crows of strasbourg

1.

Rumors of the crow's arrival had been circulating in the Consulate for months, flowing from the top floor office, carried downstairs by the counselors, and intercepted by the radio operators, dormant in their cramped, cluttered cells After a few days, it finally spread like dysentery in the restaurant.The Consul threw a fit over it, but if there's one thing neither the Consul nor God can do, it's to retract the gossip.

There used to be three employees in the radio branch of the US Consulate in Strasbourg, one seemed as old as radio itself, the other didn't seem to have finished tenth grade, and in the middle was Leon Christen, which was an embarrassment name, he thought so himself.The French suspected he was either German or the son of a milkman in the eastern Belgian countryside.Germans, on hearing his Christian name, tended to assume he could speak Alsatian.The name had actually been given to him by his priestly uncle, in honor of a grandfather whom Leon had never met.His colleagues adopted an inappropriate compromise method and called him Chris. Over time, Leon Christen was completely forgotten, and only Chris at the dispatch office remained.

The older codebreaker left the week before Christmas, and the leaving party was held in the dining room, with no music, but a pot of sticky kale soup and lightly burnt pralines, like a great-grandmother's funeral joy.The Consul himself was not present, and the Cultural Counselor left early, claiming that he had urgent business, which Leon suspected was closely related to the Counselor's crotch; They applauded loudly and sent him to the train bound for the train station, each heaving a sigh of relief.

From then on, only Leon and the boy with the acne scar remained at the dispatch station.

"So," asked the boy, his name was Tom, and his parents must have wanted him to disappear into the crowd, "who is the crow?"

Leon didn't know it, but he had recently become the oldest employee in the radio department, and a new sense of authority put him under pressure to answer, "We don't talk about him publicly," he said, pulling out a sharpened Pencil, pretending to be transcribing an early morning cable from Washington, "You know what the Consul said yesterday."

"Have you seen him?"

"No, I haven't. Why don't you sit down and do something useful, Thomas?"

The boy opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the door opened and David poked his head in and snapped his fingers at Leon, "The consul wants to see you."

Leon stood up, leaving the confused boy in the telegraph room.Consuls generally had nothing to do with them, and would rather do their monthly reports to Washington than let the radio operators at the bottom of the food chain get their hands on the sacred report, even if it contained only a booze bill.David walked behind him like a collie leading a sheep.All new hires will quickly discover that Vice-Consul David Parker is the de facto person in charge here, having served two terms as Consul.There are rumors that he once worked undercover in East Berlin, but rumors, like everything else in the consulate, are uncertain and cannot be commented on.

The Consul, who was on the phone, held up a finger to indicate that he needed time.Leon stood by the door, listening to the consul haggling with the man on the other end of the line.There were two desks in the office, and David sat down behind the one against the wall, put on his glasses, and turned on the lamp.

"Chris, is it?" The Consul finally hung up.

"Leon, sir, Leon Christen."

"Of course. How long have you been working here, Leon?"

"It's been three years since Christmas."

"Can you speak Russian?"

"Yes, but my French and German are better."

"Very good, very good," the consul nodded, although the sender didn't understand what was good, "We need to give you a task."

"gentlemen?"

"David will give you a car." The Consul took out a handkerchief, wiped his forehead, glanced at the Vice-Consul, and got permission from the Vice-Consul before continuing, "Yes, a car, a Citroen, I think, A car capable of long-distance travel."

"why?"

"Apparently, Scott, the intended driver, has acute gastroenteritis—"

"The consul means," said David mildly, taking the floor like a glass from a wobbly toddler, "that you're going to Belgrade."

"No offense, sir, but why?"

The vice-consul took off his glasses, wiped them carefully, and put them next to the phone, "Because you'll take 'The Raven' back, Mr. Christen."

-

Leon Christen did not jump into the murky fishpond of diplomacy just to become a radio operator.

His mother, God bless her Methodist soul, would have liked Leon to be a veterinarian so that when the cows on the ranch were due to give birth, he wouldn't have to go twenty kilometers to fetch that tobacco-chewing Mexican. coming.When Leon returned from Washington for the last time announcing his imminent deployment to Europe, Mrs. Christen spat into the kitchen waste bin and continued stirring the pot of potato puree.

Leon arrived in Paris on January 1972, 1. He was on a C23 transport plane and stuffed in the cabin with forty or fifty wooden boxes. There was no label on the wooden box. Maybe it was an aircraft component, maybe it was freeze-dried. Soviet spies.No one picked him up at the airport, and Leon waited an hour at the airport with a small suitcase borrowed from his uncle, feeling like a war orphan.The consulate was clearly counting on the fledgling diplomat to conquer SNCF's bewildering sprawl on his own.

Miraculously, he did.

David Parker brought the young man from Connecticut to Liam, the codebreaker, like throwing a retrieved puppy to an old gray-nosed dog.Teach him how the thing works, the vice-consul said, and let him do other things if necessary. "This thing" means a radio transmitter. "Doing something else" means cleaning the pantry and regularly feeding the few stray cats that prowl the enclosure.The fattest tabby tom was named Kissinger, and the rest had no names.

"They asked Washington for a hand," explained the old coder, throwing a tattered manual in front of him, and three or four pencils with bitten ends, "and Washington sent you .still have to make the most of it, you understand?"

This was only temporary, Leon told himself, and in a few months the interesting parts of a diplomat's life would emerge.And yet three years later, he was still sending and receiving telegrams in that cupboard, and the funniest part of his diplomatic career was nothing more than Liam swallowing a fly during his office nap.

This is the moment you've been waiting for, he thought, starting the car, the engine humming pleasantly, a secret mission, to pick up a real spy in Yugoslavia.The vice-consul knocked on the glass, and Leon rolled down the window.

"Don't do anything unnecessary," the collie warned him, "and don't say anything unnecessary."

"Yes, sir, I mean, I won't, sir."

"Unless it's an emergency, don't use your diplomatic passport, don't mention the consulate, don't even dream about it. Remember the name on the new passport, everything is on your own until Belgrade, understand, Mr. Christen ?”

"Yes."

"Good luck."

He closed the window, the guard opened the gate, and the drizzle fell on the Avenue des Alsaces, most likely to turn into light snow in the middle of the night.Crossing Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, looking for a grain of sand in a communist clam shell, he thought, how hard can it be to get the water droplets on the windshield wiped off by the wipers?

-

When David Parker came back upstairs, his superior was at the window watching the Citroen drive out of the consulate.

"Do you think it's a good idea?"

"We don't have any other choice, sir," the vice-consul turned on his desk lamp again, picked up the glasses that had been placed next to the phone, and put them on, "Scott's identity has been revealed, Pine is in East Berlin, We can't risk moving him."

"But, a radio operator."

"Beyond the Soviets' expectations, don't you think so?"

"I hope so," said the Consul, taking out his handkerchief and mopping his brow, as the car was out of sight and the Ill flowed like a gray ribbon under rows of dead trees, "otherwise the poor boy was out Not more than two hours."

"He wasn't on anyone's radar, we made him a reporter, and if things went wrong, we were able to put the blame on the overzealous newspapers again."

The consul crumpled up his handkerchief, put it in his pocket, and turned around, "If the ambassador asks—"

"If Paris asks," said David Parker, "we answer, 'We've got our best hands,' sir."