The Red Fox

7

He spoke deliberately, with the patient condescension of a professional coping with a layman. "Mr. Thome," he said, "have you ever seen someone who's killed himself with a shotgun?"

I am moving in a dream. I float, suspended in the fiery sunlight. Sweat burns on my skin, my eyes sting, and when I emerge from the forest onto a road, dust cakes against my lips. Beyond, the woods open up, and now I start running again. He must have come here, I think, he must have come here. The trees are larger, the sunlight falling in long shafts between them. Finally I see a tumbled-down shack. That's where he is. He must be inside. And so I run faster. And then, glistening—

"Yes," I said. "I have."

Katadotis, a lieutenant of detectives in the Detroit police force, raised his eyebrows. Avoiding embarrassing questions, I quickly added, "It was a hunting accident, Lieutenant. Not very pleasant. So I know what you're talking about, and I appreciate your concern for Miss Brightman. I just want you to understand that I never met Brightman and it's stretching things to describe me as a friend. Accepting that, I'd be happy to identify his body."

He hesitated, convenience and duty struggling together in his mind, and I glanced at my watch. It was now twenty past two. Early that morning, I'd flown from Halifax to Toronto, and then May and I had come on to Windsor, the small Canadian city across the border from Detroit. For two hours now, we'd been shuffled from office to office in the Beaubien Street headquarters of the Detroit police, waiting, answering questions, filling in forms, waiting again. To begin with, May had stood up to it well, but finally she'd broken down. No tears, no hysterics: she simply couldn't take any more and had lapsed into a sort of blank listlessness. A policewoman had now taken her off and a doctor was supposed to see her. As for myself, I was naturally distressed for her, but I was also feeling considerable frustration and resentment — mainly at my own impotence. When May had first called me in Charlottesville, I hadn't thought there'd be anything to do; then, in Halifax, I thought I really was doing something. And now, no matter what I did, it didn't make any difference.

Wearily, I watched Katadotis' face. He was about fifty, somewhat old for his rank: a patrolman who'd made it onto the detective squad at the very last moment. His fingers, short and stubby, seemed uncomfortable among the papers on his desk, and his three-piece suit was a shade too tight. As he shrugged, finally making up his mind, his shirt collar pressed into the flesh of his neck.

"I don't think it makes much difference, Mr. Thorne. I wouldn't want to sound crude, but he took both barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun right in the face, so there's not much left to identify. I don't see that we need trouble Miss Brightman. All I need is someone to go through the motions and sign my form."

"All right. I can do that."

"There's no doubt, you see. It's him… and it's suicide."

Yes. He was right on both scores. There weren't any doubts — none in their minds at least, and by this time I was even ready to set mine aside. What I'd discovered in Halifax was moot, relevant only to the motivation of an act whose details themselves were indisputable. The Savage-Stevens shotgun that had killed Harry Brightman had been purchased at a Grosse Pointe sporting-goods store with his Visa card. There was no doubt about his signature on the form, and no doubt too about the note he had left. Written in his own hand, it had been addressed to May. You know how much I love you, but I can't go on. For me, this really is easier. Your loving father, Harry. He had left this, neatly folded, on the dashboard of the car, and must then have maneuvered himself and the long gun into a practical posture of self-annihilation — the gun braced against the door on the driver's side, his body half reclining on the passenger seat. Finally, overcoming the difficulty faced by all shotgun suicides (Hemingway used his toes, I believe; my father, a stick), he had jabbed a tightly rolled copy of the Detroit News against the gun's trigger. Death — obliteration — must have been instantaneous.

Taking a breath, I asked, "Will there be an inquest?"

"That'd be routine, Mr. Thorne."

"What about May? Would she have to attend?"

"You understand, that wouldn't be for me to decide. I'd guess they'd want her to, but probably they'd be satisfied with a deposition." He shrugged. "She's Canadian, remember. The M.E. can issue a subpoena, but we can't enforce it."

I nodded.

He cleared his throat. "Of course, there'll be one or two other formalities as well."

"Such as?"

"Well, there's the matter of Mr. Brightman's remains, to begin with. Pending the inquest, we hang on to them, but once he's done we release them."

"How long would that be?"

"That'd be hard to say. I just wouldn't want her making arrangements — setting a date — till she's all clear with us."

Arrangements. For a second, I didn't understand what he was talking about. But of course he meant the funeral; and of course I'd have to support May through it.

"Another point, Mr. Thorne, just so there's no misunderstanding. We only release Mr. Brightman's remains here in Detroit, so she'll have to get them over the line on her own. I know there's a certain procedure to go through, but you'd want to talk to Canadian customs."

I closed my eyes: I could just imagine the bureaucratic niceties involved in transporting a corpse across an international boundary. But I nodded. "I'll look after it, Lieutenant." This promise was a penance: an apology to May, and Brightman's shade, for my uncharitable thoughts — and for not having found him before he died. "Is there anything else?"

Katadotis shuffled papers on his desk, his eyes screwing into a frown and his lips making small, compressive movements as if he was trying to determine some taste. At length, he selected a form and peered at it, holding it a little away from himself: he needed glasses but was too proud to wear them. He said, "That's about everything, except for the car."

"What about the car?"

"According to this, they're done with it. We could release it right now and you could take it straight back with you."

"Lieutenant, I sincerely doubt that Miss Brightman wants to return to Toronto in that particular vehicle."

His frown was full of understanding. "I guess not. I was just thinking that it'd save you a trip."

Brightman, it had turned out, had killed himself in the front seat of his Mark VII Jaguar saloon — a model, if I remembered correctly, that was about as large and conspicuous as the Queen Mary. In a way, the car was now a mystery all on its own. How could May have forgotten about it? The police had found one car, a Buick, in the garage of Brightman's house, but May had never mentioned the Jaguar. She claimed he never drove it and garaged it miles from his home — it had just slipped her mind. Now I cursed the thing under my breath. "Couldn't one of your men drive it back?"

"We wouldn't want to take that responsibility, Mr. Thorne. It would go against policy." Then he brightened. "But supposing you did want to take it back, I'd probably be able to detail a policewoman to go with Miss Brightman. That is, if a doctor would sign she couldn't travel alone."

Or she could hire someone in Toronto to come and fetch it… except I knew I wouldn't let her; in the end, I'd get it myself. I sighed. "Perhaps I should discuss it with her."

He drew the telephone toward him, his huge hand almost swallowing up the receiver. He dialed very deliberately, his stubby fingers carrying each numeral through to the stop, then releasing it with great care. He made three calls: the last of these — a source of satisfaction rather than embarrassment— determined that May was sitting right outside his door. We rose. His office was merely a cubicle within a larger partition, its walls formed from varnished wood and frosted glass like the principal's office in an old-fashioned high school. Six desks took up most of the space. At one of them, feet up, arms spread wide, a detective was reading a newspaper, while a uniformed patrolman scribbled away at another. I crossed the room. There was a wooden bench in a corner for visitors and May was waiting there. Her face was terribly drawn. She was wearing an ancient navy blue suit, and this, combined with her long hair — like a pretense of youth that has failed — made her look all the more haggard and old. I sat down beside her. On the far side of the wall, someone laughed heartily. In the distance, a phone began ringing. Then stopped. I took her hand and whispered, "How are you doing?"

She managed a smile. "Better. I let him give me something. I'm sorry. All of a sudden…"

"That's okay. Just take it easy. We're almost finished, but there are still one or two details. I'm going to have to identify your father's body."

She looked at me, then glanced at Katadotis, who was pretending to be busy on the far side of the room. "You can't," she whispered. "You never met him."

"Don't worry, they understand. We've worked it all out."

Her look faltered, and she turned away. "I don't know, Robert. Dear God, I should at least—"

"It will be better like this, believe me." I hesitated. "But we have to decide what to do about the car."

She closed her eyes now: I was afraid she might begin crying again. "I feel so sick about that. If only I'd told them…" I held her hand. There wasn't much I could say. If she'd remembered the car, the police might have found him. And if only I'd called out to my father — just once — he might have stopped. Yes. That was true. But it's also true that if people want to kill themselves, they'll find a way… I was suddenly very tired. I leaned back until my head rested against the partition. It trembled slightly as someone came in. This was another detective, black, carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee. A phone began ringing in another room. Out in the hall, someone was whistling. I caught Katadotis giving me a look, but then he glanced away. For him, I thought, this scene was routine, and all our terrible emotions were as familiar as the highway signs on the road he took home every night. A feeling of unreality passed over me. I thought about May. Why hadn't she remembered the car? And the question I'd asked last night in Halifax came back again. How much of this had she known from the very beginning? But none of that made any difference now — because this was the end. Besides, we were all liars here. We were all acting parts. May was the Grieving Daughter, I was the Concerned Friend, Katadotis was the Dutiful Bureaucrat. But what we actually felt probably had little to do with Harry Brightman. I wondered if May wasn't feeling relief; at least the suspense was finally over. Maybe she even felt vindicated: everyone had doubted her, but now all her fears had proved true. As for myself, Brightman had almost passed out of my mind in the past twelve hours — if he had any emotional reality at all, it was only because of the peculiar correspondence his death had with my father's. And Katadotis, behind his concern, only wanted to be rid of us as fast as possible.

Beside me, May cleared her throat, but her voice was still rough. "What about the car?" she whispered.

"We have to get it back to Toronto. They'll release it now if we'll take it away. I could drive it back to your place and they'd send a policewoman with you on the plane."

She thought for a moment, then nodded. "All right… but I don't want anyone with me. You drive the car, but I'll go by myself."

"You shouldn't. Not alone."

"I'm all right now. I'll go over to Windsor and take the train. I'd like that, I think. I'd have time to pull myself together." She touched my hand. "But you're sure you don't mind, Robert? You've done so much already, I feel badly…"

This appeal — given what I'd been thinking — only sharpened my pangs of conscience. In fact, I wasn't at all sure that she should be traveling alone, and I now imagined catastrophe piling upon catastrophe, with May wandering around empty train stations overcome by hysterics. On the other hand, it was clear to me that I was going to end up dealing with the car one way or the other and I preferred doing so now. The whole business was over, I told myself, I might as well get it over with.

I levered myself up and crossed the room to Katadotis. "I'll take the car," I told him, "but she wants to go back alone."

His eyes flickered over my shoulder, then turned glassy. "She probably knows best, Mr. Thorne."

"Yes. But get a car to take her across the border."

"No problem there."

He went into his office. I helped May on with her coat, and when Katadotis returned we all went outside. November was here; there was a wintry chill in the air and the sunshine was brittle as glass. In silence, feeling a little awkward, we stood together inside the carved stone entrance of the headquarters building and stared out at the street. Then a scout car — that's what they call them in Detroit — pulled up at the curb and Katadotis motioned us into the wind. May took my arm as we went down the steps, leaning on me so hard that I had to stiffen myself. She was no mystery now… she was an exhausted, middle-aged woman whose father was dying over and over and over again — but she still couldn't believe it. I said, "Listen, are you sure you're going to be all right?"

She kissed me lightly on the cheek. "Bless you, Robert. Please don't worry."

"I'll probably be back tonight, but late."

She nodded, then smiled almost sheepishly. "I don't know what to say, Robert. If you hadn't been here I don't know how I would have got through this."

"Forget it. I'll see you tonight."

She gave me another quick kiss, then nodded at Katadotis and got into the car. Almost solemnly, Katadotis and I watched the car disappear, but as soon as it did I could feel his mood shift. Now, man to man, we could get down to business.

And what a business it was.

"If you'll just follow me, Mr. Thorne, we can walk to the morgue."

We headed down Beaubien. I hadn't been in Detroit for years, but the place seemed even more desolate than I remembered. The streets were deserted. The buildings around us were like the ruins of some earlier, greater civilization, long since overwhelmed. Only by lifting your eyes above the cheap aluminum storefronts and street-level squalor could you see the remains of past glories: skyscrapers from the twenties and thirties, many of them stone, their facades elegantly carved, their proportions supremely confident. Now most of their windows were boarded up and behind the grimy glass of others I read faded, despairing signs advertising bargain-basement rents. I felt depression creep over me — from this town; from this errand. We turned a corner, onto Lafayette. The morgue was across from the Water Board, behind Sam's Cut Rate Drugs. Katadotis signed me in and I followed him down a hall and through some doors to a long, half-lit, white-tiled room where the temperature was always 38 degrees Fahrenheit— just as it is in morgues all over the world. The banks of stainless-steel crypts, behind meat-locker doors, lined the walls. Waiting for Katadotis to scrounge up some official, I started to count them, remembering that night in Brightman's study when I'd counted his pictures. Yes — there was the true reason for my depression: I'd never discovered their secret, and Brightman, occupying one of the 186 slabs before me, had rendered all my questions irrelevant. Except, it turned out, he wasn't there at all. Katadotis came bustling back with a frown on his face. "There's been a screw-up, Mr. Thorne. They've still got him downstairs."

He led me outside, to an elevator. Descending a floor, we stepped into a large, low basement room. Fluorescent lights gave off a wan blue haze and the tiles were a dirty-brown color. Every sound seemed to echo in the chill air. Four steel tables, like a line of perspective, were spaced through the room, with three men grouped around the one farthest away. I could hear a low murmur: "Kidney, 156 grams… spleen, 333…"

Katadotis turned grim. "Sorry, Mr. Thome. No reason you should have to go through any of this."

I could have told him I'd done the obligatory stint as a police reporter, but that would have been bravado. He marched off. I grew conscious of a wet, washed smell in the air and realized I wasn't trying too hard to breathe. I licked my lips: but you could taste that smell too. I watched Katadotis consult with the men around the table and after a moment he beckoned. Unhappily, legs stiff, I crossed the room. Coming up to the table I told myself not to look, but of course you do: a corpse, half covered in a baby-blue plastic sheet. But at least it wasn't Brightman — I wouldn't have to look at his guts — for now Katadotis stepped around the table and gestured me beyond it. Here, pushed casually into a corner, was a wheeled stretcher. Katadotis murmured, "I don't know how this happened, Mr. Thome. They should have sent him up hours ago."

I stared down. Brightman was encased in a body bag, a heavy green vinyl bag like a suit bag. As Katadotis began to work back the zipper, I felt slightly sick. I looked away. The zipper stuck. With a grunt, Katadotis gave it a yank. I forced my eyes back. But he must have worked the zipper the wrong way, or possibly the body had been put in upside down; in any case, my first view of Harry Brightman in person consisted of his ankles and feet: stiff, splayed out, the toes separated and curved like claws.

"Jesus Christ," Katadotis muttered, and zipped him back up. But somehow the absurdity of all this relieved my feelings and I relaxed. Struggling with the zipper, Katadotis tried again, but there seemed to be no choice: he had to reveal the whole body to show me the head.

Skinny: ribs like blue shadows under the skin.

Shriveled: an intricate patina of wrinkles where the neck merged with the chest.

A smaller man than I'd expected…

Harry Brightman, taken by May Brightman with her own Brownie, Georgian Bay, Aug. 1, 1949.

I tried to summon up that photograph, like a ghost, to see how it fitted this late corporeal home, but in thirty years Brightman had changed. The hair, though, was more or less right, still thick, an indeterminate brownish-gray color. As for the rest of his face… there was scarcely anything there. For one ghastly instant, I was back in that woods, looking down at my father. But then that passed. No, this mess had nothing to do with me. It had nothing to do with anyone now.

Steadying my voice, I said, "He must have held the gun away from his face."

Katadotis, surprised at this professional observation, gave me a look. "That's it. We figure five, six inches at least. They do it like that if they want to wipe themselves right off the face of the earth."

Was that what my father had wanted? Another moot question: as unanswerable here as it was in front of his grave. I nodded. "All right, Lieutenant."

Katadotis took up his clipboard. Holding it a little away from himself, he intoned, "Do you, Robert Thorne, to the best of your knowledge and belief, identify the human remains you now see before you as those of Harold Charles Brightman?"

"I do." My voice sounded ridiculously solemn, but Katadotis nodded happily and filled in his form. "If you could just sign here, Mr. Thorne…"

I scrawled.

"Great. That's it."

Eyes front, we made our way out. We rode the elevator in silence, though Katadotis gave me one shifty look, as if mildly embarrassed — perhaps he was wondering if I'd noticed that he'd neglected to zip Brightman back up. But my own performance, I decided, didn't give me the right to criticize others, and when the elevator jerked to a stop, I made straight for the open air. Fussing with his coat, Katadotis said, "Better she didn't have to go through that, Mr. Thorne."

"Yes."

"Anyway, you wait here a minute and I'll get a car. Then we'll head out to the pound."

He walked away. Turning my back to the wind, I got a cigarette going. So that was the end of Harry Brightman. There was nothing anyone could do to him — or that I could do for him. And perhaps it was all for the best. I looked at my watch. Getting on toward three. I probably wouldn't get away until four, and I guessed that Toronto was a good three hours away. So say seven-thirty. Not that it made any difference — I'd have to spend the night at May's anyway — but if she was feeling all right, I'd go home tomorrow. Yes. Go home, then come back for the funeral — expensive, but I'd prefer it. Get this out of my mind, get back to work… But then I swore under my breath. The trouble was, I didn't want to get back to work, I wanted to find out what had happened to Harry Brightman. Fact: someone had broken into my house and gone through my mail. Fact: someone had broken into Brightman's the night I'd been there. Fact: that same person, a Russian, had pointed a gun at me last night in Halifax. All of this had to mean something. But that meaning, whatever it was, kept running up against the last fact: Brightman had killed himself. I'd pushed Katadotis and an earlier detective — the one who'd actually conducted the investigation — about as hard as I could and there appeared to be no chance of foul play. Conceivably, someone might have forced Brightman to write that note, but he'd bought the gun of his own free will: the clerk remembered him and claimed that the purchase was entirely normal. What I'd discovered was probably connected with Brightman's killing himself, but, now that he'd done so, it didn't make much difference. Nothing could bring him back now. And even if he'd been blackmailed or otherwise hounded to death, discovering the reason, even the person who'd done it, wouldn't do him any good and might only hurt May.

Tossing my cigarette into the gutter as Katadotis pulled up, I got in beside him. No, I thought, there was nothing to do but resign myself, sit back, and watch this miserable city slip by. The place matched my mood and as we turned down toward the river, something of this must have shown on my face, for Katadotis grunted, "Quite a town, Mr. Thorne."

I kept my voice neutral: it was his home, after all. "Everyone says it's a lot better than it used to be."

A smile flickered. "Mr. Thorne, my father came here fifty years ago to work on Henry Ford's line, and he thought it was paradise. Now it's like something you pick up on your shoe."

I wasn't going to give him an argument. We turned onto Jefferson, broad, empty, and desolate. We passed blocks of low, anonymous buildings: cheap furniture stores; liquor stores; warehouses, abandoned and filthy. Further on, set well back from the road, I saw a large apartment block, a sign in front of it advertising "Elegant and Secure Living." All the faces on these streets were black, though beyond lay Grosse Pointe with its lily-white Park, Farms, Woods, and Shores. But long before this we turned onto St. Jean, part of a veritable war zone. Down the right-hand side of the street stood the empty, burned-out shells of small frame houses. A whole neighborhood had been razed — the fire next time had been this time, and I asked, "That's not still left from the riot?"

"Sure. And collecting a little insurance."

Porches leaned; window frames dangled; tongues of soot licked up walls. The sidewalks had been abandoned and thistles and weeds were invading the street. Bouncing and heaving, the car lurched over ruts in the ruined road. On the left, a chain link fence appeared, with the auto pound beyond. Signs flashed by.

I began to understand why they'd wanted to release the car today — in this neighborhood, no one wanted responsibility for an antique Jaguar any longer than necessary.

Ignoring the signs, Katadotis turned in at the gate and drew up beside a small shack. I waited while he went inside. A smell of exhaust and burned rubber tainted the air; a winch whined in the distance. Like fossilized bones of the creatures for whom they were named — cougars, mustangs, bobcats, ramchargers — the remains of thousands of cars were scattered everywhere and whole body shells, flattened, were stacked up like hides. It was a Pop Art masterpiece, a landscape of the surreal; and since the cars impounded for traffic offenses were arranged in rows and segregated by make, the place even had the peculiar order of certain dreams. Motown U.S.A. The perfect expression of the place, I decided, was indeed a museum of road junk.

Katadotis reappeared, accompanied by a mechanic dressed in overalls.

"This is Jerry, Mr. Thome."

I nodded, and Jerry said, "That's some kind of car you got, Mr. Thome, but I'll be glad when you take it. Nothing left but the drive train, you leave it here a couple more nights."

I gave him another nod and he turned, leading us confidently into the landscape of this strange world: mountains of tires, valleys of broken glass, defiles of stacked-up batteries and radiators. Brightman's Jaguar was way at the back, and had already been assimilated to the Pop-Dali style of the place. To its left was an enormous pile of old wheel rims; behind it, arranged in an arc, were a dozen black motorcycles. Only a naked lady, reclining on the car's vast hood, was required to complete the ad for some elegant whiskey.

Katadotis shook his head mournfully. "It's a real shame, Mr. Thorne. If she'd told us he was driving that car, we'd have picked him up the minute he came over the border."

I stared at the car. As a boy, I'd been crazy about cars, knew them all, and seeing this model again — not uncommon on the embassy circuit — I recognized it at once. A Mark VII, circa 1955. A stripped-down version, with an aluminum body, had won at Le Mans. It was painted white and truly enormous, its lines rounded and flowing — a rich man's horseless carriage from an era when liners still plied the Atlantic.

"It seems to be missing some hubcaps."

Jerry grinned. "Yeah. And one of the guys must have cut the Jaguar out of the hood. The radiator'd go next."

Fishing keys from his pocket, he opened the door and slid behind the wheel. There was a choke, of course. And a starter button. But these antiques were still working and the engine caught first time, idling with true British discretion. Jerry got out and patted the roof. "Runs like the lady she is. Should look under the hood. He kept her real nice."

Yet May had forgotten the car's very existence… you couldn't help thinking this. But she had no use for cars; all the time I'd known her, she'd only driven Volkswagen Beetles. This great boat just hadn't registered.

Katadotis stepped forward, holding a large manila envelope toward me. "The contents of the glove compartment, Mr. Thome. You have to sign for them, and of course for the car itself." As I took it from him, he handed me a form and I read it through — finding no mention of compensation for hubcaps or hood ornaments. But I signed it anyway—"received in good order." Katadotis went on, "That just leaves us one problem, Mr. Thorne. The registration was in his wallet and we have to keep that… personal effects of the deceased. What I did, I had them make a photostat and then I wrote you this note. If anyone still doesn't like it, have them call me."

"I'll do that, Lieutenant."

I stepped forward warily and slid onto the seat, halfway intimidated at the prospect of driving this monster. When I took a breath, my nose filled with the smells of leather, polish, wax— the fat, fruity smell of rich car. I looked around. The carpet on the passenger side was stained, and there was another stain— you could see that someone had tried to towel it off — on the roof above the window. Other than that, however, it was clean enough: real nice, as Jerry would say. In fact, as I sat there, I realized how beautifully the car had been cared for. The huge dashboard, probably walnut, was lovingly polished, and there wasn't even dust on the gauges. Brightman had loved this machine: it made sense that he'd chosen to end his life here.

Katadotis leaned through the window. "You okay, Mr. Thome?"

"Yes. Thank you, Lieutenant."

"Well, I'm sorry that we had to meet under these circumstances, but you've been a great help, believe me, Mr. Thorne. You've been a real good friend to Miss Brightman."

We shook hands. Jerry shouted directions. I eased off the clutch… As the transmission took hold, it was as if a great locomotive was delicately nosing me forward. I held my breath; hung on to the wheel. Turned right at the tires. Right again at the door panels. Left at the fence. I reached the gate, still in first gear, then daringly shifted to second as I started down St. Jean. How bizarre this all was. I was Churchill, touring the lines after D Day. Or James Bond: all around me were black townships in South Africa where diamond smugglers were working… I turned left onto Jefferson. For the first time, I put my foot down a little, and switched up into third. The Jag moved as if in a dream, with no sense of effort or strain. I decided to count my blessings. Tomorrow, I'd be home in Charlottesville. In a month, this would all be forgotten. All those unanswered questions were frustrating, but I told myself to be philosophical. As a journalist, you learn that 90 percent of your questions never get answered, and your best stories are never turned out of the typewriter — which may be the greatest blessing of all. So I relaxed. Checked my watch. Three forty-five… I hadn't eaten since this morning, on the plane, and I was more than a little hungry. As between Detroit and Windsor, I know where I'd rather live, but when it came to restaurants, I wondered if I wasn't better off here. Besides, looming up on my left were the towers of the Renaissance Center, the massive hotel and office complex that's supposed to "revitalize" downtown Detroit. I knew I'd find something in there, and so I ponderously turned the great car and rolled sedately down an access ramp to a parking lot. I found a spot… and then, despite my philosophizing, I delayed. Lighting a cigarette, I tore open the envelope Katadotis had given me, searching for one last hope, some clue the police might have missed. But there was very little inside, and certainly no revelations; nothing to prevent me kissing Harry Brightman goodbye: just a government map of Ontario, an old Rand McNally map of the New England states, and a membership in the Canadian Automobile Association that had expired in 1968… I tossed them back where they'd come from, a glove compartment that was the size of most trunks.

And then a face leaned down toward the window.

I rolled it down.

"Mister?"

It was a young black man — the attendant, I realized, who'd let me in at the gate.

"Yes?"

"I got an urgent call for you, up in the booth."

"I don't understand. A telephone call?"

"Yessir. The man said, the man in the big white car that just came through."

"What's his name?"

The black kid looked impatient. "Your name's Brightman, isn't it? He just said to go fetch you."

"Hang on," I said, "I'll be there in a second."

8

"Mr. Brightman?"

"Yes. I'm Brightman."

"But I know it is you, Mr. Thome. I only wished to get your attention."

The voice was male, and the accent was Russian.

"Who are you?"

"Never mind, Mr. Thome. We've never met — but now I think that we should."

"I'm not so sure. Perhaps we already have."

A pause. Then: "It is interesting that you say that, Mr. Thome. But I assure you we've never so much as laid eyes on each other."

And I believed him — it wasn't the Russian from Halifax. But he must have been following me, whoever he was; it was the only way he could have known I was here. I looked around. The booth was only four feet by eight, but was nonetheless fairly substantial: baseboard heaters; built-in coat locker; a shelf with a portable television — Monty Hall was dealing away in full color. There were tinted-glass windows on all four sides, and I knew he had to be close by, but there wasn't much I could see: the booth was on the downslope of a hill, so I could just make out the tops of the cars passing along Jefferson while the far side of the road was completely hidden from view.

"Mr. Thorne?"

"Yes. I'm here."

"I am surprised you are not more interested. I can tell you everything, Mr. Thorne. How it was done. What has happened to Brightman. Everything."

"I'm listening."

"No. It is better to meet face to face."

Russia. Brightman had been there, I had lived there, that man in Halifax, and now… I said, "There might be other things besides Brightman to talk about."

"Oh yes. Many things."

"Such as?"

"Whatever you wish."

"You're Russian. Maybe we should talk about that."

"If you like. We can talk about anything… We can talk about the byliny or the beguny or the Black Hundreds — anything. I am a regular Peter Kirillov, Mr. Thorne. Just ask me, and I'll point you where you want to go."

A car, leaving the lot, came up to the window. The kid stuck the ticket into an electric timer, which came down with a clunk, then passed it outside.

"Mr. Thorne?"

"All right."

"Good. It is four o'clock now. In one hour and a half, at five-thirty, come to 362 Grayson Street. It is just an old garage, but from there we can go somewhere else."

"All right. I'll be there."

"Very good. And of course you will come by yourself. No police. This is not for them. It has nothing to do with them. You must realize that. I am serious. I will tell you about Brightman, but I will tell you something else. That will be personal, Mr. Thorne. You understand? Something you wouldn't want a policeman to hear."

Silence.

"What do you mean?"

"What I say."

His breath, rustling into the mouthpiece… and then the line went dead and I was standing there, the phone squeezed in my hand.

Something personal. Something you wouldn't want a policeman to hear…

I put the phone down. I had no idea what he was talking about — but for some reason my palms had started to sweat. From the very beginning, I'd had the feeling that all this would double back on me. And here it was. Yet none of it was tied to me personally — there was nothing I wouldn't want a policeman to hear… May. She was my connection. And it could not be more innocent. Russia? It linked us all — me, Brightman, the man on the phone — but I had no guilt there… That made no difference, however. My skin had gone clammy, and I'd begun to feel very queasy, as if… as if what? As if, somewhere inside, I already knew—

"Sir?"

I turned around.

"That's okay, sir. Just wondered if you was finished using the phone."

I dug up a couple of dollars and got out of his booth. The wind, gusting off the Detroit River, pressed my raincoat tight to my body, and grit, blown across the huge lot, stung my cheeks. For a moment, I wandered among the long aisles of cars. Turning my back to the wind, I got a cigarette going and tried to calm myself down. There was no time for soul-searching — I had some decisions to make. First, what should I do? Call Katadotis? But even as I thought this, I knew that I wouldn't. Even ignoring the warnings my mysterious caller had issued, he would obviously be very cautious and at the first hint of the cops he'd take off. But that raised the next question. If I kept our appointment, what would happen? One Russian yesterday, a second today — and the first had a gun. It made you think. Certain initials even began blinking at the edge of my brain. But it was too incredible and it just didn't feel right. Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti may be hard to pronounce, but after eight years in the U.S.S.R. I could smell a KGB officer a mile away and certainly sniff one at the end of the phone. This smell was different; not official at all.

I flipped my cigarette away. In truth, I didn't have the faintest idea what it all meant, or could possibly mean. But I knew I'd go anyway: I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. And there was, I realized, no time to debate about it. My hour and a half had already shrunk fifteen minutes. Grayson Street, an old garage — I had to find out where they were, then get myself there. Not in a cab; I'd want my own transportation. And not in Brightman's car, which had already been recognized. Therefore…

My mind began steadying itself on these practical details. I looked around. By now, I'd wandered into the middle of this vast parking lot. To my left, behind a high wire fence, was the muddy trench of the Detroit River, with Canada huddling glumly on the opposite bank. In front of me, rising up like some urban mirage, were the towers of the Renaissance Center. I made for them, thinking I could rent a car there, but in the end caught a taxi out front. I was curious: the man on the other end of that phone must have been following me all morning— unless he'd been following May and had picked me up later— and I wondered if he was still on my tail. After ten minutes, I decided he wasn't. By then we were on Michigan Avenue. The cabbie turned around, headed back downtown, and dropped me at a Hertz office on Washington Boulevard. After the usual routine, they put me into the driver's seat of a Pontiac and the clerk showed me Grayson Street on a map.

Heading north, I nosed up Woodward, resolutely keeping my mind on my driving: it was the easiest way of forgetting how nervous I felt. Five o'clock. A gloomy dusk hung over the city as the rush-hour crowds fled toward Ann Arbor and Flint, Ypsilanti and Lansing. I joined the escape. Caught up in the edgy panic, I let the traffic suck me up Gratiot, then down the Chrysler Freeway. Like most Detroit expressways, it's built below grade, a canal full of carbon monoxide and noise. Overhead, an electric sign gave the temperature (49 degrees) and flashed the fact that 5,467 Fords had been built that day, while on WXYZ the disk jockey intoned, "Like Mr. Ford used to say, 'I don't believe in caging birds or animals or any living thing.'"

I fought clear of all this at the Plymouth Plant exit. I was now in Hamtramck and began hunting for Grayson. Trapped between the expressway approaches and an old railway spur, it turned out to be almost impossible to get to: blocked off by high fences or separated from ordinary roads by immense vacant lots. But I made it on my third pass, bumping across an abandoned siding and then turning down a stretch of gravel until the street signs started.

It was getting dark now. Only a few kids were out on the sidewalks, and a pair of black men in boots and overalls plodded slowly home. Though not as bad as St. Jean and the area near the auto pound, this was still a melancholy place. The houses were identical cinder-block bungalows. Most were shabby and the lawns were minuscule, though a few — somehow even more pathetic — boasted a spindly hedge of suburban shrub by the door. I slowed down, trying to spot house numbers, but just then the garage itself loomed up. It appeared abandoned, and was built in an old-fashioned style that made me think of gas stations you sometimes find in country towns.

The pumps had rounded tops and the building itself was peeling stucco. Accelerating a little — why give myself away? — I continued past it and turned down a side street.

I parked and looked at my watch. Ten minutes early. I stared down the street. Lights were on in the houses; a door banged somewhere and a woman's voice harshly called out a name. About four blocks along, the road petered out at a railway embankment protected by a sagging metal fence and lit by a single curved light. I cranked down my window. Behind me, in the side-view mirror, the lights of a car drifted down Grayson, and a moment later a black kid on a bicycle came riding up, his shining eyes quietly marking my ofay face. Then he disappeared in the gloom.

I lit a cigarette, smoked it slowly. I thought about a time in Moscow when I'd waited like this. I'd been doing an article on the Soviet Army and had made contact with a Mladshü Lieten-ant in a Guard's Division. He was only going to tell me about the food, his leave, his pay — the ordinary miseries of day-today life in any army — but we both knew that this was technically espionage, and that only the most technical definitions would interest a Soviet court. Now, by comparison… but maybe it was a comparison I'd better not make. I flipped my cigarette out the window, got out myself. The street was empty except for the beat-up old heaps drawn up at the curb, one of which was resting right on its wheel rims. I locked the car door and walked back toward the corner, my steps grittily crunching on the cement of the sidewalk. At Grayson, I paused a moment, looking around. To the left, a block away, a few indistinct figures were grouped around a car. Somebody laughed. Then the car door opened and in the glow of the interior light I caught the shine of legs and shoes and the flash of a smile. Kids, I thought, horsing around… I looked right, toward the garage. I couldn't see it from this angle, but a dark, empty space marked where it was. On the far sidewalk, a single man was walking toward me, hands thrust deeply into the pocket of his windbreaker; on this side, further on — beyond the garage — two men were walking away from me. Streetlights spread shadows into the gloom. As the two men passed into one of these areas of light, I saw that they had green garbage bags over their shoulders: heading for the coin wash, doing their laundry before the crowds came after supper.

I started ahead. Each step made a precise, distinct sound. Behind me I heard those kids laughing and then one of them hooted, "Jesus, man, whose side you on?" and they all laughed some more. The man in the windbreaker passed by me on the far side of the street; up ahead, the two men with the laundry bags disappeared in the dark. And then I could see the garage. Quiet. Recessive. Like some forlorn crossroads gas station on a lonely stretch of road in the bush. There was a sign on top of it, braced by a wooden scaffold — commercial lot for sale murphy realty 543-6454—and beside it was an overgrown yard and a boarded-up house.

I slowed my pace: but no one showed himself. Coming even with the station, I angled across the asphalt apron toward the two skinny pumps. I stopped there and looked around. The dark building, the black asphalt, merged with the gloom. The whole street seemed to recede. And still no one appeared — indeed, the street was now completely deserted, for, looking back, I could see that even the man in the windbreaker had gone on his way. Stepping closer to the pumps, I realized that their hoses were cut and the glass over their gauges was broken. Inside, you could see the faded seals from the Michigan Department of Commerce. The dial was set at 39.9 cents a gallon and the last sale had netted $12.94.

Dark. Cold. And I had that sense of being out in the open… But he had to be able to see me. I began to fidget, tugging my gloves over my fingers, putting my hands in my pocket, taking them out again. Then — what the hell — I lit up a cigarette and let the Bic's flame show off my face. Still no one came. I smoked slowly, standing still but looking around in every direction. Shadows. The wind… Not too bad, I thought; or it wouldn't be if Grayson Street was a film set, I was Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall was back home fixing dinner. As it was… A couple of minutes slipped by. I smoked the butt down, then ground it out. Where in hell was he? I walked across to the gas station's office, thinking that he might be inside and still hadn't seen me. I stopped in front of the window. On it, one letter for each pane of glass, the words b-a-r-g-a-i-n g-a-s were spelled out in white paint. Close up, you could see the mark of the brush, and when I shaded my eyes and looked through the "r," the old, dusty glass filled my nose with a dirty, coppery smell. It was dark inside, hard to see, but I could tell no one was there. The place was a shambles. A plywood counter had been turned over and there was rubbish everywhere — bottles, flattened cartons, old cans, plastic jugs. No one had been here in weeks. I stepped back. But then I tried the office door and the knob turned easily. I hesitated, then stepped inside. It was darker. Colder. I stood in the doorway, feeling the darkness and emptiness of the street out behind me. I stared ahead. In the corner of the room was an old Coke machine, that kind with the white enamel lettering, and a wire rack for empties beside it. Feeling an urge to call out, I repressed it, then changed my mind. "Hello? Hello? Anyone there?"

Whistling in the dark… Now the silence left me feeling more than a little foolish. There wasn't even an echo, just grit grinding under my heel as I shifted my weight. To the left was the gray patch of the doorway in to the service bays. Now that I'd come this far, there was nowhere else left to go, so I stepped through; but just inside, wanting a clear line of retreat, I waited again. Open space stretched before me. It was very dark, but enough light leaked in from the street to make the darkness swirl and eddy like fog. It is just an old garage, but from there we can go somewhere else. I looked around. I could see two greasy pits where they'd taken out the lifts, a length of rubber hose dangling from a hook on the back wall, and right by my head there was a pasted-up picture of Miss Rheingold, 1955. But nothing more. Slowly, I edged into the gloom. The floor was cement, but huge chunks of it had chipped or crumbled away, so that patches of damp earth showed through. Smells: oil, that smell that cold concrete gets, the sour smell of wet earth. My toe nudged a can. I flicked it into the darkness, where it rattled away. Pivoting slowly, I looked back toward the street. Most of the panes in the service doors had been broken; on the others, scrawled in the dust, were the usual obscenities, and at ticktacktoe, "x" had won three times out of five… Deciding that no one was there, I flicked on my lighter and looked at my watch. Five thirty-eight. Was I being stood up?

Irritation. But I felt myself relax a little as well. I was certain now that no one was about to step out of the darkness and that made it easier to pretend I was being ever so brave. The trouble was, the obverse of fear isn't courage but boredom. I stamped my feet. Lit a cigarette. Began checking my watch every two minutes. Maybe he was lost, I thought, though that didn't seem right for a real Peter Kirillov. Peter was a mythical figure from the days of the Old Believers, holy Russian pilgrims who dreamed of a mythical Kingdom of the White Waters where righteousness reigned. The road there was hard and long, but in a certain village, if you could only reach it, Peter Kirillov would show you the right way… A car came up Grayson, casting a huge net of shadow around me — very melodramatic, but then it passed silently by. Five forty-six… He wouldn't come; I was sure of it. Or perhaps he was being subtle. Perhaps he was already here, watching, waiting for me to leave; then he'd follow me and present himself when I least expected it.

Actually, that was not inconceivable — and it made an excellent excuse for leaving right now. But I told myself to wait. Till six. Give him that long and then go.

Five forty-nine. I began moving around, just to keep warm. My eyes were getting used to the dark. I realized that the place had been abandoned for years; half the floor had crumbled away. There were a few plastic jugs and quart oil cans littered around a squashed cardboard carton or two, but the interior had been stripped to the bone by a generation of kids. Everything useful was gone. At some point vagrants had built a fire in the corner; tossing my cigarette onto a gray pile of ash, I continued along the back wall… and that's when I heard a slight sound. It wasn't much, barely a rustling… though more metallic than that. Yet not exactly a scrape. It came again. I stepped further along till I reached another doorway. The door itself was gone, but it was hard to see out because something was blocking the way. I went closer. It was just one of those big metal dumpers for picking up trash. I stepped outside, into a dark, cold zone that smelled of wet cinder and ash. I listened again, but didn't hear anything — it was probably nothing more than a rat — and then, deciding to walk around to the front of the building, I began to edge sideways between the dumper and the back wall of the garage. Old burdock. Gutter, dangling from brackets. An electric meter, all smashed to hell… Finally I squeezed around the edge of the dumper — and then the sound came again, from inside. A settling sound, a weight shifting. I hesitated — I don't much like rats or dark holes. But then I reached up, grabbed the top edge of the dumper, and pulled myself up. I looked in. Dropped back. I wasn't sure what I'd seen. I took out my lighter. Clumsy with my gloves, I adjusted the flame as high as I could, then hoisted myself back up. The damn thing was so rusty that the metal felt like sand under my fingers. With a grunt, I stretched forward, leaning my chest across the top rail, and stuck out my right arm. The orange flame of the Bic hissed and bent in the darkness. I looked down. The bottom of the dumper had rusted out years ago; now weeds poked through the filmy metal and a black puddle glistened in the mud. There wasn't much to see: a pile of old Quaker State oil cans, bits of muffler and pipe, half a door panel, and a painter's plastic drop sheet that was wrapped around something. All twisted and folded, the clear plastic sheet was shot through with wrinkles and fissures, like an ice cube. But the wrinkles were wet and red. And frozen at the center was the body of a fat, hairy man with no head, hands, or feet.

I fell back, my knees banging the dumper, the red afterimage of the lighter's flame pulsing before my eyes. I froze in a crouch. Dear Jesus. Then I blundered away, charging back down the gap between the wall and the dumper. Weeds grabbed my legs. The wall grazed my cheek. The dumper pressed in and something sticking out from the wall jabbed at my thigh. With a gasp of relief, I squeezed through. I staggered ahead, then stepped on something — the top of a trash can— and my ankle turned under me. Falling to one knee, I reached down and touched the cold ground and steadied myself. And then I remembered those men with the laundry bags and understood what they'd contained; and with all the ease of a child, I was sick.

For a moment, I closed my eyes against the horror.

I opened them slowly. Vomit steamed around my feet.

It didn't happen to you. It's all right.

Catching my breath, I found an old end of Kleenex and wiped my mouth. Pulled myself upright. My ankle was throbbing, my knee ached, there was a stinging scrape along the side of my face. I swore under my breath. It's all right. Take it easy. I peered around the corner of the garage. Night uncoiled down the street. Windows glowed like cats' eyes and I could hear the buzz of a streetlamp. But I couldn't see anyone, so I forced my legs to move. Across the asphalt apron of the garage. Then the sidewalk. Left. It's all right. Don't run. The corner. Left one more time…

I made it to the car and got in; and then I couldn't stop myself, and locked all the doors, as if that headless corpse might follow me here. As I stared into the darkness, my reflection mistily drifted over the window. Lights were on in the houses but no one was out in the street. In the distance, I could hear the low-gear grunt of a truck. The wind, coming up stronger, bumped at the car… I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Five minutes, I thought, maybe less: I'd come that close to seeing a murder, maybe being murdered myself. In delayed response, my heart began to race in my chest and I felt faint. With shaking hands, I fumbled a cigarette up to my mouth. I tried to start thinking. Who was he? Who had killed him? Why? Who, except you, knew he was going to be there? But then I got hold of myself and shut down my mind — there was no point asking questions no one could answer. There was no time for theory, no time for abstractions. Are you in danger? It was the only question that counted. And the answer was no, not now, not here. Proof: whoever had killed him hadn't waited, which must mean that they hadn't known I'd be coming. Or maybe they didn't care. Something personal, something you wouldn't want a policeman to hear… Maybe that had all been a lie; maybe it had nothing to do with me at all. So what do I do? Should I—? No. No big decisions. Just get the hell out of here. Right now you couldn't think your way out of a wet paper bag.

With relief, and a vicious twist of the key, I started the car. Truth: I didn't want to think, or question, or know. I only wanted to get away from this spot. But, like a careful drunk, I made myself do it slowly. I turned away from the curb. Straightened out. Lightly put my foot down… and maybe that's why I saw it. As I came up to the next corner, I stopped the car dead.

I twisted back in my seat.

Behind me, stretching along the curb, were the half dozen cars that had been parked in front of me. They were all rusted, dented heaps, held together by body compound and inertia. Except for one, that is: a late-model Pontiac as bright and shiny as the one I was driving. I thought for a second, then clunked the car into reverse, the engine whining shrilly as I backed down the street. I stopped. Quickly opening the door, I walked back to the other car. I leaned forward, cupping my hands, and peered in the driver's-side window. It was a standard-issue two-door sedan: autotransmission, plush velour seats, the dash neatly wiped — I didn't have to see the Hertz litter bag to know it was rented. I tried the doors, but they were locked. It was obvious, though. He'd done just as I had: Parked here, then approached the garage circumspectly… though not circumspectly enough.

For some reason, this little discovery steadied me, and by the time I was back in my own car, I felt more under control. Doubling back to the Chrysler Freeway, I followed the rush-hour traffic north but got off before Flint. Then I just drove around for a while. Bit by bit, my nerve came back. And as I drove along a cluttered neon boulevard of car lots and muffler shops, I realized I was hungry. I pulled into a McDonald's and used their washroom to clean up a little; but restoring myself to respectability killed my appetite for their kind of food, and I drove further down the street to a shopping center. What I found there wasn't much better — something called The Chances R, a bar with a Western motif: saloon doors, waitresses in cowboy hats, wagon wheels hanging from the ceiling with lights in the hub. I took a stool and ordered a bourbon — cheap and disgusting enough to jolt you out of anything. But the steak sandwich wasn't too bad. By then, my mind was more or less back on the rails, and with coffee and cigarettes I tried to work out where I stood. Point one: there was no reason to panic. The man who had called me, assuming he was the man in the dumper, had known I was involved in all this, but whoever had killed him probably didn't; or didn't care if I was. Otherwise, they would have hung around and killed me as well. Point two: I didn't want to go to the police, at least for the moment. Something personal, something you wouldn't want a policeman to hear… That was part of it. And maybe — after my panicky flight from the garage — I wanted to recoup self-esteem, at least in my own eyes. I'd come this far on my own; I could go a bit further. Which was why, when I'd finished eating, I walked through the plaza until I found a hardware store that was still open and bought a five-pound sledge.

It was after seven now. Back on the freeway, heading south, traffic was thin. I was only ten minutes getting down to Ham-tramck, though it took another twenty to find Grayson Street again. Nothing had changed. Passing the garage, I saw it was as dark and calm as I had left it. But there was no reason why it shouldn't be. They might not find that body for months— they might never find it.

I turned down a side street and parked about three cars ahead of the Pontiac.

Headlights off, motor running. I leaned back to switch off the interior light, then eased open the door. The cold wind struck my eyes. That acrid, chemical smell burned in my nose. I shut the door carefully, leaving it open a crack, then walked back down the street. I was heading toward Grayson and now a car passed there, its lights sweeping the corner. I stopped, undecided; almost went back; but as it passed further on, I went forward again. Standing by the Pontiac, I swiveled around. It was parked right in front of a house where the lights were on, but the place next door was dark. I drew back the sledge and swung as hard as I could. At the first blow, the window only gave slightly in its frame and didn't even crack, but the second starred it like a piece of old ice and the third pushed a big chunk inside the car. With my hand, I pushed more bits and pieces away, then reached in and opened the glove compartment. And found what I wanted: the rental form. I pulled it out and walked smartly back to my car. No one had seen me. Two minutes later, I was back on the freeway.

I headed south and this time went right downtown before pulling off. Then I parked and read through the form in the glow of the dash-light. His name had been Michael Travin. He had a Maine driver's license that gave a home address in Lewiston. The car had been rented from the Hertz counter in the Renaissance Center and the local address was room 909 in the Detroit Plaza Hotel — the hotel that's part of the complex. Hertz had imprinted his Visa card. He'd paid three dollars for extra insurance…

Decision time. But not really. I found Michigan Avenue, followed it straight down to Randolph, and that took me right into the Center. I parked in the same lot where I'd left Bright-man's Jaguar. The cold, dusty wind was fierce off the river. As I walked up, the towers glowed like copper against the night sky. I went in by the main entrance and found the hotel desk right in front of me, but I walked around for a moment, getting my bearings. The place was like something left over from a sci-fi spectacular: the main lobby was a brightly lit, five-story atrium where trees breathed the man-made air, fountains splashed into artificial lakes, and concrete "seating pods" projected out into space. Impressive enough, and security was probably better than normal: but the place was very big, very busy, and despite everything I still looked very respectable.

Smile.

"Hi. I'm Mr. Travin in 909. I can't find my key, so I must have left it with you. I hope."

Smile.

"Just a — yes, Mr. Travin, you did. Here you are."

"Thanks."

I strode firmly away from the desk, but then blundered about, not sure which way to go, for a network of circular stairs and escalators wound you round to various levels inside the lobby — it was that kind of place. Eventually, however, I followed a bellhop into an elevator, which then shot me up to the guest rooms. Emerging, I found myself in an empty, curved hall. I followed this around. The door to 909 was like any other door in any other hotel. I hesitated a moment and almost knocked; then just inserted the key and went in.

At once, instinctively, I knew that the room was empty.

I flipped on a light. I was in a little hall, the bathroom on my right. I stuck my head in. Neat. Tidy. The towels weren't fresh but they were neatly hung up. The shower was one of those molded plastic units — not up to the standards of the lobby — and there were a few drops of water around the drain; but nothing more. I backed out, then stepped into the main part of the room. This too was nothing more than a standard first-class American hotel room. There was a desk-bureau, with a mirror and a wicker chair; a TV set on a plastic pedestal; a tub chair, covered in vinyl; and then the bed, a single, with a night table and a lamp. Even the room's only picture was standard — an abstract that could have been taken from any doctor's office, New York to Los Angeles.

Standard. Empty. Barren.

And no sign of Michael Travin at all.

I looked everywhere… not that there were many places to look. There were no bags, no clothes in the bureau or closet, and the room was so neat you would have thought the maid had just finished. The bed was made. Ashtrays were clean. The wastebasket was empty. I turned on the television. It was tuned to one of the Canadian stations in Windsor. I pulled back the drapes. There were no messages scrawled on the windows, and the lights of the city winked up at me dumbly…

I lit a cigarette, took a drag. The room was so neat and tidy that you'd think he'd checked out. But he hadn't — otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get the key in his name. And a maid, I realized, hadn't done this: the towels were hung up, but they hadn't been changed, and though the ashtrays were clean, there were no fresh matchbooks. What had happened?

But now a peculiar feeling came over me. I don't know how to describe it — a creepy, paranoid prickling at the back of my neck. I hadn't felt it in years, not since I'd lived in the U.S.S.R… and then I knew what it was and I spun right around and began searching again, searching now for the signs of a search, a search that would have been made so carefully that even if you did find traces of it you wouldn't be sure. Not quite. Not ever… On my hands and knees, I felt along the edge of the carpet, and yes, it was loose; if I pulled it back here, I could take up the whole room. Had the contractor been sloppy or had somebody lifted it? Then I traced out the seams in the wallpaper, feeling along with my fingernail. Loose again. Natural wear, or had someone been using a razor? I turned the chairs upside down, pulled out the bureau and the bed, checked the TV — and found three screws that might have been freshly scratched. They'd been looking for something small, I thought, some sort of paper or document. Or maybe not: when I turned over the mattress, I found a six-inch cut where they'd slipped in their probe. But, whatever they'd been looking for, I was now certain of one thing. CIA, SIS, SDECE, STASI, BND… "Security," everywhere, leaves the same mark, but there was only one source for the peculiar, lingering scent I sniffed all through this room: KGB.

Which didn't especially excite me. I was more accustomed to the Komitet than I was to dead bodies. But I began to think fast. They, after all, must have moved very fast. At four o'clock

Travin calls me in the parking lot. Looking down, I could make out the booth — was it even possible that he'd called from right here? No. He might have recognized Brightman's car from this height, but not me — and he'd known my name. We'd then set up our meeting. Five-thirty, that was. So, sometime in the hour between four and five, they'd picked him up and started following him. That had probably happened right here, for they would have had this room under surveillance, but in any event they'd followed him to Grayson Street. What had they thought he was doing there? Hiding something? Not likely. Surely there was only one thing they could have thought — that he was meeting someone. But that hadn't concerned them, I'd already worked that much out. What did interest them, then? When you thought about it, all they'd really taken trouble about was his identity. They'd cut off his head, hands, and feet, so that establishing the identity of the corpse would now be a forensic miracle. But then they'd been very sloppy, for they'd forgotten the car. Or had they known about it at all? If they'd followed him there, they must have… But they'd ignored it, and come here and searched the room instead. Which might mean something: maybe they already knew that the Travin identity was false and that, by itself, it wouldn't help establish who the man actually was.

Possible.

But maybe not.

For their differing reasons, both the Kremlin and the Pentagon find the notion of an all-powerful, super-efficient Soviet state very convenient and promote it like hell. But for anyone who's ever lived in Russia the idea is laughable — and the KGB's screwed up before.

Using a Kleenex, I picked up the phone.

"This is room 909, operator. I'd like to speak to information in Lewiston, Maine."

"Yes, sir. That's a toll-free call, sir… just one moment."

She got off the line as the long-distance operator came on: "Information for what city, please?"

"Lewiston, Maine."

"Yes. Go ahead."

I pulled out the Hertz form, spelled Travin's name, and gave his address. After a moment, she said, "We have no Travin listed there, sir."

"Could it be a new listing, operator?"

"No, sir. We have no listing at all."

I hung up… but then had another idea. I called down to the desk.

"I'd like to check out, if I could. Mr. Travin in 909. I'm in quite a hurry. Could you have someone bring up the bill."

"One moment, sir… Yes, will that be on your Visa card?"

"Please. I think you already have it."

"Yes, Mr. Travin. I'll just check it through and then someone will bring it up to your room."

Ten minutes later, careful to hide my face, I stuck a dollar around the door and received Travin's bill in return. But it wasn't very informative: same address, same phone number, same Visa number as on the Hertz form. He'd had breakfast in his room every morning, two other meals in one of the hotel restaurants, and drinks in the bar. All in all, he'd been staying here for six days; unfortunately, he'd made no long-distance phone calls. So…the men who'd searched this room hadn't slipped up, after all. The name Travin, his driver's license, the credit card, his hotel bill — they added up to a dead end. In a few days, Hertz would sound the alarm. The police would come up with the car but then go no further. Even if they found the body and concluded it was Travin, it wouldn't do them much good. Michael Travin, whoever he was, had effectively vanished from the face of the earth.

I took a long breath, walked over to the window, and looked out at the night. The lights of an ore carrier twinkled out on the river and made me think of Halifax. I'd been there yesterday: it seemed centuries ago. Brightman's death was a chasm, a great void… and what did it have to do with all this? / can tell you everything, Mr. Thorne. How it was done. What has happened to Brightman. Everything. Had Travin been killed because he knew? And was that why they hadn't worried about me — because as long as I didn't get to talk to him, I wouldn't 7 know? But questions like that were beyond me, and I had more immediate problems. Where was I in this? What should I do now? I sensed that I'd reached a turning point — emotionally, in terms of my own commitment, but in other ways as well. There were some practical questions. I am not a professional adventurer. As a writer, my time is my own, but there was the small matter of money and the more subtle one of energy. Did I really want to make the investment? Then there were legal considerations. Right now, my legal position was fine, not even iffy. I hadn't actually seen a crime committed, and you're under no obligation to report the dead bodies you find lying around. The car was nothing. As long as I paid Hertz for the window, no cop on earth would think of pressing a charge. Theft? I hadn't taken anything of value. Obstruction of justice? No one knew the rental form had been in the glove compartment except me; besides, the police could get the original from the Hertz office. No doubt I'd violated some local Hotel- and Innkeepers Act by getting into this room, but even that might be hard to prove since I hadn't had a criminal purpose. What had I taken? Destroyed? No, if I picked up the phone right now and called the police, I'd get nothing more than a lecture on good citizenship. If…

But just then there was a knock at the door.

I froze.

The knock, a little heavier, came again.

I took a deep breath. "Yes?"

"Mr. Travin, sir? Valet service, sir. They called up from the desk, sir, and said you was checking out. Don't want to be forgetting your suit."

"Just a minute."

I was even more careful than I'd been with the bellhop and made absolutely certain that the woman didn't get a look at my face: Travin was dead — I didn't want to become him. Yet now, in an odd way, I was being visited by his shade. Pulling off the plastic wrapping, I spread the suit out on the bed, and it lay there in grisly imitation of its owner: sans head, hands, and feet. Other than this, however, it was perfectly ordinary: gray, one pair of trousers, no vest. Sears, The Men's Store, said the label. But then I saw there was a little brown envelope twist-tied to the hanger. We Found This in Your Pockets … I tore it open, spilled it out on the pillow.

One book of matches, from something called the Mikado Room.

Seventy-seven cents in change, including one Canadian quarter.

And a claim check from a photo store…

I picked up this last item. It was the usual thing: the strip of envelope they give back to you when you take in a film. It was gray, overprinted with the number 2009 and the store's name and address: Jack's Photo Supplies, Berlin, N.H.

Well, well. Maybe they'd screwed up after all.

And right then, I made up my mind. I wasn't entirely sure why. I'd been joining the dots in one of those puzzles they used to put in the paper, and here was another. That was part of it; and so was Russia, and all I felt about that country, and May Brightman was still in it too. But there was something else; and it was "something personal," just as Travin had said — a feeling, present from the very beginning, that all these events, however impossible it seemed, led back to me.

But maybe the reasons don't make any difference. A rose is a rose: you do what you do. With Travin's suit bundled under my arm, I took the elevator down to the lobby, and forty minutes later, behind the wheel of Brightman's enormous white boat, I entered the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and crossed back over the Canadian border.

9

Windsor to Toronto, Toronto to Montreal, then south to the border again: Route 26 through New Hampshire, back roads to Interstate 91, then east on 84 through Pennsylvania… Twenty-four hours after leaving Detroit, I was sitting in a restaurant in Washington, D.C., but on that trip you'd have to say I took the long way around. I was exhausted by the end of it, though I made plenty of stops — mainly for gas, which Brightman's mammoth machine guzzled insatiably. But I also detoured to pick up my bags at Toronto International Airport, where I'd left them when I came in from Halifax, and for a few hours I flaked out in a motel near Kingston, Ontario. And most important of all, I jogged through Berlin, New Hampshire, to pick up Travin's photographs.

As the miles rolled by, I thought and drove, and drove and thought, until my mind was humming along with the tires. On the highway, I made pretty good time, but mentally my progress wasn't so even: I kept swinging back and forth between confidence and doubt. What if I found nothing? What if the whole thing was meaningless? My conscience prickled, I felt halfway a fugitive, and the further Detroit receded behind me, the more unbelievable my speculations seemed to become. Brightman had killed himself: I had no reason to suspect, let alone contradict, that conclusion. And I had no certain knowledge that anyone, let alone the KGB, had searched the hotel room. But then, just as I grew convinced that I was making a fool of myself, my mind headed off in another direction. Travin was dead. Someone had killed him. And even if Brightman hadn't been murdered, you can hardly call suicide normal. No: something very peculiar was happening… I suppose, even before I picked up those photographs, that I was convinced: my mind just needed time to get used to it.

Berlin, when I got there, turned out to be a pulp and paper town whose smokestacks trailed a livid, sulphurous haze across the New England hills. I would have put its population at something like fifteen thousand, big enough to boast a Wool-worth's, a newspaper (the Berlin Reporter), and a municipal building with a fine old clock tower. Pleasant; a little ramshackle; even pretty if you looked away from the smokestacks, for the Androscoggin River flowed through it. It was the sort of place that perfectly expressed small-town America before the Midwest was discovered. Despite the name, I didn't see much sign of a German influence and was more aware of a French-Canadian element — Canucks, as they say in New England. There was a grocer called Mercier, a Club des Raquettes, and a red-brick Ste. Anne's on your way in. Of course, that first trip, I noticed this only in passing: my mind was entirely concentrated on the photo shop, where I laid down $65.48 and received two oversized gray envelopes in return.

I had no idea what to expect when I opened them, and for the past fifty miles had been bracing myself for something completely banal. Travin's girl in the buff… his last fishing trip… sunsets… Still, even as I took them from the woman in the store, I knew that I hadn't entirely wasted my time. The two envelopes were stapled together, and scrawled across the first was: M. Travin, RFD 2, Berlin, tel. 236-6454. This, I thought, was more likely to be his real address than the one on the driver's license. But that piece of information was only the consolation prize. When I opened the first envelope itself I hit the bonanza. Twenty-four five-by-seven enlargements spilled onto my lap. Each shot was different, but they all had one subject: May Brightman.

Which was about the only thing I hadn't expected.

Detroit had canceled out Halifax. The past twelve hours, and my discovery of Travin's body, had carved a great gulf between the present and everything that had gone before: May's adoption, Dr. Charlie, Florence Raines, that lawyer in Toronto… They were figures from a vanished age — but now they were alive again.

Almost in bewilderment, I began sorting through the photographs. By checking the negatives — they were all 35mm — I was able to arrange them in the order in which they'd been taken, and judging by the backgrounds, this must have been during the summer. All of the photos were "candid": May, clearly, had no idea what was happening. Three had been shot from a car as she came out her front door, another strip caught her in a crowd, probably shopping in that market near her house, and a third consisted of three frames showing her sitting on a bench in a park. One of these was very overexposed, but the other two were perfect, very crisp and clear. Her expression was calm and composed as she enjoyed the sun; and though you could see her age in the wrinkles around her eyes, there was still something girlish about her — a patter of freckles high on her cheeks, the way her loose blond hair spread across her rough-knit sweater. The next set, almost by design, was a direct contrast to this. Two frames: in both she was wearing a white business suit and looking rather awkward, somewhat as she had yesterday morning inside the police station. Her hair was pulled into a bun; she might have been wearing a shade too much lipstick. Altogether, she reminded me of a proper suburban matron — an English matron — dressed up for her monthly visit to town. In fact, there was something English about her, or at least European. But then the next four shots reminded me that her special quality wasn't national at all, for Travin had crept down her lane, just as I'd done the day I arrived in Toronto, and photographed her working in the garden. I could guess just where he was standing — it was hard to imagine that she hadn't heard the click of the shutter. But the results had been worth the risk, for one of these shots was actually a very fine photograph, and all three caught precisely the quality I'd seen that first day: there was something essentially anachronistic or otherworldly about her. Bloomsbury girl and hippie, princess and peasant — she contained contradictions that removed her from this time and place. In Travin's photos, she was wearing a large straw hat that partly shaded her face and a long, high-necked dress worked with lace, and draped around her neck and over her shoulders was a long, tasseled shawl. The effect of all this was attractive, but undeniably odd: it was like looking into the past and watching a highborn Edwardian lady at play. What an enigma she was. And Travin, I finally concluded, would have agreed. As I flipped back through the prints, it was obvious that his principal interest had been her face, as if he'd wanted to compare this face, her face, with another. Travin had also been asking the question: who was May Brightman?

Naturally, when I opened the second envelope, I was hoping to find the answer inside. And maybe it was there, if I'd only been able to see it.

This envelope held only three prints: six-by-eight enlargements that were all identical except for slight differences in the developing. I saw at once that they'd been made from a copy negative; that is, they were photographs of a photograph. Travin had done this reasonably well — the lighting was good, and he'd used a tripod or maybe even a copy stand. But they were undoubtedly copies; even the best of the prints was subject to a sort of translucent blurring, as if a very thin coating of egg white had been painted over the image. In addition, the original must have been very small and also a trifle underexposed, which the developing had tried to compensate for, though not very successfully. Nonetheless, there was no problem making out what the photographs showed. Fourteen men were standing in the backyard of a house, with a large wooden shed or garage in the background. Their attention had clearly been called to the camera, but they were very informally posed: they'd just stood still, looked up, smiled, and one had crossed his arms over his chest. The yard looked very bare and unkempt. The shed in the background was weathered and a border of grass and weeds was growing in front of it. The sun, shining into the yard from the upper left, cast the shadow of the house across some of the group, obscuring their faces. On the far right stood a picnic table covered with bottles and dishes; one corner of the tablecloth flapped in the breeze. A few canvas deck chairs had been placed around the table, and two of the men were sitting in them, one with a plate on his knee. Nine of the men wore suits, or at least jackets and white shirts, while the remainder were more casually dressed: sweaters, a checked lumberjack shirt, a white shirt but no tie (the man with his arms crossed). It was evident from these clothes (baggy trousers, fat little ties) that the photograph must have been taken in the late thirties or forties. But then this would have been obvious anyway. Two of the men had been circled with white marking pencil and, in the same way, a single line had been written across the bottom of the photograph. Halifax, 1940, it read — or, more exactly:

Tilting the photograph to catch the light better, I stared hard at the smaller of the two circled figures. It was Brightman. It had been impossible to connect the bloody stump in the Wayne County morgue with the face in the photo May had taken "with her own Brownie," but there was no doubt about this. He was standing at the back, his shadow stretching up the wall of the shed. A big, barrel-chested man. Thick hair, receding a little and pulled straight back from his forehead as if he'd just run his fingers through it. He was dressed in a dark suit; his hands were thrust down into his pants pockets and his jacket was open; his tie had been flopped up by the wind… Harry Brightman, as he'd looked when he'd adopted his daughter. Had he been thinking about her at that very moment? It was almost possible to imagine this, for his face showed an abstracted, impatient expression as though he wished to be elsewhere. Why? Who were these people around him? Friends? Colleagues? Could one of them be May's real father?

Fascinated, I moved my eyes over the photograph, examining all the other figures but especially the second man who was circled. Even without this mark of special importance, something singled him out. Well away from Brightman, he was standing in the foreground, near the picnic table: a short but powerful man, with a broad, fleshy face and heavy lips turned down in a sulky scowl. Perhaps he too wished to be elsewhere. I let my glance wander a moment, then looked back, hoping such a heavy, determined face might ring some bell; but it didn't. Nor did the others. And yet…

Russia.

Brightman.

Halifax, 1940.

Dr. Charlie…

As I sipped a coffee in Macauley's Inner Circle Restaurant, with the photographs spread out before me, I felt that I was closer to some real answers than I'd been before. The men who'd searched Travin's room had been looking for these photographs; I was almost certain of that. Therefore, I wasn't making a fool of myself — and that alone was reassuring. In addition, the photographs brought Brightman's disappearance and May's adoption irrevocably together, for Travin had been interested in both father and daughter. Yet everything that had happened in Detroit also proved that the connection wasn't "personal" in any obvious way: it wasn't a case of May's "real" mother, or anyone else, trying a quiet spot of blackmail. May's adoption gave a particular focus to her father's past — a focus that had burned its way right into the present — but it was his past itself that was the problem. Who was May Brightman? This question, the question Travin had been asking, now seemed only one aspect of another: who was Harry? I had no clear idea of the answer. But that afternoon, as I drove away from Berlin, I had some real clues to play with, and I began putting them together. May and Harry, together, made up the mystery, and Russia was the key to its solution. Brightman had been there, I had been there, and a number of real, live Russians — and one dead Russian — apparently had an interest in this. And when you think of Russia, you think of Communism, a word that connected up nicely with the year 1940, and even better with Dr. Charlie, the doctor who was "a bit of a socialist," the doctor with all those left-wing books in his den. Finally, there was the photograph itself, with its Cyrillic lettering, and that odd group of men. I'm not sure why, but something in their stance — an aggressiveness, a tension— struck me as familiar. Funny associations played through my mind: old Jimmy Cagney movies about gangsters holed up in the hills… old pictures of railway executives posed around the Last Spike… and, since I was thinking of Russia and Communism, I also thought of those formal, frozen portraits of Engels and Marx, Lenin and Stalin, that are the iconography of Soviet sainthood. This sounds very vague; and it was. But it was more than a hunch. I suspected that I knew more than

I yet understood. I needed one final hint, a last nudge, one more prompt… I'd joined up the dots, but couldn't make out the picture they formed; I'd filled in the blanks, but couldn't pronounce the word the letters spelled out. Or, more precisely, I now had the photograph, but I still needed the caption.

I began looking for it in Washington — and found it three days later in New York.

As searches go, this one was not that hard, and indeed it was a pleasure for me: something like work, even a return to civilization. I faced nothing more threatening than a recalcitrant microfiche reader, and the greatest challenge to my intestinal fortitude was the Washington Post cafeteria. Nonetheless, I didn't forget Travin's fate, or Brightman's. Retrieving my own car, I ditched the Jaguar in a parking garage, and though I stayed at my mother's house in Georgetown, I was very discreet. I kept away from my friends, eschewed certain obvious contacts and haunts, and otherwise kept my head low. With May, I was vague. Though she'd returned to Toronto without mishap, she was still upset — naturally enough — and tried to make me promise that I'd give up what I was doing. But I brushed that off, and once I was satisfied that she was really all right, I told her a story about having trouble with the car and said I'd call her again in a couple of days.

A week, in fact, was the deadline I gave myself. This was less arbitrary than it sounds. I knew the sort of job I had to do, and experience told me that I'd either wrap it up quickly or not at all. Who were the people in the photograph? What had they been doing in Halifax in 1940? Above all, who was the other man whom Travin had circled? Assuming it was possible, then answering these questions should be a task of only middling difficulty.

I had three clues: Brightman, Halifax, and 1940. The first I dispensed with quickly. If I'd run Brightman's name through the files of the Toronto papers, I likely would have come up with one or two references, but there was nothing in Washington. My second clue, Halifax, was more productive — a huge explosion in 1917, innumerable royal visits, naval activity all through the war. And 1940 was a bonanza: all those stories my mother had told me scrolled through the scratchy, glaring field of the microfilm lens:

February 11: The U.S.S.R. launches a new, massive invasion of Finland.

April 9: Germany attacks Denmark and Norway.

May 10: Germany overruns Belgium.

May 13: Germany invades France.

May 26: The Allied evacuation at Dunkirk begins.

June 14: Paris falls.

June 21: France surrenders…

It was all there in black and white, and there were plenty of pictures: Molotov, Chamberlain, Weygand, Churchill, Reynaud, Guderian, Roosevelt, Lindbergh… My man, obviously, was a much smaller fish than any of these; he would be a minor figure, a face in the background, some assistant or aide. But I was sure he was a public man. If the photo had no wider reference, why tear Travin's room apart trying to find it? Pushing on, I checked all the papers, the Library of Congress, then made copies of the photo — blocking out Brightman — and showed them around. Two guesses took half a day to track down, I wasted an evening with an old UPI man in a bar, but finally, widening the search, I got lucky. This was in New York, in the Bettmann Archive, which — being the last place I looked — is undoubtedly where I should have gone to begin with. The Archive houses one of the largest collections of historical photographs in the world, and they are superbly organized. Instead of making you paw through trays of prints, or file folders that end up spilling all over the place, they have a nice, neat system of index cards: a small print of the photo is reproduced on one side of the card, there's a brief paragraph of commentary, and then half a dozen index headings. My first break came under "War, Spanish Civil": a picture of a stocky man hoisted on the shoulders of some grinning members of the International Brigade. I couldn't make up my mind; this man was like Travin's man — he had the same sort of presence — but the photos were too dissimilar to let me be certain. Now, though, I knew what I wanted, and I quickly found three other shots, the best of them in the "Date File" for 1933. It had been taken from above, and showed the head and upper body of a man in his mid-forties. He had dark, thick hair and dark eyes, and his powerful shoulders bunched the cloth of his suit. His expression was determined, but also slightly distracted, as if he'd looked away for a moment after a period of concentration. Even in this casual portrait, the force of the man's personality was evident, especially in contrast to the figures behind him. One of these was a man slumped forward in utter dejection; the second was a guard with a vacant expression who was wearing the uniform of the German police. Under "Description" the index card said:

Setting the two photographs side by side, I went back and forth between them, but there was absolutely no doubt. The second man whom Travin had circled was Georgi Dimitrov, the man the Nazis had tried to frame for the Reichstag fire; Georgi Dimitrov, undisputed leader of the Popular Front against Fascism; Georgi Dimitrov, last head of the Comintern.

As I leaned back in my chair, there were no fanfares, no ringing bells. Just that hush that surrounds any true secret. For that's what it was. From the middle thirties, Georgi Dimitrov had been one of the most important of all the Communist leaders. And Brightman had known him. What's more, they'd both been together in the spring of 1940—just after Brightman had returned from Europe with May and started Dr. Charlie along the devious course of the adoption.

The centrality of all this was obvious. Yet, as I stared down at Travin's photograph, I realized that many of the details of what had happened were less so. What had the two men been doing? Who were the other men with them? And what was the relationship between Dimitrov's presence in Halifax in 1940 and Brightman's disappearance today? Those aren't the sorts of questions you can answer by searching the library shelves. That afternoon, as I boarded the shuttle back to Washington, I knew I had to pick someone's brains, and by the time I landed, I had a short list of three. At the top of it was a man named Leonard Forbes. When it comes to the Comintern — the organization the Russians used to control the Communist parties outside the Soviet Union — there are maybe a dozen men in the world who know as much as he does — but no one knows more. A tall, rumpled, genial professor who teaches at Georgetown, I'd met him first during my own miserable spell in academia, and we'd been friends ever since. Now in his sixties, and recently a widower, he lived by himself. At six-thirty he was still in his office, but readily accepted my invitation to dinner. "I have an ulterior motive, so it's on me. How about Chez Odette's in half an hour?"

"Terrific."

When he arrived at the restaurant, Leonard was his usual self, his understated wit slyly poking away at the universe. We talked friends, doings at the university, politics. But when our coffee arrived, Leonard lit up a cigar, folded his hands on his paunch, and grunted, "So what's it all about?"

"Take a look at this," I said, and handed him the best of Travin's "Halifax, 1940" prints.

He peered at it a moment. Then his face tightened in concentration and he irritably pushed his glasses up on his forehead and brought the picture close to his face.

Then he put it down and looked at me. "A fake," he said.

"A copy, certainly."

"I mean the writing's fake. Even if the picture is genuine, it wasn't taken in Halifax in 1940."

"Because," I said, "Georgi Dimitrov wasn't in Halifax then?"

"So you recognized him?"

I smiled. "Not in thirty seconds, I didn't. But eventually." Then I added, "Leonard, you realize this is all under your hat?"

"Oh yes. I can see your article now, splashed across The New York Times Magazine. But be careful. I still say it's a fake."

"Could you swear he wasn't in Halifax?"

"No. I suppose not. But it's unlikely."

"Where was he, then?"

"Moscow, at a guess. Where else? He didn't travel around incognito. He was one of the best-known Communist leaders in the world then — in the Party, they called him Deda— Grandpa — and that wasn't for nothing. Besides, the Comintern, especially the foreign sections, had just been hit by the Purges. I expect he was spending a lot of his time on Gorki Street holding hands with the survivors."

Leonard, on his home ground, can be hard to keep up with, so you don't want him to get too far ahead. "Gorki Street… you mean the Hotel Lux, where all the foreign Communists stayed?"

He nodded. "Ulbricht, Bela Kun, Thorez, Togliatti. They say that Tito literally ran into Earl Browder under the shower… a grisly experience, I should imagine." But then he stopped himself and frowned. "Let me see that again." He stared at the photograph. "What the hell, that is Browder." I leaned across the table to look. I would never have recognized him straight off, but with the name in my mind I saw it at once: Earl Russell Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Slowly, still staring down at the picture, Leonard murmured, "You know, I wouldn't swear to it, but this guy, the one with his arms crossed — I forget his name, but I think he was the head of the Canadian CP… Buck. Tim Buck." He looked up at me. "If this is one of your stunts, I'll admit it's very ingenious. How did you do it?"

I held up my palm. "It's not a stunt, I promise. Just go back to Browder. I thought he was in jail around this time."

"Well, the trial was 1940—passport fraud — but I don't think he actually went in until later."

"So what this might show is a meeting, in Halifax, between the head of the Comintern and a bunch of top North American Communists?"

"If it's real."

"Don't worry, it is." I picked up the photograph and looked at it again. Dimitrov, Browder, this Canadian Communist… and now I recognized the yard they were standing in. I'd been there myself: it was the yard behind Dr. Charlie's clinic in Halifax. I lit a cigarette and made an executive decision. It wasn't hard — I'd trust Leonard Forbes a long way.

"Len, this is absolutely confidential."

"Sure."

"Okay. I don't understand most of this, but my way into it was the man at the back, the other one who's been circled."

"Don't know him."

"You wouldn't. He's dead now, but he was a Canadian, a wealthy businessman. Not at all the sort you'd expect to see running around with these revolutionary types. But he was in the fur business, and made several trips to Russia in the twenties. Apparently he got to know Zinoviev pretty well, and even had an affair with some woman on his staff. Her name was Anna Kostina — I don't suppose you've heard of her?"

He pursed his lips around his cigar and shook his head. "No. I don't think so."

"She was tried in 1934, along with Zinoviev, but I don't think they killed her."

Leonard shrugged, then shook his head again. "It doesn't ring a bell. She probably went through one of the osoboe sovesh-chanie, and in those years—'36, '37, '38, '39—you're talking some pretty big numbers: over a million Party members arrested, six hundred thousand shot outright, ninety percent of the rest dying in the camps. A single face doesn't stand out from the crowd, if you see what I mean."

"What I'm driving at is this: could this businessman, through people like Zinoviev and this woman, have become close — personally close — to Dimitrov?"

"I suppose it's not unreasonable — though I'm not sure I follow you. But Zinoviev was the first head of the Comintern, and already in the twenties Dimitrov was head of the Comintern's Balkan Section. So if this Canadian fellow knew Zinoviev well enough to have an affair with a woman on his staff, I guess he might have run into Dimitrov."

"But Dimitrov, back then, wasn't very important?"

"No. Revolutionaries like him were a dime a dozen. His break didn't come till 1933, when the Nazis tried to frame him for the Reichstag fire… if you can call that a break. But I suppose it was — his trial turned him into a newsreel celebrity. He made Goring and Goebbels look like fools and they finally cut their losses and simply deported him. The next year — or the year after, I guess — he was elected head of the Comintern. In a sense, he owed his career to Hitler."

"But come back to 1940. What was his position then? You said the Purges—"

"Actually, they hit the Comintern a bit earlier, say in the summer of '37."

"But they didn't touch Dimitrov?"

"Not directly, though a lot of other Bulgarians got it. All the foreign sections did. There was literally only one person left alive in each of the Polish and Hungarian units."

"But Dimitrov survived?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Leonard shrugged. "Come on. You know better than that. In general, Stalin used the Purges to consolidate his personal power, but why any particular individual died — or escaped— is almost impossible to say. Actually, in Medvedev's book, I think he says that the NKVD began some sort of investigation against Dimitrov but it was never carried through. You could never say why."

"But — again going back to 1940—he might have been afraid he was going to be purged?"

"Oh, I'm sure he was. In fact, 1939, 1940, would have been an especially bad time. Dimitrov, remember, was the originator of the Popular Front: Communists were to unite with liberals and socialists to take on the Fascists. CPs all over the world became very popular."

"You mean, until Russia and the Nazis signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact."

"Exactly. August 23, 1939: Stalin and Hitler embrace in the interests of peace-loving peoples everywhere — and the next week invade Poland together. Overnight, the whole Comintern policy switched right around. Now the Nazis were the good guys. But of course this was an incredible disaster for the Western CPs, and Dimitrov — to coin a phrase — was their embarrassment made flesh. Now I think of it, it's a miracle that he survived."

"But he did survive. He remained alive, both personally and politically — he remained head of the Comintern. And in that capacity — if you accept the photograph — he made a secret trip to North America in the spring or summer of 1940. Why? How come?"

Leonard pushed his lips out, let his chin settle back into the folds of his bow tie, and shook his head in his most professorial manner. "You can't expect me to answer that. No one could say, not on the basis of this."

"Guess."

"Scholars don't guess."

"But dinner guests do. Have some more brandy… and I promise that nothing you say will ever be used against you."

He hesitated for another half minute — though I knew he couldn't resist. Unlike most academics, Leonard possesses a brain and relishes using it. Leaning forward, he took a sip of his brandy and then propped the photograph against his coffee cup. "I'd say — since you've put a gun to my head — that your best bet is to work back from the time and place of this thing as much as from the people in it. Now, 1940 was a very interesting year. From the looks of this — as you say — it was probably taken in the spring. By that time, the Nazis have already invaded Poland and divided up Eastern Europe with Stalin. Now they're just turning west, into France — the 'phony war' is over and the real thing is well under way…"

"I know. Remember, my mother and father were there."

"All right, then. Put that together with the place — Halifax, Canada. Also interesting. Why not the U.S.?"

"Convenience. Logistics. Dimitrov would have had an easier time getting in up there than down here."

Leonard grinned. "I now see why you were such a failure in academia — never accept the simplest explanation for any question. Besides, maybe you're wrong — maybe it had something to do with the fact that the Canadians were already into the war while we were still talking about it. In a way, that probably didn't mean very much; that early on, I don't suppose they had much of a military. What they did have, though, was industrial production. I know they built an awful lot of guns and ships and Merlin engines for the Spitfires. And you can see how that might tie up with Dimitrov and the Communists. In the thirties and forties, the CP still had clout in the trade unions, which meant they could have had a real effect on the industrial war effort. Strikes, slowdowns, refusing to work overtime, even sabotage… You can see how important all that would have been. And of course the official Party line said the war was of no consequence to real proletarians. All the same, we do know that sensible people in the Soviet Union understood that they'd end up fighting Hitler eventually. Therefore, the real interests of the Russians required CP unions over here to back the war effort, not obstruct it, and maybe Dimitrov was sent here to tell them so." He took a sip of his brandy. "You can even tie in this other man, the businessman—"

"His name was Brightman."

"Was he a Red?"

"I wouldn't think so."

"No, he sounds like a junior Cyrus Eaton — a capitalist who did enough business with the Russians to develop a certain rapport with them. Which would have made him perfect… Say the Canadian government was worried about the effect the CP unions might have, and wanted someone from 'above' to give them a good talking to? Dimitrov, with all his prestige in the West, was a perfect man to deliver such a lecture, and this Brightman character was the perfect man to arrange all the details. It would have been done on the quiet, of course. Given that Browder was present, maybe Roosevelt was in on it too." He ground out his cigar. "What you'd want to do," he added, "is track down the rest of the people in that photograph. If they turned out to be CP trade union leaders, I might say that this is more than pure speculation, embarrassing nonsense… which you've skillfully suckered me into."

I smiled, though I doubted if it was nonsense at all. On the contrary, it sounded like an exceedingly reasonable theory— it just didn't do me very much good. If Dimitrov was connected with the child — if, not to beat around the bush, he was May's biological father — why had he needed Brightman at all? If he'd come to Halifax on legitimate political business, why the complicated scenario with Dr. Charlie, the passport, and so forth? I said, "So your explanation is entirely political… I mean, you can't see Dimitrov having any personal reasons for being there? You said he was under suspicion — that the NKVD was already investigating… Could he have been defecting? At least thinking about it…?"

Leonard made a face. "You're asking a hell of a lot from one photograph. Who knows what he was thinking? He didn't defect, we know that. Almost none of them tried to escape that way, even when they had the chance. They were Communists, remember, absolutely loyal — even as the gun was pressed into the back of their necks. And if Dimitrov was thinking about it, how come he ended up next to a Stalinist like Browder?"

"What about his family?" I asked. "Do you know if they were in danger?"

"If he was, they were… that goes without saying. But I don't think they were in any particular danger."

I took a sip of Drambuie, considering this. My mind had been following the obvious track, the dotted line that wound through all this history; if I dug down, would I discover the treasure? It was remarkably close to Grainger's outline. Dimi-trov: a major Communist with connections that led back to Zinoviev and other people Bnghtman had known. Dimitrov: he hadn't been purged, but in 1940 he would have been worried. It all fitted. But something was missing… until, as it were, I pushed in my shovel at random.

"He did have a family, however. A wife… children?"

"He was married twice. His first wife died early on, I think before the Reichstag fire. I'm not sure whether they had children or not, but he adopted a couple with the second woman, after the war. Fanya… Boyko… there may have been another. The Bulgarians always made a fuss about it — kindly Uncle Georgi and so forth."

Somehow, I managed not to give myself away. But there it was, surely. Dimitrov, in mortal danger, had been unable or unwilling to save himself, but had wanted to rescue his child. Later, having survived, he redeemed himself with Fate by rescuing two others. Of course, that still left plenty of questions. Had Dimitrov brought May with him to Halifax, or had Brightman? Was it possible, in fact, that Brightman's efforts had been a form of insurance, a second option if Dimitrov hadn't been able to make the journey himself? Above all, why should any of this concern people so desperately now — why wasn't it merely a curiosity, an anecdote I could tell Leonard and which we might turn into a footnote? Finishing my Drambuie, I could feel all these questions well up in my mind, but for now, at least, I held back. The waiter hovered with coffee; I waved him away. Leonard looked tired, and he'd given me so many answers it seemed ungrateful to ask him for more.

I drove him home — he lived just across the Fairfax County line from Arlington-and by the time I headed back it was past eleven. Staying off the turnpikes, I took my time along Wilson Boulevard to the Key Bridge, then headed back into Georgetown, coasting sedately down Q Street just before midnight. These blocks, making a village, are where Washington's rulers live: on quiet, narrow streets behind black wrought-iron fences and neatly trimmed hedges; in tastefully restored terrace houses with bow fronts and carved lintels over the windows. My father had bought a house here when his own father had died, and my parents had always kept it, giving them a place to call home as the State Department shunted them all over the world. It was small, the end door in a row of three: white-painted brick; wrought-iron railings for the tiny three-step stoop and wrought-iron grilles over the first-story windows; a graceful dormer roof for the attic. I had always loved the house, but with my mother's passing it had turned into a problem. I couldn't bear to sell it but I didn't want to live in it, and so I used it now as a pied-a-terre on my trips into Washington. Given the taxes, it was a luxury I really couldn't afford, but tonight I was grateful for it. There was only one disadvantage: as with most of these houses, there was no garage, not even a lane, and the curb was so jammed with cars that I had to park around the corner, halfway up the next block.

The street was quiet; slamming the car door seemed an uncivil disturbance. Over on Wisconsin, the traffic made a soft, cozy hum and the wind rustled gently through the trees: old oaks whose shade was so thick that you were cool even in summer. I walked along in their shadow. On my right hand, the parked cars lent a soft sheen to the night, and as I walked on, memories swelled in the darkness. No wonder. My whole childhood had been spent just like this, coming back to this house: my return rendered all the more poignant by the certainty that I'd soon be leaving again. I could never walk down this street without getting the same old feelings: anxious expectancy, then glad recognition, and finally a fresh flowering of excitement because the place was never quite as you remembered. I'd loved it here. So had my mother — probably more than I had. After my father had gotten her out of France, she'd lived here for almost eight months by herself and she always claimed that it made her feel completely at home: it was so old, she said, and almost inconvenient enough to be French. Indeed, the house was really her house; my father had liked it, of course, but I associated him more with our summer place in Pennsylvania or our cars (one old Packard especially) or trips to New York on the train…

But now I'd reached the door: three stone steps, then you're inside. Now I stood in the hall, its shadowy perspective stretching before me, the maple floor and oak paneling softly gleaming. To my left, a little light filtered into the dining room and glittered against the glass doors of a cabinet. Flipping on the light switch, I hung up my coat and went straight upstairs, but instead of going into my room, I ascended the narrow, switchback staircase that takes you up to the attic. I'm not sure why. I must have been thinking of my father, still caught up in the train of memories I'd brought into the house, for the attic had always been his retreat. There were two low rooms. The smaller of these had always been a storeroom, the larger my father's study, where, after his death, my mother had kept those of his possessions she couldn't bear to part with. I opened the door. Nothing here had been changed for years. Thus, since I knew precisely what to expect, there was an instant when that's what I saw, the past forming itself from the soft highlights within the shadowy gloom. There were the Art Nouveau curves of his Horta armchair; the neat rows of Foreign Relations lined up in the bookcase; the framed Foreign Service map (with its washed-out colors) that would always be the world to me; and beneath this sat his desk, with its serried ranks of framed photographs: my father's graduating class at Foreign Service school; my father, pinched in a high collar, helping the embassy staff bid farewell to some ambassador; my father at meetings and conferences; my father playing center field on the consulate softball team; and my father, fixed smile on his face, shaking hands with all those names you can barely remember: Acheson, Dulles, Christian Herter… For a second, as I say, that's what I saw. But then I realized what was actually in front of my eyes.

It would be wrong to call that room a shambles, or say it had been dismembered — that would imply a degree of violence that just wasn't there. But someone had taken it apart, just the same. The spine of every book had been sliced open with a razor: but so neatly that a piece of tape would mend them again. The old map had been pulled completely apart: but then neatly propped against the side of the desk. And although every one of those photographs had been removed from its frame, all the pictures, and all their little cardboard mattes, were arranged in separate, neat piles.

Brightman's house… Travin's room… and now this. I was almost too tired for shock, and the question—What were they looking for? — barely registered. But then I felt very afraid. Quickly, I crossed the room to the window. Peering cautiously into the street, I could see two men get out of a parked car, about thirty yards down the block, and silently close the doors behind them.

Later, I was to realize how lucky I'd been. Since I'd parked so far from the house, my car had given them no warning; in all likelihood, they hadn't even seen me come down the street — only my turning on the light in the hall had alerted them. But, as I say, I only worked that out later: then, I just moved, and without hesitation. I think that saved my life. Striding out of the room, I ran down the stairs to the second floor, then raced down the hall to the back stairs. These took me to the kitchen. I felt my way through the darkness to the back door; as I reached it, I could hear scratchings around at the front.

I stepped into the night. The backyard was small — six feet of patchy lawn, two feet of border, a chest-high fence. I vaulted this, landing among my neighbor's fall bulbs. I scrambled ahead, through some shrubs, leaves shaking like tambourines and shadows poking into my eyes. Groping along the wall of the house, I came to a gate and stepped onto the sidewalk. I decided against my own car. Walking quickly, but normally, I turned down 31st, reached Q, then ran all the way across to Wisconsin. There were still a few people about; keeping close to them, I hurried south till I finally flagged down a cab. Half frozen, I slumped down on the seat and told the cabbie to take me to the Hay-Adams. It's expensive, but that night it seemed far safer than home.

10

It was three days before I got back to Berlin. Once again, it was a question of taking the long way around — and even before I left I had to make several detours.

The most important, of course, involved May.

Up to this point, I'd faced no direct threat to myself, nor had she; but now both of us were in danger. My encounter in Grainger's lane and the grisly events in Detroit could be written off as chance or coincidence, but not the search of my mother's house; that changed everything. I was now a target, even if I didn't understand why. But this meant that May was in danger as well — she had to be, since she was the only reason I was involved in the first place. That night, pulling myself together in the Hay-Adams, this conclusion seemed at first inescapable and then horrifying: for as soon as I'd thought everything through, I called her number in Toronto… and there was no answer. I called at midnight, at one, at one-thirty, then every ten minutes till three in the morning, and she still wasn't there. Falling asleep in a fever of guilt, I awoke at seven. Still no response. Then, as I began phoning the airport, something occurred to me. I had one other name in Toronto— Stewart Cadogan, Brightman's lawyer. So I dialed his number instead. At seven twenty-five there was no one in his office, but at seven thirty-one, by God, the old man picked up the phone himself.

There was a moment's pause as he took in my name. Then he grunted, "I'm surprised you'd start doing business this early, Mr. Thorne. But gratified. I've—"

I was in no mood for his crustiness and cut him off. "This is urgent, Mr. Cadogan. I'm very worried about May."

"For what reason?"

"Never mind. I just want you to send—"

"But I think I do mind, Mr. Thorne. You almost make it sound as if she was in danger."

"She is."

That made him pause for a second. "Why do you say so?"

"Because I've been calling her home since yesterday evening, almost continuously. There's nobody there."

"That would hardly indicate—"

"Listen, I don't want to argue. Just send somebody around there and make sure she's all right."

The anger in my voice finally got through to him. "I apologize, Mr. Thorne. I'd not understood that you were so upset. And of course, if you wish, I'll send someone to her house— I'll go myself — but I really don't see the need. She's not there — because yesterday afternoon she left for France."

"France?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Yes… or reasonably so. Yesterday afternoon she came by my office and said she was on the way to the airport. She had her bags with her."

I thought a moment, digesting this. It seemed incredible. She could only just have arrived back from Detroit. But she did have a house in France, so it was possible.

"How did she seem?"

"Calm. Subdued… but calm."

"You weren't surprised by her leaving at such a time?"

"I'm not sure it was my place to be surprised, Mr. Thorne. She said she was exhausted, that she wished to get away. I know she loves France and spends considerable time there— it seemed not unreasonable. And she left me various instructions concerning her property, the will, her father's remains… indeed yourself, Mr. Thorne."

"What do you mean?"

"What I say. Miss Brightman gave me your number in Virginia and I tried to call you yesterday. She wished me to thank you on her behalf and since — she said — your efforts would have left you considerably out of pocket, she instructed me to give you a check for ten thousand dollars."

I was stunned — by everything, but the money especially. And the fact that I had spared a few thoughts for what this was costing me didn't make me feel less offended. After a moment I said, "Of course I won't accept her money, Mr. Cadogan— money has nothing to do with this and in any case that's a ludicrous sum."

"Mr. Thorne, she asked me — on her behalf — to insist."

"All right, you've insisted. But I still won't accept it."

"Very well. There was one other point. She wanted me to thank you for what you've done, but also to say that now you should stop. She was very determined about that. She said she would write you later and explain, but for now she wanted me to make you promise, unconditionally, to give up all the inquiries that you've been making into her past. They'd only cause harm; they'd only hurt her. That's what she said."

I made no reply. I was trying to understand what she was doing, and I suppose, from one point of view, it might have made sense — get away, wipe the slate clean.

"Mr. Thome?"

"Yes."

"I ask you for that promise."

"I'm not sure I can give it."

"Mr. Thorne, please consider this carefully…" But then he stopped himself. And when he went on, he surprised me. "I'm sorry, Mr. Thorne. It was presumptuous of me to say that, for I know you will consider it as carefully as anyone could. But I am worried about her… despite what I've said. Perhaps it would be best for all of us to do just as she asks."

I hesitated. Had she told him something she hadn't told me? Perhaps she had, for now the old man went on, "You understand that I am discreet, Mr. Thorne — by my own nature and by the nature of my profession. But perhaps you don't know how often I curse that discretion. I do so now, for there is a great deal I would like to say which I can't. So I only say this. I have known the Brightmans for a good many years, and I know that May Brightman was always her father's protector — that was her life — and he was hers — that was his life. Now, you see, all she has left are those memories. If you were to alter them, or reveal that they had a false basis, you would be doing her a harm greater than you could possibly know."

"I think I'm aware of that, Mr. Cadogan."

"Very well. Do as you think best, and if you need me — for any reason — I can always be reached through this number. Please don't hesitate to use it."

"Thank you, sir. I'll remember."

We hung up. And for a moment, as I stood by the phone, I felt a funny mixture of feelings. Relief, consternation, something else… God only knows what it was. Mistrust? Suspicion? Her flight, the offer of money — so much money — and then her demand that I not go on — what did it mean? Then, as I asked myself this question, I was able to answer another. I knew what May had told Cadogan: she'd told him about our broken engagement. Yes, I was certain; that had shifted my status with the old man, lending me a legitimacy — as an old friend of the family — that was not far removed from his own. But there seemed, under the circumstances, only one reason why she would have confided this to him: to give him an extra call on my loyalty. After all, he'd been clear enough; to go on would be a betrayal of May.

Should I?

For me, this was a very real question, and I spent much of that day, and another sleepless night, thinking about it. In fact, I did not want to betray her; more importantly, I did not want to put her in danger. But the more I thought about what had happened, the queasier I felt. Her flight to France, in the final analysis, didn't seem natural and certain old questions would not go away. In Halifax, I'd wondered for the first time how much she'd actually known, how much of the truth she had told me; and, try as I might, her forgetfulness about Bright-man's Jaguar still seemed peculiar. Then there was the money — and though I was probably being a little self-righteous, I still felt offended. It looked like a bribe.

But — of course — this argument had another side as well. She'd run off, but so what? It was her way of handling grief. And her grief, after all, would have a peculiar cast simply because it was the confirmation of her own worst fears: those fears would now seem a self-fulfilling prophecy, making her responsible for her father's death. Insane, but people are like that___Then there were my own motives to consider. If I truly mistrusted her, perhaps the reasons were to be found in myself and the old wounds my ego had suffered. She'd betrayed me, after all: perhaps my psyche was now taking belated revenge. And this explanation seemed distressingly reasonable because the alternatives, when you thought about them — and I spent a lot of time thinking, that afternoon, in the Hay-Adams bar — bordered on the ludicrous. If I was going to suspect her, what could I suspect her of? Did I really imagine that she'd been involved, malevolently, in her father's disappearance and death? The idea was crazy.

Yes, it was crazy; but, rightly or wrongly, I suppose it was questions like these, which she herself had sowed in my mind, that ultimately decided me to disregard her wishes and go on. But I had other reasons too, and no doubt these showed how much this whole business had become my own. I'd started out as a spectator, become an unwitting catalyst, but now I'd seized the initiative. Because I'd broken into Travin's car, I— alone? — knew about Dimitrov. More: I had a way of tracking back over Travin's footsteps. Where would they lead? Could I live with myself if I refused to find out? And there was one final matter which I could not disregard. I was a target, that was clear, and I had been from the very beginning — that's why they'd taken May's telegram that very first day in Charlottesville. Or was that the real explanation? Might there not be another? Something personal, something you wouldn't want a policeman to hear… Sipping bourbon in the Hay-Adams bar, I began to work out a theory. Brightman had gone to Europe in late 1939 or early 1940, and had probably made his return journey just as Hitler launched his attack in the West. Therefore it was conceivable, even likely, that he'd been in Paris at the time the French had surrendered. A tricky moment. What if something had gone wrong? He was, after all, traveling with false papers. A couple of calls to the Canadian Embassy established that the Canadians had evacuated Paris with the British (and my mother) on the tenth of June 1940, so after that date he couldn't have turned to his own people for help. No. But the U.S. Embassy was carrying on business as usual and my father was working there. Had they met? Had my father rendered Brightman assistance — perhaps in an irregular way? Was I more directly involved — and hence more directly a threat— than I'd ever imagined? Speculation, that's all you could call this. But it did fit some of the facts, and even the possibility that it might be true made it impossible for me to turn back.

So I went on.

But cautiously.

Taking the most roundabout route I could think of, I flew to New York, took the train to Hartford, a bus to Boston, a commuter flight to Portland, and finally — the next morning— I rented an old Ford and headed off" to New Hampshire. That afternoon, as I headed into the White Mountain area west of Berlin, I was reasonably confident I was alone. Even so, I was careful. Berlin's a small town, and there aren't that many motels. Giving them all a miss, I went on to Lancaster, about twenty-five miles to the west. By then, it was early evening, too late to do anything. I took a stroll through the town, bought a Boston Globe, then watched TV and went to bed early.

The next morning, I put my "plan" straight into action. This was simple enough. There was no listing for Travin in the local directories, and the number he'd left with the store didn't answer. But that didn't discourage me. He would have used a different name with the phone company, and you could hardly expect him to answer his phone, given his present condition. I had to hope, however, that the basic information he'd left with the store was genuine. If it was, I should be able to cross-reference the phone number and address and discover where he was living.

When I arrived in Berlin around ten, my first stop was the post office. No one there remembered Travin's name, but a clerk penciled in RFD 2—the rural delivery number he'd left with the store — onto my map. Following these directions, I stuck with the highway for three miles, then turned left onto an unmarked secondary road. Running straight for a time, it eventually began climbing steeply, then twisted its way through a thick stand of spruce.

The first mailbox — the next step in my plan — appeared shortly afterward.

It was a square one, at the end of a short drive leading to an aluminum "universal" home. The letters on the box were black and silver stick-ons, the sort farmers use on their pickups. I slowed to read them, pressing the microphone switch on the cassette recorder I'd picked up in Boston. I knew this couldn't be Travin, but you have to start somewhere — so W. F. Grafton became first on my list. Around the bend, in quick succession, there were three more places, just like his. Then came a gap — a mile of cedar and spruce — and then a large New England-style house, all turrets and porches and dormers. Before each, I slowed slightly and murmured the owner's name into the mike. The miles rolled on. I learned that orange reflective letters are easier to read than black ones, I wondered about the etiquette of rural styles of address — the formality of "H. Edward Wilmott"; the terseness of "Carson's" — and I tried, unsuccessfully, to discern the patterns of land development here: a few suburban bungalows would be pressed tight together at the side of the road, then you'd have two miles of wilderness, a patch of rural slum, a fine old farmhouse overlooking a valley, and then bungalows and TV antennas again. After a time, however, even these signs of relative civilization petered out, and the forest pressed in. Logging roads led into nowhere. A big sign, in the shape of an Indian, pointed down a lane to a kids' camp. Then nothing. More trees. Miles of them. Until, with a hollow rumble, my wheels kicked up the logs on a bridge and I flashed by a hunting camp. Then nothing again… By noon, I'd looped back to the main road, and finding Route 3 again, I turned toward Lancaster.

In my motel room, I ate a Big Mac, then played back my tape, giving myself a list of all the people living on RFD 2.

Now, tediously, I looked up all their names in the phone book — hoping to match the number Travin had left with the photo store. In twenty-five minutes, I had it. Michael Travin had been staying at something called Gerry's White Mountain Camp.

This was the opposite of what I'd been hoping for — hotel, lodge, campground: these were the sorts of places where he might have stayed for a couple of days before moving on. I tried to recall what it looked like, but all I got was an image of bush, so I drove out there. Even knowing where it was, this took almost an hour, for it was at the "wilderness" end of my run: the road cut across a narrow notch in the hills, passed over a stream, then climbed steeply up a higher hill beyond. The mailbox, drooping on its post, was at the bottom of this upgrade, at the junction of a narrow dirt road that ran back into the bush. Drawing up beside it, I got out of the Ford and looked around, but memory had served me regrettably well; there was really nothing to look at but trees — no buildings, the nearest house was five or eight minutes back, and there wasn't much further on till you curled down the far side of the hill toward the highway. I walked up to the gate. It was new and padlocked shut, but it was just a regular metal farm gate. The road to the camp itself, disappearing into the trees behind it, might have run on for miles.

I drove back to Lancaster.

By then, it was after three in the afternoon. I called the camp number a couple of times, but there was no answer, and then, before it got too late, I decided to check a point. Lancaster, though smaller than Berlin, is the seat of Coos County, New Hampshire; as such, it boasts a fine old courthouse — with as much varnished brightwork inside as a millionaire's yacht— which contains the local deed registry. A clerk gave me a hand with the books, and I traced out the history of Gerry's Camp. The original Gerry had been one Gerard Ledoux, who'd put the land together in 1947. In 1962, it had passed by probate to his wife, who'd hung on to it for another three years. Since then, it had changed hands fairly regularly about every two years, the last purchaser, a man named Evans, having bought it ten months previously. I wasn't much disappointed by this; I hadn't really expected to find Travin listed as owner. Going back to the motel, I tried the camp number again — but still got no answer.

No answer.

That evening, again watching television — Lancaster had few other diversions to offer a stranger — I wondered about this. It did seem a bit funny. This was November. I hadn't hunted in a long time, and I'd never hunted in this state, but I guessed we were close to the deer season: hardly the time when a hunting camp would close down. Of course, everyone might be off in the bush, or the camp might have gone bankrupt — or conceivably Mr. Evans had purchased the land for different reasons altogether. Still, as I went on trying the number and getting no response, I decided I wasn't going to let up on the caution.

The next morning, around nine, I drove into Berlin and paid a visit to the Pinkham Notch Shop, a sporting-goods store on the main street. Here, a friendly, knowledgeable Canuck sold me a bush shirt, a heavy wool sweater, a camouflage poncho, a rubberized groundsheet, two canteens, one hatchet, a Russell belt knife, a flashlight, a Silva compass, Bushnell 10-power binoculars, and a nylon pack to put everything in. He had no maps, but I assumed I wouldn't have to go far. I went on to a grocery: ham, cheese, bread, a liter of cheap Valpolicella. Back in the car, I filled up the canteens with the wine, then drove out of town.

The day was no better than yesterday, cold and drear, but inside the old Ford's comfortable fug (oil, ancient dust, cigarette smoke), the cold world turned remote, like a movie, or the miniaturized landscape toy trains pass through: the Androscoggin River was a twist of gray modeling clay, toothpicks made birches that rattled their branches against the slate sky, and the thick stands of spruce were bits of pipe cleaner dipped into ink.

Slowly, I climbed through the hills of RFD 2. Out of habit, I kept one eye on the mailboxes, and noted that a few red flags were up, signaling the mailman to stop for a letter. I recognized landmarks now: a twist in the road that revealed a long, forested valley, a hill topped with an enormous, gnarled spruce. And I even had my favorite sights: an old frame farmhouse with a white paddock and three Shetland ponies and the burned-out shell of a barn beside the white splash of a stream.

After a time, a pickup truck passed me — the first vehicle I'd seen on this road — and then, getting closer, I slowed. Once again, loose logs bounced under my wheels as I crossed over a bridge, and a hundred yards on, the road bent slightly left. As it straightened out, it passed the camp gate — still locked— and began climbing steeply again. At this point I checked the odometer. One and two-tenths miles further on, a logging road ran off to the left. It was further than I would have liked, but there was really no other place to pull over, and the ground, though bumpy, was firm. I nosed the car in. Ten yards on, the track widened a little and pulled a bit right, then became so overgrown as to be completely impassable. But this was perfect for me: the jog meant the Ford wouldn't be seen from the highway.

To keep dry, I went through the contortions of changing inside the car. The flannel bush shirt — an ugly green and black plaid — went over my regular shirt. Then came the hiking boots and the sweater, which was loose enough to be comfortable. Next I packed up the knapsack, making sure the binoculars and groundsheet went in last, and slung it over my shoulder, paper-boy style, so that it rested on my left hip. Finally, on top of everything else, came the poncho. Drawing up its hood, I stepped into misery.

Coniferous forest, especially if it's been cut over recently, makes about the worst bush in the world. After five minutes, I knew this stuff was pure hell: a northern equivalent to the Amazon jungle.

The trees, mainly spruce, grew so tightly together that you could barely move, and their thick, heavy boughs made it impossible to see where you were going. Dead branches jabbed like spikes. Underfoot, branches left from past cutting had turned slick as ice. And everything was wet — after ten feet, my pant legs were soaked. There was nothing to do but grit my teeth and bull forward — though I was ass backwards about fifty percent of the time. I blundered through huge, sticky cobwebs; branches slashed a dozen stinging cuts on my face; and the rain sifted down as an acrid, resinous haze — it was like taking a bath in retsina. To make matters worse, I'd started high up on the slope and kept sliding downhill, though I was trying to make a straight course, a little east of north, that would keep me parallel to the camp road. After ten minutes, though, I gave up on all that fancy stuff and just tried to make sure I didn't circle back on myself. Eventually, things got a little easier. I stumbled onto a deer path — running northwest, downhill, but I was in no mood to be finicky — and for ten minutes I enjoyed quick, easy going. Then the ground opened up, spruce and pine giving way to maple and oak — their leaves gleaming russet and gold in the gloom — and I was even able to glimpse the miserable sky overhead.

I took a breather then and tried to fix my position. I'd been walking for forty-five minutes but probably hadn't traveled a mile from my entry point. I'd been well up the mountain to begin with, but had definitely been angling downhill, which meant, by my calculations, that I'd eventually intersect the camp road. But I didn't want to do this; Or at least not too soon, or in an uncontrolled way. My idea was to reconnoiter the camp, making absolutely certain that I saw the occupants — if any — long before they spotted me. I looked around. I was standing in a clearing full of small oaks, but there was one tall larch nearby and I decided to climb it. Not easy: there were no low branches, so I had to cut notches with my hatchet and shinny the first ten feet, and by the time I reached the first big branch my fingers were glued together with resin and bark. But I got what I wanted — a view — and at twenty feet I hung on and peered out. Across the valley there was nothing to see, just a long gray sweep of trees. But looking backwards, up the hill I'd been coming down, I saw just what I wanted: a rocky outcrop, near the summit. I took a compass bearing on it, clambered down, and allowed myself two gulps of wine before starting out.

It was twelve-twenty when I left for the knoll; I reached it exactly two hours later.

By then, I'd begun to get the hang of these woods. For reasons of soil or climate, the evergreens — like some drab forest infantry — commanded the heights while the hardwoods marched in their bright dress uniforms along the lower slopes. And on the lower ground, as the hillside flattened out into the valley, the trees were much older, or at least larger, and grew further apart. Since all of this made the going much easier, that's where I stayed, keeping parallel to the hill, which, of course, I'd eventually have to climb. But here I could walk rather than scramble; find my way rather than blunder on blindly. My steps and my breathing fell into a rhythm, while my mind found a nice quiet spot at the back of my skull and happily dozed. Still, this comfort was only relative. I was still cold, and very wet — the rain came down hard for ten minutes, and these open woods gave me little protection. But I made steady progress, and when the rain slacked off, I even caught a whiff of that lovely forest fragrance — damp earth, fresh water, pine needles, the soft rot under logs. After I rested awhile on a rock, my breath finally stilled and I listened quietly to the soft forest drip all around me. Memories came back. Pennsylvania. Hunting trips with my father. The perfect silence that forms just before your finger squeezes the trigger; the ache you always get at the back of your legs… Five minutes later, coming into the open, I was able to look up the hillside and see my knoll, almost directly above.

From now, it was all uphill — and it was a high hill — but this was easier than I expected. The ground was much rockier, the footing easier; and though the hardwoods petered out, this stonier soil supported fewer trees altogether — some spruce and pine, but more birch and cedar. Up the steepest slopes, I had to crawl on all fours, but most of the time I could find a spot to wedge my foot in, and frequently small runs of boulders formed traverses that let me work my way up at an angle. Even better, about halfway up I hit a rocky ledge, a sort of shelf, that made an easy path. I worked along this quite comfortably, now and then catching glimpses — huge sweeps of space — of the valley below me. And then the path opened up, a big blast of wind hit me, and I stepped onto the knoll.

But it really wasn't a knoll. As I rested a moment, leaning back on a rock, I realized it was a flat ledge — an expansion of the ledge I'd been walking along — that projected from the hillside like a fungus jutting out from a tree. It was completely open, the wind blustered in my ears, and up this high even the dark, overcast sky was dazzling. Shading my eyes, I stared over the valley. A dizzying expanse of space opened out: a curve of high gray sky above, a curve of dark khaki below. I guessed that the valley was about two miles wide, though I've never been a great judge of distances. The opposite hill was a little lower than the one I was on, but higher hills rose beyond it. Though the floor of the valley was rough and wooded, I also caught a glint of water through the trees — a substantial stream, if not quite a river. On the far side of this, a little way up the hill, Gerry's Camp was clearly visible: one large building, two smaller ones, a trickle of smoke.

Reassured that it was there, I turned away for a moment. In behind a big boulder I stretched out my groundsheet, holding down the corners with stones, and set out a rather soggy picnic. But I was starving — even my pasty sandwiches tasted terrific, and I refused to complain about the plastic aftertaste the canteen lent the wine. Finally, stretching my legs out, I relaxed with a cigarette. I even thought of a fire, but then decided against it. I could build one all right — I could sense various old skills coming back — but in this rain it was bound to smoke, and if I could see smoke from Gerry's, presumably they would see mine. Taking no chance, I let a second cigarette warm me instead.

By three o'clock I was ready to get down to business.

At the extreme edge of the knoll, a couple of boulders made a kind of chair, and I wedged myself in and examined the valley with my binoculars. I could see the road I'd driven up, but the camp road, the one with the gate, wasn't visible at all. Indeed, the most conspicuous feature of this landscape was the stream, a snaking gleam through the trees. At one point, the bank opened into a meadow — presumably a spot where it flooded in the spring — and just beneath the camp itself, the bank was very rocky, a scree of small boulders about twenty yards wide. On the far side of the stream, this rocky beach ended at the base of a hill, almost a cliff, which sheered up to a wide, flat terrace that was quite open except for a few cedar trees. It was here that the camp had been built.

There were three separate buildings. The largest, its front facing me directly, was the type of New England farmhouse I was learning to admire. It was built on two levels: two full stories and an attic with dormers. At the eastern end rose a high, hexagonal tower and a roofed veranda wrapped around the ground floor. The roof of the house was shingled with cedar shakes, very weathered; judging by them, and the sag in the roof of the veranda, I guessed that the place had been allowed to run down, though somebody was clearly taking care of it now: even in this dull light, it gleamed with fresh paint — white for the walls, dark green for the shutters and trim. Parallel to this main building (no doubt the "lodge") stood a smaller one, about the same vintage: a kind of coach house. And off to the right, and closer to me, there was a long shed with a metal roof.

Amidst all this real estate, I detected a few signs of humanity.

Smoke still trickled from the chimney, a white wisp against the gray sky; and just as I lifted the binoculars, I was fairly certain that I'd heard the faint, faraway whap of a door slamming shut — a back door, perhaps, for no one appeared at the front. In addition, three vehicles were parked on a patch of gravel in front of the metal-roofed shed: a small brown pickup truck, a yellow Volkswagen Scirocco, and a rusted sedan whose boxy shape took a moment to recognize… an ancient Datsun 510. So, I thought, someone was home — why didn't they answer their phone?

But as I stared down at the place — keeping those flat, hard binocular images steady in front of my eyes — I wondered if there wasn't a more relevant question. What had Travin's status been here? If this was really a hunting camp, had he been a guest? An employee?

Thinking this over, I crouched in my eyrie and tried to keep warm with my wine and my cigarettes. Half an hour slipped by. I kept telling myself that this wasn't too bad; indeed, the rain stopped completely, and after a while the wind switched around, putting me comfortably in the lee of the hill. I watched a hawk drift over the valley and studied a doe taking a drink from the stream — each sip paid for with a frightened, quivering look. Ten more minutes, one more cigarette… And then, without warning, a figure stepped off the veranda. I grabbed up the binoculars, pushed hair out of my eyes, thumbed the focusing wheel.

The figure was a man, walking briskly across to the cars.

I only had him perfectly clear for a second, just as he stepped into the pickup. Blue jeans. Windbreaker, unzipped. A hint of reddish-brown hair… A glimpse, that's all it was, but in a way that made him almost easier to identify.

Surprise?

Elation?

Fear?

A little of each. As the truck backed around and turned into the trees, I set down the glasses and let go of my breath.

A short, red-haired, weasel-faced man.

The man in Halifax, behind Grainger's place.

The man who'd floated in the darkness beyond Brightman's study, then disappeared down the hall like a ghost.

11

I watched the camp for six days. To begin with, I used the knoll as my base, and by the time I was through, I'd even made the place halfway comfortable. An extra groundsheet, rigged between two cedars, kept off the rain; and wrapped inside a sleeping bag, with a couple of butane camp stoves angled to reflect their heat off a big rock, I stayed reasonably warm. My meals were sandwiches and Dare cookies, I replaced my canteens of wine with a thermos of coffee and brandy, and I improved things on the optical side with a 20-power Zeiss telescope. So conditions were passable, if not exactly cozy. I soon developed a routine. I left my motel around five every morning, and was normally blundering through the bush as dawn dribbled over the horizon. On the knoll by seven, I'd bundle myself in my sleeping bag and watch the mist uncoil over the stream or a few straggling ducks, their necks stretched out before them, beat a hasty retreat down the valley from Canada. My first sighting usually came around eight: one of them would step onto the veranda with green plastic bowls for their dogs. Sometimes hours then passed before I saw them again — boredom was as much a problem as anything. My first coffee break, a great event, was at ten, I munched my sandwiches at noon, then there was more coffee at two. I always left by four-fifteen — I didn't want to get caught in that bush after dark.

What did I gain by all this?

Not much.

Travin had "known everything"; Travin had known why Brightman had died. Thus, having traced Travin this far, I assumed that I would know too — that I'd make the final connection between Brightman, Dimitrov, the adoption of May, and the eruption of all these events into the present.

In fact, what I now discovered seemed to lead in a completely different direction. Sitting up on that knoll, half frozen, I knew that the people I watched through my telescope were connected to Brightman, but the hows and whys now seemed to evaporate.

Still, I did gather some data. There were five men, no women, staying at the camp, and with the help of the telescope I soon learned to distinguish them. The red-haired man, the one I'd seen in Brightman's house, was obviously the leader. Twice I saw him ordering the others about — gesturing, pointing — and they obeyed him without hesitation. But it was equally clear that he wasn't running a hunting camp. Their one visitor came on the third day I watched them, but he was wearing a suit and left after an hour.

By that time, the third day, I was frustrated. My expectation in Washington — that I was on the brink of a solution — had now retreated into the distance. Yet I wasn't sure what to do. Getting closer to the camp wasn't the answer. With the telescope I could see well enough; the trouble was, what I wanted to see wasn't the sort of thing you ever do see: plans, relationships, motives. I thought of breaking into the house and searching it, but on top of all the other risks — and I wasn't sure

I had the nerve — there was the problem of the dogs. These were nothing special, just a couple of sheepdogs, but they were clearly turned out of the house every night to guard it.

That third night, back in my motel room, I decided on something simpler: to follow them when they left the camp in their cars.

From the start, I'd observed them departing on a number of such expeditions. Most had an obvious purpose — carting their garbage to the dump, buying groceries — but others were less clear, and they were frequent enough to arouse my curiosity. For example, on the second day the red-haired man took off in the Scirocco just after nine and still hadn't returned when I came down from the knoll. Where had he gone? What had he done? Following them was the easiest way to find out, and I tackled the problem on the fourth morning, hunting for a spot on RFD 2 where I could keep the gate under observation. I found one, though it wasn't very good. Because of the way the road curved, I had to be almost on top of the gate to see it; and because there was virtually no shoulder here, my car wasn't even remotely hidden — which meant I had to stay very alert to avoid being seen. As soon as someone came down the camp road, I'd pull out, as if I was just passing by, and then watch in my mirror to see which way the car turned. I almost never timed this properly; I'd be around the first curve before the driver got out of the car, opened the gate, and emerged onto RFD 2. Because of this, I'd drive very slowly, waiting to see if he came into sight. If he did, I'd drive on normally and he'd usually pass me; if not — if he turned in the other direction— I'd have to make a fast U-turn and chase after him. All of this sounds clumsy, but it worked. Over the next three days, I followed them on seven separate trips away from the camp. On four occasions I broke away quickly — I was afraid they might spot me — but the other three times I was able to stay with them to their destination.

All of these excursions were completely mundane, and I only learned anything of significance from one of them.

They bought groceries, gas, stamps; they took their clothes in to the cleaner's; the Scirocco was repaired at Al's Garage, despite its enormous sign — WE SPECIALIZE IN JAP CARS — and they picked up a cord of wood from a fanner near Gorham, a little place about ten miles south of Berlin. None of this was very enlightening, though I was rather more comfortable than I'd been up on that knoll. But then, on the fifth day, the pickup took their trash to the dump and I decided to do a little garbage picking. No one saw me: the dump, up a short access road, was just an open spot in the bush. There was a wooden shack, presumably for an attendant, but that morning I only had two hopping crows for company. I could see where the truck had parked and three yellow garbage bags had been tossed nearby. Making like a real CIA man, I began poking through them, thereby discovering that garbage is garbage: orange rinds, eggshells, milk cartons, yuck. But the last of the bags contained newspapers and there I found something: in among the New York Times es and Boston Globes were two old copies of a Russian-language paper, Nasha Strana — Our Homeland. I'd actually heard of it, though I'd never seen a copy before: it was published in Buenos Aires and served the large Russian emigre population there. Both issues were a couple of months old, the paper yellowed and cracked, and though I sat in the car and read them through from beginning to end, I couldn't see anything of particular interest. Nonetheless, it established something important: Travin's connection to the camp hadn't been casual.

An hour later, I made another discovery — also important, even if I couldn't say precisely what its significance was.

I was back in my regular position by the side of the road when a plumpish woman, in an old Toyota, pulled in by the gate and delivered the U.S. mail — one envelope, slipped into their box. As soon as she left, I did the obvious thing: the mailbox was an old one, and though it had a lock, this had long since been broken. The envelope, standard size, was fat, heavy, crinkly. I shoved it into my pocket and headed straight back to the motel.

When I opened it, I discovered three items: a wad of receipts, stapled together; twenty hundred-dollar bills; and a letter from a lawyer in Springfield, Massachusetts. This was addressed to "Mr. Howard Petersen c/o Gerry's White Mountain Camp." It itemized all the paid bills, noted that "your usual remittance is enclosed," and concluded: "After these transactions, your funds held in trust by this firm amount to $22,736.79." It was signed, as per the letterhead, by one Robert Evans.

Robert Evans — whose name was on the camp's deed. Interesting. I flipped through the receipts. They included everything from a county tax bill to an American Express account. The local items were all charged to the camp, the others to something called E. Arnott Travel Ltd. In the case of the Amex account this might even have been genuine — it certainly included plenty of trips: Boston-Montreal, Montreal-Toronto, Toronto-New York, Boston-London, Amsterdam-Frankfurt, Brussels-New York… During the previous month, Mr. Petersen had been moving around and taking certain precautions to cover his tracks: he either hid behind his lawyer or paid up in cash — and indeed it occurred to me now that I'd never seen any of them make a trip to the bank.

It was three o'clock when I made this discovery. Given the sum of money involved, I assumed that Mr. Petersen was expecting his letter, so I drove straight to Springfield and put it back in the mail. It was late by then, so I stayed overnight and didn't head back to Berlin till the next morning.

That was a dreary drive. I had no idea where I stood. Something was going on, and Berlin was one of the centers; but

Brightman, Dimitrov, and Travin revolved around it like unknown, mysterious planets. Above all, I couldn't see where Travin fitted in. Presumably, he'd been living at the camp. Did the people there know what had happened to him? Or had Travin been a renegade, whom they themselves had eliminated? This had to be admitted as a possibility, but if I accepted it I had to reject my previous theory — that the people who had dealt with Travin, and searched that hotel room, were "official." But they had been — I was sure of it. Which meant that I was dealing with two sets of Russians: the KGB — the men who'd killed Travin — and the people I was watching right now. But who could they be? A good question… which I couldn't answer. Yet, as I drove along, I wondered if I didn't have a few clues. They were Russian. They were apparently an organized group, and they might have émigré connections: witness the paper I'd pulled out of the garbage. What seemed to tie these facts together, albeit with a tenuous thread, were some of the remarks Travin had made on the phone in Detroit. At the time, I'd barely noticed them, but now they came back into my mind. "We can talk about the byliny," Travin had said, "or the beguny or the Black Hundreds." I'd taken him to mean: we can talk about anything under the sun — but perhaps he'd revealed more than he'd intended. The byliny are the great medieval folk epics of Russian literature, and their most famous hero — Ilya of Murom — has long been a symbol of Russian power, Russian unity, Russian Christianity, and the greatness of Russia's common man. The beguny—if I remembered correctly — were a crazy nineteenth-century religious sect (the word means "fugitive") who refused to have anything to do with authority (especially the census and passports) and took to the woods, like Robin Hood. And of course the Black Hundreds were a group of anti-Semitic thugs, with connections to the Czarist court, whose program was embodied in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. At this point, you could even make a direct connection to myself. The Protocols were ostensibly the outline of a Jewish plot to conquer the world by subversion. In fact, they'd been concocted by the Russian secret police around 1900, and had continued to be important in anti-Semitic propaganda into the thirties — and even later. For, in September 1972, the Soviet Embassy in Paris had actually issued one version of them, word for word, as a document entitled "Israel: A School of Obscurantism." I'd been in Paris at the time, had written a piece on it, and, in consequence, hadn't been able to get a visa back to Moscow for the next year.

Could all that be connected? Was it possible that Travin, without meaning to, had hinted that these people were some sort of wild émigré sect — Russian and religious, anti-Semitic and anti-Soviet? There was no reason why this shouldn't be true; in fact, there are Russian émigré groups like this all over the world. But what was the connection to Brightman, to Dimitrov, to May — and why did the KGB take it so seriously that they were prepared to murder its members inside the United States?

When I arrived back in Berlin, I had no idea what the answers to these questions might be, and not much certainty that the questions themselves made any sense. In fact, I didn't have any ideas at all, and later that afternoon, when I returned to my customary position near the camp gate, I was really admitting that I couldn't think of anything better to do.

I got there about half past three and for the next couple of hours bored myself with the futility of my own thoughts. But finally, as dusk began to concentrate into full night, headlights swept over the gate. A man emerged, his shadow stretching over the road. The red-haired man — I could now tell them apart by their shape, bearing, stance. But there was someone else in the car with him, which made me curious, for I'd never known them to travel in pairs. It was the short, stocky one who usually drove the pickup… But now I was well into my little trick, pulling out and heading up the road, and once again I hadn't timed it right. Forty seconds passed. There were still no lights in my mirror, so I U-turned and doubled back. The road was empty, but as I came through the curve I could see their taillights way up ahead. They were driving the Scirocco and traveling fast: away from Berlin, toward Route 26. This wasn't the usual pattern-most of the time they headed for town — but then I'd never before followed them this late in the day. We came up to the highway. Left turn. North. Which was also rare. As the road twisted into the hills, I fumbled along the dash for my map. North of here was a place called Colebrook, very small; then the Vermont border; then Canada.

The highway curved and climbed higher, then swooped down through the Dixville Notch. Hanging on to the wheel, I kept my mind on my driving; the Scirocco sprinted ahead— your glorified Rabbit — while my Ford drifted clumsily through the curves and grumbled up grades. Still, the further we went, the more content I was to hang back; on a road with so many hills and curves, it was unlikely that they'd spot me, but there was no sense taking chances, especially since there were so few places where they might turn off. Even so, I almost made a mistake. We passed through Colebrook, where I closed up a little, and the border, eight or ten miles beyond, came up quicker than I expected. The border post here is very small— Canaan on the U.S. side; a tiny Quebec village, whose name I never did learn, on the Canadian — so there's just one small hut and a single guard. I only realized what was happening at the very last minute — if I hadn't pulled over, I would have been sitting right behind their car as they went through. As it was, I gave them five minutes before coming up and they were just pulling away as I arrived. Once I was cleared, I took after them. The road here was gravel, twisting along the shore of a lake, and no matter what you were driving you couldn't go very fast. No one seemed to live in this district; there was an abandoned farm, a few scruffy cottages, "The Christian Frontier Camp." At last I bumped up onto asphalt and then I picked up their lights. They led me to a town called Coaticook, then further west along the same narrow road. There were hills in the distance, big lumps of darkness, but rolling countryside stretched away on either side of the double-barreled sweep of the headlights. Now there were more houses, and farms whose floodlit silos were painted with the blue fleur-de-lys. I hung back — there wasn't much traffic — and when the Scirocco turned down a still smaller road, I put out my lights. The night was like ink. Driving blind, I edged out to the center line, guessing the curves by the twitch of their taillights. Entering woods, we started to climb. I had to slow down, but every time they went round a curve, I flicked on my lights and shot ahead, before dousing them again. Finally, a mile further on, they swung right. I slowed right down, watching them across an open field. Their lights poked down this side road about two hundred yards and then stopped; and then backed up a bit before turning sharp left. That had to mean a house or farm. I waited till they were gone, and then followed, my wheels crunching over the gravel. Passing the spot where they'd turned, I could see a lane leading up through some trees, with a glimmer of light just beyond. Keeping straight on for a hundred yards or so, I backed around and pulled over.

With the motor idling, I rolled down my window. A soft, rustling night spread around me. The air was cool, full of the smell of grass and wet earth. After those miles in the dark, I needed a break and lit up a cigarette, but as soon as my nerves had knit back together I got out of the car. Silently, staying on the grass at the edge of the ditch, I walked up to the lane. There was a mailbox, of course — I wondered if the damn things wouldn't haunt my dreams in future years as banal symbols of hidden identity. This was an old one, with a name crudely painted in red: N. Bern.

I went up the drive a few steps, but all I could see was a vague pattern of lights beyond some maple trees. My nose quivered then. There was an odd, strange smell in the air. Presumably this place was a farm, but it wasn't manure. Chickens? Pigs? It was different, stronger. Something like skunk, but not that either. The breeze shifted, the smell wafted away… I hesitated. I wanted to go further down the road, but I knew I couldn't. The two men in the Scirocco plus this N. Berri — that made it three against one, and if they caught me skulking around, what explanation could I possibly give?

I went back to the Ford.

An hour passed.

Then, around eight-thirty, a terrible howl cut through the night, ending with the most pitiful whimpering sound I'd ever heard in my life.

It was so sudden and startling that it froze me in my seat. Staring into the blackness, I leaned forward and switched off the engine, listening as silence hummed in my ears. Then a dog barked. Except — like that smell — it wasn't quite that; it was different, a quicker, sharper yip. And then another barking voice joined in, and then another and another, and for the next twenty-five minutes it didn't stop: the helpless, desperate baying of terrified animals pacing back and forth in their runs. It went on and on; cries of pain and fear and lamentation that made my skin crawl with horror. But what had happened? And what could I do?

Maybe I could have, should have, done something; but I didn't. I just sat there and waited.

Then headlights swept down the lane.

The Scirocco. As it paused at the end of the drive, I had a glimpse of two shadowy figures inside, one of whom was the red-haired man from the camp. Then the car turned and headed back toward the highway.

I watched till their lights finally winked out in the distance.

Half of me, I admit, wanted to follow them, but I couldn't— I felt bad enough as it was and to have driven away from that pitiful howling would have left too much on my conscience. So I started the Ford and moved up the road. As I turned into the drive, stones popped under the tires and trees flashed silver in the glare of my headlights. For fifty yards the lane was black as a tunnel, but then it curved around in a crescent and a lawn gleamed like black ice. I could see the house then, and every light in the place seemed to be on. It was a small bungalow, not much more than a cottage, the roof slanting steeply over a small front porch. Bright fans of light spread out from two windows, but everything else was in shadow. As my headlights came around, I could see that the space between the porch and the ground was filled in with white-painted lattice. Shovels and rakes were leaning against this; a wheelbarrow, filled with dead leaves, stood just at the end of the drive.

I stopped the Ford but kept the engine running and then blew the horn a couple of times.

The crying and barking grew even louder, but no one came out of the house.

Very reluctantly, I stepped out of the car, then waited a moment, one hand on the top of the door and one foot inside. For a moment, I stared at the house over the roof of the car, reached in and blew the horn again, but still no one came. Beneath the grisly howling of the dogs — or whatever they were — night sounds whispered and cool air traced my cheek. The musky odor I'd smelled before was now very strong, but I still couldn't decide what it was. Closing the car door softly, I stepped around the hood, paused again, then went straight up to the porch. There was a metal storm door. I knocked and it shook with a rattle, but by now I was sure that no one was coming, so I eased it open, and then I saw that it was slightly ajar and I just pushed it ahead of me.

Standing on the threshold, I looked into a small, brightly lit room. A cottage room. It was crammed with the sort of old furniture that collects in such places, a clumsy sofa, a white wicker chair, a heavy square armchair from the fifties, floor lamps with tasseled shades.

But this wasn't what I looked at; not then.

Directly in front of me, on the other side of the room, was an arch leading into the kitchen beyond, and in the middle of this space, lashed into a straight-backed chair with a rope, was an old man — but pulled over his head, like a sack, was the head and shoulders of a fox: a white fox, whose lips were pulled back, grinning in death. The other half of its body was lying beside the chair, its guts bulging out of it in a bluish-pink mess, with the ax that had been used to sever the neck driven into the floor just beside it. Blood was everywhere. The room stank of it; it was matted like paint in the fox's fur, it glistened around the legs of the chair, great black stains had soaked into the carpet.

I sucked in a breath — but a breath whose stench made me choke it off in my windpipe. I wouldn't say that I'm squeamish, but God only knows why I didn't pass out at the sight of all this. Maybe, after Detroit, I was ready for anything. Or maybe the cruelty of the scene twisted the horror I felt into anger. In any case, my shoes skidding in gore, I crossed the room to the old man. He was alive. With a convulsive jerk, I flung the fox's head away, and for the first time he must have known I was there, for he started to struggle, almost overbalancing the chair. I caught him. He was shaking with fear, and as I reached around behind him to get at the ropes, he started to whimper, "They were going to kill them all, just like that. They said they'd kill them all one after the other…"

I coughed. If I coughed, I might not have to be sick. My hands, slick with blood, tugged at the ropes.

The old man kept whimpering; the foxes kept howling.

"It's okay," I finally said, getting him free. "It's okay.

They're not going to kill anyone now, Mr. Berri. You're all right. Listen: I'm a friend. Do you understand that? I'm a friend."

I took him by the shoulder and eased him a little away from me.

"I was a friend of Harry's," I said. "Harry Brightman's."

At last something flickered into his eyes.

"Poor Harry," he whispered. "Things never end like you think."

12

As Berri later said, it wasn't as bad as it looked — but that made it quite bad enough.

They'd slapped him around, bloodied his nose, and the business with the fox's head had put him into shock; but he was more frightened than hurt. I laid him on his bed, covered him with a blanket, brought him water. He began to pull himself back together again pretty quickly, and then, I sensed, felt a little embarrassed. Unreasonable, but also understandable: he was a proud old man, as I soon discovered, and couldn't have relished being seen by a stranger in such a state. In any case, once I was sure he didn't need a doctor, I left him alone and went back into the kitchen. There, looking through the arch, I gawked at the horror of the living room.

The sight was nearly indescribable; the disgust it aroused almost beyond expression.

Once upon a time, it must have been a cozy room, and its odd, jumbled furniture — flea-market items, gifts from friends, made that myself — gave it a rough, homey quality. But now it was like the inside of an abattoir. Blood glistened on the shiny brocade of that heavy old armchair; it was sprayed on the walls; a bookcase made a dam for a red, thickening stream. The remains of the fox were lumps of meat in this grisly stew. The head was the worst. Raggedly hacked away at the neck, its face grimaced in agony, the enormous yellow eyes still bulging with the pain they had felt. They'd also cut open its belly, and the guts were spilled around the legs of the chair. It was hard not to gag; but this was, I knew, a horror I couldn't ask Berri to face, so I stepped as carefully as I could through the carnage and found a shovel outside on the porch. With this, I pushed the gore into a bloody puddle in the middle of the carpet, then picked it up like a sling and dumped it into the wheel-barrow. Obscenity — there's nothing you can do except bury it. Trying not to look at what was directly under my nose, and cutting off each breath before it got to my windpipe, I grabbed up the handles and trundled the barrow around the side of the house. I was looking for a garbage can, an old carton, anything. But behind the house, stretching down one side of the yard, was a long strip of garden and so I humped my way across ruts and over old cucumber hills to the end of it. There, with the foxes' pitiful howling as a graveside lament — it had never ceased — I scooped out a hole and tipped everything in. Finally, having covered it all up, I flung the shovel into the night.

At last I could breathe again. Wandering a little away from the garden, I let the night cool me and looked around in the darkness. There was no moon, but it must have been shining somewhere, for the sky had a soft, pewter sheen. To my left, at the back of the house, was a muddy jumble of sawhorses, boards, a bale of old snow fence. Stretching in front of me, and away to my right, a dozen old apple trees twisted their shadows against the glow of the sky. The kennels — cages, pens, whatever you called them — lay just beyond this. They were made entirely of wire, and were lifted up off the ground on log pilings. Here was the source of that thick, musky odor I'd smelled, and the crying which, even now, still prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. Foxes: perhaps two dozen of them. I watched them as they paced back and forth, dim gray shadows, flitting like bats. With the blood of their own kind so thick on the air, they moved with the panic that only exhaustion can still. But all at once — I suppose a breeze brought them my scent — they fell silent and the emptiness of the night, like a crystal globe, dropped around me. I didn't move. And then I held my breath, almost in awe, as a dozen golden eyes glowed in the dark. For an instant, they froze me in my tracks. Then one voice began crying, a second joined in, and soon they were all howling again.

I went back to the house.

Despite my efforts, the living room remained, most literally, a bloody mess, so I tore a couple of flaps off a cardboard carton and tried to scrape up as much of the gore as I could. Then I spread a lot of newspapers around; after that, short of a mop and pail, there wasn't much more I could do. It was now after ten. While I'd been working, I'd heard the shower running, but now it was off and I tiptoed into the kitchen, assuming that Berri was trying to sleep. After a moment, though, I thought I heard him moving around in the back of the house and I called out to him.

A pause, long enough to be awkward, stretched out, before he called back, "I'll be there in a minute."

I looked around the kitchen. It was old and shabby, reminding me a little of Grainger's clinic: the lino was loose and wavy, the old cupboards bore innumerable coats of chipped white paint, and there was an ancient stove with big heavy knobs. I poked around in the cupboards, looking for coffee but finding tins of Campbell's soup, Chef Boyardee, Cordon Bleu Irish Stew, and a great deal of tea: Red Rose in bags, four small tins °f Twining's — Irish Breakfast, Earl Grey, Russian Caravan, Darjeeling. Given this indication of his taste, I filled a kettle and put it on the old stove, then set cups and saucers on a table at the far end of the room. Here, pinned up in the corner, was the kitchen's sole decorative touch: a 1941 calendar, issued by the Hudson's Bay Company, which showed a brawny, ill-painted Indian carrying a canoe up a portage. While the kettle boiled, I sat down beneath it and tried to put together a picture of the man who lived in this place. He was lonely, I guessed, a solitary; a bachelor — certainly no woman had any claims in this kitchen; and there was a combination of clues (the homemade aspect to the house and its furnishings, the very location of the place, and the foxes themselves) that made me think of one of those self-educated, self-sufficient workingmen who take night courses, harbor pet obsessions and projects, but who are practical enough to bring them into cranky, quirky reality. As a guess, this turned out pretty well. When he stepped into the room a moment later, it was clear that Berri was a very definite character: a wiry old fellow with gray hair worn in a bristly brush cut and a trace of white stubble over hollow, leathery cheeks. He'd changed into a rough gray sweater and a pair of old wool trousers, but his feet were bare and this made him seem all the more vigorous. Inevitably, covered in vomit and blood, he'd looked rather pitiful, but now that feeling was entirely dispelled. An old sailor, you might have thought. Or a tough old jockey — except he was a bit bigger than that. He hesitated a second, as if embarrassed, then managed a brief, flickering smile. "I should thank you, I guess."

"That's okay, Mr. Berri."

"Nick," he said. "Nick Berri."

"Robert Thorne."

He nodded, tried out his smile again. "Guess it was just lucky you came passing by."

I poured out the tea, lifting the pot and trying to look cheerful. "I thought you could use some…"

He nodded, crossing the room. I realized I was sitting in his regular place and began to get up, but he waved me down and pulled out a chair. He took a sip of his tea, a fussy, noisy, old man's sip, and as he did so, I was able to put my finger on something I'd missed before. Except for some mugs, all the china I'd found in the cupboard was of the same pattern: a heavy glazed pottery in an earthy yellow color. The cups were broad and very shallow, the saucers almost flat. They were rather elegant, in comparison to the rest of the place, and now I recognized them. They were "Russel Wright ware," a style that had been popular in the forties; my parents had had some, the last few pieces ending their days at the cottage.

As he set his cup down, I said, "Are you sure you're all right, Mr. Bern?"

"I'm all right."

"I've got a car. If you want, I could take you to a doctor."

"No." He shook his head. "Like I say, I'm all right."

The defensiveness in his voice was just this side of hostile. I tried to stay neutral. "That was quite an ordeal you went through. I guess what you really need is a good rest."

"I'm fine. I thank you again for all you did, but I'm fine now. Really I am."

I smiled. "And I guess you'd like me to get the hell out."

His mouth drew back in a deep, frowning crease up his cheeks. "Sorry it sounded like that. Like I say, I ought to be grateful and I truly am. But I'm okay now. It's late, and if you want to stay, you're welcome, but don't do it on my account. Those men got what they came for; they won't be back."

Got what? I wondered. But I asked, "Do you know who they were?"

He shook his head. "Never saw them before in my life."

"You mean they just came in—"

"Yes."

"What did they want?"

"I've no idea."

"But you said—"

"Listen, Mr. Thome, what happened tonight… that would be hard to explain and I'm not sure there's much of a point. But it wasn't as bad as it looked."

I hesitated. A moment passed. The foxes were still barking out in the yard, and Berri's eyes moved to the window. His chair creaked as he shifted his weight. It was obvious that he had no wish to talk about what had happened to him, despite the gratitude he felt for his rescue; and certainly, if he'd wanted to wait till the morning, I wouldn't have blamed him. Indeed, I would have preferred it. But I also knew it was important for him to understand that he was going to have to talk, so, as easily as I could, I said, "I'm a friend of Harry's, Mr. Berri. I think I said that."

He nodded. "I guess you did."

"Do you know he's dead?"

"They said… they said he was."

"Yes. He died a couple of weeks ago in Detroit. The police think it's suicide, and maybe it was, but those men drove him to it. You're lucky to be alive, Mr. Berri."

He squinted at me. "How come you know all this?"

I shrugged. "I wasn't just passing by. I've been following those men for days. As you say, the reasons why would be hard to explain, and I'm not sure there's much point. I'm a friend. I'm on your side. That's what you have to remember."

"Harry had a lot of friends. But some things even his best friends didn't know."

"Listen, Mr. Berri. No matter what you say, no matter what anyone says, nothing can hurt Harry now. But other people can be hurt. You can be hurt—"

"/ don't give a damn!" His voice was suddenly vehement. "Tonight, that's what I thought. Why should I? After all these years? Those sons of bitches deserve all they get." He smiled then, a quick, rueful grimace. "That's how come I'm alive, Mr. Thorne. No luck at all. No thanks to you. I just told those bastards what they wanted to know. Who the hell cares anymore?"

Unsure what he meant, I said nothing, but I watched his face. For a second, exhaustion flickered, a deep, inner emptiness into which his features collapsed; then he leaned forward, gulping his tea, though when my own hand touched my cup it felt cold. For a second, his eyes went to the window.

"Poor Harry," he murmured. "He called me a month or so back. He'd do that, every once in a while. Ask after the foxes — that was the excuse. He bought them for me, you see, when I quit working — six breeding pair, all registered. Harry liked to say it was a joint venture, just a hobby now but eventually the market was bound to come back. He always believed that. He loved foxes. 'They are cunning,' he'd say. He loved the mutations, like I've got* but he especially loved the natural reds. The most beautiful fur. Warm. Durable. Skins pretty easy to work. He was always saying we'd go in together in a big way — his money, what I knew. Harry always liked to have plans. That's what I noticed this last time he called. No plans. It was almost as if he was saying goodbye." He shrugged. "I guess maybe he was."

I took a moment, crushing my cigarette out in the saucer. He was talking now. Should I encourage him to continue, or put it all off till the morning? The trouble was, by the morning his defensiveness would probably harden to obstinacy — and Nick Berri, I suspected, could be a very obstinate old man. Making up my mind, I leaned forward a little and said, "Those men, Mr. Berri. Can you tell me about them?"

"They were Russians."

"How did you know?"

"They spoke it. They talked to each other."

"So you speak Russian?"

"Sure. My real name's Berzhin. My father was born in Kiev."

"But you're a Canadian?"

He nodded. "I was born in Montreal. Berri is French. My father, though, was Russian to the day he died. We always spoke it at home. That's how come I met Harry, you know. Because I could speak it."

"When was this, Mr. Berri?"

He shrugged. "Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? I'm not sure."

"Around the time Brightman first traveled to Russia?"

"You know about that?"

"Yes. I didn't think it was much of a secret."

"No, no secret at all. Anyway, that's how it happened. I went with him. He wanted someone who spoke the language but also knew furs. I was a grader by then — no one knew skins like Harry, but I knew enough."

"So you were his translator?"

"Sure, but I only went twice. After that, he'd picked up enough so he could go by himself." He coughed. "The Russians were really excited about furs back then, Canadian furs especially. Just a year or so before, Jack Caswell sold them sixty-five pair of silvers and that was the basis for their whole industry." He nodded, half to himself. "We got a real nice reception. The best hotels. Our own droshky to cart us around. Other people went to Russia and got the Black Bread Blues, but it was the caviar that did us in."

"This was when you met Zinoviev?"

"So you know that too?" He shrugged. "You're right, though. Kirov, then Zinoviev. The very first two the Bolshevik shot."

"Yes…" Then, on an impulse I added, "Didn't you meet a woman as well, Anna Kostina?"

"Bolshevik shot her too." He shrugged. "Poor Harry. He never had good luck with his ladies."

I remembered Grainger's words: the best lies always contain some of the truth, "Some people say he got her pregnant."

"That's crazy… though I suppose maybe not. You never know about women. She was interesting, though. A real Red — they say the women were even tougher than the men. Anna. The old lady, Breshkovsky. Anna knew everyone — Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev… and the Bolshevik killed them all, every last one of them."

"What about Dimitrov, Mr. Bern? Wasn't that someone else Anna introduced Brightman to?"

He frowned. "Been a long time since I heard that name."

"But you know it, don't you?"

He shook his head. "Not then, I didn't."

"When did you learn about him?"

"Same time as everyone else. When the Reichstag burned down, the big trial. I remember I once asked Harry if he knew anything about him and he told me he'd met him back then. Great man, Harry said. Maybe he was. The Bolshevik never got him."

"You must have been proud to meet him."

His eyes went shifty. "Did I? I guess you do know a lot— maybe more than I know myself."

"I wouldn't say that, Mr. Berri, but I think you did meet him. This would have been a little later, probably the spring of 1940. Dimitrov made a secret trip to Canada that year, for the Comintern. I'm not exactly sure why, but he probably wanted to tell North American Communists to forget about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. He wanted them to ignore it. Stalin and Hitler were in bed together, but the workers were to back the war effort to the hilt. He came to Halifax to tell them that — maybe the Canadian and U.S. governments even helped him to get there — and I think that's when you met him."

"So what if I did?"

"But isn't that the point of all this, Mr. Berri? Dimitrov's political mission had a private side as well, and that's where Harry Brightman came in. Dimitrov was frightened. Kirov, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Tukhachevsky, Pyatakov, Bela Kun, Lenski, Warski, Copic, Eberlin… Stalin had already amassed a huge list of victims and Dimitrov was afraid he would be next. So he was trying to save what he could. He knew there was no hope for himself — even if he'd refused to go back they would have got him eventually — but he thought he could save the life of one little girl. Maybe the child was his, maybe not; that doesn't make any difference. In any event, with Brightman's help, he smuggled the child out of Russia and then Brightman adopted the child as his own. It was all done very slickly — but not slickly enough. Forty years later, someone got on to him."

I watched Bern's face. It concentrated in a frown of genuine puzzlement, then he shook his head slowly. "You've got it wrong. You still don't understand."

I shrugged. "Don't I?" But I was sure I did. "You tell me then, Mr. Berri."

He was silent. A moment passed. His eyes held mine for a second, then shifted to the dark window. The foxes were still whining, crying, and barking just as before. He listened; and I could see the pain which their pain brought into his face. Maybe I was pressing too hard, I thought, maybe I should hold off till tomorrow. I tried to keep my voice gentle. "If you like…" I began. But he was already shaking his head. Slowly, he pushed himself up from the table.

"No, no," he said, "that's all right. You don't understand — you don't understand nothing at all. But I'll tell you. Just give me a minute to settle them down."

A side door led out of the kitchen, and beside it, on an old newspaper, was a pair of muddy rubber boots, their tops turned down in a cuff, just like the boots I'd worn as a child. He put these on and opened the door. I made no move to stop him, and when the latch clicked shut, I stood up myself. Looking out, I peered through my reflection into the night. You don't understand, he'd said. Had I got it all wrong? I didn't think so; but I knew, of course, that the "all" still eluded me. I stepped outside. There was a cast-cement porch, tilted at a rather uncertain angle. From here the night seemed vast, stretching away, while high in the sky the clouds were like enormous shadows cast before some infinite, silvery light. Across the lawn, I could see the glistening tracks Berri's boots had made in the dew. I followed them across the wet grass, through the orchard, where the sharp, sour smell of fallen apples undercut the musk of the foxes, and then onto a stretch of packed dirt. Beyond this, the cages lifted out of the gloom.

I waited, standing a little away. Inside their cages, the foxes twisted and floated like puffs of mist, and as Berri moved past each pen, the fox inside would leap up and bark with excitement. I caught up to him as he reached the last of the cages. The wire was torn. As he pushed the mesh together, the edges sprang back with a twang. He murmured, "She was the mother of most of these. That's partly why they're so frightened."

"I'm sorry," I said. And then, remembering with guilt my long delay on the road, I added, "You understand, Mr. Berri, I thought you were one of them, with them. That's why I didn't come sooner."

He nodded; and then I saw his fingers tighten in the mesh of the torn cage. I looked away, toward the foxes. I could see why he loved them. They were beautiful, exquisitely so, their wild, golden eyes shining forth from dark, delicate faces. They moved like cats, with a slinky, elegant grace, and though I wouldn't have said they were tame, they looked friendly, pushing their muzzles up to the mesh for a sniff. They varied in color. Some, like the dead fox, were pure white; others, almost black, were overlaid with a sparkling silver sheen.

Beside me, Berri cleared his throat. "They were bastards, you know. Real sons of bitches. You can kill a fox so it doesn't feel anything. Grab them by their hind legs, and turn them over — they'll just lie there — and then step down lightly over their hearts. They don't feel a thing. Just go to sleep___I think they even knew that. At least they knew how to handle her. But instead they…" He leaned back on the cage. A moment passed. "Sons of bitches," he murmured again. Then, as the animals began barking at the far end of the row, he shrugged himself off the mesh and began moving along. I fell into step.

"Let me tell you again, Mr. Berri. I have nothing to do with those men."

"I understand."

"I'm a friend of Harry's. I'm a friend of his daughter's, May Brightman."

"She has nothing to do with this. I told you, you've got it all wrong."

"There was a child. You know there was a child."

"Maybe. Maybe. I'm just saying it doesn't make any difference."

Stopping in front of a cage, he drew his hand up into the sleeve of his sweater, then pushed the loose end of wool through the mesh. The little fox inside was black as midnight. He ran over and tugged at the wool and started to suck. I waited. Up this close, the smell was very strong, though it was hard to be offended by anything produced by such beautiful creatures. They seemed calmer now, crying less, and even these cries were more like a bark. But most were still pacing up and down in their pens, and I could hear the quick scratch-scratch of their paws on the boards. After a moment, Berri pulled the sleeve back, then moved along to the next cage and did the same trick again. The fox chewed, licked, grunting softly all the time. And then, with his face pressed up to the mesh — as if addressing someone at the far end of the cage — Berri started to speak. Later, I sometimes wondered why he'd chosen that moment; maybe he was more comfortable out with his foxes; or maybe it was just because the choice was his. In any case, the words came out of him easily. I almost had the impression he wasn't speaking to me but was setting the record straight for himself.

"To understand," he began, "you've got to know something about Russia, Russia back then—1930, let's say, 1940. In those days, the Bolshevik had all sorts of problems, but his biggest was the one everyone's got. He was broke. But for him that had a special twist, because even the money he did have was worthless. All the rubles in the world didn't add up to a dollar. Actually, it was even worse, because when he did get a little together, he still couldn't go near a bank, on account of how Lenin, when he took over, had refused to pay off on the old Czarist bonds. Banks all over the world were holding them, and every time the Bolshevik tried to open up an account or sell sometning, they'd like as not send the sheriff around. So, all in all, the Bolshevik was in a real fix, and he tried everything he knew to get out of it. He confiscated every bank safe in the country to get foreign currency, he tried to sell the Crown jewels — damn near worthless, he found — and in 1923 he took all the gold and silver out of the churches. Now, gold, of course ¦ ¦. that was the one thing they did have. For egalitarian, proletarian, Red Revolutionary Communists you might say they took a keen interest in the stuff. In fact, first thing after the Great Revolution — first things first, you might say — they got the mines open again. But even that didn't do them much good. The Americans stopped them — in 1920, along with the Brits and the French, they passed a law making it illegal to bring Russian gold into their countries. You can see what that meant. No one would give the Bolshevik credit, he had no money — and what money he had wasn't worth anything — and people wouldn't even go for his gold. Just to get the most ordinary things, he had to pull all sorts of tricks. You follow me this far?"

I did. And I knew that everything he'd been saying was true. But I said, "I follow you, Mr. Berri. I'm just not too clear where you're going."

"That's okay. I'm almost there." But in fact he now paused, pulling the wet, ragged sleeve of his sweater back from the cage and moving along to the next one. The fox inside it ran over, and as it started to suck, Berri went on. "Just remember what I'm saying. It was almost impossible for the Bolshevik to get regular things, locomotives, machine tools, even food. Now think: what about those other things so dear to the Bolshevik's heart? Certain scientific supplies, for instance. Or military items. And what about the Red Revolution? They believed in it then, you remember — the World Revolution that would make the Bolshevik safe. These days, of course — when they don't give a damn — it's no problem. They want to support the French CP, they just slap some money into a bank account. They want to finance their friends over in Africa, they use the Swiss banks. Their gold's good enough now. So's their natural gas. Even the goddamned ruble's worth something."

"What are you trying to tell me? That Brightman smuggled gold out of Russia in the furs he was buying?"

"Think a minute. The furs were the gold. And year after year, Harry went over to Leningrad and brought it back."

"I don't understand. Those trips were no secret."

"That was the beauty of it. Everything was out in the open."

"And everyone knew he was doing it, Mr. Berri. There was no law against selling Russian furs."

"Well, time to time, place to place, that hasn't exactly been true. But it isn't the point."

"Mr. Berri, I'm asking. What is the point?"

"It's so simple, no one ever did see it. Year after year, Harry brought those furs back, and year after year he sold them, bale after bale. But the Russians never sent him a bill. That was his secret. They gave those furs to him. And though they made Harry rich, he had to use the money just like they told him." Berri chuckled then, an old man's laugh, deep in his throat. "You ever hear that expression, Mr. Thorne, 'Moscow gold'? Well, this was the real thing. That's what it was all about, you see. The Bolshevik's gold. Poor Harry's moneybags."

Overhead, the moon finally pressed a disk of silver light through a patch of clouds and beside me one of the foxes shoved its snout against the mesh.

"They are cunning," he'd say… he especially loved the natural reds.

Harry Brightman: a red fox with golden eyes.

"I'll be damned," I whispered.

13

All.

Everything.

Now I knew it too, just like Travin. Yet, for a moment longer, I still couldn't take it in, let alone "believe" it.

As Berri reached through the cage to stroke the fox, he laughed again at my incredulity. "I always wanted to tell someone that story, just to see the look on their face… and, if you don't mind my saying, it's been worth it."

I smiled. "If it's true, Mr. Berri, it's damn neat."

"Oh, it's true. There's no doubt about that. I never knew what Harry did about his income tax, but I expect it wasn't even illegal."

"But why did he do it? Was he a Communist? Or was it just for the money?"

"No, no. Harry was a Red, all right. He believed. They did make him rich, but that's not why he did it. I know that because I saw how much it hurt when he didn V believe anymore. But I've never been sure about one thing. Was Harry a Red when he went over that first time, or did it all happen once the Bolshevik got him into his clutches?"

"You were a Communist, weren't you?"

"Red as a fire truck. I was even in a genuine cell — all garment workers, old Jews, smart girls with thick glasses. They sent me to him, that first time. Those were my orders: convince Harry Brightman to take me with him to Russia. But he might have been a Red even then. I never did ask him, and he probably wouldn't have told me. Later, we just assumed it between us."

I leaned back against the cage, the mesh sagging slightly under my weight. "Let me get this straight. You're saying he took these furs out of Russia—"

"All aboveboard. Right out in the open."

"And then he sold them, also out in the open. Which meant he turned those furs into hard currency — Canadian dollars, U.S. dollars… and I suppose he then passed this back to the Soviets?"

He was shaking his head. "Not quite like that. That wasn't the deal. He kept the money, built up his business. They wanted him to become a rich, respectable man. A banker. That was always his joke. 'I'm a banker, Nick. I run the Comintern Bank of America.' That's what he'd say."

"But if he didn't give the Soviets the money, what did he do with it?"

"That changed, I think, though you understand I never knew all the details. At first it was political — he just gave money to the fronts, trade unions, that sort of thing. Some of it was up here, but naturally it was really the States they were worried about. Later on, though, the Bolshevik wanted him to buy things, especially scientific equipment of various kinds. Harry told me he usually did that in Europe — and since he always traveled a lot, that wasn't too hard. Then the war came and…" Berri shrugged.

"So what happened then?"

"Figure it out. Harry bought what the Bolshevik needed, and what he needed then was… information, I guess you'd say."

"What are you talking about?"

"What the hell do you think I'm talking about? Spies cost money, Mr. Thorne, like everything else."

I was too stunned to speak. I just stood there, listening to the rustling wind and the foxes quietly settling down in their cages. Then Berri laid his hand on my arm. "They'll be all right," he murmured. "We can go back to the house."

It was his turn now to make the tea, and he did so with an obvious pleasure, relishing my discomfiture. He'd been right: I most certainly had not understood. And as the old man refilled my cup, and settled down in his chair, I wanted to make sure I understood now.

"Let's go back to the beginning," I said. "When exactly did you first go to Russia?"

He shook his head. "Exactly? I couldn't say. But I'd guess '29."

"Okay. And how many trips did you make altogether?"

"Two. I told you."

"I'm sorry. I meant Harry. How many times did he go?"

"Three, I think. Maybe four. He skipped a year here and there. But even if he didn't go, he still brought the furs in."

"A lot?"

"Sure. He sold a good deal of it to other dealers, you see. And he bought everything. Blues and kitts. Kolinsky-a Russian weasel, that is, something like mink. Not much karakul, at least not until later. Marmot. Seal. Suslik. Some lynx and a few muskrat, but their skins aren't up to ours." He shrugged. "Of course, the big item was sable. And that was partly how he worked out the fiddle. He'd bring in real prime Barguzin skins—'Crown sable,' as the Russians would say — but label them marten or even fisher. At customs, there was no way they could tell the difference."

"And how much were all these furs worth?"

"I never knew, but a lot. They were always big shipments and he kept it up till the start of the war."

"Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? A million?"

"More than a million… but if I said more than that, I'd only be guessing."

"Okay, but whatever it was, you're saying that the money he made out of this arrangement was plowed back into his business?"

"Yes. But don't worry, the Bolshevik kept an account — the Bolshevik always knew to the penny how much Harry owed him. After a while, Harry even kept their share separate and turned it all into gold — real gold, I mean."

"It was like a trust fund, in a way."

"If you like."

"All right. Go back to what he did with the money. So far as you know, he mainly gave it to CP front groups — here in Canada, and in the U.S.?"

Berri made a face. "That's just how it started. But the Bolshevik didn't really give a damn about the CP, here or down there. Browder, those people, they were all idiots. Through Harry, the Bolshevik gave them what he had to, but not a cent more. What he wanted was patents, special castings, instruments, particular parts—"

"And Harry bought them all this?"

"Not directly. He put up the money. That was the point, don't you see — always the money. He worked through other people, but he set them up with his money. Companies, even."

'Except — according to you — this all changed with the war. He started out giving the money away — using it politically — then went on to supplying them technical goods, and ended up… as a spy."

Berri made a sour face. "That's your word. Who knows what it means?"

"You used it just a minute ago, Mr. Berri, and if we turned all this around, I don't think a Russian court would have any trouble deciding."

"Maybe. But Harry was way in the background. Always, he worked through other people… passed messages, collected them, but mainly he paid the bills."

"He didn't mind this? You said he 'believed.' You're sure about that? You're sure they weren't blackmailing him? Maybe that first time, in Leningrad, they trapped him by offering him a deal he couldn't refuse — those furs made him rich, after all — and then later forced him to help them."

But even before I finished, Berri was shaking his tough little head. "Nope. Don't kid yourself. He believed, just like I say. Just like the rest of us. I told you: the proof came when he didn't believe anymore."

"And when was that?"

Berri leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest — looking, as he frowned in thought, almost gnomelike. Then, with a little burst of energy, he rocked forward and tapped his index finger twice on the top of the table. "That's interesting, come to think of it. You mentioned Dimitrov and his coming here — which, you see, really had no importance in any of this — but that's when it started. Dimitrov told him the truth — about Stalin, the trials, everything. The Pact was the worst. I don't know what he told Buck — Tim Buck, he was head of the Canadian CP — and Browder and those other idiots they brought to Halifax, but he told Harry the truth. No excuses. Sometimes you hear people say it was the fault of the French or the British, that they wouldn't do a deal with the Bolshevik so he had to fall in with Hitler, but Dimitrov knew that was all so much shit. The British couldn't give him half of Poland, Latvia, Estonia, all the rest of it — but the Nazis could and that was the key. That was why he loved Hitler so dear, and turned over the German and Polish CPs to the Gestapo."

I waited a moment; a fierce, concentrated look had come into his eyes as he'd spoken, and two red spots had sprung up on his cheeks. All this had happened forty years ago, but for Berri that was yesterday. Finally I said, "What was Bright-man's reaction to all of this?"

He shook his head slightly as if, in some obscure way, I was arguing with him.

"He took his cue from Dimitrov. You don't understand what a big man Dimitrov was in those days. To every Communist in the world, he was the model revolutionary and a man you could trust. He told Harry a struggle was going on inside the Bolshevik's guts. Smart people knew Stalin was a fool to trust Hitler, they all saw what was coming, and according to Dimitrov their day would come. So Harry hung on."

"But Dimitrov was wrong."

"So he was. But remember, the war was on, and once the Russians came into it, everything was forgiven for the duration."

"And after the war?"

He gave a bob of his head, and smiled. "He gritted his teeth — we all did — and waited. Of course, that got harder and harder—1948: the German workers; 1956: Hungary; 1968: Prague… I couldn't take any more after Budapest, but Harry stuck it out longer, till Czechoslovakia. Then he told them to go to hell."

"Wait a minute now. You're saying that up till the spring of 1968 Harry was still working for them?"

"So far as I know… which means yes, 'cause I know that far."

"And what was he doing?"

"What in hell could he be doing?"

"Jesus," I said. I leaned back in my chair.

"Actually, they almost got him when Gouzenko defected. He told me there was some sort of trail. But he cut it off and in the end the Mounties didn't get close."

I thought hard for a moment. There was no sense, absolutely no sense, in disputing any of this. It was either true or it wasn't, and there was no way I was going to be able to tell, one way or the other. And at least it sounded genuine enough. But what did it mean? Above all, what did it mean now, in the present? That was the trouble. The past was coming alive, but what was its connection to the present? After a moment, I thought I saw one possibility and leaned forward on the table. "You say he finally told them to go to hell, but I wonder if that can really be true. He was in too deep. And no one tells them to go to hell anyway."

He nodded. "You're no fool, Mr. Thorne. And you're right. He shouldn't have been able to do it — but he did. I don't know how. He had some kind of hold, some sort of threat… they were afraid of him for some reason. He never told me what it was, but it worked. They left him alone."

"Until a couple of months ago, you mean. Maybe it worked for a time, Mr. Bern, but not in the end."

He sucked in his cheeks. "Don't be so sure. Those men, tonight, weren't from the Bolshevik. They were something different. I'm not even sure the Bolshevik knows about this."

"The Bolshevik": I'd assumed he'd meant Stalin, but for him I suppose the word stood for some essence of Sovietism that went beyond any one man — and this was a spirit, a shade, that had haunted him for so long that he would know it better than his own shadow. If the men who'd attacked him tonight were not "from the Bolshevik," Berri would know it — but then who had they been and what had they wanted? I eyed the old man; he glanced away. We'd come full circle at last. Keeping my voice as gentle as I could, I said, "You know what I have to ask, Mr. Berri."

He nodded. "Guess I do."

"And I don't want to bully you, but… it's me or the police. You have to understand that."

The room was very quiet. The foxes were silent now, and there was no sound except the soft rush of the wind past the window. When Berri turned back to face me, his head seemed to hang, and there was a watery film in his eyes. He cleared his throat and swallowed. "It's like I told you, I don't know who they were. I'd just say this. They were Russian, but they weren't from the Bolshevik. And one of them — he was like a little weasel — was called Subotin. The other one called him that."

Subotin… a name for my ghost. But I didn't let this tidbit divert me. "Did they know what you've been telling me?"

"Maybe. Most of it."

"So what did they want?"

He shrugged. "The money, of course. Where to find it."

"What money?"

"I told you — the Bolshevik's. It wasn't all spent, you see, when Harry got free. He told me he was damned if the Bolshevik would get any back, but he didn't want to spend it himself — it would only bring him bad luck. So he hid it away."

"This was still the money he'd made from the furs?"

"That's it. What was left."

"How much?"

A quick shrug. "He told me eight hundred thousand. But it wasn't in money, you understand. He always kept the Bolshevik's share in gold — gold certificates — because that made it easy to travel, and you could always cash them, no questions asked." Berri smiled. "He used to joke about that. 'J. Edgar's right,' he'd say, 'it really should be Moscow gold.' "

I hesitated now, thinking back. Gold certificates are issued by some of the big Swiss banks and a few other institutions. Each certificate represents a certain amount of gold, and as a way of owning the stuff, they're far more convenient than bars or wafers or coins; pretty pieces of paper that can be worth thousands. And that's always what they'd been looking for, something small, something like paper: in Travin's hotel in Detroit; at Grainger's clinic; in Brightman's house, where I'd first seen Petersen… whose real name was Subotin. And— was it possible? — even that first day, at my place in Charlottesville. Up to now, I'd assumed that whoever had broken into my place had been after the telegram from May — had wanted to make sure that I didn't help her — but perhaps they thought she might have sent the certificates to me for safekeeping.

I looked at Berri now, but even as I did so, he got to his feet and went over to the sink and splashed water over his face. As he dried himself with a towel, I said to his back, "Where did he hide it?"

"I don't know. That's what I told them."

I hesitated; I was only telling the truth when I'd said I had no desire to bully him. I kept my voice level: "Mr. Berri, you told me yourself that they got what they came for."

He^was still facing away from me, leaning over the sink, but he nodded. "They knew I didn't have it, you see. They knew that already."

"They killed the fox, Mr. Berri. They killed one of your foxes and they threatened to kill all the others. Why? Because they were trying to get you to talk, to tell them something, or give them something you had…"

I listened. He took a funny, hoarse breath, but only when he spoke did I know he was crying. "They wanted a name…" He cleared his throat, but his voice kept breaking. "They wanted a name… They knew I helped Harry. Somehow, they knew that… they knew I sometimes took messages to the people who helped him. They knew that Harry must have trusted those people, so they thought maybe… maybe he gave them the money to keep. I told them one name, someone who was already dead. But they knew that too, and so they killed the fox, and they said…"

All at once, with a groan, he leaned forward and was sick into the sink. I looked away. I heard him gasping, fighting for breath. Then he panted, "They said they'd kill all my foxes, just like the first one, and then they'd kill me. So I told them." He wheezed. Sucked in more air. "I don't give a damn. I swear to God I don't give a damn…"

After a moment, I whispered, "Who was it?"

"A man called Paul Hamilton."

"Who was he?"

"He worked in the State Department. I don't know more than that."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Five years ago, Harry gave me a message. He was retired then — Hamilton, I mean. He was living in Paris."

I got to my feet. Now, at one level, I did know everything. Brightman had taken his final secret, the location of the gold, to his grave. Since his death, Subotin had been going from one of Brightman's old contacts to the other in the hopes of finding it. I suddenly felt very queasy: what had happened to Dr. Charlie? If tonight was anything to go by, his fate couldn't have been very pleasant. And neither would Hamilton's. He'd been a spy — why mince words? — and I owed him nothing, but simple humanity said I had to warn him. There was a phone in the bedroom. It was midnight when I started to dial, which made it five in the morning in Paris, but that was probably all for the best; and certainly there was no sense in waiting. It was unlikely that Subotin could have acted this quickly, but judging by his American Express account, he got around a good deal, and conceivably he had friends in France who were just a phone call away. In any event, I was forty minutes getting through. There was a bad line, and you'd be surprised how many Hamiltons there are in the Paris directory — I woke up two Peters and one Philippe before finding Paul. When I got him, he grumbled French into the phone, but after I'd asked if he'd once worked for the State Department and then said the name Harry Bright-man, he was fully awake. Even so, he was cautious.

"Maybe I knew someone like that. I'm not sure."

"If you've listened this far, Mr. Hamilton, you knew him. A Canadian. Wealthy. A fur—"

"All right, I knew him. Who are you?" His voice had the flat, neutral accent of Americans who've spoken French a long time, but he was from the East, probably Boston.

I ignored his question. I realized something: after speaking to this man for less than three minutes, I already disliked him. Heartily. Finally I said, "Brightman's dead, Mr. Hamilton. He killed himself — he was under great pressure."

"I know nothing about this. I'm not involved." An old man's voice now, a trace of whine. "This has nothing to do with me. It was all a long time—"

"Maybe so, Mr. Hamilton. But it will have something to do with you because the people who were applying the pressure to Brightman will soon apply it to you. They believe that Brightman left something with you, something valuable. Did he?"

"No. Absolutely not. I haven't seen him or heard from him in many years."

"All right. In a way that doesn't make any difference. The people who will be visiting you — who may be visiting you at any moment — won't take no for an answer. What—"

"Who are you? You still haven't answered my question."

"I'm a friend of Brightman's, if you like. I know he'd want me to give you this warning."

"And who are these people you keep talking about?"

"I'm not entirely sure. If you think about it, you might come to one obvious conclusion, but I believe that would be wrong. I do not believe these people are acting in an official capacity. On the other hand, I'm certain that they come from the same country as those people… if you follow me."

A long pause.

"I see."

Another pause.

Then: "You're warning me… you're saying I'm in danger because of all this?"

"That's right, Mr. Hamilton. Grave danger. Mortal danger."

Now there was another pause, in which the word "danger" echoed back and forth under the ocean, or over it, or however they do these things now. For Hamilton, perhaps, the medium through which my words came was the past, a past he now feared and greatly resented. "Well," he finally said, "you're warning me. What do you propose I do?"

As if it was my responsibility; as if it was somehow my fault. I just said, "Whatever you like."

A pause. I thought I heard him clearing his throat. Then he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply…"

I wondered who he was. What he had been. What he had done for them. And I wondered why. Was he a fool? A knave? Greedy? Homosexual? And then I wondered whether, at this late date, he could even have answered the question.

"Mr. Hamilton," I said, "just listen. You have to leave your home, and you have to leave now. Go to some place where you can't be traced. Not a hotel, I should think, or even a friend's — at least, if there's any obvious connection to you. But some place—"

"I could go—"

"Don't tell me. I don't want to know, at least not now. Just go there, at once. I mean that. Leave immediately. These people may have a Paris branch; they could be on their way now. So get out right away, even if you have to spend the next few hours wandering around in a park. You understand this?"

"Yes."

"All right. I'll come to Paris. I can't be sure when I'll get there, but within the next couple of days. When I arrive, I'll leave a message for you at American Express… the main office, near the Opera… you know where it is. I'll tell you where I'm staying, and how to get in touch with me. Then you phone me as soon as you can."

A pause, while he absorbed this. But there was no nonsense now: he'd taken it in; he believed me. "All right, but I'll need your name."

"Thorne. Robert Thorne." There was a long, echoing pause, and then I realized something and said, "It's possible you knew my father, Mr. Hamilton. He also worked for the State Department."

"Yes. I think I do know the name…"

But in fact, from his voice, I wasn't sure that he did. I said, "Whether you do or you don't, just remember: leave now."

"Yes. You're sure you can't—"

"Yes. Just get going. I'll tell you everything in a few days."

We hung up. I lit a cigarette. I was now absolutely exhausted. As I waved the match out, I looked around Berri's room. It was unfinished, the studs still exposed, and you could read the tar paper that had been laid over the walls: Ten-Test, Ten-Test, Ten-Test… Drawing my leg up, I leaned back on the bed and let a slow curl of smoke drift to the ceiling. The room was very small. A cell: Berri had belonged to one, and he still slept in one every night. I thought of Berri and Hamilton, putting them together in my mind. The two were very different, you could bet, but both were Communists and I could see the link that joined them together. It wasn't ideology, really; more a shading of character: a primness; a hint of puritanism; an effort of self-control — a set of inhibitions that kept their own authoritarianism under control. And when those inhibitions were taken away… I closed my eyes; I was very tired, and these dubious meditations, I knew, were just an excuse to keep me from going back to the room where the old man was waiting. His bloody clothes had been thrown over the end of the bed. Would he wash them, I wondered, put them back on again? Would he clean the furniture in the living room, scrub the blood off the walls? I supposed he would: it was his life, after all, and he'd have to pick up its pieces. Smoking quietly, I lay there and thought about that. His life, and what it was built on. The capacity to believe. Self-delusion. Paranoia. Who betrayed whom? Mendacity. Loyalty. Truth… And in the end, what was the wish nearest his heart? I don't give a damn. I swear to God I don't give a damn.

There was no putting it off. I stubbed out my cigarette and walked down the hall. For the second time that night, Berri had cleaned himself up, and now he was sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of whiskey before him. Canadian Club. I don't know where he got it: not from those cupboards. But perhaps, like the little tins of Twining's tea, it was secreted away, only brought out for special occasions. To his back, I said, "It's all right. I got to him first."

He tried to keep his voice level, but didn't quite make it. "Was he worth a fox, would you say?"

I shook my head. "Probably not, Mr. Berri. Or at least he wasn't worth your love for that fox."

Firmly, he lifted the teacup of whiskey to his lips and took a good sip, then set it back in the saucer, as prim and proper as at an old lady's tea party. "Like I told you, I don't give a damn."

I took a breath. "I'm just afraid of one thing. They may think you warned him. When they don't find him in Paris, they might come back here."

"Let them. I've got a shotgun. This time I'll be ready."

"You're sure?"

He shrugged. "I can't leave them anyway. Not for more than twenty-four hours."

I came into the room and sat down beside him; and then— the one gesture of sympathy I thought might be acceptable— I took a little whiskey myself. I sipped, and let its burning path wind down my throat. Then I murmured, "Just a couple of things. According to the police, Harry killed himself. And it does look that way. But does it make sense to you? If these people had been after him — the same ones that came here— would he have killed himself rather than give them the money?"

Berri shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe they threatened his daughter like they threatened to kill all my foxes. He loved her — I know that. He'd have done anything for her."

"But that's arguing the other way. The simplest way to protect her would have been to hand over the money. Yet he didn't."

He shrugged again. "Harry could be a stubborn son of a bitch… Or maybe it's the police. Why believe them? They could have been fooled. They could have made it look like he killed himself."

Which was what I was wondering about. Up to this point, not understanding its motive, the suicide had seemed convincing enough. But if Brightman could simply have given them the money — if there'd been such an easy way out — why would he have put himself and May through the horror? On the other hand, Subotin wouldn't have wanted Brightman dead — not before he'd told him where the gold was located. But maybe it didn't make that much difference. One way or the other, Harry Brightman was dead.

I said, "All right, forget about that. There's something else

I still don't get. This hold Harry had on the Bolshevik… did it have anything to do with the child?"

He shrugged. Sipped. Then shook his head with impatience. "I don't know. Maybe. Who does know? You've got all that on the brain."

"But there was a child, Mr. Bern. There's no doubt about that. And I'm sure it came out of Russia at the same time Dimitrov made his trip here."

"Well, I'll tell you one thing. Don't kid yourself. Once upon a time, Dimitrov might have been your hero, but he ended up like the rest of them, a son of a bitch. By 1940, his hands were covered in blood. If he snatched a baby away from the Bolshevik, it was because he thought it might help save him, not the child."

I waited, but he turned back to his cup. I thought for a moment — his idea at least had the virtue of novelty. But was it really possible that a child had protected Dimitrov, and that this protection had then been passed on to Brightman? In 1940, everyone seemed to agree, Dimitrov had been living under a genuine threat: many of his friends were dead, and his policies had all been discredited. Yet, despite this threat, it was a simple historical fact that he had survived. So the question Leonard Forbes had asked now came back into my mind: Who really knows why any of them were killed, or why any of them escaped? More than likely Dimitrov survived through blind luck. But maybe he hadn't; maybe… I leaned back in my chair. It was all too vague; and maybe, in the end, Berri was right — he'd been right more than anyone else, after all — and the child really had no importance. Taking another sip of the old man's whiskey, I moved back to firmer ground. "One last point," I said, "about the money. You said he kept it in gold, in gold certificates. Do you know when he bought them? I don't mean exactly, but do you know if he bought them before 1970?"

He shrugged. "Long before that. What the hell difference does the year make?"

A great deal, I knew; but if he didn't understand, that was all right. Spilling a little more whiskey into his cup, I went into the living room.

I'd spread every paper I'd been able to find on the floor, and now they were stained with soft black blots of the dead fox's blood. But I found what I wanted, the print on the page glistening like a reflection on a black lacquer table: a Montreal Gazette from a week ago, the box on the stock-market page which showed the commodity prices.

I kneeled down, took out my pen, worked it all out in the margin.

It was simple enough. Before August 15, 1971, the U.S. Treasury had bought and sold gold at $35 an ounce. That was the price at which Harry Brightman must have bought his, and for $800,000 he would have received certificates equivalent to almost twenty-three thousand ounces. But after 1971, when the price of gold had been left to the free market, that value had soared. According to the Gazette, the price in London three days before had been around $500 an ounce — which meant that Brightman's certificates were now worth between eleven and twelve million dollars.

Kneeling in that living room, I stared at this figure for a long, long time. It explained a great deal. More than what I'd discovered about Dimitrov, far more than what I'd found out about May's adoption. Here was the past — Brightman's past — erupting into the present. Here were the motives for his disappearance, his suicide, and Travin's murder. But then I thought about May… had she known what was happening? If I could call her now, what would she say? Had she told Cadogan to stop me from going on precisely because she knew what I'd find? But then why point me down this trail in the first place?

Questions — to which I still didn't have answers. But then there was Berri's solution — that none of them made any difference, that they were merely an obsession, something I had on the brain. As I stared down at my figuring, he seemed to be right. May, Dimitrov, Grainger, Florence Raines — perhaps I was holding on to them like a scientist, in love with his theories, who's now been presented with fresh, contradictory evidence. I simply didn't like to admit that everything now pointed in a different direction. To Brightman as a spy, not a father; to Paris today, not Halifax long ago.

But what did this have to do with me? Here was the last, crucial question. I'd told Hamilton I'd go to France, and I felt I had no choice about that, even if it left me dead broke. Having come this far, there was no doubt that I'd go on to the end. But was there some inner, hidden logic driving me on? Paris… my mother's city. Paris: where my parents had met. It was truly uncanny. Each step I took into Brightman's past only seemed to carry me deeper into my own, and now, as I crouched in Berri's blood-spattered living room, Travin's words drifted back through my mind: I'll tell you something personal, Mr. Thome, something you wouldn't want a policeman to hear… Maybe, I thought, I already knew what this was. The truth was there, at the tip of my tongue, in the corner of my eye — but I was too afraid to let myself say it or see it.

Maybe.

On the other hand, there was Berri's solution: all these vague questions were merely problems I had on the brain.

$12,000,000…

For most people, that was reason enough to do anything. It was reason enough for Subotin, I thought, and it would do for me too. What did he want with that money? Why was he prepared to kill and maim for it? I had no idea, but I knew I didn't want him to have it. Whatever side he was on — or Berri, ^or Brightman, or even my father — my side was different.

But then, erasing these thoughts from my mind, the foxes once more took up their lament, a melancholy cry that sent a shiver up my spine. Stock-still, I listened. Their howls rose and fell in rough, pitiful harmony, like a banshee's cry that has come too late, or a ghost's agonized call to its own lost soul — the Red Fox was dead, but perhaps his shade, disturbed by this night, was restlessly moving through the forest nearby.

In the kitchen, Berri got to his feet; I heard him open the door. And then the scent that had troubled the foxes — whatever it was — must have passed on, for soon they fell silent again.

14

I arrived in Paris on the ninth of November.

If you're lucky, that can be one of the city's best months, but not this time. I flew Montreal-Mirabel to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, but only exchanged one rainstorm for another; and Paris was worse, the rain wind-driven and unremitting. On the bus from Roissy to Porte Maillot, the city swam mistily beyond the streaming window like a bad film director fading to somebody's memories. But maybe that was the best way to look at the place. Montmartre, Clichy, the dix-septieme—as we moved around the peripherique, the beltway that runs around Paris, the rain softened the purple swirl of the diesel fumes and blunted the high-rise towers, transforming them with the gentle blur of an Impressionist's gaze. Inevitably, I thought of my mother, realizing that she'd never see the city again. But then she'd never looked at it with much illusion. "Paris is very beautiful," she used to say, "but if you live there, it only seems ^a city like all the others — a place where no one ever has enough money."

At the aerogare, I reserved a car with Hertz for later that afternoon, then went into the Metro. Getting off at Chatelet, I let the moving sidewalk whisk me under the river — past the usual gauntlet of beggars — to Place St.-Michel. Now I was on the Left Bank, the Latin Quarter, and despite the touristy resonance of its name, this has always been the part of the city where I've felt the most comfortable. This too goes back to my mother. Her family originally came from Lyons, and they'd only moved to Paris, fulfilling her own mother's dream, when she was fourteen. "It was all for Maman," she used to complain, "the whole thing — moving, the big house near the Pare de Monceau, a new car. For me it just meant I lost all my friends. I never really felt the city was mine till much later, at the Sorbonne." Only then, as a student on the Left Bank, had she been truly happy, and this was the Paris she always remembered and had taught me to love. It hadn't changed much; a hint of doner and souvlaki mingled with the traditional smells of bread and tobacco, but the student kids, even this early in the day, were still going into the cinemas. Head down, I stayed tight to the buildings and let my feet find their own way through the warren of streets around St.-Severin until they brought me to the Pension Mull. Shaking myself off in the gloomy cafe underneath, I saw that it hadn't changed either, though a couple of video games were scattered among the pinball machines and there was a new color television over the bar. Totally lacking in atmosphere, it was a place tourists never came to, but that was all right with Madame: she catered to the poor immigrants and pensioners who lived behind the scenes of the tourist spectacle and who coveted, rather than sneered at, the new. I'd first used this place as a student, and now it was a habit, with the added virtue, this trip, of complete anonymity. After two glasses of rouge at the bar, I went up to my room. Stretching out, I could feel the wine begin to merge with the jet lag and in five minutes I was asleep.

I awoke at two-thirty, still tired and with a headache from the wine; but the frigid douche at the end of the hall woke me up, and a brisk walk up to the Opera got my blood flowing again. American Express is right at the corner; outside, like so many mangy cats, the anxious, indigent young awaited money from home, while inside there was the smell of new carpet and a pretty Vietnamese girl to serve me. I cashed a check, paid my account, and left the cafe's number for Hamilton. It was four by the time I was finished. I decided to go on to Hertz and pick up my car, but I was back in the cafe, drinking Suze, by five.

For the next hour, I tried not to be nervous; but I was. I didn't think Subotin could have got here before me, but it was possible, and it was also possible that Hamilton, reconsidering, had decided to ignore my warning — or, panic-stricken, had taken a flit. But he hadn't. At twenty past six, the barman waved me round to the phone.

"Thome?" His voice was low and tense, but he had himself under control. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting. I put off calling Amex till the very last moment to give you as much time as possible."

"That's all right. Where are you?"

There was a slight hesitation, but of course he had to tell me. "A cafe on the Quai des Grands-Augustins. The Cafe Raymond."

"All right. I assume you've kept away from your place."

"Don't worry, Mr. Thome. I've been a good boy. I was out of there twenty minutes after you called, and I haven't been back."

I didn't like him; he didn't like me. Somehow, that was clear at once.

"Stay where you are," I said. "It'll only take me ten minutes or so."

"I'm the old man at the bar, drinking Stella."

The quai was just a five-minute walk. It was dark now, and the rain was a persistent, cold drizzle. Behind me, Notre-Dame lifted up through the mist like a poet's dream, and lights dimly glowed in the obscurity of the Palais de Justice. Traffic along the quai was heavy and irritable, and on the sidewalks the crowds jostled sullenly, full of that malice which the French use to preserve their egos against the mass.

The cafe, when I reached it, was nothing special: a big room crowded with after-work drinkers, tiny plastic tables and orange plastic chairs, a lot of smoke, and the harsh, staccato beat of rapid French. Hamilton was at the bar, and I recognized him at once, though I would hardly have described him as an old man drinking beer. He was a tall, handsome man with very shiny silver hair. This hair was a trifle long, and there were unruly little tufts of it behind his ears and at the nape of his neck, and as he looked up from his glass, he reached back, in an automatic gesture, to smooth them. I couldn't be sure of his age — in my parents' generation, but on the younger side of it, and he had that glow of comfortable, prosperous health that spelled "early retirement." He was dressed in a rough gray fisherman's sweater and gray wool pants, the effect casual but quietly stylish; a senior civil servant on his day off, you might have guessed — he probably sailed, and if he didn't, he rode or he climbed.

And I still didn't like him.

I wondered why. He was a "spy," of course; a "traitor." He was also a liar. He accepted trust, then betrayed it. Yet you could say the same of Berri and I'd felt sympathy for him. Maybe it was because Berri had paid… not just in the beating he'd suffered, but in the wider sense of having accepted responsibility for what he'd done. He'd dwelled on it, reflected upon it, paid a price in terms of his own self-esteem. But not this man. I watched him as he lit a cigarette. Blowing smoke down at the bar, he leaned back slightly and used his right hand to brush a flake of ash from the front of his sweater. Very cool; very self-satisfied; but then he cast a quick glance over his shoulder and I could see the anxiety in his pale, watery eyes. And for some reason those eyes offended me; their anxiety seemed insatiable, even greedy, glittering with selfishness. Only with reluctance did I now move toward him. All at once he was aware of me, but before he could get up or say anything, I began talking rapidly to him in French. There was, I thought, no reason why we should draw attention to ourselves unnecessarily. To give him credit, he played along nicely, and after a moment, quite casually, he got up from his stool and I followed him out.

Stepping outside, he paused in the face of the rain, and ground out his cigarette on the terrasse.

"You speak excellent French, Mr. Thorne. I'm fluent, but I've never quite managed to shake off my accent."

"My mother was French."

"Ah, yes. I was forgetting. But then that makes it definite: I did know your father." He gave me a smile. "He was senior to me, rather exalted in fact. But I can clearly remember being charmed by your mother."

This was interesting, but I wasn't that surprised — the State Department, especially before 1950, was a very small world. I merely nodded, and watched his smile fade as I didn't pick up on our family connection. I found myself wondering now if he was homosexual — perhaps some buried prejudice was making me react negatively to him — but I didn't really think that he was. He wasn't an old man who liked boys; rather, he was an old man who still echoed certain ancient fashions of boyishness: he made me think of private schools, of rich kids in blazers and gray flannel pants. Now, reinforcing precisely this image, he thrust both hands deeply into his pockets and darted confidently into the traffic, crossing to the Seine side of the quai. I followed as best I could, and caught up to him at the top of a broad stone stairway leading down to the water. We were now virtually in the shadow of the Pont-Neuf; but here, down a level, the sound of the traffic was just a low rumble and the brackish pungency of the river cut through the gasoline fumes. Boats were tied up all along here; beyond them, glittering slightly with the first lights of evening, the Seine branched blackly around the He de la Cite. Most of the boats were barges, moored three deep: perhaps thirty or forty altogether. Some had shiny metal hulls; others, more elegant, were wood. But all were about a hundred feet long and of much the same design: a wheelhouse in the stern, with a long, low cabin running up to the prow. People were living on them; silhouetted against the misty lights of the Qte was an intricate cobweb of clotheslines, awnings, and canopies. I smelled a charcoal fire; somebody laughed; a radio was playing Mozart.

Hamilton had run on a little ahead. Now he stopped and waited for me. The rain had beaded on the heavy wool of his sweater and lent an even glossier sheen to his hair. He smiled. His face was long, the excellent features marked with heavy creases in his darkly tanned skin. "You'll have to be a bit acrobatic," he said, then, quite gracefully, leapt across to the first of the barges. It was scruffy, steel-hulled, the deck streaked with rust. Clumsily, I thumped after him, then scrambled across the deck, avoiding pails and bits of rope. He stopped on the far side, more or less in the middle of the boat, where the gunwales of this barge were bumpered against the next further out. Deftly, he then hopped up and over. This second barge seemed deserted, its deck a dark minefield of obstructions, but finally I reached the far side and — a middle-aged pirate — once more stormed over the gunwales.

As I straightened up and tried to catch my breath, I saw he still had his hands in his pockets: which, I will confess, didn't exactly endear him to me. He smiled. "Welcome to La Trom-pette, Mr. Thorne."

I looked around. I was standing on the deck of an old wooden barge. Its freshly varnished decks and polished brass fittings glowed softly in the light that filtered down from the great mansions in the Place Dauphine and the cars streaming across the Pont-Neuf.

It was all very impressive, and I wondered how discreet it could be. "You're absolutely sure you can't be traced here?"

He shook his head. "I bought her in the spring, but they've been fitting her out at Janville. They only brought her up this last week."

That sounded safe enough, and better than a hotel or a friend. I nodded, then followed him into the high, square wheelhouse. Here, shadows leapt up from kerosene lanterns, and the sounds of the great city retreated, replaced by the gentle creak of the hull. Everything was hushed, and with the rain trickling mistily over the windows, I had that childhood sense of being in a separate, far-off world. But then Hamilton flicked on an overhead light and I could see all the new brass and mahogany, the chart table that folded into the wall, the brassbound lockers, the new gimbaled lamps. The wheel, though, was old, a spoked circle of rusted iron rod. Hamilton put his hand on it and said, "It was all they said they could save, but I damn well made them save that."

Paul Hamilton, man of taste… He flicked off the light. The golden glow of the lanterns, and the flickering shadows, returned. Edging through a doorway, he beckoned.me, and I followed him down a short ladder to the main cabin. It was very large, a long, low mahogany chamber as cozy and plush as an Edwardian Club room. Toward the bow, one section was fitted up as the salon with built-in couches, a bookcase, even a television and stereo. Closer to us was a galley, a decors modemes assemblage of stainless-steel sinks, butcher-block counters, and cunning little gadget racks. He'd been working here; wrenches, bits of pipe, and a torch were laid out on a newspaper. By way of explanation, he slid open a door beneath one of the counters, revealing a large metal canister which he pinged with his fingernail.

"My great debate," he said. "Propane or NG, which was it to be? I just hooked it up this afternoon. I like propane better to cook with, but it's heavier than air, so if you get a leak it sinks into the bilges. Then poof… But NG goes straight out the window. Safe as houses."

"So I can smoke, you mean?"

"Please do. And have a seat. I'll even get you a drink, if you like."

The floor — sole? — was oiled teak. I walked through the galley and sat down on one of the couches. The dry, starched smell of new upholstery rose around me. On the other side of the room, Hamilton turned a brass catch on a neatly fitted locker, and a bar descended out of the bulkhead with various niches for bottles and implements. With his back to me, he splashed Johnnie Walker Red into crystal tumblers and murmured, "By the way, I trust you are being polite? No wires? Body recorders?"

I actually do own a Nagra, but that was back home in Charlottesville — which, right now, seemed a long way away. "Don't worry, Mr. Hamilton. This is just between us."

"Good. There wouldn't be much point talking at all if we couldn't speak frankly." He turned around, a glass in each hand. He smiled. And there was a condescending twist to this smile that acknowledged the hostility between us and suggested that I was being a bit of a bore… but he'd put up with me anyway. Then the smile faded and he handed me the glass. "So Brightman's dead?" he grunted.

I nodded.

"And bad men are chasing me?"

"Something like that."

"Because I'm supposed to have something that Brightman left with me?"

I sipped my whiskey. His wariness, overlaid with his face-tiousness, only increased my dislike of him. But I tried to keep my voice even. "If you don't mind, I'd like to start with my questions."

He shrugged. He seemed very cool. But when he tilted his head back to drink, I could again see the anxiety in his eyes, and his lips worked greedily at the rim of his glass. The glass came back down. He'd swigged a good inch of whiskey. Sitting, he crossed his legs and began rubbing the glass in little circles on his knee. "All right," he finally said, "but what if I don't want to answer?"

"I don't think you have a choice, Mr. Hamilton."

"That wouldn't be true, not quite. You'd be wrong to think that. But…" He smiled. "Go ahead."

The small lamps on the bulkheads spilled pools of yellowish light into the cozy, leathery, masculine gloom. I said, "I'll start at the obvious place. When did you last see Brightman?"

He took a more gentlemanly sip at his whiskey and smiled. "As you say, that is obvious — but I'm not sure I want to answer. Could I reserve it? Just for a moment? I told you I want to be frank — I'd rather you let me be honestly reticent than force me into a lie."

"Have you seen him within the last six months?"

"All right. Yes."

"What did he want?"

"Help, I think. It was fairly evident he was in some sort of trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Didn't say."

"What kind of help, then?"

"He was vague."

"Did he leave anything with you? Or did he want to?"

"I assume you mean a variation on the letter-to-be-opened-upon-my-decease theme?"

"Yes. But probably not that exactly. He had something that people wanted, wanted so much that possessing it made him a target. So I think he decided to pass it on. He was saying, in effect: I don't have it anymore, there's no point coming after me. When you saw him, did you have the impression that he felt himself in danger?"

"I'm not sure my impressions were that distinct."

"Then maybe you should have paid closer attention. He was in danger and was trying to cope with it — by passing on this particular item. It not only took him out of the direct line of fire but also worked as a kind of insurance. Since he was the only person who knew where it was, people interested in this item now had a vested interest in his well-being."

"I see. What you're saying is—"

"What I'm saying, Mr. Hamilton, is that he wasn't doing you any great favor. Anyone who possesses this item is in considerable danger. Don't make any mistake about that."

He got up, reaching toward my glass as he did so, but I shook my head. He went over to his fancy bar. As he poured himself some more whiskey, his back was to me. "This item… can you tell me what it is, more specifically?"

"If you have it, you know. If not… perhaps that's something you'll let me reserve."

He turned around. "All right. But what makes you think I do have it?"

"The choice of candidates isn't really that great. And you'll surely grant that Brightman and yourself had a unique sort of relationship."

He smiled. "Maybe. But I didn't know him well, you understand. Not as well as yourself, at a guess."

"If you're asking, I didn't know him at all. I'm just a friend of his daughter's."

"There you go. I didn't even know he had a daughter. Over the years, I think I met him precisely three times." He came over to the couch again and sat down in front of me. Leaning his head back and looking up at the ceiling, he made a show of remembering. "I guess the first time was somewhere in the early forties. I couldn't even say when exactly. Then '56. I remember that well enough. Then this last time… but that's it. I don't see why you, or anyone else, would assume that he'd come to me for a favor, especially a vital one. I scarcely knew him, and had never done anything for him in a personal way."

"So what did you do for him?"

I watched his face. For a moment he seemed undecided, but I wondered if this too wasn't show. After all, it was he who'd explicitly brought up the past, and I had the impression that he welcomed the excuse to start talking about it, that he'd already worked out precisely what he would say.

He shrugged and snatched a quick sip of his drink. "I took some science at school," he began. "Not much, certainly not worth boasting about, but in the U.S. Foreign Service, at least in my day, science was about as rare as straight talk. At the beginning of the war — people having worked out that science and warfare might have some connection — this meant that I gained a number of important assignments virtually by default. Some of these involved various advisory panels on the export of scientific equipment. To the combatants, during the period the U.S. was neutral, to our allies afterwards."

"Including the Soviet Union?"

He hesitated. "So far as I was concerned, Mr. Thorne, I was helping a nation that had been beleaguered since its very conception and was now fighting for its life against the same enemy we were fighting — the greatest enemy humanity has ever known."

I couldn't help smiling at the hypocrisy of these noble sentiments — as the barge was worked gently in the swell and the lamps pushed golden tongues of light through its luxurious interior. "I'm not sure that speech fits your style."

"It was my style back then. Believe me, it was."

"You were a Communist?"

"Don't be idiotic. I was trying to be a decent man, I was trying to do the right thing." His voice, to my surprise, suddenly trembled a little. "I was surrounded by fools, that was the trouble. Fools, who couldn't see the menace Hitler represented — and fools, once they had seen it, who let their own ideological prejudices prevent full cooperation with Russia."

I watched his face, trying to decide if he believed this now, as he spoke, or whether he was only recollecting a passion long since suppressed. Conceivably, too, it was even more subtle: those former beliefs, however briefly held, may nonetheless have been the only beliefs he'd ever had in his life. Today, even if he thought them ridiculous, he might have nothing else to fall back on. Except Hitler, of course. I wondered if that wasn't the most enduring legacy of the Nazis: their horrors had become a virtually limitless excuse for the lesser horrors of others. But, despite the annoyance I was feeling, I had no desire to argue with him. I said, "In effect, you had a fundamental disagreement with U.S. foreign policy?"

"If you like."

"And you used Brightman to… circumvent it."

He gave a little smile. "What a nice way to put it… But you needn't be so polite. I was, undoubtedly, a spy. And I knew precisely what I was doing."

I'd underestimated his ego; he had earned his title, "spy," and bore it proudly. "All right," I said. "You spied. What on? What did you tell him?"

He smiled. "You think I'm putting on airs, Mr. Thome, and I mustn't. It was all minor league. As I said, most of it revolved around scientific equipment. There were certain requests the Soviets were particularly anxious about, and I tried to make sure they were seen in a favorable light. As well, it was useful for them to know what other countries were asking for… I suppose it gave them a kind of index of their own efforts."

"What other countries?"

"Britain, of course… but Canada, Australia… any Allied center of war and scientific production. After the war, France, the Scandinavian countries—"

"So you kept on after the war?"

"To a degree."

"We're talking about atomic materials now?"

"No. Not materials. I told you — equipment, apparatus."

"And all of this," I said, "went through Harry Brightman?" He shook his head. "I couldn't say. That didn't concern me, you see. There were arrangements… I expect quite usual under such circumstances. But I was never precisely sure who received the information I transmitted."

"Then why did you meet with Brightman at all?" He shrugged. "Well, the first time was in the middle of the war. I was told to meet him in New York. It turned out that he wanted to obtain a particular piece of equipment — something electronic, I think, but I scarcely remember. He had money; any amount. I told him that what he wanted wasn't commercially procurable — it existed, but it had been custom-made in one of the university labs — and so we worked out a plan to get hold of it in a different fashion."

"Which was?"

He leaned back comfortably and took a quick sip. "It was his idea, and quite ingenious. I was to go back to my little committee full of pious anxieties: Wouldn't it be possible for someone to put together this piece of apparatus by combining items that were more readily available? Wasn't our security lax in that way? This set off a great flurry, and the researchers involved were asked to break the whole thing down and give us all the bits and pieces… most of which — confirming my conscientious worries and Brightman's suspicions—were available. I passed this list on to my contact, and I assume Brightman went off and got them." He shrugged. "It wouldn't have given them a hundred percent of it, but damn close."

I wondered what that piece of equipment had been, but at this late date it could scarcely make any difference — outside a law court. What was clear, however, was that Hamilton was telling at least part of the truth: according to Berri, this was precisely the sort of thing that Brightman had done.

I said, "You claim you met him a second time… in 1956."

"Yes. Hungary, you'll remember. That was special again. By this time — not that anyone ever told me — I think I was under Brightman's control. A number of people must have been, and one of them was having pangs of conscience. Apparently he believed all that talk about Freedom Fighters and was threatening to do something foolish. He must have been an idiot. The Hungarians positively welcomed the Germans; men lined up in the streets of Budapest to fight on the Russian front. So far as I was concerned, they deserved everything they got… In any case, this person worked in the State Department and Bright-man wanted me to calm him down."

"Who was it?"

"I've no idea. I told Brightman to forget it — I wasn't going to expose myself to somebody who was already getting cold feet. That was his problem. I just wanted him to keep me out of it."

"Did he understand that?"

"Yes."

"Was he angry?"

"No… He pushed me hard to speak to this person but I think he understood my position well enough."

Interesting. Brightman had asked him for a favor, then. But Hamilton hadn't come through. I said, "These were face-to-face meetings…"

"Yes."

"But there must have been other forms of communication with him as well. Messages. And — at least once — a messenger."

"You know about that? He was a funny little fellow. A French-Canadian. He told me his name but I forget it. I was living here then, just nicely retired. Brightman wanted me to set up a meeting for him, through the embassy… the Soviet Embassy, of course. I told him no."

"Why?"

"Why should I? Why should I take a risk for him?"

"All right… but why do you think Brightman asked you to? By all accounts, he was higher up in the hierarchy — closer to the embassy, if you like — than you ever were."

He shrugged. "It's a good question, and at the time I asked it. But you understand I wasn't dealing with him, just his messenger, and he clearly knew nothing. I assumed that Brightman had his own procedures for getting in touch with them but this time, for some reason, preferred to use an outside party. Or perhaps he'd had unsatisfactory results using his normal channels and wanted to try another. In any case, I didn't see what business it was of mine, so I said no."

"You have to admit it's a little strange. Brightman was never close to you… personally or professionally…"

"That's right."

"Yet under these circumstances — which we can assume were exceptional — he again picked on you for a favor. Why?"

"I don't know, Mr. Thorne. Using me might have been safer. More effective. Quicker. Who knows? Perhaps it was something entirely mundane. All these events happened a fair time ^ago. I was young when I started out — if I may put it like that — but quite probably the other people Brightman knew were much older. By the time we're talking about — this was just a few years back — there probably weren't many of us left."

That, at least, could be true. Of Brightman's original "ring," few could still be alive. This was all ancient history. 1939: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — more important to these people, strangely enough, than the outbreak of the war itself. 1941: Germany invades the Soviet Union. Communists, no longer embarrassed by their alliance with the Nazis, can come out of the closet and "help" the Russians under the guise of aiding the common effort against Hitler. 1945: the Cold War begins. A man like Hamilton — like the Rosenbergs, like Alger Hiss— is now in great peril. Worse: by 1956, and the Hungarian Uprising, disillusion has begun to set in; the risks no longer seem worth it. And by 1968, with the invasion of Czechoslovakia, even diehards like Brightman were beginning to search for a way out. But even the most recent of these dates was a dozen years ago now. Few people who had started out with Brightman would have been left, and even they would have been old men — like Philby or Anthony Blunt. Thus, Brightman could have been forced to come to Hamilton, whether he liked it or not. But he couldn't have liked it; given what I knew about Brightman and could guess about Hamilton, the two men had nothing in common. Yet he had trusted him… asked him for favors. Why?

As I thought about this, Hamilton went to the bar and poured himself another finger of whiskey. "So we're back to the present," he said. "The present, and Harry Brightman. Except Harry isn't part of it, is he?" I said nothing. I watched him drink. Again there was a nervous sucking of his lips at the rim of the glass. He looked back at me. "He is dead? You're sure of it?"

Since it was obviously so important to him, 1 said, definitely, "Yes. I saw his body myself. Harry Brightman is dead."

He gave me a look, then simply shrugged. "He never betrayed me, Mr. Thorne, and I have no wish to betray him. But there's not much point worrying if he's dead…" Coming from him, such a testament of loyalty had to be ludicrous… and it was a mistake, for now he'd drawn my attention again to that one crucial point: for Hamilton, Brightman's death mattered more than anything else. I watched him now as he set his glass back on the bar, then turned around, leaning against it and facing me.

"In any case," he continued, "I might as well tell you… about the last time I saw him, I mean." He picked up the glass again… a nice, casual gesture not quite perfectly acted. I knew, even before he opened his mouth, that he was going to tell me a lie. "It was in the second week of September. I had no idea he was coming. In fact, he just appeared at my elbow one day in the market — he was obviously taking the strictest precautions. We had a drink and talked. As I said, it was clear he was in trouble and wanted my help. I'd turned him down before, of course — and I don't make any apologies for that— but this time, I admit, it seemed something special. I tried to get out of him what it was. He refused to say, not until I committed myself. I just couldn't do that. Surely you understand? The only reason I've survived this long is because I've been very cautious."

I shook my head. Because I'd worked it out now. "I don't believe you, Mr. Hamilton. Not a word."

He turned away. "Believe what you like."

But I shook my head again; the most important thing about any lie is its motivation, and now I knew his. "He came to you that first time and you turned him down — but he kept coming back, time and time again. How come? Why bother? If you were so cautious, you'd always refuse to stick out your neck ¦ " " but he kept coming back. In fact, he kept coming back to you because you always did exactly as you were told. He was blackmailing you, Mr. Hamilton — that's what I believe. He had a nice bundle of documents stashed away in some vault and so you had to do just what he wanted."

"Don't be ridiculous. If he could blackmail me, think of what I had on him."

"Nothing. Certainly nothing on paper. Besides, he didn't give a damn. Threaten him and he might call your bluff — he was a disillusioned old man, sick with himself and sick with the world. But you? Oh no… you've got something to lose. You want to enjoy a cozy retirement on your beautiful barge. So you did just as he told you."

He couldn't keep it out of his eyes; I was right. He looked away. "That's ridiculous. Listen—"

"No. You listen. Don't kid yourself, Hamilton. He left that package with you because it was too dangerous to leave with his daughter or anyone else he cared for. And it's no less dangerous now. If you've still got it in forty-eight hours, believe me, you're as good as dead."

He tried to light a cigarette, get back his composure, but now his anxiety was coming out like sweat.

"I don't believe you," he stammered. "Why should I? If your theory's right, why was Brightman killed after he gave me his package? You're telling the lies."

Again I shook my head. "That's something else you'd better get straight. You've got that package, so you probably know what's inside it. A key? A combination? Some sort of document that gets you into a vault? Whatever it is, it leads to a great deal of money — but don't be tempted. It's part of the money the Soviets originally gave Brightman to buy that equipment you were putting him on to. A lot was left over. Certain people, certain Russians, are trying to get hold of it, and your former employers are trying to stop them; they want to cover the whole thing up. So whatever you do, don't go to them for help. I think that's the mistake Brightman made."

I'd been working much of this out as I went along, but as soon as I started to speak, I knew it was true. Subotin on one side, the KGB on the other: there'd be more complications, but that was the heart of it. Brightman had probably gone to his old masters to get Subotin off his back, but they'd eliminated him instead, and then done likewise with Travin. I was suddenly convinced of this — and my conviction must have got through to Hamilton. When I was finished, he poured out more whiskey but then thrust it away. "I don't believe that," he said. "None of it. I was loyal… perfectly. I've kept up my contacts — it's been a long time, but there are still a few people left who'll remember my name, who'll be grateful. And everyone knows that the Soviet Service takes care of its own."

I looked at him, amazed. It was incredible if he actually believed this. "Mr. Hamilton," I said, "you are a forty-year-old skeleton in the closet. They just want to make sure you don't rattle."

An expression of shock spread over his face; strangely enough, I think it was my contempt that got through to him. He realized I considered him a fool and was embarrassed — he didn't like to be thought of that way. He suddenly strode out of the salon, through the galley, and opened a door into a cabin under the wheelhouse. A light went on, and I could hear him rummaging in a desk. I had a moment's panic then, thinking of a gun. But he pulled out a bottle of pills and popped a few down his throat. He looked back at me; then his eyes faltered. As he started to speak, I could barely hear him. "All right," he said. "You've made your point… and I'll admit I haven't told the whole truth. But listen, you've got to help me."

"Just give me the package, the envelope… whatever it is. *'ll get rid of it for you and I'll make sure they understand that you don't have it anymore. Then you're home free."

He shook his head. "No… listen, I can't. Not just like that-it's not that simple. You have to believe me. I need time to think." He looked up at me now and made a quick gesture with his hand, to take in the barge. "How safe am I here?" As safe as a man on the edge of a cliff. They have your address, your apartment. Is there anything there that will lead them here?"

He put his hand up to his head. "I don't think so… at least not immediately."

I shrugged. "Then they won't find you — immediately. But they'll find you eventually."

"Twenty-four hours… that's all I need. I must have that long. Could you do that? Wait till tomorrow? Come back tomorrow evening, Thome. We'll work out something then."

I looked at him, down the length of the boat. An old man: tarted up. If old men can be tarted up… The pleading tone that had come into his voice should have increased my contempt, but, despite myself, I felt a little sympathy. I shrugged. "You understand, Hamilton, I'm not your problem."

He nodded. "Of course… of course." He even tried a smile. "I realize you're trying to help. I thank you for that. But don't do anything now. Just give me a little more time. Till tomorrow… Come back then, Thorne. Same time. We'll work something out."

I said nothing. In truth, I felt more than a little sick, and half of me wanted to send this nasty little man straight off to prison. Except he wouldn't go there. What he'd done was too long ago; and the CIA, never having let the British live down Philby, weren't going to expose themselves to the embarrassment of revealing Hamilton's existence. No, they'd make his life difficult — tax audits, passport restrictions, bureaucratic harassment — but these discomforts would be marginal. And he knew this. Which meant I couldn't even threaten him with the police. Yet I also knew he was going to do something stupid. He had Brightman's "package," whatever that was, and he wanted some time — he was going to do something stupid, all right.

But I got up and shrugged myself into my raincoat. Then I said, "Hamilton, do you have any idea who these people are?"

He made a little gesture with his hand. "Brightman mentioned something… I think he said they were a faction of the Service — the KGB — with connections into the military… Not very nice."

"You're not thinking that you can convince them that you're on their side?"

"No," he said. "Of course not. Nothing like that."

"And don't try convincing the embassy, either."

His face suddenly twisted in anger. "I'm not on anyone's side — I don't care—"

"Don't give me that. You've been on the same side from the very beginning. Your own."

He sneered then. But not very convincingly. "What do you know? You didn't have to live through the times we lived through."

"No, I didn't. But people like you didn't make it any easier for those who did."

As a rebuke, it wasn't much, but it was the best I could do. And it shut him up as I walked past him, through the galley, and climbed the stairs into the wheelhouse. Stepping outside, I looked at my watch. It was after eight; we'd talked a long time. The rain had stopped, but a cold wind was blowing down the river. It snatched traffic sounds from the Pont-Neuf and made lights from the He de la Cite dance in the water. I made my way over the barges; someone had boiled chicken for dinner, and I could hear the splash of water and a clatter of pans. Nearby, a man coughed and murmured, "Bon soir," and I waved vaguely into the darkness.

I climbed up to the quai. On the sidewalk, lighting a cigarette, I felt very uneasy. I knew he was up to something, and whatever he did would be on my head. Partly. But then I told myself, no, I was damned if I was going to take responsibility for people like Hamilton. But I still didn't want to let him out 3t my sight, so I crossed the road to a cafe and found a table that let me keep watch on the stairway up from the river. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, Hamilton appeared — but not very dramatically: he just went into a phone booth, made a call, came out again. Half an hour went by. And then a car drew up, the sort of American car that always seems ridiculous on a European street: a huge Dodge Charger that was painted bright yellow and festooned with spoilers and window slats. It stopped, hazard lights flashing. Someone got out… and I smiled at myself and swore for the thousandth time never again to speculate about other people's sex lives, for Hamilton's friend was a young, pretty boy. They talked for a minute, then the boy drove away. But Hamilton stayed where he was, smoking a cigarette and running his fingers back through his long silver hair. A few minutes later, the young man returned, this time on foot. Together, they went down to the river. After an hour, when they still hadn't come back, I was sure they were settled in for the night. But I was taking no chances. Making a quick tour of the streets near the quai, I found the boy's Dodge squeezed into an alley, and then fetched my own little machine from the pension and parked up the road.

Ten twenty-two… Eleven-sixteen… The rain stopped, then started again. Slowly, one by one, the hours passed by. I dozed intermittently. The front seat of a Renault Cinq doesn't make much of a bed, but it will do.

15

I passed a busy night.

There were four drunks, a couple of cat fights, a whore who found it hard to take no for an answer, and even a flic who shined his light in the window and asked for my papers. All in all, I didn't get much sleep… though no one came near the big yellow car. Around four o'clock the city seemed to drift off, lulled into drowsiness by the distant hum of trucks on the autoroutes and the peripherique, but an hour later deliveries started to the cafes, and soon afterward the working people of the quartier emerged. In Paris, as everywhere else, the poor are always up before the rest of us. Early-shift workers cycled through the rain, old women, bundled up in heavy coats and with kerchiefs on their heads, trudged off to their jobs as domestics in the big hotels, and an old man in a blue serge jacket took up his position at the kiosk on the corner. By six, the sidewalks were crowded. By six, even exhausted, unshaved, out-of-cigarettes men who'd slept all night in their cars had got up and stretched. I walked over to the quai and the stairway that led down to the water. A gray haze of drizzle hung over the Seine. On some of the barges, life was stirring — a smudge of smoke, the thump of a pump — but La Trompette seemed to be slumbering on. For the time being, that was fine by me. I crossed the street, found a cafe, and began drinking coffee.

By seven, I felt halfway human, except for the beard, and began wondering what I was going to do, since Hamilton didn't strike me as an early riser and probably wouldn't show for hours. But almost at once, I got a surprise: the boyfriend appeared. He even seemed fairly perky, popping up from the stairway and then darting briskly through traffic. I wondered if I should follow him; but then that question became moot, because he came straight over to the cafe where I was sitting. For a second, I was worried that Hamilton might be tagging along behind, but he ordered right away and settled down to eat alone. It was easy to watch him — he was only half a dozen tables away, but he opened a paper and began reading it closely. I put his age at nineteen or twenty. Tall. Slim. A lean, elegant face but with a rather boyish lick of hair that kept falling into his eyes. He was wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans and a pair of Nocona boots, and he was very tanned: Mr. Franco-California, you might have called him. But, as so often happens with European imitations of American styles, the very sincerity of his efforts produced something quite different from the original. In this case, it was a rather appealing innocence. Five years ago, he'd been full of rock 'n' roll and movie stars; now, after his night with his older American lover, he was trying hard not to be too shocked by himself. Lighting a cigarette, he shook out his paper, and when the waiter brought his coffee and croissants, he deigned to acknowledge them with only the slightest of nods. Deftly, he stubbed out the cigarette, then began eating slowly, looking about the room as he did so… for an instant, his glance touched mine, but then passed on, quite normally. He seemed perfectly calm: if Hamilton had communicated any of his problems to him, he wasn't showing it.

As the boy ate, I pondered. Hamilton was up to something, I was sure of that, so I was reluctant to give up my watch on the quai. On the other hand, the boy might be important too. Hamilton had called him immediately after seeing me, and there was also the question of the car. Presumably Hamilton had enough sense to understand that his own was too dangerous to drive, and last night I'd been half expecting him to use the Dodge for a midnight flit; and he might still do that. Or he could send the boy off on errands. It was this that created the potential dilemma… and in point of fact it arrived just after eight. Folding his paper, the boy pressed a button on his watch. Informed of the time to the millisecond, he then rose and headed out of the cafe. I hesitated… and if, in the end, I decided to follow him, I was very tentative. Only back to the barge. To the car — he might meet Hamilton there. Or…

He stepped onto the quai

The sidewalks were crowded, and out on the street Paris was "accommodating itself to the automobile" — to use President Pompidou's immortal expression — just like Newark, New Jersey: with a traffic jam that jostled and banged and grumbled for miles. Heading up the Quai des Grands-Augustins, the boy continued onto the Quai St.-Michel, then turned up the Rue St.-Jacques. He was going to his car; I took a shortcut and beat him to it. Hamilton wasn't there, but I hadn't really expected that — he was probably still in bed. I decided to string along a bit more and started the Renault, so its engine was already warm as the big Dodge coughed in the damp. Backing out of the alley, he squealed his tires — another California touch — rand sped away. Doubling back onto St.-Germain, he crossed the river by the Pont de Sully and continued onto the Boulevard Henri IV — in the traffic, there was no trouble following him; and even when we got out of it, you would have been hard-pressed to lose that huge splash of yellow. Forty minutes later, I pulled up to the curb of the Avenue Foch in St.-Mande, an eastern suburb just outside the city proper.

I didn't know the place, but I knew lots like it: streets of old, solid stone apartments behind black wrought-iron fences; very quiet; the curb jammed with cars, including some Peugeots and Citroens and one carefully maintained MG. The yellow Dodge was out of place, but as I watched the boy go into one of the buildings, I had the feeling that this was where his parents lived.

I never found out if that was true, but he was back inside of twenty minutes, carrying two soft suitcases. Throwing them into the trunk of the Dodge, he now led us onto the peri-pherique. He went east as far as Gentilly and then turned into the Boulevard Jourdan, a big street that runs through one of those areas that all cities have to put up with: a bare, barren expanse that was dotted with big hospitals and other institutional structures. The principal example here was the Cite Universitaire, a huge educational complex where the French put a lot of their foreign students, housing them in maisons built in the appropriate national style — the Thai house, for example, is like a little pagoda. Turning onto one of its access roads, California Jacques headed for a parking lot.

I almost didn't follow — I assumed he was going to a class or was visiting someone. But why the bags? The question intrigued me just enough to wait a moment, engine running, by a loading bay in behind one of the buildings. Sure enough, he appeared about three minutes later. And he didn't go into the school. Striding quickly, he crossed a stretch of dead lawn and headed out to the street. Getting out of my car, I followed him across. There was a Metro station here, but he didn't go into it, instead cutting across the corner of a park, finally coming out at the entrance of a small side street. Only when

I saw the name of this street did I finally understand. It was Hamilton's street. I almost couldn't believe it. I'd already formed a low opinion of the man, but this was incredible. Despite what I'd told him, he'd let the boy come here — must have asked him to… and clearly hadn't told him there was any danger, for now, with no attempt at deception, he turned into a doorway. I had a sudden spasm of guilt, but then told myself that it was still unlikely that Subotin had made it to Paris, and I crossed over the street to a cafe-tabac. Five minutes, I thought; I'll give him that long. But even five minutes is a long time for your conscience, and when that five minutes was up, I gave him five minutes more… and two minutes and twenty-six seconds later, he appeared.

And seemed quite unconcerned.

The drizzle was turning to rain. Slipping his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, and hunching his shoulders, he ran in a funny, stifF-legged lope up to the corner, just across from me. He paused; squinted both ways; then dashed across the road, into the park. From inside the cafe, I watched his back, but if anyone was following him, I didn't see them… though in the next ninety seconds or so, one car turned into, another out of, that street. Still, it seemed that he'd gotten away with it — Subotin probably hadn't arrived in Paris yet — and so I took after him. The rain began to come down hard, trickling under my collar. I could see the boy up ahead; he was hustling along, but that was clearly because of the rain: whatever he'd done in Hamilton's apartment hadn't worried him. And if he'd taken something out of it, it was small enough to fit into his pocket. So it was probably nothing exciting: money, a checkbook, credit cards — the sort of thing Hamilton might have forgotten in his rush to get out of the place after I'd phoned. Head down, I ran through the park, catching up to him as we arrived back at the Boulevard Jourdan. Sparing his fancy boots, California picked his way across, neatly avoiding puddles, but by the time I came up to the curb, the traffic was heavy and I had to wait. I could see him plainly, though. And this time he went into one of the buildings. He was long gone before I was across the street, so I went straight back to the parking lot.

I had a twelve-minute wait, but then he emerged and walked slowly across to the Dodge. Again, he displayed no signs of anxiety or suspicion. He got in, started the engine, and nosed past me, leaning forward over the wheel to rub a clear spot on the windshield. He turned onto the boulevard; then, returning to the peripherique, he led us back the way we'd come: through St.-Mande, then onto the A4. This was done, I might say, rather cautiously; he'd put his foot down if the traffic really opened up, but only for a few seconds, and I had the impression that he wasn't quite familiar with the car, and was even a little afraid of it. I didn't complain; I was having a hard enough time as it was. The rain was fairly heavy now, and in the little Renault I was constantly drowned in muddy spray from the big trucks. With relief, just before Villiers, I followed him off the autoroute onto a smaller highway running through the smaller towns and villages near the banks of the Marne. I hung back cautiously — on the autoroute I'd been one Renault among a thousand, but here I was much more exposed— though he showed no signs of being wary at all. Keeping a pleasant, sedate pace, we wiggled along behind the river — like a map illustrating the front line in September 1914—until he turned oif the highway and then, almost immediately, turned again, down a small side road. We were now about twenty-five or thirty miles from Paris, not far from Meaux. Here, all the land sloped down toward the river, whose course was marked by a gray, fuzzy line of trees in the distance. Slowly, bouncing over potholes, we made our way toward it, passing a few farms, huddled houses, and orchards and woodlots where the bare branches of the trees shook stiffly in the wind. After a couple of miles, a biggish, barnlike structure appeared on the right. The boy flashed his turn signal; I took my foot off the gas. The place was a roadside restaurant of the sort commercial travelers go for: big, fast service, decent, cheap food. Judging by the number of cars out front, they were doing good business. The boy headed in. Though there hadn't been the slightest sign that he suspected anyone was following him, I was cautious and drove past the entrance, then doubled back. As I parked, I was just in time to see him disappear inside.

I thought a moment. He hadn't seemed suspicious: but he had seen me in the cafe on the quai. Still, it was a little early for lunch, which made me curious, and there was a possibility — though I didn't see how — that he might be meeting Hamilton here. Deciding to chance it, I followed him in. And in fact there was no risk at all: in front of the main dining room (very large) was a gloomy bar. I was able to sit there, pretty well hidden, and catch a glimpse of the boy every time someone opened the big swinging doors and went in to eat. He was alone and, I judged, had no expectations of meeting anyone.

I ordered a vermouth, then found I could get a sandwich and ate two ravenously. After that, I enjoyed an hour of French sociology. The bar was used by the locals, Meldois as they are called in this region; there was a fair traffic, but it kept moving, so the place was never crowded. Some of these people were farmers, taciturn but friendly, while others were men who'd retired to the country — comfortably off, but not rich, a sort of subgentry. They talked to each other about the weather and the roads and fishing, and made Paris seem a thousand miles away. After half an hour, I bought myself a second vermouth, and was just starting a third when the boy finally emerged. Once more, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He stood for a moment in the foyer, buttoning his jacket carefully and making people step around him, then pushed through the doorway. Still bearing in mind that he'd seen me in Paris, I stayed where

I was until I heard the Dodge's big engine start burbling. Then I got up, watching from the doorway as he drove across the parking lot. But now I got a surprise: instead of turning left, toward the highway, he headed right, down toward the river. But even as I sprinted back to the Renault, I understood. Indeed, it was obvious. I was within ten kilometers of the Marne, which flows into the Seine near Paris. The boy was meeting Hamilton — but Hamilton would be arriving by barge. So following the boy had been a terrific stroke of good luck… or so I thought until I turned the key in the Renault's ignition.

Nothing happened.

After three tries — and a slow count to fifty — I got out and propped up the hood. The engine was still warm after the morning's drive, and raindrops hissed on the block… but no matter how warm it was, or how well tuned, there was no way it was going to start when two of the ignition cables were missing.

I sat in the car.

The rain drummed on the roof and sheeted over the windshield, turning people leaving the restaurant into wavy, aqueous ghosts. Lighting a cigarette, I watched my warm breath turn to mist on the glass and told myself there were two possibilities, one frightening, the other merely annoying, but why be alarmist? I was certain that Subotin hadn't been in Hamilton's apartment; if he had been, he'd never have let the boy come out again. And I was almost sure that no one had followed us away from the place… But the lack of certainty made me shiver. There was no sense getting into a panic, however; more than likely, I'd just been too confident, too careless, and the boy hadn't been as innocent as he looked. He'd got on to me. And then he'd led me into this place— thereby getting me out of the car — and skillfully beached me: he'd been out of my sight just long enough to do it. Very neat, I thought; except it didn't make any difference. That is, it didn't make any difference if I was right about Hamilton coming by barge. I was too close to the river; I could walk there in an hour. I stubbed out my cigarette. I was fairly sure about all this — but not so sure that I wanted to waste any time. I ran back to the restaurant. The barman gave me plenty of sympathy, and offered to call a garage further down the N3, but I knew that would end up taking hours.

"It's nothing, you see. If I had the part, I could do it myself."

"A taxi would have to come out from Meaux."

"A bicycle? If it's not too far…"

"In this? You're sure?"

One of the girls in the kitchen had one. She thought I was crazy, because of the rain, but wouldn't take any money. Her machine, not exactly a velo, was padlocked to a drainpipe in behind the restaurant: a lady's bicycle, old and squeaky, with a red plastic basket on the front handlebars. I got onto it and wobbled off, and found that people are right, you never forget: it's not your memory, just thirty years of food and booze and cigarettes that keep you from being a kid again. But at least the road was downhill, carrying me down to the Marne. I rattled on; fell into a rhythm: push, push, and pant, and every third time around, a quick squint into the rain. The wheels juddered through potholes, the saddle delivered unladylike prods, my pants were soaked so completely that they molded to my thighs. I passed a farm and a couple of cottages, but in this weather no one was out, and I didn't see a single car. For twenty minutes or so, I struggled ahead. Then the road narrowed and the surface changed to hard-packed gravel, and I entered a dark lane of huge oaks, so dense that even without their leaves they kept the rain off. The grade steepened; I sat back, coasting. It was very dark, and a sort of hush fell, or at least a peculiar kind of resonance: close to, filling my ears, were the sounds of my panted breaths and the constant soft crunch of the wheels over the gravel, but beyond these sounds was a vast zone of silence, enclosed in turn by the patter of the rain in the branches high overhead. The light here was soft, dim, silvery; as if everything was reflected in a misted mirror. Leaves were thickly matted in the ditches; on both sides, the woods seemed dense. I started pedaling again, then coasted some more as the road grew even steeper. I glided round a curve, and it was just at this point, as the road straightened out, that I saw the yellow Dodge.

It was in the ditch: tilted sharply over on the right, with its big snout crumpled against one of the oaks.

I braked, hard. The bike slewed round. I got my feet down and straddled it, and stared down the dark, wet road.

Nothing was moving. The Dodge just lay there, like a huge piece of road junk. It was hard to be certain, but I didn't think anyone was still inside. The driver's door was ajar, the passenger's wide open — like an arm that was trying to brace the car and keep it from flipping over completely. I listened. All I could hear was the rain. With the doors open like that, there should have been a warning buzzer if the keys were still in the ignition.

The boy had driven his car off the road. Unhurt, he'd taken the keys out and was walking for help… Yes, that was possible; but I didn't like it. There was nothing tricky about this road, unless you took it too fast; and despite his tight jeans and fancy boots, I would have said the kid was a cautious driver. Besides, I hadn't passed him, and the restaurant was the first place he'd think of for help. No; I didn't like this at all, and felt a queasiness that was becoming all too familiar. But could Subotin be here? I just wasn't sure. Coming out of Paris, on the peripherique, I'd been working too hard to see out the front window without worrying about the back, and once we were on the N3 it would have been easy for someone to follow us without being spotted.

Reluctantly, I got back on the bicycle.

Jiggling and rattling, I came up to the car. There was nobody in it. And there was no blood, which was the next thing I looked for. I walked around to the front. The right side was jammed hard against the oak, having gouged a white, gleaming wound out of the trunk. As an accident, it was more than a fender bender, but nothing spectacular; although the fancy grille resembled a crushed beer can and there was a drip from the radiator, I doubted that he'd been going fast enough to hurt himself.

But that was assuming it had been an accident.

And when I stepped back, and saw the scraped patch above the right front wheel well, I wondered again.

A crow squawked in the woods. Its call drew my eyes there. These woods were very dense, for between the huge, ancient oaks, many smaller trees — birches and little pines — were growing. The rain had beaten the leaves from their branches and they lay in great piles around the trunks… except for the wavy path where something had been dragged through them, pushing them to one side and turning up the leaves underneath in wet, matted patches.

I stared at that path the way you look at a door you don't want to open. And just as I'd felt in that garage in Detroit, I now had an urge to call out, to see if anyone was there. But I kept my mouth shut and stood very still, listening to the slow, steady drip of coolant out of the radiator.

A minute passed. There was no getting away from what I had to do. I stepped around the car and over the ditch. The wet leaves were spongy underfoot, and each step released a Pungent smell of mold. Everywhere, there was the drip and trickle of water over vegetation, and a gust of wind spattered down more rain from the branches above. You couldn't move without making a hell of a lot of noise. Every few yards, I stopped and listened. Birds clucked and rustled around me, and high up, somewhere in the gray lattice of sky beyond the trees, a single-engine plane was droning along. I pushed past a wet pine bough. Everything I touched was wet; soaking already, I was soaked again. My feet began to itch inside my wet socks and my crotch was chafing… sensations I now concentrated on just the way, as a child, I'd concentrated on the cracks in the sidewalk as I ran down a dark, frightening street.

I was thankful that I didn't have to go far; they'd simply wanted to get him out of sight from the road. He was sitting in a little hollow, at the base of a birch tree. His legs were stuck out in front of him, his fancy snakeskin boots buried in dirty leaves, while his arms were tied behind him, lashed around the trunk. His head too was tied back to the tree. They'd used his belt; they'd looped it around his neck and the tree trunk, and then they'd jammed a stick through the loop, twisting it tight, as if they were winding up the rubber band on a kid's model airplane. His face was very bloody. He didn't move, and a sick, guilty feeling began to spread through the pit of my stomach. There was no way to duck it. It was partly my fault. I could have stopped him — at the quai, at Hamilton's apartment, in the restaurant… but then — thank God, thank God — his eyes opened, glittering, and his whole body strained toward me. With a tremendous sense of relief, I skidded down a slope of mud and leaves and reached him.

He was groaning. The belt had dug a red furrow into his throat and was tight enough to stop him from speaking. When I got it off, he gave a hoarse gasp, and then I undid his hands. With a single quick look, a child's imploring look of helplessness and shame — like a child who can't stop soiling himself— he toppled onto on his side and just breathed… huge, deep breaths, sucked in, released, over and over…

I waited, kneeling in the muddy leaves. Despite the blood, I thought — as with Berri — that he was more frightened than hurt. Lying there, he drew his knees up to his belly, his breaths came in long, trembling gasps, and the tears made glistening tracks through the blood on his cheeks. Giving him a chance to recover, I looked away. And only then realized that the ground all around the boy's feet was littered with money, fresh, bright leaves among the old — French and Swiss francs, Swedish crowns, British pounds…

He got his breath back. He gave me one quick look — almost furtive — but then looked away. His voice was soft and trembling as he said, "I thank you. I thought no one would come. I thank you very much."

"If you like, I can go for a doctor."

He shook his head. "I'll be all right in a minute… But a handkerchief… if you happen to have one…"

I gave him a Kleenex. It was sodden; as he scraped it over his face, bits of it stuck in the blood. Then he said, "Excuse me," and pushed it up his nose, which was still bleeding, and leaned his head back. "I'm very sorry… I don't know what to say, how to explain… I was attacked by some men…"

His voice petered away. He was bewildered. He seemed very young and frightened, his adolescence more evident now than his sexual style. He could have been a kid out joyriding — he'd had too many beers, rolled the car. Now he was injured and his best friend was dead. But he didn't know that yet.

I said, "You don't have to explain. I know Hamilton… I know who those men are. They must have followed you from his apartment… I did as well, but I didn't see them."

His head came upright again, his left hand still holding the Kleenex up to his nose. But before he could speak, I added, It's all right. I'm not with them — I'm on your side. Tell me, at the restaurant, did you touch my car?"

"No… I had no idea… You followed me? I don't understand. Who are you? Who are those men?"

"My name is Robert Thome. I'm an American. You can ask Paul about me. He knows who I am. But you must tell me… when you went to his apartment, what did you get?"

He took the Kleenex away from his nose. A little blood trickled from his left nostril; reaching the line of his lip, it flowed around it, like a pencil mustache or a trace of chocolate ice cream around the mouth of a kid.

"You know Paul?"

"Yes. I'm a friend of his from America."

"He said he was in trouble. He wanted me to do something for him. I asked him what the trouble was but he said it was too complicated to explain. People were watching his apartment, that was the point — he couldn't go there, but I could because they wouldn't know who I was."

"Except they did."

"But that can't be possible. Paul said so… It was safe, because they wouldn't know me."

"Maybe that's what he thought, but he didn't think hard enough. Does he have any pictures of you? There, I mean… in the apartment."

There was a flicker behind his eyes. Then he looked away. "Yes… perhaps. I'm not sure."

But of course Hamilton had pictures of him — lovingly posed, beautifully taken; and when Subotin had broken in, and seen them, he'd known a way of getting to Hamilton anytime he cared to. "It doesn't make any difference," I said. "Somehow they recognized you. They followed you from the apartment to the Cite and then here… They wanted to know what you were doing for Paul."

"Yes."

"And what were you doing?"

"I'm not sure that I should tell you."

"You must… It's very important — not for you now, but for Paul."

He looked straight at me, absolutely directly, like a child searching for trust. "You swear? You are Paul's friend?"

"I swear."

He believed me. He wanted to: because this was one secret he wanted to tell. The words tumbled out. "Paul had a locker in the Cite, in the library I had to get the key from the apartment to open it. There were three envelopes inside. I was to mail one of them — I did that right there, in the Cite — and bring him the others."

I looked around us, at the bills scattered among the leaves. "This money was in one of them?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"And the others… you mailed one, but you had the second with you?"

"Yes. Paul said not to mail it; he wanted to look at it first. But they took it away from me. It had an address in Canada — I don't think it was important because they opened it and then crumpled it up."

"This Canadian address — did it include a name?"

"Yes. It was supposed to go to a man named Cadogan, in Toronto."

"All right. Think of the one you did mail — who was that to?"

He looked at me and swallowed. "That's what they wanted to know. They said they'd choke it out of me…" But now his voice faltered and his face twisted with anguish; anguish, God knows, that he was under no obligation to feel, not for a man like Hamilton.

"Don't blame yourself," I said, "not for anything. Because that's exactly what they would have done — they'd have choked you to death."

"Yes… I know. But I tried not to tell them anyway. And I didn't tell them everything."

"All right. Again, I promise you… it won't harm Paul to tell me."

He brought his head back, tossing the bit of Kleenex away, into the leaves. His voice was very soft, almost a mutter. "It was to Russia… and it was in an envelope from the Russian Embassy in Paris — it had a big label in the corner, printed with their address. Of course, I was surprised and I looked at it carefully. The address it was being sent to was written in French and also in Russian — the names were harder to read, but I'm quite sure it said Yuri Shastov in a place called Povo-nets. But I didn't tell them that, you see… only that it was going to Russia."

He looked at me, as though for approval, and I nodded. "Did you have any idea from the envelopes what might have been inside them?"

He shook his head. "Not really. The one they took, the one to Canada, was in an ordinary envelope, like a letter. The other was bigger, padded. But not heavy. Even to Russia, it was just a few francs." As he finished speaking, he reached back, bracing himself against the trunk of the tree, and tried to stand up. He made it, but his face went pale as the blood rushed out of his head. He bent over, resting his hands on his knees.

"Take it easy," I said. With his head down, more blood began to drip from his nose, patting dark red splashes on the dead leaves. I was silent a moment, trying to understand what he'd said. At best, I thought I could understand half of it. I'd been right about one thing: Brightman had been holding something over Hamilton's head. But Hamilton had done a deal; in a funny way, you could even say that he'd honored it. Hamilton's payoff, for hanging on to Brightman's envelope, had presumably been the return of the incriminating material, whatever it had been. And he'd even made sure that he'd get it if Brightman disappeared — the letter to Cadogan, probably written by Brightman, would have contained instructions about this; or at least that's what Hamilton assumed it contained. But there was more — and it was even more interesting. Brightman must also have left Hamilton with orders about what to do with the other envelope, the one to Russia, and Hamilton had obeyed them. He was probably too afraid not to — afraid, if he didn't, that his own reward would be withheld. But what sense did it make from Brightman's point of view? If the second envelope contained the key to all this — if it was the buried treasure Subotin was looking for — why in hell would Brightman have instructed Hamilton to send it to the Soviet Union?

No answer.

I looked up at the boy. "I don't know your name."

He tried to sniff back the blood and coughed, spitting some out. "Alain," he said.

"Alain… it's important that all this is true… what you've told me…"

"I understand."

"That's all you remember about the envelopes?"

He looked straight at me, but I could tell nothing from his eyes. "It's all I remember. I swear it."

"And it's true?"

"Yes."

"All right. What else did these men ask you about?"

Carefully, he straightened up, taking a breath. "They wanted to know where Paul was."

"He's coming here, isn't he? On the barge?" Now I got to my feet as well. Without noticing, I'd been feeling through the leaves, picking up the money. It amounted to several thousand dollars: Hamilton's emergency hoard.

Alain drew his hand back across his nose. "You knew he was leaving?"

I shook my head. "I guessed. I knew about the barge. I was there with him yesterday, just before he called you."

He nodded, as if this explained something to him. "They didn't know, you see. But I didn't understand that soon enough. I told them we were going to meet tonight, in Meaux, at the end of the canal."

"The Marne, you mean?"

"Yes. But between Chalifert and Meaux, it's a canal."

"But that's something else you were trying to keep from them?"

"Yes. We really intended to meet at the end of this road. There's a place where you can tie up, and I could leave the car. Paul left early — he could get to Meaux in one day — but he didn't want to be in a city, where it would be simple to find him."

Two lies, two bits of information held back — the boy had far more guts than Hamilton deserved. I said, "Do you think they believed you?"

"I'm not sure. I thought they'd go toward Meaux… to wait… but by the sounds of their car… I don't know. It's possible they turned back to Paris."

Which made sense. They wouldn't want to wait. They'd drive back, staying on the highway, cutting down to the water every few kilometers on the side road. Eventually, they were bound to run into him. I wondered if he was dead already, but I said, "All right, Alain, where do you think he is now? How far could he have come?"

"A long way. He must be close to here now… I'm not sure. Already he's been sailing for hours."

"And when did they leave you? The men… the man with red hair?"

He shrugged. "Half an hour… even forty minutes, perhaps."

A good start; probably time enough to find him if he was close. And Subotin had a car. On the other hand, they might overshoot their mark — underestimating his progress, they could have passed him, gone too far back toward Paris. Or perhaps they'd taken the easy way out and waited at Meaux… though I doubted it.

"We must warn him."

I nodded. "Yes, but I'm going to do that. You've done enough. In fact, you've got to get the hell out of here." I shoved the money toward him, and when he tried to protest, shut him up with a wave of my hand. "This is dangerous, very dangerous, and you're in no shape for it now. Just listen to me. Go back to your car. There's a bicycle there. Ride it back to the place where you had lunch, then call a garage and get them to fix the red Renault in the parking lot — here are the keys. Take the car back to Paris. Take it to Hertz and leave it there, and then get on a plane — just listen to me — get on a plane and go anywhere outside of France. At least for a couple of weeks."

He looked down at my hand. I'd pushed the money into his, and he was holding it, but he didn't reach for the key. He was dripping more blood, but he didn't bother to wipe it. He said, "What is happening?… What is Paul doing? Who is he really, and what do these men want from him?"

I hesitated, gave a shrug. "I'm sorry. That's something you'll have to ask him."

"Why?" he said. "Why can't you tell me?"

"Because there's no time. Because it's not my story to tell " " ¦ and if you knew what it was, maybe you wouldn't want me to tell it."

His head lifted a little; I saw a flicker of feeling behind his brown eyes… suspicion… resentment. His ego was coming back to him, and this was the form that it took. It assumed hostility; searched for someone to blame. He reached out, plucking the keys from my hands. His voice was sullen. "If I do what you want," he said, "how will Paul know where I am?"

I hesitated. "You're sure you want him to know?"

It was something 1 couldn't help asking, but it brought a small, defiant smile to his lips. "You're not a friend of Paul's, are you? That was a lie."

"Maybe… you could say he was more a friend of my father's."

The smile changed; he was taking satisfaction from catching me out, in confirming old expectations. "I know what you think of me," he said. "Don't think I don't."

"Don't be too sure of that." j

"You think I'm a fool. You think I'm a dirty little queer. But maybe, you know — about some things — you should mind your own business."

I said nothing.

His hands tightened over the keys. "I will do what you say, my friend, but make sure you tell Paul… tell Paul I will write him in a week at my uncle's."

I nodded. He gave me a last, angry look. Then, turning away, he climbed out of that hollow. It wasn't very deep, but he was still wobbly and he had to stop at the top. It was a weakness he didn't like to admit, and he brushed at his jacket, as if this was the real reason he'd halted, and then lifted up each foot and swept the wet leaves from his boots. When he was finished, he seemed about to turn back and say something more; but he didn't. Straightening his shoulders, he walked off toward the road.

I waited, letting him go.

The wind stirred, sifting down a little more rain from the trees. But I could not have been wetter. Even pinched between my fingernails, every cigarette turned into a sodden mess after three puffs, and I flung this one away. I listened. In the distance, the trunk of the Dodge slammed shut. Alain: probably changing his clothes. That would help restore his dignity, but wouldn't change the fact that the horrors and humiliations he'd suffered meant nothing. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that Hamilton was dead. Worse, Alain's courage, rather than protecting his friend, had only made his death inevitable: with the importance of the envelope established, Subotin's pursuit would be nothing short of relentless.

Still, I had to try and warn him. For myself, for the boy, and even a little for Hamilton himself. So I walked down to the Marne. Alain had been right: at this point the river was really a canal, a trench about thirty feet wide. And I could even see the spot he'd been talking about, where he was due to meet up with the barge: huge iron rings, all rusted, had been driven into the trunks of two massive oaks, making a place to tie up at. But no one was there, and there was nothing to do but slog along the towpath beside the canal. I had no clear idea where I was: west of Meaux, north of Villiers, was the best I could do. To my left, as I started out, there were fields and small farms, and to my right — quick glimmers through the screen of trees — I realized that the Marne itself was flowing, so that the houses I saw in that direction were actually on its farther bank. Finally, after a couple of soggy kilometers, I hit a built-up area, with roads, and then the canal turned into an aqueduct, crossing a valley, before entering Esbly. There I waited, watching a man on a railway bridge; but it wasn't Subotin and so I kept on — exhausted now, soaked to the skin — until I'd reached the other side of Coupvray. Then! saw it: even before I could read the fancy gold letters that spelled out La Trompette, the gloss of the hull gave it away. The canal curved here, through some trees, with the fields of a small, muddy farm just ahead. This curve must have created a current; the barge was tied up at the bow to an iron picket driven into the bank, but its stern had tugged out a bit into the channel. I edged closer; but then I told myself that Hamilton wasn't worth taking any kind of a risk for, and ducked off the path and watched the boat from behind a thick hedge of lilac. Five minutes passed. On the barge, everything seemed quiet, peaceful, quite normal. Her black hull, slick with rain, gleamed like plastic, and the pristine, varnished superstructure almost made the vessel look like a toy. I was about to step forward — but then I peered intently ahead as the rope from the barge to the bank suddenly tensed and a figure stepped from the wheelhouse onto the deck.

It was a woman, a navy blue rain cape over her shoulders, a kerchief tied on her head.

She looked away from me, down the canal, but then turned her head so I could see her in profile. I couldn't believe it— she looked just like May.

16

The rain streaked down. It splashed against the dark leaves of the lilacs, stirring up a lingering trace of the summer's scent, and washed the image of the canal, the barge, and May — was it May? — in the silvery, monochrome tints of an old silent film. For an instant, in fact, she seemed to hang in the air like an unreal, ghostly projection. Was she there? Could it be true? But then, as a gust of wind parted the rain, I was sure. At once a dizzying rush of feeling swept over me. What I was looking at was surely impossible — May couldn't be here. But she was. And then, as the full implications of her presence sank in — as all my old doubts and suspicions returned — my astonishment leapt far beyond this moment or these particular circumstances. Everything changed; even the past. Peering through the leaves, I watched her unobserved as on that first day in Toronto, but the distance I'd felt from her then was now compounded a thousand times over. What was she doing here? Had she betrayed me? Then, too, I'd wondered who she really was, but on the assumption that I had some special claim on the answer. Now that assumption died in my heart. We were strangers. She wasn't a woman I'd loved or a woman I'd intended to marry, but a woman I still hadn't met. I felt a quick jab of pain, a final twitch from that ancient wound, and the last bonds that had joined us were cut — indeed, the dizziness I felt might even have been a sensation of freedom. And yet… This was so odd: it was precisely now that I felt drawn to her, called to her, more powerfully and urgently than at any time since all this had begun. Shrouded in her kerchief and cape, the hissing rain scratching the air all around her, she seemed so alone and forlorn, so remote. If she was cut off from me, did she have ties with anyone else? I didn't know who she was, but — whoever she was — something in her called out to me, and called out so strongly that I was pulled from my hiding place onto the path.

She turned then and saw me. "Robert!"

I stood transfixed. I didn't know what to say; I scarcely knew how to address her. And now I was astonished again. Taking a step across the deck to the gunwale, she came closer and I could see her more clearly. My last memory of her was that day in Detroit, in the waiting room, when she'd looked so drawn and tired. But now she was completely transformed. All the old, contradictory elements were there, and she still seemed to exist in some earlier time, but now she was beautiful. With her navy blue cape spreading over her shoulders and her hair tied up under her kerchief, she might have been a sturdy French peasant girl walking through a Pissarro, or a young nurse trudging back to her aid station in the days of the Somme: but, either way, she was beautiful. The rain had washed away years, her face shone with life, glowed with it, as if this was indeed an old film and I'd stepped into it with her, going back in time to the first time we'd met — perhaps that was the time where she truly belonged. And her voice was strong; she was again in charge of her life. "Robert, what are you doing here? You have to leave. I told you—"

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course. Where did you—?"

"Is Hamilton there?"

"No. But I don't — listen to me—"

"In a second, but get back inside."

She hesitated an instant: but now there was an edge to my voice, for I was back to myself, this place, what was happening, and the urgency that had drawn me forward was now dissolved in another — Subotin might be watching. "Hurry," I said.

May disappeared. I looked down the path, into the distance; but there was no sign of anyone. Dashing to the boat, I pulled myself over the railing, then ran across the deck to the wheel-house. May was waiting inside, her face turned up anxiously. "Robert, I don't want you to do this. I told Stewart Cado-gan—"

"I got the message."

My tone made her hesitate and her glance shifted away. "I'm sorry about that."

"Forget it."

"It was the money, wasn't it?"

"Partly—"

"I only meant… I just wanted you to know how grateful I was and I couldn't tell you myself. There just wasn't time."

"All right. It's not very important. You're in danger now— great danger."

"I don't think so. I just have to be careful."

"Subotin — do you know that name?"

"No."

"Travin — Petersen — do you know those?"

"No. But I don't see—"

"Then you don't know the danger you're in. When did you get here?"

"About twenty minutes ago."

"Where was Hamilton?"

"He wasn't here. Nobody was. I called out, but no one came.

At first I couldn't get on the boat, but then a big barge went by on the canal and the waves pushed it in toward the shore. I climbed on. There's nobody here."

But somebody had been; a book and a chart were open on a table, with an empty coffee mug beside them.

"Did you look inside?"

"No, I didn't want to. I just waited here. But I called. There's nobody there. Robert—"

"Wait." I went down into the cabin, May hesitating a second but then following after me. Lights glowed dimly down the length of the barge. In the kitchen, the butter was out, along with a crock of Dundee marmalade. Bread crumbs were scattered on the cutting board… a bit of tomato… I looked all around, and discovered nothing more suspicious than this — certainly no signs of a struggle. But where was Hamilton— and why leave the barge here? Where would you go? And when I found the bright yellow oilskins neatly stowed in their wardrobe, a chill ran up my spine. Given the rain, he wouldn't have gone out without them. Peering into the dark interior of the salon, I listened as waves gently lapped at the hull. And the emptiness I felt had a cold, final quality.

May felt it too. "What is it?" she whispered.

I turned to face her. "I don't know… but he's clearly not here."

Fringed by her long golden lashes, her eyes seemed huge; and now, for an instant, they were touched by fear. She took a step closer; instinctively, seeking protection. Then stopped. Did she also feel the new distance between us? Since I'd joined her on the barge, we'd made no move to touch, let alone embrace. Maybe she was thinking this too, for she now took another step closer and reached out for my arm. "Robert," she whispered, "I wish you hadn't come. I wish I hadn't… My God this is terrible."

"I know."

"I don't want you to feel—"

"It's all right." Now I was whispering too. I squeezed her hand. "But you have to tell me everything, and you have to tell me the truth."

Her face turned up toward me; I could smell the wet wool of her skirt, feel the warmth of her breath. For a moment, her gaze held mine and then she said, "I've tried to, I swear. In the beginning, when I first called you — do you know why I was afraid? It wasn't only my father — I was frightened when I couldn't get through to you, when you weren't at your house. Because I knew you were the only person on earth I could tell the truth to."

"Then why did you want me to stop?"

"I had to. I was afraid for you. I was afraid that…"

Her voice trailed away — because this was a lie that she couldn't bring off? But I wasn't sure — now, here, in her presence, I wasn't sure of anything. Why hadn't she remembered about her father's car? Had she been manipulating me from the very beginning? Had she ever told me the truth? All these questions and doubts flooded into my mind; and yet, somehow, I wanted to believe even more than before. I said, "What are you doing here? How did you learn about Hamilton?"

Her body shifted and her eyes looked away; and I thought she might turn away altogether. But then she looked up at me once again. "I was supposed to meet him here. When I got back from Detroit — the next day — or the day after, I can't remember — a letter came in the mail from my father. He'd sent it from Detroit. He said that if I got this letter it would mean he was dead and he wanted me to do certain things."

"What things?"

"Robert, please — I beg you—"

"You must tell me."

She hesitated. "He said… he told me to go to a post office box — he sent the key with the letter. He said I'd find an envelope inside. It was addressed to Paul Hamilton, here — in Paris — and I was to take it there and give it to him in return for… another envelope, one that would be addressed to Stewart Cadogan — I was supposed to destroy it — and something else, some sort of slip… There was a second envelope, you see. Hamilton was to mail it but give me a receipt — a registration form, something from the post office — to prove that he had."

"But not the envelope itself?"

"No… not if I could help it. It was dangerous. If there was no choice, my father said, I should take it, but then mail it immediately."

"And in return for this…?"

She stepped back. She was wearing a heavy, cable-knit sweater under the cape; reaching beneath it, she pulled out an oversized envelope, fairly thick. I took it from her and squeezed it, feeling a wad of papers inside. I didn't open it. I didn't need to. I was certain now that my speculations had been close to the mark. This envelope contained the material that Brightman had held over Hamilton, which ultimately would have been redeemed by the letter to Cadogan — which Subotin had taken from Alain. Now, this ring-around-the-rosy scarcely made any dhTerence… but something else did.

"The second envelope," I said, "the one you were supposed to get the slip for… what did your father tell you about it? If all you had was the slip, how would you know Hamilton had mailed it at all?"

She looked at me. Doubt passed through her eyes. To lie or not to lie — now, without doubt, she was trying to decide. But then she made up her mind. "He gave me the address, the address that had to be on the receipt."

"And it was an address in the Soviet Union?"

"My God, yes. How did you know?"

"Please — let me see it."

She took a piece of paper from the pocket of her skirt and handed it to me. The address was printed in firm block letters: Yuri Shastov, Povonets, Karelia, U.S.S.R.

"Do you know who this person is?"

"No. I've never heard of him. In my father's letter, that's all there was. Just the name and that address."

"What was in the envelope?"

"I have no idea — I swear it."

I believed her; I almost believed all of it now. And I realized something else too: Subotin must know all about this. Because Alain had lied; he'd told me he'd mailed the letter, but not that he'd obtained a receipt — and why else would he do that unless he wanted to cover up the fact that Subotin had taken it from him? Not that I blamed him; giving up that receipt had undoubtedly saved his life. And it might even have another good result: if Subotin already had the Russian address, he'd have no use for Hamilton, and that meant we were now safe. But could I be sure? If Subotin hadn't come here, where had Hamilton gone? There were so many questions, I thought, so many doubts… Even the precise nature of Brightman's demise was problematic again. I'd been assuming he'd been murdered, but if Harry had actually sent May a letter from Detroit, then it implied that he'd killed himself, after all. He just hadn't trusted Hamilton to follow his instructions, and had used May, in effect, as a posthumous bully. This seemed out of character, since it exposed her to danger, but then he'd told her not to handle the envelope itself; and presumably, in other ways, he'd weighed the risks and decided that her safety required the absolute certainty that Hamilton did as he'd promised.

I looked back at May. "You spoke to Hamilton?"

"Yes."

"But not from Toronto?" No… In the letter, my father told me how I should reach him. I wasn't to phone, they had a special way… I flew to

Paris, but then I went straight to my place — I still have it, outside Sancerre — and then I came back. I spoke to him yesterday—"

"When?"

"In the morning first, then later — late last night. That's when he agreed… and he told me how to get here."

I thought it through and it worked out. She hadn't phoned Hamilton from Toronto, I was certain of that; my call from Nick Bern's had taken him completely by surprise. But yesterday, when I'd seen him on the barge, he'd already spoken to her: which was why he'd had so many questions for me — and why, above all, he wanted reassurance that Brightman really was dead. I'd given him that; maybe, in the end, that's why he'd agreed to see her. Then he'd called Alain, and later-while I was dozing away in my car — he and May had worked out the details. Yes, I thought, all of this fitted together, and once you accepted it, you could—must—accept everything else. All my suspicions about May came to nothing… and the only reason left for suspicions was the very strength or my desire to give them up.

Because, indeed, I so much wanted to believe her. I watched her now as she stepped across the salon, peeled off her kerchief, and shook out her hair; a few strands stuck to her damp cheeks and she pushed them away. How extraordinary she looked. Peasant… hippie lady… but in that cape and her thick wool skirt — and wearing olive-drab gum boots — she also looked like a perfect aristocrat, a country lady who'd just returned from a fine muddy tramp across her estate. And how alive she was. Her father was dead, she ought to be grieving, and yet she was radiant. More suspicions? But then I wondered if her new vitality wasn't a clue. Did she already know the truth about Harry? Was she feeling relief that his long struggle was over? Had that struggle been hers as well?

She may have sensed these questions forming in my mind, for now she broke in: "You think he's dead, don't you?"

"I'm not sure. He could be."

"Robert — if he is — you should go. I'll be all right. If he doesn't come back in an hour, I'll leave."

"That's crazy. You should go. There's no reason for you to stay. The first letter — the one to Cadogan — will never be mailed, and the second one, to Russia, already has."

An anxious look crossed her face. "You can't be sure — you don't know."

"Don't worry, I'm sure. I can't explain how, but I am."

She took this in and considered; for the first time, perhaps, she was now wondering if she could believe me. But then decision, and relief, settled into her face. "All right, then, we should go together. If he's dead… if there's no reason to stay…" She came toward me; she stood so close to me that I could feel the warmth of her breath, taste its fresh, flowery scent on my lips, and then she leaned forward further and kissed me, a soft press of her lips on my cheek. My response to this — the desire I felt — was a shock: as pure and unexpected a sensation as the astonishment I'd felt on first seeing her. Was that her purpose? Was she trying to tempt me? Something had happened that had wiped the slate clean… whatever had kept us apart in the past was now gone — it was, in truth, as if I'd never met her before, and therefore I could be attracted to her all over again. And if that had only been true, there was no doubt that I would have gone with her. But it wasn't. Gently, I kissed her. "I have to stay," I said. "He may have hidden something, something that might connect him and your father."

She stepped back. "I don't want you to. I don't want you to do anything more."

"I have to."

"No—I beg you. You'll hurt yourself. You'll hurt me."

"May, you're not afraid for me," I said, "or for yourself, you're still protecting him. But Harry's dead — he can't be hurt anymore. And what I find out from now on doesn't make any difference — I know all his secrets."

"Robert… you may think you do, but you don't. Nobody does — I'm not even sure that I do."

"You're wrong. I know everything. Russia. The gold and the furs. Who he was, what he did. What Hamilton did…"

"Dear God…"

"There's only one secret I don't know — I don't know how much you know, or when you found out."

She turned away and a long moment passed. In the silence, I could hear the waves working at the hull and the rain streaming down on the deck. Then she turned slowly around. "Can't you guess? Don't you remember? After you asked me to marry you, I went up to see him — you remember what I said, that if you wouldn't ask for my hand, I was going to ask for you— and that's when he told me. That's why I couldn't… go through with it."

Silence. The rain. The whole world suspended. Had I seen this much of the truth? If so, it didn't soften the blow. I couldn't move; I couldn't feel. Or not directly. I could only watch my feelings mirrored in May's face — in her anguished expectation of my pain, in the consolation she longed to offen but knew was much too late. It was extraordinary, that m,o-ment. I've always known a secret that most of you never learn — tragedy doesn't happen to other people, it happens to yourself. My father's death had taught me that… but here it was again. Yet, in another sense, this was, quite precisely, tragedy at one remove: it had all been so long ago. And when I began to breathe again I felt a spasm of grief, of sympathy — as if for someone else — and then a terrible regret. What a fate to suffer. To lose love like that. To give up half your life. To withdraw. To hide. To live so emptily… But then it hit me. I was not the understanding friend; I was the victim. And I could have cried, I wanted to — but part of the price I'd paid was the loss of all my tears. So May wept for me; it was her consolation, and final testament to what we'd almost had. I held her against me. She whispered, "What a time to tell you."

I tried to smile. "I always was a little curious. And I never did believe that nonsense… whatever it was you told me."

"But I couldn't tell the truth. When I saw him, he said he couldn't let me marry you without knowing because he was afraid that the police were on to him. Our lives might be ruined — he couldn't help it — but he didn't want to ruin yours." She stepped back and looked at me. "I almost did tell you later on. I thought we might get back together. But it was too late then. And everything had changed with Harry; I couldn't leave him. We'd always been very close — everything I said about the adoption, all that was true — but once I knew… somehow that meant…"

Yes, I knew just what it meant, for I'd already seen that much: our lives, though separate, had been on a curious parallel, both of us living in the shadow of our fathers. But Harry was dead and she was free; that had to be the reason for the transformation she'd undergone. Now, looking at her, phrases began going through my mind. It's never too late. We can get together now. Start again. Pretend it never happened… But that's where those phrases stayed — in my mind. Something held me back, though she stood there, all open, and I think—

But then she tensed against me: a quick, dull knocking sound echoed through the hull.

I held up my hand.

It came again, on the far side — a boat rubbing or…

"Wait here," I whispered.

But she followed me up the steps, and as I entered the wheelhouse, I had to hold her back. "Keep your head down. If something happens, run — get off the barge and run."

In a crouch, so I couldn't be seen through the window, I scuttled over to the door. After listening a moment, I stepped out on deck. The rain drowned every sound in the splash and hiss of falling water. But there didn't seem to be anything alarming, and when I looked around I was almost reassured: on the bank, just beyond the barge, an old man was trudging along the path, a fishing pole over his shoulder. But then I heard another thump against the hull and edged across the deck; when I reached the rail, I leaned out and took a quick look down.

Behind me, May called softly, "What is it?"

I turned around. "It's all right. But look, you have to go— staying here is dangerous. And pointless."

"Come with me, Robert."

I shook my head. "I can't. I told you. I have to stay and search the boat."

"But when you've finished… come then."

I shook my head. "I can't stop yet. I'm not sure how it's happened, but this is my story now as much as yours."

She thought a second — and maybe she was thinking a step ahead of me. "Robert, please — don't go to Russia."

"Don't worry. I'll be all right."

She faced me and I think was going to argue; but then she touched my hand and said, "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

She gave a little smile. "A moment ago, I knew just what you were thinking…"

"What?"

That it's too late. But she only smiled again and so I said, "You should go. You have a car?"

She looked away. "Hamilton told me to leave it on a side road."

"All right. I think you'll be safe enough, but don't go back to Sancerre just yet — drive around, stay in a few hotels. Then, if you want, go back to Canada."

"You'll call?"

"Of course."

"But if I'm not there… you mustn't worry." Again, she tried to smile. "Who knows? This is all over now. I might go traveling."

"Somehow we always find each other."

She nodded, and almost spoke again, but then, quickly, she turned away, stepped across the deck, and jumped down to the bank. Stumbling, she landed on one knee.

"All right?"

A smile. "I'm fine." She pulled herself up; then, knotting her kerchief on her head, she gave a little wave, and turned along the path. I watched her go. She caught up to the old man, the one with the fishing pole, and then turned to give me one last look. The rain came slanting down, a misty window… but behind it her face seemed bright again, as bright as the first moment when I'd seen her on the barge. I waved back, and a moment later she disappeared around a bend.

Turning away, I took three steps across the deck and leaned over the rail. My eyes searched the muddy water. It was still there. A twist of tattered cloth… a lump that bobbed up, then rolled under again.'. bumping its way along the hull, all shrouded in a cloud of greasy red.

Paul Hamilton: wrapped in the flag of his own choosing.

Paul Hamilton: the "decent" man who'd tried to do the "decent" thing.

I stepped back and buttoned up my coat. A thousand thoughts began swirling through my mind, what-ifs, and might-have-beens. But surely she was right — and I was right it was too late. And too late, perhaps, in other ways., Subotin had a good head start, and Russia — as Brightman surely knew — is a long, long way from anywhere.

There was no time to waste. I clambered off the barge, hurried down the path. Behind me — one last look back—La Trompette was glistening in the rain.