'I'm in politics now,' Hart said. 'Did you know that?'
'I thought perhaps you were playing the horses.'
'You always had a great sense of humour.' He smiled for just a fraction of a second. 'I'm not so touchy as I used to be in the old days,' he said. He fingered his new moustache self-consciously. I noticed the manicured fingernails. He'd come a long way from that nervous, opinionated State Department clerk that I remembered from our first meeting.
The drinks came. I put extra Tabasco into my Bloody Mary and then offered the same to Gerry. He shook his head. 'Plain tomato juice doesn't need flavouring,' he said primly. 'And I'm certainly surprised you need it with all that vodka.'
'My analyst says it's a subconscious desire to wash my mouth out with disinfectant.'
Hart nodded. 'Well, you have a lot of politician in you,' he said.
'You mean I approach every problem with an open mouth,' I said. I drank quite a lot of my Bloody Mary. 'Yes, well, if I decide to run, I'll come and talk to you.'
I knew it would be foolish to upset Hart before I knew what was in his mind. His file said he was a 31-year- old lawyer from Connecticut. I regarded him as one of the first of that growing army of young men who had used a few years' service in the C.I.A. as a stepping-stone to other ambitions, as at one tune the British middle classes had used the Brigade of Guards.
Hart was short and saturnine, a handsome man with curly hair and the sort of dark circles under deep-set eyes that made you think he was sleepy. But Gerry Hart was a tough kid who didn't smoke and didn't drink, and if he was sleepy it was only because he stayed up late at night rewriting the inaugural address he'd deliver to Congress on the day he became President.
Hart sipped a little of his tomato juice, and wiped his mouth carefully before speaking. 'I handle more top- secret material now than I did when I was working for the company — would you believe that?'
'Yes,' I said. Gerry Hart liked to refer to the C.I.A. as 'the company' to emphasize that he had been on the inside. His file didn't mention service in the C.I.A. but that didn't mean a thing.
'Did you ever hear of the 1924 Society?' he asked me.
'I'd rather hear about it from you,' I said.
'Right,' said Hart.
The waitress came to the table with the menus. 'Don't go away,' he told her. He ran his eye quickly down the list. 'Club sandwich,' mixed salad with French dressing, regular coffee, and I'll take the check. O.K?'
'Yes, sir,' said the waitress.
'The same,' I said. That made Gerry Hart feel very secure, and I wanted him to feel very secure.
The waitress closed her pad and took the menus from us. She came back with our order almost immediately. Hart smiled at her.
'We have penetrated the 1924 Society. That's why we can do it,' Gerry Hart explained when she had gone.
'What's inside a club sandwich?' I said. 'Do what?'
'Bring Mrs Bekuv here.'
'Is it like a triple-deck sandwich?'
'Bring Mrs Bekuv out of the U.S.S.R., officially or unofficially.'
'How?'
'What do you care how?'
I took the top off my sandwich and examined the filling. 'We don't have club sandwiches in England,' I explained.
'Even Greenwood hasn't been told that this is a C.I.A. operation,' Hart said. 'Sure, we'll try to get Bekuv's wife by asking the Russians through the Senate Scientific Development sub-committee but if they won't play, we'll make it work some other way.'
'Wait a minute,' I said. 'What is this C.I.A. operation you're talking about?'
'The 1924 Society.'
'I don't even know what the 1924 Society is,' I said truthfully.
Hart smiled. 'In 1924 Mars came very close to Earth. Scientists said maybe Mars would try to communicate with Earth. It caused no end of a ruckus in the scientific press, and then the newspapers joined in the speculation. Even the U.S. Army and Navy ordered all their radio stations to reduce signals traffic and listen for extra-terrestrial messages. The 1924 Society was formed that year. Twelve eminent scientists decided to pool information about communications from outer space, and plan ways of sending messages back.'
'And it's still going strong, is it?'
'Now there are twenty-seven members — only three of them founder members — but a lot of people take it seriously. In 1965, when three Russian astronomers picked up radio waves on a hundred-day cycle from quasar C.T.A. - I02, the 1924 Society were considering the report even before the Soviet Academy got the news, and before the Kremlin ordered them to retract.'
'And the C.I.A. has penetrated the 1924 Society?'
'How do you think we got the first indication that Bekuv was ready to defect?'
I polished my spectacles — people tell me I do that when I'm nervous — and gave the lenses undue care and attention. I needed a little time to look at Gerry Hart and decide that a man I'd always thought of as blowing the tuba was writing the orchestrations.
Gerry Hart said, 'This is a big operation, make no mistake. Bekuv is only a tiny part of it but we'll get Mrs Bekuv here if that's what you want.'
'But?'
He stabbed a fork into his sandwich and cut a small triangle of it ready to eat. 'But you'll have to prevent Mann from putting his stubby peasant fingers into the 1924 Society. His abrasive personality would really have them all running for dear life, just at a time when we've got it ticking along nicely.' He changed the fork over to his other hand and fed himself some sandwich.
I picked my sandwich up in my fist, and didn't reply until I had a big mouthful to talk round.
'You've been frank with me, Gerry,' I said, 'and I'll be frank with you. You think we are worrying ourselves sick about getting Mrs Bekuv here? I'll tell you, we don't give a damn where she is. Sure we have made the right sort of noises and let Bekuv think we are pushing hard on his behalf, but we prefer things the way they are.'
'You can't be serious,' said Hart.
'Never been more serious in my life, old pal.'
'I wish someone had told us this before,' he said irritably. 'We have spent a lot of money on this one already.'
'On what?'
'We've paid some money to a couple of Russian airline people… we have organized travel papers for Mrs Bekuv. There was talk of getting her here by Saturday week.'
'This is a good sandwich, Gerry. They call this a club sandwich, do they? I must remember that.'
'Is your pal Major Mickey Mouse really planning to tear the 1924 Society apart?'
'You know what he's like,' I said.
Gerry Hart forked through his salad to find the last pieces of cucumber. He dipped them into the salt and ate them before pushing the rest of the salad away. He wiped his mouth on his napkin. 'No one would believe that I was trying to help you guys,' he said. 'No one would believe that I was trying to solve one of your biggest headaches and trying to stop you giving me one.'
'Are you serious about being able to get Mrs Bekuv here… getting her here by next week, I mean?'
Hart brightened a little. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and got out a tiny chamois purse. He opened it with his fingertips and dropped the contents into the open palm I offered him. There were two gold rings. One of them was old, and burnished to a condition where the ornamentation was almost worn away. The newer one was simpler in style and inside, where there was an inscription in Russian, I could see that the gold was only a thin plating.
Hart said, 'Bekuv's wife's rings: the plated one is their wedding band — with suitably euphoric Komsomol slogan — and the other one is Bekuv's mother's ring, inherited when she died.' He reached out and I returned the rings to him. 'Good enough for you?' he asked.
