How to Organize an Embassy

1

AFTER Ambassador Bullitt’s initial visit to Moscow in November, 1933, he returned to Washington leaving George Kennan, then a Third Secretary in the Foreign Service, to arrange quarters for the new Embassy which was to open in February.

I went on with my Russian, working ten to twelve hours a day with my teacher, and at last felt qualified to call on Mr. Kennan, who was staying at the National Hotel. In the hall outside his room was a long line of people. I pushed my way through, Moscow-streetcar fashion, and went into Kennan’s room. He was sitting at a desk surrounded by papers, maps, blueprints, and God-knows-what-all else. He looked rather tired and harassed and I told him so.

Kennan smiled wearily. “Yes, there’s plenty to do. I have to check the blueprints of the new Embassy buildings; I have to draft the leases and get Washington’s permission to sign them. Those people outside are all applicants for jobs and have to be interviewed. I have to answer inquiries every day. After fifteen years without an Embassy there is bound to be a backlog of business.”

“Isn’t there any way I could help?” I asked.

“We’re not authorized by the State Department to employ anyone yet. Thank you just the same.”

“I didn’t mean a regular job. It just looked as though you could do with help.”

“The regulations don’t allow me to take on volunteers, but–“ He thought for a moment. “What do you know about Customs House procedures here in Moscow?”

“I got a trunk of my own through Customs,” I answered, “It took almost two months and I think I met everyone in Moscow who ever had anything to do with the Customs House. There many have been a few clerks who escaped me. But I got the trunk.”

Kennan hesitated for a moment. “The trouble is we have about forty carloads of equipment on its way from America for the Embassy. Washington told me simply to turn the whole matter over to the Moscow equivalent of the Railway Express. But there isn’t any such thing. The Department doesn’t seem to realize things are a little different in a Soviet state.”

“Forty carloads,”I repeated, a little overwhelmed. “Forty carloads of what?”

“Forty carloads of furniture for the Embassy and for the staff apartments, and all the office equipment for the Chancery as well.”

“Chancery? What’s that?”

“The Chancery is the office of an Embassy. Ours will be in the building they’re finishing next door.”

“But the building next door hasn’t even got the roof on it yet. Where is the stuff to be stored?”

“Well, that’s one of the things we have to attend to– find storage space in the Customs House. Maybe you could look into the matter and let me know what procedure we have to follow, what papers we have to prepare, and so forth. I’ll give you a letter saying you represent me. It’s against regulations but what the devil!”

A few minutes later I hurried off on my first official mission for the Embassy.

The Customs Chief was an enormous old gentleman six foot four or five tall and almost as big around. His is gray beard reached halfway down to his expansive waist. He was as affable as his figure was imposing. He treated me with the charm of an Old World diplomat and listened intently to my problem, which I explained as best I could in my not very grammatical Russian.

When I got to the forty carloads, the Chief relaxed a bit and smiled. “Forty days, you say? Why worry till then? There’s plenty of time. When your baggage arrives, we’ll let you know and you send a messenger with the necessary papers.”

“Not forty days, forty carloads,” I said.

“Forty cars? An awful lot of cars for one Embassy— but then we know you Americans. You don’t like to walk. If the Foreign Commissariat says it’s okay, it’s all right with us. When they come, you send us the chauffeurs, there’ll be no trouble.”

“No! No! Not cars, not automobiles, but railroad cars. Wagons, you call them.”

The Customs Chief got a little impatient: “What in the devil does an Embassy want with forty railroad cars? Are you going to build your own railroad? Or are they a gift to the Transport Commissariat? If that’s the case, the Commissariat will take care of the Customs formalities.”

I tried to find some way to explain in Russian “forty freight cars full of furniture.” During my weeks of study, the phrase hadn’t appeared once in my lessons. I pointed to the Customs Chiefs desk, his chair, the couch, the table, and all the other furniture in the room. “Five times all this is about one carload. Tomorrow, next day or soon, the Embassy will have two hundred times all this furniture — forty carloads arriving here in the Customs House.”

The Chief stopped smiling. He asked me to wait a moment and sent for his Assistant. The Assistant, a younger man, tall, thin, and tired looking, came in and sat down beside his Chief. The Chief asked me to repeat what I had just said. When I finished, there was a long silence during which the Chief stared at the Assistant Chief and the latter stared back.

The Assistant was the first to speak. “ This is a rather new problem for us. We handle only small lots here. Small shipments to private individuals. We’ve never had a whole Embassy come all at once. Big shipments are always for a trust or a commissariat—a part of our government. They are sent directly to the plants and factories. All we see is the papers. But this is different. Everything must be inspected here, of course. But forty carloads! Why, a shipment like that would block up the Customs House for weeks. We’ll have to work some special procedure.” He looked at the Chief and said something under his breath. The Chief smiled approval.

“Yes, that’s it!” and turning to me, he explained: “Come back tomorrow and maybe we’ll have figured something out by then.”

“But the forty cars may be in your yard by tomorrow, and then what?”

The old Chief nodded, a little resignedly. “Yes. You’re right. We must make a plan at once.”

In a moment he was all energy and bustle. “A plan of campaign! Not a moment to lose or the enemy will be upon us,” he shouted good-humoredly. “Why, it’s like the Civil War all over again.”

Our three heads went together and the Customs House Forty-Car Plan took shape: —

One car would be unloaded at a time. Otherwise the siding would be blocked for normal work. The railroad would have to hold the remaining thirty-nine in the yards. The Customs Chief would arrange that.

Guards for the thirty-nine would be needed. The Assistant Chief would see to that.

Trucks? Ten a day, at least, would be necessary. That would be for me to work out. Maybe the Moving Trust would help, the Chief suggested.

Porters, at least eight per truck, would be needed. Perhaps I would contact the Labor Union Council?

Storage? “My God!” said the Customs Chief. “Haven’t you even got a building?” A little sheepishly I explained that angle of the problem. Well, that was for me to worry about, but the Chief had heard from his brother-in-law that the Artificial Rubber Trust was moving to Vladimir. Perhaps there’d be a bit of room in their old building for a few weeks till the Chancery got its roof.

Finally, the Chief pointed out, it would probably take a little time to coördinate the railroad, the Moving Trust, the Labor Union Council, the porters, and the warehouse. He would instruct his agents at the frontier to wire him as soon as any shipments for the American Embassy crossed the border. That would give us a few hours warning at least.

Eventually the Plan was completed and I took off on a round of the trusts to work out the details.

2

DAYS elapsed and no word came from the Customs House. Twice I called to review the procedure with the genial Chief of Customs.

“Don’t worry,” he told me. “As soon as anything crosses the border, I’ll let you know — day or night.”

Finally, very early one morning, the telephone at the apartment rang.

“Karl Georgovich,” roared the voice of the Customs Chief, “a shipment for the American Embassy passed the frontier at Negoreloye early yesterday evening. It’s due in the Customs any minute. I’ll call my people — and you call yours.”

I called Kennan at the National Hotel and told him the news, “I’ll go straight to the Customs and report what the shipment contains as soon as the operation is under way.” I’ve always liked the word “operation.” It sounds so efficient and military.

Then I called a friend, a beau of the landlady’s daughter, who worked in a nearby garage and had a motorcycle at his disposal. Could he come at once to take me on a government mission to the Customs House? It was very urgent — and official.

Then the Foreign Commissariat. Yes, they’d send a man from the Protocol Section at once with all the necessary documents.

The Moving Trust and the Labor Union Council were quickly alerted.

The sputtering of a motorcycle on the street announced the arrival of the landlady’s daughter’s beau. In a few minutes we were skidding over icy streets toward the warehouse and then on to Station Square. As we drew up in front of the Customs House. I noticed ten large trucks pulling into the yards, each with eight husky porters aboard.

Inside the building the Customs Chief, his Assistant, and a dapper little man from the Foreign Office were waiting. They appeared in the best of spirits, especially the hulking Chief, whose eyes were twinkling unusually brightly for that early hour. Together we went out through the yards to the customs shed, the Chief leading, I, now almost bursting with self-importance, immediately behind him.

Halfway through the shed, the Chief stopped. “Karl Georgovich,” he announced with heavily accentuated solemnity, “the first of your forty carloads has been unloaded and lies before you!” He pointed to a small wooden crate at his feet.

It was marked “Pilsner Beer– quarts. Compliments of the Brewery.”

Eventually the furniture and the desks and the typewriters all arrived– in driblets, needless to say. And eventually we got them into the buildings and the rooms where they belonged. Late one evening George Kennan, “Pinky” Daves, a State Department architect, and I carried an enormous bed upstairs into the master bedroom of Spaso House, the Ambassador’s residence. The next morning, early, we hurried to the station to meet the Ambassador and his household. There was a slight confusion at the station, I remember, because the train carrying Mr. Bullitt also had a large contingent of female Communists coming to the annual Women’s Day Celebration in Moscow. For several exciting minutes it looked as though Bullitt were going to get the bouquets and the hand, and the women were going to get a bow and a handshake from the Chief of Protocol. But somehow or other, things got sorted out at the last moment and everyone was happy.

3

EARLY in our occupation of Spaso House we discovered a microphone in the process of being installed in a ventilator shaft leading down from the attic and through the wall of the Ambassador’s office. The microphone, when we found it, was separated from the Ambassador’s desk by only a thin layer of plaster. Whoever was putting it in had not quite finished the job and we could find no wires leading beyond the attic. So we photographed the mike, which had been made in Leningrad. and put it back where we found it, hoping to surprise the culprit when he came around to finish the job. Otherwise we would have no proof whatever as to who was being so curious about what our Ambassador had to say in his office. (He was more fortunate perhaps than another Ambassador, who was embarrassed to find that a mike had been placed in the wall between his and his wife’s beds. Moscow’s Diplomatic Corps unanimously agreed that it had been a most delicate and deserved tribute to the dominating personality of the other Ambassador’s wife.)

For several nights George Kennan, Elbridge Durbrow, another Embassy Secretary, and I took turns hiding in the dusty old attic with a revolver in one hand and a flashlight in the other. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, because to stay hidden we had to lie on our bellies on the hard floor. Besides, it was rather cold and the atmosphere was anything but gay. Every now and then a night owl or some other bird with insomnia would hop across the tin roof above and bring us to with a start.

Eventually it began to tell on our nerves, so we hooked up what seemed a very ingenious system of fine silk threads crisscrossed across the floor near the fatal ventilator shaft. The threads were attached to some homemade switches which in turn were connected to an alarm bell in one of the bedrooms. where we took turns standing guard in a good deal more comfort than the attic provided. We thought it was a pretty foolproof system because there were so many threads and the attic was so dark that it was practically impossible to move without selling off the alarm —as we proved to ourselves on several occasions.

But there was one flaw in the trap. The electricity on which it operated came off the regular house current. One morning when, I think, Durbrow was standing (or rather sleeping) watch, the Ambassador’s English butler, Taylor, woke him to say that the main switch for the house had been pulled during the night. Realizing that the whole apparatus we had set up was out of commission, Durbrow dashed upstairs to find practically every silk thread pulled and the mike gone. Naturally we were a little disappointed hut we soon got over it and consoled ourselves with the thought that we hadn’t been hired to be detectives anyway. I was a little surprised some years later when I saw the film Mission to Moscow and heard the character representing the Ambassador chastising a junior Third Secretary — presumably myself — for insinuating that there might be a microphone in his office. But f guess that was a misunderstanding of the affair by one of the scenario writers. At any rate a photograph of the mike is on file in the State Department in case anyone in Hollywood is interested.

(To be continued)