Brian Freemantle - The Bearpit

With a positive date to work from it took the clerk only minutes. ‘Colonel Panchenko,’ he said. ‘He kept it a week.’

‘Is it here now?’

The clerk consulted a chart on the wall and said: ‘Bay 38.’

The paintsprayer had not been exaggerating, acknowledged Yuri: the colour was an excellent match. Like another positive match, the provable tread of the tyres compared against those outlined in his father’s blood, at the scene of the killing: outlined in the photograph he possessed.

He had it all, thought Yuri, taking the elevator back up to the reception area. Now what was he going to do with it? He imagined the question answered when he identified himself and was told he had to report to Vladislav Belov.

The despair lumped in John Willick’s throat and he swallowed against breaking down, although there was no one in the Karacharovo apartment to witness his crying. No one anywhere. The drivers taking him to and from the debriefings appeared unable to speak English and his interrogators rotated and every one treated him with an attitude bordering on contempt anyway, so he was resigned against any possibility of acquaintanceship, let alone friendship. The system had been established for him to be paid but he had been granted no concessionary facilities. He had not yet been able to buy anything without lining up for hours and having to use sign language when he’d bought the purchase ticket and then moved into the second queue to reclaim what he wanted, against the price already paid. He found the language sessions impossible. The instructor was impatient with him and Willick knew it would take him months – years – to get even a limited mastery of Russian. He was so miserable, he thought; more miserable than he’d ever been in his entire life. He didn’t know what to do; there was nothing he could do. He choked, unable to hold on any longer, sitting at the stained table, the sobs shuddering through him.

The revelation of the CIA headquarters personnel was as devastating as Vladislav Belov had predicted during the last interview with Kazin. The identities were disclosed over a period, for maximum and sustained impact, were published throughout Europe, and from the outlets there picked up and carried on television and in newspapers across America.

Harry Myers was named as the Agency’s security chief and Edward Norris as the deputy controller of the Soviet Division in the second batch released.

‘Holy Mother of Christ!’ exploded Myers.

‘I know,’ anticipated Crookshank, uncertain if the disclosures were over and fearing his name could still come. ‘If you could, you’d kill him. I would, too.’

It took Yuri the time to pass through the entry formalities on the ground floor and reach Belov’s quarters on the sixth storey to evolve his approach. Where he was almost immediately off-balanced. The reception from the other man was different again from what it had been before, neither the surprising affability of their earlier meetings nor the frozen reserve of the cemetery encounter. Yuri searched for the word and decided it was weariness: Vladislav Belov appeared bowed by some sort of fatigue. The remainder of the IBM mainframe computer blueprints had once more been carried in a film cassette and as before Yuri went patiently through the hand-over ritual, waiting.

‘I am seeing you personally to inform you of changes,’ announced Belov. He had decided to do exactly as he was told; recall the man, announce some unknown reassignment and avoid getting involved from then on. That was the way to avoid any difficulties for himself: just see his time out. Fifteen years, he thought, agonized: a lifetime! What else could he do?

‘Involving me?’

‘You are being withdrawn from New York.’

‘Upon the instructions of Comrade Directorate chairman Kazin?’ anticipated Yuri.

Belov blinked at the astuteness of the question. With stiff formality, he said: ‘It is not permissible to discuss or question reassignments.’

‘I would like to show you something,’ said Yuri, going to the documentation that bulged his briefcase. He handed across the table the photograph he had taken of the defector and his son in Connecticut: the pictures were blurred and grainy but brought up under a magnifying glass it was just possible to make an identification, which Yuri knew because he had done it.

‘Who are they?’ demanded Belov, examining them first without enlargement.

‘The man is Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin. The boy is his son, Petr,’ said Yuri simply.

‘What!’

Yuri was tensed for the response from the other man, whom Kazin had instructed could not be told, wanting to learn from it. But he learned nothing: it sounded like outrage, which Yuri could not understand. There could be no turning back, not now. He said: ‘When I was in Moscow on compassionate leave after the death of my father, I was ordered by the Comrade First Deputy to locate Levin, which I did. He and his family are near a small township called Litchfield, in Connecticut…’ He paused and then announced: ‘The American authorities were warned, in advance.’

Belov sat shaking his head and once again Yuri’s inference was of overwhelming tiredness. ‘Why?’ said the man, his voice exhausted like the rest of him. ‘Why?’

Defectors were pursued, thought Yuri curiously. He wished he could infer more from the other man. ‘I would also like to present to you irrefutable evidence that my father was murdered,’ Yuri plunged on, producing the police files, with what he had discovered himself that day uppermost. ‘And by whom,’ he finished.

Belov read, head bent, for a long time, the sound of concentrated breathing the only noise in the room. Yuri could see the traffic streaming around the peripheral road but not hear it through the double glazing. Would the taxi driver by now have cleared anything incriminating from his home? Yuri guessed he probably had: already converted the incriminating dollars, too.

The lassitude had gone from Belov when he finally looked up. In its place was an attitude of intense wariness. He said: ‘Who else has seen this?’

‘No one, not in its complete form.’

‘There are no copies?’

‘Not in its complete form,’ reiterated Yuri, wary himself.

‘Is there anything else?’

Yuri hesitated, unsure. But why unsure? If he’d made a mistake it was irreparable so there was no safety in holding back what his father had accumulated. He passed over the second dossier and again there was uninterrupted silence for a long time. When Belov looked up again he did not immediately speak but remained gazing blank-faced across his desk.

Say something! Do something! Yuri thought desperately. Anything! As forcefully as he could, Yuri said: ‘My father was killed to prevent his pursuing an inquiry that would have proven the involvement of Colonel Panchenko in the death of Igor Agayans.’

‘Yes,’ said Belov at last. It was not so much an agreement with Yuri’s insistence but a personal acceptance of all that he had read during the previous hour. He went on: ‘How did you trace Levin?’

‘Through the letters between the family and the daughter.’

‘He stopped her leaving, didn’t he?’ said Belov, again in some private conversation. Concentrating more, he said: ‘Did you realize Levin was trying to convey as much as possible, about his acceptance?’

‘Acceptance!’ queried Yuri, baffled once more.

‘An incredible man,’ said Belov admiringly.

‘The man is a traitor.’

‘Yevgennie Levin is carrying out a service to his country unparalleled in Soviet intelligence,’ corrected Belov. ‘All the indications are that he has succeeded brilliantly, although we will not get confirmation for many months, when he can make contact.’