The Story of Henri Tod Read Free Page A

addressing Blackford.
    â€œNo sir.”
    â€œWell, we have just now got on to him. He has been serving as a double agent for eight years that we know of. And he has been attached to our military intelligence in Berlin. Moreover, we have established, belatedly, that Blake has been in possession of information that emanated from your embassy in Moscow. The chap declines to tell us how he got that intelligence. We have not given up on the effort to get from him that, er, information—”
    â€œYou are appealing to his patriotism?”
    â€œWe are appealing to his—how would my headmaster have put it? —joie de vivre . Meanwhile,” his mien was now totally grave, “we have got a most frightful problem. The crisis of Berlin is coming, there is no final agreement among the Allies about what is to be done, the PM has conferred with President Kennedy, President Kennedy has conferred with De Gaulle, I would not be surprised if President Kennedy and Mr. Khrushchev will be meeting, and the Soviet ultimatum is reiterated with increasing distinctness. You may as well be advised, Oakes, that I have been in charge of Her Majesty’s intelligence in Berlin for over eight years.”
    â€œYou were Blake’s boss?”
    â€œI was Blake’s boss. And if I were otherwise situated, I would devote my energies to forming the Committee to Restore Hanging for Traitors. But let me review the situation.”
    Sir Basil might have been delivering a lecture on diplomatic history to a class at Oxford, Blackford thought. Although in the art of exposition, Rufus was no slouch. But he didn’t have the rhetorical flair. With gusto, Sir Basil was back at Yalta, and then Potsdam, and then describing the de facto arrangements reached between General Lucius Clay, representing the Allies in Berlin, and Marshal Zhukov, representing Stalin.
    â€œLet me attempt first a juridical summary, after which I shall follow with a geopolitical summary. But this I do on the understanding that the latter issues from my own understanding—which does not necessarily reflect what I certainly hope will be a crystallizing consensus among the leaders of our respective countries.
    â€œUnder formal agreements, signed by all relevant parties—our own countries, plus France—the City of Berlin, an enclave within East Germany, is jointly governed by representatives of the four occupying powers. No unilateral step taken by any occupying power suffices to abrogate that agreement.
    â€œSecond, all occupying powers enjoy the right of access to the City of Berlin. The whole world is aware that that right of access Stalin attempted to block in 1948. And the whole world knows that President Truman’s airlift prevailed, and that the right of access to all of Berlin, was in effect revalidated, however grudgingly.
    â€œThird, although not by written agreement but by evolution, early during the occupation civil authority over what is now called East Berlin was ceded to the Soviet Union, while authority over what is now called West Berlin was ceded to the Western powers. Now implicit in that modus operandi was the acknowledgment of the right of internal access. Those who live in East Berlin are free to go into West Berlin, and those who live in West Berlin have been free to go into East Berlin. And, of course, the crisis that’s been generated is the result of the overwhelming traffic of East Germans—not merely East Berliners—into West Berlin. And from West Berlin, to West Germany. That drain is a social, economic, and psychological drain the Kremlin is certainly not willing, and probably not able, to continue to endure.”
    â€œAnd their strategem,” Rufus volunteered, “is wonderfully elegant. The Soviet Union will proceed to consummate a peace treaty with East Germany, which thereupon inherits sovereignty over all of Berlin. Thereafter, Mr. Ulbricht, or more correct, Mr. Khrushchev’s Mr.