The Lost American

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Blair started moving when he saw them hit – knowing they were dead – wanting to get out on to the road before the Russians cordoned the airport, because it shouldn’t have happened like this and he was shaking, from the shock of it and he knew he couldn’t withstand or pass any examination. He kept just within the limit to avoid attracting any attention: about a mile towards Moscow a lot of police and military vehicles hurtled past in the opposite direction, sirens blaring, but no one tried to stop him. It was another fives miles before he felt he was safe. The shaking was still as bad. He intended going to the embassy anyway, but it was essential now, for him to recover.

He drove directly to Chaykovskovo, sure that at this time of night the embassy would be deserted apart from the skeleton night staff; certainly Art Blakey and King wouldn’t be there. He wanted the CIA Residency within the embassy to himself. Its innermost room was steel-lined, for security, and it was there he went, sitting at the desk and physically holding himself, trying to quieten the reaction. He stared around the room, willing himself back to normality by the normality of accustomed surroundings. There were duplicate cipher machines for direct contact with Langley if necessary and a radio receiver and transmitter against the far wall. Adjoining that was the special equipment Blair had created and assembled, with his electronic expertise. He’d start to dismantle it tomorrow, thought the American, as he recovered; begin packing everything, in fact. They’d said he could pull out early, so why not? Reminded he called the duty clerk to ensure that the diplomatic pouch hadn’t gone and said he had a letter to enclose in it and could they wait. The clerk said there was plenty of time; there was some sort of flap out at the airport and all the planes were delayed anyway. Writing to Paul would help, Blair decided; something else that was normal. He always typed his letters, because his handwriting was so bad. He apologised to Paul for not replying earlier to his letters but said he had been extremely busy. The Moscow trip didn’t look like coming off now because unexpectedly he was being reassigned but that was great because at the moment it looked like Washington which meant they could see each other all the time. When he and John got to know Ann – and Blair underlined his conviction they were going to like her – they could stay over weekends and things like that. He was sorry about the Moscow vacation but thinking about it they might have found it dull, after a while. Ann didn’t like it all that much: in fact very little. To make up for Moscow, why didn’t they go away for a vacation in America? As a kid his own father had taken him on horseback and by canoe through a lot of the Grand Canyon. Why didn’t they do that, camping and stuff? Something mat hadn’t been available when he was a kid were the special flights out of Las Vegas, flying right along the Canyon. They could do that, if they preferred it. Why didn’t he talk it through with John and let him know as soon as he got back, which wouldn’t be long now? He sent his love to John and to Ruth, read it through and sealed it. As a test, to ensure he had recovered, he took it along to the duty clerk. The man repeated there was no hurry: latest news was that the airport was closed. From the man’s demeanour towards him, Blair was sure he’d passed his own test.

The door leading into the inner, top security room was steel-lined, of course, and fitted with a designation window into which coloured strips could be operated from the inside, indicating the degree of security applicable to whatever was going on inside. Crimson was absolute security, excluding even the ambassador. Blair locked the door – using all the devices – and although the embassy was empty put up the crimson code. He sat for a long time at the desk, staring at the electrical equipment he created but not really aware of the apparatus, deep in thought. Gradually, recovering further, he stirred, reaching back into the cabinet and taking out a burn-bag. He erected it carefully upon its tripod and with more care prepared the phosporus compound which operated upon contact with air and incinerated whatever was put inside. Satisfied, he went to the safe for which – for the last few hours – only he had the combination; they’d change it, after he left, giving Blakey a new one. There were a lot of tapes because as an internal precaution Blair installed nine listening devices in his apartment. Intention – at the time – was to have detected any Soviet entry, when they might have been away from the flat.

They were in those ridiculous matroyshka dolls sets that Ann seemed to like so much and in the light socket by the bed and again in the living room and every telephone was monitored, not in the instrument itself – which the Russians would have discovered attempting the inevitable bug – but back along the connecting wire. All were voice and noise activated, so the installation was automatic, feeding directly into the electronic equipment that Blair put into the office and which he intended to dismantle the following day.

The tapes were numbered and dated, because Blair was a ruthlessly methodical man. Tape one was recorded while he was in America the first time, when he’d been recalled for Paul’s initial problem. Blair picked it up and was moving towards the bag when he hesitated, changing his mind. Instead he slotted it into the machine and depressed the button, listening to the first dinner party that Ann and Brinkman had in the apartment. ‘ Christ, it hasn’t been bloody easy! ’ he heard Ann say. Then their meeting and their love – did she really think of him as all John Wayne and howdy? – ‘ Anywhere but here! If there were an embassy at the North Pole I’d happily swop it for here .’ Blair ran the tape on, sadly knowing the stop points. It was Brinkman’s voice. ‘ It’s allowed, for special friends.’ Blair snatched the tape from the machine and dropped it into the burn bag. There was a faint skein of black smoke and a brief acrid smell. The next tape was from the telephone, where the installation was better and the quality clearer.

‘ What are you doing? ’

‘ Nothing much. Nothing at all, in fact. Just sitting here. Thinking.’

‘ What about? ’

‘ I would have thought that was obvious.’

‘ Sorry. Stupid question.’

There’d been a lot of talk about regret upon the tape, Blair thought; he wondered if it were genuine.

‘ Sorry? ’

‘ Of course I’m sorry! Aren’t you? ’

‘ I don’t think so.’

‘ You haven’t got so much to be sorry about.’

‘ I don‘t think I would be, even if I had.’

The quality was slightly lower on the second section, because he’d been in the apartment then. The living room first: elsewhere later. Blair winced, in physical pain, at the bedroom sounds. And at the conversation.

‘ Don’t you think I’m a whore? ’

‘ What! ’

‘ A whore! ’

‘ Of course I don’t think you’re a whore.’

‘ What then? ’

‘ I think you’re lonely. I think you’re very unhappy. I think you’re looking for something you haven’t got: maybe can’t have. I think you’re very beautiful. And I think you are a fantastic lover.’

And more: hatefully – except that he couldn’t hate, only love – more.

‘ No, it isn’t a casual fuck. And it isn’t Romeo and Juliet, either. What’s wrong with you?’ and then quality improved, from her end at least, because it was the telephone again.

‘ It was Eddie. He’s coming home.’

Blair realised just how upset Ann had been, during that homecoming argument, when he’d announced he was staying on – ‘ You know damned well how I hate it here. How I’ve always hated it.’ But then, he’d lost his temper, as well. ‘ I don’t expect you to stay.’ Thank God she had: he loved her so much. So very much.

Brinkman had been right about warning her of talking on an open line, when she’d called the man at the embassy and told him of their row. And Ann had been so honest. ‘ Oh darling, I’m so unsure of everything.’

Suddenly impatient, Blair stopped reminding himself of the tapes, of the whispered telephone conversations and the bedroom sounds, abruptly discarding one after another into the destruct bag, stopping at one he knew better than all the others, the one he’d replayed over and over again.

‘ Do you love me? ’ Brinkman’s voice.

‘ I don’t know.’ Ann.

‘ Do you love me? ’ Brinkman.

‘ Yes, I suppose so.’ Ann again.

‘ What about Eddie? ’ Brinkman: awful, fucking Brinkman.

‘ That’s it! I love him, too.’

Blair had heard it so often that he didn’t think he could cry now but he did, not breaking down into sobs but feeling the tears move irritatingly down his face.

‘ You can’t love two people at the same time.’ The insistent Brinkman.

‘ Who says? Where are the rules that everyone obeys that say you can’t love two people? ’ A desperate Ann.

‘ You’re going to have to make a choice.’ Cocky, pushing fucking Brinkman.

‘ I don’t want to. I’m frightened.’ Poor, lovely, confused Ann.

Because everything was so carefully annotated, it was something other than a tape next in line for destruction. Blair gazed down at a piece of paper that the sad, nervous, knowingly sacrificed Orlov slipped to him in the Krasnaya Park, with Harriet Johnson’s telephone extension at the United Nations. It had been an impromptu, improperly thought-out decision openly to leave the copy like he had on the apartment desk because by then – what else – he’d known he had to destroy Brinkman. But still wasn’t sure how to hook him. Brinkman must have been desperate: certainly the questions seemed that way, a desperation not to have realised the impossibility of his ever having made a mistake like leaving around the most important part of an emerging intelligence operation. But then, Brinkman had other distractions. What a bastard the man had been!

Blair threw Orlov’s pitiful note into the bag and it was destroyed so swiftly that there wasn’t a wisp of smoke.

The American stretched, aware that he had been sitting at the desk for almost two hours and that it was getting late. Did he need any more reminders? No more. Now the need was to forget. He loved Ann so much; so very much. More than she would ever know.

There was only one tape left, the one that had been made that afternoon. Blair made himself do it, needing to hear of her uncertainty; needing to know of her love.

‘ Don’t pressure me all the time! ’

‘ You know what you want. So do it! ’

‘ Why did you ever have to come to Moscow? If you hadn’t come here everything would have been all right ’

You know that isn’t true.’

‘ I’ll decide.’

‘ When? And don’t say soon; don’t try to run away again.’

‘ A week. I’ll decide in a week. I promise.’

Now she wouldn’t have to decide – to be undecided – thought Blair, taking the final tape from the machine and putting it into the bag. The equipment was extremely efficient and there was only a miniscule amount of detritus. He shook it into the special container and sealed it, along with the remaining, exhausted phosphorus, for collection and disposal the following morning.

Blair rose, stretching again and looked at the telephone, unsure whether to call Ann to tell her he was on his way. No reason any more, he realised: no longer any need for discretion.

He collected his solitary car from the pound and eased out on to the near deserted night streets of Moscow. Where, he wondered, were all the cars with all the observers who had made themselves so obvious, so obvious that he would have aborted the mission anyway if he hadn’t decided to handle it another way.

The recall to Washington was a bonus, something he hadn’t anticipated. But everything else had gone exactly as planned. Until the absolute end, that is. It had been easy, from the intercepted conversations and Brinkman’s hurried return to England to know that the man had correctly interpreted the extension and imagined he could win. Blair wondered if the surveillance team would still be in place in New York and whether they had seen the British make contact. Had it been Brinkman, personally? The man had been away long enough; and was ambitious enough.

Blair guessed Orlov had gained the agricultural delegation he’d read about in Pravda and Brinkman confirmed it by the sudden departure so easily set out upon the tape. The airport message had been impromptu – like leaving the United Nations number in his apartment – once he positively identified Orlov arriving. But it had worked, like everything else. Except the shooting. Blair had not expected that: wanted it. Blair had imagined an arrest: a trial and an imprisonment, until an exchange deal had been worked out, like exchange deals were always worked out. Long enough for Ann to forget. But not that the man should get killed. Panic, thought Blair. It was always fatal to panic.

At the apartment block he put his car in the reserved space and climbed slowly to their apartment. Outside Blair hesitated, remembering the recall to Washington. He’d tell her tomorrow, he determined. Not tonight; tonight was going to be a shock. She’d need something tomorrow: poor Ann. Poor lovely, adorable Ann.

Blair hesitated a few moments longer, preparing himself and finally went in. Ann was sitting in the main room, close to the matroyshka set he hated. Something he shouldn’t forget to clear and pack tomorrow.

‘Darling,’ said Blair, solemn-voiced. ‘I’ve got the most terrible news about Jeremy Brinkman.’