hunt's ski-jump nose reminds me of--Bob Ho But Porringer says Capablanca only laughed so much because he frightened. Our CIA reputation casts a long shadow. Even the C of Police down here thinks we're capable of disposing of people 1 snap of our fingers. (Just as well they don't know how relatr law-abiding we are.) In any case, Hunt was playing on such fear. in thing he said was: "Senor Capablanca, as you well know, such taps be put in mit or mitout." "Mit or mitout? Would you explain, Senor Hunt?" "Mit or mitout your help." "Oh, I see." Capablanca laughed again. "But if we do it together, the take can be shared." "I would have to tell President Batlle." "Como no," said Howard, and they shook hands over tr On the drive back. Hunt listened carefully to Porringer. C sie's read was that Badle would be too anti-American to cooper but too spineless to get in the way of our taps. However, the Der Chief of Police, Peones, who was also at the lunch, was ready to recruited. Porringer told Hunt that he had been working on Pec for nine months. (Why does it always take nine months to make agent? Another one of our Station jokes.) Hunt shook Porring hand solemnly. "That will be one A-OK coup," he said. In i Kittredge, it now is. Peones has been in the fold since Febru Brownie points for Porringer. After this lunch, Sonderstrom hastened his departure. He Hunt were civil to one another, but they were not in tune. Now Sonderstroms are gone and Porringer is, at present, Acting Def COS, and expects to take real tide. His scrupulosity on detail inside political savvy will back-stop Howard nicely. Incidentally, I spent an interesting evening at Porrinjj home just a couple of weeks ago. His wife is a serious bridge plat and in the States was working on her National Tournament Rad Marooned here, she has joined a bridge club in Montevideo, w| forces her to learn basic Spanish--"Yo declare tres corazones!",^ Porringers brought in a member of Sally's local group for my da^ dolorous, much-wrinkled duenna of seventy or seventy-five ^ spoke passable English, and played real hot cards. I do an accept! college rubber, and Porringer is slightly better, but that was the HARLOT'S GHOST 473 of the evening. I pass, you notice, quickly over the meal. Sally is, alas, no cook, and we had pot roast that tasted like boiled beef in dishwater, sort of reminiscent of the old St. Matthew's grub. Later, during bridge, the kids would stir once in a while in their all-American bedroom, bunk-bed small and stuffed with half-broken toys, as I discovered when sitting it out as dummy and thereby being the one free to walk the youngest back to her bed after she woke up for the usual nocturnal and fluvial reasons. Why do I tell you all this? It's just that our American domesticity is so strange to me that I look upon it as Martian. (Confession: I envisaged Christopher's bedroom in a few years. Please: no broken toys.) The banality of the Porringer evening was relieved by one astonishing insight into Sherman. His house looks as you would expect--gray drapes, and blonde-wood furniture, formica dining table and chairs, unpainted stack shelves jammed with books and papers--exactly the way a Midwestern graduate student's apartment figures to shape up. Even a rug made of straw squares sewn together. And frayed. They brought all their furniture with them from Wash- ington because it's shipped at Company expense. (That gave me a tense of all our modest U.S. families deployed around the globe.) At any rate, in the midst of this predictable household is one glass case with eight hand-painted eggs within. They're remarkably well done. A vista of tree and pond wraps around the shell in one. Another is a yothic castle with moonlight shimmering through a purple forest; they all are separate and exceptional--painted by someone who can use those fine brushes with one or two hairs. Then I learn they are in the glass case because, Sally tells us, Sherman has carefully sucked out the itgg by way of a tiny hole he drilled. Once that is accomplished, he jpaints the fragile surface. Enjoys the risk of it. You can lose all you've at in with one careless move. "Would you like to see these gorgeous ings up close?" asks Sally. Well, prepare yourself for the horror. Even as Sherman is King the first of his eggs to me, said object falls between our fingers shatter on the floor. I feel as if a baby bird has just croaked. Ittredge, there are clumsy accidents, and there are what I would call ird-force accidents. This was in the latter category. The eggshell left » hand and I swear it took its own willful flip into space. Well, I apologized till I felt as if I were chewing aspirin, and f kept shrugging it off. A bull rage was stirring so deep in him that ljust bury another piece of his much suppressed soul. I'm sure 474 NORMAN MAILER five, if not ten, hours of immaculate work were lost, and nothing do about it. He said at the end of a long time for me, but short enoug I suppose, for him to get his sentiments in harness again—"Well, doi feel too bad. It's my least favorite egg. I always take it out first strangers are going to handle the stuff." Given the circumstances, must admit Porringer was being gracious. His blue-black shav< cheeks looked as funereal as the occasion. It's late, and I can't possibly send a letter off which ends < a note like this. So will hold, and write more tomorrow, and mail y< that. Your indentured serval H2 11 April 11, I can't imagine why I told the awful egg story, except I do know. as I write this to you, the reason comes home. It was the sound o egg as it struck their tile floor. Being just an empty shell, it madi softest, saddest little sound on breaking. I can't get that out o: head. Once on a High Thursday, Hugh told us of an ancient Egy] saying that the difference between the truth and a lie weighs no i than a feather. Enough! The exciting news is that we now have an Obs< tion Post right next to the Russian Embassy, and this is as m league as we have been able to get. Once again, credit is dij Porringer, since the OP comes to us by way ofPeones, yet the a< derives from Howard's efforts to wake us up. I have not descq Peones, but you would hate him. He's heavy, very vain, half Spa half Italian, and built to endure. Medium height, with massive sl ders and legs. Large black mustache. Frankly, he's swarthy. G« an animal odor that he covers with scent. Peones knows a brothels in Montevideo and scouts them for new talent the w assistant college coach will go out to high school football gad look for recruitments. Well, Porringer, I've learned, is someth; a brothelmaniac himself. Much more than I ever was, so qu contumely. I've settled down. I'm frankly working too hanlJ Porringer and Peones became friends by running together S; HARLOT'S GHOST 475 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 ride 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 ofMontevideo 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 transla- ion does not signify Freedom of Speech nearly so much as "Ah, 'reedom--your tongue!"). ' Libertad, it appears, has been corresponding lately with Penes. She is the love of his life. If the Central Intelligence Agency fould bring her back from Havana to Montevideo--other own free "U, of course--he is ready to serve. Much of Uruguay, via Peones, 'ould be at our disposal: selected government officials, individual Msiers, the telephone company. Embassy Row, and police informers left organizations. Peones finishes by saying in English, "My coun- is yours." Porringer carried the offer back to the Station. Peones' prom 476 NORMAN MAILER ises are vast, but can he be trusted to deliver? Once the girl is h what if he fails to come through? Moreover, can we afford it? If is doing all that well in Havana, her shift of venue may prove ex^ sive. No, Peones promises, the cost will not be prohibitive. The sincerely desires to return to him. It is a true love affair, he Porringer. Moreover, says Pedro, we will have to bear no more than transportation costs. Once she is here, he will establish her in on several fine properties he already commands. She will be Su] Deluxe. La Montevideana. So a good deal of cable traffic has gone into these projei costs. It may not be as fearful, economically speaking, as we am pated. (Two thousand dollars will get the girl here, bag and bagg first class, bonus included.) Moreover, EH2 knows his way around appropriate fields in Foggy Bottom. I soon learn that where one C will get empty pockets on the return cable, another, like Howard, come up with the kale. You're right. Hunt does talk about money the time, and has more synonyms for checks and cash than anyo ever met. "Does Libertad have any idea how many stick-emu] will take to transport her butt down here?" is one of his rema "Lettuce," he calls the stuff, and "frogskins," "cartwheels" (for si dollars, I find out), and "farthings." "Bawbees," "tanners," " boas," "bolivars." It's fun when he gets going. To my surprise, the biggest impediment is Havana Stat Howard suspects that Caribbean Desk has been using Libertad specific assignments, but he knows how to pull a few strings on I-J-K-L harp, and the impasse is adjudicated. We get her. We ( wonder a little why did Havana try to throw all that sand into gears. Anyway, Pedro is so happy that we now have a new t around the Station for extreme emotional states: it is Delirium Pei In successive fits of generosity--since the girl has not as yet arrive Pedro has already installed a tap on the phone lines of his dete superior, Salvador Capablanca. Our listening post immediately j us the confirmation we need--Luis Batlle, President of Uruguay even more pro-Soviet than anticipated. Capablanca is complete^ boy. We divined that already, but confirmation is to divination;! good meal to an empty belly. , a Then comes the super-coup. After the confirmation c that Libertad was definitively en route, Peones made a short speec HARLOT'S GHOST 477 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 Espana. 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-l 6 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 icfore cold weather sets in. Obviously, we have to find the proper enants pronto. But, where do we get them? We don't want to rely in Peones for this. Hunt decides to collar Gordy Morewood, and soon we have father and mother installed in the villa with their thirty-year-old laughter. They're vintage Jewish refugees from the Nazis and came o Montevideo in 1935 or (hereabouts. Their name is Bosqueverde, vhich is changed from the original German, I assume. Grunewald lay have been the original. Never altered Hyman toJaime, however. •o it's Hyman Bosqueverde, and his wife is Rosa. Daughter is Greta. »°ey call her Gretel. They are a timid, very retiring couple with a shy, '"in daughter, but very close to one another. If the daughter sneezes, 478 NORMAN MAILER the mother shivers. I know all this because Howard has made me tl Support Officer. You see, none of us dare speak to the Bosqueverdes in Eng (a pity since their English is not bad), but it would be a total giveax if the KGB had miked the villa. The solution, therefore, was to me. While my German is not great, I believe I can get away v laying a heavy Spanish accent over it. We hope the assumption ' be--if, that is, the KGB is listening--that I'm some Spanish frienc the Bosqueverdes trying to improve his accent. At any rate, my duties here are simple and small. In return living in the villa rent-free, the Bosqueverdes are obliged to k someone near the movie camera and tripod from six in the mora until dark. Since the daughter works as a librarian, I assume she { in less time than the parents. I visit every third or fourth night to bi over new film and carry back exposed reels. We get the take de^ oped in a safe lab, and I then put in my hours with a movie projet and screen studying the arrivals and departures from the front gat< the Soviet Embassy, ready to attach a new number to each new £ Then the film is pouched up to Cockroach Alley, where Soviet Ru Division has the capacity to recognize faces and attach dossiers them. As we receive their findings, life becomes more interesri One of the faces, for example, belonged to a high-level KGB man. came to the Embassy a couple of times, left again on each occas after a half-hour visit, and then flew back to Paris, which we were < to determine via AV/OUCH-2 in Passport Control. Of course, don't know why he made his visit, but SR Division has one to straw for their giant nest. The garden parties are another matter. Two have been phc graphed so far, and I run the reels with as much absorption as if I sitting on the bank of a lake at evening and can't stop studying light on the water. It's a curious image to use because the B queverdes are not skillful photographers, and the result is close to 1 home movies with a telephoto lens thrown in. The pans are ab< enough to make you feel as if a wrestler is throwing you half assf the ring. Still, I study the footage over and over for clues to Sal Embassy personnel relationships, and can't begin to tell you ^ absorbing that is. I feel as if I'm watching a film by Roberto Rosseflj I'm tempted to relate more, but would rather wait until the | garden party, which is scheduled for this Saturday. Personnel froiBS ^ HARLOT'S GHOST 479 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- Mi tzvah. 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 GermanJewish accent, "Please, you should take the best care of Mr. Morewood. He works so hard for you." "Ja," I say, "si,ja," and I smile and leave with the exposed 'eels rattling in my paper bag. (Which also has a loaf of bread sticking >ut of it.) And I am back on the street and sauntering along for three "ocks to my pool car, taking a couple of leisurely stops en route to ee if perchance I'm being followed. So far--nichts! Good enough. I lave 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 »erlin. 480 NORMAN MAILER On the drive to my hotel I keep thinking about the Je They are only one-eighth of me but I have this pecuhar wh response to them. Time for bed. Give my love to my godson, and to you ; yours. Ha 12 April 14, 1< Dearest Kittredge, The garden party is tomorrow and Hunt has decided that ] the one to go with him. No doubt about it, he's bold, and I'm pleas I know the terrain, I've done the chores, and now I'm entitled to reward. Of course, I'll have to be three times as cautious in fat when dropping in on the Bosqueverdes, or else turn the visits ovel Reams or Gatsby (who are, incidentally, jealous of Hunt's grow fondness for me—you were certainly right about that) but, on balar I'm pleased. To sip cocktails behind the enemy's garden walls—h many can speak of such an experience? As a result, work hung heavy today, and I left early, and n find an urge to write to you again. There are so many sides to my, that I feel as if I'm only giving you the most partial glimpses. From day he came in, for instance. Hunt was fascinated by my work w AV/ALANCHE. Before long, he was giving me slogans to pass or the gang. Howard wants to see in letters five feet high such decL dons as marxismo es odioso, or—a real blockbuster—marxismc mierda. "Howard," I tell him, "I don't believe those kids will w to put mierda up. They may be slum children, but they're straida' about such stuff." •: "Scatology," says Howard, "has a hell of an impact in pi countries. Let me tell you what the Chinese did to the Japs duringi war." And he provided a long tale about the OSS giving stink-bfij spray dispensers to Chinese kids who would sneak up on Japaa| officers taking a stroll and loose the littlest squirt on their pants. I minutes later, the officer smelled as if he had been bathing in dtf "What a loss efface for the Japs," said EH2. HARLOT'S GHOST 481 "Yes," I say, "that's quite a story." He senses my resistance and lets it go for the time being. All the same, he is rash. He is trying to get me to accelerate Chevi Fuertes' efforts, and I resist. Chevi is coming along nicely with me. For my devoted readers back in the Groogs, I have developed a fairly detailed picture of the top PCU personnel, and which PCU factions have clout with which unions, etc. Porringer, who has kept on the labor scene these last two years, claims my stuff is good but hardly new--I'd hate to think this is repayment for the broken egg. In any event, Howard now wants me to push Chevi to install a couple ofsneakies into the inner office of the PCU. That's no huge job. One has only to replace the present old-fashioned electrical wall outlets (which look like white porcelain doorknobs) with new outlets, built to look exactly the same but containing a miniature microphone and transmitter within. Gatsby has managed to rent a listening post in an office building near enough to PCU headquarters to pick up these limited-range transmissions. So Hunt says the job is in place and all we're waiting for is Chevi to bring his screwdriver. The trouble is that the office is well guarded. Chevi draws guard duty once a week in the inner office. He and a fellow Communist camp out there for the night. Since the PCU is certainly paranoid about security, neither man is supposed to leave the other alone. They don't even go down the hall to the bathroom. A bucket is left for them. This rule, however, is there to be broken. Once a night, Chevi's companion will pay a ten-minute visit to the loo. That can be counted on. In these ten minutes, Chevi could substitute our porcelain outlet for the other. But if it goes wrong, I don't want to think of what would happen to Fuertes. I'm not certain they'd hurt him physically, but, at the least, he's ruined among his own people forever. (In a sense, he is already, to himself.) Of course, I also have to consider whether I'm being too protective of my agent. That is as bad as being too reckless. In any event, the pressure is on to push Fuertes, and I believe I will. Hunt wants us to get moving in every direction. For instance, Gatsby, under Sherman's tutelage, has taken over Porringer's relations with a centrist labor union that has been keeping us informed on several left-wing unions. Hunt wants more. "We're here to war on the Reds," he says, "not to monitor their social progress." So Gatsby has been pushed into using stink-bombs. A couple of left-wing meetings have been broken up lately by right-wing students whom Gatsby (with an assist from Gordy Morewood) recruited over the last three 482 NORMAN MAILER months. Hunt insists there's double mileage in the use ofWhoM "It makes the recipient feel infantile. Helpless infants live in the mi of such smells. So, it deprives these labor leaders of some of tt ability to take themselves seriously. That's a vital blow to a lal leader." Gatsby, whom I don't believe I've described to you, is sam haired, scrub-featured, freckled, and, in a word, not very describal He was never exactly noticeable, not even with a mustache t happened to be dark enough to contrast with his light hair. But Hi convinced him to shave it off. Now he is truly inconspicuous. Last note on stink-bombs. AV/ALANCHE-1 through 7 h; been armed with pellets. Hunt claims these Who-Me's will beef morale for my kids. To my surprise, it does. Last time AV/ALANC] 1--7 went out, they actually got into a pitched battle with a left-w gang they had been wary of before, but the pellets apparently did job. On their next sally, they intend to paint marxismo es mierda a warehouse wall near the center of town. The next sally reminds me that the Porringers are also go to the Soviet garden party. I feel like Anthony Trollope. Will Hen Hubbard convince Mrs. Porringer to dance with the Russians? Your own Ha April 15, 1< Kittredge, I wish I hadn't dispatched that letter yesterday. Now you expecting news I can't oner. The Russians called off their gan party. The excuse is that their residentura, Samoilov, is ill with flu. nonsense. We know better. A quick check with the Bosquever confirmed that Samoilov has been in and out of the Embassy sevi times this morning. Whom, you may ask, do we dare to send to the B queverdes' door in broad daylight? It's an ingenious piece ofwori another nice touch from the unpopular Mr. Morewood. Gordy 4 on a twelve-year-old nephew of the Bosqueverdes whenever wants Hyman to come out to a pay phone. Since the boy lives ri the villa, he merely saunters over in his skullcap to pay, ostensiblj visit to his Hebrew teacher. OfSuch pointillisme is the complete palette. I wish one could like Gordy more--there is so much to 1 from him. HARLOT'S GHOST 483 By such means, Hyman Bosqueverde did relay to us the news that Samoilov was walking about and healthy. Why the party was canceled we cannot answer yet. We notified the Groogs, who took it up with Soviet Russia Division. Their analysis is that Khrushchev's friendly gestures of late toward the West are intended to slow down the nuclear buildup in NATO. The invitation to us here in Monte- video was one of the far-flung expressions of such a gambit. Something, however, went wrong overnight, and they pulled back the olive branch. A worldwide checkout on Soviet Embassy parties reveals that the Montevideo bash, plus a party in Johannesburg to which our Embassy people were also invited, seem to have been the only two canceled. Our best readout after a three-way cable interchange is that the Russians were indicating that a minor, not a major, chill is taking place. As evidence, the entire party was called off, which is far better, on balance, than merely disinviting the American Embassy. God, what a way to waste a day. I'm at raw ends. And Barry Keams is in a worse state. He had to spend the entire morning and afternoon on the Encoder-Decoder with Soviet Russia Division. When Keams makes even the smallest error in routing, which is not hard to do, the Sourballs become awfully nasty. (Merely to reach them, however, calls for invoking an entry code that changes with the hour.) Keams forgot that Washington, of late on Daylight Savings Time, is no longer sixty minutes behind us--well, contemplate the return vituperations. Reams' error cost the Sourballs some ninety minutes in the Great Bin of Lost Messages until they located his cable. Here is part of their reply: NEXTT IMESH OWYOU RCERT IFICA TEOFI DIOCY I'll spare you the rest of that billet-doux. The SR Division has be composed of thick-spectacled creatures with half-bald heads, Woodpecker noses, and wholly splenetic dispositions. Poor Keams. I haven't described him to you, but he's our *isfit. Six-four, he weighs much too much, maybe one of the heaviest eople in the Agency, lardlike, even soft. I don't know how he played " ^for Sonderstrom, although I hear he had some ability to drive a S ball and was a finicky but reasonably dependable putter. His golf > however, is gathering dust. Under Hunt's baleful supervision, 484 NORMAN MAILER Reams' inadequacies are beginning to show up. He panics, and < easily blow a communications procedure. Keams also has a he; hand when trying to joke with the Groogs. There's a cable protoc I could even call it a cable panache, that he lacks. Whereas, Hunt it. This is what Howard sent last week to the ArgentinaUrugi Desk: NOBODY TOLD ME BUT I BELIEVE TODAY TO BE THE TEN ANNIVERSARY OF OUR URUGUAY STATION. GIFTS AND CONGRATU] TIONS WILL BE GRATEFULLY RECEIVED. DO NOT REMIT CASH. I can see how such humor won't translate over to you, 1 given our oft-strained relations with the Groogs, it was a funny cal They sent back the following reply: would you consider thii THOUSAND AMERICAN PENNIES TO ACCOMPANY THE USUAL FELICF TIONS FOR A JOB PRETERNATURALLY (AS ALWAYS) HALF-BAKED T( PERFECT TURN. Well, I'm feeling psychic across six thousand miles. I sei your Furies stirring. Kittredge, do try to forgive the disappointm this letter must be. Ha April 19, I0 Harry, I believe that I am a case officer manque. I know that wt I expect information and don't receive it, I have to hold on t; temper so terrible that I am convinced my Gardiner forebears ow touch of Druid's blood. Your last letter, to put it kindly, reads 1 drool from Fathead Lane. What do I care about your third-rate Ct of Station and his Napoleonic urinations into the pee-pot ofUrugu His cables are equal to his mentality. Your appreciation of such me ocrity inspires me with horror. As I write this, I am sitting at Harlot's desk looking at y< brooch. Note that this is the first time I have ever called Hugh by 1 name for which he is famous. I wonder what Christopher's prc cryptonym is yet to be? STRUMPET? TOMBSTONE? The baby is crying. Again. Again. It is because I called B TOMBSTONE. His life is part of my future death. ^ Brooch | Your bro< f HARLOT'SGHOST485 : April 20, 1957 Dear Harry, Forget yesterday's letter if you can. I mailed it immediately upon completion, and that is all I remember. Whatever was in it cannot possibly be more than half true. I suffer attacks like migraine, except my head does not hurt. It's just that I undergo temporary amnesia. Have you given up your brothel girl or are you deep in the slop-pits with her? I fear the worst. I really do not wish to correspond with you anymore. This is an order. Cease all communications with me. Hadley Kittredge Gardiner Montague If I had sworn that I would not use the secure phone to reach Harlot, the oath had to be broken. Our Station's secure phone was kept, however, in a locked closet in Howard Hunt's office. He was not sympathetic to my request. "Howard," I told him, "I must have use of it." "Could you provide the reason?" "Personal." Howard sat behind his desk and shrugged. "In that case, why don't you find a pay phone on the other side of town?" "This is Company business. The man I want to reach won't speak unless the line is secure." ?,: "Hugh Montague. Is he the gentleman?" "Yessir." Howard put his elbows on the desk and looked at me from the ;nt of his upraised and slanted fingers. "Harry, I think you ought to now," he said, "that Harlot is a legend in the Agency for six good easons and eight bad ones. One of the bad ones is that you can't have decent conversation with the guy unless you're using a secure •hone." "I accept the fact that Hugh Montague is a man full of quirks. But Ms happens to be a family matter of first importance." Howard showed his temper. "The secure phone is placed in my 486 NORMAN MAILER hands as Chief of Station. You are asking me to abuse this serii privilege." "For God's sake, I was able to use a secure phone all the tim was in Berlin. It happened to be located right at the end of a corri( in the Department of Defense. Anyone could use it." "Berlin," said Howard, "is an orgy. A goddamned out-ofcont orgy." "Yessir." "I can't allow you to use my secure phone for a private mati That's cutting a hole in the membrane." "Yessir. But I do have to talk over a family matter." "I thought we passed that stop." "Howard, I am godfather to the Montagues' child, Christopt: Upsetting news came to me this morning by way of a letter." "Isn't Hugh Montague your godfather?" "Yessir." But I could not hold back the question. "How did } know?" He touched his thumb with his forefinger several times to indie a duck quacking. "I had lunch back in Washington with Ar Rosen." "Rosey," I said, "is better than an old-fashioned telephone ope tor." To my surprise, Hunt laughed. "Here!" He reached into a \ pocket and withdrew a small key. "Help yourself. Maybe I kill what it is to be worried about a kid." "Thank you, Howard." "And when you're done, not today, but soon, I have a couple things to talk to you about. Don't ask who, but a couple ofpeo warned me off of one Harry Hubbard. Told me you fucked up Berlin." "Maybe I did." "Well, everybody messes up under Bill Harvey. The real I word, if you want to hear it, is that you're locked in with the wr^ rabbi." ? I made no reply. I was damn angry by now and trying to h calm as stone. | "We can," said Hunt, picking it up, "talk about it over drink dinner." He looked at his watch. "Hey, I'm late for one big 1" This office is going to be yours. Leave it as you found it." He lai to subdue the edge of his last remark, and was gone. HARLOT'S GHOST 487 Using a secure phone proved difficult in Montevideo. I ha'd to pass through relays of operators from Buenos Aires to Mexico City to Washington. It took a half hour to learn that Harlot was not in his office, nor at home, but another call to Location Inquiry-Secure directed me to WILD GARLIC, the cognomen given to Harlot's phone at the Keep. An hour had been spent in Howard Hunt's closet to reach a man I dreaded speaking to. "Are you calling about Kittredge?" Harlot said for greeting. Once again came the impression of hearing a voice from the other end of a long tube. "Yes," I said, "just what I am calling about." "How the hell did you get to Howard's phone? Have to give away a piece of yourself?" "Probably." "Doubtless too much." "Hugh, is Kittredge with you at the Keep?" "She's all right. Under some sedation, but fine." I could not see how someone who was under sedation was fine, but he must have heard what I did not say, for he added, "I'm with her. She's not alone." ' "Yessir." He was silent for the longest time, and when he spoke, it was as if he had made a whole decision to tell me more. "Harry, she didn't go out of her head, you know. It was overload." "I've been worried," I said. He snorted. "Worried? I've been grinding a few teeth. Do you . know? She was still trying to nurse the baby, and keep up at work, and .^vith it all, most unfortunately, experimenting with a substance. At | such times, of course, she would not nurse the baby. Not when the ubstance was in her." I could hardly believe what he had said. "The what?" "Kittredge would never test others before jumping in the pool self But her timing was ill advised." "Is she all right?" I asked. "I told you. She is mending. She is under sedation. A good ctor-friend of mine is supervising her recovery. Friend of Alien's." "Did she go to the hospital?" "Of course not. A psychotic episode in your 201 is about as able as joining the Communist Party in your youth." 488 NORMAN MAILER I could feel his desire to talk. In what a state must he be! "Hugh, forgive this question, but are you certain she shouldn't seeing a very good psychiatrist?" "I know the lot," said Montague. "We run them in and out TSS in relays. I comprehend Kittredge far better than ever they cou They are not qualified to deal with her fine mind. She is all right tell you. In another week, she will be herself. Of course, she must n work for a time, and in future has to forswear any ingestion substances whatever. It's her ambition, don't you see? The only p of the girl that is not balanced. They don't recognize the stature oft work sufficiently. That's enough to drive a sane mind wild." "May I speak to Kittredge?" "She is sleeping. I would not wake her." "May I call back?" There was a full pause. I waited, but he did not reply. "Is Christopher with you?" I asked. "Naturally." "And a nurse?" "A good Maine woman who comes in by the day. I get up wi Christopher if he wakes at night." He was silent after that. I wanted to ask about his office. Who was covering? Kittredge h once spoken of two assistants who were absolutely dependable. Th would be guarding the doors at GHOUL. I had a small but inescapal panic that my time on the phone was running out. I would be alo in Uruguay so soon as he hung up. "May I call later?" I asked again. His telephone silence, teeming with static, seemed equal to t babble of a myriad of infinitesimal creatures. "Harry, look into yourself," said Harlot. "You've been a son a bitch. I want your correspondence with Kittredge to cease." My first reaction was to wonder whether he had read the lettfi or merely knew of their existence. | "Dear God, Hugh," I said at last, "I think that ought to'. Kittredge's decision." "I "Harry, the birth of a baby is as incapacitating to an ambiritf talented woman as the hole left by a spear. She needs to mend.' cease this correspondence. That is my wish and it is hers." ^ "I'm going to ask for a leave." "You may get it, but I won't permit you to see her." "Hugh, don't cut me off. I'm six thousand miles away." HARLOT'S GHOST 489 "Well, you're going to discover the stuff of which you are made. My uneasiest sentiment, now that we are perforce joined by truth for a moment or two, is that you, Harry, are not tough enough. Not for the life work you have chosen. Prove me wrong. Plunge into your job. Take a sabbatical from us until we come around." With that, he hung up. 13 since IT WAS NEAR MY HOTEL, I HAD THE HABIT OF STOPPING BY THE Central Post Office each morning on the way to work. Sally Porringer would leave letters for me there. Her notes, as one could anticipate, were functional—"Oh, Harry, I miss you so much, I'm just aching for you. Let's figure out something for Saturday," is a fair sample. It was nice, however, that someone was aching for me. In the month after the last letter from Kirn-edge, I made love to Sally in a cold fury. It was unfair, but I held Sally responsible for the loss, and copulated in hate, which may have had the obverse effect of melting some icy moraine in her, for she kept telling me I was wonderful. Sexual vanity with its iron-tipped fingers kept clawing me forward, therefore, into more performance, even as I kept asking myself why I couldn't act like other Americans and just find women and forget them. Porringer, for example, was always ready to regale Gatsby and me about his nights in Montevideo brothels. IfSherman, with a wife, two children, and all of the duties of a Deputy COS, could still disport "like the happiest hog on the hind tit," as he put it himself—somber, blue-cheeked, paranoid Porringer—why could I not enjoy it? The irony is that I was even beginning to feel a bit of loyalty to Sally. The paradox of sex is that it always negotiates some kind of contract with love—no matter what, love and sex will never be entirely without relations. If I had added to my clandestine jamborees with Sally all the anger I felt at exercising my brains right out of my head with the wrong girl, and so felt more and more separated from the only woman I could adore like a goddess—strong words, but I was suffering my loss—all this anger had to live nonetheless with my sexual greed. Loss had left me a displaced person in the land of love. So love slipped over, if only by a little, into my feelings, and I did not despise Sally quite so much, and had compassion for the awful 490 NORMAN MAILER loneliness other life in a land where the only people who understood her at all were maniacal old lady bridge players, a young, grim, and much detached lover, and a husband who understood her so well he did not comprehend her at all. "Does he think it makes me feel good," she complained once, "for him to announce to company, 'Oh, Sally's a good old girl,' as if I was his 4-H Blue Ribbon in the prize sow contest? I hate Sherman sometimes. He's so needful and inconsiderate," and she began to weep. I, holding her, felt the first beginnings of compassion move out from me and into her. I still looked upon her with a great measure of contempt, but there were limits to how long I could keep my best feelings--that inner chalice of tender compassion--reserved entirely for Kittredge Gardiner Montague when I ached within from every bruise she had bestowed. Besides, it was too painful to think other. Was she mad? There was not a night when I did not curse myself for failing to get leave to go back to America. Yet it was hopeless. Harlot was never less than his word. Besides, he could be right. It might be one's duty to suck up the slack. Nonetheless, I still felt treacherous toward Kittredge whenever Sally and I put in our raunchy hours. Sex with Sally grew more appealing despite myself. I would lie in her arms afterward wondering if Kittredge were on the mend, or had I, across six thousand miles, just sent another thundering blow to the head? Suck up the slack, yes. I felt like a strip miner through all of May and June. The mild winter of Montevideo might as well have been spent in an Eastern coal pit. I was alone in Uruguay with no letters to write. So I took on work as Harlot had advised. I saw Chevi Fuertes twice a week, and AV/ALANCHE once, AV/OUCH-1 and 2 at Travel Control and Passport Control were on my route, and AV/ ERAGE, the homosexual journalist on the society beat, was also given to me now that Gatsby had been put onto Porringer's old trade union contacts. And there were always the Bosqueverdes (who spent their winter photographing the passage of live souls in and out of the Soviet Embassy gate). They were mine. And Howard Hunt gave me Gordy Morewood as well, and I had to deal with his unrelenting demands for cash. On certain mornings, every face was an irritant. Sometimes when Porringer and Kearns and Gatsby were all together in our big office room with its four desks, I knew again how faceless were everyday faces. And how intimate! Every misgrown nostril hair! Hunt became my friend during that Uruguayan winter, which 490 NORMAN MAILER loneliness other life in a land where the only people who understoo her at all were maniacal old lady bridge players, a young, grim, an much detached lover, and a husband who understood her so well h did not comprehend her at all. "Does he think it makes me fei good," she complained once, "for him to announce to compan^ 'Oh, Sally's a good old girl,' as if I was his 4-H Blue Ribbon in th prize sow contest? I hate Sherman sometimes. He's so needful an inconsiderate," and she began to weep. I, holding her, felt the fir beginnings of compassion move out from me and into her. I sri looked upon her with a great measure of contempt, but there wei limits to how long I could keep my best feelings—that inner chalk of tender compassion—reserved entirely for Kittredge Gardiner mob tague when I ached within from every bruise she had bestowed. Besides, it was too painful to think of her. Was she mad? Thei was not a night when I did not curse myself for failing to get leave t go back to America. Yet it was hopeless. Harlot was never less tha his word. Besides, he could be right. It might be one's duty to sue up the slack. Nonetheless, I still felt treacherous toward Kittredge whenevt Sally and I put in our raunchy hours. Sex with Sally grew moi appealing despite myself. I would lie in her arms afterward wonderin if Kittredge were on the mend, or had I, across six thousand miles, jui sent another thundering blow to the head? Suck up the slack, yes. I felt like a strip miner through all ofMa and June. The mild winter of Montevideo might as well have bee spent in an Eastern coal pit. I was alone in Uruguay with no letters t write. So I took on work as Harlot had advised. I saw Chevi Fuertt twice a week, and AV/ALANCHE once, AV/OUCH-1 and 2 ; Travel Control and Passport Control were on my route, and A\ ERAGE, the homosexual journalist on the society beat, was also give to me now that Gatsby had been put onto Porringer's old trade unio contacts. And there were always the Bosqueverdes (who spent the winter photographing the passage of live souls in and out of the Sovil Embassy gate). They were mine. And Howard Hunt gave me Gord Morewood as well, and I had to deal with his unrelenting demands fi cash. On certain mornings, every face was an irritant. Sometinad when Porringer and Keams and Gatsby were all together in our M office room with its four desks, I knew again how faceless we| everyday faces. And how intimate! Every misgrown nostril hair! ] Hunt became my friend during that Uruguayan winter, whiti HARLOT'S GHOST 491 was the summer of 1957 in North America. Two months after I spoke across six thousand miles to Harlot up at the Keep in Maine, I was wending my way out to Carrasco twice a week for dinner with Dorothy and Howard. If the high regard I used to hold for Harlot was now buried like provisions kept for one's return from a long journey, the habit of such respect, its shadow, so to speak, became transferred to Hunt. While he had a nasty temper, and was as easy to dislike at one moment as to like at the next, he was still my leader. I was discovering all over again that our capacity for love, when all else fails, attaches easily to such formal investments as flag and office. In the midst of all this, on an average cold morning, following my habit of stopping at the Central Post Office on the way to work, I pulled my hand out of the box one day with a letter from Kittredge. She had written to me directly rather than by way of the pouch. The Stable June 30, 1957 Dear Harry, ' Got this address from your mother. I believe open mail will be all right. This is really to tell you that I am now all right. In fact, in a limited sense, I'm thriving. To my modest sorrow, the baby is off" my breast and onto formula, but, on balance, it works. We have a daily nurse-housekeeper, and I am back on the job, indeed, no one over at the shop knows I was ill. Hugh managed that with great dispatch. Alien may be witting but certainly no one else. Hugh just brazened it through with a KittredgeandIhaven'thadavacationsince-marriage sort of stance that only he could get away with. Of course, he did work at the Keep, and damn hard while I was sorting out the little mad things for myself. Don't repeat this, but the real trouble was not you, nor the brooch, nor the baby, nor Hugh, all of whom I was beginning to see as encircling fiends, but, in fact, was due to the most injudicious experimenting with a fabulous if horribly tricky drug for altering consciousness called LSD. Certain of our people have been trying it the last five or six years with the most fascinating but inconclusive results, and I was vain enough to decide to experiment on myself and try to trace LSD's impact on Alpha and Omega. Needless to say. Alpha and Omega got into a frightful hoedown. So, this letter is apology to you. I recollect just enough of my deep dive to be certain it was unforgivable. I've wanted to tell you for 494 NORMAN MAILER could not enjoy a repast with people who did not know how to se the damn thing. And Dorothy was worse. To the stern blood st; dards of her one-eighth of Oglala Sioux and the Harrison ancest could be added Mrs. Hunt's relinquished tide. Dorothy had b< married to the Marquis de Goutiere, and had kept house with hirr Chandemagore, which happened to be, Howard could tell you, " family seat of the de Goutieres. It's near Calcutta." I never knew if the de Goutieres were Franco-Hindu or In< French, and if I heard the sound of "Marquesa" from time to til I barely knew how to spell it. But allow Dorothy her due—she i aristocratic. With dark hair, large dark eyes, a large and aquiline w. and lips that could curve into many a nuance of displeasure, she i curiously attractive, and rarely lacking in inner sentiments of s< worth. Whatever were the virtues and shortfalls at the home of Hunts, I paid for their hospitality by absorbing a concomitant c from my brother operators at the office. No matter. I accepted transaction. I was learning a good deal about Hunt's view of Station. While dinners in Carrasco adhered to Dorothy's edict that outright business could be transacted at table, the half hour bef dinner invariably installed me in Howard's study, and there I was u as a sounding board. An audible meditation, minutes in length, on defects ofGatsby and Kearns would issue from the thriving hive of thoughts. I rarely had to reply as Hunt conducted me through e; loose drum skin in our Station. I knew it was only a way of warm me up for a new job. Porringer was liaison to each of the Uruguay journalists and editors we paid to plant our pieces in the Montevi< press. Last week, however. Porringer had spent more time writing the Montevideo periodicals than reading them. "Khrushch Butcher of the Ukraine," went the theme. So I saw my new task shaping up. While Porringer's contacts w journalists were as sacrosanct to him as an Oklahoma dirt faran forty acres, I would now be given a heavy share of the writing i editing. Hunt's litany of imperfect execution of projects by Gatsbyi Keams was, I knew, the mirror image of their complaints to him I I was not taking on my proper load. The oldest game at every Statt I had begun to learn, was to slough dull tasks onto the new man at next desk, and Hunt, who could hardly be unaware of what it na cost to be his favorite, must have decided to unload more of' shopwork on me. When I agreed, therefore, to put my hand in on HARLOT'S GHOST 495 material Porringer sent over to his three best journalists, AV/ARICE, AV/ENGE, and AV/IATOR, Hunt had obtained his purpose, and could feel expansive. "Harry, when all is said and done," he told me now, "propaganda is half of what we do. Sometimes I think it's the better half." He opened his desk drawer and shut it as if to take a spot check on whether the Sovs had left a sneaky there recently. "Hate to tell you," he said with his hand to the side of his mouth as if to hold off all alien ears, "just how many newspapers back home also take plants from us. Journalists are easier to buy than horses!" The maid knocked on the door of the study. It was time for dinner. End of business and commencement of history. Dorothy, who was considerably less talkative than Howard, was always ready to accept his monologues at table, and converted them, I expect, into periods of meditation for herself. After all, she had heard the tales. I, however, had not, and thought he told them well. Let one suffice for the many. "Back in Tokyo about two years ago ..." "More like a year and a half ago," commented Dorothy. "You're keeper of the clock," said Howard. "All right, eighteen months ago, the Chinese Communists had the effrontery to announce that they were going to open their first trade fair in Japan. Show off their advanced machine-tool equipment. This set up a hell of a ripple. We knew better, but still! What if they were actually competitive? American interests had a lot of ducats in the pot, so we certainly didn't want the Japanese people looking to China. Well, I managed to slip into their preview and the ChiCom stuff was pathetic. Poor copies of our machine tools. The few good products were hand-crafted. Obviously, they were going to make no dent in the bacon-and-beans department, no, sir, no Almighty Dollars would have to be spent competing with them. All the same, I decided to bomb their exposition." "Did you employ Who-Me's?" I asked. "Not at all. This job called for finesse. So I authored a nifty op. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets floated down on Tokyo one night from a plane. 'Come to the Chinese Trade Fair,' said the invitation. 'Free Admission, Free Beer, Free Rice, Free Sashimi.' " Hunt began to laugh. "Harry, the ChiComs were inundated with Tokyo citizens waving these leaflets. They had to close their doors. They didn't have any free anything. Terrible press. Had to slink their Chinese butts out of town. 496 NORMAN MAILER "Speak ofBrownie points," said Howard. "I think one reason I' sitting in a COS seat right now was the success of that coup. ( course, I might also have to thank Dorothy." He lifted his glass to hi "Friend," he said, "when you look at your hostess, what do you see "A beautiful lady," I interjected. "More than that," said Hunt, "I also glimpse the female perso at its most elusive. Ask yourself. Harry, would Dorothy make a spy "None better," I replied. "You are on course." He sipped his wine. "I'm going to let o one I ought not to. While in Tokyo, she managed to cop the Arge tine code books." "I'm impressed," I said to Dorothy. "Well, Howard had to bring it up, but I will say it was no gr< feat. I was working, after all, for the Argentine Ambassador." "Her Spanish is impeccable," said Howard. "She was his speec writer." "Part-time," said Dorothy. "Part-time just managed to be enough," said Howard, "for dc othy to pick up the code books during the midday siesta. We hac little team around the corner who photographed her take faster th you can skin a rabbit, and Dorothy got them back before the ft siestero returned. That was worth a private salute from the North A Command. Darling, you are the real article," said Howard. "Why, we hadn't met in Paris, I would probably have encountered you. Hong Kong on some enchanted evening." "And what would I have been doing there?" asked Dorothy. "Running a large espionage mill- Contract players at every pri< All nations welcome." Dorothy said: "Pass the wine before you drink it all." "Another bottle," said Howard. We got very drunk that night. Long after Dorothy had gone bed, Howard kept talking to me. I had never had an older brother, b Hunt was beginning to present some notion of one. Back in the paneled wood study after dinner, he took out a got of Courvoisier, and we honed our after-dinner sentiments. hub study must have had fifty photographs on the wall, silver-framed sh| of himself and Dorothy in their separate childhoods, then together Paris; pictures of their children; pictures of Howard playing the saa| phone in a college band; Ensign Howard Hunt, USNR; Correspfl dent Hunt at Guadalcanal; Hunt at the typewriter for one of? HARLOT'S GHOST 497 novels; Hunt in a Chinese dugout with a sniper's gun; Hunt on a ski lift in Austria; Hunt with a brace of pheasants in Mexico; Hunt at the beach in Acapuico; Hunt in Hollywood; Hunt with antelope horns in Wyoming; Hunt with rani's horns in I don't know where—he grew tired of the tour by the time we got to Greece. He gave a wave of dismissal to himself at the Acropolis, settled in one big leather chair, and, obviously provident, was able to offer me its mate. The more we drank, the more confidential he became. In a little while, he began to call me Hub. I could see a long career for Hub and quickly offered an explanation (which had no truth) that one of my twin brothers had such a nickname. "Back to Harry," he said equably. "Good name, Harry." "Thank you." "What do you see for yourself. Harry, down the road?" "Down the road?" "Thirty years from now. Do you see a Director's chair, or is it fur-lined slippers on Retirement Lane?" "I like this work. I learn something every day. I just want to get awfully good at it." "No attacks of conscience?" "A few, perhaps, but I'm in need of seasoning." "Good," said Howard and opened his desk drawer. "What I show you next is in whole confidence." "Yessir." "These are personnel evaluations." "I see." "We can skip Gatsby and Keams. I can't send back anything very good about them." I couldn't either, so I was silent. "Porringer gets his B-minus. You do better." ; He must have had some second thoughts because he closed his , drawer without removing any papers. "I give Sherman good marks for jrhard work and agent-recruitment initiative, but I have to pigeonhole jhim. He's Deputy COS level. Can go no higher until he learns to run j,a happy Station. That, I am afraid, is going to stick to him, but my job ' to evaluate without tilt." "I can see the difficulty." "You present more of a problem. Bill Harvey is a vindictive son • a bitch, we can all agree, but something unique came out of him. |*e labeled you untrustworthy—which is a slash to the jugular. Then he 498 NORMAN MAILER withdrew it a week later. 'On reconsideration,' he wrote, 'this ma unorthodox but talented and trustworthy.' When you come up for pron tion, the examiner could begin to wonder what caused Harvi 180-degree change of heart. That does you no great good." "Yessir." I paused. "Wow," I heard myself say. "You need a firm, unequivocal yes from me." "I would think so." "I believe you're going to get it. I see something in you that a of good young officers don't have, good as they are. You anticip; I am going to say that while still inexperienced, you show poten for high echelon. 'Worth keeping an eye on,' is the plus I intenc put in for you." "Thank you, Howard." "It is because you have ambition." Did I? Knowledge versus power had never seemed a painful chc for me. I preferred the first. Did he see something I did not perceiw myself? I do not know if it was the Courvoisier or Hunt's la assessment of my qualities, but I knew the warmth of flattery in all limbs. As for Harvey's evaluation, I would brood on that tomorro\ "The key thing. Hub—sorry! Harry!—is not to kid oneself. ' all want to become Director of Central Intelligence. To me, t means more than being President. Do you feel that way?" I could hardly answer in the negative. I nodded. "Hell, I do. I recognize the odds. Howard Hunt has got one s in twenty, maybe one in fifty—Dorothy says I have the unfortur habit of being a little too easy on myself. Call it one in a hundred. T particular one is a live nerve. It runs from the top of my head to tip of my toes. Another ten or fifteen years and I might be in ] contention for an empyrean slot. So might you be in twenty twenty-five years." "I'm beginning to see what good brandy is all about." "Ha, ha. Say that again, Harry." He fit his words to his actiora) taking a sip from the snifter. He had a nifty way of clicking his < finger against the glass. "Fine. We comprehend the meaning ofi endgame. Here's to high purpose." He raised his glass. ^ "To high purpose." ,| "Let me line up one more crucial target for your sights. OrijJ these days you are going to get married." " "It's to be expected." < "A good CIA wife has to be a work of art. About the time < HARLOT'S GHOST 499 assigned me to Guatemala, Dorothy was well along in her third pregnancy. I had to leave her behind in Washington during a most difficult period. So, obviously, there are pros and cons. Career-wise, being single can prove a plus for the short term. You can pick up and move anywhere. But over the long haul, it's an Agency minus to be without a wife. Objectively speaking, the best wife for a Company man is a rich girl, wholly presentable on the social side, who is self-sufficient enough to survive without you for months at a time. "Let's put it this way. So long as you stay unmarried, take advantage of it. Look for every change of Division they offer you. Broaden your field. Then, when you have the right girl, and I'm talking about a masterpiece like Dorothy, get married. You can't make COS without that. A Station Chief is his own kind of Ambassador. We're the embodiment of what foreigners expect of Americans." He pointed a long finger up from the brandy snifter at a forty-five-degree angle. "You see, I have a thesis. We Americans abroad are engaged in Envy-Control. We've shown the globe a way to live that's clean and prosperous, so they hate us all over the world. Everything we do, therefore, has to keep an eye on Envy-Control. They may hate us, but be sure to leave them feeling impotent in that envy. That's where your woman makes a difference." All the while he spoke, I was thinking that that was not what I was in it for. It could have been the brandy, but I did not think I wanted to be DCI, no, I was here for the double life. In the double life lay all my hope for sanity, and I nodded wisely as if the brandy and I were vintage friends. 15 I DID NOT HEAR AGAIN FROM kittredge UNTIL THE WEATHER HAD ; turned warm and my second Christmas in Uruguay was approaching. Dec. 12, 1957 larry, dear Harry, I want to hear from you, and to write to you of all that's 'appened to me. So much has shifted within. Of course, I am breaking a promise. (I refuse to call it a vow, ^ce Hugh extorted it from me. To give one's word when at one's 500 NORMAN MAILER weakest is not to give the heartfelt word.) On the dubious logic oft} I decided not to tell Hugh that I am going to correspond with y again. He would not agree, and my life with him would, as a resi grow intolerable. I will not submit to his force; he would never acc( my rebellion. Our marriage, which has moved equably, and in honesty, happily, on the foundation of his prodigious care of me wh I needed it most, could be thrown into the doldrums again. I have obviously learned much. One lives with what wor but the spirit looks for what needs to be added. By this logic, I ne your letters. In consequence, the royal itch to deceive Hugh 1 sprung up in me once more and I'm going to tell you consideral more about myself than you may expect, in fact, I'll soon overwhe you with a long one. Guess W p.s. It's safe to try the pouch again. New address, however. Still Po Galen Smith, but new Route, AT-658-NF I returned a two-line letter: "Just to say that your Christn present arrived intact. I await words and music." Jan. 5, 19 Dear Harry, Christopher might delight you now. What a splendid lit fellow your godson has become. Of course, he is also in that fright stage other mothers have warned me about—he walks, but does r talk! I cannot tell you how fearful a situation this creates, and it coi last for many hysterical months to come. The only way to protect t furnishings is to keep Christopher out on the street in his stroller, penned upstairs. Once he gets into our parlor, he comports hinU like a drunken hellion, staggering about, arms out, trying to overm all our carefully acquired goodies. God, I love him. Each time I shri "No!" as he is about to knock over my hand-wrought Eife or| beautiful Pimm, he offers a resolute manly little grin with just a hi of the glint in Hugh's evil eye. Lord, I am awful when I come face face with my impeccable love of property. Flesh and blood go to | block before antique value. I I find as I write that I am preparing you for a consideral HARLOT'S GHOST 501 confession. I don't know that you've been made aware of the real landscape of my mental abdication all those many months ago. Yes, it was due to LSD, and the brooch, and Hugh, and you, all that I have already admitted to, but there were some unmanageable fantasies as well. And serious and most concrete difficulties. The real cause I have never really talked to you about. It was my work in TSS. I now relate to you that whenever I think of the corpus of offices and corridors composing Technical Services Staff over in our wing of Cockroach Alley, I tend to think of Alien Dulles wrinkling his nose as he walks down our smelly corridors. In my dreams and daydreams he has a tail and a cloven hoof, simple as that. You do know that he was born with a clubfoot? The Dulles family had him operated on quicker than crackers, so he has only had to limp the least little bit through life except when gout strikes his Satanic appetites. Of course, given Alien's tropisms, he did marry a young lady named Clover. (Just change the r to an n.) Harry, forgive this string of sitting ducks, but there are times when I hate Hugh and I hate Alien for they inhabit me, which, I suspect, is what being a good boss is all about. Well, don't fret--I'm now over on the meditative side of these unruly emotions, and only tell you this to indicate the previous intensity of my feelings. You see, I've felt badly divided at times on the justifiability of the work we do at TSS. So much of it is sheer mind-control. That comes down to manipulating the souls of other people. Yet, here is.my Harlot all for mind-control so long as it's the people he approves of who are doing it. Yes, the great war for the human future--Christians versus Reds! And weren't those Russian materialists brilliant to choose all the blood and fire of red as their emblematic color? Brilliant, I say, for it brought a necessary sense of the elemental to fill their materialistic void. Am I wandering? The one concept I've lived with ever since meeting Hugh is that Communists strive twenty-four hours a day to find ways to coerce the soul of humankind, and so we must labor our own twenty-four to confound them. TSS is the temple where we not only search for secret germs but hypnotic manipulations, abracadabra drugs and psychological methods to take over the enemy before they control us. Hugh, indeed, gave me a stiff lecture before we married. It was to the effect (and this is his favorite thesis on the source of vital human energy) that only when the best and worst in oneself is equally attached to the same mission, can one operate with full strength. In an exceptional moment of candor, he said to me, "I am attached to rock climbing because I 502 NORMAN MAILER have to conquer my fear of great falls--that is the good motive--b I also revel in it because I can dominate and humiliate others, and th happens to be an equally deep-rooted part of me." Harry, I was stirri by his candor. I knew that deep under my glowing college-girl ext rior were Shakespearean closets of blood, gore, and other unmentiol ables. I also knew that Hugh was a man who could steer a cool roll through such an underworld in me. Well, my husband-to-be did have his thesis well in hand. I- said we were blessed in our work at the Agency because the best ai the worst in ourselves could work together on a noble venture. ^ were to thwart, dominate, and finally conquer the KGB, even as the expressing by their lights the good and bad in themselves, were ei gaged, "tragic fellows" (Hugh's words), in an ignoble venture. So, on I went to TSS with Alien's blessing and Hugh's stroi arm around my waist. I was prepared to dive into the dark depths, bi of course, as soon as I finished training, they wrapped me in cotto Technical Services Staff, as you can guess, is as highly compartments ized as any place you're going to work in the Agency. Even now, aft five years in TSS's recessive folds, I still can't decide such basic thin as whether we go in for wet jobs, or, leaving assassination quite to d side, whether we indulge in even worse deeds, such as honest-tog< termination experiments. If one were to believe the more sinist gossip, it's true. Of course, such rumors do come to me in the lar; from Amie Rosen, and I'm not sure he's always to be trusted, (t loves wild stories too much!) Well, the time is come to let you in on a subconfessio About a year and a half ago, Arnold began to work for me, and so< became my number-one assistant. He's brilliant, and he's bad. Y< have to understand bad as an old Radcliffe foible. When we used say that of a male friend, it meant he was homosexual. Arnold--ai you are absolutely not to repeat this--is very much in hiding about 1 predilections. While he says that he's eschewed all sex since he's con into the Company, I don't believe him. All the same, he swears tw I suppose he must. Apparently, he was a bit of a queen in high schcM Hard to imagine. There he must have been, funny-looking, weanj eyeglasses, school valedictorian, all summa grades, of course, but H| an addiction to "debasement," as he puts it. He says it like a bislj man, not one word but two, "dee basement." He is, when you | to know him (and he drops that awful lapdog admiration which I used to put on for Hugh), a wicked and incredibly funny gossi HARLOT'S GHOST 503 When I asked him how he managed to get through the, wings of the nutter bird in the entrance tests, he said, "Darling, we people know how to pass a lie-detector. That's part of our lore." "Well, how do you?" I asked. "I can't possibly tell. It would offend your proprieties." "I have none," I said. "Kittredge, you are the most innocent and locked-up person I know." "Tell me," I said. "Darling, we eat a lot of beans." "Beans?" I didn't get it. Not at all. "Once you know when the test will be given, the rest is merely a small bout of discomfort. In anticipation, you eat a good plateful of beans." I slapped his hand. "Amie, you're a psychopathic liar." "I am not. The idea is be able to think of nothing but your bowels while you are being fluttered. Your mind couldn't care less whether or not it is telling a lie when the prime drama is to control your sphincter. I can tell you that the test administrator got awfully annoyed with me. 'You're one of those,' he said. 'General tension in all responses. It's hopeless.' 'I'm so sorry, sir,' I told him. 'It must be something I ate.' " Harry, he's a bit of a demon. If I'd never thought of Alpha and Omega before, Amie Rosen's existence would have suggested it. He has two totally different personalities—the one I expect that you are familiar with, and this considerably different one for me. I think Hugh had him attached to my court so I'd have at least one wise fellow around. He certainly indulges my outsized curiosity about some of the very strange people one does pass in the corridor. Rosen is full of whispers as to what might be going on. "Kittredge, feel the aura coming off that closed door! It's Dracula's Lair!" I accept that. I believe it. But, then I wonder if I am hypersen- ; sitive to the occult. (One full summer and a half ago, you may recall , that I encountered the ghost of Augustus Fan- up at the Keep, and to my over-fevered recollection, he limped just like Alien on a bad day. Ho, ho, ho.) Well, I want to bring you back a few years more than that. •To the time when I was wrapped in cotton. Alien Dulles had taken to my Radcliffe senior thesis on Alpha and Omega so completely that "e funded me right from the start. On the completion of my Farm 504 NORMAN MAILER. training--do you remember that that was the spring we met?--I v set up with a bona ride group of five graduate students in psycholc at Comell who did not even know they were being paid by t Agency. Another bit of nifty cover. I used to fly up to my seminar Ithaca every two weeks to see how research was progressing. By every visible measure, I was doing nothing dirty. I v merely developing my chosen work. I may have been a little in k with Alien during those first couple of years. If not for Hugh, I coi actually have contemplated going to bed with the man. Alien was dt I certainly loved him enough to want to develop something ofexc( donal use for him. So I dashed off in the wrong direction. Instead pursuing Alpha and Omega a little further into the labyrinth ofmysi and serving as my own laboratory which--all proportions kept-- what grand old Master Plumber Freud did, that is, spent many ye analyzing himself before giving us ego and id, I absconded from i floods and raging furnaces, and went searching too quickly for ov tests the Agency could use to spot a potential agent. I worked for the last five years, therefore, trying to elabor a test profile that could be used to detect potential treachery. The ft form, as of eight months ago, shows up as twenty test sheets w twenty-five items to check off on each page, and at certain levels were as good at predicting mental disorders as a Szondi test 01 Rorschach. Extracting a reliable Alpha-Omega profile, however, is ba( breaking. We learned to our horror that Long Tom (our in-hoi term for the five hundred pairings) has to be taken a minimum off times in order to pick up the style of transition from Alpha to Ome While certain kinds of bureaucrats keep the two personae whc separate for years, actors and psychopaths can go back and to twenty times a day. For such people, the test has to be repeat therefore, at different hours of the day. Dawn and midnight, so speak. Drunk and sober. We did end with a pretty foolproof set vectors to spot a putative agent, or even better, a putative dovk agent, but administering Long Tom was more difficult than raia orchids, a Harry, for the last five years, I have carried this burden woe, doubt, misery, and burgeoning frustration. And every y passed to me; I would, however, leave out the reference to the So" Russia Division. If the intent of the KGB was to increase our suspis I typed out a reply to the comment, my five-letter groups would begin their trip back through the same typewriter and Encoder 546 NORMAN MAILER Decoder to the Sourballs in Cockroach Alley. I would sit and wait my typewriter to commence clacking again. After hours of such b; and forth, I began to feel as if I were playing chess with an oppon in another room. Over my shoulder, Hjalmar Omaley read the qu tions and my answers. On this last comment, Boris note lacks concerted impact, I turned him. "What is that supposed to mean?" He had an irritating smile. His teeth would gleam in concert w the gleam that came off his eyeglasses. "It means," said Hjain "precisely what it says." This annoyed me sufficiently to type for my reply exactly wh had said to him. whatd oesth ismea N preci selyw hatit says came back. "All right, we have a problem," I said. "I can't comment if I dc know what I'm replying to." At Yale, I had always detested the superior sort of graduate stud who looked like Hjalmar Omaley. Their heads were invariably h at odd angles. They listened with a half-smile. They appeared to sniffing the inferior odor of your turds as compared to the Integra concert of their own. They would answer inquiries with question! with such throwaways as precisely what it says. When, however, d finally took account of the subject, they left you in no doubt ofti credentials. "We have under consideration," said Hjalmar, "a hi; echelon member of the KGB, expert in American studies, who dal with a minor case officer in a country with small to negligi geopolitical impact. Said KGB officer then proceeds to incrimil] himself to said minor case officer by dint of extreme remarks, allusic and unorthodox comparisons of his country and party to a sor husband and wife. He abuses Marxist tenets. All such product we guarantee, at the least, his recall, and imprisonment if we were forward transcript obtained to the KGB and they were to believ< Do you follow me now?" '', "Yes." I "Good. Since he is, however, heading up the KGB cadres Itf his own transcript, if he has one, need not be of concern to him.| has obviously been given sanction. There are elements in the M who do have sanction to speak freely and, on occasion, act frfij Such post-Neanderthals can be seen as the equivalent ofseventeefl century Jesuits. Are you still capable of following me?" | HARLOT'S GHOST 547 "Yes." "Good. We now encounter the specific implausibility of the entire situation. To summarize what I have just said: A major KGB operative who, so far as we can see, has no intention of defecting, nonetheless engages in major conversational indiscretions with the opposition. If there is an entelechy in his process--and there must be entelechy, or else, why commence?--he succeeds in presenting a note which is destroyed almost immediately after it is delivered. That is a dubious business, since the message has no incisive content. It names no person, attacks specifically none of our departments, and in sum, is too general to be disruptive. He has given you a shovel without a handle. What explanation do you offer?" I was about to reply, but he said, "Wait," and turned on a tape recorder placed next to the Encoder-Decoder. "Speak your piece into that." The position of the microphone placed my back to Omaley, and I could feel his malign presence leaning in full psychic drapery upon my shoulders. "Repeat your question," I said. "What explanation do you offer of your meeting?" "I think we are dealing with a man rather than a scenario." "Expatiate." "I'm not as certain as all of you that Masarov has a clear message to pass on. If he is the number-one man, and his wife is indeed in love with Varkhov, who now, it seems, is his assistant, I believe that could prove disorienting to his behavior." "Masarov is ruthless, skillful, and highly capable of discharging ultimate functions. It is difficult to believe that his marital troubles, if bona ride, would prove unsettling. In 1941, at the age of twenty-two, as a young officer in the NKVD, he was present in the Katyn Forest during the Soviet massacre of the Polish officers. He is a man, therefore, who has shot others in the back of the head." Standing behind me, Hjalmar did tap me lightly on the head. ;: Could I place Boris into this new portrait? My stomach was reacting. "Katyn Forest helps to explain his appraisal of Khrushchev," I said. "To employ Masarov's own terminology--kvatch. An attempt to beguile you, misdirect you, have you, in short, follow the wrong shell ' ; his game." "If you know all of it, why do you keep questioning me?" 548 NORMAN MAILER " 'Boris note lacks concerted impact.' Try replying to that on th ED." I turned to my typewriter and sent the following into the En coder-Decoder. ICANN OTDOA NYTHI NGTOR ESOLV ETHIS IMPAS SEIWI LLALT ERMY STIMA TEOFP ROBAB ILITY OFREC OLLEC TIONO FTHEN OTEFR OMSO*! To95% There was a long pause. Omaley sat there shaking his head slowl from side to side like a metronome oscillating alone in a vault. It wa late at night and we were the only two people left in our wing ofth Embassy. final, asked the ED. final, I typed back. This time the pause was short. doyou agree totak ingal iede ECTOR TEST " Omaley looked happy for the first time in three days. INPRI NCIPL EYESP ROVID EDJUR ISDIC TIONA LHEGE MONIE SDONI TOWER RIDET HEPRI NCIPL E "In principle, yes," read Hjalmar over my shoulder, and ver much aloud, "provided jurisdictional hegemonies do not override th principle." He laughed. "What would you suppose are the probabili ties that your Chief of Station will enable you to avoid the flutter box Fifty percent? Forty percent?" There was a high-pitched note so hateful in his voice that I cam very close to hitting him. I was still smarting from the tap on the bac of my head. 21 "preposterous," SAID howard NEXT MORNING, "OUTRAGEOUS. YOl have been doing your best to stay afloat with a KGB heavyweight, atf they want to flutter you because they are not happy with the result! You are absolutely right. This is jurisdictional. I'm not letting a^ paranoid peacocks drive a truck right through the middle of E Station." "I'm ready to take the test if it comes to it," I said. ^ "Glad you said that, but I'm here to protect my people fully much as I am ready to expose them to appropriate risk-taking." flj HARLOT'S GHOST 549 paused. "I want all the tarps tied down on this one, however. Are you really 95-percent sure of your accuracy about this note? That's what ticked them off, you know. You can't get cheeky with their evaluation process. It's like defying the Torah or the Koran." He looked most carefully at me. "Between us, cozy as thieves, what is your real estimate?" "Ninety percent." "Okay. I have to buy that. But why is Masarov's message so anemic? The name of the game is to maim someone's name." "Howard, I put it in my report. I have a theory that no one gives credence to: Just a couple of weeks ago, on February 2, the Russians asked for a summit meeting. I think Masarov wanted me to bear the same message that the Russians are sending in a thousand different ways all over the world. 'Give the summit a try, Khrushchev is okay.' Part of their personal propaganda approach." "All right. Those lines of possibility do stand out in the transcript. But why confuse matters? Boris is an old pro. He knows the cardinal differences between a clandestine note and a political pitch--which, by the way, I don't trust for one minute, those Sovietskys don't want peace ever, just a breathing space to find a new way to screw us." He paused. "But, all right. Boris gives his sermon. We can all cry for the Soviet Union. Countless-countless killed. Yes, and how about the five thousand Polish officers Masarov helped to shoot in the back of the head, and the other ten thousand Polish officers that remain missing? Stalin knew what he was doing. He was killing the cadres of a possible future independent Poland, yeah, those Sovs want peace--I'll believe that when pimps stop taking their cut." He tapped his desk as if it were a podium. "You ought to be in politics, Howard," I said. "I could have been in many things. It kills me to look at the properties you could develop out in Carrasco. We pay a stiff price, Harry, for giving our allegiance to the Company. A CIA man makes a whole financial sacrifice for life. But that's another matter. Let's keep the target in our sights. Explain to me one more time your under, standing of Masarov's note." - "Howard, I think Boris was drunk and full of misery, half ready to defect and knows he won't--unless he does--he's a Russian, after ^ he's half crazy, he loves his wife, he's sinking in guilt, he has a lot on his conscience, he wants to save his soul, and if you add it all up, he must be very self-destructive. He loves Dostoyevsky. I think he 550 NORMAN MAILER wanted to hang himself with that meaningless note, but then : changed his mind and burned it." "So you buy his speech at face value?" "I think I do. Why else write a meaningless note?" "God, you're young." "I guess I am." Actually, I was amazed at the felicity with which I was able to 1 How much of my mother was in me after all. For the first tim( understood her pleasure in little creations. Lies were also a species spiritual currency. "Well, I'm going to bat for you," said Howard. "I appreciate that." "Kid, do you have any'idea how expensive this could prove i yours truly?" "I think a lot of people up and down the line will respect you i taking a tough stand," I said. "Yes. How much won in respect, and how much lost to futi: deep-dyed, unalloyed enmity. Yes. Tell me. Harry, why are y( reluctant to take the test?" "I'll take it, Howard. I'm ready to. I'm innocent. It's just that th get you feeling so goddamn guilty once they put those electrodes ok "Say that again. I remember my indignation when they asked i if I were homosexual. Years ago. I controlled myself long enough say no--when in doubt, observe the proprieties--but, I tell yc fellow, if any man was ever crazy enough to try to put his pecker my mouth, and I don't care if that man is a buck nigger, six feet! inches tall, I would bite his masterpiece off at the root. So, yes, I.c hook on to your feelings. I hate lie detectors too. We'll stop the bastards right where they live. This is, after all, my Station." I caught a whiff of his breath. He had had a few belts, and that w certainly not his habit for the morning. It was possible that he v more agitated than me. ; Howard left soon after to keep a date for lunch with one oft| Uruguayan friends. "I'm going to hold the line," he said. sl As if to show his trust in me, he quit his office while I was sttB it. That was not customary. He usually locked his door. Now,! merely left it ajar so that from her desk just outside, Nancy Watersti could certainly check on whether I was looking into any ofj drawers. Just then, the secure phone in the locked closet began to ri)| "Nancy," I said, "do you hear that?" J HARLOT'S GHOST 551 She did after a moment. "I think," I told her, "we had better answer it. Do you have a key?" She did. She made a point of unlocking the closet door herself. By the time she lifted the receiver, there had been twelve rings. "Yes," she said, "He's here. Who wishes to speak to him?" A pause. "Oh, it's classified. Oh, I'm afraid I don't know the protocol on classified secure phone referrals." Meanwhile, she was stabbing her finger directly into the air between us. "For you," her finger-was saying. "I'll take it," I said. "I don't know," she said, covering the mouthpiece, "who is asking for you." "Never fear. It's more routine than you'd expect." "I don't know," she repeated, "who is asking for you." "Nancy, I could, if necessary, tell you what this is all about, but I won't. You are interfering with a priority." "All right," she said, then added as she handed me the phone, "it's a woman." "Hello," I said into the mouthpiece. "Is that other person standing at your elbow?" said Kittredge in my ear. "More or less." "Banish her." "It'll take some doing." "All the same!" "Nancy," I said, "this is a secure phone. I'd like privacy. That is the designated purpose of these phones." "Only intended for use," said Nancy, "by the Chief of Station." "In his absence, I have entitlement. This involves something co-developed by Howard and me." Nancy receded, but grudgingly, like a tide not yet ready to accept its summons back from high water. She left Howard's door still ajar. I, in turn, did not feel ready to close the closet. Under these exceptional circumstances, Nancy might feel emboldened to listen at the keyhole. So, through two half-opened doors, we managed to keep an eye on each other even as I spoke in the lowest tones. "Are we clear?" asked Kittredge. | "Yes." " "Harry, I love your letters. I know I haven't been responding lately, but I love them. Particularly the last one. It's invaluable." 552 NORMAN MAILER "Are you all right?" "Couldn't be better. It's all turned around now. I'm in spleni shape." Her voice, however, was coming to me out of the long reverbe tions of the secure phone. All I could determine about her state being was that she was speaking quickly. "Yes," she said, "I want your permission on a small but prec fabrication." "You've got it," I said. Given the proportions of the Abomina Omission, why deny anything small and precise? "I'm not ready to inform Hugh we're corresponding, because t would upset him much too much, but I do ask for your permissi to tell him that you were sufficiently concerned by what took pi on your Soviet picnic to place a call to the Stable's secure phone. was out, I'll say, and so you told me all. Then you and he can together tonight on this same lovely red phone." "The first thing wrong with your proposal," I said, "is that y< call right now has already ticked off a nasty response. Unless I < come up with a feasible explanation, I'll never be able to get a secc call out tonight on my lovely red phone, which, incidentally, d lady, is housed in a stifling closet—" "Don't talk so much," she said, "there's an off-putting echo "The second difficulty," I said, "is that I don't believe you. I thi you've told Hugh already." "I have," she said. "About my last letter?" "No, never the letter. About Masarov's crazy note. Your lei arrived yesterday, yes, yesterday, Wednesday, and I made up the st< of your phone call, said it was at 4:00 p.m., and Hugh was sufficier exercised—" "Speak more slowly. Did you say exercised?" "Exercised, not ex-or-cised. Hugh tapped into his source oves Soviet Russia Division, and, yes, the Sourballs are agog. Darling b you must have tampered with the message. Hugh gave me the w0 ing. It's not what you put in the letter to me. They must be tryittj sweat the last gamma globulin—" i "Slower, please." I "Not getting their last bit of fat, are they?" j "No." Pause. "What does Hugh think of what I did?" I "Thinks your natural instinct has a touch of the divine tar."^ HARLOT'S GHOST 553 "Divine tar?" "Harry, that's Hugh's accolade. The stuff God filched back from the Devil. Divine tar." "Well, Kittredge, you've left me impressed with myself." Suddenly, however, all amusement was gone. "Oh, Harry, it just occurred to me. When you speak to Hugh, do get our little story straight. When you phoned me yesterday, you did impart the missing contents to me." "Yes, I'll keep the new chronology in place," I said. "I think you're wonderful. However, that's not what's at issue. How are you and my spouse going to speak if you can't get a secure phone?" "I guess," I said, "that Hugh should ring me at eleven o'clock tonight," and I gave the number of a street phone near my hotel that I sometimes used to call Chevi Fuertes. "Is it virgin?" she asked. "Hell, no." "You must select another pay phone you've never used before. Then phone us at home around eleven tonight on any pay phone. Hugh will pick up. Don't speak to him by name. Just give the color code for the selected phone and hang up. Of course, you had better skew the color code." "By how many digits?" "Choose a number." "Four ..." "I just picked two. Make it three then," Kittredge said. "Three." "Skewed by three." "Shouldn't it be a continuing skew?" "Agreed." "By the way, only six digits on phones here, not seven," I said. "And I will call at eleven o'clock. If I can't make it, then by midnight." "Agreed," she said. "By the way, they want to put me in the nutter box." "Hugh will probably get you out of that." "How?" "Harry, be content." She hung up before I could say goodbye. It was a long afternoon and made more nervous by thoughts of the 554 NORMAN MAILER skew. My recall of the color code for phone numbers was still ab lute--on that I could feel well trained. Zero was white; 1, yellow green; 3, blue; 4, purple; 5, red; 6, orange; 7, brown; 8, gray; 9, bla A full skew turned zero into 9, 1 to 8, 2 to 7, so forth. A skew ofth changed 3 to 9, 4 to 8, 5 to 7, 6 to 6, 7 to 5, so forth. But continu skew was a misery. The first digit in the telephone number ' skewed by three, the next by three more, or six, the third by nine, fourth by three again, the fifth by six again, the sixth by nine o: more. One didn't dare do it in one's mind but reached for pencil; pad. The virtue of the continuing skew, however, was that any< tapping in on the first conversation who happened to be familiar w the color code would still, if he did not know the continuing ski need time to break down the number. By then, presumably, the phone would have been used and never employed again. Hunt returned from lunch and locked his door. I surmised he1 on the phone to Washington. Then he called in Hjalmar Omal who looked expressionless when he came out. It took no great a men to recognize that the demand by SR Division for a lie-detec test was not going to be decided by Hunt, but back in Cockro Alley. The Encoder-Decoder was certainly silent. Porringer went home at five, ditto Gatsby. Nancy Waterston < at six, which was as early as she had left in several weeks. Hjalmar s< followed; I had the idea he and Nancy would meet for dinner tonij Hunt stopped at my desk as he was leaving. "What was that sec phone call about? More illness in the family?" "Yessir." He lost his temper. Mean storm warnings passed across his £ "I don't want you using the red box again." "I won't." He slammed out of the office. I understood his fury. He was going to circle the encampment with our wagons after all. Alone in the office, I felt gainfully employed for the first ri since Sunday afternoon. My regular meeting with Chevi Fuerte^ scheduled for Friday at the safe house, and I had to go over his-I Then my accounts with AV/ALANCHE, sadly screwed up. I had, been out with them in two weeks and they were in a state ofdisa from a couple of bloody street fights. My undone account go concerned not only AV/OCADO and AV/ALANCHE, but t OUCH-1, AV/OUCH-2, and AV/ERAGE, all on my desk to HARLOT'S GHOST 555 brought up to date for Nancy Waterston. As I sat alone in the office, I could even feel AV/ERAGE, my homosexual society journalist, sulking--I had not met him this week for a drink. Yet the thought of all these unaccomplished tasks was curiously soothing as if I could wrap them about myself like a poultice against the raw adrenaline of the last three days. That evening, after choosing the critical phone for my serious conversation with Harlot, I ate alone in a trucker's cafe in the Old City, an uneasy but pleasurable anticipation suffusing itself into my broiled meats and wine as if I were getting ready to meet Sally on a good night for me. I obtained from the waiter a fistful of change, and my pants pocket, on leaving the restaurant, lolled concupiscently against my thigh. By ten-thirty, I had chosen the phone booth for the first call, and at ten of eleven, I called the international operator, gave her the number of the Stable in Georgetown, and deposited my coins. When I heard Harlot's voice, I said, "In front of a yellow wall is a white table with a purple lamp. A man in a brown jacket, yellow pants, and red shoes is standing. There is no chair." "Repeat in brief," said Harlot's voice. "Yellow, white, purple, brown, yellow, red." That would convert to 104715. "Twelve to fifteen minutes," said Harlot and hung up. Ten-47-15 was but the immediate conversion. Calculated for a continuing skew of three, it would come out to 154545. : I had chosen to receive the second telephone call in a nearby bar of reasonable decorum. It had two phones in private booths and ; thereby offered less likelihood that some stranger would be kept I waiting if our conversation should take a while. Indeed, I was in the j; booth five minutes in advance with the phone up to my ear and my J* other hand on the hang-up lever so that the apparatus would be able ^ to ring. In the fourteenth minute, it did. "Well," said Harlot, "back to the old rigamarole. I dislike pay phones quite as much as you do." "This one has been interesting," I said. "Time-consuming." He paused. "Here is the hygiene. Ifnecesf, for purposes of clarity, names are permissible. Should we, for any an, disconnect, hold your place and I will call again. If you don't 556 NORMAN MAILER hear in five minutes, wait until midnight. I'll call then." "Make it eleven-forty," I said. "This place shuts down at mi night. I've asked." "Good fellow. Now, purpose of my call. Verification. There is i doubt in your mind that your drinking pal named the Soviet Rus Division?" "Zero doubt," I said. "Why did you not report it?" "My drinking partner had obviously set me up to do so. I thoue I'd spike his game." "Presumptuous of you." "I can only say that my deepest instinct told me to follow sucl course," I said. "I had a hunch you would want me to follow suet course." "This is amazing," said Harlot. "Do you know, if you had co suited me, I would have told you to do just what you did. The r( object of the Russian's billet-doux was not SR Division, but closer home." "My God," I Said. "Yes. GHOUL. I think there is a furry little creature loose in t Soviet Russia Division. They, in turn, agree that the Agency is suffi ing a penetration, but place the mole in GHOUL. Dear boy, you we instinctively bright. Since you and I, for better or worse, are seen now as umbilically attached, even Alien would have had to give sor credence to SR's claim that the mole is in my cellar, if you had, tt is, reported correctly. I expect Masarov chose you precisely for tt reason. No question, you see---they're after me. The Russkys i appreciate my value more than the Agency. And I appreciate yo new drinking pal even more than the KGB does. He's a hell of fellow. Stay away from him. Competitively speaking, he's nearly competent as myself." "Good Lord," I said. "You wouldn't care to trade wits with me yet, would you?",; "No, sir. Not yet." | "Ho. Good for you. Not yet. Well, by the same logic, stay a^ from your new friend." ,| "If I will be permitted to." | "You will." Pause. "Now, about the lie detector test. You wdj have to take it." | "May I query you further?" ' ' : HARLOT'SGHOST557 "Lord, no. You've got all you need. This call is costing a lot, and I can hardly put it on my expense account." "Well, good-bye, then." "Yes. Remember that I'm pleased with you." He hung up. 22 February 22, 1958 Dearest Harry, There will be no nutter test. If my husband is Byzantine on matters so minor as a dinner party, I assure you that he is Bach's harpsichordist when it comes to tweaking Company strings. So, to pull you out of the clutches of Soviet Russia Division, Hugh chose the Right Gobsloptious Baron of your Western Hemisphere Division, J. C. King. J.C. is not the sort of fellow to welcome Soviet Russia Division's poachers onto his preserve. You are saved. Isn't it a fact that my husband can take care of everyone's career but his wife's? Actually, Hugh and I have been getting along far better than ever, and since my illness he has been sharing a good deal more of his work with me. You don't know what a great step that is for him. Hugh, for all emotional purposes, was scourged in childhood when his mother killed his father. Since he cannot know whether the death was accidental or purposeful, his Alpha and Omega, built, of necessity, on rival propositions, are like two hill kingdoms facing each other across 'an abyss. Conceive, then, how difficult it is for him to trust me with ['any details of his work. (Which, collaterally, is why it would be a disaster for him to know that we are corresponding.) You may ask how I can encourage our letters, then, and I say that Hugh and I belong to a typical bond-and-bombs marriage, which is to say, we are jjhalf-wed. Alpha-Hugh and Alpha-Kitt are as joined as our sacraments, it his Omega cannot allow him to put faith in any woman, and my mega, eager to be free and alone and full of taste for life, is obliged suffer in the iron parameters of our marriage. After my illness we did talk about such matters for the first ne. I was able to point out that some of our sense of mutual >pression might be relieved by allowing me to live with a few of his [ventures, if only in spirit. 558 NORMAN MAILER "They are not adventures," he told me. "They are webs,; quite as sticky as spiderwebs." All the same, Hugh proved to be man enough, and husb< enough to enter my horrors last summer. When he finally came understand, despite all his cautions and incalculable filigree of pa noia, that by closing me out of his professional life he was helping unbalance my mind, he began to reveal to me a bit here and th about the pieces on his playing board. So I may know more n about your situation than you. I wish to give you a warning. ^ KGB, according to Hugh, has taken great strides in these last few y< since Stalin's death. The all-out reign of terror is over, and they h begun to get fearfully skillful again. You might try worrying ab them in serious respectful fashion. Hugh's estimate of the Masa: picnic is as follows: The KGB has succeeded in placing a mole in Soviet Russia Division. The best way to protect said mole is insinuate a notion into the upper reaches of the Agency that the fell is to be found in GHOUL. By Hugh's estimate, the KGB set up picnic in order to hand you a note that would point directly to So^ Russia Division. This was done on the firm premise that Alien Du would then conclude the furry creature was to be located anywh but in SR Div. Since you were the recipient of the note, but co not produce it, inasmuch as Boris had taken it back, a shadow we fall on GHOUL. The antipathy between GHOUL and SR Divis is, after all, no secret. So we would have one more bad mark agai Hugh. A provocation set up by the KGB in Uruguay would h been manipulated to great effect by the mole in SR Div bad Headquarters. The purpose of the picnic, therefore, was not merely to inj GHOUL, but to crimp Hugh's influence in the Agency. That we be a disaster. Hugh is not the man to make such a claim aloud, b< know he feels the KGB are going to be able to penetrate to the v top of the Agency if he is not there to stop them. And it won't t all that many years. ' Harry, I know you hate the idea of backing off from Masatf so I'm going to offer the sum of my modest wisdom. I believe-1 people like you and me go into intelligence work in the first pi because to a much greater degree than we realize, we've been intea tually seduced. And often by nothing more impressive than good| novels and movies. We want, secretly, to act as protagonists in $| ventures. Then we go to work for the Company, and discover B HARLOT'S GHOST 559 whatever we are, we are never protagonists. We pop into the spy novel at chapter six, but rarely find out what was going on in chapter five, let alone earlier times. Just as seldom are we privy to what happens in the rest of the book. I offered this once to Hugh, and he said, "If you must feel sorry for yourself, read a book on the calculus of partial derivatives. That will give you paradigmatic solace, darling." The key to our lives. Harry, is in the drear word patience. We are incompetent without it. As a test of your patience, I now inform you that I have news, but it is not for this letter. To whet your appetite to a slather, I will only say that I have changed my slot in TSS. I am now behind one of the doors that Amie Rosen used to call "Dracula's Lair." Yes, I am being trained for what we might as well term heavier work. I've decided it's time to stop being a nice Radcliffe girl and step onto the dance floor with the barbarian in me who, breathing in great secret, does get somewhat short of wind over Lavinia's stumps. You had better tell me what you are up to, or you simply won't get the next letter. Love, Kittredge 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 bus wife at Christmas, I have seen him at least once a week for the last jfourteen months. The Groogs have developed a great taste for Chevi's output, and they monitor my reports carefully. He is far and away our "nost significant penetration into the Communist Party of Uruguay, 560 NORMAN MAILER and a measure of his importance can be seen in how my war with Sourballs was brought to its formal close. A cable came from the Ri Gobsloptious Baron--where did you ever get that word? (Was it at age of eleven playing jacks on Brattle Street, your pigtails flyi; Gobsloptious--my God!) J. C. King sent the following to Hi COMMENDATION CONFIRMED RE AV/AILABLE'S DEVELOPMENT OF OCADO. Hugh's virtuosity is unparalleled. The Commendation did job. Soviet Russia Division was obliged to recognize that a nutter at this point would poke a very rude finger into the grand eye d C. King. So they withdrew. Hunt, concomitandy, has been cordia hell ever since, and promises to take me along on a visit to an esta\ one of these weekends. To certify this intention, he is teaching me play polo on a practice field out in Carrasco. Do you know, hun perversity being a bottomless pit, I like him more for liking me me In fact, I'm a little taken with myself. King's praise may h been stimulated by Hugh, but the language did enable me to refl back on these fourteen months, and yes, I think I have broughl enough good work on Chevi to, yes, rate the Commendation. You may then inquire why I have written so little about top agent. I suppose I have kept away because the job consists adding up small pieces of information gleaned from Chevi's task the PCU (Partido Comunista de Uruguay), and I did not wish to b you. All the same, in these fourteen months, Chevi has moved the rungs of that organization. His wife may be the leading womar the Uruguayan Party, but Chevi has become her effective equal. may even be ranked, overall, in the top twenty of Uruguayan Co munists, and could one day become titular head of the whole sheba Already, we have access to the thinking of the leadership. Of course, the reason he has risen so quickly is that the Stat made it possible. You may recall that nearly a year ago we had Ch plant a transmitter in the PCU's inner office. It was a five-minute; consisting of no more than the replacement of a porcelain wall ou with our bugged duplicate--an enterprise calling for no more tha screwdriver. Still, it was squeaky work and had to be done ufl combat conditions, that is, in the ten minutes that Chevi's associate ^ down the hall using the John. ' At the time, we debated whether it was worth endanger AV/OCADO, but decided that the prospective take balanced^ HARLOT'SGHOST561 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 1 people were being framed, there was little they could do about it. The I'first accused was held without bail for allegedly dealing in a large [uantity of drugs, and the second was beaten badly enough to be everely demoralized. Replacements had to be found for their jobs. Now, these victims (if it is any consolation to them) happened o be chosen with considerable care. You might even say the opera- ion was designed by Sherman Porringer. I am beginning to see some elation between Oatsie's carefully painted eggshells and the delicacy ie brought to this project. Hunt provided the go-ahead--"See what ou can do about getting Chevi promoted"--but Porringer put it all 'to place. Elegant selection of target was what Sherman was hunting 'r- As he saw it, the key mistake would be to knock out the man 562 NORMAN MAILER directly above Chevi. We had to allow that the PCU would be bri; enough to assume Pedro Peones was doing our muscle work, and their suspicion was bound to fall on the man who was in line to the gap. All right, then, reasoned Porringer, look not only for a gc man to knock out, but get one whose immediate inferior is not v respected, thereby disposing of two obstacles for the price of one. T double disruption, even though located several rungs up the lade would have to benefit Fuertes before too long. On the drug bust, Peones' victim was a PCU leader ofun satiable integrity, but his assistant had a gambling problem, and so ' brought to trial by his Party peers on an accusation of collaborat with Peones. Before it was over, the man resigned his office. Some months later, the second arrest produced compara results. Chevi had advanced four rungs through our efforts. Crucial to Porringer's design was that we maintained inun ulate hygiene in relation to Peones. Pedro was never given a rea; for either arrest, and we even discussed with him attacks on sew other Communist officials including Fuertes. Our assumption was t Peones' police office had already been penetrated by the PCU. 1 best way to obtain Chevi a clean bill from his own Communi therefore, would be to add his name to Peones' list of intended P( victims. Indeed, Chevi was soon warned by the Party hierarchy t Peones was looking to entrap him. Fuertes began to talk, therefore, of the threat to his safety would hate," he told me, "to be beaten up by Peones' duros for be a Communist when, in fact, I am a betrayer of Communists. 1 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 discovel you. Can you tell Peones to stay off this body?" He tapped his ch "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 success." "I "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 police goons?" "I think we can exercise some influence." When he lau HARLOT'S GHOST 563 this, I added, "We are more law-abiding than you would ever i " Jieve. More recently, Chevi has become suspicious of his rapid Party cvancement. A few months ago he said to me, "It is one thing to tray my coworkers, but another to shoot them in the back." Still, Chevi has changed considerably. I think. For one thing, ; is now high enough on the slope to sniff the air of the summit, and at has been tonic to his ambition. For another, his identity has :ered. Kittredge, either his Alpha or Omega has taken over from the her. He has put on more than thirty pounds, and has grown a odigious handlebar mustache which, in company with the plump )uches beneath his eyes, has given him a jolly piratical South Ameri- 11 look. He makes you think of an overweight gaucho riding a inny horse. With Roger Clarkson, he was always on the run for omen; now, he is a glutton for food. AV/OCADO is taking on the ape of his name. The largest disagreement we face these days is here to meet. He hates the safe house. May heaven help me if I rget to stock the icebox! He wants tapas and beer, steak and hour- in, and--speak of peculiarities--raw onions with good Scotch! Plus :sserts. Dukes. Even the sound calls to mind a stream of half-frozen lights sweetening the parched canyon of the throat. He talks while iting. His pieces of intelligence come forth best as food passes in the ^posite direction. He punctuates tidbits of information by sucking in oalljets of air to clean the spaces between his teeth. At times he acts gross as Peones. And he keeps coming back to one theme: that we ieet more often in restaurants. I have increasing difficulty in refusing an. For one thing, the denizens of our high-rise apartment house luster an astonishing number of rich widows and well-to-do retired rts, and they study everyone who comes up to their floor. Each time >e elevator stops, doors open a crack all up and down the hall. Eyes ?ek at one voraciously. These ladies must have expected a comfort- "e old age where they could pull back wooden shutters and set their Scumulated bosoms on a worm-eaten second-story windowsill while »ey observed life in the common street below. Instead, they are now rooned on the twelfth floor and can only keep an eye on who goes ind out of each apartment. Needless to say, Fuertes is also aware of s, and claims it is dangerous. The word could be out among the ghbors that our apartment is kept by El Coloso del Norte, and, 564 NORMAN MAILER besides, he might be recognized. He has lived almost all of his lif Montevideo. I take up the problem with Hunt and he is furious. "Tell son of a bitch to shove his reports in a dead drop. We'll pick then with a cutout." "Howard," I protest gently, "we'll lose a lot if I can't tal him." I pause. "What about moving to a more secluded safe hou; "All safe houses present problems. His real bitch is the biente. That goddamn furniture! I can't get requisitions for de< stuff. Economies in the wrong place. I hate tacky government ir talkies. A posh safe house is a good investment if you can < convince the powers that be." He stopped. "Wigs," said How "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 serv That's the only language agents really respect." Exiting from this interview, it occurs to me that I may i have put in more hours in the field than Howard. In any evel certainly know better than to follow his advice. As a practical ma never treat an agent like Chevi any worse than a younger brother. j most of the time I cater to him. Part of that derives, I know, from incomplete ability, as Hugh would put it, to toughen up. Damn feel for my agent. Chevi does manage to penetrate into all those c places in oneself where you chart the rise and fall of your ego. (Qu We've never talked about Alpha Ego and Omega Ego and their ii relations. That's a whole study, I know.) Chevi, I suspect, is trea me like a younger brother all the while I am trying to treat him one. As one example of how he attempts to keep me in place, he 1< to speak of his two years in New York when he lived with Negress in Harlem. She turned tricks, and was on drugs, and enc< aged him to be her pimp. After a time, he changes his story confesses that he actually took on the job. He tells me hair-raising] about knife fights with other pimps. I don't know how much of; true--I suspect he is exaggerating--indeed, I would guess he av.a knife fights, but I just can't swear to any of this. He does have >aj facial scars. Be assured, however, his tales serve their purpose; i inferior to his sophistication. On the other hand, we are always u or another spiritual contest to see who will end up brother sup< Lately, I've been having my troubles in this direction, t ard's concept of emblazoning marxismo es mierda in six-foot 1 HARLOT'S GHOST 565 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 on-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 ad down the surrounding streets photographing any and all youths pproaching the scene, an absurdly over-weighted venture (speak of spense!) which Hunt did call to a halt once he saw that the results, part from the labors of identification, were technically inadequate. You couldn't discern the faces on the film, let alone identify them.) fcould have told him as much. At any rate, the MRO is now on the offensive. yanqui A era.' is getting painted on many walls, and in good Catholic neigh- rhoods, too. The MRO people seem to have a better sense of ttere to strike than we do. Hunt decides that one of Peones' cops 566 NORMAN MAILER must be secretly aiding the MRO, and wants Chevi to furnish us '< detailed information on the MRO cadres so we can get more a on this. Fuertes refuses the request outright. He is a serious a; doing serious work, he says, and we are asking him to inform on st youths. "My pride is that I betray those who are situated above not beneath me." "Ayudame, companero," I exclaim. "I am not your companero. I am your agent. And insufficie paid." "Do you think you will get a raise by refusing us?" "That is a matter of no significance. You will, in either ( continue to treat me like a puppet, and I will attempt to exert w ever autonomy is left to me." "Why don't we cut through the crap and get to the boi I tell him. "Quintessentially American. Get to the bone." "Will you fulfill our request?" "I betray big people. Stupid, stuffed-shirt bureaucratic Ci munists who have sold out their own people for the power they now exercise at a desk. They are upper filth, and I associate nr with them every day, and become an upper bureaucrat like them.; I do not delude myself. I have betrayed my people and my roots. 1 a viper. Nonetheless, I am not so degraded that I wish to poison d who are smaller than myself. The MRO street boys who come from. La Teja to fight at night are nearer to me than you can evel I grew up in La Teja. I was cadre myself in the MRO during uni sity days. But, now, as an entrenched bureaucrat in the PCU, '. longer have the contacts you need. You see, the MRO does not i the PCU. They view it as too established and too penetrated." Well, at least I have a plausible report to bring back to H I am writing it in my mind as I listen: Profound internecine mis between MRO and PCU. Cannot determine Left police sources wh penetrating MRO. 1 That will use up a month of debate between Station! Groogs. By then. Hunt may be on to something else, or—and^j I have an inspiration. The key to working with Chevi is to^, mutual face. '| "All right," I say, "you will not do it, and I will not th«J i HARLOT'S GHOST 567 au. I accept your version; PCU and MRO lack umbilical connec- on." "Put that in the bank," says Chevi. He bends toward me and 'hispers, "They hate each other." He giggles. "All right," I say, "point made. Now, I want you to help me. ly people are going to need a penetration into the highest places in ie MRO." I point upward with my finger to emphasize that I am in me with the AV/OCADO ethic of punching up, always up. "I want ou to provide me with a list of possible high personnel for penetra- », on. 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 iat I will get together with Gordy Morewood and go over the names ;hevi brings in. Gordy may even know how to make the approach. Jl this will take months, but my rapidly aging young backside will be overed. 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, suppose, to the retired tarts peeking out at him, and, waddling just trifle in obedience to his increasing avoirdupois, made his way to the levators. That son of a bitch. I can assure you, he probably had the ames already. By the next week, he came forth with a short list; of iiree figures in the MRO, and Gordy Morewood was on the stick. a turn, by the following week, Fuertes had asked for a raise. And will robably get it. Yes, Masarov has been only one element in these busy days. Vrite to me. I need it. Love, " Harry 568 NORMAN MAILER 24 March 15, 1 Beloved Man, I am so glad you seem to have accepted my sermon patience, since I cannot tell you any more at this point about Draci Lair. I have taken too many vows of silence concerning the matter am just not able to find the sanction in myself to fill you in. Yet, ] still dying to send you letters. When is devotion ever so alive a wholly private correspondence? Which we have, dear friend. You took your courage delicately in hand and asked me al Alpha-Ego and Omega-Ego. I must have frightened you in the for stepping on my preserves! How decent it is of you to live witii theories when everyone else has decided they are last year's intel tual fashion. Well, it is interesting that you fix on this aspect of my w Do you know that is where I began? The first crude questionnaii laid out to try to locate the separate properties of Alpha and On did focus on their separate egos. I had an insight at the time, you The best approach would be by way of memory tests. It was an interesting concept. Memory, after all, is o sinister. Nothing within ourselves betrays us quite so much as mi ory, and ego, I came to decide, was the overseer of memory. It does matter what we may retain at deeper levels; the ego controls surface and so will distort a recollection if that is necessary to maint ing the ego's view of things. Well, contemplate the hurdles to be faced with two egos, for Alpha, one for Omega. No wonder people could not bear theories. Yet, one characteristic was soon clear to me. Because A] and Omega maintain separate banks of recollection, memory was going to be at all identical in them. Their respective egos have many separate needs, and, given enough need, memory become; more than a servant of the ego—which, I expect, is exactly wh^ memoirs of successful men are usually so awful. J The easiest route, I concluded, to uncovering the distin properties of Alpha and Omega would be, then, to study the rei tive development of their egos. I would offer each subject S material to memorize, then question him on retention. I expect! discover patterns of recollection coupled with the most surprising L 0, T ' S GHOST 569 'recollection, and I did, but I also found that my test did not work ith certain kinds of strong and ruthless people engaged in high-level ork. They consistently broke the pattern. They had what I came to U ultra-ego. They could remember a hideous deed perfectly, and ith no large signs of disturbance. Consider, for example, the indescribably powerful psychic rce that enabled monsters like Hitler and Stalin to live with' the illions of deaths they left in their wake. At a more modest level, but )t vastly more comprehensible, are those responsible for the deaths "thousands. It occurs to me not all too comfortably that Hugh can pire to that category. Taken by intimate measure, Hugh's ultra-ego curiously intoxicating to me, and feeds, I suspect, the impulse now iving this girl to become one of Dracula's ladies—an outrageous :aggeration, and yet not altogether. You see, I have never lost •mpletely my presentiment that the transactions of the spirit under- orld are very much connected to us here. In this vein, a man named oel Field is most relevant to my fears. Do you know that I have days hen I cannot think of Alien Dulles without invoking Noel Field's iage, for he has been incarcerated in Soviet prisons for years and lien put him there back in 1950. Very much with the help of Hugh. Believe it, my dear husband did confide in me about this yloit. Alien, I learned, was made to look a hell of a fool by Noel eld back in Zurich during World War II. For some reason. Alien listed Field enough to add his personal recommendation to the imes of a number of Europeans proposed by Field for important jobs ith the Allied armies. Many of them turned out to be Communists, id Noel, who had more or less known that, never informed Alien .'their political bent. (Like many another Quaker, Noel Field did go ;, I fear, for the most overweening permissiveness in dealing with onununists.) Well, Alien paid for that mistake in a number of ways, id never forgave Noel. But it took Hugh, in company with Frank hsner, to come up with an idea how to pay this enterprising Quaker tck. In 1949, we managed to get the word out to a few high Soviets at Noel Field was CIA. Pure disinformation. Hugh handled that part td, you may be certain, left no American signature on it. I expect Miles, Wisner, and Montague assumed that just as soon as Field took ' next Red Cross or CARE trip over to Warsaw he would be prisoned as a spy and some of his close Communist cronies might ?e to suffer a bit along with him. It went, however, a lot further that. Stalin was hopelessly insane by then. Field was thrown 570 NORMAN MAILER incommunicado into a Warsaw jail cell, and before the affair was just about every Communist with whom he had had dealings, their numerous circles of cohorts, were either shot, tortured, 01 prisoned for confessing to deeds they had not committed. Somi the number of Party victims at a thousand dead; some at five thou When I inquired of Hugh, he shrugged and said, "Stalin ga^ another Katyn Forest massacre." Well, I never knew whether to be proud of my husb skills in this matter or aghast, and, of course, the Agency now enj in levitations that can be seen as amusing or scandalous, dependir one's point of view. Over these last years, we have certainly fina a number of liberal but resolutely anti-Communist organizations set up a programmatic hue and cry to free the American martyr, Field, from Soviet-Polish oppression. Later, Harry, during that awful time when I passed thr the loneliness of living with my own career failure, I began to 1 about all those Polish Communists who were falsely executi traitors. Here was one more example of an evil masterpiece con" ted by us in the name, and, I believe, ultimately, in the cause, ofj but, oh, the anguish of the victims. I began to wonder if we ha< touched some vulnerable edge of the cosmos. I hope this is not sc I do fear it. I think of the frightful way Herr Adolf massacred mi] of people in clean places. They walked into the gas chambers beli< they were going to bathe their dirty, tired bodies. Get ready fo showers, they were told. Then the fatal vents were opened. As going under in my own Easter madness, I used to feel as if I could those victims screaming in rage, and I began to brood on the pos ity that when a death is monstrously unfair, it can send out a ' upon human existence from which we do not necessarily recov full. Not altogether. Some days when the smog in Washingt inhumanly bilious I wonder if we are not breathing some b; message from the beyond. You can see how disturbed I am Which of course leads me to brood on your dealings with your a Chevi Fuertes. What about his life? How responsible are you for" is happening to him? And to the people around him. ? Well, I've gotten into awfully solemn stuff, have I not? I say I am feeling nervous about my upcoming venture, which prove no picnic either. Would you divert me? I know it seems like a small rec but if Howard has indeed gotten around to taking you to one off LOT'S GHOST 571 estancias, would you write to me about that little event? I like the social comedies you get into, and am certain any description of Howard Hunt cavorting with rich Uruguayans will be milk and honey for me--certainly much better than my paranoid fantasies that you are off on brothel expeditions. Really! We all have to lie so much that a straightforward account is balm to the soul. Love to you, dear man, Kittredge 25 I DID NOT KNOW IF I WISHBD TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT LIES. kit- tredge's letter disturbed me, and I began to wonder whether some manifestations of ultra-ego were not often present in more minor inatters. After all, I, who still saw myself as an honest man, had been lying conceitedly to Hugh Montague, Kittredge, Howard Hunt, Chevi Fuertes, Sherman Porringer, and, worst of all, to Sally. For I had made the mistake, all those months ago, of hinting that love along some future tree-lined street was not wholly impossible. Of course, I was hardly in possession of any large funds of ultra-ego, since in her case, I certainly had to pay the price. My lie exploded on the day she law a headless ghost gallop across my face in the instant I learned she was pregnant. After which, it did not matter what I tried to say; I was ^confirming what she knew already. , Our abandoned carnal relations began to rear up in my memory like a burned-out building. Sally made a point, when meeting at mbassy parties, to be conceitedly nasty. Such parties were now the am of what I had for social life in Montevideo. On those even more 'equent nights when I was alone in my hotel room, it would occur ) me all too bitterly that I could not even boast of a bar I frequented igularly. We were not encouraged to--CIA men were always poten- al targets for kidnapping and torture, or, at least, so went the premise. hi those occasions when night work or an Embassy function did not fcve me occupied in the evening, I did not always know what to do pth myself--people who work sixty hours a week usually don't. And JE»w there were no late-night options for chancy play with Sally. 'tore her pregnancy, there had been evenings when Sherman, kept 572 NORMAN MAILER late at the office, would thereby free Sally and me to meet in my ho Now, at parties, she would choose a corner to rake me over wit quick speech or two. "Harry," she would say, "Sherman's becom hellion in bed." "They say marriages go through stages." "What could you know about marriage?" Sally would reply,; with a bright smile for the rest of the room, as if she were recount the saga of a three no-trump, doubled and redoubled, she would a "I bet you are a faggot. Deep down!" Deep down was where she had just wounded me. I had enjo^ her protestations that no other man ever made love to her so w Now I had a momentary struggle to keep the tears out of my e^ Manifest injustice always affected me in such manner. "You've never looked more attractive," I said, and stepped aw I saw her soon after at the next Russian Embassy party. As even came to the garden, we were left again with our natural colleagues, Soviets. In a reprise of our earlier evening, Hunt and Porringer ; Keams and Gatsby and their wives, and Nancy Waterston and mys were still around at the end, and on this occasion Hunt obtaine long-held wish. Poking one stiff finger into Varkhov's chest, he s; "Georgey boy, I hear you are going to charm our socks off and t us on a tour of your Embassy." "Soxoff?" said Georgi, "I do not think I know him." But I < able to pick up the smallest flick of a look he sent in Boris' direcd' followed by a slow opening ofMasarov's eyes to indicate assent, Varkhov now said, "Yes, into the Embassy, of course, why n Everybody," and we trooped in to take a tour of the rooms permitt which were four in number and grand enough to suggest a musei; The gold and white furniture in these reception chambers seen suitable for a lady-in-waiting to Louis XIV or Catherine the Gn That turned out to be not a bad guess, for Varkhov now murmu to Hunt, "Furniture from excess at Hermitage in Leningrad." ) "Boy, I hear that's one splendiferous pile," said Howard, i "Formidable presentation ofczarist-era wealth," replied Varkhj We wandered about in these four medium-grand rooms w their high ceilings, extrusive gilt-painted moldings, solemnly p found old carpets, parquet floors, rococo chairs with faded champaq seats, and all the many portraits of Lenin, Stalin--still prominent| Stalin!--Khrushchev, Bulganin, Peter the Great, and hunting sce( I found myself looking into Lenin's eyes and they kept looking B HARLOT'SGHOST573 at me until I recognized that I was drunk on vodka. More vodka followed. Toast upon toast: To summit meetings! To friendship between nations! To peace on earth! Hoorah, we yelled. After all, there had been so many years of supporting the weight of one another. Tonight, on a river of vodka, we had solved a myriad of problems that would be there again tomorrow, but for tonight, hurrah, we were in the Russian Embassy. Hunt kept teasing Varkhov. "Georgey, these rooms are for the tourists. Give us the real trip. Let's see the dishes in the sink." "Oh, cannot. No dishes in sink. Soviet sink clean." "You just bet your Uncle Ezra on that," said Howard, and Dorothy explained, "It's a figure of speech," since Varkhov was already inquiring, "Uncle Ezra? Is cousin of Uncle Sam?" Hunt finally got his way. We were taken on a tour through a few of the back offices, which had heavy Russian-made office furniture, but were otherwise not all that distinguishable from ours. As we went along, Masarov had a moment when he was standing nearby long enough to send a wink my way, a quick acknowledgment, I could only suppose, of the grief he had bestowed with his picnic note. As if we had been engaged in a practice sufficiently embarrassing on that Sunday afternoon never to make reference to it again, Boris had proffered no more invitations, and Zenia treated me like a stranger once more, which is to say she revealed again her abstract but nearly .overwhelming sexual side, exactly what I had not been favored with in her home where she had been naught but maternal. In public, her sexuality was always saying: "You, a man, cannot begin to comprehend how magical, wondrous, and occult is the labyrinth of my power," but, it was, as I say, an abstract sexuality. You could have ; been approaching a large city at night from so great a distance that you had to be content with a view of the sky glow. '" Now, Masarov gave his wink, and that was all, and we continued to straggle along with glasses in our hands through office rooms, becoming sufficiently separated from one another to leave me, for perhaps thirty seconds, alone in one of their cubicles with Sally Poringer, who was by now just pregnant enough to be looking prettier nan ever, and Sally, with what had to be an accurate sense of the time t would take for the next person to reach our small quarters, pro- ceded to sit down, rock back in her chair, raise her knees and spread ler thighs. She was wearing no panties, and my eyes, in consequence, ^ere able to feast on the lost lands below. Then, with timing as precise 574 NORMAN MAILER as a dancing master, she put down her skirt and lowered her legs as Sherman came along with Dorothy Hunt, but in that suspen interval, while showing herself to me, there had been time enough Sally to whisper, "It's crazy being in these people's rooms," ar could have leaped across to her. The impulse to spring was so pov ful that I was racked for days. I actually telephoned her. In fact, I ie a fool of myself. She had touched some fatal spot between the n: and the groin. For the first time, I was tortured at not being abl have her, and Sally, in turn, kept assuring me through the receive! won't bother to see you. Sherman is surprising merry hell out of todas las noches." "Sally, I just might be eating my heart out," I told her. "Well, keep eating," she said, and laughed merrily. Wh; stomper her rodeo dad must have been. 26 I HAD NEVER HAD SUCH NEED OF SEX BEFORE. one NIGHT, I ENDEI going with—who else could it be?—Sherman Porringer to his favc brothel, an eighty-year-old emporium in the Old City full of char liers and walnut-paneled walls. "Been remiss with the seno: lately," he confided to me, "but that's because old Sally eats nod but chili peppers these days." Some supernatural weeks ensued. Supernatural was the w< Loose at last in Montevideo's brothels, enjoying such forays more t I expected, I found myself fulfilling whole panels ofKittredge's im nation, and often became as fond of the whore I took for a nigh I had ever been of Sally. In the relief of knowing that it was si loved. Sally, poor girl—for I was now as mean in my memory of as she to me—began to be remembered, poor Sally, as a randy n tang who would be honored best for introducing me to my true: natural estate, which was to love women at large. Kittredge rtl once have scorned my descriptions of Alpha and Omega at sex su love, but my old thesis certainly seemed to fit the new life. A sported with prostitutes, and Omega became the keeper of the d» yes, Omega might still be in love with the exceptional Mrs. M tague, but that made me no sexual fascist, merely the wise propt of a home for two strikingly different individuals, the romantic HARLOT'S GHOST 575 who needed no more than a letter to keep love warm, and the sportsman who could hunt as intently as his father for female flesh. Of course, flesh was not hard to find in the brothels of Monte- video. I knew the beginner's joy of unlimited game. There was a month or two when it was just so simple as that. Engraved on my retina, and imprinted on my loins, was the emblem of Sally's bare ass on a Soviet chair, and this conjunction of the superpowers was there to offer its libidinous funds. Porringer was my guide for the first night, and gave a running commentary on all the girls, "That squatty dark one is better than she looks, has a twat will like to jerk you off, it's got a grip," at which the short squatty one gave me a broad grin showing two gold teeth, and of another, "Has the prettiest pussy you will ever see but she only takes it up the dirt track"--a lithe, slim, and sullen girl whose buttocks were her most salient feature--"although, goddamnit," said Porringer, "why not?"--and poked me with his elbow as a tall beauty with the falsest color of purple-red hair came down the stairs. "This one's got nothing to offer but her mouth, can't touch her down below, she's diseased, but the mouth is worth the rest, and penicillin will keep you blessed," whereupon he began to guffaw and slugged his beer. He was a ranch hand in a brothel. His family had been out there in Oklahoma before the 1889 land-grab--as I was to learn on this night in the Arboleda de Mujeres, what a Female Grove!--and I even had an insight into Sally and Oatsie's roots, generation unto generation living on those long, mean plains where the hound of austerity rode in with the dust (or so I conceived it, knowing nothing of Oklahoma but the little I knew), yet, as I saw it, simple human greed had been so deprived of satisfaction out in those lands that it ', Worked itself all the way back to the last human nerve, the one that ds to our soul. Greed, after generations of being denied, had ipted into the hog, Porringer, and the sow, Sally, yes, I was not kind aut the wounds I had taken, but my sentiments would hardly bother tierman. He saw himself, good yeoman legionnaire of the American npire, as owning the females in the countries through which he aveled, good finger-licking food for his omnivorous cock. Or was iF^ll regional differences to the side, close to describing myself as well? Bven as I was buying my hour from one girl that night, and a )nd woman for a second hour, and feeling freer with these stran- ' than in all my twenty-five years of Park Avenue, Knickerbocker Matty Saints, punch bowl at Mory's, et cetera, et cetera, 576 NORMAN MAILER maybe the taproot where my greed was stored was pouring out a into the American Century, and I too was out there copulating fo flag. Greed having transmuted itself into a more noble emotion, a glow of inner power, as if I were finally attached to the wheeling scheme of things. During this spell of nightlife, I went to mansions that must have been as grand as the Russian Embassy, and to sheds on the of shack towns where the streets were unpaved and the loose tin offered percussive effects when the wind blew. I visited parlors bedrooms in high-rise apartment houses out near Pocitos Beach once, coming home from Hunt's villa in Carrasco, I found a ' appointed brothel in the shadow of the famous Carrasco Casinc Hotel where the girls looked as lovely to me as Hollywood sta even if the one I chose (because her nipples pointed most astonish; toward the stars) offered but an austere Spanish sense of recipr and approached no earthquake force with me. Another night in a cellar whorehouse on a medium-poor s where the oak tables were bumpy with the welts of initials ca across the grain of other initials, I ended up with a short, fat, n girl whose black eyes gleamed with expert mischief. She was delig she had caught herself an American and proceeded to explore wit] tongue every crevice I had counted as my own and a few I die even know were there, until even Omega was stirred out o Kittredge-loving quarters, and I felt as if I were coming all over t and knew afterward as I held that merry little fatso in my arms men could end up married to girls with but a single skill. I loved the decor of the brothels. They could be clean or ( lavish or bare, bars or sitting rooms, but the lights were invariably and the jukeboxes, which were almost always an extravagan; colored bulbs and cascades of neon tubing, looked like little fro towns unto themselves. You could gamble with your money, heart, your ego, and your health. In the months that followed, I w come down with gonorrhea twice and syphilis once, but MontCT was not Berlin, and you could trust any doctor on any street to' you without a report. In Berlin every adventure had seemed t6S. a likely cost, payment virtually in advance—here, in a part d world where silt-filled tides lapped quietly on the shore, infectioSJ the concomitant of a good tour. I Needless to say, this exploration night after night was only'l ble because a part of me was now more in love with Kittredgel HARLOT'S GHOST 577 'er. Since I no longer deceived her with one hard-as-clay little merican cheerleader, but rather surrounded her with a full chorus of ;r own sex--even if they were, for the most part, poor and South rnerican--I felt no shame. On the contrary, I was full of interest, for was proceeding on the assumption that women who looked alike ould make love in similar fashion--and it may be as good a hypothe- ; as any other. I could even tell myself that this quickly acquired loss 'innocence would be excellent for my future work in the Agency. nowledge of people was part of the power, after all, to do one's job. If I did have an initial period on going into brothels alone with y courage racing as fast as my heart, full of fear that I, as a CIA ncer, was open to kidnapping, ambush, torture, or entrapment, such ixiety was soon replaced by the recognition that vice and violence ere commercially antipathetic--nowhere in the world was a bad unk more unpopular than in a Montevidean brothel. If I had also amed the low trick of tipping the bouncer, that merely certified I as knowledgeable and American. The true peril, as I soon discoved, was not peril but loneliness, corrosive visits to loneliness. Soon lough, it began to arrive in the middle of a drunken spree. There was ie such night in a cheap whorehouse called El Cielo de Husar near ie docks, and this Hussar's Heaven was a dilapidated and very old ause of the early nineteenth century which must once have kept arses in the living room, and so reminded me of the Stable in eorgetown. Here, however, were gaps in the molding and rat portals i the walls; the swaybacked beds had dirty blankets at the foot; the hores were morose. If I was there on that night, it was because my iood was no better, and I made love to my girl in a surprisingly irtunctory performance considering how seriously I took the act by nt of paying for it (penurious were the Hubbard habits concerning ie hard and the crisp). Usually I tried to choose women who brought modicum of art or ceremony to this possible desecration of eternal craments--you could take the boy out of the chapel, I said to myself, at you could not take St. Matthew's out of the boy, I was as alone t all that, drink notwithstanding. On the same afternoon, I had Kually been curdled enough in my judgment to wonder whether "y Porringer and I could, all hazards recognized, be able to live as n, woman, and new child, no, that was smashed on the thought of r child's head dented by the last phallic acts of the previous husband, inger, just so morbid had my thoughts become, and were still 1 me that night in the Hussar's Heaven, while banging away on a 578 NORMAN MAILER piece of flesh. I decided that depravity had you in its grip when fl( felt equal to rubber in your mitts. Trying to force the semi-demor ized troops of my loins up one more drunken hill, I could hear fix the bedrooms on either side of me the long professional wail of t\ whores as they came in unison with their clients, or pretended their voices crying out into the chill of the South American night the whore on my left screaming, "Hijo, hijo, hijo," while the one my right kept grunting, "Ya, ya, ya." It was then I knew how it 1 to be the loneliest man in the world. Laboring up the bare knoll pleasure reserved for me on this night, I dressed quickly, and w< downstairs for a drink at the bar, which I did not finish—I v obviously coming to the end of my youth when drinks I had paid 1 would not be finished—and left El Cielo de Husar to walk to t garage where I had taken the precaution to leave my car. On the way, I met Chevi Fuertes. It was not a coincidence, I a miracle. So I felt. The sight of his wide and smiling mustache v a providential omen. I was no longer at the end of the first long str< of my life, but merely in the middle of a bad evening which hadji taken an upward turn. We went off to the next bar to have a dri together and when that, after fifteen minutes, activated the dregs my professionalism enough to sober me at the thought of being se together in public, we decided to get into my car and take a drive ( to Pocitos Beach to visit a dear friend of his. Miss Libertad La Lengi who would not be working tonight, Thursday night, he said. I thi I should have paid more attention to the way he said Miss Libertad Lengua. 27 April 10, 1958—Late at nij Dearest Kittredge, l It's weeks since I sent a letter, but I feel in no rush to ap