The Story of Henri Tod by William F. Buckley

much in common a desire to know one thing, namely what did Khrushchev intend to do in and around Berlin; and when did he intend to do it? How the West would respond was of course of vital interest to Henri Tod. But he never gave the West’s representative any reason to believe that he would be bound by the West’s conclusions in this matter. Henri Tod therefore desired a certain explicit alienation from Western operations; and Western operators desired an equally explicit alienation from the operations of the Bruderschaft. This dichotomy figured in the relations between Henri Tod and Blackford Oakes, and Blackford was formally careful not to inquire into the operations of the Bruderschaft, even as Henri drew the line carefully in his questions to Blackford. But the obsessive question being the one that brought them together—What would Khrushchev do?—there was much to share, and reason to spend many hours together.
    Blackford saw in Henri signs of the disciplinarian. But it was not gratuitous, reflecting rather his sense of what was expected of him, not least of what he expected of himself. There was, Blackford noted one evening when the conversation digressed, a haunting distraction there. Something that lay in the back of the mind of Henri Tod. Conceivably, not even Tod knew exactly what it was, or exactly what hold it had on him. The devotion to him of his colleagues was not only an act of gratitude for the spirit he represented—the unity of free Germans—but a recognition of Tod’s personal courage. He regularly put himself on the duty roster, engaging in dangerous activity, armed always with the cyanide capsule in the event he was captured. But he would be detected in acts of personal kindness. There was the widow of young Ochlander, who had been captured, tortured, and executed. Although she had removed, with her young son, to France to live, she regularly received personal letters from her late husband’s leader, and these she took to copying and sending to her husband’s closest friends. They in turn gave the letters discreet circulation. And in them Henri, who had known the widow only slightly, gave evidence of his great reserves of sympathy, of his desire to assuage suffering, of his determination to convince Hilda that her husband’s sacrifice had made an important contribution. Several times when a member of the society, fighting for his life in a hospital bed or—when the nature of the operation that had caused his wound kept him from a hospital—lying in a safe house, tended to by Bruni or by other doctors brought in, the companion posted to sit by the patient during the night would, at two or three in the morning, look up to find Henri Tod, silently entering into the room, who would nod the attendant out. “Go and get some sleep. I will stay here.”
    Blackford at first only admired Henri Tod. But very soon after, he began to like Henri Tod. In the end he would come to love him. And now he accepted without resentment the boundary beyond which Henri would not admit him. It was primarily, Blackford reflected, a professional boundary. And Blackford was right in supposing so. Because Henri Tod had vowed many years ago that he would not again impulsively reveal information that should be kept secret; not again, that once having been more than a lifetime’s ration.

6
    Henri Toddweiss (they called him Heinrich in those days) and Clementa (Clementina) had always shared the same bedroom, and did so even now, aged thirteen and eleven. It wouldn’t be until the following year that they would get separate quarters, their mother said: so it had been in her own family, and in that of her husband. Henri and Clementa had privately sworn never to sleep other than in a single room. Moreover, they swore according to the sacred rites of a society so secret that it had only two members, Henri and Clementa, and even beyond that, so secret that no one else in the entire