The Bearpit

31

John Willick felt like he had that special day, when he’d been a kid of fourteen. His father, who had been first mate on an oil tanker and away from home for months at a time, had returned from sea and taken him to the amusement park at Coney Island and told him he could go on as many rides as he liked; do what he liked. Willick didn’t think he’d missed one, not a single one. And he’d eaten ice cream as well and candied apples and cotton candy and then he’d been sick, violently, the man standing behind him and holding him around the waist, to stop him falling over. It had been wonderful.

Willick was sure he was not going to be sick this time, although the chance seemed there from the moment he seated himself in the first-class section of the Air France 747, immediately to be handed champagne and then foie gras and after that a white wine and a red wine he’d never heard of, to go with the seafood and the beef prepared in a way he’d never heard of, either. Wonderful, like that day at Coney Island. Only better. He was grown up now.

He celebrated during the flight but was careful not to get drunk, aware despite his euphoria that he’d escaped disaster (would he really have been so sexually abused, in prison?) by inches or by minutes and not wanting to endanger that escape by a mistake until he was completely safe, in Moscow. He still had a slight headache when the plane landed at Paris, at breakfast time because of the time change, and felt gritty-eyed and stubble-chinned. From Charles de Gaulle airport he took a taxi into the centre of Paris, chose a cafe at random actually on the Champs Elysees that he’d seen in all the movies and on television and sat over coffee that was too bitter, watching the city wake up around him. Free! he thought: I’m free. Free of Eleanor and free of horses that don’t win and stocks that don’t rise and free of pay-or-else letters and most important of all free of fear. He knew – was absolutely certain – that Moscow was going to be terrific. A new start, with the slate wiped clean and his being treated properly, like he should be treated, with respect. No one had ever treated him properly, with respect. Not Eleanor or those bastards in the CIA. Never. Served them right, all of them. Bastards. Bitches and bastards. Good, to be free.

Willick felt a twitch of apprehension when he came to pay but the waiter, who spoke English, accepted the American money and thanked him politely for a three-dollar tip, which was twice what it should have been, and Willick set off for the Soviet embassy buoyed by the gratitude. Being treated properly, he thought; with respect.

He had to ask twice for directions to the street address Oleg had given him in the Washington bar (could it really have only been last night, less than twenty-four hours?) and when he located it at last Willick’s uncertainty worsened at the sight of the uniformed gendarmes on duty around the embassy, with a police truck that looked like a shed on wheels obviously drawn up in a side street.

The American loitered on the far side of the avenue, watching the arrivals and departures, realizing with relief that there was no entry challenge from the French policemen. Stomach in turmoil, wishing now he had not eaten the seafood and the beef in that rich sauce on the aircraft, Willick forced himself to cross the road and walk as confidently as he could past the guards and into the compound, ears ringing for the demand to stop, which never came. Wet-palmed, he handed the letter that Oleg had given him to the unsmiling clerk at the vestibule desk, praying there was a lavatory nearby that he could use. Damn the seafood; shellfish had never agreed with him.

The letter was dispatched with a guard, the response was instantaneous, and Willick’s nervousness ebbed away just as quickly. Being treated properly, just like he knew he’d be. Respectfully.

Sergei Kapalet, who never identified himself, strode arm outstretched from somewhere at the rear of the building, retaining Willick’s hand to guide him back beyond the entrance. Willick expected an office but instead was led into a kind of apartment, with couches and easy chairs and even fresh flowers in a vase. There was not just a lavatory for Willick’s immediate need but a shower and a complete toilet kit, for him to shave, and a robe he was able to wear while his suit was pressed and his shirt laundered. In his excellent English Kapalet maintained a constant and relaxing stream of small talk, inquiring about the flight and wondering about the delay in Willick’s expected arrival at the embassy (there is nothing like the first petit dejeuner on the Champs Elysees, he agreed) and promising the American he’d chosen an excellent restaurant for lunch.

The idea of leaving the security of the embassy surprised Willick. Kapalet laughed at the doubt and said: ‘Why not?’ and Willick smiled back and agreed: ‘Why not?’ He was free, after all. Still difficult to adjust.

They ate at the Taillevent, on the Rue Lamenais, Willick deferring completely to the Russian’s obvious familiarity and expertise around a French menu and wine list. Willick could not remember ever having eaten or drunk anything that came remotely close to what Kapalet ordered. Just twenty-four hours earlier, for that nerve-jangled lunch in the CIA cafeteria, there’d been meat loaf and coffee, he remembered, disgusted. Not something to remember; something to forget. Like so much else. America – his life there – was over, Willick recognized. It was his future that was important now, the thing to think about: his wonderful, free, rewarding future.

His mind on that, Willick said: ‘When am I to go to Moscow?’

‘There is an Aeroflot flight tonight. Seven o’clock,’ said Kapalet.

‘Yes,’ accepted Willick. It was a ridiculous reaction – he was tired, he told himself – but there was the vaguest feeling of regret. It would have been nice to have stayed in Paris for a day or two. Not that he had any doubt about Moscow: of course he hadn’t. Just liked to have seen a bit more of Paris – eaten in a few more restaurants like this – that’s all.

‘Moscow are anxious for you to get there,’ said Kapalet.

‘I am regarded as important, then?’ said Willick, wanting to hear the words actually spoken.

‘Very important,’ assured the Russian.

After lunch, because Willick requested it, Kapalet took him on a motor-car tour of the Paris sights, to the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, and to get to Notre Dame they drove the complete length of the Champs Elysees and around the Tuileries Gardens, and once again Willick started to think how good it would be to stay a few days longer, but refused to finish the reflection. This wasn’t a vacation, for Christ’s sake!

Kapalet concluded the sightseeing early, refusing to risk any rush-hour traffic delay, and led him directly to what looked like a closed Aeroflot counter. At once a plainclothes official appeared.

‘He will escort you through immigration: see that everything is as it should be on the plane,’ promised Kapalet.

‘Thank you, for what you’ve done,’ said the American.

‘Thank you, for what you are going to do,’ replied Kapalet.

The Aeroflot man stayed to one side and slightly apart while Willick went through French immigration but once that was achieved – without difficulty – the man closely escorted him directly through the embarkation lounge and on to the aircraft, ahead of anyone else. Willick was seated in the front, in a curtained-off section separating him from the other passengers. At once a stewardess offered him champagne, which Willick, feeling he was getting accustomed to the life, accepted.

The meal was not as good as it had been the previous evening but his treatment was. The greeting stewardess appeared to be exclusively assigned to him and halfway through the journey the pilot came back to invite him on to the flight deck. Willick went, although he was not particularly interested, unable to see anything in the darkness except for an occasional straggle of lights. But the view – or lack of it – was not what mattered. What mattered was the indication of his importance: Willick liked that, very much indeed.

And it continued, when the plane landed. Willick was led off once more ahead of anyone else to a waiting limousine drawn up close to the aircraft, without any hindering formalities. The driver opened the door for him and Willick began to enter but then stopped abruptly, momentarily startled by the figure of Vladislav Andreevich Belov already waiting in the rear seat.

‘It’s good to see you in Moscow,’ greeted the director of the American division of the First Chief Directorate.

Willick got in beside the man and said: ‘I’m glad to be here.’

The vehicle moved off immediately, around an airport perimeter road to pick up a multi-laned highway along which it began to move at a speed which surprised Willick, accustomed to the rigidly enforced limits of the United States. Sixty, maybe seventy miles an hour, he guessed; the first obvious difference, between his old and new life. Good, like everything else was good.

‘You’ll be tired?’ anticipated Belov.

‘I am,’ agreed Willick. He’d dozed on the Air France flight and again on this final leg but it had to be almost forty-eight hours since he’d slept in a proper bed.

‘Accommodation is already prepared for you,’ promised Belov. ‘We won’t talk about anything tonight.’

‘Has there been any announcement from Washington?’

‘No,’ said Belov.

Willick felt oddly disappointed. ‘I thought there would have been, by now.’

‘It’s still only early afternoon, in Washington,’ reminded the Russian. ‘You’ll only have been absent from your desk for a few hours.’ The disclosure the Soviets intended was calculated to catch the main NBC, ABC and CBS TV broadcasts. There were still precisely three hours to go and Belov was anxious against the Americans revealing it first: a confirmation was going to have far less public impact than Moscow being first with the news.

‘Everything seems to have happened so fast,’ said Willick. ‘It’s still difficult to think in terms of hours, which is all it’s been. Impossible, in fact.’

‘It will seem real, soon enough.’

Willick was conscious of moving through streets which vaguely reminded him of Washington, expansive although matchingly low-rise buildings positioned either side of even more expansive but similarly matching highways. The only difference seemed to be in their lack of bustle and the corresponding absence of noise. Willick wondered what he was listening for and then realized it was a fire or police siren. Another immediate difference, between old and new: neither a cultural shock, so far. The street in which they stopped was deserted and Willick’s comparison now was not with Washington but with Paris because the entrance to the building was through huge, pavement-abutting gates into an inner courtyard off which led the main entry door. Although he was not sure, it seemed to be an apartment complex. The ground-floor area was unidentified and, obediently following Belov, Willick ascended to an upper level and went through a secondary entry door into a suite that literally made him gasp. His immediate impression, coming through the courtyard, was that it was a prerevolutionary building and everything about the apartment confirmed it. The furniture was gilded and tapesty-upholstered, the walls were covered in flocked wallpaper, there were reflecting chandeliers – two in the main room and others in the two bedrooms – and the floor-to-ceiling windows were draped in heavy, tasselled silk curtains. The flowers were not in vases but bulge-bellied bowls and on a circular, claw-footed table in the main room there was a frosted ice bucket containing yet more champagne and alongside it a silver bowl, iced again, of beluga caviar and a side dish of black and white bread.

Belov continued the conducted tour, into the chandeliered master bedroom where the curtaining design carried on with the bed canopied in matching material and off which led a marbled bathroom that Willick guessed to be roughly the size of the main living room of his never-returned-to Rosslyn apartment. The shower stall was separate from the bath and there was a bidet as well as a toilet, in an enclosed stall. White towels fountained from differently sized wall holders and everywhere there was the smell of some flower-like fragrance.

The dining area was as lavishly furnished but a comparatively small alcove, compared to the remainder of the apartment and into Willick’s mind came the question as Belov answered it.

‘There is no kitchen on this level,’ said the Russian. ‘On the ground level are the people who will look after you. The kitchens are there. Whatever you want, they can provide. Just lift the telephone and ask. Whatever.’

‘I understand,’ said Willick, overwhelmed.

‘You will be comfortable here?’

‘Oh yes,’ assured Willick hurriedly. ‘Very comfortable indeed.’ He’d hoped to be feted but never like this. If this weren’t the former home of a Grand Duke it was something pretty close. What was close to a Grand Duke? Maybe just an ordinary Duke. He wished there had been identifiable ancestral portraits on the walls from which he could have tried to work out whose home it had once been.

‘Get some rest,’ urged Belov. There’s a great deal to be done in a very short time.’

‘What?’ asked the American at once.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Belov. ‘Everything can wait until tomorrow, when you’re rested.’

Willick walked with the Russian to the exit and turned immediately inside it as the man left, staring into the apartment with his back pressed against the door, trying to recapture the emotion of his earlier entry, a junkie trying to repeat the high of his first fix. Not precisely the same, but close. Incredible. Not good enough: not expressive enough. Spectacularly incredible: that didn’t sound right, either, grammatically or in any other way. Why try to find words for it? He guessed his value was being assessed for the years he had spent upon the CIA’s Soviet analysis desk, years from which he was aware of the divide – the Grand Canyon or Mississippi Delta? – between the haves and the have-nots of the Soviet Union. Never, in his most speculative assessment, had he considered anything like this. This was

… His mind blocked, unable to cope. Wonderful was the word which danced in his head, like a child’s toy on the end of an elastic string. Inadequate, like every other superlative, but it would have to do. Absolutely wonderful.

He was sagging from fatigue but like a child again, unwilling to leave the best birthday party it’s ever known, he spooned some of the red eggs upon some black bread, although he wasn’t hungry, and tugged open the champagne, although he was not thirsty nor did he want to drink. Glass in one hand, spilling caviar in the other, Willick went to the window, gazing through the misted gauze curtains at the darkened, hushed and deserted street beyond. Who would his neighbours be, he wondered. Doubtless get to know them, in the way one got to know one’s neighbours. Hadn’t happened in Rosslyn, though. Not his fault. Eleanor’s fault. Everything was Eleanor’s fault: stand-offish, snooty bitch. Different this time. Wouldn’t rush it – no need to rush or be in a hurry – but respond properly when the invitations came, accept theirs and respond to theirs, after the proper length of time. Wouldn’t be able to say what he did, of course. Hadn’t been able to in Washington, either. I work for the government: the customary reply, so customary that everyone knew he worked for the CIA. Get guidance about that. Plenty of time and he didn’t want to offend, through ignorance. Would he be awarded a car? Certain to be, if he were allocated accommodation like this. And a driver? Almost certain again. Have to drive himself sometimes, though. Enjoy that. Especially at the speed at which the driver had come in from the airport. Seventy miles an hour at least: maybe eighty.

Willick looked at his watch, blinking to focus, trying to work out the difference between Washington and Moscow, and realized he had not altered the time from his departure from Dulles Airport. He frowned, surprised at the oversight. Five, he saw. They’d be worried now. Checking with the section head to see if he’d called in sick, panic rising from his name being on the list of internal transfers, then the hurried swoop at Rosslyn. To find nothing: empty fridge, empty bottles, empty bed, empty everything. Lots of bills, though. Who’d be responsible for those now? The Agency? Or Eleanor? Supreme but fitting irony if Eleanor were judged responsible for all the shit he’d left behind and ordered by some court to clear it up. He belched and had to swallow, quickly: have to be careful against being sick. Where had that been? Coney Island, he remembered. Long time ago. Didn’t live anywhere near there any more. Lived here. Had champagne and caviar. Didn’t want any more though, not right now. Tired. Wanted to sleep.

When the KGB attendant entered the suite the following morning he found Willick lying in his underwear across the bed, which had not been opened, half a glass of champagne and the remainder of his caviar and bread on a side table, upon which the light still burned. The debris was cleared away and the clothes were collected to be valeted and Willick was rolled, grunting, between the covers for two more hours’ sleep before being properly roused. He took the proferred robe but refused any breakfast, his stomach still loose from the excesses of the previous day. Pain was banded around his head and a shower didn’t help.

Belov arrived carrying a briefcase, smiling broadly, and said with immediate briskness: ‘And today we work.’ The smile, like the briskness, was forced. They’d succeeded in making the announcement of Willick’s defection and from the overnight Washington embassy playbacks he knew all three national television networks had led their main newscast with it. It had also been the major item on subsidiary programmes throughout the nation, and in newspapers and on radio occupied major segments after the CIA confirmation that the man was missing. So now – today – should have been the start of his being acknowledged the architect of one of the most brilliant KGB coups ever. And would have been, but for the bastard Kazin.

‘What?’ asked Willick.

‘Your defection has been made public,’ disclosed Belov, without saying how.

Willick frowned at the word: until this moment he had not thought of what he’d done as defecting. He said: ‘When?’

‘Last night.’

‘Has a lot been made of it?’

‘Lead item throughout the media.’

He’d be famous, thought Willick. He said: ‘You didn’t tell me what you meant, by saying I had to work.’

‘You’re going to give a press conference,’ announced Belov. ‘The Ministry has been inundated with press inquiries. We’ve said you’ll be made available this afternoon.’

‘I don’t want to give a press conference!’ protested Willick. He’d shouted and he had not meant to. But why did it always happen to him? Why, when things looked good, did it always have to crumble? He’d be attacked, he knew: sneered at and called a traitor.

‘We want you to,’ said Belov with quiet, contrasting insistence.

‘No!’ said Willick. It was a plea more than an outright refusal. ‘I won’t be any good at it; won’t know what to say.’ He’d be like some exhibit, a freak at a funfair. Like Coney Island.

Belov patted the briefcase beside him and said: ‘We’ll prepare everything, you and I. So you’ll know the answers to give.’

‘How, before we know the questions?’

‘Everything will be on our terms,’ said Belov. ‘You’ll make a statement…’ He patted the briefcase again. ‘That’s here, all ready. There will be people on the platform with you during the questioning. They’ll help you, before you have to answer.’

‘Will I be on television again in America?’

‘Of course you will,’ said Belov. That’s the whole object, you stupid fool, the Russian thought.

Eleanor might see him: realize how important he was. Willick said: ‘No one will be allowed to attack me? Criticize me?’

‘We will control everything,’ repeated Belov patiently.

‘I’m still not sure I can do it,’ said Willick. What if he broke down halfway through; couldn’t think of anything to say and made an idiot of himself while the cameras were running?

‘A doctor is coming,’ said Belov, conscious of the other man’s nervousness. ‘He’ll give you something.’

‘A shot?’ Willick did not like injections.

‘Pills.’

He could do it then, Willick decided. Pop a couple of pills, just to settle his stomach: appear on television right across America, show everybody just how important he was. He said: ‘All right. I think it would be OK if I had some pills.’

‘Of course it would,’ encouraged Belov. He took the prepared statement from the briefcase and said: ‘You don’t even have to learn it: just familiarize yourself. You can read it from the platform.’

It was shorter than Willick had expected, just two sheets, double spaced. There was an insistence that the CIA was an organization involved in illegality against every nation in the world, even its allies, and the assertion that it was working actively in several of those nations to undermine and subvert democratically elected governments. The document claimed Willick had become sickened by his growing awareness as a CIA analyst at how the Agency ignored its own country’s laws and the restraints of Congress, and that his coming to the Soviet Union was as a protest against their pervasive control. The last paragraph read: ‘I know – because I have seen and handled the evidence practically every day of my working life – that America is controlled by a government within a government, a government about which the country I love is not aware and which remains in power despite any supposed election. Just as I know, within the Agency, there are others who feel as I do. That I am not, nor will be, the last to try to expose the Agency for the evil that it is.’

‘This isn’t what I think,’ said Willick weakly.

‘Would it sound better if you said you betrayed your country for money?’ demanded Belov brutally. ‘That you didn’t give a damn about anything, apart from how much you got paid?’

Willick winced at the abrupt change. ‘But I don’t think it’s true. It isn’t true.’

‘That is the statement you will make,’ ordered Belov. ‘And although there is no need to learn it all you must memorize the last two lines and not forget, under any circumstance, to say them.’

‘But it sounds…’ Willick began and then stopped, nervous of offending the other man. ‘… strange,’ he picked up. ‘Artificial.’

‘How it sounds is no concern of yours,’ said Belov dismissively. ‘Learn it.’

The two men sat opposite each other for another hour until Belov was satisfied that Willick was familiar enough with the statement to utter it as if the views were his own and not as a recitation prepared by someone else. His valeted clothes were returned just before a lunch of cold, unidentified meats and boiled cabbage and potatoes. Belov refused Willick either booze or wine, reminding the American he was going to be prescribed a drug and that he needed to retain a clear head.

The doctor arrived unannounced as they were finishing the meal. He gave Willick a cursory examination and then tapped out three orange tablets from a sweet-shop array in the case he carried with him. He watched while Willick took them and said something in Russian to Belov.

To the American Belov said: ‘He says you are actually going to enjoy it.’

Belov led the way from the suite to the waiting car of the previous night. The streets were definitely busier but there seemed to be a reserved central lane along which they travelled again at a very high speed. A lot of the buildings were squatly monolithic, like Washington; at one junction, where they had to slow, Willick looked to his left and thought he saw the walled Kremlin and the oriental tips of St Basil’s Cathedral, with the vast square in front. The drug began to work, the sensation at first unsettling but very quickly not disturbing at all. Willick was absolutely conscious of where he was and what he was going to do and what he had to say – large tracts of the statement came easily to mind – but there was none of the hollow-stomached fear he knew so well. He actually felt confident: eager, even. He was important, admired.

They entered the quadrangle of a huge, square building through gates that opened and closed immediately, and at once dipped into a long, darkened tunnel, from which they emerged into an inner courtyard. Willick followed Belov through a small door beyond which waited four men who were identified without name as the people who would help him through the press conference.

‘Aren’t you going to be with me?’ Willick asked Belov.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ said the Russian.

The journalists were already assembled when they moved on to the stage. The moment Willick appeared the television lights burst on and there were flashes from still cameras, and Willick found it difficult to see beyond the glare, to establish how many people there were wanting to interview him. From the noise, it seemed a lot.

A thin bespectacled man whom he’d met at the entrance unnecessarily introduced Willick (‘a brave American’) and announced he had a statement to make. Willick cleared his throat, looking directly out to where he believed the television cameras were placed, and delivered the prepared speech perfectly, consulting the sheet occasionally but more frequently staring directly out at the journalists. The effect of the pills strangely seemed to make it possible for him to hear himself, as he talked: he knew he sounded calm and forceful. He enunciated the sentences upon which Belov had been most insistent with his eyes unblinkingly out into the room.

There was an immediate babble of questions when Willick stopped. The thin man held up his hands, quieting the uproar, pointing to individuals whom the American still had difficulty in isolating.

‘How long have you been a spy?’ was the question and unprompted the Russian alongside cupped his hand over the microphone and leaned sideways to Willick.

‘It is not a sudden decision for me to come to the Soviet Union,’ recited Willick, grateful for the prompt. ‘It is a process that has taken some time.’

‘That’s not an answer,’ protested the questioner but the Russian was already selecting someone else.

‘Have you told the Soviets of your work within the CIA?’

‘I have already outlined in my statement how I regard the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency,’ replied Willick, guided again. The pills made him feel fantastic: he wondered if it would be possible to get some more.

‘Haven’t you endangered the lives of fellow Americans by what you have done?’

‘The Central Intelligence Agency endangers the lives of fellow Americans’ was the prepared reply.

‘Do you regard yourself as a traitor?’

‘I regard myself as someone driven by despair, at what I know, forced to speak out.’ Willick thought that sounded good, if a little melodramatic.

‘How did you get here?’

‘Openly, by aeroplane.’ Willick hadn’t needed help that time.

‘Did your recent divorce have anything to do with your decision to defect?’

Willick supposed they would have delved into his background but the question surprised him. ‘Nothing whatsoever,’ he said. Who would Eleanor get her alimony from now!

‘Do you have any involvement with anyone here, in Moscow?’

‘No.’ Another question he found easy.

‘Were you blackmailed into defecting?’

The thin man came sideways but Willick was confident enough to reply by himself. ‘Certainly not,’ he said.

‘What evidence do you have – can you give us – about the claims you’ve made about the CIA?’

Willick listened attentively to the whispered advice and said: ‘That is a demand that should be made by the American people to the CIA. And admitted by the CIA.’

‘What did you mean by the remark about others in the Agency feeling like you… that you will not be the last to expose the evils of the CIA?’

The assistance was immediate and Willick said: ‘I do not feel able to expand any further upon that remark. I think it speaks for itself.’

Willick was searching the blur of faces, enjoying himself like the doctor had promised, but the thin man rose abruptly, cupping his hand beneath the American’s elbow to bring him up as well, and led him away to a cacophony of protests.

‘I’m prepared to go on,’ protested Willick.

‘We’re not,’ said the man.

The American television networks only showed edited highlights, of course, but using the State Department as a front the Crisis Committee obtained complete transcripts from CBS and NBC and from their own wire services they got a full transcript from Associated Press.

‘We’ve got a wholesale fucking disaster on our hands,’ judged Harry Myers.

It was an assessment confirmed within two days, when KGB-supplied names of Central Intelligence Agency personnel whom Willick had identified were published in left-wing newspapers and magazines in Spain, France and West Germany.

In Bonn the deputy head of the station was assassinated by a group claiming to be the Red Army faction.

Petr Levin felt physically limited in his frustration, as if he were enclosed in some sort of straitjacket. He wanted so badly to let Natalia know she had not been abandoned in Moscow. And that it would not be long now before he was with her. And it wouldn’t be long. He’d made the checks carefully over several days and knew that having dropped him off at school the CIA driver did not hang around Litchfield but returned to the house. Which meant he was unescorted for six hours: six whole hours, to get to New York! They’d never even miss him, until it was too late. Petr knew he’d been equally clever discovering the necessary railway route, disputing it with a girl called Janie who thought he was interested in her until to prove an apparent argument she brought him the timetable of the New Haven Line which actually set out the stations. Not quite sure which one yet. Waterbury, maybe. Or Naugatuck. Then straight south and right into Grand Central. He would be able to walk to the United Nations in minutes.

Petr grimaced up through his bedroom window at the noise of the patrolling helicopter, catching a faraway sight of one of the armed patrols. Was there really a Soviet assassination search going on for his father, like they all said? They seemed to be taking it seriously enough. But then they seemed permanently to take themselves seriously. What would he say, if the Russians at the United Nations asked him where his father was? Tell them, he thought at once. He was a traitor, wasn’t he? His father had deserted Natalia, so he couldn’t love her, despite all the shit that he did. Couldn’t love any of them. Deserved all that was coming to him. Even to be killed.

The boy returned to his letter, bored with the emptiness of it. He scribbled a few more lines, describing the widow’s walk he could see from the schoolroom window and then recounted, because he thought it was funny, that the locals called the rock that was everywhere not granite, but ledge, and signed off as he always did that he hoped to see her soon, hoping she would read into the last line what he really meant it to convey.

And it would be soon, he told himself again, in familiar litany. Very soon now.