Brian Freemantle - The Bearpit

‘And we would be delighted for you to be with us here at Langley,’ said Crookshank, critic-turned-supporter.

‘Welcome to the CIA,’ endorsed Myers.

‘I hope to be very useful here,’ said Levin, a remark for his own enjoyment, the only celebration he could allow.

‘What will it involve?’ asked Galina, that night, when he made the announcement back in Connecticut.

‘Moving to the Washington area, I suppose,’ said Levin. ‘Being able to get a house of our own, instead of living like we do here: in a goldfish bowl.’

Petr, who was in the same room as his father, accepted it was time that he made his move. Which he did the following day. It coincided with Yuri Malik’s arrival at Kennedy Airport, after a circuitous flight through Canada.

Petr’s escape went as smoothly as he had known it would. He waited thirty minutes after being deposited at school and then complained of feeling unwell. He rejected the offer of the school recalling his car and was walking up Litchfield’s North Street before the hour was out. The lack of public transport was a minimal problem, because the first lift he picked up was going all the way to Naugatuck and from his map and timetable Petr knew there was a station there. He caught a train just after eleven, settling in a corner seat, bunched with excitement at what he had already done and in expectation of what he would soon be doing. Would they have him make some immediate public denunciation of his father? Or want to interview him at length first, to find out what had happened since their defection? Whatever, the boy decided: he’d do whatever he was asked. And enjoy it. God how he was going to enjoy it! His voluntary return showed he had no part in the defection and certainly Natalia hadn’t: important to make it clear that his mother was not involved, either. He could remember how bewildered she had been, that night at the Plaza. Only his father: his father the bastard. Puffed with imagined importance, boasting of some consultancy or job with the CIA: soon to be taught a lesson, though. His father would know something to be wrong, when he wasn’t there to be picked up from school that evening. Served him right. Bastard.

Petr mentally ticked the stations off his list, each one bringing him closer to New York, excitement building on excitement. He was free! In complete realization Petr decided the Connecticut house with its armed guards and suspended helicopters had been as much a prison keeping them in as a safe house keeping pursuers out. Hadn’t kept him in, though: he’d beaten them. They’d never suspected him; didn’t have a clue. He laughed openly, in the carriage, stifling the outburst at once to avoid drawing attention to himself. How surprised they’d be! What else? Angry, of course. Frightened, too. He hoped so much they’d be frightened, not knowing what he would do. What to do themselves. He wanted them to be frightened: his father particularly.

Old Greenwich, he saw. Only fourteen more stops and only then if they halted at each one. He consulted his timetable and saw that they didn’t: bypassed six. And from the schedule he calculated they were precisely on time for the noon arrival. Ten minutes, down 42nd Street and he would be there! Less than two hours. The expectation built up and he shifted impatiently in his seat.

The problem came to him abruptly and there was a twitch of annoyance that it had not occurred to him before. The United Nations was not a public place: certainly there were public tours but they were tightly controlled so he would not be able to walk in and roam the building until he found a Soviet delegate he could ask for help. There were guards who would demand his accreditation: and they would be Americans, who could intercept him and warn Proctor or Bowden or someone and get him hauled back to Connecticut. The resolve came, as quickly as the problem, and Petr smiled to himself again, pleased with the way he was thinking. Nothing was going to stop him: nothing could.

At the cavernous, echoing Grand Central terminal Petr found the telephone bank by the exit on to 42nd Street and politely, in English, requested the number of the Soviet delegation. He was confused when the telephonist demanded a reason, blurting without thought that he wanted information, which was how he came to be given the extension not of the delegation he sought but the public affairs department.

The call was taken, by further coincidence, by Inya who since that failed night had spread the story of Yuri’s impotence through the department. When Petr repeated his request she signalled to Yuri that it was for him.

‘You are Russian?’ asked Petr, still in English.

‘Yes.’

The boy switched immediately to their own language. ‘I am the son of Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin,’ he announced. ‘I was forced to go with my father. I want to return, to expose him.’

Yuri was astonished, for the first few seconds completely unable to respond. In Russian, too, he said: ‘Where are you?’

‘New York. I have escaped. I want to come in but I know I will be stopped without the proper documentation.’

Could it be a trick, some trap being set by the FBI or the CIA who had become suspicious of Levin? Yuri said: ‘Where have you been held?’

‘Connecticut,’ said the boy at once.

‘What was the nearest town?’

‘Litchfield. I was attending school there.’

That checks out: I know it checks out, thought Yuri. Other impressions tumbled in upon him, the most important being the recollection of Vladislav Belov only twenty-four hours earlier describing to him a KGB operation regarded as the most brilliant ever conceived. He said: ‘Whereabouts in New York?’

‘Grand Central.’

The right station, Yuri recognized. If it were Petr Levin on the telephone the last place in New York – in the world – where he could publicly reappear was at the UN. Where then? No time to plan or prepare, like any encounter should be planned and prepared. He said: ‘Do not come here. I will come to you.’

‘To the station?’

It was as good a place as any, decided Yuri. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Just wait in the main concourse.’

‘How will I recognize you?’

‘I’ll recognize you,’ assured Yuri.

To walk was the quickest way and it enable Yuri a few moments to try to rationalize what was happening. The first consideration had to be the personal risk in going to meet the boy at all. Very little, accepted Yuri. None, in fact. It would be quite understandable for someone attached to the Soviet delegation to go to see a member of a defector’s family seeking help. More suspicious to refuse, in fact. So where could the danger lie? That it was the trick he’d already considered, an attempt either by the CIA or the FBI to check the genuineness of the father’s defection. How? He couldn’t know that until they’d talked. What other danger? The greatest of all was that it were Petr Levin, that he was disaffected and by doing what he had done risked destroying a KGB infiltration that had taken years to evolve.

Yuri did not enter through the 42nd Street entrance but off Lexington, so that he was at the top of the stairs, high above the main concourse. He saw Petr Levin at once. The boy was walking back and forth at the very centre, behind the ticket queues, concentrating upon the 42nd Street doorway through which he expected his contact to enter. But Yuri was not looking for that sort of concentration. The boy hadn’t been trained. If this were something set up he’d be accompanied and, amateur that he was, there’d be some indication, glances or smiles for reassurance. There was nothing. Yuri could not isolate, either, anyone obviously keeping Petr under observation but in a place with so many people that was practically impossible.

Yuri descended the stairs, went straight up to the youth and said: ‘How can I help you, Petr Yevgennovich?’