The Lost American

Chapter Twelve

Blair arrived at Dulles airport unshaven and crumpled. He didn’t enjoy flying and sleep would have been impossible anyway, so he was jetlagged, his head feeling as if it were stuffed with cotton wool. He went mechanically through the process of renting a car, blinking to concentrate when he reached the Beltway on his way into Washington; Muscovites drove faster than this – often dangerously so – but here there seemed so many more cars and Blair got his first reminder of how long he had been out of the country. He guessed there would be many more; like the reason for his being summoned home. He felt easier when he was able to leave the Beltway for the Memorial route. It took him directly by the CIA headquarters – openly signposted – and he stared in its direction, unable to see the familiar building through the screen of trees. He’d make contact, obviously. But not yet. For the moment the career for which he’d made so many sacrifices could be put on the back burner. Blair halted the slide, recognising the search for excuses and irritated at himself for the weakness. Getting Paul sorted out was the only consideration; the excuses and the who-and-what-was-to-blame recriminations could wait until later. And his commitment to the Agency would be pretty low on the list anyway.

He approached Washington looking for landmarks, the widening thread of the Potomac and by the bridge the topsy turvey canoe club building he always expected to fall down but which never did, the cathedral beyond, proudly grand, and far away, misted by the heat haze, the most familiar markers of all, the wedding cake dome of the Capitol and the exclamation mark of the Washington Memorial. He took the Key Bridge exit to get into Rosslyn, conscious at once of the change. It was really the road system, the huge roundabout directly in front of the Key Bridge leading across into Georgetown, but he got the impression that there where more buildings, too. There never seemed anything being newly built in Moscow.

Ruth was in jeans and a workshirt and without any make-up – actually with a smudge of dust against her nose – when she answered the door to him, frowning when she saw who it was. She looked down at herself in instant embarrassment and said, ‘I thought you’d call, from the airport.’

He should have done, Blair realised. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot: wasn’t thinking.’

They stood momentarily staring at each other, each unsure. Then she stepped back into the house and said, ‘Sorry. You’d better come in.’

Blair entered hesitantly, stopping in the hallway and there was another moment of uncertainty between them. Despite the disarrayed hair and dirt on her nose, Blair thought she was very pretty; it wouldn’t be right to tell her so. He’d had two hours to kill at Schipol, waiting for the Washington connection and spent it in the bar; he should have looked at the airport shops instead and got her a gift. The boys, too, for Christ’s sake! Why the hell hadn’t he thought of doing so!

Ruth broke the moment by going into the living room and he followed. She said, ‘I’m glad you’re here at this time, though. With the boys at school, I mean. We can talk.’

‘Yes,’ said Blair. Everything was extremely neat and tidy. But then Ruth had always been neat and tidy. Ann was always cleaning but… Blair closed his mind against the comparison. That wasn’t what he was here for. He said, unnecessarily polite, ‘Can I sit down?’

‘Sorry. Of course,’ she said.

They each had an eagerness to apologise, thought Blair, and as he did so Ruth said on cue, ‘Sorry. What about some coffee? It must have been a long flight.’

‘Coffee would be good,’ he accepted. As she started to leave the room he said, ‘Can I help?’ and wished he hadn’t, as soon as he spoke.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’

Alone, he looked around the room again. There were fresh flowers in two vases, one on a low table in the middle of the room and another more elaborate display on a stand near the main window. On the mantle was a picture of the two boys that he hadn’t seen before. It was stiffly posed and he guessed it was a school photograph: John was wearing a brace, he saw, remembering Ann’s remark. Ruth returned with the coffee prepared on a cloth-covered tray, in a pot, with the cups and the cream.

‘You haven’t started taking sugar yet, have you?’ she said, pouring.

‘No,’ he said. She had a good memory. Then again, maybe not. They had been married eighteen years.

‘Sorry I had to do it,’ said Ruth, apologising still. ‘Get you back, I mean. It seemed the only thing to do.’ Now the immediate shock of the police interviews and the court appearance was passing she was unsure whether she shouldn’t have tried to handle it herself.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Blair at once. ‘Of course you should have got me back. How bad it is?’

She shrugged, an indication of helplessness, and said, ‘I don’t know, not really. He’s closed right up, after the initial shock. Frightened, I guess.’

‘What happened?’ prompted Blair gently. ‘Tell me what happened from the beginning.’

Ruth hesitated, arranging the story in her mind and Blair saw that while she was in the kitchen she’d cleaned the smudge off her nose. She said simply, ‘He got caught, trying to rob a pharmacy. He and three others, all from the same class. After pills, they said later. Any sort of pills, it didn’t matter. Cocaine, too, if it was there. They didn’t know if it was carried or not but they were trying to find it Intended to set themselves up…’

‘Set themselves up?’ queried Blair.

‘As dealers, in the school.’

‘Jesus!’ said Blair.

Ruth was more comfortable now, still embarrassed at his finding her in workclothes but better than she had been; after getting the house ready she’d wanted to shower and change and be prepared – absolutely – before he arrived. She dismissed the obvious tiredness as the effect of the non-stop flight; he didn’t seem to have changed much. Not at all, in fact. Had it really been eighteen months, since their last meeting? It didn’t seem that long. She went on, ‘Like I said, they were shocked at being arrested by the police…’ She smiled for no reason and said, ‘The cop didn’t know what he was confronting, apparently; actually had his gun out and was threatening to shoot…’

‘And if they’d run he probably would have done,’ said Blair, sick at the thought.

‘Anyway,’ said Ruth. ‘That was when it all came out, when they were scared. Seems they had been doing a lot of stealing, stuff from stores that they could sell on, to get money. Forcing coinboxes on newstands. They even robbed an old man of his welfare money, but Paul wasn’t involved that time, just the others…’ She hesitated and said, ‘I suppose we should get some consolation out of that although I don’t know if I do.’

‘All for drugs?’

Ruth nodded at the question. ‘Marijuana,’ she said. ‘Seems he’s been smoking it for a long time. Now I’ve gone back through it, checked it out with the teachers, it is the most likely reason for the poor grades. Pills, too. And there’s been some cocaine, although I don’t think a lot.’

‘What the hell sort of school is this!’ demanded Blair, needing to be angry at something.

Ruth, who had had longer to recover, said calmly, ‘Your average American school, no worse and no better than any other. The problem is so bad that it runs a drug programme and has a full-time counsellor. He’s a nice guy. Erickson. He wants to meet you.’

‘Sure,’ said Blair automatically, not yet wanting to move on. ‘You said Paul’s been smoking for a long time?’

‘One of the court orders was urinalysis,’ said the woman. ‘He had a high count. I had our own doctor check him out, too. There was some irritation of the nasal membrane, because of the cocaine – or maybe the crap they cut it with, before selling it – but not a lot…’ She stopped and then disclosing her abrupt new education she said, ‘You’ve got to do it for years, apparently, for it to cause real damage. Then it can actually rot your nose away.’

‘They were going to set themselves up as dealers?’ persisted the man, wanting to understand everything.

Ruth swallowed, arriving at the worst part. ‘Paul told the police he’d decided it was dumb to go on as they were. That dealing was where the money was.’

‘ Paul decided.’

Ruth nodded, at the demand for qualification. ‘He was the leader, Eddie. Actually set it up: checked out the pharmacy for the busy and slack times…’ Ruth stopped, lower lip trapped between her teeth, trying to stop herself crying. Of all the resolutions, this was the strongest, the one she’d repeated and repeated to herself, not wanting him to know how lost she felt. The threat passed, although her voice was still unsteady. She said, ‘He’d even planned the getaway, checked the times of the trains on the Metro and worked it out that they could make a connection and be halfway across Washington before the police had time to get there.’

‘Holy shit!’ said Blair, disgusted. ‘What’s happened, since?’

‘There was the initial juvenile court appearance and the remand, for tests and reports. There’s a court-appointed counsellor who wants to see you also, a man called Kemp. And Erickson, from the school, like I told you.’

‘What’s Paul say about it all?’

‘Nothing,’ said the woman. ‘Everything I’ve told you I got from the police.’

‘Didn’t you ask him?’ shouted Blair, immediately regretting it, holding up his hands as if he were physically trying to pull back the anger in his voice. ‘Sorry,’ he said hurriedly, ‘I’m really very sorry.’

Ruth’s face had tightened, at the eruption, but now it relaxed. There was another resolution, almost as important as not crying, which involved not losing her temper or making any accusations. Maybe it was a fantasy but it was a nice fantasy to hope that Eddie’s return might involve more than the immediate problem. ‘Of course I asked him,’ she said. ‘Not at first, not that first night. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. But when I did he wouldn’t talk about it. Just said it was something that had happened.’

‘Not even sorry!’

‘Not even sorry,’ she said.

‘Christ, what a mess,’ said Blair. He smiled sadly at her. ‘I’m sorry, Ruth. That you had to handle it by yourself, I mean.’ Apologies after apologies after apologies, he thought.

‘Now I haven’t, not any longer, have I?’ she said, the gratitude obvious. ‘Now you’re back. Thanks for coming.’

‘Was it likely I wouldn’t?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It might have been difficult. There might have been something important happening.’

There was something important happening in Moscow, thought Blair. It pleased him to realise that the leadership uncertainty and the part he was supposed to have analysing it had never occurred to him as a greater priority than returning here. ‘At the moment I don’t think there’s anything more important than this,’ said Blair. Aware of her quick, hopeful smile, he said, ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to work out OK.’

‘I hope so,’ she said. In so many ways, she thought, allowing herself the continued fantasy.

Blair rubbed his hand over his unshaven face, making a scratching sound. ‘I need to get cleaned up,’ he said. ‘I came straight here, from the airport.’

‘You know where the bathroom is,’ she said.

‘You sure that’s OK?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I didn’t want to make any awkward situations. I was thinking of the Marriott down by the bridge.’ Blair was trying to be considerate but didn’t think he was succeeding very well.

Don’t lose your temper, thought Ruth; whatever you do don’t lose your temper and let him see how upset you are. She said, ‘Wouldn’t that be kind of unneccessary?’

‘You sure it won’t be awkward?’

‘I would have thought it was rather essential, considering why you came all the way back,’ she said, coming as near as she intended to criticism. ‘There’s plenty of room: you know that.’

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You’ve hardly got to thank me, Eddie.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ he insisted.

‘How’s Ann?’ asked the woman, this part rehearsed.

‘Fine,’ said Blair. ‘You still friendly with…’ His voice trailed, at his inability to remember the name.

‘Charlie,’ supplied Ruth. ‘Charlie Rogers.’ She paused, wondering whether to make the point. Deciding to, she said, ‘That’s what it is. Friendship.’

‘Oh,’ said Blair. Conscious of the difficulty between them he said, ‘You’re looking good, Ruth.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You too.’

‘Apart from this – if there can be anything apart from this – how have you been keeping?’ he said.

‘OK.’

‘How was Thanksgiving, with your folks?’

‘Paul played up,’ she said. ‘Now I probably know why: we stayed over a few days and he wouldn’t have been able to get anything.’

‘Jesus!’ said Blair again, exasperated: there was only going to be one conversation between them, however hard they tried. ‘Everything is going to work out OK,’ he said, another repetition. ‘You’ll see.’

‘I wish I could be sure,’ said Ruth. For a moment her control slipped and before she could stop herself she said, ‘I wish I could be sure of so many things.’

Ann decided that the problem was a personal one. She considered that she was only peripherally involved and it was certainly none of Brinkman’s business, friendly though they were, and so she said simply that Blair had returned to Washington for a sudden family reason.

‘Hope everything’s all right,’ he said. It was feasible but unlikely, Brinkman decided. It was obviously a recall to Langley, for something involving the leadership changes. But what? It would have to be something pretty dramatic, to take him all the way back to America. He was surprised, in passing, that they hadn’t evolved a better excuse, abrupt though the departure had obviously been.

‘I’m sure it will be,’ she said. ‘But it’s meant an upset.’

‘What?’

Ann smiled, pleased with her secret. ‘I know it’s your birthday and I got tickets for the new Bolshoi production and I planned it as a surprise, for the three of us to go.’

‘What a nice thought,’ said Brinkman.

‘Now Eddie won’t be able to make it, of course,’ she said. ‘But there’s no point in wasting all the tickets, is there?’

‘None at all,’ agreed Brinkman. ‘We’ll make a party out of it.’

Ann wondered what Betty Harrison’s reaction would be, when she found out. It would be better if she didn’t.

The rioting that occurred in Emba and in Poltava and Donetsk – which by bitter irony had been quickly stopped by rushing the first arrival of the Canadian and American wheat to both provinces – was published in one of the widest circulating zamizdat in Moscow. Sokol flooded the city, rounding up the known dissidents and seizing as many copies as he could but from his informants he knew he didn’t get them all and that the stories were around the capital. The summons was very quick, coming from Panov.

‘Precisely what we didn’t want,’ declared the KGB chairman, without any preliminaries. ‘Speculation abroad is irrelevant. And inevitable. But the Politburo declared against the stories circulating internally. You knew that.’

Sokol knew many things. He knew that the conversation was being recorded, for Panov’s defence if any purge began. But worst of all Sokol knew that if it had reached Politburo level then he was failing in the very objective towards which he had set out, bringing himself to the notice of the rulers in a favourable light. Conscious of the recording, he said, ‘We’ve quelled the unrest in Kazakhstan. And Ukraine.’

‘I’m not interested for the moment in two of the republics. I’m interested in the famine being known and talked about here, in Moscow. And the fact that it is in two separate republics being known as well. That was another assurance you gave me: that you’d contained the spread, from one to another.’

‘All the best-known dissidents are under detention.’

‘Which the Western press, which feeds off them, will report and because they already know thanks to the American announcement of the famine will interpret correctly as the connection. This is emerging into a full scale crisis. And I don’t mean the crisis of people starving. I mean the crisis here, within this building.’

‘The wheat and grain shipments are on stream now. I believe I can contain it.’

‘If you don’t,’ said Panov, in open threat, ‘others will.’