The Red Fox

17

After Vienna, the plane headed north, over Czechoslovakia, and then east, across Poland.

There was no stop at Warsaw.

Soon it became hard to know where we were — hence the peculiar agony of Polish history — but as the the miles drifted by, the landscape grew whiter, and the rust-red blotches of the winter-plowed fields showed up like the patches of a piebald pony. With the snow, my Russian memories began: whispering, like the breeze through a birch forest; eddying, like the smoke from some poor peasant's izba; and then flowing, as hypnotic and remorseless as the spring thaw. Russia… Closing my eyes, I could see the sun set over Lake Baikal and flash from the bright domes of Suzdal, and when I listened hard even the roar of the Kuznetsov turbofans was drowned out by the deep-throated music of the language itself. Memories and images mingling, I drifted away into sleep and then a dream came, very simple and clear. A ship is arriving in Leningrad. A figure appears on the gangway, enormous inside ^a "^ulky fur coat… It must be Brightman; even in my dream, I'm conscious of this. Slowly, he shuffles down to the dock, joining an immense line that tortuously winds through a shed, past a desk. On the desk is a sign: Old Russian Custom — to Wait. Are You from the States? As the man steps forward, passport in hand, he turns slightly, smiling to himself at this attempt at a joke. But the man isn't Brightman; it's me. And as the official looks up, I see the face of…

I awoke with a jerk. But I'm not sure I had a right to be startled. This was an Aeroflot flight, we were on a Tu-154 (the peculiar smell of their cabins), and our destination was mysterious Leningrad — for most of my fellow travelers, it was precisely the strangeness of this that excited or disturbed them. But with me it was the reverse. As if suffering from some variation of deja vu, it was the familiar that distressed me— I'd been here so often before, but what was I doing here now? Following a total stranger, I'd ended up on my own doorstep. How could it have happened? Charlottesville, Halifax, Paris… Leningrad had to be the end of the trail, yet I kept feeling I'd been moving in a circle — unless I had it all wrong, and the circle had been moving around me.

But all of these questions, even if I should have known the answers to them, were secondary; I had more concrete problems ahead of me. Who was Yuri Shastov? Why had Bright-man's package ended up in Povonets, a dot on the map four hundred miles northeast of Leningrad? And even more difficult than these questions was the consequent one of how I was going to answer them, for no matter how you define "totalitarian," the bottom line is "police state," and I was now proposing to enter the greatest police state in history and operate in a fashion that would be both clandestine and illegal. To make matters worse, I was a Westerner; worse still, an American; worst of all, a journalist. This meant automatic suspicion and possibly surveillance… which was precisely what I had to avoid. Somehow, in the most tightly controlled society on earth, I had to "disappear," find a way to gain a free hand.

I had a plan — a variation of a stunt I'd pulled once before — and its first step was simple: be as normal as possible.

Pudvolko, Leningrad's airport, is south of the city. There's a perfectly good airport bus that takes you right down the Nevsky, but I've always preferred a cab — and so that's what I took now. It was a cold, gray day; the first snowbanks were heaped up at the side of the road, and in the windblown fields the frozen earth'was the color of steel. Rolling down the window, I sucked in a breath. The air was thick with the smell of all the big Russian cities, a compound of cement dust and diesel fumes from the huge Belaz transport trucks, which people will proudly (and truthfully) tell you are the largest trucks in the world. Following my usual, roundabout route, I had the driver take me past the old Putilov ironworks, with its huge statue of Kirov — arms outstretched, he points toward the factory in a gesture, supposedly dramatic and revolutionary, which the local inhabitants interpret more rudely — then under the Neva Arch, toward the gray, bleak expanse of the port. It would be closing up soon, except for the lanes they keep open with the nuclear icebreakers. Already, there was a skin of ice on the canals. We bumped across one of the city's six hundred bridges and headed downtown.

I was staying at the Astoria. People used to say that it has an air of faded glory, but now it's just faded. I like it all the same. The beds may sag and creak, it takes about an hour to fill up your bath, but the place still manages to be comfortable and the staff always strikes me as being more sophisticated than in other Russian hotels. Ordinary room service requests, often met by puzzlement elsewhere, are here handled routinely, though that afternoon I didn't want anything except the routine: one bottle of vodka. After a couple of welcoming slugs, I unpacked, then left the hotel and walked across St. Isaac's Square. Kitty-corner to the Cathedral is a massive stone building that was once the German Embassy and which now houses the main office of Intourist. After a long argument and several loudly dropped names, I got what I wanted: an approved travel itinerary and a dark blue Zhiguli — Fiat to you — which I picked up at the Aeroflot Terminal on the Nevsky Prospekt. From there, I returned to the Astoria.

It was around three o'clock in the afternoon; I lay down on the bed and waited for the phone to ring.

Because I knew it would.

Presumably Subotin had ways of getting into the U.S.S.R. without attracting attention, but for me that was impossible. Having lived and worked here as a journalist, I was simply listed in too many files. Besides, in Paris I'd pulled some strings to get a visa inside twenty-four hours rather than the usual three days or a week. Each of those strings had had a bell at the end; inevitably, they'd start to ring here. The first call was from a man I knew in Tass's translation section, just to say hello. Then there was someone at UPI who said he'd been tipped off by Aeroflot. (Reasonable: my fixer in Paris, so far as the visa was concerned, had been an old acquaintance in Aero-flot's PR department — it was his blat, in addition, that had got me the car.) And lastly, at quarter to five, I was welcomed to Leningrad by an official greeter from the Soviet Union of Journalists. I'd met him before. Viktor Glubin he was called, but in fact he was a typical Ivan Ivanov, the sort of idiot bureaucrat who reassures the people "upstairs" — the nachalstvo—that their will is being done, while actually ensuring that nothing very much is being done at all. Just this once, I was glad to see him: in fact, he, or someone like him, was almost essential to my plans. Before picking up Subotin's trail, I had to cover my own. Even if the KGB were not aware of what I was doing, my arrival would have been noted, and would have piqued their curiosity. To reassure them — the second step of my plan — I'd carefully prepared a soothing little explanation, and now I needed someone to deliver it. For that, Viktor Glubin was perfect: when it comes to the Komitet, he was as "amateur" as a Russian athlete. I happily accepted his invitation to dinner, then began running a bath. After that, I lay down and dozed.

Glubin arrived around seven.

He was a chubby, rumpled man, with a sour, puckered mouth and a forehead that was as greasy as the back of a spoon. I bought him a drink in the Astoria bar. Trading gossip about various journalistic acquaintances, we tested the waters between us. With Russians, this is always a tricky business, and maybe it's especially true of Russian newspapermen. They want it assumed that they're part of the same world as you— that "journalist" means the same thing in Leningrad as in New York — but as soon as you apply the standards of that world to them, they are prone, like little children, to pick up their marbles and go home. Tonight, I was very careful to be the perfect diplomat, and was too worried about my own performance to notice any equivocations in his.

Perhaps they weren't there; everything, indeed, proceeded quite normally. He took me to the Byka, an Azerbaijani restaurant. It was fairly small by Soviet standards, perhaps thirty tables, and the otherwise gloomy atmosphere was enlivened by some bright rugs on the walls and a band. In Russia, there's always a band — Russians consider dancing a necessary part of a night out, like certain Midwesterners. As we came in, this one was playing a mournful version of "Memories Are Made of This," and the room was hooting, considering the tune much too old-fashioned. Our meal was superior to the entertainment. Azerbaijan is a Soviet Socialist Republic wedged between northern Iran and the Caspian Sea. The people are Shüte Muslims, the cuisine something like Turkish. I started with a sort of tolma (stuffed vine leaves), went on to dovta (sour milk soup) and then shashlik kebab—each of these dishes being accompanied, not very authentically, by Starka vodka, which Glubin poured out remorselessly, glass after glass. With my tongue thus loosened, I blurted out all my secrets, including my true reasons for being in Leningrad. I was writing a book, it seemed, a personal book — no politics — that would contain anecdotes and reflections based on my years of living in Russia. The idea behind the trip was to revisit all the parts of the country where I'd lived or traveled before… as anyone could confirm by checking my "Travel Memo" at Intourist.

Viktor, listening dutifully, gave an understanding nod. "It sounds very interesting, Robert. It will be a book full of feeling."

By now the band was playing "A Hard Day's Night" — apparently more acceptable to the audience — and men were going among the tables, asking the women to dance.

"You're right," I said. "It has to have feeling. But I don't want it to be too sentimental… too Russian, if you know what I mean."

Viktor smiled. Russians are proud of being sentimental and don't mind being teased about it… though they wouldn't like you to point out that the obverse of the sentimental is brutality.

He raised his glass. "To Russian tears. Let us drown them."

We drank. Then, showing he'd read my file, he remarked that I would have a long trip, for I'd lived in so many places — Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow, even Semipalatinsk — and we drank to each of these spots in turn. He grinned happily, and somehow there was nothing objectionable, or even hypocritical, about all this. We were in Russia. He knew, and I knew, that the purpose of our dinner was to enable him to make a report to the police. But this wasn't its "real" purpose, any more than the real purpose of taking a breath was to avoid suffocation; you simply did it, without thinking. Indeed, two weeks from now, with complete sincerity, he'd be telling his pals about his nice evening with "my American friend Robert Thorne." But, one way or another, my story seemed to have convinced him, and after a time I set down my glass and looked around the room. The band had started up again, some tune I didn't recognize. Opposite our table, a pretty Hungarian blonde adjusted the straps of her dress to cover the straps of her bra, then gave her hand to a soldier wearing the blue beret of a Soviet paratrooper. Everyone started to move; I think they might have been doing the frug. After a time, even Viktor got up, though only to announce a trip to the John. I took another sip of vodka, then a forkful of baklava. As my eyes moved over the tables, I remembered the time when I could have made a feature story from any of them: the old waiter whose grandmother had marched in the Peace and Bread demonstrations that had brought the Bolsheviks to power; an East German engineer who'd last been in Leningrad in 1942, when the German siege of the city had come within a few hundred yards of the Putilov works that I'd passed this morning; and a Rumanian poet, disciple of Barbu, who was being shown around town by a cultural commissar. As the second city of a great empire, Leningrad has always had plenty of stories to tell.". though my eyes, I admit, kept coming back to the Hungarian blonde. She was a real stunner; and there was the irony of the paratrooper. But then, as I watched her, I began to catch the quick, wary looks she'd dart to the far corner of the room as the movements of the dance turned her that way. I followed those looks… and that's when I saw him. Short, chunky, but wearing a well-tailored dark blue suit that slimmed him down. I should have spotted him before, I realized, because he was the only person in the place with a table to himself.

I set down my fork.

I should say that I wasn't afraid, though, right away, I had no doubt that he was there because of me. But KGB officers come in all shapes and sizes. Many are thugs; quite a number are young CP careerists taking a fast route to the top; and most are merely the petty bureaucrats of oppression, the fonc-tionaires that all totalitarian states need to carry on business: the censors; the people who manage the internal "passport" system which, like South Africa's, controls people's movements through the country; or the upravdom in Soviet apartment buildings whose task is to report on all the occupants' comings and goings. These men exist, as the mandate of their organization candidly puts it, to be the "shield of the Party" — that is, to defend the Party against any possible threat from the people. Thus, very few of them have much involvement with espionage or even foreigners, and those that do are relatively sophisticated, well educated, even well traveled. Like this man. And I took that as a good sign. If they'd intended anything nasty — even a quick-step out to the airport — they would have sent someone else.

I watched him, and when the music stopped, he got up from his table and crossed the room.

"Mr. Thome?"

There was a polite, even formal, expression of inquiry on his face.

I have a rule: be polite but don't be obsequious. So I just nodded and said, "That's right."

"My name is Valentin Loginov, Mr. Thome. Viktor mentioned that he'd be bringing you here tonight and asked me to drop by. He thought it might be useful if we talked."

The Hungarian girl, returning to her table, looked away; a waiter, hurrying past, averted his eyes.

"May I?" he said.

I nodded.

"It's a good band?"

"Not bad."

"For rock and roll, however, a band doesn't work. There are too many players. All those instruments just get in the way."

"Yes, I suppose that's true."

He nodded. "That's why they don't like rock and roll. The professionals, I mean. The musicians. There are not enough jobs. They prefer Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman, but the people no longer like them."

I expect he was right. As they began "Serenade in Blue," only a few people got up and danced. The Hungarian and her paratrooper had now shifted positions — so the girl had her back to my table.

"Of course," Loginov said, "Benny Goodman began with a trio — him and Gene Krupa and Teddy Wilson. And then Lionel Hampton."

"I don't know much about music… about swing."

He smiled. "It only shows I am much older than you."

No; it showed that he was "friendly," and that he wasn't a hick. He was about fifty years old, with a barrel chest and a fair belly, though the suit made him look sleek. He wore a small pin in his lapel: a cross made by a flyer's wings and a propeller. This is the insignia of the Soviet Air Force, but KGB officers frequently hold commissions in other branches of service and wear their uniforms — the Air Force being favored because theirs are the best-looking. Since our conversation about music seemed to be over, I said, "I'm afraid Viktor didn't mention you'd be joining us, Mr. Loginov."

"That is because I wasn't sure I'd be able to. Happily, however…" He smiled pleasantly and turned his hands palms up, as if to say, "Here I am and isn't it fun?" Then the waiter came hurrying up, setting down an extra glass; and naturally it was Loginov who poured out the vodka — a straightforward demonstration of who was in charge. We drank a simple vashez-dorovye. When I put my glass down, I said, "You have the advantage, Mr. Loginov. I think you must know more about me than I do about you."

He brought out a package of John Player's Special, and extended one to me. "I suppose that is true. To begin with, I think I have read everything you have written."

"I doubt that."

He shrugged, lighting our cigarettes. "Well, not all… but a great deal. And I have read careful digests of the rest. And estimates of you."

"That's a file I'd like to see."

"I can tell you, Mr. Thome, that its conclusions are all very positive. You've taken the trouble to learn our language, you've done your best to understand our country, and you are a fair man. That doesn't make you less critical, but at least your criticisms are not stupid. And intelligent criticism is as rare… is the same as… good advice." He lifted his glass then. "Let us drink to that — to good advice."

I drank, or rather sipped; though, as usual in this life, it was too late to worry about how much I'd drunk. As he put his glass down, Loginov added, "Perhaps I can return the favor, Mr. Thorne. Not with advice, exactly, but information."

"Really? Your organization isn't famous for passing it out."

His voice sank a little; he looked very levelly at me. "Look, Mr. Thorne… I have mentioned no organizations, and though I naturally have an employer, why don't we forget it. For now. Put it out of your mind…"

"That's easier said than done."

"I won't disagree. But — you understand? — there is nothing official about this conversation. Tell me to leave, and I will. And there will be no repercussions. You are very welcome in the Soviet Union. That is official." He paused, then added, "I would simply like to help make your stay more profitable."

"By giving me information?"

"Exactly."

I could hear the band again. They were still flipping around through the musical eras, and now everyone chuckled at "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?"

I said, "As you know, Mr. Loginov, I'm a journalist. Information is one thing I never have enough of."

"Good… and, as it happens, I am especially well informed about the subject of your current project… which Mr. Glubin mentioned to me."

I said, "I see," though of course Viktor Glubin had supposedly known nothing about my current "project" till twenty minutes ago.

Loginov nodded. "Yes," he said. "The dissidents. Naturally, they are a subject of great fascination in the West. But they are much misunderstood. I'm sure it would be very worthwhile for a man of your knowledge and sensitivity to tackle the subject."

I leaned forward, knocking ash from my cigarette. "Mr. Loginov, I wouldn't want you to think me ungrateful, but just for the record, my current project — as you call it — has nothing to do with the dissident movement."

"No?" He looked skeptical. "I will note that — for the record, as you put it. But I'm not sure that you're right. Possibly it is a confusion of terminology; we may be speaking of the same thing, but with different words. You see what I mean?" He added, "It may become clearer as I go on."

He was a KGB officer and this was Leningrad; if he wanted to go on, I had no intention of trying to stop him. I leaned back in my chair. "I don't suppose you're a dissident, Mr. Loginov?"

He smiled. "Not quite. But I know many of them… Or does that surprise you?"

I shrugged.

"Of course, personal knowledge is not the same as friendship, though everyone knows Yevtushenko was very friendly with Khrushchev. You see, what people in the West don't understand is that the liberal dissidents are very few in number and are almost all drawn from the elite elements of Soviet society… our intellectuals, scientists. They are a closely knit group, and if you know one, you know all the others. They are like a family. Or the characters in our great novels — there is always a chart on the flyleaf that shows you how they are related." He reached for the vodka, pouring us each another glass. "Perhaps it's even hereditary," he added, "or at least a tradition — like the painting of icons — that is passed down from generation to generation. Think of Yuli Daniel. He was a student of Sinyavsky, the famous 'Abram Tertz.' And Si-nyavsky, of course, was a great friend of Pasternak's — he was a pallbearer at Pasternak's funeral — and Pasternak, in his turn, came from a family who were friends of Tolstoy, and he was enough of a dissident in his day to be excommunicated by the Orthodox Church. So you see, in the veins of Yuli Daniel, you might say there is running the blood of a tradition of resistance that goes all the way back to the Czars."

"That's a fascinating theory, Mr. Loginov. Maybe this is a book you should be writing."

He shook his head. "I wouldn't be interested. And neither should you — if you don't mind my saying so. Why? Because the dissidents I have been talking about — the democratic, liberal dissidents you so admire in the West — can have little importance here. I don't say no importance, you understand; but only a little. It's interesting. The reason they have a little importance is the same reason why they can never have very much: it is because, as I've said, they come from the elite. Any regime must pay some attention to what its top people say, men like Sakharov, but in the final analysis they don't count, for they have no popular power."

"You mean, they are separated from the masses."

"Sneer at the words, Mr. Thome, but not the idea. Ask Johnson and Nixon why they couldn't win their ugly little war in Vietnam — it was because, in the end, they didn't have the people behind them. That is the same problem the liberal dissidents have. You understand, this isn't because the people support the regime, or that they love Communism. In Russia, Mr. Thorne, Communism is not even a bad joke anymore, just an old one. It simply doesn't work, and even when it does, it works to no purpose. It's like that old story about Gorky, you know. He was supposed to have visited a wonderful, modern, efficient factory — everything humming along at top speed— but when he asked them what they made, they told him, 'We make signs that say "Elevator Out of Order." ' That's Communism for you — that's the best it can do — and everybody knows it. But this 'everybody,' you see, is Russian. That's the trouble. And 'democracy' is not Russian, 'freedom' is not Russian, 'human rights' are not Russian. These ideas come from the West, where Napoleon came from, and Guderian's tanks. That is why the liberal dissidents have always been doomed."

I said nothing; in Russia, "sophistication" can often be expressed by this sort of talk, but it might also be a trap. After a second, Loginov smiled. "You are surprised, Mr. Thorne?"

"I don't want to bring up organizations again, but there's one, you know, that's supposed to be the 'shield of the Party.' "

"Ah. The Party. Have I said a word that's critical of it? I would hate to think so, Mr. Thorne — I would hate myself for saying it. But the Party is over eighty years old, and only a foolish old man believes in the dreams of his youth." He shook his head. "When you speak of the Party, you speak of Soviet power — legitimate Soviet power… and that has less and less to do with Communism."

"All right. I won't even quibble about 'legitimate.' But what does any of this have to do with me?"

"Yes. For that, I return to the dissidents. I told you why the liberal dissidents couldn't succeed — they're too identified with the West, with foreign ideas. Ordinary Russians, even if they're unhappy with the state of affairs, can find nothing there — so they look elsewhere. They look to themselves, to Russia, to their past. In its own way, of course, that is rebellion… to find anything good before 1917 is a criticism of what has come after, whether you like it or not. At the same time, how can anyone disapprove? What is wrong with loving your country, its being, its history?"

I shrugged. "Nothing. What you're describing sounds very much like patriotism, Mr. Loginov… as in the Great Patriotic War."

"Perhaps it is. But let us reserve that word 'patriotic' for something undoubtedly honorable. We should use another one… something different, maybe just a neutral word like 'nationalism.' But it doesn't make any difference — the important thing is to understand what it means."

"And what does it mean?"

"Listen a moment. What I'm talking about began in the sixties, with students. But our students in those years were different from your own. Their rebellion was expressed by looking back, searching for old ways rather than new ones. They became fascinated by the Russian past, and took little trips to Vladimir and Suzdal to look at the old buildings and monuments. It was all very innocent. But soon, you see, they attracted quite a following — respectable people like Antonov, the airplane designer — and then the Party decided to play along, and something was formed called the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical Monuments. By '67, according to Tass, they had three million members… which was just the tip of the iceberg. Aboveground, nationalist themes began getting played up in the press — even the Party press— and underground, in samizdat, you began seeing ultranational-ists like the Veche group take over… I think you must have heard of them."

"Yes," I said. "Vladimir Osipov. A Slavic nationalist: Russia for the Russians as opposed to the Uzbeks, the Tatars, the Jews, the Kazakhs, the Yakuts, and all the other minorities. Who now make up more than fifty percent of your population."

"I think you are too polite. 'Slavic nationalist'…" He made a face. "People like Osipov are anti-Semites, racists, and chauvinists. And if you don't want to say it about them, then what about VSKhSON?" He spat out the name: "The AU-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People… They speak of 'spiritual rebirth,' the 'revival of Orthodoxy,' 'freedom of conscience,' but for them these words mean nothing more than they did to the Nazis."

"Mr. Loginov, VSKhSON never had more than forty members and was crushed… by an organization we've agreed not to talk about."

"True. Officially, that is true."

An interesting qualification. But I hesitated now for another reason. I was making connections: I was hearing Travin's voice on the phone—We can talk about the by liny or the beguny or the Black Hundreds… and there was that emigre paper I'd found in the dump.

Carefully, I said, "You understand that I do not support such people?"

"Yes. I know that."

"And you surely don't expect me to believe that you're really afraid of them? Even the CIA has given up its fantasies about the Soviet people rising up to throw out the Bolsheviks and bring back the Czar."

He shook his head. "That is not the point, Mr. Thorne. Of course you are right. No one — from 'below'—will overthrow this regime. With us, all change starts 'upstairs,' in the Party. But think of the Party for just a minute. Do you imagine it is composed of fools? Of idiots? Do you think our good Party people do not see the grave problems that now face the Soviet Union? Naturally they do. Let me give you even a single example. Everyone knows that Soviet agriculture is a disaster — this Western talk about our attacking America is crazy, Mr. Thorne, because if we bombed Kansas or Manitoba, we Russians would all starve the next year. But why? Our land is huge and rich. Our fanners have enough tractors — that can no longer be the excuse. The reason is the system itself. Do you know that the private plots of our collective farmers — the 'capitalist plots,' we like to say — occupy less than three percent of our agricultural land but produce about thirty percent of what we eat? If you are in the Party, what does that tell you? That the system has failed, Mr. Thorne, that's what it tells you."

"So change systems."

"Yes, but how do you do that and keep the Party in power? How do you do that and ensure that Russia doesn't fall into pieces? Ideology, belief, faith, myth — this is the glue that holds a nation together. If you take the system apart, and try to put it together in a different way, you must have a new glue. Do you see?"

I saw. But I wanted to make sure I saw right. "You're saying that elements in the Party are thinking that an extreme right-wing form of nationalism—"

"Might create in the country the sort of spirit that saw us through the war with the Germans."

I looked at him, then sat back in my chair. I should say that I wasn't shocked or startled by any of this; in fact, he really had told me nothing I didn't know already. But hearing it from him… somehow, that seemed to make a great difference.

I said, "You talk about 'elements in the Party'—who exactly do you mean?"

He shrugged. Smiled. "They are all politicians, of course. Some are Stalinists: for them it is just a chance to return to the hard line of the past. Others truly believe what they say; they talk about a 'new vision of Russia.' There are also some of the young technocrats — technocrats, you might say, who see the limits of their technocracy. They understand that 'management' can't do everything; at some level, there must be belief. And of course — you understand — there are also followers of this tendency outside the Party, in other Soviet institutions."

"Such as?"

"Surely you can guess. Where does this sort of ideology traditionally flourish?"

"The military, you mean?"

He nodded. And there was something in the abruptness of this nod that denied the sophistication of his clothes and his manner — that labeled him KGB in a different way altogether.

I said, "This must be a great worry."

He pursed his lips, wiggled his hand in an equivocal gesture. "A cloud on the horizon." Then his fingers fished a cigarette out of the pack on the table. He frowned as he lit it. "I don't wish to exaggerate," he said. "Nothing will happen about this today or tomorrow, or even next month… but five years from now? Who knows?… In any event, there is one aspect of all this that you might find especially of interest. It concerns the West, you see. A clandestine group — representatives of this tendency — are trying to establish themselves outside of Russia. ¦ ¦. They are, if you like, putting the resources together."

"Why would they bother?"

"Don't fool yourself, Mr. Thorne. What happens outside of Russia — the attitudes of foreign governments — has great effect on what goes on here. Besides, there are many practical advantages. Safe havens. Lures. Certain allies… Mundane considerations: for example, if you wished to speak with the captain of a Soviet destroyer, to influence him, it would probably be easier to do it in Djakarta than here in Leningrad."

I nodded. Of course he was right. Such a "tendency," to use his word, would need a Western base, even if it was only Switzerland again, to wait out one more Russian exile. And establishing this would require resources… such as some old gold certificates worth a cool twelve million dollars. Yet how had they discovered the map that told them where to dig for such treasure?

I turned back to Loginov. "You say the military might be one center for this kind of tendency… Might there not be another as well, closer to home — to your home, I mean?"

"Perhaps."

"In fact, there might even be a certain loss of control?"

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the ta" ble and his chin on his clasped hands. "Mr. Thorne, I don't know about that. But I can tell you one thing. The men I've been describing to you are very dangerous. Very, very dangerous. They are serious men. They have abandoned everything for what they believe. You said, at the beginning, that you had no interest in the dissidents I proposed telling you of — your current project had nothing to do with them. You said it yourself. If so, nothing is lost: you simply have the basis for an interesting article quoting unnamed, but reliable, Soviet sources. On the other hand, if you do have an interest in this and wish to pursue it, be warned. Be wary. Be cautious. Above all, Mr. Thorne, understand that if you ever meet this man, you are meeting a killer."

And then, reaching into his jacket, he drew out a small white envelope and handed it across to me. Inside, there was a crudely lit photograph, of the kind that is used for official identity purposes. It was a full-face, head-and-shoulders shot of a young man in a Russian Army uniform, and must have been taken before 1970, because he was still wearing the old, high-collared gymnasterka of the Soviet Army. Dark eyes, slightly bugged, perhaps because of the flash… the face almost squeezed, or compressed, with the teeth shoved forward into the mouth… and though the photograph was in black and white, I knew the crew-cut hair had to be red.

I said, "Can you tell me, Mr. Loginov… did this man ever work for your employer?"

He hesitated; then shrugged. "Let us not be coy, Mr. Thome. Aleksandr Subotin worked for the GRU. It is even possible that he still does. He was a specialist in certain security problems in connection with the Soviet Navy." The GRU: Soviet military intelligence. Once, this organization had been a genuine rival to the KGB, but now it was a sort of subsidiary. "But I can tell you no more than that," Loginov added. He started to rise. "From this point, you are on your own."

"But I've been warned?"

He smiled. "Informed."

I nodded. For a second longer, he stood by the table. I wondered if he was thinking of shaking my hand, but in the end he didn't offer and neither did I. I watched him go out the door, then waved at the waiter; but Glubin, whatever his other deficiencies as host, had taken care of the bill. As I got up to go, the band began playing again—"You Light Up My Life" — and everyone was dancing, cheek to cheek. The Hungarian blonde was back with the paratrooper, but as she looked over his shoulder, her eyes wouldn't meet mine.

Waiting till the end, I clapped with the others, and then went into the street.

18

It was snowing as I left the Byka, large, soft flakes that floated down so lazily you could follow each one individually. I walked to the Nevsky. The snow, falling faster, caught on my eyelids, turning the globes of the streetlights into stars which sparkled magically in the darkness above Leningrad's great main street. Traffic was quiet and the snow hissed softly in the stillness. Then, two blocks away, a trolley clattered through an intersection, the row of colored lights on the cab — visible even in the worst blizzard — proclaiming its route. On the sidewalk, a thin stream of people passed by. These were bureaucrats hurrying home from No. 41, the Leningrad Party headquarters, or clerks from the Gostinyy Dvor department store, which had just closed up, or students, wrapped in scarves, leaving the old Imperial Library. Heads bowed before the prospect of the coming winter, and thickly clothed in the resolute silence of Russians in the mass, they trickled into the Metro stops.

Standing there, watching them, I thought over what Logi-nov had told me. Did I believe him? Was there really a Russian dissent within the "Soviet Union" — a dissent that might truly matter? In a way, I thought, this street proved his words. The Bolsheviks had tried to rename the Nevsky "Avenue of the 25th of October," but it just hadn't stuck. And a lot else hadn't stuck either. Since 1917 Russia had come a great distance, but so had the rest of the world; relatively little had changed. She was the real "sick man" of Europe, with a vast, rebellious empire, a desperately backward economy, and a cruelly repressive government. I lifted my eyes. In the distance, framed by the long perspective of the trefoil streetlamps, the sharp golden spike of the Admiralty Tower was brilliantly lit up by spotlights. It had been the city's symbol a hundred years before Lenin arrived at the Finland Station, and its presence now seemed only to mock what he had done. The "Revolution" had been an illusion. But then so was "Soviet Russia" itself. For Brightman and a million others in his generation, it had been a Shangri-la, existing only on the maps of their minds; for Hamilton, it had been a secret stage on which he could act out the fantasies of his own puny power; and for Subotin… a new purity? the true home of the Slavic soul? a "spiritual" path between the "materialism" of the West and the anthill "order" of the East?

Yes, I could believe it… Yet the more I thought about it, the more I felt that this wasn't the real importance of Loginov's message; not for me, not now. Subotin's motives were fascinating but not immediately relevant, and I didn't need anyone to tell me that the man was a killer. Indeed, as I walked along, it was the manner, rather than the substance, of what Loginov had said that struck me as crucial. It was extraordinary, when you thought about it. He'd been so cautious, so circumspect. He'd offered me "information" and "advice." But he wasn't a professor of Soviet studies or Dear Abby. He was a KGB officer. And — in the middle of Leningrad — a KGB officer shouldn't have the least reason for caution. If he wanted something, he'd just give the order; and if you didn't obey, he'd stick you in jail or put you on the next plane back home. Except he hadn't done that. He'd played games… and I thought I knew why. May Brightman, Florence Raines, Dr. Charlie, Dimitrov, Nick Berri, Hamilton: all the separate elements I'd discovered circled one central point — Harry Brightman and Harry Brightman's gold. This was obviously the "resource" Subotih was seeking. But Harry Brightman had been a KGB agent— or, if that wasn't quite the right expression, a KGB asset. Which raised an interesting question: if Harry Brightman had buried the treasure, who had told Subotin where he should dig? There was only one possible answer: even if Subotin and his "tendency" were rooted in the Soviet military, they must have had good lines into the KGB. There was no other way they could have got on to Brightman in the first place. Once you granted that, Loginov's peculiar approach made sense. It implied that there was dissent, or at least ambiguity, within the KGB itself as to how they should handle Subotin… and that was the critical point, so far as I was concerned. It meant I had a certain amount of freedom. But it also imposed some crucial restraints. Subotin had allies; they were in high places; and once they got on to me, they could come down hard. So I had to move fast — it was now or never. If I was going ahead, I had to disappear in a puff of smoke and get in and out of Povonets before anyone noticed.

Or at least that's what I was thinking as I reached the Narodnyy Most, the People's Bridge, over the Moyka.

And — to give myself credit — once I'd reached this conclusion, I did things right.

Assuming I was under surveillance, I tried to appear perfectly normal. I was okay so far — I was following a reasonable route back to the hotel — and now I stopped, lit a cigarette, and looked casually down from the bridge. The Moyka is the smallest of the three rivers — the others are the Great Neva and the

Fontanka — which flow through Leningrad. It was already beginning to freeze, the wind slithering white snakes of snow across a skin of shiny black ice. Winter was setting its teeth. Still, it wasn't too cold for a walk, especially if a KGB officer had just given you something to think about, so I crossed the street and went down to the southern embankment. The wind was brisker here; the few people around hurried along, wrapped in their own shadows, the snow crunching under their boots. But even though I turned up my collar, I still kept to a slow pace: like a man deep in thought, as opposed to one who's made up his mind. Keeping on, I went past all the old dark mansions and palaces that are now institutes and academies, then paused again, looking across to the opposite bank, in order to admire the silver cap of snow on St. Isaac's golden cupola. I smoked one more cigarette there; studiously didn't look back. Then, turning away — apparently becoming conscious of the cold — I shoved my hands deep into my pockets, put my head down against the wind, and set off more quickly: but like a man who just wants to get warm, as opposed to one who's about to do something rash. Beyond the Blue Bridge is an old footbridge; with my steps ringing on the ancient iron, I crossed over. On this side, the embankment merged with Ulitsa Gertsena. Doubling back and crossing the wide square in front of St. Isaac's, I soon reached the hotel.

Downstairs, I also took my time: I bought two packs of cigarettes, a copy of Pravda, and left a wake-up call at the desk. Then I rode the elevator up to my floor. As in all Russian hotels, the Astoria has separate "night clerks" on each floor, old ladies who keep an eye on the guests, the staff, and other-^Wlse get in the way. I passed a few words with mine, asking her how long the bar stayed open, then went on to my room.

It was now eleven twenty-five.

I washed my face and spruced myself up — a fresh shirt, a different tie, a navy blazer I'd bought in Montreal. The total effect was nothing fancy but at least respectable. Now I laid my coat out on the bed. It was an Aquascutum raincoat, not very warm, but it had a zip-in lining that now proved handy. Opening it up, I packed away a couple of shirts, a sweater, and a pair of socks, then stuffed it into a pillowcase and put my boots in on top. Knotted up, this made a fancy version of a hobo's satchel. Next I got a towel from the bathroom. Doubling it around my hand, I gave the window a couple of hard raps, cracking the glass. It was a sealed, double-glazed unit; with my penknife, I opened up the cracks, then wiggled the pieces of glass away from the plastic. I was able to manage all this very quietly; even if my room had looked onto a main street, I don't think anyone would have noticed. As it was, I was at the back, facing another building. When the hole was big enough, I pushed my bundle out. It disappeared in the darkness and I didn't even hear it land.

Midnight.

I stepped into the hall, walked along to the elevators. The night clerk saw me, but that was okay. She also saw that I wasn't dressed to go out, and she already knew I was off to the bar. And that's where I went. It was old, rather gloomy; a fuzzy imitation of a British club. The room was already pretty full, and more people began to come in as I did, for Leningrad closes up around midnight, only the Western hotels, like the Astoria, staying open late — and even they were only open till two.

I sat at a table with a Danish designer of injection molds and two German patent attorneys. They were drinking "No. 1," a decent Russian white wine. I followed suit, and bought us a bottle, and after a couple of glasses it was Sven, Dieter, and Bob — I never did catch the second German's name. They all knew Leningrad well. We traded stories, compared notes. Around one o'clock, two more Germans joined us — also attorneys; there was some sort of international conference — and a few minutes later one them asked us all back to his room for a nightcap. I declined, saying I was too tired, but went with them as far as the elevators. Then I headed straight for the lobby, and two minutes later was out on the street.

No one had noticed my departure; the clerk on my floor would assume she'd just missed my return, and that I was back in my room. With luck, I wouldn't be missed till the next day.

Outside, the snow was still falling, but now, wind-driven, it fell in sharp, slanting streaks. And of course it took me a good ten minutes to find that damned alley — somehow, the world looked very different down here than it had from my window. But finally, shaking with cold, I blundered into it and found the pillowcase. Shivering, hopping about on one foot, I got into my boots, then put on the raincoat; it worked all right, though I had to cinch the belt tight to stop all the stuff I'd packed inside from slipping down to the hem.

The alley appeared to serve no purpose; there weren't even trash cans. At the far end, a spill of light glistened on the street, but there was no sign that anyone had followed me. I made my way out. Now I walked directly to my car, which was parked about two blocks away: for although this was "downtown" Leningrad, one of the great virtues of Soviet cities is that you can park virtually anywhere, anytime. Indeed, I could see only one other vehicle parked on that block. I got into mine. The cold engine coughed, pushing at the heavy weight of the oil in the crankcase, then kicked over, falling into a ragged, faltering idle. Letting it warm, and trying to warm myself, I lit a cigarette and looked down the street. At the far end there was a glow from St. Isaac's, and a block beyond this a taxi passed by, probably on its way to the Leningradskaya, another hotel just behind the Astoria. But nothing else moved; just the snow, slicing down through the glow of the streetlights. So if I was being watched, it was being done very well; and in fact I doubted that I was. Except in Moscow, there is so little traffic in Russian cities that you can't possibly follow another car without giving yourself away, and though that might be a useful intimidation tactic, Loginov had already passed on the chance to intimidate me much more directly. All the same, I knew the car was the weak link. It was too easy to trace. For the time being, I'd disappeared into thin air — but now I had to pull the same trick with it.

I turned on the headlights. The Zhiguli, a Russian Fiat, is no better than the original; with a grind and a clunk it finally agreed to go into gear. Slowly, I rolled down the street, inspecting that other car, but it was empty, the wind building a ramp of snow up its windshield. Hitting the gas, I made for the Nevsky, reached it, but quickly turned off, cutting in behind the Gostinyy Dvor. I know Leningrad like the back of my hand, and now that was no small advantage; above all, no one watching me drive — the militsia, for example — would ever have guessed that I was a foreigner. Following Kirovsky Pros-pekt, I crossed the islands that the Neva carves out as it flows into the Gulf of Finland, and then turned into Novaya Derev-nya, the old country-house district on the far side. Here, without incident, I pulled into Service Station No. 3.

A combination garage and filling station, it was fairly large, like one of those interstate truck stops you see in the West. But it was the standard Soviet type: several islands dispensing various grades of benzin, and a cinder-block building with an old woman behind a slot in the window. Snow swirled like moths in the cones of light over the pumps, and a service vehicle was hectically clearing an area at the back of the lot. Since there are only a few gas stations in Leningrad, and fewer still are open all night, they were doing good business. Cars, trucks, transports, and a couple of snowplows jockeyed for position, their engines chugging with the fat, bubbly sound that comes from low-octane gas. I got into line behind an ancient Skoda and walked up to the booth with its driver when our turn came.

"Not a good night," he said.

"If it gets any worse, I will stop in Novgorod," I replied. "At my cousin's."

"Your car is new, though. Very nice."

"Yes. But it would feel better in Italy."

He laughed and we went inside. I paid for twenty liters, then trotted briskly back to the car: in Russian gas stations, you pay the attendant for the gas, then she (usually) dials it up on a sort of telephone gadget, which turns the hose on — the sudden jolt of pressure frequently spraying your purchase all over the place. But in this case my run was purely for form; Intourist had given me a full tank, so most of what I'd bought was spilled anyway.

When I was finished, I put the hose back and pulled over to one side of the lot. I was still in the light here, but at the very edge of its arc, and as cars and trucks moved in and out of the service area they hid me from anyone inside the booth.

I went around and opened the hood. The oily warmth of the engine swelled up at my face and the snow hissed on the block. I checked the dipstick; it was fine. I wiggled the battery connections; terrific. But then, apparently discovering something wrong, I returned to the car and came out with the tool kit. Taking out a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, I fussed for a couple of minutes, adjusting the idle until it was absolutely the same as I'd found it. Then, leaving the hood up, I got back in the car, sitting in the front seat but leaving the door open and keeping both feet outside, on the ground.

I lit a cigarette.

Five minutes passed.

Traffic, mainly trucks, kept pulling into the station. As they came up to the pumps, their powerful headlamps shone right ^at my little car, stretching a long wedge of shadow behind it. "hen I ground out my cigarette, and stepped into this darkled patch, I must have been almost invisible. I worked around to the service area. The snow had been cleared here, but the bays were dark and locked. Beyond them, extending out from the back of the building, was a metal fence; I probably could have got over this easily, but I didn't have to. There was a gate, and the padlock was broken; I just pushed hard to shift the snow behind it and stepped quickly through.

I looked around. I was on a small asphalt lot, where they kept the cars that were waiting to go in for repairs. Parked in two rows, they were now being buried under a blanket of snow. Behind them, bringing back a faint echo of that day in Detroit, was a junkyard: piles of tires (but chained together); a lot of twisted scrap, one old door jutting up like a broken wing; and a tangled heap of exhaust pipes sticking up through the snow like old bones. If there was a guard, I couldn't see him. I made my way to the cars. The one I wanted was in the back row. A Zhiguli. It was dark green, but at night it would be hard to tell from the one I was driving. Its owner must have tried to drive it through a brick wall. The front end was a twisted mess, the grille ripped right away, and a piece of cardboard was taped over the windshield. But, bending down, I saw that the front license plate was intact and hanging by only a single bolt. Rather than try to unscrew it, I just levered hard with the screwdriver — one ugly screech — until it popped free. I went around to the back. Here the damage wasn't so bad, though the trunk lid was off its hinges and jammed inside. I set to work with the screwdriver. One of the bolts was a little rusted, but in ninety seconds I had it off, and with both plates shoved under my coat I headed back to the gate. No one had seen me; in twenty minutes, the snow would have covered my tracks. And it might be days before anyone noticed the missing plates; even then, the assumption would be that someone had taken them off and put them away for safekeeping.

I returned to my car.

Sitting there, with its hood up and the door still open, it seemed part of the landscape; already the windshield was covered with snow. I slipped inside, shoving the plates under the seat. Then I lit a cigarette and started the engine… though my door remained open and the pantomime still wasn't over. I let the engine warm. Finished my cigarette. Turned on the wipers, waited as they carved two perfect arcs in the night. At last, getting out, I slapped the hood back into place; and this time, getting back in, I pulled the door shut behind me. But both my coming and going had been so slow and gradual that I felt sure neither would have been noticed.

I edged into the road.

A mile away, turning into a side street, I pulled up at the curb, and ten minutes later, despite the cold and my clumsy fingers, one Zhiguli had vanished and another had taken its place.

I had disappeared. The car had disappeared. For one night at least, I could enjoy the greatest freedom — or horror — conceivable in a totalitarian country: I had no official identity.

But I knew this freedom would be very brief; I had to make quick use of it. I sped south through the city. Tn an odd way now, my plans depended on my being seen at least a couple of times by the police, so I kept to main roads: back to the Nevsky, past Alexander's Palace onto Oborony Prospekt, then on toward Route 22. Here, at the junction, was a GAI post, the yellow light of its interior floating high over the road; I dutifully slowed. The GAI are a Soviet equivalent to the highway patrol; they cruise around in yellow cars and man observation posts along the highways. Some of these are small, but others, like the one I passed now, are high towers. Inside, they would take down my license, and conceivably transmit it to the next post in line. And I wanted them to: tomorrow, when my car was posted missing, these records would be checked, and as long as its license — or the entry unidentified Zhiguli—didn't appear, everyone would assume I was still somewhere in Leningrad.

As I accelerated away from the post, the road opened up. On either side was the blackness of the subarctic night, but in front of me, trapped in the headlights, was a blizzard of gold. The wind rocked the little car, and after half an hour my arms ached from the task of holding it steady. But the road was level and reasonably straight. I kept the speedometer at ninety kilometers per hour, and the miles unwound. There was little to see in the blackness, just the snow heaped up on empty fields or around the rim of the forest, but I knew I was traveling along the southern edge of Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in all Europe, and occasionally the void beyond the car took on a limitless sheen. There were one or two towns — Novya Ladoga, Perevoz, Lodeynoye Pole — but at Olonets the road swung north and east, across country. Five A.M. … Now I was into Karelia, a stubby finger of rock and bush that sticks up between the Finnish border and the arctic seas. It's a desolate land of rocks, trees, lakes, tumbling rivers and waterfalls whose towns are depots for pitheads and lumber camps. A lot of it was once part of Finland, and though almost half a million Finns left when the Russians invaded, East Finnish is still spoken here and I saw it printed on the occasional sign. I was tired by now; my shoulders ached and my eyes burned a little. But then, at Pryazha, where a smaller road joined the one I was on, I fell in behind a couple of lumber trucks and gave them the task of finding the way. There were three of them, empty, traveling in convoy. Huge black chains, used to strap the logs on, jostled and jounced on their long, flat beds, and I followed their thumping music through the wind, the night, and the snow into Petrozavodsk.

Sitting on the edge of Lake Onega — the second-largest lake in all of Europe — this is the capital of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (K.A.S.S.R.); about 200,000 people live there. In Imperial times, it was called "the near Siberia" because people from Petersburg convicted of minor offenses were often exiled here, but now it's an administrative center, has the regulation tractor factory, and boasts something of a tourist industry based on a hydrofoil service that runs to Kizhi Island, with its ancient wooden church, out in the lake. But there'd be no boat trips today. As a gray, bleary dawn streaked the horizon, I could see that the low, snow-covered shore merged with the ice on the lake in an unbroken white plain, and only far, far out was there a dark sparkle from open water.

Sticking close to the trucks, I cut through the western edge of the city. Soon we rejoined the highway. There was more traffic now, and although the snow was letting up, enough had fallen for some drifting to start. I cut back my speed; the next fifty kilometers, to Kondopoga, took almost an hour. Shortly afterward, around nine-thirty, the trucks turned away, down a side road. But now I had no need of a guide; the road led only one way, due north. It was the single track through an almost trackless waste. To my right was the pure-white desolation of the lake; on my left, endless fir and pine forest, the thick purple boughs of the trees pressed low by the fresh white snow. With only an occasional glimpse of a railway line for company, I kept on, beating the miles into submission. Finally I won total victory. Medvezhegorsk, with twenty thousand people or so, was the last sizable spot on the line, and then came Pindushi, a small village perched on a long, icy bay jutting in from the lake. After that, the road swung inland through bush, scrub, cut-over land. I rumbled over a bridge. Two or three kilometers went by, then the road narrowed, snowbanks pinching in, and finally I could see a scattering of dark buildings along the rocky shore of the white, limitless lake. There was no sign — like myself, the place was anonymous — but I knew this was Povonets, home of the man who'd inherited Harry Brightman's strange fortune.

I eased back on the gas. All at once, I felt very tired. I'd come a long way; I only hoped that this was the end of the line.

19

A few streets of rutted ice and mud… gray log buildings and metal shacks… black smoke oozing out of stovepipe chimneys… This was Povonets. And a million other Russian villages.

If there were any cars at all in this place, people would know them by sight and a strange one would attract immediate attention; so I took the first turnoff I came to. It was a cul-de-sac. The gray, spiky trunks of dead pine trees pressed tight to both sides of the road, and at the end of it stood the burned-out shell of a cinder-block building. The roof had fallen in, and the top edges of the walls were blackened with soot. There was obviously no one there now, and it might have been abandoned for years.

When the snow deepened, I stopped the car and got out, the sound of the door closing behind me hanging in the cold air. I didn't move. The trees and the snow seemed to go on forever, stretching out under the endless gray sky. It was very quiet. The wind worked softly, smoothing out the fresh snow, and the stiff dead branches of the pines shook in the woods; but the only man-made sound was the faint drone of a plane, a brown speck, over the lake. It made me think of Halifax; there'd been a plane overhead as I made my way up Grainger's lane. And sometimes, crouched on that knoll in New Hampshire, I'd hear a plane droning by.

I waited till it disappeared before I headed back toward the main road. I walked in the ruts the car had made, my body leaning forward with the effort and my pant legs chafing together. It was irrational, but inside the car I'd felt a certain sense of security. Now that was gone, and I was feeling nervous as hell. At the road, I glanced behind me. The car was hidden by a little bend, though its tracks were obvious enough. In front of me, the road sloped sharply downhill, hedged in on both sides by these same mournful pines. To my right, partially screened by the trees, I could see the lake and the village away in the distance. The lake was a pristine white tablecloth; the village, dribbles from coffee cups: three or four thousand people, a few hundred dwellings. Squinting against the glare of the hazy sky, I could see that some of the dribbles were sufficiently regular to make up a street, and in front of one of them— metaphor breaking down — an idling bus was sending up a purplish plume of exhaust.

I took a breath and started ahead, walking in the deep, hard tracks the bus must have made on its way in.

The road wound down the side of the hill, and after a moment the village disappeared from my view. I walked along, still nervous. But I knew if I tried to be "cautious," or play it too safe, I'd just seem more suspicious. And I had to show myself sometime. There was no other choice. To find Shastov, I would have to speak with someone; in fact, I'd have to pass as a Russian. I knew I could manage this up to a point — but only up to a point. For all practical purposes, I speak the language flawlessly; in Moscow, I'm sometimes taken as a Leningrader, and in Leningrad as a Muscovite, but no one ever thinks I'm not a Russian. But I had no papers — one inquisitive militsia and I was finished — and my clothes were all wrong. That's what worried me most. The boots might just make it (though Russians spend a lot of time studying boots), but the coat was hopeless; it was too light, and too snazzy. Only its peculiar bulky shape, the result of the other clothes still packed into the lining, was even vaguely Russian. But that wasn't much camouflage. I was a stranger, I wasn't properly dressed, and I was surrounded by some of the more suspicious people on this earth — Russian peasants — so I was going to be noticed. All I could do was reach Shastov as fast as I could, then get out before people began asking serious questions.

Now, at the foot of the hill, the road leveled out; for three-quarters of a mile, it ran through a low, humped landscape of black rocks, bluish-gray snow, the streaky shadows of trees. A few huts crouched among the boulders, a boy watched me pass from a hillside, but the only adult I saw was an old woman, with a huge black apron wrapped around her middle, who studied me from her front yard. Then, quite suddenly, the ground flattened out entirely, and I found myself at the end of the town's "main" street.

It was short and dark, like a mouth of bad teeth: low, shabby buildings pressing together, then a gap. Some of the buildings were log izbas, but there were also frame structures and one large, boxlike dormitory coated with peeling stucco. Bare wooden stairways zigzagged up the sides of these structures, and stretching from behind one of them I could see a clothesline, with four gray sheets, frozen stiff" as sections of plywood, creaking in the wind. The snow was deep, piled up against the foundations of these buildings, and was smudged gray with cinders and ash. There were no sidewalks, but narrow, slushy trails, like chicken tracks, crisscrossed the street. It could have been an old refugee camp; all the buildings had been erected as temporary structures, but people had been living in them as long as anyone could remember. Or perhaps it had now been evacuated, for there was an air of total abandonment, and the only sound I could hear — the whine of a saw — seemed to enhance this. I sniffed the air. There was a smell of vinegar. After a moment, the saw, with a diminishing, wobbling sound, came to a stop.

I lit a cigarette. I was unsure what to do. But at last, almost reassuring, a woman emerged from a door and set off, away from me, down one of the tracks: dressed all in black, she was carrying an avoshka string bag that gave her an odd, canted progression. She disappeared between two of the houses. But almost immediately a man emerged from the flat-roofed, cement-block building further down the street — probably the liquor store — and gave me a look. Yes, I'd definitely caught his eye; I was now officially the stranger in town… I stood for a time, undecided. Beyond the liquor store was a two-story brick building with a corrugated-iron roof — a splendid structure for Povonets, so presumably a government office. I could ask for Shastov there, but that entailed obvious risks. I decided not to chance it. Instead, following in the path of the old woman, I walked up the street and then turned. Up ahead, the bus I'd seen from the car was still chugging away, its exhaust spreading a sooty fan over the snow. It was parked in front of a dark, squat structure, probably the village store. Almost certainly, they'd know where Shastov lived, though asking would also create its own risks. But I had to start somewhere. Tossing my cigarette aside, I followed the track I was on till it merged with another, then crossed the street.

In the bus, a wool glove cleaned a wedge in the frost and two eyes peered out: probably the old lady with the string bag-Stepping around the back of it, I stayed out of the driver's sight. There was a porch on the front of the store, snow piled up on it, which was supported by heavy logs still covered with bark. A nail had been driven into one of these to hang a hurricane lamp, and the skis, snowshoes, and burlap sacks piled up around the door made me think of old steel engravings of "Life in the North."

I pushed the door open. At once, I was swallowed up in a cloud of tobacco smoke, dust, and coal-oil fumes, a fog so thick that I needed a moment to adjust my eyes to the murk. When I could see again, I realized I was in a low room — I almost felt I had to crouch — that was divided by a wooden counter. Behind this counter was a window, but one of its panes had been replaced by a square of cardboard, and the rest of it was so completely obstructed by various pots, pans, and other goods hanging from hooks along the back wall that it admitted almost no light. I stepped deeper into the room. There was a plank floor, spread with sawdust to stop the cold from seeping up, and the walls were bare boards. After I'd taken a couple of steps, a voice grunted, "It is after one now. The electricity has been turned off. So I regret that the store is now closed. Tonight, at six, we will open again. When they turn it back on."

Tracking down her voice, I was able to see her: a middle-aged woman, behind the counter and at the far end of it. In this dark corner of the room, she was lost in the shadow of a stovepipe, which stretched from an immense black space heater to a hole in the ceiling. Behind her were a series of shelves, empty except for a single bolt of dark cloth and a small Pyramid of tins. She was a big woman, tall and stout, her bulk being further increased by layers of sweaters and shawls. As ^s«e stood, regarding me, she hugged herself with her arms, though in fact the place seemed warm enough.

'Perhaps you could help me anyway," I said. "And… would you have any cigarettes?"

Only papirosi. Today, he didn't bring any more."

Perhaps "he" was the bus driver, for now I could hear the ^engine revving outside.

I said, "Papiwsi will be all right."

She reached under the counter. Papirosi are cardboard tubes with a little loose tobacco inside. Inhale too deeply and you get a mouthful; puff hard and you're likely to spray ash all over the room. Pinching off the end, I lit up. The woman eyed me — and despite the meagerness of her stock, she had a shopkeeper's eyes: they added me up and made change. "You are from Moscow," she said.

This was, in fact, a fair guess. The truth of my origins was so incredible that not even the keenest intuition would grasp it immediately. But she knew I wasn't from here, and she knew that something about me made her suspicious — and people from Moscow, tentatively, fitted that bill. I didn't argue. "That's right."

She smiled. "If you don't mind, I'll have a good look. We don't see many from there."

I smiled back. "You should see the back of my head. I have eyes there as well." Then I shrugged. "I'm from Moscow, but I was born in Pestovo… which you've never heard of, just as people there don't know Povonets. Still, it's a real place to be from."

A little shift in her posture indicated some sort of acceptance. She smiled. "So what do you want, Moscow Pestovo?"

"I'm looking for a man name Yuri Shastov. I want to know where he lives."

Her mouth tightened. She didn't like that; friends know where their friends live — and so anyone who asks isn't a friend. Russia is the country that invented "the knock on the door," and so even today the doors in older apartment buildings often don't have any numbers. I tried to seem casual. "I could ask up the street, but why make it official?"

"Why not? If it is…"

"No, no. It's not necessary. I have a message, from an old friend. He told me where to go — the road, near the burned-out factory. I walked up there, but no one had heard of him."

She hesitated, then made up her mind. She shrugged. "He's never lived there. Everyone knows… I suppose there's no harm… he rarely comes here anymore. He lives on the second road to the canal. You can recognize his house. There's a fancy roof over the well."

"He lives by himself? I understood…"

"An old woman looks after him."

"Ah, I see, then. Thank you."

She smiled. "It's no trouble… helping a man from Pes-tovo."

"But you've saved me a great deal of trouble — and in Pes-tovo I will tell everyone that they must help you when you come there."

She laughed then, and, indeed, the chances of her ever leaving this village were purely humorous. "The second road," she said as I turned away. "You'll have to walk to the end of the street."

I retreated through the gloom. Outside, the chill air misted my breath as I heaved a sigh of relief. But I'd done all right; rny strangeness had been defined for me, "the man from Mos-cow/Pestovo," and despite the awkwardness I'd felt, she'd found me convincing; at least she wouldn't run to the police. But this just bought time. At six, when the store opened again, the questions would start — she now had choice gossip to sell to her customers. Who would want to see Yuri Shastov, and come all the way here from Moscow to do it? Of course, I thought, there was one simple solution to that: get out of here before six o'clock rolled around.

I turned up the street. The sun was now trying to come out, ^and it had grown a bit warmer; the snow was turning sticky ^ cake. Following the storekeeper's directions, I kept straight on. As the houses petered out, the road swung inland, away from the lake. For a time there were tracks I could follow, but then these ran out, and I trudged on, the snow coming to the top of my boots. It was tough going; soon I was huffing hard and walking with my head down, and my nose began streaming. After a mile or so, the road ascended a little hill and I paused to rest at the top. I could see a fair distance. Behind me was the white plain of the lake. In front, a thin, sickly woods enclosed both sides of the road — small birches and pines that grew up from the stumps of old cuttings — but farther away the forest grew thicker. Still farther on, I could see that the woods thinned again, and I guessed that I was seeing the line of the canal. It was only when the storekeeper had mentioned this word that I'd remembered the peculiar significance of Povo-nets. From 1931 to 1933, more than 100,000 people had starved, frozen, or otherwise perished while constructing the Belomor Canal, linking the White Sea, between Murmansk and Archangel, to Lake Onega. This was its southern end. I was now walking parallel to the "Povonets staircase" of locks — in effect, an immense graveyard, and if the trees here grew poorly, it was because they were feeding on the bitterest bile. For an odd reason, this is one of Stalin's crimes that could never be covered up or forgotten. At the time the canal was built, a tremendous amount of propaganda was generated around the "great socialist triumph" — books by Gorky, celebratory cruises up the canal by Stalin and Kirov — and one aspect of this involved the creation of a brand of cigarettes called Belomorkanals, whose package features a picture of it. Russians are devoted to tobacco — it's one of the things I have. in common with them. You can tell them any number of lies, and rewrite their history… but tamper with their cigarettes? No regime would take such a chance. So even though the canal isn't used much anymore — it's too shallow for all but the smallest barges — the cigarettes persist, and might even be a bit less repellent than most Russian brands. I wondered if they were sold in the woman's shop, and, if they were, if anyone bought them.

I walked on. Ten minutes later, a road crossed the one I was on: the "first" canal road, I assumed. A truck had turned off it, giving me fresh tracks to follow, and now I moved faster. By one-thirty I reached the second road, and then minutes after that I arrived at Shastov's house.

I stood there, panting, very hot under my coat. Through a thin screen of birches and pines, I could see a cabin of squared logs, chinked with cement. A footpath, partially obliterated by the snow, led up to it, and a crib of split logs reached to the edge of its steep, slanting roof. This was an izba: if Yuri Shas-tov lived here today, he was following a pattern of life Russians have known for centuries.

I looked across the bare, frozen landscape. It seemed incredible that I should be here, and as my frosted breath prickled on my unshaved stubble, I wondered again if this wasn't some bizarre trick on Brightman's part — perhaps he'd pulled Yuri Shastov's name out of a hat, sending his fortune off into the blue and returning it, at random, from whence it had come… But that possibility didn't bear thinking about, so I felt through my pockets for a Kleenex, blew my nose, and headed up the path. It lay, like a shadow, beneath the recent snow, ascending a gentle slope through the birch trees. No one— Subotin, for example — had passed here in hours, and snow had drifted in an even line against the door. I knocked. And at once, as if he'd been waiting for me, a voice softly called, "Come in, come in."

There was no lock or door handle; just an iron latch which I lifted and pushed, releasing a little avalanche of snow before me.

Stepping ahead, I found myself in a darkened, smoky room. it was more like the inside of a shed, or a small farm building, than a house. The log walls were blackened with soot, the plank floor was strewn with straw, and a fire smoldered on an open hearth. Two black electric wires dangled down from the roof, but it still wasn't six, so the only light came from the fire and two kerosene lanterns; these were sitting on a stool which, in turn, was drawn up beside a wing chair of enormous proportions: curved legs that ended in eagle's claws gripping brass balls; "wings" like a nun's cowl; a seat as large as a bed. In such a place, a chair like that was an incredible sight; but even odder was the fact that it somehow "belonged." In fact, it was the natural center of the room. Ancient, very worn, it was covered in a faded paisley brocade, but this still had a sheen, as if it had been lovingly polished for years. Reflected by that brocade, the flickering flames of the fire took on a misty, coppery gleam and the light from the lamps spread through the shadows with a silky glow, transforming everything it touched; indeed, whatever that light touched — a simple jug on the table; the color photo, cut from a newspaper, that hung on the wall — was set apart from its surroundings and drawn back again to the chair itself. The chair was like a jewel box, with a diamond nestled inside. And, appropriate to this, the chair's contents were enclosed in layer upon layer of blankets and rugs, the whole being covered with a sheet as white as tissue paper. The diamond, however, took the form of a little old man. Very wizened, he had bright dark eyes and a flowing mustache — and those eyes were the real points of light in the room. He was reading and, clearly expecting somebody else at my knock, had gone back to his book. When he finally noticed me, he stared for a second before letting the book settle gently into his lap. Then he said, "Who are you?"

"Are you Yuri Shastov?"

"Naturally. And I ask you again: who are you?" This was a crucial moment, though I didn't know it 'at the time. How was I going to account for myself? I'd been so concerned about getting here that I hadn't considered the question. Now my consternation was obviously genuine — and therefore convincing. Finally, with those eyes staring into my face, I just told the truth. "My name is Robert Thorne, Mr. Shastov. I'm an American."

He took this in. "An American?"

"Yes."

A log cracked on the hearth. A spark spat onto the floor. I looked around. Accustomed now to the gloom, my eyes made out a length of black stovepipe, suspended from the roof, over the fire. A curl of smoke rose toward it, but most of this eddied back into the room.

Glancing down, and frowning, Shastov closed the book on his finger. "I apologize, but I must ask you to confirm what you've said. You are an American?"

"Yes."

"That is hard to believe."

"I've come a very long way to see you, Mr. Shastov. I just hope you'll understand… this isn't going to be easy to explain."

As I looked at his face, it was clear he didn't believe me. I could hardly blame him. It was almost certain that I was the only American — perhaps the only foreigner — he had ever seen; and, for all I knew, no American had been in Povonets in this century. Or ever. After a moment, he glanced away — but then, as if afraid to take his eyes off me, glanced quickly back. "You say you are… from the United States of America?"

"Yes. That's right."

He nodded; then his mouth went very firm. Hitching himself up a bit in the chair, he said, "All right, then, tell me this. What is the capital of the American state South Dakota?"

Now it was my turn to gawk — not only because of the question he'd asked but because he'd asked it in passable English. I hesitated; with those eyes staring at me, I felt very much as if I was in the third grade. And I couldn't have done very well in the third grade. I shook my head. "I have no idea."

"No? Guess…"

"I couldn't. I don't know."

"That surprises me, since you are an American. The answer is Pierre. The state capital of South Dakota is Pierre."

"Really? And what is the capital of North Dakota?"

Those eyes flashed even brighter. "Bismarck. I don't know, but I suppose a lot of Germans must live there. Bismarck… am I right?"

I smiled. "Honestly, Mr. Shastov, I don't know that one either. But I am an American."

He shook his head. "Your English is very good for a Chek-ist, but your Russian is much too good for any foreigner, let alone an American. I don't understand, however. Why did you come here? Why are you playing with me? If you have something to ask, why not just ask?"

"I'm not a Chekist, Mr. Shastov. Believe me."

A moment passed. He looked at me, straight on, without fear. And I think he was going to say something — some equivalent of "Go to hell" — and I didn't want that, I didn't want him painted into a corner, and so I said, "Your English is excellent. May I ask where you learned how to speak it?"

He eyed me. "Perm," he said. "In a school."

"Are you from Perm?"

"A long time ago. It's all in my papers. You have the authority to look at them… as you well know."

"No, Mr. Shastov. I assure you — I have no authority at all."

He shrugged; and now, if he didn't believe me, I could sense that he was at least confused. "In any case, I have been a resident of Povonets for many years. By order of the state, you understand. I was deported here to work on the canal."

"Why… were you deported?"

A little smile flickered over his lips. But maybe my foolishness helped, for he said, "Perhaps you are a foreigner. Who knows why they are deported? Maybe they needed deportees here, and so I was sent. Or perhaps, deportees being available, they decided to use them on the canal."

I hesitated. I couldn't tell whether he was angry or amused. "You worked on the canal?"

He laughed softly. "No, no. If I worked on the canal, my bones would be out there someplace. I was deported here later. They called me a kulak, you understand. In my case, this meant that I was teaching in a little village not far from Perm. But I could read and write, so the Bolsheviks decided I must be a threat and Stalin sent me and my wife to this place. I was to help run it. The locks, maintenance, keeping records as hundreds of ships began sailing through… not that they did. But we were ready. No one can ever deny it. I have been here ever since. I even stayed when the Germans were here."

All the time he'd been talking, his eyes had never left my face, and I had the feeling that now curiosity was beginning to overcome his suspicion. And my confusion was genuine, God knows. Perhaps, too, he was working it out by process of elimination. I was completely incredible; Chekists, most definitely, weren't: therefore… I felt through my pockets and came up with some real cigarettes. I moved across the room and extended the pack. He took one; examined it. Then, from beneath the rugs covering his lap, he extracted a smoothly polished black pipe. Carefully, he unwrapped the paper from around the cigarette and stuffed the tobacco into the pipe bowl. It wasn't very full, so I gave him another. He smiled, and nodded. "You are generous."

"Chekists aren't generous."

'Perhaps not. I expect, however, that many smoke American cigarettes."

I thought of Loginov. "Or English ones."

He had tamped the tobacco with the first two fingers of his right hand; now he worked his palm against the bowl as if to polish it even more brightly, or perhaps, through friction, to set alight the tobacco within. I lit my own cigarette more conventionally, tossing the match into the fire… and as I did this, he made a quick little gesture with his pipe hand to indicate that I should sit.

There was a table against the right-hand wall of the room. I pulled one of the chairs away from it and drew it near his. He nodded his satisfaction at this arrangement. Then, rummaging beneath his blankets, he found matches of his own and set his pipe going. I was close enough now to see the book he'd been reading; it was Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches.

I said, "Mr. Shastov, I am not a Chekist. I hope now you believe me."

"Yes, I'm beginning to." He puffed his pipe and smiled. "But, since you are an American, it is only fair if I tell you a secret about Russians."

"What is that?"

"They always lie."

I smiled. "Do they?"

He nodded. "Yes. Do you know why?"

I shook my head.

"Being an American, you will understand the reason. It is a question of profit. Think… if you tell the truth, what do you get? Nothing. But if you know the truth and lie about it, you make a secret. The truth becomes a secret. That can be very valuable."

"You mean, like the secret you've just been telling me?"

"Exactly."

"So you don't believe me?"

"Oh no. I do. That is the truth." Then he grinned.

I took a breath. "Mr. Shastov, let me tell you a secret — a truth, but one you must always lie about. You understand?"

"Of course."

"It is the reason I've come to Povonets. To see you…"

"Yes."

"Someone has sent you, or will send you, something very valuable from the West. It will be bigger than a letter, but it will come to you in the mail."

He peered through the smoke curling from his pipe. "A letter from the West… the Chekists would know about that. And wouldn't like it very much."

"No. But I'm not a Chekist. And I don't think the Chekists do know about it, because the man who sent this letter was very clever. It will come from Paris, in an envelope from the Soviet Embassy there."

"I have not had such a letter. I have never known any Frenchmen. And I can think of no one who would send such a letter to me. Or to anyone."

"His name is Brightman. Harry Brightman."

I was three feet away, watching his eyes. But Brightman's name didn't register… so far as I could tell. But then his life had probably taught him a better poker face than I was ever going to master. He shook his head. "I don't know him. You are the only American I have ever met… Once, in a newspaper, I saw Nixon's face."

"Well, Brightman wasn't American. He was Canadian."

He shrugged. "I still don't know him." He adjusted himself inside the chair, leaning against the arm and sitting a bit more upright. "What is in this letter?"

"A great secret… and a valuable one, just as you've said."

"Valuable in what way?"

"Valuable the way gold is valuable."

He smiled, gesturing around his little room with his pipe stem. "Now you have proof that this letter hasn't arrived."

"You have no idea what I'm talking about? None of this makes any sense?"

"Exactly. You have said it very well."

I paused. I believed him; and in the back of my mind I'd been afraid this might happen. Day one: Alain puts the envelope into the mail at the Cite Universitaire. The next day, I'm back in Paris seeing my friend at Aeroflot. Two days later, the visa arrives. Another day, arranging the flight. Then yesterday. Six days altogether — not very long for a letter to move between Paris and here… especially considering a detour through the censor. Even assuming that Brightman's ploy — the embassy stationery — would hurry things up, I really couldn't be very surprised.

I said, "Have you ever had communications, mail or anything like that, from someone in the West?"

"If you were a Chekist, you would know."

"But I'm not."

He smiled. "All right, I admit it, then. When I was a boy, in Perm — before the Revolution, even before the Great Imperialist War — I collected stamps. Twice, I received packages from Berlin."

I wondered again if he thought I was mad; if he believed any of what I'd told him. I said, "You have to understand that this is serious, Mr. Shastov. Several people have already been hurt and even killed because of this letter. I know someone who will kill you to get it."

"But you would not?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"That doesn't make any difference. You must believe me, however. That does make a difference."

The fire spat and hissed again; a sharp rattling sound emerged from the chimney. Then there was silence, enclosed only by the soft rush of the wind around the hut. f" tried to think of how I might convince him. In a way, when the letter arrived, it would be easier. On the other hand, that could well be too late.

But then, looking at me quite calmly, Yuri Shastov broke the silence. "Mr. Thorne, I am trying to believe you. Yet there is one thing I don't understand."

"What is that?"

"Why would anyone in the world send me this letter? Why me? Why Yuri Fedorovich Shastov?"

I shook my head firmly, and this time I was the one who looked him in the eye. "You know the answer to that, Mr. Shastov — you know it better than anyone else in the world. It's your great secret, I think… a secret you've spent your whole life lying about."

He smiled. "Despite what I said, Mr. Thorne, I'm just an old man. Too old to have secrets."

"But I know you have three. Three at least."

His eyebrows raised slightly. "Maybe you are a Chekist, after all — for they always do that, invent secrets for other people to have. They don't even trust you to lie on your own."

"I'm not a Chekist, as I've told you, but your first secret is the one you won't tell me because you're still afraid I might be…"

"I will say nothing… since I've already told you that Russians only tell lies."

"Then there's the secret of how you've survived to such a great age—"

"But that is no secret, my friend. Yuri Shastov, as everyone will tell you, has led a good and virtuous life."

"And finally there's the secret — and it must be a great secret — of the chair that you're sitting in and how it ever came to be here."

He chuckled softly. "Ah, well, that is not my secret at all. It was my wife's doing. This chair was always my father's chair at our home in Perm. When he died, it became mine. I took it with me everywhere. Then we were sent here, and I thought I'd lost it forever, but somehow — and she never told me how — my wife found a way to get it. All the way from Perm! Can you imagine? We were deportees! Two winters in a row, it was almost turned into firewood, but it always survived. Like me. When I go, I swear it will die too… only my weight, pushing down, gives it a reason to go on."

He was lying to me, of course. In the past five minutes, he'd probably told me five hundred lies: lies knitted together in his mind like the intricate steps of a peasant dance. And I couldn't blame him. Why should he trust me? Why would he trust anyone, but especially a foreigner who arrived out of the blue with the story I'd told? To get over his suspicion would be equivalent to climbing Mount Everest. And now, after that drive, having gone thirty-six hours without any sleep, I wasn't sure I still had the energy. But perhaps that was the key… perhaps the secret I searched for, like a forgotten dream or memory, would only come to me when I'd ceased trying to recall it. In any case, when I began speaking again, I had no particular purpose; my remark was purely conventional, ut-^J tered only to keep the ball rolling. I said, "Your wife sounds like a very remarkable woman."

"She was. Of course, she has been dead many years. She died the year before the Great Patriotic War — and you mustn't say you are sorry, for it was a blessing to miss so much that was horrible. Only now I regret that she's not here, just to talk." He smiled then, and his right hand dove under his blankets, bringing forth a small framed photograph, which he then held out to me. "She was very beautiful, as you can see."

In fact, what he gave me wasn't a photograph, but something earlier; a tintype, even a daguerreotype. The frame was heavy, conceivably silver, and the picture itself was sealed behind a sheet of thick glass and an oval matte. The picture was a portrait, the subject being a darkly beautiful woman in three-quarters profile. The antiquity of the image itself and shifts in fashion — she wore a black, high-necked dress and her dark hair formed a single thick wave on one side of her face — made it impossible to feel certain about her age, but I would have put her in her thirties. Her beauty was striking, and very Russian; if you needed someone to play Tolstoy's Natasha, this sharply featured woman with enormous dark eyes might be a good choice. And yet it was not her beauty in itself that now made my hand tremble. Rather it was a strange, ethereal quality, part aristocratic aloofness, part shyness, which, once seen, was quite unmistakable. Placing the photograph carefully on the old man's lap, I reached into my coat and brought out my wallet. I'd carried two of Travin's photographs with me: one of Georgi Dimitrov picnicking with the good North American comrades, the second of May Brightman emerging from her home in Toronto. This was the photograph I smoothed out, and laid by the first.

"If this is your wife," I told the old man, "then this must be your daughter."

20

If I'd known the message I was carrying, I might have delivered it more carefully; or I would have tried to. But I'm not sure, in fact, if that was possible. In those strange circumstances — in the glow of two kerosene lanterns, enclosed by the aura of this old man in his chair, dancing back and forth between past and present, truth and falsehood, and with the photographs of the two women lying between us: in such circumstances, my announcement was nothing short of a miracle. And miracles aren't led up to; they simply happen.

Strangely, I think the effect was the same on both of us. Transported beyond bewilderment, disarmed beyond confusion, we were equally amazed. Shastov's face moved through a dozen expressions, settling on none, and when he finally tried to speak, he couldn't; I suppose forty years of the unutterable-was lodged in his throat. So, in the end, I did the talking. I told him everything; about Brightman, about May, about what had happened. At a certain point, I mentioned her name and it was then, for the first time, that he cried: May, virtually the same word in both English and Russian, had been the name he and his wife had given their child. Brightman had kept it. The tears began trickling down his cheeks; and, as he wept, it seemed to me that his tears were as much for his wife as for anything else — she had suddenly been brought back to life by that photograph, only to die once again; and, once again, without knowing that her daughter was safe. In the midst of hope, hopelessness. After that, there didn't seem to be much more to say. So I waited. But then I reminded myself that this was a Russian house, and Russian homes always have one solution for grief. In the back wall of the place, beyond the light from the lamps (we still awaited the witching hour of six), there was a door that led into a kitchen. It was a small, bare room, the floor strewn with sawdust. A Dutch door, opening over a table and sink — for preparing the animals' feed — gave onto a lean-to shelter with a wooden trough that was filled with black, rotted straw. An iron stove with a fire burning stood on the far side of the room. To give the old man more time to recover, I added a log and stoked it up, then found vodka and glasses in a small cupboard and returned to the front room. He'd got himself back together. When I gave him the vodka he drank it straight back, then held his glass out for more. I poured, and this time he sipped.

"Dear God. You will think us so wicked."

"No. I don't think that, Mr. Shastov."

He shook his head. "You will think she was wicked to do it and that I was even more wicked — the husband — to let her."

"Why did she want to?"

One of the lamps sent an oily curl of soot into the air. Bending forward, he turned down the wick. Then, taking another sip of the vodka, he wiped at his eyes with the edge of the sheet.

"You must understand," he said, "we had a baby in Perm, when we were first married. A baby boy. But he died almost at once. My wife was grief-stricken and swore never to have any more. And she didn't. People here in the village used to say that I must treat her like a saint, or the very devil, but in truth it was her doing — she was always so careful. But then she thought that was all finished, that she couldn't have any more, and shortly after, she became pregnant. I was glad. Honestly, I was glad. Even here — even as we were living here then — I wanted a child. But she was very upset; I think, once, she tried to end it. There was a woman in the village… yet it didn't work, for the child came. It almost killed my wife, however. She was too old. The child was all right, but my wife knew that she was going to die, and if she died, how could the child live? There was no milk here… there is almost none now… you see? That's why she wanted to."

I could see it. In that hut — in that light — so near the canal and its graveyard of anonymous bones — I could believe desperation without any limits. "Yes… so she thought—"

"She asked me to let her save the child's life. She said she knew people who would take her, look after her. If she lived through the winter, then fine, our little girl would come back, but if she died, or if I died, the child would go on. I was frightened. Because she didn't tell me who these people were — she wrote a letter that she wouldn't let me read. But she grew weaker and weaker… it was clear what was happening… To have refused her would have killed her last hope. So I let them come and they took the baby away. Not long after, she died and then the war came — I always thought that my wife had seen the war coming, and I told myself she'd been right. She was dead, and whatever might happen to me, at least our daughter was safe."

"Who were the men?"

He looked me straight in the eye; and now, without doubt, I was getting the truth. "I don't know."

"Why did they want the child?"

"I don't know… I'm not sure they did. I thought then they were only taking her to somebody else."

"What did they look like?"

"Ordinary men, but from the city. From Leningrad, I expect. Two of them. One did all the talking. He had bushy hair, very curly, like Trotsky's. The other was bigger and said nothing. A big man with a big chest, a dignified face."

Harry Brightman, taken by May Brightman with her own Brownie. … I could see it then. I could see the dark interior of some smoky hovel, or their corner of a barrack. I could smell the sweat and the filth, hear the wind moan through the cracks in the walls. A baby cries. The woman's voice is desperate and weak. And Brightman waits calmly, off to one side, with Dr. Charlie's passport in his pocket. But why? Why Yuri Shastov's little girl?

I said, "You say that the first man looked like Trotsky — but he wasn't? You're sure of that?"

"No, no. I'm sure. By then, I think poor Trotsky was dead."

In fact, he hadn't been killed till that summer, but the chances of his being in Russia at that point were nil. I nodded. "The second man… that was Brightman."

"So I have met him?"

"Yes."

"And now he's sent me this letter?"

I nodded. "And now you know why."

"No, Mr. Thorne… I still don't understand that."

I wondered if I did. Had Harry sent the money to Shastov as a final, despairing gesture? Had he simply wanted to put everyone off the trail? Or had he decided that Shastov might be the only person on earth who had any moral claim to the gold? But then, thinking this through, I decided that the answer was probably simpler.

"He loved his daughter, Mr. Shastov—your daughter. At the end of his life, I think he loved her more than anything else in the world, even more than life itself. He felt he owed you a great deal, and he was trying to repay the debt."

A moment passed. Shastov picked up the photograph of May, held it up to his face. He said, "You know, what you say is wrong, Mr. Thorne. I owe him more than he owed me — and I owe you as well. It is I who have the debts to repay." He set the photograph down. "And now I shall pay them. I have the letter Brightman has sent me. Olga brought it this morning— she is a woman who helps me — and it was just as you said, from the Soviet Embassy in Paris."

I sat back, startled; then smiled. "You're very good at keeping secrets, Yuri Fedorovich."

"As I warned you, I think."

"What did the letter say?"

"See for yourself."

Hitching himself to one side, he now reached under his blankets and drew out a heavy, padded envelope, just as Alain had described: a large printed label bore the address of the new embassy on the Boulevard Lannes. The envelope was already torn open. Taking it from him, I extracted the contents. There were two items. The first was a letter, typed in Cyrillic on very genuine-looking embassy letterhead. It read: Your letter more properly should have been addressed to the appropriate Ministry in Moscow, or directly to the Government of the Republic of France. However, on this one occasion only, we have fulfilled your request. It was signed by a second assistant consular officer. The "request," apparently, had concerned horticulture, for the only other item in the envelope was a publication from the French Department of Agriculture on apple orchards. It was a thick, soft-cover book — not unlike a museum catalogue — and was printed on glossy stock, with numerous black-and-white photographs and drawings.

"This was all?"

"Everything. You understand, I had no idea what to make of it."

It was obvious what Brightman must have done. Carefully, I began cutting up the envelope with my pocketknife, scattering fluff everywhere. There was nothing inside, however, so I turned to the book — and it held the treasure. Stripping the spine away from the binding revealed a length of carefully fitted plastic wrap, which protected the following:

— one flat metal key;

— one birth certificate (Province of Ontario, Canada) for Harold Charles Brightman;

— one Ontario driver's license in the same name;

— and a receipt to Brightman from a branch of the Dauphin Deposit Bank, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The old man eyed me. "Have you found what you expected?"

It was a good question. Was this what I'd expected? But then I nodded. "Yes. The papers let you use the key… and the key is the key to a great fortune."

I passed the papers across to him. Turning them over in his lap, he picked up the bank receipt and squinted at it. "Harrisburg," he said. "That is the capital of Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."

I smiled. "That one I know, Mr. Shastov."

"You have been there?"

"Many times. My father was from that part of the country and we spent our summers there."

Harrisburg… Should I have expected that too? But even as my mind had registered the coincidence, I realized, deep in my heart, that I'd known all along.

Shastov, leaning forward, handed back the papers. "They were sent to me, Mr. Thome, so please accept them as my gift."

I said, "It's hard to know whom they truly belong to."

"You must have heard that famous expression, 'Possession is nine-tenths of the law.' "

"It creates something of a problem in this case."

"I don't understand."

"I told you, other men have been searching for this. I possess it now — but they think you do. When they come here, you'll be in danger."

"Why should I be? I'll tell them you have the envelope. I'll tell them it came, what was in it — no lies, you see, no secrets — and that I gave it to you. Or I could say I sold it to you. They'd believe that. I had no use for this foolish pamphlet, but you wanted to give me money, so I took it."

I looked at the old man; his notion was logical, but I didn't like it. On the other hand, time was moving on; I wanted to get out of here fast, not only to avoid Subotin but also to reach Leningrad before I was missed. And his idea might, work. Might… If it didn't? Not a pretty thought. Not something I wanted to have on my conscience.

I shook my head. "Listen, Yuri Fedorovich. What you suggest could work, but it frightens me. These men are going to be very, very angry to learn that I've beaten them to this. So they could hurt you, even if it doesn't make sense."

"No. For them, that would just make more, trouble."

"Maybe. But I'm not sure — and I have another idea. Remember, you have a daughter again. She's well off. Rich. I'm sure she would be happy to see you. Why not go to her?… Wait now — I'm not crazy. I know certain things about these other men that the Chekists would like to know. In return for what I could tell them, I'm sure they'd let you out of the country."

He picked up May's photograph, stared at it a moment, and then his gaze wandered away. He looked around the room. My eyes followed his: sculpted by the flickering flames, it was like the inside of a cave, but a cave where men had lived for centuries, like the catacombs of the old Russian Church Fathers. Finally, with a little smile, he shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "I am glad to have this" — he held up the photograph of May—"but would she really want to see me?" He shrugged. "Who can tell?… Besides, this is my home, Mr. Thome. It may not seem much to you, but I don't think I could live anywhere else. I'm like the old man in the story of the wolf. You must know it. He is an old man who lived with his wife, five sheep, a colt, and a calf, and one day a wolf came and sang them a song. At once, the man's wife said, 'What a wonderful song! Give him a sheep.' The old man did so and the wolf ate it, but soon he returned, singing again. And he kept singing that song until he'd eaten them all, all the sheep, the colt, the calf, even the woman. Then the old man was alone. Again the wolf came. But this time the old man grabbed up a stick and beat him. So the wolf went away, never to return, leaving the old man alone with his misery… You see, Mr. Thorne? This place, Russia, may be as mean as a wolf, but it is all I have left. If I leave it, or drive it away, what would I do?" Again, he shook his head. "No," he said, "I will stay here. But I don't want you to worry—"

"I will."

"No. Tell me — do you have any American money?"

"Yes."

"A lot? One hundred dollars?"

"More."

"That is enough. Give it to me. If these men come, I'll show it to them. Have no fear, they'll believe me then. And you know what they'll do? They'll threaten me… for it's illegal to take foreign money. All I have to do after that is act frightened and tell them everything. You came here in a car—"

"A dark Zhiguli."

"Good. And you told me you were going from here…?"

"Back to Leningrad."

"So, they'll believe it. And leave me alone."

It was shrewd; and he could bring it off if anyone could. "All right," I said. "I agree. But do one more thing for me. Go and stay with someone, or have someone stay here…"

He was making a face. "No…"

"What about this woman, Olga…?"

His expression turned even more sour. "She wishes to marry me. On the day before I die, I may let her — but not one minute sooner." He flapped his hand. "However, I will do it for you… I'll tell her to come here. That is more natural." Then, rather to my surprise, he began to get up from the chair: not spryly, perhaps, but with somewhat more locomotive power than I'd assumed he could muster. He was dressed in a flannel nightshirt, long underwear, many pairs of socks, and a pair of knitted slippers — Olga's handiwork? — that came up to his knees.

"We should go now," he said. "She'll go down to the village when the store opens again."

Passing through a curtained doorway, he emerged a few minutes later as heavily bundled up in sweaters and coats as he'd been in his chair. We stepped outside. He took my arm, and I led him down to the road.

It was late afternoon now, the sky was darkening, and the gray shadows of the birches and pines stretched over the snow. But it was warmer, and only a few flakes drifted reluctantly down. As we walked in the tracks of a truck, separated by the space of its body, I had to slow my pace to Shastov's, but it was nonetheless clear that he could manage; stiffly, and a little anxiously, but carefully, staying within himself… which, I concluded, was a good sign, and I began to worry less about him and Subotin. After ten minutes, we reached the "first" canal road; it was here that Olga lived.

"I'll fetch her," the old man said, "but don't come with me. It isn't far, and it would be best that she not see you."

I nodded. We shook hands. And then, with a little spasm of embarrassment, he reached into the folds of his clothing and drew forth a small, black, leather-covered box. "For her," he said. "For my daughter. It was her mother's. It's all I have to give to her… if you would."

"Yes. Of course."

I took the box from him, though in fact it wasn't really a box but a small traveling icon: the sides and top were flaps, which could be folded open and propped up as a little altar. It is a traditional Russian present to honor a child's "name day" — that is, the feast day of the saint whose name forms part of the child's own. As was usually the case, an image of the saint was embossed on a small gold disk on the top flap — I didn't recognize which one it was — and this, in turn, was superimposed over a coat of arms. The Russian nobility usually employed their own arms here, but ordinary Russians, not entitled to such dignity, borrowed the national crest, the Imperial eagles of the Romanovs; and this was what Yuri's wife had done. Beautifully enameled, outlined in gilt — a little worn — they glared up at me in all their ancient glory.

"It's very lovely," I said. "I'll see May gets it."

He smiled, and his dark eyes, peering out from under a huge wool cap that came down to his eyebrows, brightened. "And you'll also remember Pierre—"

"South Dakota—"

"And Bismarck—"

"Yes, I'll remember."

"Very good." Then, with a wave, he turned away. I watched him go. Further on, he waved again, and then I turned, toward the village.

It was dark now; the road was empty. I trudged along in the tracks of the truck, but then, approaching the village, swung off to my right. I waded across a rocky field toward some trees. They were the same dying pines, their ash-gray bark peeling off in long strips, but the black shadows they cast reached out and swallowed me up. I struggled on. The wind was coming up, snow sifted down from the branches over my head, and there were sudden hollows where I plunged in to my thighs; but I knew this was safer than the road. And then, just as I began to sense the, lake up ahead, there was a sudden spatter of lights to my left: I knew it was six. Turning back, I looked through the misting plume of my breath and had my last glimpse of Povonets, glimmering through the trees.

Twenty minutes later, I arrived at the car. It was as I'd left it. Saying a prayer, I turned the key… It chugged a couple of times, but the battery was strong and it kicked over. As the engine warmed, I thought about this incredible day. I couldn't complain; I'd found more than I'd come for. Yet, even as I squeezed Brightman's key in my palm, I thought again that each aspect of this "case" which I seemed to "solve" only opened up another mystery. Unfolding the little icon, I set it up on the dash. I stroked the leather; it was soft as silk and I realized that it jnust have been in Shastov's family, or his wife's, for generations. May was the last of her line. But who was she? And what connection was there between her real identity and Brightman's disappearance? The very questions I'd begun with had returned. Shastov had given me most of her story, but in truth I had no idea what that story meant… / assume that some of what Brightman told me was true, Grainger had written. He did go to Russia, after all… and I'm sure he did get to know many men in the senior Communist leadership. So I suspect that Brightman's daughter is the child of one of those men — someone who believed he would soon fall victim to Stalin's Terror. At the time, it had seemed a good guess, but now I was sure it couldn't be true: neither Shastov nor his wife had been a prominent Communist. And Berri's notion wasn't much better: 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 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. No doubt he was right about Dimitrov — but how could Yuri Shas-tov's child save anyone? And who would wish to save her?

These were the questions that occupied my mind as I headed back to Leningrad, but they seemed unanswerable, and for the time being I had other problems. Most urgently, I was exhausted, and after winding back along the lake for thirty miles — to thoroughly warm the engine — I found a side road and plowed up it. There I slept for three blissful hours, and when the cold awoke me I was almost myself again. I started off. Now the miles and hours passed — and the tension built. What would happen back in Leningrad? I'd escaped Subotin — but if Loginov really wanted me, there wasn't much to stop him, for Russia is as hard to leave as it is to enter. But perhaps he didn't want me; for him, I was the lure to draw Subotin out. In any case, when I got back to the hotel, no one seemed to notice, and when I returned the car — the original license plates once again in place — there was no comment. Gradually, my worries shifted. Where was Subotin? If I really was a lure, then I had to expect a strike, but I had no proof that he was even close. He must have come to Russia, but he would have his own means of moving here and might be miles ahead of me — or just behind. That last night, as' I lay exhausted in the Astoria, my conscience would have given anything for the power to make a simple call to Povonets. Had Subotin been there? Was the old man all right? I guessed he was — when it came to survival, I would have bet on him no matter what the odds — but there was no way of telling. So, the next morning, I crossed my fingers, filled out all the forms, and headed for my plane, and as I felt the big engines thrust us up, I turned my thoughts to my destination — Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Once again Brightman had shown a fox's cunning, and once again his secret trail circled back upon me. What did it mean? I had no idea; but as the Polish darkness drifted by below us, I fell asleep and dreamed, or rather I rejoined the dream I'd dreamt as I was flying in. It was just the same. I could see a ship drawn up beside the pier at Leningrad: an ancient steamer, with belching funnels and swiveling cranes. I could see Brightman, bundled up in his fur coat, as he made his way through the customs shed. And finally I could see the desk where he turned in his passport. He looked up then, showing his face: and it was my face. And as the passport official stamped the documents and handed them back, his face was revealed as well; darkened, the features obscured by the shadow of his cap, but clear enough: my father.

21

Everywhere I looked, as I came into Harrisburg, there was a disturbing sense of deja vu: a feeling of strangeness, of alienation, which utterly failed to disguise the fact that what I was seeing was all too familiar.

Paris: where my parents had met.

Leningrad: my own Russian city.

Now this place, a town where every turning led back to my past…

I was like an amnesiac who builds up a new life only to find it repeating the first. Market Street was still there, but looking seedy and grim: Ppmeroy's held on, but the old Capitol Theatre had finally expired, drowned in a miasma of kung-fu movies and stale popcorn smells. Yet, despite the decay, despite Three Mile Island, it was still the same place. In the years when we'd had that cabin in the Tuscaroras, it had represented something special to me, a sort of benchmark for American normalcy. Having been brought up either outside the country or in Washington, I think I took Harrisburg as representative of the places where "ordinary people" lived.

The broad, lazy Susquehanna with the early-morning mist rising around its islands, and the long run of solid, middle-class homes out on Second Street, united in my mind the America of the pioneers and the America of Ike. How could such a place be the scene of the crime? Yet it must be — since I was returning to it. And if it was, what had the crime been, and who had committed it?

But I put those questions on hold. For one thing, I was still tired after the flight back from Paris; it was ten in the morning as I drove into town, but God only knows what time my body thought it was — some hour, in any case, when my eyes ought to have been decently closed rather than blinking back a cold drizzle on Market Street. And there were other considerations as well. Brightman's safe-deposit box held an immense fortune, a fortune that rightly belonged to May; or so I supposed. But I also hoped that it might contain the answers to a few of my questions, and for that reason I wanted to be the first one into it — which meant, in turn, that I was going to commit fraud. But impersonating Brightman might not be so easy. A Canadian driver's license and a foreign birth certificate weren't the best identification in the world, so I was keeping my fingers crossed.

The bank, when I reached it, didn't do much for my nerves. Guarded by fluted Greek columns, it had the air, inside, of a proud, prosperous Victorian railway station: huge fans turned slowly beneath the domes of its high vaulted ceilings, and aisles of red velvet ropes led you up to the tellers. All of this communicated probity so powerfully that I had a mild urge, as I went up to the counter, to confess my larcenous intentions— though by this time, even if I didn't know it, such a confession would have been impossible, for there was no longer a crime to commit. My request to get into Brightman's box, accepted routinely, quickly produced a Frown, Looks, and Whispers, then Professional Concern, and finally Profuse Apologies— delivered by a civil young man named Mr. Corey.

"I'm sorry for the delay, Mr. Brightman, but there seems to be some sort of mix-up. According to our records, this box was canceled and all outstanding charges cleared as of yesterday afternoon."

I took it well, on the whole. No staggers; no fainting spells. Merely the sort of frown which anyone, having been informed that their safe-deposit box has been canceled by someone else, surely has the right to assume. And I was cool enough to play the Affronted Customer reasonably well.

"I don't know about your records, Mr. Corey, but most of yesterday I was either thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic or in a taxi trapped inside the Holland Tunnel. I certainly wasn't in Harrisburg, and I certainly didn't cancel my box." Taking the key from my pocket, I held it up in front of his nose. "When you cancel a box, don't you get the key back?""

He looked unhappy. I'm not sure what I felt, though my anger was only partly an act — I'd come a long, long way to get to this point. On the other hand, I probably didn't have much right to be surprised. Why should the last act of this drama be any simpler than the earlier ones? In any case, after a certain amount of backing and filling a lady was fetched: one of those older, professional women whose eyes, never quite focusing on anyone, radiate, hostility everywhere. But with a prim nod she solved our little mystery.

"This was yesterday afternoon, Mr. Corey. Mr. Simmons was really the one who handled it. A lady appeared with legal papers giving her title to the box as executor of her father's will. She was Canadian, I think — she had Canadian papers and Commonwealth papers. And she had a lawyer. Mr. Simmons spoke with him."

"Do you remember her name?"

"Mr. Simmons has it in his file, Mr. Corey. If I remember correctly, the lady's name was also Brightman."

I was very smooth, the Truth Dawning on my face with fair conviction. "This begins to make sense, Mr. Corey. Miss j Brightman is my sister… in fact, she is the executor of my father's estate — she's been living with him up in Toronto — and I suppose some of my papers must have got mixed up with his. It's not impossible, you see. We're both Harold; I just never use the 'junior.'"

This was a touch too elaborate. Mr. Corey looked dubious. 't But his ultimate concern was the bank, so he took advantage of this opening to say, "I take it, then, that no harm's been done?"

"No. And certainly nothing that the bank's responsible for." I looked at the woman. "Could you tell me when my sister was here? You said yesterday…"

The lady too how had her doubts and solicited Mr. Corey's nod before speaking — and managed to do so without actually addressing me. "She came in around one and left her papers with Mr. Simmons. She returned much later, around half past four. I'm not sure when she left."

I nodded. "Maybe she's still in town, then. Or I'll contact her in Toronto. In any case, thank you for your trouble… and here, you'd better keep this."

I then pushed Brightman's key over the counter and, before Corey could speak, extended my hand. By then, I think, suspicions had definitely formed in his mind, but the civilities were his sharpest reflex. We shook, said goodbye, and a moment later I was out on the street.

I took a breath. I was very tired, but now I thought hard and fast — what was May doing? For a second, my old suspicions flickered, but after what had happened on Hamilton's barge, I couldn't believe them. But what were the alternatives? Had Brightman made a terrible blunder and allowed some record of the safe-deposit box to stay in his will? It seemed incredible. Wills are too public… but then if she hadn't learned about it from the will, how else could she have?

In confusion, I made my way back to my car, and by the time I reached it, I was beginning to feel fairly anxious as well. I'd shaken off Subotin in Russia, but there was no reason to think he'd disappeared for good. And did May even know he existed? Had she any idea of the danger she was now in? I had to find her. Which meant another airplane and a trip to Toronto — hardly a thrilling prospect after the past forty-eight hours. But then I thought again. She'd been here yesterday. Conceivably, she'd gone back right away; on the other hand— if she was driving — she might only have left this morning, or might actually still be here now. It wasn't impossible. She was never one to hurry, and it wasn't eleven yet — checkout time, but still worth a try. What I needed was a phone, so I walked along Market to Second Avenue — past the Senator, with skin flicks beginning at ten forty-five; past the hotels with rooms by the day, week, or month — and went into a greasy spoon called the Olympia.

Therein, I wasted five quarters.

She wasn't in the Sheraton, Marriott, Holiday Inn, or any of the other big places, but then it occurred to me that she never stayed in places like that. Tourist homes… guest houses". funny little residential hotels that no one else knew about — they're what she liked. A number of candidates came to mind, but they were the kind of places you do better to visit in person, so I went back to my car, drove past Brightman's bank again, and then straight through to the old railway station, where passengers now catch the Trailways bus. I parked, then walked back to Blackberry Street. On the corner of Fourth stood the Alva.

I couldn't think when I'd last been there; years ago. It was a big old place, three stories high and half the block wide, and the ground floor was taken up with one of those old family restaurants the fast-food chains are killing: American food, plenty of "regulars," the cops stopping by for their "coffee and…" The hotel, over the restaurant, had its "permanents" — mainly pensioners — and was used by people up at the Capitol when they couldn't get home during the session. Stepping inside brought back a flood of memories, for it had changed very little since my childhood: the same booths (but no jukeboxes); the same photograph of the prize steer they'd bought at the State Farm Show; the same middle-aged waitresses, spiced up with a few pretty college kids.

I asked after May — and it seemed that my logic had been right but my timing wrong.

"This is a lady with long hair, sort of red?"

"That's right."

"I know the one you mean, then. She was here for a couple of days. Just left this morning, around ten. She had one of those old Volkswagens, the kind you don't see so much anymore."

So that was that.

As consolation, I decided to get something to eat and slid into a booth. Given that I was in a place like the Alva, I ordered coffee and the speciality de la maison, peanut-butter cream pie. Waiting to see what this could possibly be, I lit a cigarette and looked around the room. There were booths along the outside walls, tables elsewhere. Coming right into the center of the room was a staircase from the second floor, the hotel. Washrooms said a sign, and pointed up. After a time, my pie arrived. It was astonishing, but also delicious. As I ate it, I listened to the pretty Chinese waitress flirting with a man in a Caterpillar Tractor cap a few tables over. "Oh, you!" she exclaimed, dissolving in giggles. "You just behave!" Another girl, behind the counter, was having trouble fitting a filter of coffee into the machine. Then a man came down the stairs from the second floor. He was zipping up his windbreaker and stopped halfway when the zipper got stuck. He worked it free and came down the last steps, into the room. I could see him well now. It was Subotin. Short, red-haired, that hard, narrow face — it was definitely him. With his hands thrust deeply into the windbreaker's pockets, he shouldered open the front door of the restaurant and passed into the street… while I, hand trembling slightly, set a forkful of peanut-butter cream pie back on my plate.

Chance, as someone once said, is merely a nickname for Providence: in which case this particular encounter was providential in many respects — such as the million-to-one shot that I'd been sitting there, and the billion-to-one shot that he hadn't seen me. It was enough to take your breath away — but not so completely that I didn't have the presence of mind to get up and dash out the door.

I was in time to see him crossing the road, heading for a large concrete parking garage on Fourth.

Relying on luck for another ninety seconds, I ran back to the station and fetched my car. Then I waited, breath held — because there might be a second exit from the garage which I couldn't see. But the gods were still on my side, and after a couple of minutes, Subotin emerged and pointed a Chevrolet down toward the river. There he slowed; in front of us stretched the Susquehanna, broad and placid, the reflections of its bridges mingling on the surface like a pioneers' Avignon. Front Street was quiet; a few joggers puffed along the bank, but almost no one lives in the fine old houses now, for they're all taken up with lawyers, PR men, and lobbyists specializing in "issues management." At the corner — a bit clumsily — Subotin turned left; but then he had to, for Front is one-way. And evidently he wanted to head in the other direction, because he immediately switchbacked onto Second. Now, straightened around, he became more confident and picked up speed, heading north toward Interstate 81.1 stayed right behind him, and my brain started working. What was Subotin doing here? What had led him to the Alva?… Had he simply been using the washroom? Looking for May? Had he missed her, just as I had — or was he with her? It seemed a preposterous notion, but then I realized something: I had absolutely no proof that he'd been to Russia at all. Maybe he'd come here straight from France.

As my logic ran into these complications, we also hit the interchange and I concentrated on my driving. Following the Marysville signs, Subotin got onto 81 South… a highway I know as well as any in the world, for, if you stay on it, you'll end up in Washington. But Subotin didn't stay on it. Beyond Marysville, he swung north, onto a side road — and, if anything, this was a road I knew even better. It carried you through the Blue Mountains, across the Mahanoy Ridge, into the higher, rougher Tuscaroras beyond.

In tandem, we wound our way across the peaceful, dun-colored slopes. At first, the settlements were almost suburban — expensive bungalows built along the ridges of the hills so they could enjoy the views of the valleys below — but soon we left the city behind. The woods thickened. The leaves had turned, and many trees were already bare, so that on the exposed faces of the higher hills, veins of silver-gray wiggled through the rust and the gold. After a time, we slid into a valley. Here there were farms, the swaths cut by the combines neatly marking the contours of the fields, and marshaled around the crossroads were all-American villages, with their steeples, picket fences, and shiny coats of white paint. I knew all these places; one by one, their names came back to me. And every time I lifted my eyes, patches of landscape jumped out of the past: the way the road, darkly overhung by tall oaks, doubled back through this curve; a valley, opening up to display every shade of Thanksgiving brown and gold; a scar of rock on a hill. I did not need to summon memories, they were simply there, and as we entered the Tuscaroras themselves, I could hear my father, explaining — explaining that the Tuscaroras were Indians, that they'd been driven from their own confederacy in North Carolina to join with the Iroquois as the last of the famous Six Nations, that they were among the most advanced of the woodland tribes. Did they take scalps? I'd wondered. Maybe, he replied: but if they did, it was only because the white man — specifically the French — taught them how, just the way your mother took mine. At which we all laughed, and indeed it became a family joke: that my mother, born in Lyons, was a Tuscarora princess at heart.

There were more memories where that one came from, and for a time, in fact, I had the uncanny feeling that Subotin might actually lead me back to our old cabin. But then he turned into a side road which climbed up a ridge of these hills and then dove down into a narrow valley on the far side. There were no houses here, and few cabins, and on these steep slopes the maples and oaks gave way to spruce and pine. I remembered that a stream flowed along the floor of this valley, and soon I could see it flashing beyond the cold dark trees. The road, fighting to keep its grip on the sharp grade of the ravine, writhed like a snake. I didn't mind: because of the curves, I could stay right on Subotin's tail yet remain out of sight. He kept his speed down, which also made things easier, and it was clear he was unfamiliar with the road, for he had a map open on his dash, and he slowed at each sign. We kept on like this for seven or eight miles. The rain had stopped, but the wind blew quick spattering showers from the trees, and leaves, spinning down, stuck to the car's hood and jammed under the wipers. At length, as I knew it was going to, the road swung sharp right and passed over the stream. One Truck on Bridge read a sign, and, perhaps a little timorously, Subotin slowed right down as he crossed. I let him get clear, then followed. I knew it would be hard to lose him now, there were so few turnoffs. For another two miles, the road would keep the stream on its left, then climb the slope of the ridge and continue on the far side. If I remembered correctly (for us, on the way to the cabin, it had always been the wrong way around), it would eventually reach Evansville and actually pass by the steps of Father Delaney's little frame church… though that, needless to say, wasn't where Subotin was going. Just as the road began climbing, he slowed, and a hundred yards on turned down a narrow dirt side road. I didn't follow. Continuing past the intersection, I pulled over and stopped.

I twisted back in my seat and looked over my shoulder.

He'd probably made a wrong turn: I was almost sure the side road was a dead end.

I waited, rain dripping from the oaks overhead with a slow plop-plop on the roof of the car. Five minutes passed. When there was still no sign of him, I began to get nervous and put the car back into gear. But then I stopped myself. If I was right, if the road was a dead end, that meant his destination must lie along it; a car would only give me away.

I decided to walk.

Killing the engine produced an edgy, unnatural silence which made me ease the door shut, and as I walked back to the intersection, the quick squawk of a jay in the woods made me jump. The air, even at this slight elevation, was already cooler than it had been in Harrisburg; my breath misted, and I thrust my hands into my pockets. I came up to the side road. Narrow, unpaved, it split off from the main road in a "Y"; Subotin might well have turned down it while thinking he was going straight on. I hesitated. But there was no sign of him. For a hundred yards, the road ran straight downhill and I had an unobstructed view. Reluctantly, I started ahead. After the first straight stretch, there was a slight curve; then another, much sharper. Now the woods closed in on all sides and the air took on a gray, misty gloom. A mourning dove, crouched in the ditch, lifted away with a soft whirring of wings; jays and chickadees, flushed ahead of me, chirped and complained. I walked slowly, stopping to listen every few yards. Ten minutes passed and I still didn't see him. I began to worry now that I'd made a real blunder — he might be miles away — but there was nothing to do except go on. Then, a moment later, I saw my first sign of man — a tattered No Hunting poster matted on a tree trunk — and shortly thereafter, another: a crudely hand-painted sign erected at the side of the road. No Exit it read… So I'd been right. It made me even more cautious, but I kept going, and finally, a quarter mile on, I saw the car. It had been run up a narrow track leading into the woods, on the right-hand side of the road.

For thirty seconds, I stood stock-still; the car, masked by the trees, almost seemed like a predator waiting to pounce. But Subotin couldn't have seen me; if he had, I'd probably be dead. Cautiously, I walked up to the track. Which is all it was: two tire ruts leading into the woods. If he'd run the car up just another few yards, he could have hidden it completely from the road, but no doubt he'd been afraid of getting stuck in the wet, spongy ground. Moving forward, I peered in the car's windows… and saw, on the back seat, one of those canvas rifle holders. Empty…

I didn't like this at all. Where was he? What in hell was he doing here? I looked up the track, and the dark, wet trunks of the pines stared Impassively back, giving nothing away. I waited. I knew I was going ahead, but I needed a moment to let the idea sink in. Then — without comment, as it were — I simply started forward. I walked briskly; in that soft ground, my steps were silent, but there was little point to concealment. The track was very narrow; if he was hiding along it, he'd certainly see me. Still, every twenty yards or so I stopped and listened; it was just possible, if I had any warning at all, that I could throw myself into the bush and get away — it was so thick and dark. But I heard nothing. Just the occasional chirp of a bird, the trickling of water, the soft tread of my steps. I kept on. Conceivably, I thought, the track was the remains of an old logging road, or might lead to a hunting camp. It was probably five miles to my family's old place. If you imagined the side road continuing, you'd end up—

I stopped dead.

Ahead, the track widened and the gloom lightened.

After six paces, I could see that the track opened out into a clearing fringed with birches. Something gleamed there, in the shadows. I knelt down. Looking beneath the spreading branches of the pines, I could see the front bumper, and about half the hood, of a pickup truck. In the half-light, I couldn't be sure of the color; maybe dark green or dark blue.

I stood up. I knew it would be suicidal to go on. Subotin had to be there. Waiting. With a rifle… I turned and hurriedly retraced my steps. Then, when the track had curved enough to take me out of sight of the clearing, I paused to consider. What was happening? Was I doing the right thing? But I knew I was. I'm not a coward; but then I'm not an idiot either. It was possible that Subotin had merely come here to meet with someone, or perhaps to join them, but the more likely explanation was far more menacing: he was lying in ambush. He was, no doubt, expecting someone to come into the clearing from the opposite direction; but as soon as I did so, I'd be a dead man.

What should I do?

I couldn't just leave. I remembered all too clearly how Berri had paid for my dithering. Worse, some of my previous speculations now reversed. Could May be in there? Probably Subotin had been looking for her at the Alva. Had he come here because this was where he thought she would be?

But questions like that were unanswerable, and I let intuition take over. Backpedaling another fifty yards, I found a gap in the trees and stepped into it; then, at right angles to the track, I began working my way into the woods. Within a minute, I was soaked. Every step brought a shower down from above, and the ferns and bushes on the forest floor tugged at my legs like seaweed. I blundered on. Then, when I judged I was two or three hundred yards into the woods, I changed direction, striking out parallel to the track. My intention, of course, was to skirt the clearing and cut in behind it; and the problem lay in judging when I'd gone far enough. Now I got a break. Pausing to catch my breath, I heard the rush of a stream — a constant whispering behind the steady drip of the leaves — and a few minutes later, working away to my right, I came to its bank. It was a tributary of the creek that the highway had crossed. In the spring, during the runoff, it would have been impressive, deep and swift, but now there was just a thin trickle of black water to meander along the bottom of its bed. But it was precisely this that I now took advantage of, for the streambed, exposed, was as good as a path. And it ran the right way. I scrambled down from the bank. The bed was gravel and hard-packed mud; I could stride along. Only when it curved sharply, and the banks constricted, did I have to leave it. In twenty minutes or so, I must have gone the better part of a mile. Then, on the bank above me, I saw a path.

It was, as paths go, nothing unusual — merely a line of least resistance through the pines. It ran up to the bank of the stream, then veered away again, like the arms in the letter "K." The upper arm, I was sure, would lead back to the clearing; the lower would continue into the woods, probably to a cabin. In fact, the general layout, from beginning to end, wasn't much different from the one I remembered as a child. The track let you get your car off the road, but you had to carry your stuff the rest of the way… like the voyageurs, my mother had complained.

I stood a moment, catching my breath, then started down the lower arm of the path.

It was shoulder wide, edged by pines and small oaks. Tramped down by the years, dead pine needles formed a smooth, springy turf and, in spots where the path descended, the roots of trees had wedged the earth into neat little steps. I was hurrying now as fast as I could, and my panting sucked in the pungent smells of wet leaves and forest rot and my flushed face began stinging with pine resin and sweat. Detour-ing around a huge, rotting stump, ascending a rugged range of boulders — a rhythm of crevices worked out by the years for your feet — the path twisted on for about two hundred yards. Then, again, a pale patch appeared up ahead. I slowed my pace. A moment later, I could smell woodsmoke, and a moment after that the cabin appeared. Through the trees, outlined against the gauzy, purplish gloom, it had an unreal appearance, like a painted flat in a play: the home of a woodcutter… an exiled fairy-tale prince… But then, as I crept forward and crouched at the end of the path, it jumped into focus and turned real.

Pressed down among some ferns, I peered into a small, rocky clearing.

The cabin stood in the middle of this. It was merely a frame shack, dignified with cedar-shake siding and a stovepipe chimney. Set up off the ground on concrete blocks, it had a tottering, precarious air — a distinct list to port — but was nonetheless clearly inhabited. A cozy plume of smoke curled out of the chimney; fresh kindling was stacked by the door. Catching my breath, I calmed myself. For I now realized that I could have this all wrong. I was assuming that Subotin had stopped in the clearing, but why shouldn't he have continued straight along the path and come here? No reason at all. He could be inside now. Someone was, without doubt. The cabin possessed one small window and a dark shape moved past it… and then I held my breath as the door began to swing open.

Who, in truth, did I expect to come through that door?

My fears said Subotin. My mind, such as it was, would have guessed May. But my heart — what I felt—told me my father.

Which was crazy, of course. But, in a funny way, I wasn't far wrong, for what I saw with my eyes was just as miraculous.

He was a big man, heavyset, with a broad chest sloping into a heavy belly. His face was broad and genial, his hair thick…

Yes, he looked like a bear — but he had a fox's cunning.

I rose and stepped into the open.

He stared at me, a piece of kindling in hand.

"Who are you?" he said.

"My name is Robert Thorne. Mr. Brightman."

22

I was shocked, stunned, flabbergasted… But perhaps I should have known. I closed my eyes, and could see May, standing on that barge in France. How beautiful she'd looked. And what else could have transformed her so? What other life could have let her live again?

Yet whatever I'd expected to find in that cabin, it had not been Harry Brightman. Harry Brightman had disappeared; Harry Brightman had killed himself; Harry Brightman had been murdered. This progression into oblivion was even more fundamental than an assumption, because at least you think about assumptions every once in a while. But this was one possibility that hadn't crossed my mind for an instant. So long had he been the object of my curiosity, and the subject of a thousand speculations, that his real presence — his occupation of any space outside my thoughts — was almost an affront. Harry Brightman was alive. How dare he be?

But he was — the Red Fox had been run to earth.

Seeing him in the flesh, in that cabin — and hearing his voice — demanded modifications of all my previous impressions. Yet they hadn't been completely wrong. The photograph of May's, taken with her own Brownie, and my own fantasies — the figure of a man bundled up inside an enormous fur coat; the figure coming off that ship in my dream — had caught his presence, his solidity. You describe many old men as "spry," or "lively," but not Harry Brightman. He communicated the physical force of a man half his age. On the other hand, my imaginings had all possessed an antiquated quality that his appearance denied. He had seemed trapped in the past of the newsreels, the past of Zinoviev, Trotsky, the Second World War: yet clearly he had a contemporary existence — he knew what an automatic transmission was, and he knew how to check in at an airport. And allied to this was another shifting of emphasis: in the past few weeks I had discovered the major course of his life, but it flowed in other directions as well and was fed by tributaries I'd scarcely bothered to notice. You could hear that in his voice, which was easy, rugged, and gentle: the voice of a man of the world, and of several worlds.

I must have stared at him for a long time before I finally said, "I'm not sure how to talk to the dead."

"In Greek, isn't it… alpha and omega? Or perhaps you're supposed to blow a trumpet. Come inside, please."

I looked around the dark cabin. It was a large, low, square room. A bunk bed stood in the far corner, the upper mattress bare, but the lower neatly made up with a dark brown blanket and a neatly plumped pillow. Just inside the door was a counter and sink, and directly in front of me stood an immense black wood stove. A sooty pipe emerged from the back of it. Suspended from the ceiling by loops of rusty wire, it ran along to the far end of the room, where it disappeared through the roof. Reaching up, Brightman leaned against it. The wire loops creaked. His hands were big and strong… he was certainly the most substantial ghost I'd ever laid eyes on.

I turned back to him. "I don't feel that angelic," I said.

He smiled. "Perhaps more judgmental, Mr. Thorne."

He was very cool; but he had to be feeling a certain amount of surprise himself. I said, "You do know who I am?"

"Yes. May's told me what a great help you were."

My smile, inevitably, was a trifle ironic. "I'm sure."

"Please, don't feel resentful. Or not at her. I know how upset she was at deceiving you. And you should understand that when she first called you, everything she said was quite true. She didn't know then that I was alive. It was only later, after what happened in Detroit, that I told her."

"Because you had to. You knew the police would want her to identify… whoever it was in the morgue."

"Yes."

"Except I did the dirty work for her."

"As I said, Mr. Thorne, I understand your resentment — but direct it at me. In fact, it was I who insisted that she bring you to Detroit. I realized then that her original impulse had been sensible. She needed a friend, someone she could trust and rely on. I thank you for being that person — though I hardly expect you to thank me."

Was resentment what I felt now? I wasn't sure. I watched him silently as he drew a small black cheroot from the breast pocket of his shirt — a checkered lumberjack shirt, virtually identical to the one in May's picture. Now that I knew he was alive, a good many things began to make sense. But I still wasn't sure about May. To what extent had she manipulated me — despite her reluctance? Or had she too been duped by her father? It scarcely made any difference; not now. And he'd certainly duped everyone else. While we'd been chasing all over the world, he'd had his feet up, relaxing in his woodsy lair. It was even comfortable. The wood stove was primitive, but its heat would be abundant; the kitchen table was a nice piece of pine; and the Coleman pressure lamps would provide enough light for a pleasant read in the evening. There was even one engraving, beautifully framed: palms, waving gently on the beach of some Pacific isle. Perhaps Robert Gibbings…

Struggling to take everything in, I stepped to the cabin's single window and parted the curtain. It was late afternoon now, growing darker each minute; already the clearing held an opaque, silvery light, like the back of a mirror: crouched in the dark margin of the woods, Subotin would be completely invisible. If he was there… I turned back to the room. Brightman lit his cheroot; behind the cloud of black smoke it produced, his eyes regarded me impassively. It was my move, he seemed to be saying — but he was planning his too. He was not only alive, I realized, he was still very formidable. God knows what I felt about him; his existence, in itself, was still too disorienting. And yet this turn of events, however unsettling, also gave me a certain sense of satisfaction. For on some level my intuition had proved right. He'd been alive all along, and as I tracked into his past, he'd been waiting ahead of me, around the next corner. I said, "Where is May now?"

"In Toronto, I assume."

"Did she come here first, on her way?"

"I haven't seen her for weeks, Mr. Thorne." A lie, and it stole a little of his dignity. I shook my head. "We don't have time, Mr. Brightman. There's no point trying to hide things. I saw Grainger. I know all about Florence Raines. And Dimitrov. I saw Berri, and he told me the truth. Hamilton… your embassy package… Yuri Shastov… I know all that. I know May was in Harrisburg, and I know what she was doing. I know…" But then I stopped. I'd asked the question because I was trying to work out how Subotin had found him — presumably he'd been following May — but this too really didn't make very much difference. So I just added, The pickup in the clearing at the end of the track… I assume it's yours?"

Brightman looked at me, his eyes level with mine. I'd told him that I'd unraveled all the secrets of his life, but he only gave a slight nod — an acknowledgment, but hardly of defeat. "You've been very enterprising." He shrugged. "And yes, the truck is mine. I was about to walk up there. You can't drink from the stream anymore, so every other day I go into the village for water."

On the table, a length of rope was looped through the handles of three plastic milk jugs.

"I wouldn't advise it," I said. "You'll find a man waiting there. His name is Subotin, or at least that's how I know him. In any case, he's Russian, he has a gun, and he's planning to kill you — or worse."

The effect of this was immediate, though I wouldn't call it devastating: you just don't "devastate" men like Brightman. But the news hit him hard. The skin tightened over his skull; for an instant, he was very much his age. Steadying himself, he drew on the cheroot.

"You're sure, Mr. Thorne?"

"Yes."

"If you know as much 3s you say you do, you know how important this is. Tell me—"

"I saw him at the Alva, the place where May was staying. I followed him here. He's in the clearing with the truck. I went around him, following the stream, then picked up the path." I added, "I assume he followed May when she came here."

He shook his head. "May was never here."

"You must have met her."

"Yes, but in Harrisburg."

"Then he must have followed you from that meeting."

"No." He walked over to the window and looked out. "Remember, Mr. Thorne, I've been covering my tracks longer than you've been alive. No one followed me here. But you say he found Hamilton—"

"He killed Hamilton, Mr. Brightman. I suspect he also killed Grainger, and he very nearly killed Berri."

He turned to me. "Years ago, Hamilton was here. It's possible—"

"Does it make any difference?"

"Oh yes. He only wants the money — but May's got it now. If he found out about this place from Hamilton — if he doesn i know about her — then she's safe. That's the difference."

And now his eyes met mine. At once his expression changed utterly. His sophistication vanished; calculation, cunning, duplicity — even his strong sense of himself — dropped away and were replaced by a look of total frankness and vulnerability. This was his heart; this was all that he cared about; everything else was pretense. This look lasted only a moment, but it was almost frightening… Relief spread through him; but in its wake came resignation, acceptance, surrender. All at once, in retrospect, everything May had done — her fears in the beginning — seemed much more reasonable; she had understood how completely he was devoted to her. Feeling an echo of this now, I said quickly, "Don't be too sure."

I was right; even this one hint of doubt as to her safety flashed life back into his eyes.

"Yes," he said, "you can never be too sure with him. Do you know who he is, Mr. Thorne? Who he represents?"

"People in the Soviet military. With friends in high places."

"You have been thorough. He was in the GRU, military intelligence — though it's really just a subset of the KGB. His 'friends' are in the Navy."

"And they want to make the U.S.S.R. safe for the Russians?"

'They want power, Mr. Thorne, for themselves and their country — and they know that Communism merely gets in the way. They want an efficient economy, national loyalty, rational political structures… so they can have even bigger guns and more submarines. They'll try to get this power through the military and the secret police — they're going to try and bring them together, end their infighting. Once they've done that, they'll turn Russia from a Communist dictatorship into a military one."

"And you want to stop this?"

He turned away from the window, and smiled. "No, Mr. Thorne. I just want to be left alone. That's why — I was in despair — I sent the key back there. Let them'deal with it — let them deal with their own damn problems in their own damnable country."

I looked at him carefully; he was lying, or partly — but then he didn't know that I knew who Shastov really was, only that I knew his name. But maybe it wasn't entirely a lie… he'd been in despair and by returning the key to the gold to Shastov he'd been making a final, despairing gesture. But perhaps, too, he'd hoped to send everyone on a wild-goose chase through the Soviet Union while he and May sneaked away quietly — this might have been his last, despairing hope. I said, "You say May's got the money… do you truly still want it?"

The look he gave me was compounded of pity and anger. "Don't be a fool, Mr. Thorne. I suppose I'll destroy it, burn it… They're only paper, you know, those certificates — the real gold's in a Swiss bank vault and it can stay there till eternity for all I care. I only want to make sure… I only want to live out my life with no more shame than I already feel."

But I knew what he wanted to make sure of: that the gold no longer served as a prize that drew everyone on… toward May. I said, "Maybe that's what you want, but from what I've seen of Subotin, it's not the kind of sentiment he'll find terribly compelling. He'll kill you, Mr. Brightman. Or he'll hold you as a way of getting the money from May. So I suggest we get the hell out of here. If we move fast — before he gets too impatient — we should be able to go back the same way I came."

"That sounds like an excellent idea — for you. But not me. Even if I got away, it wouldn't do any good. Now that he knows I'm alive, he'll only track me down somewhere else."

"Not if we call the police."

He smiled. "I can hardly do that."

I flipped my hand. "It was a long time ago, Mr. Bright-man. I suppose the FBI would want to talk to you, but I doubt—"

He shook his head. Once more he was completely self-possessed. "I doubt if you're so naive as to believe that the FBI would be so forgiving, but that's not the real problem. You forget: I'm dead. Buried. If I reappear…"

I hesitated. I'd forgotten that little detail — and I suddenly realized what a nasty little detail it was. But when I looked him in the eye, his gaze didn't flinch. He smiled again. "You see?"

"Whose body was it?"

"Does it make any difference?"

"As a practical matter it might. Was it a bum, some drunk you found in an alley?"

His face twisted sardonically. "No, Mr. Thome. He was a friend — a 'comrade' if you like. I was attempting, through him, to make contact with our former employers."

"Another Hamilton?"

"A more substantial fool. He still believed."

"And what happened?"

"I'm not sure. He had never severed his connections, or at least not as completely as myself — which is what made him useful. It is possible he transmitted my requests and received certain orders in return. Or possibly he decided to kill me on his own because he was afraid that I might expose him. I threatened to do so — I admit that. But I had to bully him. In any case, he did try to kill me… and failed. I killed him instead… and though I've lived a life that I regret almost totally, that's one detail that will never grate on my conscience.

No. The worst of it was the next half hour, when I had to sit in the motel room with his body beside me. But that's when it came to me. Preston was smaller than me, but more or less the right age. It seemed worth a try. If I failed, after all, I could simply stick with my original plan and kill myself. So I bought a shotgun, dressed him in my clothes, set him in my car, and blew his head off. It worked — worked too well for me to undo it now." He walked over to the stove, opened the lid, and tossed his cheroot into the orange glow of the fire. Turning back, he added, "The point is: I'm now dead. And I'm going to stay that way. Everything hinges on it. With me dead, everyone else is much better oif."

"I'm not sure May would agree."

But he was two jumps ahead of me. "Yes, in the short run. But I'm going to die soon enough anyway. I'd already worked that out, you see, when I first went away. I knew it would hurt her — but she'd get over it, and still have a long life ahead of her. All that hasn't changed."

Once again, I sensed the despair and resignation beneath the surface of this man. In truth, it was more than that: it was a kind of self-contempt.

Perhaps he was reading my mind, for now, turning away from the stove and lighting another cheroot, he said, "Do you know what a Communist is, Mr. Thome? How you can spot one? Pick him out of a crowd? Let me tell you. It's very simple: a Communist is that person who can most skillfully justify the greatest number of the murdered dead. Which makes me a failed Communist. Undoubtedly, I can still murder and maim, but I could no longer justify it — I've lost the greatest skill I could once claim to possess."

I nodded my head toward the window. "Very interesting… but a bit theoretical. We have a practical problem."

"You're wrong. I'm being very practical. The solution to our problem is that I stay right here. As you say, Subotin will eventually grow impatient and come and find me — and either I'll kill him or he'll kill me. Ultimately, one more dead body won't make much difference, not to my conscience. What I want you to do — no, please, hear me out — is to make sure that you're safe. God knows, you've done enough. Please don't argue. Just… just believe me, Mr. Thorne. For reasons you may be able to guess — but for others I'm sure you can't — your safety is important to me. May and I have asked far, far too much of you already, and when I said that everyone is better off with me dead… well, that includes you as well."

For a second, this remark hung in the air. And of course I knew then — and knew that I'd known all along. My father had spied for this man. My father had been the other man in the State Department, whom Hamilton had refused to reveal himself to. Here, at long last, right out in the open, was the "something personal" that Travin had hinted at. As a revelation, I suppose it was obvious enough, and it hardly struck like a blow — God knows, I'd let myself come to see it so gradually — but for one instant I closed my eyes and winced in pain. I think Brightman saw this, but, between us, there was a collusive failure of nerve and neither of us said anything. Which was probably all for the best. Turning my head, I again glanced out the window. It was raining again, streaking the glass, hissing down on the roof… and hissing down on Subotin, a professional killer. For the time being, we'd have to let the dead bury the dead — or we'd be joining them. I turned back.

"Do you have a gun?" I asked.

"Yes. A couple of old shotguns, and I think there might be a rifle. Don't worry, Mr. Thorne. I won't have much of a chance, but I will have a chance. If he makes a mistake…"

"That's not what I'm thinking. There might be a better way."

"I'm not interested, Mr. Thorne. Just get out. I beg you."

"Do you really expect me to simply walk away, leaving you here?"

"Of course. Why not? Conscience doesn't require anyone to be a fool, Mr. Thorne. If you truly want to do me a favor, save yourself and continue being a friend to my daughter. Isn't that why you began this — to help her?"

"Just listen for a moment. Subotin doesn't know I'm here— and he doesn't know that you know he's here. That gives us the advantage. In that clearing, he's out in the open. If I go back by the stream — the way I came — and you go straight down the path, we could take him from either side."

He began to protest, but then stopped himself. Because he knew it might work.

I said, "And when I say 'take him,' I mean take him alive. If possible. We can knock him out, tie him up, get him back here. Then give me a couple of hours on a telephone. I used to be a journalist, Mr. Brightman — I suppose you know that. I have certain contacts — CIA contacts. I can guarantee that they'd happily take Subotin off our hands. You could stick around and justify yourself or clear out, that would be entirely up to you. Either way, I don't think you'd have to worry about him ever again."

Brightman took the cheroot from his mouth, and gave a little smile. "If this fails, I'd be no worse off anyway."

"Exactly. Nor would I."

"You're sure?"

"Just get me a gun."

He crossed the room. Pushed into the corner between the bunk and the wall was a hardboard closet. The guns were in there: though he had to go around, opening drawers, before he discovered some shells. I looked out the window and saw that it was growing much darker. Not good; Subotin would be growing restive, waiting for Brightman to show. For a moment, I wondered if this whole scheme wasn't crazy, but it was the best I could think of. And I wasn't being naive; capturing Subotin was a long shot, but keeping Brightman from killing him might even be harder. I knew something else: Brightman killing me wasn't entirely out of the question.

Now, though, he brought me the gun. It was a venerable double-barreled Stevens, from the era of exposed hammers and twin triggers; the sort of gun I'd learned to shoot with. I opened it and loaded both barrels, then put two more shells into my pocket. I tried to look him in the eye then; but he couldn't meet my glance. Yet instead of confirming my suspicions, this suggested another: that, rather than killing Subotin, he'd contrive events so that Subotin killed him. It was a paradox. Brightman had been resurrected in front of my eyes, but so far as he was concerned, he was dead — and better off for it, just as he'd said.

But I'd have to cross that bridge when I came to it. I looked at my watch. "It's almost four. The quicker, the better. Give me till half past to get into position, then wait for my signal. Do you speak any Russian?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I'll shout 'Stoy!'—'Stay where you are'—when I'm ready. Wait and see what happens then before you reveal yourself."

He nodded. "All right." And then he stuck out his hand— though whether this was a sign of alliance or a farewell, I couldn't be sure.

I went to the door and stepped out. The air was cold and raw, the day darkening swiftly. The sky held all the shades of a bruise; with the drizzle, the trees in the little clearing had lost definition while the surrounding forest blurred to a dark, indefinite smudge. Slipping the gun into the crook of my arm, I stepped down from the cabin.

Then it happened.

Three hard cracks—a flurry of splinters flying into my hair. Throwing myself to the ground, I scrambled desperately under the cabin.

23

Everything happened so quickly now that there was no time for thought. My breath was knocked out of me as I hit the ground, and as I rolled and twisted under the cabin a stone slashed my knee and something reached down from above to gouge at my cheek. Yet I felt nothing — not even terror: I just kept rolling until I banged up against one of the pilings that held up the cabin. Wedged against this, I sprawled flat on my belly. I was in a low, dark crawl space. Six inches above my head were the floorboards of the cabin; on either side were assorted bits of junk and debris — old boards, a rake, a screen, a splintered scrap of plywood that cut at my hand; and all I could see in front of me was a maze of pilings and the narrow strip of light where the foundation ended. And then another shot rang out and I pressed my face into a puddle of mud and dead leaves. Somewhere over my head, the shot smashed through the cabin, the sound feeding back with a nasty whine. I began wiggling back even farther, till my head hit a joist. That stopped me and then I listened for a moment. Subotin was calling something, but I couldn't hear what it was.

And as I peered at that gray strip of light all I could see were the stalks of dead grass around the foundation. Now came two more shots, quick, one on top of the other, and I wormed back some more. Sensing light behind me, I began slewing around. A cobweb stickily matted over my mouth, I pushed an old bucket out of my way, but then I scrambled ahead, elbows working madly, and rolled into the open. I pulled myself up — and just then a voice hissed, "Thorne? Is it you?"

I spun around — almost more startled by this than by the shots. But then I realized it was Bnghtman, on the other side of the wall; there was no window, but he was whispering, his lips pressed to a crack.

"Listen! He thinks you are me. He must. Run! Get into the trees. There's a path that takes you down to the stream—stay in the stream! Hurry!"

I could scarcely understand this — I was too confused — but even as my brain fought to get control of my tongue, I heard Brightman rolling away and sensed Subotin, on the far side of the cabin, making his dash through the clearing. I looked up. The dark, oysterish light swam and pulsed in front of my eyes. Here, behind the cabin, the clearing continued for perhaps fifty yards, the black massed shadows of the trees beckoning beyond. There was no time to think, to "decide"; I just started to run, running for my very life, head down, lungs gasping, one step fleeing another. Leaping over rocks, blundering through bushes, I barely knew where I was going, for in the dying light the world had lost all definition. Everything floated in murk, space itself had discovered new rules. Before me, the safe shadow of the forest seemed to retreat forever, like a mirage; but vague, remote forms suddenly came into focus an inch away from my face: the bare bones of a birch, the bright beaded pattern of a spider's web, a withered seed pod hanging from a bush. And in the same way, even as I began to feel I was running through a hopeless dream, the dark trees suddenly reached out and grabbed me.

Only then did I allow myself a single look back — the clearing was empty. At once, taking a breath, I began running again. Then, a moment later, I stumbled onto a path. The path to the stream: for the first time I realized I was doing just what Brightman had told me. And why did that raise a doubt? But my desperation was still too intense to consider this question and I merely followed the path until, just as he'd said, it joined up with the streambed. Jumping down over the edge of the bank — which gave me the protection of a parapet — I finally stopped and turned around.

Struggling to catch my breath, my face pressed to the scurf of dead grass along the top of the bank, I looked into the dark whorls of shadow that spread back, into the forest. But there was nothing to see, and all I could hear was the rush of my breath in my throat and the whispering wind in the trees. I was safe — for the moment. But where was Subotin? What had happened to Brightman? What should I do?

He thinks you're me… Run… Stay in the stream…

Now Brightman's words came back to me… and with them, cold as the shadows around me, a swirling mist of doubt: the same small doubt I'd felt in the cabin, but now a thousand times magnified. Had I walked into a trap? All at once, every hint and fear and suspicion I'd felt these past weeks seemed to become crystal clear. I cursed — swore aloud: right there, staring back into the woods, my lips against the mud of the bank — for I was sure I understood now. Admitting the truth about my father let other truths in as well. Why had / been chosen to play May's protector? Because Brightman knew he could always control me — my father's guilt gave him an even greater hold over me than he'd had over Hamilton. But I'd gone too far; found out too much. That's why Brightman might have been forced to do a deal with Subotin — two wily foxes joining their cunning — a deal whose final clause was my elimination. So Subotin had let me see him in Harrisburg; I'd been intended to follow him here. Yes: the ambush in the clearing had been designed for me to walk into, and now that I'd escaped, Bright-man was trying to set up another. Stay in the stream…

But almost as soon as I thought this, my mind jerked away. It couldn't be true… Brightman, coming out of his cabin when I'd first seen him, had not been a man expecting to hear a murderous shot. And May — could she do this? After what had passed between us on Hamilton's barge, I simply wasn't prepared to believe it. Besides, Brightman was probably right. Subotin didn't know who I was; he could have had no idea that I was in the cabin at all. Subotin thought I was Brightman. It was probably the only reason why I was still alive. Knowing Subotin's background, it was hard to believe that he could have missed me as I came out of the cabin door; despite the bad light, it was just too easy a shot. But he'd not been meaning to kill, only to frighten: because his main interest remained the money, and for that he needed Brightman alive.

But why the stream, why stay here? I looked around; curving through the trees, the streambed was dark as a tunnel except for the faint glitter from the trickle of water that still flowed along it. Yet the darkness made very thin cover; if he knew I was there, if he was watching, any man up on the bank would have a clear shot…

My mind leapt back and forth, circuits of paranoia arcing through exhaustion and fear — and then, almost as if these mental currents had set it off, the detonating sound of a shot boomed through the darkness. Instinctively, I pressed myself flat, hugging the bank. Yet, even as the shot faded, I realized it was nowhere near here… and I found myself staring down the streambed, back toward the cottage—back toward the road, if you went far enough. Logically, this should have increased my confusion, but in fact it decided me, and rolling onto my back, I skidded down the bank to the base of the streambed. At this point, I don't know what I was thinking, or even if I was thinking at all, for as I headed along the stream, I was going in the direction of danger, toward the spot where the shot had come from. Perhaps I felt I had no choice — at least, in that direction, I had the chance of reaching the road and my car, while going the other way would only carry me deeper into the bush. Or possibly I already suspected the injustice I might have done to Brightman, at least in my mind. And then, with a terrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I was almost certain of this. The deep boom of a second shot rolled up the streambed toward me — and I knew this was the sound of a shotgun, not the rifle Subotin was carrying. Rather than setting a trap for me, Brightman was trying to draw him away from my trail. With a wrench of guilty desperation, I rushed on. It wasn't too hard — right down at the water, the streambed was gravel and hard-packed mud, and there was still just enough light to see by: a wedge of dusky light pressed down through the darkness of the forest around the stream and, high up, there was the first opalescent glimmer of a moon. In a few minutes, I'd reached a spot that must have been level with the cabin, though the building was in fact out of sight. I rested there, listening; but after a moment, hearing nothing, I moved forward again. Soon I had no idea where I was; there were too many switchbacks and curves, and the dark, hulking mass of the woods up on the bank made a featureless backdrop. Then, in succession, I ran into two obstacles. An enormous pine, undermined by the encroaching bank of the stream, had toppled across it; its dead, brittle branches were as bad as barbed wire. And, just beyond this, the stream narrowed sharply: which, compressing the water, created a deep enough flow to force me up on the bank. Now, for a good ten minutes I had to fight through brush, in the pitch darkness, which inevitably made a hell of a racket; but then the stream broadened, its flow fell back to the same meager trickle, and I was able to walk along the bed once again.

Five minutes later, I stopped, knowing I must be close to the spot where the shots had come from. Thus, if Brightman had been giving me a chance to escape, I'd defeated his intention — but if that had been his intention, why had he told me to stay in the stream? Probably I should have been able to figure out the old man's plan at this point, but a moment later I didn't need to. Moving forward cautiously, I heard a slipping, sliding, scrabbling sound up ahead.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

For a second, I thought it might be an animal, but it came again and I knew that it wasn't. Someone had skidded down the bank of the stream. Subotin… or Brightman…

I held my breath; in front of me, the streambed stretched ahead into a black, dizzying void. Then stone knocked against stone… rattled away…

Silence: the trickling stream: the wind rustling past.

"Brightman? I know you are there. And your old blunderbuss doesn't frighten me at all."

It was Subotin — it had to be. Standing just where I was, I slowly looked around. I was virtually in the middle of the stream; and the stream here was at its widest point. I couldn't reach either bank before he—

"You see? There is no point. Don't try to hide. Come here. I won't hurt you, Brightman. You know that. For me, that makes no sense."

More silence… the crunch of a footstep… then the glare of a flashlight.

For a second, I was dazzled, like a jacklighted deer. But in fact the beam wasn't pointed toward me; it probed along the top edge of the opposite bank. Shadows leapt up and danced, and for an instant, as in an old photograph, the vague outlines of the bushes and trees were tipped with silver. Then the beam started moving. Wet stones and mud glistened and gleamed… The arc swept closer… I lifted the shotgun—

A shot boomed through the darkness. At once the light died.

But my finger still hadn't touched the trigger. The shot, a great red flash, had been fired from high up on the far bank. Brightman… it had to be… And then he fired again, a red flashing strobe that etched my shadow into the darkness. But he'd missed, for a quick burst of rifle fire exploded in front of me and sent me scrambling for cover.

I lay, pressed down behind a small pile of rocks. More shots, coming so fast they seemed to stumble over each other, whined up the streambed. I could hear them slash through the bush, thump into the bank… but all on the far side of the stream from myself. And now I understood… stay with the stream… and a feeling passed through me that I'd never felt before in my life. I had to kill a man now — there was no other choice. Brightman and I were both foxes now, and he was deliberately drawing the hound close to my teeth. What I needed was cover. These rocks weren't enough; if I missed with my first shot, he'd have me. The bank… but I'd make noise getting up there and, for an instant, going over the top, I'd be caught in silhouette from below.

Then, as I listened to the stream, the simplest idea of all slipped into my mind.

Quietly, running in a low crouch, I retraced my steps down the streambed — hearing two more shots crackling behind me — until I'd reached the spot where the banks constricted. Here, after a bare slope of gravel, there was only the water itself. It was about two feet deep, flowing swiftly, bubbling over the stones.

Silently, I stepped to the edge.

The first touch was like ice. With the next, a steel band gripped my ankle. My foot skidded… I splashed… but the rush of the water covered it and I kept going. In the middle, where the water reached up to my knees, I looked around. A few feet away, three bigger rocks formed a dam, a curve as neat as the back of a chair. Wading quietly toward them, I sat myself down.

The shock of the cold was a kind of compression, a fierce grip on my chest. Yet I had what I wanted — cover: even if he'd been expecting me, he'd never look here. Scooping up mud from the bottom, I blackened my face. Now I was just another rock, a lump of dark in the lumpy black darkness — even the fiercest hound wouldn't catch my scent here. I didn't move. I don't think I breathed. The cold, something concrete to struggle against, was almost a blessing… And then I thought that I saw him, working along, in a crouch, on the far side… or maybe I didn't, for nothing happened. I waited. Don't think. Hold your breath. Be the water. The stones. Your reflection like syrup… your shadow a mist…

And then he was there, and so close I almost jumped — a bulge in the darkness I might have reached out and touched. I think he must have crawled the last yards flat on his belly. But now, slowly, he rose. His shape disengaged itself from the shadows. He came up to the water. At the edge, he stepped out, onto a stone… Twelve feet. No more. One step. Only one single step more… The barrel of my gun was actually under the surface, the action and butt resting on my flexed knee… One motion. Don't think. Do it, do it. Up and point and squeeze the front trigger…

Did Brightman know I was there? Had he seen me? Or did he just sense me, or perhaps Subotin himself — the old fox now turning the tables and scenting the hound? I never found out, afterward there was no time to ask, but even as my own finger tensed on the trigger, a shot erupted high on the bank. I think he must have fired into the air, certainly he didn't come close to Subotin, but if he'd been trying to draw the other man out, he couldn't have done any better. Because Subotin now flashed on his light. Its beam traced a brilliant path through the darkness, sparkling on the water, glistening lustrously across the wet stones, and turning his face into a smooth, silver mask. And that's when I fired. Once. Then again. For a split second, an image was burned into my retina: the banks of the stream, the water rushing up to my chest, the man tumbling back, his arms outflung… Then there was only the echo, a vague red pulse before my eyes, and I was staggering up, stumbling and splashing in horror.

"Thome, is that you? Are you all right?"

"Yes… for Christ's sake don't shoot."

My voice, that strangled sound — it had to belong to somebody else. I was dazed and I was freezing; freezing and trembling all over. Brightman came down the bank, clattering over the stones. "I only hoped you understood what I meant. He didn't know there were two of us, I was certain…" But I didn't hear anything more. I was staring down at this bloody shape in the water. The current bubbled around him, eddying against the curve of his shoulders; bobbed his hand on the surface, splayed out his arms. And this time I could not look away; could not retch, could not even spit the foul taste from my mouth. For the shot whose echo had now faded in the night air could only summon another, and the sight in front of my eyes was merely a memory made real.

Coming up, seeing me, Brightman must have understood this. For I'm sure his words were meant only to comfort — they could hardly be revenge for the dark thoughts I'd had about him — but their kindness delivered the only blow I wasn't expecting.

"Thorne, I did all I could. I swear. That afternoon, we tried everything, your mother and I, but nothing we said, nothing we did, could—"

I looked at him in horror. " 'We'—what do you mean?"

"What I say. We…" But then his face turned aghast. "Dear God, I assumed you knew that. They were in it together, your mother and father. Both of them. From the very beginning."

All I could say about the next hour was that it passed: like certain hours in the depth of an illness, it took all I had to get through it.

I was stunned, physically, spiritually — if, in fact, any spirit was left to me. Half of me was already dead; the other half wanted to die. And indeed, I probably came very close to getting my wish. I'd never felt so cold in my life; pneumonia was a foregone conclusion, death by hypothermia a very near thing.

Yet there was almost no time to worry about dying. We had to move fast. This was Pennsylvania, we were into the hunting season, but it was possible that our shooting had attracted attention. There wasn't even time to feel the horror of the irony: we were now acting out the same scenario that Bright-man and my mother had acted out long ago. A bloody corpse… a death that had to be turned into an accident… what else could we do? Since I was already wet, I went through Subotin's pockets for his keys and spare clips of ammunition, and checked to make sure that nothing in his wallet tied him to either of us. His gun — a Valmet semiautomatic — had fallen into the stream, but I was able to find it and threw Brightman's shotgun down in its place. After that, there wasn't much we could do. If the body was found right away, there'd be lots of questions, but this was a deserted spot and he might lie here all winter; by spring, no one would be able to say what had happened.

We returned to the cabin. It was vital that I get into dry clothes, and though Brightman was certain that no one in the area had recognized him, we had to make the place look as if no one had been here for weeks. He began cleaning up while I changed into a pair of his pants and then huddled close to the fire. Slowly, I began to thaw, and since the fire was going anyway, I made us some coffee, the first swallow sending a marvelous spill of heat through my chest. When I had that down, Brightman went to a cupboard and got me some whiskey; I stirred in a splash and its burning sweetness began washing away the bitterness that now filled my mouth. I came back to myself; rose through the fever; focused my eyes. And that's when I said, "Tell me what you know… what you know of my mother."

He was rolling a sleeping bag. He paused, just for an instant, then went on, stuffing it into a blue nylon bag. "I don't know very much."

"Maybe. But about some things, you know more than me."

There was another instant of hesitation; then, abruptly, he said, "I didn't meet her till 1942, Mr. Thorne, when she came to America. I think she was at the Sorbonne and became involved with the PCF in the ordinary way. Communism, idealism, the Popular Front — in those days, it was all part of being young and alive."

"Except with her it went further."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps that was just chance. I don't know how it happened… I think — but this is only a guess — that she mixed herself up with some of the expatriate leftists who were in Paris then. I know she met Melinda Marling, for example — the American woman who married Donald Maclean. There were a lot of Americans. That's probably how she met your father."

"Had she been recruited by then?"

"Yes, I think so."

"So their marriage—"

"No. No, you shouldn't think that. She always knew, you see, that he wasn't a Communist, not really. She once told me that: 'But I love him anyway,' she said."

"So what he did… what he did for you — that all came through her?"

"No. That would be unfair to both of them. He wasn't seduced, Mr. Thorne, at least not in that sense. They each acted from slightly different motives, but both were completely sincere." He paused then, and looked back at me, lighting one of his cheroots and throwing a tin box of them toward me. "He was a decent man, a diplomat who knew what the Nazis were doing and was appalled at his own country's lack of response. He once told me that the most horrible and shameful period of his life was the years when America stayed out of the war. That showed what America really was, he said."

I thought of Hamilton then — the "decent" man; I couldn't help it. And to place my father on the same level made my stomach turn over. But I steadied myself. "At that time, though, the Russians weren't in the war either."

"No, but he excused them. They signed the Molotov-Rib-bentrop Pact to buy time, not because they wanted one quarter of Poland. That was true, in a way: they in fact wanted both."

"Then that's when he started working for them?"

"Yes."

"But that couldn't have been through my mother. He sent her away — before Paris fell."

"Francoise — your mother, I mean — was an amateur. By then the professionals had taken over."

"Like you?"

"I'm not sure I deserve the title, but yes — like me. Though I wasn't the first. I only assumed control over him after the war."

I'd been sitting wrapped in a blanket; now I tossed it over to him and he used it to bundle up some of his food. Watching him work, I thought: I discovered his secrets but he's telling me mine.

Then I said, "After the war, when you knew him, what did he do?"

"At first he kept on. But he became more and more uneasy. McCarthy, the witch-hunts — that sort of thing kept him going. But he wasn't a Communist and he certainly wasn't a Stalinist. He'd supported the Russians because that seemed the best way to strike at the Germans, but as time went on, thinking like that became more and more difficult."

"He was hooked, though."

"Yes."

"By you."

"He was on the same hook I was on, Mr. Thorne. But I expect your mother was much more important. She believed. I was prepared to let him wiggle away, and in fact I did — he began shifting his career, taking himself out of the path of the more important material. But your mother would never have let him stop altogether."

"Except he did. With that gun."

"That week was terrible for him — it was the week of the Hungarian Uprising, you remember—"

"I was only a boy."

"Well, it was a terrible week for a lot of people. Your mother became very frightened and phoned me — she was afraid he'd turn himself in. I panicked, I'll admit… partly because that's just what I wanted to do myself. You met Hamilton. I called him, and asked him to do something — since they were both in the State Department — but he refused. That made me even more frightened. I knew, if he did turn himself in, that I was finished. He was an honorable man — he wouldn't have wanted to betray me. But he would have."

"So what happened?"

"We came here and talked. I'd had this place for years, you see; it made a discreet, convenient meeting place between Toronto and Washington — your father had helped me find it… He was terribly upset. The Russians hadn't sent in the tanks yet but he knew they were going to — he had access to all the State Department estimates and that's what they were saying. I told him he couldn't be sure and calmed him down. But of course he knew he was right. Still, I always wondered if that's why he did it when he did—before the Russians made their move. That way, at the end, he could still have a little doubt, a doubt which was equivalent to a last faint hope that things might have turned out differently. In any case, he became very despondent and your mother got a message to me, but I didn't feel safe coming here so we agreed to meet in the woods. I remember wondering later whether he'd brought that gun intending to shoot us all, but in fact he'd killed himself before I arrived. I remember, just as I was leaving, that there was someone — I always wondered…"

"Yes. That was me."

"I'm very sorry."

"What happened after that? What was my mother's reaction?"

"In what way?"

"Toward you."

"It… steeled her, I suppose you might say. She went on. I didn't really want her to, but she did. She passed me gossip, little items… It was useless but it made her feel she was important and let me… keep an eye on her."

"You mean, in case she ever took it into her head to betray you."

"That wasn't a worry. I just felt responsible… even for you, if you don't mind my saying so. When we met, she'd usually mention you. One year I realized you were in New York at the same time as May, so I arranged that you meet… and I suppose that's one more thing I should apologize for."

Should he have apologized for anything? Then, I didn't care; later, I wasn't sure. But what he said after this, even if he meant it as an apology, was a hundred times better, for it seemed to explain. And though he was attempting to describe my father, to give me some guide as to how I should feel toward what he'd done, his words ended by giving me a clearer picture of Bright-man himself.

"I just want you to know something," he said, "about your father and who he was. Above all, I don't want you to think he was that much different from the person you remember— don't overestimate the importance of any of this. You knew him, as his son, better than I ever did. Who you are is a truer indication of his qualities than any of his 'secrets' reveal. And I'm not trying to comfort you — in fact, I'm trying to warn you about the dangers of romanticizing him. That's what's happened to those times, you see; they've become part of the movies. Even the Depression — even treason — has been given the golden glow of nostalgia. I hear it all the time. People were wrong — but committed. What they did was mistaken — but daring. You see? Philby, Blunt, Burgess, Maclean… they can all be turned into heroes. I can even do that to myself, and you may be tempted to think of your father that way. Don't. You'll do him a disservice. It's easy, looking back, to forget the distinctions between people, but I lived through those times and, believe me, they were there. Some people were attracted to Communism because capitalism was collapsing — people were starving — and the liberal democracies were turning Fascist. In principle, there was nothing shameful in that; under the circumstances, it only made sense to consider alternatives, and Communism — at first glance — was no worse than the others. But only at first glance. Closer inspection revealed to a good number of people enough of the truth to turn them away. There's distinction number one… because, of course, a good many stayed. And of course each purge, murder, or massacre eliminated some of them… and these, if you like, are subcategories of diminishing gullibility. Some could swallow what they said about Trotsky, but not about Bukharin, and that should honorably distinguish them — say — from people who were still justifying Andropov when he was murdering Imre Nagy in Budapest. Compare the two extremes, if you like. At one end of the spectrum is the loyal, dedicated Communist who left the Party over the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — and at the other are the loyal, dedicated Communists of today who still try to pretend that the Gulag only existed because Stalin was mad. Of course, I'm condemning myself. I've been dedicated and loyal and committed to barbarism… though in fact that's probably too generous, too grandiose. In the end, I haven't even served an ideology, but rather a second-rate country that can't even feed itself. And if, toward the end of my life, I've come to realize this — realize the obvious — it's been the result of pure accident___May, as you know, was an accident.

That chance — having her — loving her… a freak of sentimentality… is the only reason I can speak this much sense. But now compare me to your father. Draw that distinction. You see? You can't claim him as a hero, but give credit where credit is due. He saw the truth; not immediately, but before many others. And where others permitted themselves to be blackmailed — literally, or through their own guilt, or simply by circumstance — he refused. This far, but no farther… and the ultimate price for his mistake was paid by himself." He paused then and shrugged. "For me, his death wasn't even entirely wasted, because when I saw him lying there in the woods, I understood in a way I hadn't before. This is what it comes down to. This is what it all means. One more dead body. . " What could I say?

Not much, I suppose: it was his speech, he spoke it well, and I had neither the experience nor the wisdom required to comment. Besides, there was no time. We'd done as much as we could to the hut, and Subotin's gun, disassembled, was stowed in my bag — we couldn't take a chance on the police tracing a high-powered rifle to a man who'd tripped over his shotgun. Staggering beneath cartons and satchels, we made our way down the path and up to the road. Last problems: inching the pickup around Subotin's parked car. Last details: getting the scabbard from the back seat, remembering to shove his keys over the visor. Then, headlights off, we drove up the side road to the road where I'd parked. My car was still there; no one had touched it. No one, we both felt certain, had seen us. So, still clad in the old man's sweater and pants, I got down from the pickup; and then, for a last instant, I leaned on the door. Now, much too late, my mind was filling with questions, questions that only he could give answers to. If May was the key to his life, how had he found her? What was the truth about Dimitrov… and Grainger… and what did he know about Travin?… Perhaps he saw all this running through my mind, and I think he relished keeping these mysteries. But then, at the end, I gave him one: or at least we exchanged them. For just as he extended his hand, I told him to wait, went to my car, and fetched him that little traveling icon that Yuri Shastov had given me.

"For May," I said, "from all her fathers, real and imagined."

He took it from me, opened it. And then his eyes seemed to beseech me. "Do you know?" he asked. "Have you found out?"

"Whatever I've found, Mr. Brightman, you knew it already."

"Then I beg you — don't look any further."

And even as I formed the words to ask what he meant, I knew I'd waited too long. Letting go of my hand, he backed the truck around. And finally, two headlights running over a hill — a last image of golden eyes — Harry Brightman passed out of my life. But not quite.

24

A year passed.

As years go, I've known better.

But I survived; I suppose you always do. There was my work, the blessed necessity of earning a living, even a lady… Life went on and, despite what I felt, refused to leave me behind. It's even possible that Brightman's little speech played its part. What I'd learned about my parents — the tale my father's headstone had finally told — changed a great deal, but not everything, and perhaps the most important things stayed just the same.

In any event, by the spring, I was halfway back to myself, and with the mystery of my father's death finally resolved, and accepted, all those other mysteries began to come back into my mind. There were enough of them, God knows. Would Subo-tin's body ever be found? Did Loginov know he was dead? Who was Travin? What role had he played? And what had happened to Grainger? — though, in fact, a couple of discreet phone calls to Halifax answered that one: it seemed that the old man had survived, and was soldiering on at his clinic.

Indeed, as I worried away at these questions, I was able to come up with quite a few answers, for, in a general way, I was now reasonably certain about what had happened.

Subotin — it seemed obvious — had wanted money to finance the activities of his group, and through his contacts in Soviet intelligence had learned about Brightman; a unique find, to say the least. Immensely wealthy and immensely vulnerable, he would have been well worth pursuing even without the remains of his "gold for furs" fortune. And Subotin had pursued him — but then, I speculated, had pushed too hard. I was thinking of May. So far as I knew, Subotin had left her alone, and indeed she would have been too obvious a person for Brightman to pass the gold to. But this wouldn't have precluded Subotin from threatening her in order to put pressure on Brightman; in fact, it was the most powerful threat he could have possibly used. Too powerful, however: as soon as he made it, Brightman had bolted. For Brightman, May's safety had been everything, and the only time he'd exposed her to danger — in France, when she'd gone alone to the barge — had been unavoidable; for he had to make sure that Hamilton did as he'd promised while, at the same time, not revealing that he was still alive. Yes, Brightman, quite literally, had been prepared to die for his daughter, and as far as Subotin was concerned, that's just what he'd done. But this hadn't stopped Subotin at all — for, with Brightman's KGB file in his hand, he'd simply gone from one member of Brightman's old group to another: Grainger, Berri, Hamilton… Brightman would have had to leave the gold somewhere and these were the best candidates. Once you understood this, it even suggested another explanation to the hoary old riddle of why Subotin had broken into my house. Most likely, as I'd originally guessed, he'd been trying to keep me away from May by taking the telegram — but since he knew about Brightman's group, he must also have known about my parents, and so I might have been one of the names on his list.

Even if this was true, however, I wouldn't have had much importance, not at that stage: only later, after my abortive contact with Travin, had my role become potentially dangerous — hence their surveillance of my mother's old place in Georgetown.

But that brought back another question: who was Travin? There was no way to be sure. It was always possible, of course, that he was KGB, but, the more I thought about him, the more he seemed to be a man with his own, independent agenda. He'd had the photograph of Dimitrov, all those shots of May, and he'd attempted to set up a contact with me all on his own. Had he wanted the money for himself? Did he have other political goals to rival Subotin's? Even if I couldn't answer these questions with certainty, I began to put together a theory, based on what he'd said on the phone and on that paper I'd discovered in the Berlin dump. Travin was an emigre, part of that wave of Russian immigration that has swept into the United States since the early 1970s; since that time, tens of thousands of former Soviet citizens have settled in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other large cities — thirty thousand in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn alone. Most of these people are Jews; few have any sympathy with the political goals Subotin was working for. But the extreme Russian nationalism that Loginov had talked about also has its adherents within this community, and Subotin and his group might have used such people for assistance and cover. Travin — if my theory was right — might have been someone like this; someone who'd been used by Subotin but then had broken away. His attempt to contact me would have doomed him, though he knew far too much in any event; he'd known about Dimitrov, somehow he'd known about my father {something personal you wouldn't want a policeman to hear), and he'd suspected something of the truth about May: why else had he taken all those photographs of her?

But, again, there it was, the real mystery — May herself. Who was she? Why, indeed, had Travin taken those photographs? And why, if he so wished to protect her, hadn't Brightman just given Subotin the gold right away? I knew the answer, or thought I did: in the end, the gold had counted for nothing, and Brightman had protected it only to prevent a far deeper secret from being revealed. But what was that secret? After all I'd found out, and all of my theories, I was back where I started, faced with the very first question of all: who was May Bright-man, and why had she been so important?

It was a question I never expected to answer; in fact, I never expected to hear from her again. Through mutual friends, I tried to find out where she'd gone, but no one knew; and a letter to Cadogan — the lawyer in Toronto — only revealed that he didn't know either. Yet I couldn't let it alone. At a certain point, I remembered, I'd felt that her secret was becoming my secret, and mine was merging with hers; and I still felt that way. What I'd learned about my father was half of the truth, but I wanted it all. So, as the summer went on, I kept worrying at it.

And now, at least, I knew one or two things.

Shastov — not Brightman, not Georgi Dimitrov — was her natural father; I was certain of that. And the mother, of course, was not Florence Raines — she was a Russian woman who, in 1940, had tried to save her child from the desolation around her and the carnage she could see ahead. That was something to think about. Indeed, she must have been a remarkable woman (would Yuri Shastov have married anything less?), for even if many women had wished to do what she had done, few would have been able to: she possessed some sort of influence, some power which — ultimately — had enabled her to summon Harry Brightman all the way from Canada to the Soviet Union. What was that power? Why had he responded? In frustration, I remember, I got out Travin's photographs, the ones I'd found in New Hampshire, and stared at them for hours, hoping to discover the answer. Who are you? I asked. And who was your mother, and why did they all care so desperately?

But I got nowhere. Indeed, for a time, I resolved to drop the whole subject. But I couldn't; I kept coming back to it — or it came back to me. In September, a magazine sent me a book to review, a history of the Stalinist Comintern, and it was full of stuff on Dimitrov; so I went over that angle again. And kept coming up against the same old blank wall..The child wasn't Dimitrov's, and why should he have cared about Yuri Shastov's daughter? In 1940, especially, he'd had other things on his mind. Bern must have been right: if he'd saved that baby, it was only because it might have saved him… which meant that May must have been a truly miraculous child.

Still, I didn't give up, and, in the end, I decided that Dimitrov must be involved in some way. In 1940, Harry Brightman had been in Povonets, in 1940 both men and the child had turned up in Halifax — the coincidence was too great to be without meaning. Night after night, I thought about what Leonard Forbes had told me and read over the letter Dr. Charlie had written, the one Subotin had been trying to steal. Was it true, any of it? Some of it had to be. Travin's photograph confirmed that Dimitrov was there, and Brightman would hardly have gone through the Florence Raines business without having a reason. But what was that reason, and why had he gone to Russia in the first place? Grainger, of course, claimed that he didn't know; and I believed him. That whole story about Brightman and the woman on Zinoviev's staff— Anna Kostina — that all rang true: rang true, that is, as the sort of lie Brightman would have told him. But perhaps, I considered, it might even be more substantial than that. Hadn't Cadogan mentioned, right at the very beginning, that Bright-man had worried aloud about someone named Anna? And as

Grainger himself had pointed out, the best lies contain a germ of the truth. So one might reasonably ask: did Anna Kostina truly exist? Leonard Forbes hadn't heard of her, but then he doesn't know everything — quite — so I spent a day trying to find her; and, to my surprise, came across her name almost at once. Khostina, A. P… It was right there, in the index of one of the standard histories; and then, having found her the first time, I began seeing her everywhere.

Just as Grainger had said, she'd been part of Zinoviev's entourage, and had been sentenced to a term in the Gulag during the first wave of the purges — I could find nothing about her after 1935.

Earlier, however, she'd been a genuine political actor, albeit with a small part. Close enough to Zinoviev to be considered a confidante — though probably not his mistress — she carried out several sensitive missions on his behalf. Of these, the most interesting had been in 1917, for it was she who'd actually received, and transmitted, the order to murder the Czar. Fearful that the local soviet might take matters into its own hands, Lenin and Zinoviev had dispatched her to Ekaterinburg, where the Czar and his family were being held prisoners, with strict orders on their treatment and a new set of telegraph codes. Everything that had happened afterward had passed through her hands…

What could I think when I made this connection? The possibility which it raised was so improbable, so unrespectable — if you call yourself a professional in this field — that I dismissed it immediately. Or I tried to. But it kept coming back. Was it possible that Yuri Shastov's wife had a personal claim to the arms on the little icon he'd given me? Was it possible that Travin had taken all those photographs of May because he wished to compare her face to another? Was it possible — even for a second — to imagine a survival, an escape, a moment of pity?

If one could, then it became almost certain that Anna Khostina, alone, had known what had happened.

If any of the family had survived the original massacre, they must have done so because of her; and if any of them had ultimately escaped or been allowed to go free, that moment of pity must have come from her heart. And later, either fearful over her failure or regretting her moment of weakness, she might have followed the fate of her own private hostage, realizing later, as her own pitiless fate was revealed, what a weapon she had. Except she couldn't possibly use it—as long as the child, or the child of the child, was still inside Russia. The child of the child… But if she'd told someone, and that person had managed to get the child out — away from Stalin's long grasp — then they would have possessed a talisman, a surety, of almost magical potency.

The child of the child…

Did I believe it?

Could anyone?

Russia, as Peter the Great once said, "is the land where things that don't happen, happen." God knows, he was right about that. As the weeks passed, and Indian summer came and went, I found myself wondering if this was one of those "un-happening" things. I would never know — obviously. But now it became a question of what I believed in my heart, and beliefs, notoriously, are much harder than facts, so I swung back and forth… until late in October I received the only sign, the only help, that I ever would get: a message from May.

Except it was hardly a message.

Only a photograph, May smiling into the sun, with a scrawl on the back: "All our love, M."

Postmarked in Schiphol, the Netherlands — the great airport for Amsterdam — it merely proved that they were alive, and might be living, or traveling, any place in the world. And the photo wasn't any more helpful. It reminded me of that picture which had been so much in my mind, taken by May, with her own Brownie, for it had precisely that stolid, amateur competence of a generation brought up on box cameras: Harry Brightman was positioned with the sun right over his shoulder and his shadow filled up the foreground while his daughter's eyes squinted into the glare. She was standing on a pier. Tied up to it, grand yachts jostled together, filing away in magnificent perspective, and a blue sea glittered beyond — it could have been Cannes, Rio, Palm Beach, any place where the rich spend their time; it could have been that same scene, years ago, when May had first learned that she'd been adopted. I studied her face — for hours, I studied her face. She was the woman I'd loved. Was she happy? If she was who I thought she might be, did she know? There was no way to tell. The breeze pressed her dress around her legs, she had to hold her hat on with her hand, but it was hard to make out her expression. In fact, her face wasn't even in focus: it wasn't in focus because the focus of that picture was behind her, halfway down the pier.

And about the tenth time I looked at it, that fact caught my eye. No; May wasn't in focus — because the focus was on one of the yachts, a good piece behind her. It was a fine, old vessel; not a sailboat, but one of those old diesel yachts from the twenties, all bright varnish and shiny brass trim.

One afternoon, I took a glass and studied it carefully.

Huge, upright, very old-fashioned, she bore the proud lines of an era when the rich were not afraid to look rich: her deckhouse was high, the teak lovingly polished, and her name was spelled out in gilt. In itself, the style of this reminded me of both Brightman and May — reminded me of that anachronistic quality she always seemed to possess — but in truth there was nothing to connect them to it, or even — I repeat — to tie them down to this place: they might have been just passing through, spending their money, enjoying the sights, their presence here pure coincidence. Still, for whatever it's worth, the name of that yacht leapt up through my glass, bright as gold and clear as life: a hint, a hope, or a last message from Bright-man… believe what you will. In any case, I can only say what I saw, tell what I know; and I know she was called Anastasia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Hyde was born in 1946 in Ottawa, Canada, where he lives now with this wife.