Brian Garfield: Hopscotch

A coachload of tourists decanted along the quay and Kendig moved around, keeping out of the way of the Americans taking slide photos and Super-8 movies of one another. He was thinking: if you compressed all the matter in a human being, closing down the spaces between cells, the spaces between electrons and nuclei, you would end up with a heavy mass about the size of a one-eighth karat diamond, and far less useful.

Yaskov came along, elegant in a suede jacket with a Malacca cane in his spidery hand; he gave Kendig the benediction of his grave nod. Russians do not smile politely; they smile only when they are amused. It makes them appear rude to outsiders. Kendig fell in step and they walked out to the center of the bridge and down the steps onto the tiny island. The park benches were deserted. “So nice to see you again,” Yaskov said. His gleaming skin was stretched over the bones almost to the point of splitting. In the profession he was an eminence grise; his name commanded respect in all the agencies. He was not the sort of Russian who would be surprised to learn that America was no longer a land of sweatshops and scarlet letters and riders of the purple sage. (It was truly amazing how many of them were still like that.)

Yaskov’s urbane English was almost perfect. “You won a great sum of money last night, yes? It was your good fortune I sent you there.”

“Well I’m deeply grateful.” Kendig was wry.

Yaskov too was a gambler; his face never betrayed him. “I’m distressed to see you so lackluster, old friend.”

“It’s only post-coital tristesse.”

“For so many months?”

He was tired of the roundabout game. “Then you’ve been keeping tabs on me. Why? I’m out of the game now-you know that.”

“By choice, is it?”

“I’m sure you know that too.”

“Actually I’m not sure I do, old friend. My sources in Langley haven’t always been reliable. It’s said you were retired-involuntarily.”

“Is it.”

“Is that true?”

“I don’t see that it matters whether it’s true. I’m retired-that’s truth enough.”

“You have fifty-three years.”

“Yes.”

“Absurd,” Yaskov said. “I myself have sixty-one. Am I retired?”

“Do you want to be?”

“No. Avidly no. I should be bored to distraction.”

“Would you now.”

They sat down on a bench. A barge drifted past laden with what appeared to be slag. Its aftercabin had a Citroen 2CV parked on the roof and a line of multihued washing strung like an ocean vessel’s signal pennants. The barge’s family sunned on the afterdeck-a fat wife, three children-while the husband manned the tiller and smoked. Generations of them were born, lived and died aboard the canal barges. It was a peaceful life and a bastion of unchange.

A little motor runabout zipped past the barge, disturbing its tranquillity with the sharp chop of its frenetic wake.

Kendig said, “What’s your offer, Mikhail?”

“Life, old friend.”

Kendig grinned at him. “And the alternative?”

“I did not invite you to join me here on such a pleasant day in order to impose ultimata upon you,” Yaskov said. “I make no threats at all. The alternative would be of your own making, not of mine. I simply offer to revive you. I wish to bring you back to life.”

“The resurrection of Miles Kendig.” His tongue toyed with it. “A fine title for an autobiography.”

“Don’t be evasive.”

“What is it you want, then? Are you short a defector this month?”

“Oh defection is such a degrading transformation, don’t you think? In any case I should imagine you’d be just as bored in a Moscow flat as you are here. My dear Miles, I’m offering to put you back into the game. Back into action. Isn’t it what you want?”

“As a double agent I’d be of very little use, I have no access to my former employers.”

“Double agents are tedious little people anyhow,” Yaskov said. “They’re required to be so colorless. I don’t think it would suit you at all. No, it’s really quite straightforward. I should like to run you in the field. As my own agent. I can assure you the members of my string regard me as a most amiable Control. How does it strike you?”

Kendig tried briefly to put some show of interest on his face. Yaskov did not speak further; he left his invitation dangling like a baited hook.

The barge disappeared round the bend on its leisurely passage to Le Havre. The little powerboat came zigzagging back upstream, splitting the water with its razor bow, planing and slapping gaily. The sun on Kendig’s cheek was soporific. He didn’t want to have to think.

Yaskov began to draw circles on the pavement with the rubber tip of his cane. It was a subtle rebuke. It forced Kendig to speak. “It wouldn’t be worth it to me, I’m afraid.

“We’d make it worthwhile of course. There’s plenty of money.”

“Money costs too much when you have to earn it that way.”

“Then what is it you want? Power?”

“God no.”

“I could let you run a string of your own if you like. You might even rise to the policy level in time. Doesn’t that intrigue you? The possibility of making policy for your former enemies?”

“Sounds tedious to me.”

“Our kind has been on this planet for perhaps two million years,” Yaskov said, “and during all but one percent of that period we lived as hunters. The hunting way of life is the only one natural to man. The one most rewarding. It was your way of life but your government took it away from you. I offer to return it to you.”

“It’s self-destructive lunacy, that’s all it is.”

“Well my dear Miles you can’t lead our kind of life and expect to live forever. But at least we can be alive for a time.”

“It’s all computers now. World War Three will be known as the Paperkrieg. There’s no need for my kind of toy gladiator any more. We’re as obsolete as fur-trapping explorers.”

“It’s hardly gone that far, old friend. Otherwise why should I be making you this offer?”

“Because you can’t face obsolescence-you won’t acknowledge it the way I’ve done. You’re as redundant as I am-you just don’t know it yet.” Kendig smiled meaninglessly. “We’ve seven’d out. All of us.”

“I don’t know the expression but you make it clear enough.”

“It’s to do with a dice game.”

“Yes, of course. You’re beginning to annoy me. You’re not merely disenchanted; you’re condescending. I don’t need to be patronized. I suspect behind your smokescreen of boredom you’re resisting my offer out of some absurd vestige of chauvinistic scruple.”

“It could be that. Who knows.” When Kendig had learned the game he’d had Truman and the Yaskovs had had Stalin; it had been easy enough to discern which of them wore the white hat and which the black hat. Now there was none of that left. The only distinction was that the West’s leadership was more petty than the East’s. It wasn’t even a game for the intelligence operatives any more; it was only a nihilistic exercise, going through the motions out of habit, answering not to any sense of mission or principle but only to the procedural requirements of bureaucracy. There was no point to it any more. But Yaskov might be right; Kendig might have hated his side too long to be comfortable with the idea of working for them. He didn’t know; he didn’t really care.

Yaskov brooded toward the enormous monolith of the Radiodiffusion which cowed the right bank beneath it. “Well it was an intriguing idea to me. I did hope you would take an interest.”

“You’d better forget it. I’d be no good to you-I’d put my foot in it anyway.”

“Certainly you would if the work didn’t excite you. I won’t press you again but you might bear in mind that I won’t have closed the offer.”