Defectors

2

A RESTLESS NIGHT, UP TWICE, looking out at the deserted street. What did he expect to see? A man by a lamppost? Then morning coffee in the dining room, only a few other guests down this early, men in suits eating smoked fish and dark bread, buried in newspapers, columns of dense Cyrillic. He’d been told nobody read the papers—“propaganda sheets” according to DiAngelis—but here they were, as immersed and trusting as businessmen in Omaha. Outside the dining room windows the Kremlin, last night sinister and shadowy, was bathed in spring sunshine. Colonel Vassilchikov’s car wasn’t due until nine. He went out to the lobby, expecting to be stopped at the door, offered an escort, told he couldn’t leave unaccompanied, but no one seemed to notice him.

He crossed the broad street by the underground walkway, then up past the Hotel Moskva, glancing over his shoulder. No one behind, just office workers streaming out of the Metro. Red Square. A place he’d seen in a thousand photographs, filled with tanks and military salutes and politburo members who disappeared from the pictures a year later, airbrushed from memory. He’d always imagined a gray ceremonial square, boxed in by Kremlin towers, but instead it was open and bright, flooded with light, the onion domes of St. Basil’s at the far end swirls of color, GUM department store frilly and ornate, something a children’s illustrator might have dreamed up. People hurrying across to work. Anywhere. He looked at the high fortress walls. Where Stalin had sat up at night putting check marks next to names on a list. Names he knew, names other people knew, names that struck his fancy. Terror had no logic. Check. Gone. Night after night.

Now a line was already forming outside the mausoleum to see him, the embalmed king, a primitive ritual as old as Egypt. Shuffling along patiently for just a glimpse. Except for the man with the hat. Simon looked again. Not moving with the crowd, using it as a kind of screen. Had he seen the hat before? Without even noticing? Maybe on the shallow steps of the Moskva, but maybe not. He hadn’t felt anything, no prickly feeling at the back of his neck. But why stand there and not move with the crowd? To keep Simon in his sight line. He’d be one of theirs. “Nobody will contact you,” DiAngelis had said. “All the embassy people are watched. Just give the okay sign at the window. If there’s any trouble, or you need to make contact, go to the embassy. Ask for me.” “You?” “The name’ll get you to the right person. But only if you have to.” So not one of ours. Unless he was imagining things.

He turned and walked over to GUM, then looked back. No hat, which was somehow worse, a man who could disappear. GUM wasn’t open yet and in any case there’d be nothing to buy, so he kept walking toward St. Basil’s, surprised that the square didn’t end there but continued downslope to the river. He stopped and looked up at the onion domes, what any tourist would do. If in fact anybody was watching.

“Mr. Weeks?” An American voice. But nobody was supposed to contact him.

Simon turned. The same hat, now pushed back a little, a young man’s gesture. A thin face with a permanent five o’clock shadow, someone in his thirties.

“Hal Lehman. UPI.”

“Oh.”

The man held up his hand. “Don’t worry. Off the record.”

“What is?”

Hal smiled. “It’s not secret, is it, why you’re here? You sent out a press release when you signed the book, so I figured—”

“How did you find me?”

“I took a chance they’d put you up at the National. There, or the Metropol. Big cheese place. So I waited to see who came out.” Pleased with himself.

“And followed me.”

Another smile. “At least I’m the only one.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty sure. After a while you get a sense.”

“Then how about letting me enjoy my walk. Off the leash. Really, I don’t have anything to say. On or off the record.”

Hal nodded. “That’s okay. I was hoping you’d take a message for me.”

“To—?”

“Your brother, who else? All these years, it’s no, no, no. No interviews. But now. You do a book I figure you want interviews, some press. So why not UPI? We get picked up everywhere. I mean, you’re his publisher. Don’t you—?”

“That’s really up to him.” Simon paused. Not anybody. UPI. “Anyway, we’ve got a long time to go before pub. You’re early.”

“Look, just ask him. I’ve been trying to get this since I got here. And that’s eighteen months, so who knows how much longer? Two years would be a long run. They usually throw you out before that.”

“Really? Why?” Simon said, curious.

Hal shrugged. “You’re bound to write something that offends somebody in two years. Khrushchev’s wife, somebody. And by then you might have some contacts, you might be able to do some reporting. So, out. New guy comes in, he’s just got the press handouts to work with. They like it that way. You have a cigarette? They’re hell to get here.”

Simon hesitated, then offered him one from the pack. No longer a stranger asking for directions, if anyone was watching. A meeting, a conversation.

“So why the interest in Frank?” Simon said, watching him light the cigarette. “All this time. It’s an old story now.”

Hal inhaled. “Nice. You should see the stuff they smoke here. It’s not just him. I’m interested in all of them. Not what they did—you’re right, that’s old news. What they’re doing now.”

“What they’re doing now.”

Hal nodded. “Now that they’re ghosts. Kind of a ghost story.”

“Why ghosts?”

“They’re here and not here. Like ghosts. Look, you work for UPI you go to everything. Parties. Receptions at Spaso House. Everything. But you never see them.”

“You really think the American ambassador is going to invite Frank to a Fourth of July? He’s a—”

“Traitor. Right. So not the ambassador’s. But there’s other stuff, and you never see him. Any of them. You don’t see them with Russians either. You don’t see them at all. Once in a while you spot one at the Bolshoi, but that’s because I’m looking. I’m interested. The others don’t care. Time. The Post. You know they give us offices in the same building. Out on Kutuzovsky. So they can keep an eye on us, I guess. And that means we see each other all the time. So I know. The Brits—they’ll get to somebody like Gareth Jones once in a while. But the Americans don’t care. They’d rather do rockets. The space race. But I still think it’s a story. Being ghosts. I mean, what do they do all day? Gareth gets loaded, but what about the others? Do they like it here? I’m interested. So if he’s going to talk to anybody, it would be great if it’s me. I’d appreciate it, if you could help set it up.”

Simon looked at him. “I’ll give him the message. You should know that Look has serial rights. He can’t talk before that. So it could be a while.”

“It’d just be background if that’s better for him. You know, with his people. You heading back? Mind if I walk with you?”

Simon smiled. “I was about to say it’s a free country, but it isn’t, is it?”

“No, but interesting. You have to give it a little time. Thanks for this,” he said, indicating the cigarette. “I ran out a while ago, so I have to wait for the next Helsinki run.”

Simon looked at him, a question.

“To get things we can’t get here. Not even in the Beryozka—the hard currency stores.”

“Helsinki. People can just come and go?” Simon said.

“Well, they can’t,” Hal said, nodding toward the mausoleum queue. “And you use your press visa too many times, you’re asking for trouble, so we take turns. Maybe one trip a year. Everybody makes a list. And vegetables.”

“You drive to Helsinki for vegetables?” Simon said, fascinated now.

“Try getting through a winter. They even run out of cabbage. You can have things sent in, if you can afford the dollars, but something always falls off the truck, so it’s better to go get it yourself. Anyway, Nancy needed a new coat so we took the last run. My wife,” he said, seeing Simon’s expression.

“You’re here with your wife?” Simon said, something he hadn’t imagined. Vegetables and new winter coats and ordinary life.

Hal nodded. “I know. Everybody thinks it’s a bachelor’s job. And mostly it is. The Russians don’t like it. It means a bigger apartment. Usually it’s: here’s your forty square meters and here’s the key. Turn up this way. I’ll show you around a little if you have the time.”

“I should get back.”

“Well, we’ll make it short then. Just the highlights. It beats Intourist. They like to tell you how many tons of concrete the builder used. Look.” He stopped, tossing the cigarette. “I’m not expecting Weeks to jump at this. He—doesn’t. I mean, he never has. Just tell him it’s not about—what he did. He can keep his secrets. Whatever they are.” He looked up. “Unless he puts them in the book. But I’m not holding my breath.”

They had already turned the corner at the north end of GUM into Nikolskaya, a narrower street with attractive nineteenth-century buildings whose plaster fronts were grimy and cracked. A few cars.

“It was Nancy who got me into it,” Hal was saying. “The defectors. She said it would make a good story and nobody had done it. They get on a plane or a ferry or something and they just—vanish. But they don’t. They’re here. I mean, there she was, getting her hair done at the Pekin and Nancy recognizes her.”

“The Pekin?” Simon said, trying to imagine it, a row of hair­dryers, the remodeled interrogation rooms upstairs. Green light, red light.

“She likes the girl there. Anyway, Marzena was there too and Nancy recognized her so they talked and we got to know them a little.”

“Who?”

“Sorry. Perry Soames and his wife.”

“Perry Soames. The one Fuchs—?”

“Right. You can’t get to them. Usually. The atomic spies. They send them straight to Arzamas and nobody talks there. Nobody.”

Simon looked at him again, eyebrows up.

“The nuclear lab. Off-limits. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? Considering.”

Simon thought for a minute. “But his wife’s at the beauty parlor here?”

“Well, that’s the thing. Of course, this is all later. After he moved to Moscow. But why leave Arzamas in the first place? I mean, people don’t. Unless they’re—”

“What?”

“Sick. Have a breakdown. I don’t know. That’s the story, no? Of course he wasn’t going to talk to me, and his wife’s careful, even with Nancy. They never tied him to the Rosenbergs, so it must have been a separate operation, sort of parallel tracks. Or the other theory.”

“What’s that?”

“They let the Rosenbergs take the fall to protect him. He gets here, they ship him right out to Arzamas, so he still must have had stuff for them. Then he checks out. So why? Maybe the science got ahead of him. Maybe he starts feeling guilty. That might do it, seeing the bombs every day, seeing what you’d done. But anyway he stops being useful to them. So Moscow. But what’s he thinking all this time? That’s the story.”

“And what makes you think Frank can tell you?”

“He saw him that weekend. That’s one of the things I want to verify. What did he say? What was on his mind? I mean, a guy shoots himself he must have said something. He’s sorry, something. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just sleepwalking through it. But if he could tell me—I wouldn’t have to quote him, I’d just like to know.”

Simon stopped at the corner. “He killed himself? I thought he—was sick. That’s what it said in the paper.”

“That’s what they wanted us to say. So we say it. Otherwise, you’re gone. But suppose it’s something else. Suppose he gets here and he realizes he did it all for this.” He waved his hand to take in the street. “And now there’s no way out. He runs to avoid prison and he just lands in a bigger one. That would be a hell of a story.”

“If true.”

“Well, you tell me. How does your brother feel about being here?”

Simon looked up at him, no more circling, at the point.

“You’ll have to read his book and see. I’ll tell you one thing, though. He doesn’t feel like that. Putting a gun to his head. He thinks he did the right thing.”

“Do you?” Hal said.

“No.” He waited, an emphasis. “But it doesn’t matter what I think. On or off the record. I’m not him. I spent years answering questions about Frank. What did he say to me. What did I say to him. What did he think about this. That. As if I knew. Wasn’t that the point? Nobody knew what he was thinking. He fooled us all. But he wasn’t thinking that. Maybe Soames was. How did they get to be such great pals anyway? I thought people didn’t—”

“The dachas. In the country. They’re in the same compound, so they got to know each other.”

“Compound?”

“It’s fenced. You don’t see the fence.” A country house, behind wires. “A KGB compound.”

Simon looked at him. Their own hospital. Food store. Even countryside.

“So the papers just said he was sick,” Hal finished. “Natural causes. No weakness. Not that shooting yourself is a sign of weakness—I don’t know how you go through with it. But they think it is. Raises questions. They don’t like that.”

“Nobody does.”

Hal nodded, touché, then cocked his head at the building on the other side of the busy square ahead. “Especially them. That’s headquarters. The Lubyanka.”

Simon gazed across. A tsarist office building with a yellow façade, so large it filled the entire block. A statue in the middle of the square, trucks lumbering by on either side. No black cars pulling up to the doors, no screams coming from the basement. Hoses to wash the blood off the walls. Thousands. More.

“It used to be an insurance company,” Hal said. “Rossiya Insurance. They put in the prison in the thirties. Dzerzhinsky, the founding father.” He nodded to the statue. “And now look.” He turned to the big building on their side of the square. “Detskiy Mir. Biggest toy store in Russia. The kids love it.”

“That’s—” Simon said, unable to finish.

“Yeah, I know. But it’s even stranger than that. I mean, they don’t have a lot of irony here. It’s okay about the store because that really isn’t there.” He waved to the KGB building. “It doesn’t exist. None of it happened. Because if it did, if you started to see it—so nobody does. That’s just a nice old guy looking down on the kiddies. Millions disappeared and no one saw them go. That’s what it’s like here. Things just aren’t there, even when they are. So how did Soames feel about that, or Weeks, or any of them? That’s what I’d like to know. When they saw who they were working for.”

Simon looked across again. Walls of light mustard, almost cheerful. Frank’s elite force, the country where everything worked.

“Of course, there’s another possibility. About Soames. Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe somebody else did.”

Simon waited a second. “Who?”

Hal made a wry face. “Who kills people in this country?” Looking across the square.

“One of their own?”

“Maybe they thought he was a double agent. Maybe he was a double agent. They always worry about that. If the defector’s a plant. Maybe he became a liability. Picked up the wrong intel at Arzamas. I don’t know why. But if they did, it would make some story. They’d kick me out, but a story like that, you could write your own ticket back to New York.” He glanced at Simon. “Maybe even a book.”

Simon turned to him. “Frank’s not going to talk to you about this. You know that, don’t you? He works for the KGB.”

Hal nodded. “But he might talk to you.”

“To me?”

“I just need background. Confirmation. I don’t need anything on the record.”

“Is that what this little guided tour was about? Make me a source?”

Hal hunched his shoulders. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

“Not this time. I didn’t come here for this—get you a byline.”

“Look, we’re on the same side here.”

“As long as I set you up with Frank.”

Hal took out a card. “This is where I am. Don’t worry, it’s not radioactive. Nobody’ll think anything of it. Meet another American and take his number, that’s all.”

“At UPI. With him listening,” Simon said, tipping his head toward the statue.

“Well, they do. Fact of life here. But what would they hear? You’d want the interview. It’s good press for the book. You’d want to set things up early. Strictly business.” He held up his hands to show them empty. “You should probably go back to the hotel alone, though. Just out for a walk. Follow left there. It’ll circle back. Past the Bolshoi. Moscow’s laid out in rings so you’re always circling back. See the big pile down there? House of Unions. Where they put Gary Powers on trial. Poor bastard.”

“You cover that?”

“Everybody covered it. If there’s one thing they know how to do here, it’s a show trial. One more cigarette?”

Simon offered him the pack, watching as he pocketed one.

“Just ask him about Soames and see what he says. If I’m right, I’d appreciate a call. Or maybe you see me at the National. At the bar. And we have a drink. Off the record.”

When Simon got back to the hotel Colonel Vassilchikov was standing out front, annoyed but trying to mask it with a formal smile. He was wearing a business suit today, but everything about him—buzz-cut hair, the pulled back shoulders—was military, a soldier out of uniform.

“Mr. Weeks. You’ve been out?”

“I wanted to see Red Square.”

“Ah. And what did you think?”

“Much bigger than I imagined.”

Improbably, Vassilchikov’s face softened, a patriot. “Yes, it’s very beautiful. That’s what it means, you know. The word for red is also that for beautiful. Nothing to do with the Soviets.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It was a market. There were stalls along the Kremlin walls. Well,” he said, catching himself. “But if you had told me, I would have provided you with a guide.”

“That’s all right. Just a quick look around. I saw the Bolshoi on my way back. Very impressive too.”

“Yes. Well, shall we go?”

“I’ll just run up and get my bag.”

“The briefcase? I took the liberty,” he said, nodding to the backseat.

“Oh,” Simon said, feeling someone had been through his pockets. “Mind if I ride up front? It doesn’t seem right, you like a chauffeur. A colonel. Anyway, you can show me the sights.”

Vassilchikov hesitated for a second, not sure how to respond, then opened the door for him.

“You didn’t get lost,” he said pleasantly, slipping behind the wheel. “Without a map?”

“No. But I suppose I should get one.”

“Well, you know, it’s difficult. There were no maps during the war. And afterward—”

“Then how does anybody—?”

“They live here. They know. But visitors—that’s why it’s so useful to have a guide. Someone who can help you. I would be happy to do it myself. Or one of my colleagues. Just let me know what you would like to see and we’ll arrange it. Moscow is a big city. So easy to get lost.”

They drove toward the Manège, then turned right. Simon peered at the street sign. Bolshaya Nikitskaya. He’d spent days memorizing Cyrillic letters but still felt he was decoding, translating letter for letter.

“The old university,” Vassilchikov said, evidently taking the guide role seriously. “Down there, Moscow Conservatory. Very beautiful hall.” He pointed to the statue in the forecourt. “Tchaikovsky. They say an excellent likeness.”

“How long have you been Frank’s—bodyguard?”

“I am his technical officer,” Vassilchikov said, his fleshy face pulling back in disapproval.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

But Vassilchikov was waving this away. “A matter of terminology. I think in your Service you say case officer?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He waited. “I thought that was someone who ran agents in the field.”

“Yes?”

“But Frank isn’t in the field anymore.”

“No, but I can be of use in many ways. You understand, Comrade Weeks is a hero of the Soviet Union. He is entitled to such privileges. In the beginning, it’s true, there was a bodyguard—we didn’t know if his life would be in danger. But now, it’s a question of—general assistance. You see there on the right?”

Simon turned to a modern office building with a giant bronze globe hanging over the entrance.

“TASS,” he said, the Cyrillic TACC easy even for him. “The news agency.”

Vassilchikov nodded. “So you are learning Russian. It’s good. Some of the others—”

“The others?”

“Western friends. Who come here. Still only English. Gareth Jones—you met him last night at the hotel. All these years and no Russian.”

“Maybe he understands more than you think. Someone like him, that would be par for the course.”

“Course?” Vassilchikov said, bewildered.

“Sorry. An idiom. I just meant, he was a spy. It might be in his nature to know more than he lets on.”

Vassilchikov turned to him, his double chin moving up a little in a smile. “A generous assessment. No, he’s like the others. A fish out of waters. That’s correct? Except Comrade Weeks. And Maclean. He speaks Russian. His children are Young Pioneers. Sometimes, you know, the adopted land—you feel a powerful attachment. But Comrade Jones, I think not. Of course, that type—”

At the intersection with the first ring road they were stopped to let two black Zils race by, lights flashing, important.

“Kremlin,” Vassilchikov said simply.

On the other side the streets became leafy, some of the houses even with grounds, a century away.

“Is here many embassies,” Vassilchikov said. Classroom English.

“Nice,” Simon said. “You don’t expect somehow—”

“The future started with the revolution,” Vassilchikov said, a practiced line. “But Russia was here before. A desirable district. Popular with writers.”

“And Frank lives here?” Simon said, amused, imagining poetry readings, Village cafés.

“Near Patriarch’s Pond. You’ll see.”

The houses became apartment buildings, slightly shabby but still attractive, neoclassical or creamy rococo façades. Europe.

“He is so pleased you are here. His brother. You were close?”

“Yes.” Lunches at Harvey’s. So what’s happening at State? Who’s going to the conference? Reporting everything back. Close.

“He vouched for you.”

“Vouched for me?”

“With the Service. When he made the request for you to come. So it’s important, you see, that no suspicion attaches to you. Even an innocent walk—”

Simon ignored this. “I thought it was their idea—your idea. The Service’s.”

“No. Comrade Weeks’s. It’s very serious for him, this book. His legacy. Of course, also a pleasure to see you. Patriarch’s Pond,” he said, lifting his left hand off the wheel.

Simon took in a park with a long rectangular reflecting pool, a playground at one end, a restaurant pavilion at the other.

“Vouched for me how?”

“Your purpose in coming. The editorial work.”

“Why else would I be coming?”

Vassilchikov shrugged. “You were once in OSS, yes? It sometimes happens that an agent is reactivated. When an opportunity presents itself.”

“You think I’m an agent? Don’t your people have ways of checking that out?”

Vassilchikov smiled. “Yes, of course. But now another guarantee. Someone who takes responsibility for you.”

“So it would be his fault if they’re wrong?” He paused. “And what would I be doing here? If I’m—reactivated?”

“Comrade Weeks was a valuable agent. Perhaps the most valuable. A great embarrassment to the Americans.”

“They think I’m here to bump him off?” Simon said, his voice catching, almost a laugh. “I’m here to make him famous.” Then, half to himself, “I’m still not sure why.”

“Brothers,” Vassilchikov said quickly. “Comrade Weeks was sure you would come.”

“Well, there’s some money involved too.”

“Yes, but for him, the blood. Family.”

“You think so?”

“Mr. Weeks, I have been his technical officer for over five years. You see a man every day, you know him.”

“I used to see him every day.”

They had come to the end of Yermolaevskiy Street, before it curved and changed names. A concrete apartment building next to a vest pocket park that stretched all the way to the next ring road. Each section had its own entrance off the interior courtyard. Vassilchikov jumped out and swung open a high metal gate, then got back into the car and drove through. Number 21, Simon noticed. Moscow. Where he lived.

“Mr. Weeks,” Vassilchikov said, oddly hesitant. “A word. It would be best not to mention last night.”

“Last night?”

“Mrs. Weeks. It sometimes happens. A woman sensitive to drink. Not a strong Russian head,” he said, touching his own. “But then, the embarrassment. So, a politeness not to mention.”

“How long has it been going on?” Simon said.

“Off and on,” Vassilchikov said vaguely. “It’s not a happy time now. One of their friends—a tragedy.”

“Perry Soames.”

Vassilchikov looked up at him. “You’re very well informed.”

“Everybody knows he died. What, and she’s been on a tear ever since?”

“No. But a source of unhappiness. Their dachas are near to each other. So, friendly times. And now this. She was upset. Me, I think a holiday would be a good idea. Sochi. It’s early for swimming, but the air is wonderful now. The flowers.” Simon looked at him. The concierge Service again. What else did he do for them? “I have suggested this. Sochi. But of course she wanted to see you. Maybe you can persuade her—”

“To go to the Black Sea?” Sounding somehow like a joke.

“For a rest. You know the Service has a clinic there, to improve the health. It would be good for her.”

“What does Frank think?”

Vassilchikov shrugged. “He says she can rest here. But maybe after you leave—then he can go with her. You know, he depends on her so much.”

Simon looked at him, thrown slightly off balance. The KGB urging a rest cure, Simon trying to listen between words. A scheme? Or genuine concern? A girl who once went away with him. Long dark hair, body arched back toward the dance floor, everybody watching, maybe just him watching, holding her waist, in his hands. The memory of it here like a flash, then gone. Now a woman slurring warnings in his ear. Not to be mentioned the next day. It occurred to him then, looking around the dreary Moscow courtyard, that they had all thrown their lives away, everything they thought they were going to be. Or maybe Frank had done it for them.

“Are you going to stand there gossiping like two babushkas?” Frank was in the doorway. “Come in, come in. I thought you’d never get here. What was the problem? Traffic? Couldn’t be. That’s in the next five-year plan.” He had put his arm around Simon’s shoulder, guiding him in. “Careful here.” He pointed to the concrete step, a chunk crumbling at the edge. “Lift is on the fritz today, I’m afraid. Well, every day. But much better for the health. Good exercise. It’s only two flights. Keep the noise down, though. Madam has a headache.” Raising an eyebrow, just between them, making a joke of it. “So what took you so long?”

“Mr. Weeks went for a walk.”

“What, alone? Oh, you don’t want to do that. Then Boris doesn’t know where you are and he gets anxious. Blood pressure goes right up, doesn’t it, Boris?”

“I wanted to see Red Square.”

“Not the mummies, I hope.”

“No, just walked around.”

“Then you beat me to it. I was going to show you around later. I like to take walks in the afternoon. Boris too. Never mind, we’ll go somewhere else. Lots to see. Ah, here’s Jo.”

She was standing in the open doorway, arms folded, as if she were holding herself in, a cigarette in one hand. A simple skirt and cardigan, a shy smile.

“There you are. How nice,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “The place is a mess. Ludmilla doesn’t come till tomorrow.”

But it wasn’t a mess, just crowded, every wall lined with bookcases, framed pictures propped against some of the books, a couch and two tired club chairs, a professor’s apartment. Not Mt. Vernon Street, not even the small house near the Phillips Collection.

“So many books,” Simon said to Frank, a tease.

“Jo’s a great reader,” Frank said. “I’m still getting gentleman C’s. But you know, now that I have the time—sometimes we just read all evening.”

“This is the living room,” Jo said. “Not much by your standards, but a lot of space for here. Frank’s study is there—God knows what shape that’s in. He growls if I move a paper. Used to be Richie’s room,” she said, her voice neutral. “Bedroom there. And kitchen. And that’s it. Frank says I’m not to bother you when you’re working, but let’s have coffee first, yes? I can’t just say hello and then not see you. How’s Diana?”

“The same. Fine. She sends her best.” A polite lie.

“Coffee okay? I suppose you’ve been up for hours. As usual.”

“He went to see Red Square,” Frank said.

“Did you?” she said. “And here we are, just out of bed. Come, help me in the kitchen and tell me everything. Boris, coffee for you too?”

“Spasibo,” he said.

“My only word of Russian,” Jo said. “Oh, and pozhaluysta. Covers practically everything, spasibo and pozhaluysta. Just use your hands for the rest.”

“She’s kidding,” Frank said. “Her Russian is excellent.”

“I have a woman comes once a week to talk to me. We have tea. In glasses. She looks at me with these mournful eyes—well, she probably lost somebody in the war. I don’t dare ask, so we talk about the weather. Are the lilacs in bloom? Yes, the lilacs are in bloom. But not so many this year. And then I get the dative case wrong or something and she just sighs. Come. It won’t take a sec. Boris, there’s Izvestia.”

Simon followed her to the kitchen, where she turned on the gas under a kettle. “There’s some cake, if you like,” she said, but was motioning with her hands for him to run the tap water, pointing and making twisting motions.

“No, that’s all right,” he said, turning the tap, his face a question mark.

She came closer to him. “They can’t hear when the water’s running. Interferes with the voices or something. At least that’s what I heard. Anyway, let’s hope so.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and rubbed it out in the ashtray. “I’m sorry about last night. I do that now. I think I’m not going to and then I do. The worst part is that you’re always apologizing.”

“Not to me.”

“No, not to you,” she said softly. “You haven’t given up on me, have you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You see it in their faces.”

“See what?”

“Not that I see anybody anymore. You’re the first since—”

She turned to lift the kettle, which was whistling now, and poured water into the coffeemaker, the sink tap still running.

“Remember Carrie Porter? Maybe you never met. We were at school together. So that far back. And she was here. Spaso House, no less. Visiting the ambassador. I don’t know why—I suppose her husband does something. Anyway, she was at the Metropol. Frank likes to go there. The old world charm. So there we were having dinner, under the stained glass, and I look up and, my God, it’s Carrie Porter. From school. And she sees me and at first she pretends not to and then she realizes I’ve seen her, so she comes over.” She pushed down on the French press.

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. Well, what did she ever say? But that wasn’t it. It was the look. She looked at me the way you look at a criminal. Nervous, a little afraid. Something you don’t want to touch. And I thought, my God, that’s what I’ve become. A criminal. Me, Ma Barker.” She smiled a little. “But not so funny, is it, when somebody like Carrie can think it. It means everybody does. A criminal.”

“You’re not a criminal.”

She shrugged. “And Frank? Carrie wouldn’t even look at him.”

“You’re not him.”

“But if I went back, they’d still throw me in the pokey. Anyway, I can’t go back. No passport. It ran out. So how’s it going to end?” She rested her hand on the coffeepot. “Well, we know, don’t we? It doesn’t. It just goes on like this.”

“Jo—”

“Sorry. You weren’t expecting this, were you?” She smiled to herself. “Neither was I. Sometimes I wonder how any of it happened. Was I there? I was going to be like Jo in Little Women, scrappy, take charge.”

“Katharine Hepburn,” Simon said.

“And here we are. In Yermolaevskiy Street. Getting plastered. Apologizing.”

“Stop.”

“Boris wants to send me to a sanitarium. For my health. No bars on the windows. Although what difference would that make?” she said, nodding to the running water. “And you know what? For about five seconds I thought about it. How bad would it be? Like the Greenbrier or someplace. Run by the KGB. Imagine Carrie Porter’s face then. Palm Beach this year? No, Sochi.” She looked down. “But Frank wouldn’t like that. Who knows what I’d say once I got some brandy into me? I say things, apparently.” She turned to Simon. “Don’t stay here. I don’t know what he wants, but he wants something. I know him.” She stopped, folding her arms across her chest again. “Know him. I suppose if there’s anything I didn’t know, it was him.”

“Jo, what you said last night—”

“That’s the one good thing. I never remember. So be a gentleman—be Simon—and don’t tell me. I’m sure it wasn’t good. Anyway, we’d better go in. You leave the water running and they get suspicious. At least I imagine they do. Where do you think they listen, anyway? Like mice in the walls.”

“Your passport. Could I do something? Call someone at State? Maybe I could help.”

She put her hand on his cheek. “I forgot how nice you could be. Oh, darling, there’s nothing to do. Do you think they’re going to jump up and down at State to issue me a new one? And if they did, then what? A whole room of Carrie Porters, a whole country? I couldn’t face it. Five minutes at the Metropol was bad enough.” She lowered her hand. “Anyway, I live here now. So. You take the tray. We can talk at the dacha. And you know what? The lilacs are in bloom. Just like the language lesson.”

“Jo—”

“That’s something anyway. Having you there. He’ll be on his best behavior. Everybody will.” She made a wry smile. “You’re his good angel.”

“Really? Since when?”

“Since always, I think. Up there on his right shoulder.”

He picked up the tray. “So who’s on the left?”

“Nobody. He’s his own bad angel.” She looked over at him. “But he’ll make you think he’s listening to you.”

They sat drinking coffee for half an hour, Jo on the couch with her legs curled up beneath her, smoking, ashtray on her lap. The old liveliness was now just nervous energy—jerking the cigarette to her lips, brushing back hair from her forehead. Boris, still buried in Izvestia, said nothing, not there, another microphone in the wall­paper. Only Frank was eager to talk. So many years to catch up on, he had said, but the years had erased small talk, and anything larger, the reasons they were there, seemed off limits, not something you discussed over coffee. So they fell back on Moscow, what Simon should see—the Pushkin Museum, the Metro and its palatial stations.

“But first we need to work,” Simon said finally.

“Simon Legree,” Frank said pleasantly. “You never change. Okay, let’s get to it. Come on.” He stood up, about to head for the study. “Boris, I’ll leave the door open, shall I? In case you want to listen in. He’s interested in the process. Of course you’re welcome to join us.”

Boris made a dismissal sign with his hand, head back in the paper.

“What about you, Jo?” Frank said.

“I’ve got to pick up a few things for the weekend,” she said, getting up too. “What about tonight? Do you want to go to the Aragvi or do you want to be in?”

“Oh, the Aragvi I think. We’ll be in all day.” He turned to Simon. “Georgian. Shish kebabs.”

“And music,” Jo said. “Lucky us. Do you have some currency for the Beryozka?”

“Not much.” He took out his wallet. “I’m waiting for a fat check from my American publisher,” he said, smiling at Simon. “Try the Gastronom first. They’ll probably have everything you need.” Then, catching her glance, “But just in case.” He handed over some bills. “I hope we’re not going to have a house full of people. We don’t want to share Simon so soon.”

“Just Marzena. Maybe the Rubins. Hannah wasn’t sure.”

“Saul Rubin?” Simon said, a headline name.

“Mm,” Frank said, smiling. “The man who threatened the very existence of the Free World. To hear Winchell tell it anyway. Stamp collector. Like FDR. Not so easy here, since nobody writes him. He’ll probably ask you to send some, but once you start—”

“Work hard,” Joanna said, turning to go. No kiss good-bye. “Just ask yourself, what would Suslov say?”

“Who?” Simon said.

“Head of the International Department of the Central Committee. Party theoretician.”

“Another okay? I thought it was just the Service—”

“Don’t worry. Only to publish here. Then you’d need his approval. We’re all right. Come on. I’ve got the Latvians. Have a look and see what you think,” he said, leading Simon into the study. Boris turned a page of the newspaper, not even looking up.

The living room had faced the little park Simon had seen outside, but the study window looked west toward one of the Stalin skyscrapers.

“After a while you get used to them,” Frank said, noticing Simon looking out. “That’s the Foreign Ministry. Down near Smolenskaya. You have to hand it to him—he knew what he liked.”

Simon glanced around. Another room of books. A big desk and a reading chair, no traces of Richie, no hanging pennant or single bed with a Navajo blanket, pieces of sports equipment. Whatever had been here had been taken away.

“Here, your Latvians.” He handed Simon a sheaf of paper.

“Already? You did this last night?”

“No. I just fixed up the section from my debriefing. See if it works. It should. Everything’s there—well, everything was there. I had to nip and tuck.”

“Your debriefing?”

“I spent my first year here—almost two—being debriefed. Write down everything you know. Everything. So, my memoirs, in a way. That’s why, last year, when the Service suggested it, I thought, well, I’ve already written the book. All I have to do is take out the names, do a little brushwork. Hope that doesn’t bother you.”

“What?”

“Publishing a KGB debriefing. That’s what most of it is really, the book. My debriefing. A first for Keating, I’ll bet.” Said with a twinkle in his eye, having fun. “Take that chair. You’ll be more comfortable. I’ll have another look at the escape chapter. You had a question about that?”

“You said you got a phone call. So who was it?”

“Well, I can’t tell you that.”

“You mean he’s still there?” Simon said, feeling uneasy, drawn into it, protecting someone.

“What does it matter who? I got a call. ‘Now.’ So I moved. And I got out. If Pirie put two and two together he could probably figure out who—at least where he was, who had access—but since he hasn’t, I’m not going to tell him now. Do we need it?”

“It’s the best part of the book, getting to Mexico. Like a movie.”

“With the Bureau nipping at my heels. So does it matter who’s on the phone? You just want to see what happens. If I make it.” He sat back. “I was lucky. I admit it.”

“And you were tipped off.”

He looked at Simon. “I can’t, Jimbo.” He paused. “So how about the Latvians?”

Simon started to read. It was all here, the joint project with the Brits, meetings they’d both attended, moments from his own life, but seen now from the other end of the table, Frank’s side of the looking glass. The plan details, copied and passed on. The Latvian recruits, the list of names. The meeting with Frank’s control. Getting the signal that the mission had started out. The landing at night. The radio transmission suddenly cut. The frantic attempts to make contact, already knowing it was too late.

Simon looked up. “You don’t say what happened to them.”

Frank stared back at him. “The whole pound of flesh? But as a matter of fact none of us knew. I’m just writing what happened at the time. I wasn’t there, in lovely old Riga.”

“But you do know. Now.”

Frank said nothing for a minute, his eyes on Simon. Finally, he reached for a cigarette. “All right, how about this? ‘As for the Latvians, we never knew what happened to them. But I can make an educated guess.’ ” He lit the cigarette. “Does that make me a big enough shit?”

Simon held his gaze for a moment then started to write. Outside, Boris turned another page, not glancing in their direction, maybe not really listening either.

“No regrets?” Simon said, still writing. “You led them into—”

“We’ve been through this,” Frank said. “They knew the risks.”

“They didn’t know it was rigged.”

A silence so long that Boris looked over to see what was wrong.

“I’m not sure what you mean by this note,” Frank said, pointing to the page in front of him, moving on. “Here, pull up a desk chair and we can go through it together. Your handwriting—it’s like a doctor’s these days. I need a translator.”

Simon put the Latvian chapter down and went behind the desk, pulling up a chair next to Frank.

“That’s better. Like old times,” Frank said. “You still circle things?”

“I don’t get to do much editing these days.”

“Now that you’re a plutocrat. Buying off the rack at Altman’s.”

“What it says,” Simon said, pointing to the question, “is ‘what after Spain?’ You tell us you’re recruited there—you even tell us by whom, for a change.”

“He’s dead.”

“And then you go back home and it’s fuzzy until you join the OSS.”

“Well, it was fuzzy in real life. The Service knows how to play a long game. I kept thinking they were going to drop me. I’d meet with my control and I’d have nothing to tell him. But they hung on. Then Wild Bill fell into my lap—or I guess I fell into his—and we were off and running.”

“You don’t say how you fell into it.”

“You know how it happened. All Pa had to do was make a call. Which I didn’t think made anybody look good, so I left it out.”

“With everything else. Before Spain. Don’t you think a brief sketch—?”

“What, family history? The old Brahmin stock? Like something out of Marquand. You know I met him? During the war. He was at OWI, doing God knows what. I never got a thing out of him. I wonder what he thought later. Anyway, it doesn’t explain anything, all the Yankee stuff. This is My Secret Life. If we go with that title. That begins in Spain. You know what it felt like? Years you’re looking through a kaleidoscope, everything mixed up. And then one turn and all the pieces fall into place. Everything makes sense. The way things are. The way they should be. That’s where it began. Before that didn’t matter.”

“So one turn and you’re a Russian spy.”

“Spy. That’s somebody looking through peepholes. Like a house detective. I was an agent. Of the Party. The Service.” He looked over. “I still am. Is that so hard to understand?”

“You’d make it a lot easier if you told people who you were before, why everything clicked into place in Spain.”

Frank was quiet for a minute. “Maybe. But I can’t do it. Do that to him. It would kill him, being in the book. As far as he’s concerned, I’m not here. His son died during the war. Waving the Stars and Stripes. Anyway, he’s not part of the story, any of it. That starts with Spain. My secret life.”

Simon looked at him for a second, then turned the page. “Well, think about it.”

“Is that a way of saying ‘all right’ without saying ‘all right’?”

“It’s a way of saying ‘think about it.’ ”

“Stubborn.”

“Anyway, what do you mean, if we go with that? You having second thoughts about the title? What’s wrong with My Secret Life?”

“I don’t know. It sounds like one of those articles in Confidential. The love child I won’t acknowledge. The benders. You know. What do you think of The Third Department?”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s where I worked. The Third Department of the First Chief Directorate. In charge of intelligence operations against the West. It’s in the book. Don’t you remember?”

“My eyes probably slid right over it. So will the reader’s. Keep the love child.”

Frank smiled. “The siren call of the dollar.”

“We can call Chapter 2 ‘The Third Department.’ That’s where you begin working for them. During the fuzzy period.”

“But it was fuzzy. Do you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”

“Well, there we are in Spain. And you meet Paul on the road to Damascus—or Barcelona or wherever it was. The conversion. But we don’t tell anybody about it. The opposite. We don’t join the Party. We don’t go to meetings. We go to the other side. Except we’re still meeting someone on a park bench every once in a while. Was it a park bench, by the way?”

“It varied,” Frank said, enjoying this. “The seals at the zoo. Like that.”

“And what would we say? Nothing, you say now. Nothing until the war. Then there’s lots to say. But that’s a few years. When things were fuzzy. And the Service is happy to wait.”

Frank nodded. “They know how to do that. Be patient. It’s one of their strengths.”

“So you just gab about this and that. The state of the world. And watch the seals.”

“More or less.” He looked over. “Why? What do you think we talked about?”

Simon said nothing.

“You must have an idea or you wouldn’t have brought it up. So, what?”

Simon looked toward Boris, still reading the paper, then met Frank’s eyes.

“I think you were talking about Pa. His friends in the administration. Maybe what they were like. Maybe more if you happened to come across something. I think you were spying on him.”

For a minute there was no sound but the clock, Frank’s face ticking over with it, as if he were trying on responses, see which one would keep the mechanism going.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say,” he said finally, voice low.

“Is it true?”

“No. I never talked to my control about Pa. Why would we? He was out of government by that time anyway.” He paused. “We never talked about him.”

“I’m glad.”

“But you thought I did. Or might have. You really think I would do that?”

“I never thought you’d do what you did to the Latvians, but you did.” He held up his hand. “I know, they had it coming. I’m just saying I don’t know what you did. Except what’s in the book,” he said, touching the pages. “Which I assume is true, more or less?”

“More or less.”

“I don’t mind you covering your tracks. Everybody does that. But I don’t want to publish lies either. Be a mimeograph machine for the KGB. So I need to ask questions.”

“About Pa.”

“You’re in law school, then here and there in Washington, very junior. Pa knows Morgenthau, Hopkins even. Who else was there to talk about?”

“You really want to know? We talked about my friends. People we might bring along. They already had people to tell them about Morgenthau. I was talent spotting the future. Little acorns with promise. I doubt they got much out of it. But it kept me busy. And it kept me compromised. Reporting on my friends. So after a while the only friend you really have, the only one you haven’t—spied on—is your control. That’s the way it works. I’m not saying they were wrong. They played me. But I wanted to be played. We both got what we wanted. But I never talked about Pa. Or do you think this was worse?”

For a second Simon imagined himself on Frank’s shoulder, about to whisper the right thing in his ear. Whatever that was.

“I guess that would depend on what you said.”

“Not much,” Frank said easily. “Which means there’s not much to say now either. So fill in the blanks with me learning the ropes. How the meetings were arranged. Dead drops. The tricks of the trade. And then we’re in the OSS and now it matters, what I’m saying on the park bench. And we tell them. Beginning of story.”

Simon nodded, a tactical retreat. “So all that time they were just waiting— for something to happen to you?”

“And it did. I told you they know how to wait.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “And they knew something would. I was—well placed. It’s touching the faith they have in that. Got it from the English, I think. It worked that way there, so why not with us? Capitalists being all alike. And they weren’t far wrong, were they? One phone call.”

“Which they told you to make. Or have Pa make.”

Frank took a second, looking at him. “They didn’t tell me to make it. They suggested it would be very valuable if they had someone there. On the inside. So I took the hint.” He paused. “I asked him to make the call.”

“To plant a Soviet—”

“I think you’re making this worse than it was. Yes, I worked for the Soviets. No, he didn’t know. And neither, God knows, did Bill. But what harm did it do in the end? We were on the same side. We just didn’t like telling the Soviets what we were up to. So I did. And probably a good thing. They’d know they didn’t have to worry about us. They do worry, they’re suspicious, it’s their history. But everything was about the Germans. Not them. Not then, anyway.” He looked away, tapping ash off his cigarette. “So I asked him to make a call. He thought he was giving me a leg up. In my career. And he was. Just not the one he thought. I did a good job for Bill, you know.”

“I know.”

“So where was the harm? Look at Ray. Evan. Who made calls for them? They probably did more damage than I ever did. They thought it was still Friday night at the Porc. Fun and games.”

“They weren’t passing documents.”

“No,” Frank said, stubbing out the cigarette. “So where were we? What was the question?”

“How you felt asking Pa to do it. Knowing—”

“Was that the question? I don’t remember you asking that.”

Frank got up and went over to the window, looking out to the back courtyard, Stalin’s high-rise in the distance.

“You know, it’s good, you playing devil’s advocate. Good for the book, I mean. Push-pull. But it’s not always going to be what you want to hear. You want me to say I had mixed feelings—using Pa. Deceiving him. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t. Not for a minute. They needed someone inside. There was an old boy network ready to put me there. I used it. Not a qualm. I was fighting to keep a system alive. Something I believed in. I didn’t have time for— So I did it. There was a war on. Things were different later. But the OSS chapter? You want me to be sorry or—what? feel guilty? I didn’t.” He stopped, then turned to face Simon. “Not then. So let’s keep Francis Weeks Senior out of this, shall we? He wasn’t in it. Anyway, why complicate things? How many chapters like this do we have? All the Rough Rider stuff. I thought maybe we could use ‘Wild Bill’ as a chapter title. What do you think?”

Asking something else, an odd truce.

“Perfect,” Simon said with a slight nod.

“A vote of enthusiasm,” Frank said with a smile.

“No, it’s fine. Bill’s always good copy. You’re right about the chapter. Once we get you in, everything just sails along.” He looked up. “So let’s move on.”

“Do you want a break?”

“No, let’s get through the OSS anyway. See if we can finish this week.”

“Listen to you. You’ve just arrived and you’re halfway out the door.”

“I have a business to run. We’re publishing a few other books this year too.”

“Not like this,” Frank said, putting his hand on the manuscript.

“That’s what every author thinks.”

Frank dipped his head. “I’m just being greedy. Having you here. But we want to get it right, don’t we? Anyway, I thought you might want to see something of the place, as long as you’re here. How many times are you likely to come? I thought we could go up to Leningrad. St. Petersburg as was. Would that interest you?”

“What?” Simon said, surprised.

“A shame to leave without seeing the Hermitage. Of course we’d need to get permission, but that shouldn’t be too hard to arrange. There’s an overnight train. All the comforts. Better than a Pullman.”

Simon was staring at him now. Frank had turned away, not looking at him, his voice pitched somewhere else, to Boris, to whoever was listening in the walls. When he finally met Simon’s eyes, the question in them, he said, “Jo would like it, I know,” keeping his voice even, and Simon understood that for some reason he was meant to go along, play to the unseen galleries.

“Well, the Hermitage—” he said, neutral.

“After we finish. A kind of treat. Unless you really have to go back,” Frank said, eyes steady.

“Let’s see how we do. The Hermitage.” Being persuaded.

“Of course there’s lots to see in Moscow. All work and no play. After we finish this we’ll take a walk. It’s so nice out. We could have a picnic. What do you say, Boris?” he said, raising his voice, as if Boris had been out of range before.

“A walk is good. For the mind.”

“If Ludmilla were here, she’d make sandwiches. There’s some salami. But we can pick something up.”

“I can make,” Boris said.

“That’s okay.”

“Pickles?” Boris said, paying no attention.

Frank opened his hands, a conceding gesture.

They were another hour, then left by the far end of the courtyard, a passageway leading out to the Garden Ring.

“We’ll make a little circle,” Frank said, turning left.

Simon moved closer to him. “Leningrad?”

“Well, it’s an idea,” Frank said, dropping it.

Boris, carrying a string bag, walked with them and not with them, a few steps behind, a courtier’s distance. When they rounded a curve in the road, another Stalin skyscraper came into view, closer than the one they could see from the study window.

“Kudrinskaya,” Frank said. “That one’s apartments. Pilots.”

“Pilots?”

“Housing authority likes to bunch people together. I don’t know why. Maybe they think it gives them something to talk about in the elevator. Anyway, lots of air ministry people. American embassy’s just down from there, past the square. I suppose you’ll have to check in?” Another veiled glance, his voice pitched to Boris.

“At some point,” Simon said vaguely, waiting for a cue.

“We’ll have Boris fix you up with a lift. Right, Boris? But it’s just down there, if you want to walk. Ugliest building in Moscow. And that’s a hard contest to win.”

They were almost at the square when Frank pointed to a two-story house on their left. Faded pink plaster, a side entrance through a gate.

“Take a look. Chekhov’s house. Where he used to see his patients. There’s really nothing much left, but it’s his house, so at least they won’t tear it down. Put up something else.”

They turned down Malaya Nikitskaya and walked to the end of the block. Another house, this one pale blue, partly hidden by a high wall. “Beria’s house,” Frank said. “They say this is where he brought the little girls. Eight years old. Nine. Nobody said a word. You wonder if the neighbors heard anything.”

Boris said something to Frank in Russian.

“Boris doesn’t approve. Bringing you here. Raking up the past. So, on to better times. We’ll swing back this way,” he said, leading them down the side street. “But imagine. Chekhov, Beria. Just one block away. You wouldn’t see that anywhere else.”

“You wouldn’t have Beria anywhere else.”

“Yes, you would,” Frank said calmly. “Lots of variations on that theme. He just had a longer run than most of them. A monster. But he gave Stalin his bomb.”

“He had help.”

“Not from me, if that’s what you’re asking. The Service, yes. We gained a few years. A matter of time, that’s all, not science. But Stalin couldn’t wait. That’s all he could think about then. The bomb. When? We had to have it.”

“And now you do. Pointing right at us.”

“Well, it takes two, Jimbo. Somebody puts a gun to your head, you better put one to his.” He paused, glancing toward Boris. “Anyway, he got it. And that bought Beria a little time. And then, once Stalin was gone—” He let the thought complete itself. “Everything ends sooner or later. Even Beria.”

They were coming up to the park Simon had passed in the car, the long rectangular pool bordered by allées of linden trees.

“Patriarch’s Pond. There used to be more, three of them, I think. But now just this. Beautiful, isn’t it? I think it’s my favorite place in Moscow. I come here and sit—read, if the weather’s nice.”

“With Boris?”

“Oh, Boris isn’t always around. He’s just making sure of you. That you’re on the up-and-up.”

“As opposed to what?”

“I’ll be right back.”

He huddled for a minute with Boris, who moved off in the direction of the playground, still carrying the string bag with lunch.

“I said we’d meet him on the bench near old Krylov,” Frank said, indicating a big bronze statue.

“Who?”

“Children’s stories. A kind of Russian Aesop. What a lot you don’t know. He can keep an eye on us from there, so he’ll sit tight. And we can talk.”

“It’s like having a nanny.”

“Oh, don’t underestimate Boris. Political officer during the war. At the front. Pure steel. They say the troops were more afraid of them than the Nazis.”

“The bayonet behind you. Still hard to believe they’d do that. To their own people. While the war’s—”

“Nobody deserted. It was a different time.” He caught Simon’s look, but ignored it. “Come on. We don’t have long. Just a walk around the pond.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I wanted to talk to you about Jo. It embarrasses him, anything personal. So we have a little time. It’ll get better, once you’re familiar to him. Sometimes I go off, pick up the mail or something. As long as he knows where I am. Where I’m supposed to be. Play up the Moscow angle, by the way. That you want to see things. So you’ll have an excuse to be here and there. Different places.”

Simon looked at him, puzzled.

“The embassy, for instance. Now he knows you’re supposed to report there, so he won’t be suspicious when you go.”

“And when’s that? What’s going on?”

“Walk this way. So what did Pirie actually say?”

“What?”

“When he briefed you. We can talk now.”

“Frank—”

“He must have said something. An opportunity like this. A perfect chance to make a pitch.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honestly.”

Frank looked at him. “Jesus Christ, he’s dumber than I thought. Not even a trial balloon? So somebody else briefed you. Remember everything. Don’t write it down. Simon, I helped write that rule book. I know how it works. So what’s the offer?”

“The offer?”

“For me. The double cross. They’d have to take a run at it. How could they not? They finally have access to me. Right now. No filters. How can they not at least try?”

“I’m not with them.”

“You are as long as you’re here. So Pirie didn’t talk to you and whoever did had nothing to say to me, is that right?”

Simon nodded.

“Christ.”

“I’m not sure I’m following. Why would they ask? You’d refuse. What’s the point?”

“Or maybe he isn’t as dumb as I think,” Frank said, half to himself. “He doesn’t want to give me any leverage.” Abruptly he changed voices. “But it’s a little early for Sochi.”

Simon looked up. A woman was passing, a blonde wearing a tight skirt and high heels, the first Simon had seen, an unexpected erotic flash after all the sturdy sandals and shapeless sundresses. She smiled at them, then made a motion with her unlighted cigarette. Frank took out a match and lit it, saying something in Russian as she bent down to the flame. A quick jerk of her head. More Russian, then a kind of sneer before she moved off.

“What was that?”

“What you think.”

“In the middle of the day?”

“It’s known for it, the pond.”

Simon looked around. A few people lying on the sloping banks with their shirts off, or eating in the shade, an Impressionist leisure, not the people in posters with their sleeves rolled up, building dams.

“I thought there wasn’t any prostitution in the Soviet Union.”

“Or crime,” Frank said, distracted, thinking, then shaking his head. “No, he is that dumb. And I’m going to make him a hero. The high point of his career. Such as it is. The last thing he deserves. But sometimes you get lucky. Donald Fucking Pirie.”

“What high point?”

“Me.”

Simon stopped for a minute, trying to take this in. “You.”

“The ultimate catch. And he caught me. And didn’t even throw out a net. He’ll say he sent you to do it and you might as well go along. You’ll both look good. I’ll make you a hero too. You were the persuader.”

“What did I persuade you to do?” Simon said, watching him, fascinated.

Frank turned to him. “Defect.”

Simon stopped, rooted, things suddenly in slow motion around him.

“No, keep walking. Boris will notice. I know, you’re surprised. But we don’t have much time. I thought you’d be coming with an invitation, but never mind, I’ll just invite myself. I still have you. You’re the key.”

“Me?” Simon said, still trying to absorb this.

“You have a reason to be here. Boris has seen you work. That’s why I wanted him there. The perfect cover. I can’t contact anybody. I need to send a messenger. And they’ll believe you, that it’s a real offer.”

“What is?”

“To come back.”

“Come back,” Simon said, as if repeating it would make it real. “Nobody’s ever done that. Come back.”

Frank nodded. “So nobody here will be expecting it.”

“Come back,” Simon said again. “Just like that.”

“No, not just like that. You know what I mean by the Thirteenth Department?”

“Like the Third?”

“Except they’re in charge of retribution. To defectors. The minute I start this, I’m in the crosshairs. Then they track you down. And kill you. As a lesson to the others. That’s why we have to arrange a new identity. That has to be part of the deal.”

“What makes you think Pirie would do this?”

“You playing devil’s advocate again? I’m the biggest defector the Agency ever had. To get me back would be—bigger. Even if I didn’t know anything. But I do. I know everything. That’s part of what I do here. Train agents who are being sent to the States. How to act, what to say, what would an American do in a given situation. How to be like us.”

Simon looked at him, his stomach suddenly queasy.

“I know who’s on the ground there. Some of them anyway. And I know who’s here. The whole Service organizational chart. Personalities to be filled in at the debriefing. Maybe you don’t know what this is worth, but Pirie will. The minute you tell him.”

“I tell him?”

“Get word to him. There’s somebody at the embassy who can send a smoke signal to him, right? They must have given you a name.”

Simon just looked at him.

“Jimbo, it’s what I do. I know how this works.”

“And why would he believe you? After—”

“Well, that’s the point. He’d be suspicious. And careful. And he’d take his own sweet time. But we don’t have that kind of time. You’re only going to be here for—”

“Me?”

“I can’t do this without you. It’s got to be while you’re here. He may not believe me, but he’ll believe you. And just to hurry things up a little, I’m going to give him a—a little something down. Kind of a deposit.”

“What kind?” Simon said, suddenly not wanting to hear. The park, the sunny day, had become surreal, swirling slowly around him. The yellow pavilion. People eating ice cream. Maybe overhearing, maybe not a prostitute, the signs in Cyrillic, cipher letters, Frank about to run again, with Simon caught in his slipstream.

“A name. In Washington. To prove I’m for real. Of course, he can just take that and walk away, leave me here, but I’m betting he’ll want more. And there is more,” he said, as casually as putting a chip down on a table.

Simon stared at him. “A name. One of yours.”

“Well,” Frank said, unexpectedly thrown by this, embarrassed. “I don’t have much of a choice, I have to give them something.”

“So first you give the Service us. How many, by the way? Scribbling away for two years. Everybody in the Agency you ever took a piss with? And now you’re going to give us them. Your new people. Time now to cash them in too. All these years, whenever I thought about it, what you did, I’d think, well, but he believed in it. Like some religion. Like it is in the book. But it turns out—”

“I do believe in it,” Frank said quietly. “I believe it’s just, the system. And I believe it’s going to win. This doesn’t change that. But I’m almost done here. They’re going to retire me and what’s the difference when you’re retired?”

“So cut and run. And throw a bomb behind you on your way out. The way you did last time. I thought this was what you did everything for,” Simon said, spreading his hand to take in the park, Frank’s life.

“It is. But it’s a different time. Things are better now. We survived the war. And Stalin. Beria. We survived the Americans, all the loonies flying around with their bombs. We’re sending satellites into space. We’re catching up. One beat-up old agent switching sides isn’t going to bring the house crashing down. If it ever would have. Sometimes I wonder how much any of it mattered. At the time you think—but then you look back and it’s gain an inch here, an inch there, but the whole thing really just rolls along whether you’re there or not. If I hadn’t done any of it, would things be different?” He looked over. “Or maybe I’m just getting older. But I don’t think I’ll be undermining the future of Communism. Maybe give it a little bump in the road. The Service will recover. Of course, we don’t want to say that to Pirie. He thinks it all matters, he has to, that’s why he gets up every day. And now we can hand it to him on a platter, the club he’s been looking for. To beat the Service with.”

“And you’d give that to him.”

“I’d have to. None of this comes free. Immunity from prosecution. Actually, there was never any evidence against me, anything they could use, so that’s a moot point.”

“Other than turning up in Moscow.”

“But a new identity,” Frank said, not stopping. “That won’t be cheap. Expenses. The exfiltration.”

“The exfiltration,” Simon said, the word itself surreal.

“I can’t just book the next Aeroflot out. There have to be arrangements. Don’t worry, I’ve got it all worked out.”

“You.”

“You don’t think I’d leave it to Pirie, do you? Put my life in his hands.” He looked up. “This is going to be the tricky part. Getting out. You need a Houdini, somebody who knows how the locks work.”

“Like you,” Simon said, hearing the bravado in Frank’s voice, his next astonishing act.

“And you,” Frank said, looking at him. “I’d be putting myself in your hands.”

Even the air seemed to stop now, nothing moving at all.

“To get you out,” Simon said, so softly that it sounded only half-said.

“I’m very good at what I do, you know. You just take a message. That’s all. It’s no risk to you.” Looking him in the eye as he said it.

“And then what?” Simon said, still softly.

Frank shook his head. “First we put out the line. Then we take it one step at a time, in case—”

“In case it does go wrong. And somebody asks me. With the red light over the door. But no risk to me.”

“There won’t be. I’ve been planning it. It can work. Do you think I’d ask you if I thought—?”

He looked over Simon’s shoulder. The woman in high heels, circling back around the pond. She smiled at Frank, a tease, exaggerating her hip movements. The rest of the park seemed to come back to life with them, out of Frank’s vacuum, people looking up at the sun again, licking ice cream.

“What makes you think I’d do this?” Simon said, no longer in an echo chamber. “Any of it.”

Frank nodded, a question he’d been waiting for. “First you’d be doing something for your country. That always has a certain amount of appeal. Like I said, I don’t think it’ll matter very much in the scheme of things, but the Agency won’t think that. They’ll think they won the Cold War and you helped. Then there’s the book. With a brand-new last chapter. Which I promise to write. Remember when I left? How big a story that was? So think about me coming back. You do the numbers. If Keating counts that high. You’ll even be the hero of the piece, if you want to be. I’ll do it however you want. If I know the Agency, they’ll nickel-and-dime me on the pension, so I’ll need the royalties. And no sharing with Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga. Just my own account somewhere. Which I’ll help you set up.” He stopped, then put his hand on Simon’s arm. “Look, this is just talk. Why would you do it? I was hoping you’d do it for me.”

“For you.”

“It’s always been the two of us, hasn’t it? I couldn’t tell you—what I was doing. You know that. I thought it was for the best, all of it. I didn’t think things would end up this way, me walking around Patriarch’s Pond—where the hell was that anyway? But they did.” He looked up. “I don’t want to die here.”

“And what do you think it’ll be like there?”

“I know what it’ll be like. They keep me in a safe house somewhere near the Agency. And we debrief. They don’t trust me, they trust me, they don’t trust me. Months, longer. I’m not having dinner at Harvey’s, I’m not seeing anybody, I’m in jail. With guards, so nobody pops me. They hope. I hope. And when they’re finished squeezing the lemon, they send me somewhere as somebody else. Somewhere warm, by the way, would be nice. After here. And then I live there, wondering if anybody back at Langley screws up and slips where I am. Because then I’m Trotsky, waiting for the hatchet in my head. Wondering if anybody recognizes me when I go out to get the mail. Locking the door, making sure. And that’s my life. What’s left of it.”

Simon was quiet for a minute, slowing his steps, the end of the allée just ahead, Boris on a bench somewhere.

“Then why do it?” He looked around, people in the sun. “You’re better off here.”

“Maybe. But Jo isn’t.”

“Jo?”

“Why do it? I should have started there, I guess. So it makes sense to you. It’s killing her, this place. She’ll never get better here. Jesus Christ, a sanitarium in Sochi. Can you imagine what that’s like? What it would do to her? So why do it?” He looked directly at Simon. “Because I have to. You know us better than anybody. You were there. Before we were—what we are now. We got through so much—coming here, Richie, we even got through that, but now she’s coming apart and I’m just sitting here watching it happen. I can’t. She’s only here because she followed me. I have to do something. So why? The oldest reason in the book, isn’t it? It always comes down to something like this. They teach you that in the Service—look for the Achilles’ heel, the soft spot. So, mine. I don’t think the Service knows it. They’ve never tried to use it and they would, that’s what they do. Boris thinks I’m annoyed with her. He doesn’t see it’s eating me up, what’s happening. But you know her. How she used to be. And now look. You saw her at the National.” Her breath in his ear.

“Why not send her home? Without all the—?”

Frank shook his head quickly. “Even if State gave her a new passport, which they won’t, the Soviets would never let her leave. She’s my wife. She knows too much—even if she doesn’t. They think that way. They’d lose face. So they’d—deal with her.”

“Sochi.”

“Somewhere. A rest. And she’d never get well.” He glanced toward the playground. “There’s Boris. So it turns out we are talking about Jo. If he asks, say you’ll mention the clinic to her. But he won’t ask. He listens.” He looked at Simon. “Jimbo, I know this is a lot all at once. But you’re smart, you get things right away. You’ll be a messenger, that’s all. It’s me. And Jo. I have to get her out. I won’t always be here to—”

“What do you mean?”

A quick glance up, caught. “Don’t react. Boris will see. I’m sick.”

“Sick? What do you mean, sick?”

“Well, Dr. Ziolkowski—who has a gift for words—calls me a walking time bomb. Not very precise, but vivid.”

“Jesus, Frank.” He lowered his voice, just conversation. “What is it? Cancer?”

“My heart. Don’t worry, I’m not going to peg out on the way home. But if anything happens, she’ll be here on her own. It’s one thing, both of us here. But if she’s alone— So if I have to sing for Pirie, I sing. The deal is for two of us. Two.”

“Are you sure? The doctor—”

Frank nodded, then looked up. “But Pirie doesn’t know about this, understood? He’s a prick. He’d just as soon let me rot if he thinks I’m damaged goods. Might die on him.”

“Frank—”

“I know. Don’t,” he said, looking at Simon’s face. “I only told you so you’d see why—I need to do this.” He stopped, letting his voice linger between them for a second before it drifted away. “I know you. How you worry. But I’ll take you step by step. I know how to do this.”

“Houdini.”

“Nobody’ll believe it. That we pulled it off,” he said, his voice eager, another Frank scheme, Simon trailing after, his accomplice. “Right under their noses. Even Boris’s.” He nodded toward him and Boris got up, opening the string bag. “I’ll have your back. All the way,” Frank said, in a hurry now. “Go to the embassy. Today. Tell whoever it is you want to get a message directly to Pirie. They’ll use a secure line that’s routed through Vienna. And it is secure. Today.”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“I have to protect both of us now. But I can’t risk more than one day. Somebody’s bound to wonder. Tell Pirie you want a meeting. And tell him he’s right about Kelleher. Try an account at Potomac Trust under Goodman. Got that?”

“That’s the name. Kelleher,” Simon said, dismayed. Part of it now, one walk around the pond, Frank that sure of him.

Frank nodded. “That’s all you have to say. He’ll know. Then we wait.”

“I’ll have to tell them. About the secure line. Now that I know. If I don’t, I’ll be working for—your people. I won’t do that.”

Frank shrugged. “We’re not working for anybody now. Just us. But if it makes you feel better, fine. You’ll still need some way to get to the Agency, though. After tomorrow. Tell them to route a secure line through Stockholm. We don’t have anybody working the lines there right now.”

“And how would I know that?”

The sides of Frank’s mouth began to go up in a grin. “Don’t tell them anything. You like to play things close to the vest. Where you got your information. They’ll be grateful. People have gotten medals for less,” he said, almost jaunty. “Boris, still here? I thought you’d be off with the shlyukha. What’s the matter? Too expensive? She’s just your type. Blonde like that.”

“From a bottle,” Boris said. “A disgrace, in such a place. With children to see.” The family watchdog. Ready to send soldiers to a gulag for making a Stalin joke.

“Well, they won’t know what they’re looking at. Is that tea?” he said, pointing to a thermos.

“Tea only.”

“You see how he looks after me? No spiking the tea if you’re working. How’s the salami?” he said to Simon.

“Fine,” Simon said, taking a bite, wondering if he could do it too, slip into someone else, a quick-change artist, and then he was doing it, talking to Boris and munching on sandwiches as if nothing had been said on the walk, the secret there, his skin warm with it, but unseen. Every look now, every sentence a kind of lie. Without even saying yes, he had become Frank, being careful, hiding in plain sight.

It was Simon’s idea to ask Boris to walk him to the embassy, make it a KGB excursion. They left Frank at the pond and went out to the Garden Ring, curving down, not talking, Simon trying not to look over his shoulder, see a black car pulling up behind, the movie scene. And wouldn’t they be right? Not just an embassy visit, an act of espionage. Exposing an agent. A show trial, or just a quiet disappearance, Diana asking State to make inquiries. Don’t look back. His skin still warm, itchy. When they came to the pedestrian underpass, he felt he was crossing more than a street, Boris waiting behind, outside the range of the surveillance cameras.

The embassy was as ugly as Frank had promised, a custard pile with some graceless decorative brickwork, its roof bristling with antennas. Oddly enough, it reminded Simon of the Lubyanka, the same era and bureaucratic heft. There were Marine guards outside and a high gate blocking the driveway, which swooped around down in back. Not a building, a compound.

DiAngelis’s name worked, the indifferent clerk snapping to attention and immediately picking up the phone to call someone down, all the while staring with curiosity. Simon, still nervous, looked away, fixing instead on the framed picture of Kennedy behind the desk. In minutes, a man was coming toward them off the elevator.

“Weeks? Mike Novikov,” he said, presumably an immigrant son but as American as his crew cut. Simon thought of Boris, standing across the street, hair shorter but similar, another doubling effect, like the buildings.

“We’re on six,” Novikov said, pushing the elevator button. “Everything all right?”

“Fine. Just wanted to report in. Is the Vienna line open?” Breezy, confident, the way Frank would have played it.

Novikov nodded, a knowing military respect, Simon now a fellow cold warrior, DiAngelis’s man.

“Did you make contact? With your brother?”

Simon nodded. “We’ve already started. On the book. No problems.”

“Is he—? Excuse me. Just curious.”

“Is he what?”

“Still—active. We haven’t been able to get a bead on that. Whether he’s retired. He doesn’t go to the office.”

“Really?” Something Simon hadn’t known. “I think he keeps his hand in, though,” he said, covering. “Training agents, for one thing. He mentioned that. The ones going to the States. How to act.”

“Christ. We should have done something about him years ago.”

Simon looked over, startled.

“Sorry,” Novikov said, embarrassed.

“Not so easy in Moscow,” Simon said, letting it go.

“No. Not the way things are.”

Meaning what? The KGB presence or hands-off rules from Langley?

“Our new best friends,” Novikov said.

“And all ears,” Simon said, looking up. “We’ll need to send this in code. You have a—?” What was it called?

“All set up,” Novikov said, cutting him off. “This way.”

He led Simon past two desks crammed into a corridor-wide space, then into a windowless room.

“We can talk here. We sweep for bugs every other day, so it’s about as safe as you can get. You want to cable DiAngelis?”

“Pirie, actually. Eyes only. But I suppose that would have to go through DiAngelis anyway,” Simon said, guessing.

“From here, yes. I can set you up. Not much traffic today. I assume you want to send it yourself.”

“Please,” Simon said. “Pirie’s orders. Not my idea.”

“No, that’s right. If you learn anything at this station, it’s ‘be careful.’ Even in the building.” He looked round at the bunker-like room. “Except here. This way. I’ll just put in the routing codes for you, then leave you to it.”

“Thanks,” Simon said, following him into a small room with what looked like a jerry-built Teletype machine, its keyboard connected by wires to a big console behind. “By the way, have somebody check this line tomorrow. At the Vienna end. You might think about routing an alternative line through Stockholm.”

Novikov looked at him, suddenly conspiratorial. “This information good?”

Was it? He imagined Frank having puckish fun snarling the Agency’s communications, pulling connector plugs out of an old switchboard. What if none of it was true, another feint to confuse the enemy? Except they weren’t the enemy anymore, or wouldn’t be.

“Check it and see,” Simon said, in the part now. “Tomorrow. We’re all right today.”

“That’s pretty precise,” Novikov said, fishing.

“Or the next day. Keep checking.”

Novikov dipped his head, backing off, a kind of salute. “I’ll just set you up.”

And in minutes it was done, everything Frank had asked him to do, Kelleher’s name typed into the machine like a judge’s sentence. And why not? If Frank had the name, he was one of theirs, burrowing in. But Simon’s fingers stopped for a second anyway. Not just judge, executioner. One click. Now the bank account name, the evidence. A few more clicks. And Kelleher was gone, a game piece wiped off the board. Wondering if he’d given himself away or—

“All done?”

“That’ll do it. Thanks. I’d better run. I’m just supposed to be checking in with the visa section.”

“You have an exit date yet?” Agencyspeak.

“Not yet.”

“You don’t want to overstay the visa. That’s always trouble,” Novikov said, walking him to the elevator.

“Even when the KGB’s sponsoring you?”

“Officially you’re a guest of the Writers’ Union. KGB have a funny way of disappearing when you need them. Who me? So I’d keep the visa date. Be on the safe side. Here we are,” he said, opening the elevator door. “Thank you, by the way. For the information. Appreciate it.”

“One for our side,” Simon said, nodding a good-bye, then heading past the Marine guard to the broad street, where Boris waited, on the other side.