‘There was nothing for me to do, except see him when I needed to, or I would send someone instead of me, it was actually embarrassing to have so much reliable intelligence, we spent more time concealing what we knew than ferreting for things we would have needed to know if our man hadn’t been in position. I tried to protect him, but he laid golden eggs, they made me work him as hard as I could, that’s where it all went catastrophically wrong, Eisler was blown and when he went he also brought down Haupt who was the only German to have a clear vision of what Germany would turn into, we’d been protecting Haupt for a very long time, he was a genuine social democrat, an enemy, but of the highest calibre.
‘When he was almost unseated by the right in the Bundestag, I bought two Christian-Democrat MPs, closed ballot, Haupt was expecting to lose, he was so surprised that he remained in his seat while the Bundestag rose, well at least his friends did, to give him a standing ovation, he was out for the count. That time I saved his skin.
‘But only to bring him down later with a bump because we had a mole who was too good! That’s why I always went carefully with you, young gentleman of France, I’ve kept you all to myself, I don’t even tell the mirror in my bathroom about you, no other contact except me, and that only the strict minimum. From a technical point of view, the downfall of Willi Haupt didn’t make life at all difficult, we had other sources, but something had been lost, which included our appetite for what we were doing.’
Haupt, Chagrin, the jokers, the feeling of disgust, it hardly made for the merriest evening you’ve spent with Lilstein. The next morning, he had disappeared.
You stayed on for a few days at Waltenberg, an informal session of the Forum, barely thirty participants, on the question of interest rates in Europe, dry-as-dust. You are the only French person there. You followed the debate but did not speak.
That evening, in the lounge, there was a freer and more political discussion, about rumours of the tramp of Soviet jackboots in the East, in Afghanistan, you thought about what you’d said to Lilstein, you weren’t taken in, you can see through his game, even his melancholy, he is never stronger than when his morale is low, he loves playing the part, he relaxes into it, he seems to be asking for help, but you know he could give an order and have you liquidated, no, you can’t convince yourself that the thing is possible, you run through your multiple Lilsteins, there’s the first, the one you’ve only just left, who eats his Linzer like a little boy, his spirits are low, he is against the warmongers, he agreed to go to bed with the butchers to change the world but the world hasn’t changed, so he does all he can to make it change, you are friends, and the world does change, only not the way he wanted, he decides to retire and drops everything, he shows you the trumps in his side’s hand to prevent the worst from happening, just like Cuba, because he hates the mangy dogs of war, as he calls them, he passes you everything so that the Americans will react swiftly, ruthlessly, and force the Soviets to back down, thus no invasion of Afghanistan.
But you’re not entirely sure of this first Lilstein, there is undeniably a second, without scruples, we’re not going to allow the said Asian country to turn the clock back, revive the droit du seigneur and feudal dues, progress has been made and must be preserved, there are the frontiers of socialism to defend, an interventionist Lilstein who uses both his own doubts and you to persuade the West that there are very high-placed Soviets who are opposed to this intervention, intelligent men in other words, and the West must help these intelligent communists by being flexible, and making the most of this flexibility the Soviets, the warmongering crowd, will march into Afghanistan and present the West with a fait accompli, yet maybe Lilstein is genuinely opposed to this intervention, in which case he would use the flexibility of the West to tell Moscow that American flexibility is in all likelihood a trap set by the Americans.
The Americans demonstrate by their flexibility that they would like the Soviets in turn to land themselves in a pit of shit in Afghanistan, so going into Afghanistan would mean walking into an imperialist trap, so they shouldn’t go in.
But if Lilstein does favour intervening, he can also say that by making the Soviets believe that intervention is an imperialist trap, the Americans want the Soviets to back off the idea of intervening and thus demonstrate a weakness which would be prejudicial to the interest of socialism across the globe. That’s Lilstein number four. You tell yourself that there must be others.
And then you’d got tired of pondering all this by yourself, you banished Lilstein from your thoughts that evening, in the lounge of the Waldhaus, so that you could address a few Forum colleagues and two or three good-looking women, and you gave your hypotheses another airing.
You delivered under several headings, in a thorough-going Kriegspiel, a sheaf of hypotheses, like an exquisite papyrus flower, from one end of a sofa, to ten or so people, sometimes a brief pause to savour the smoke of your Monte-Cristo, and the non-smokers smile and are happy to breathe in what is rare and costly, you are elated, you have never spoken as freely, you don’t give a shit about Chagrin, Lilstein, his retirement, everything, you know that in Paris your slanging-match with Chagrin has thrown everything into the mixing-bowl, she will cut off your access to the President.
And when you got back, reception party at Orly, three tight-lipped men, a Citroën, the SM which you don’t like, the suspension makes you feel car-sick, they drove you directly to the Élysée, taking you in through the garden.
The chief’s floor, the chiefs antechamber, he doesn’t like being called ‘chief, everyone is tense, you feel you are no longer the man everyone likes because he puts the chief in a good mood, you can’t catch anybody’s eye, one of the men who is escorting you knocks on a door, stands back to let you in, closes it behind you and then the President comes on to you like a jealous lover:
‘My dear fellow, they tell me that at Waltenberg you gave a dazzling analysis of Soviet policy, you see I already know all about it, you mustn’t be so modest, it wasn’t you in journalistic mode, I was told that you made four points, the logic was incisive, but they weren’t able to give me details, but really, when you hand out the brilliant analyses you could at least let me be the first to hear them, just the two of us, instead of shooting your mouth off in the lounge of a Swiss hotel, I’m jealous, I said just us two, you must know I never repeat any of our conversations. Way back, during the Cuba crisis, you gave first-rate advice, but let’s not beat about the bush: if the Afghanistan situation were to develop, what would you advise?’
You tell your jealous chief you have no idea, he insists, eventually you say that now is the time to display those qualities of diplomacy which have been the rule since Choiseul and Talleyrand: neither prudence nor impulsiveness, allow time to look before you leap. If the Russians invade Afghanistan and win, it would still be just a dump, full of peasants, and if they lose, it will be a terrific result for the West.
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ says the President, ‘words of wisdom. Over Cuba you took a harder line, that was more like you.’