Joseph Kanon - The Prodigal Spy

“Ah, and how did we like the gray?” the salesman said, but Nick walked by him, one foot in front of the other, as if he were underwater. Moving toward the shirts, a hundred pictures flashing by him, rearranging themselves in place. The same face through the cubicle slats, in a slice, just like the crack at the study door. Molly watching him, her mouth open. And then he was there, behind the familiar shoulders.

“Hello, Larry,” he said.

“He told you.” They were on a bench in Lafayette Square, across from the Hay-Adams, everything around them drenched in sun, surreal, Larry’s voice as calm as the quiet park. A man feeding birds, a young woman pushing a pram-no one had the slightest idea. Larry had led him here by the arm, guiding him out of the store as if he were a patient, one of those men in Nick’s unit who’d been too near a bomb and had to be helped away.

“No. He never knew,” Nick said, almost whispering, foggy. “Except at the end.” His voice was coming back now. “That’s why he changed his plan that day. He figured out the lighter-that you were the only one who could have taken it. From the study.”

“That was an accident. I must have put it in my pocket. But then I had it-”

“He was going to use you to make the deal for him. Then he realized you were the one person he couldn’t use. He’d have to do it himself.”

“He must have been out of his mind.”

“Yes.”

“Come back. Really, Nick-”

“Are you going to kill me too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re my son.”

“You killed the other one.” Then, to Larry’s blank expression, “She was pregnant. Rosemary Cochrane. It was yours, wasn’t it?”

Larry was silent. “I didn’t know,” he said finally, past denial.

“Would it have made any difference?”

“No.” He looked away. “It was too dangerous.”

“She wouldn’t have named you. She was in love with you.”

“You can’t trust that,” he said dismissively. “She was just a girl. Then she got-emotional. And she slipped up somehow. They got on to her. It was dangerous. She knew about me.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. But he was going to crack. I saw it that night.” He glanced over. “When you were spying on us.”

“I didn’t understand anything.”

Larry sighed. “Well, neither did Walter. That was the problem. He didn’t understand how serious it was. He thought-I don’t know what the hell he thought. Buy them off with a name and live happily ever after? It doesn’t work that way. Once you start, you go to the end. And what name? He only had Schulman.”

“Who recruited him.”

Larry looked back, surprised. “That’s right. And me. At Penn. The one point of connection. I couldn’t risk that. If he’d given them Schulman, it might have led them to me.” He wrinkled his face. “The way things work out. I was the one who suggested he try Walter. He was always looking for prospects. I told him Walter might be promising material. But he turned out to be the weak link. You see that, don’t you? He might have brought the whole thing down.”

Nick looked at him, incredulous. Was he being asked to agree?

“They had to protect me. I was in the White House. We’d never had a chance like that.”

“Why didn’t you just kill him too?”

Larry looked at him with an indulgent expression. “Is that what you think of us? Of course we didn’t kill him. Anyway, you take care of your own, unless there’s no other choice. That would have been a foolish risk to run. Two deaths? No one would have believed the other was suicide. There’d be no end to it.”

“The police didn’t believe it anyway. You made sure of that. With the lighter.”

“No, I was making sure of him. I wasn’t sure he’d go. Walter was unpredictable.” He paused. “He had reasons to stay. He might have thought he could tough it out, not accept our invitation.”

“But not if he thought he’d be accused of murder. Then he’d have to go.”

“Well, it never came to that. It was just a precaution. He did go.”

“Convenient for you.”

“Convenient for everybody. Except old Ken Welles, I suppose, but that couldn’t be helped. Oh, you think we wanted him stopped? No-he was useful. He was so busy looking for Commies in all the wrong places, nobody thought to look in the right ones. Loyalty oaths for schoolteachers — Christ. But even a fool gets lucky once.”

“You had Hoover looking too.”

“Well, I didn’t want him looking at me. All I had to do was suggest that Walter must have been tipped off by someone in the Bureau and he was off. Catching his rats.” He stopped. “I never wanted to hurt Walter.”

“You killed him.”

“We got him out. It was the best we could do. He had a life there, you said so yourself. We had to do it.”

“Not then. Now. You killed him. Or had him killed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“We’re sitting here, aren’t we? How do you think I got to you?”

Larry looked up at him, serious. “How did you?”

“First tell me why.”

“Why. What else could we do? Coming back. That could only mean one thing. He found out. I don’t know how-we were careful about that. All those years. I knew how he’d react. He’d make it personal.”

“It was personal.”

“No. I was just another agent.”

“Who took his wife. And set him up for a murder charge. And got rid of him to cover your own ass. You ruined his life, Larry. What do you call personal?” Larry turned away. “Why did you have to kill him? He was never going to get out-you know that.”

“He didn’t have to get out. Once he knew, he could have told anybody. A journalist. The spooks at the embassy. He wasn’t safe if he knew.” He paused. “Given everything.”

“But he didn’t know, Larry. Not until the end. You had him killed for nothing.”

“What do you want me to say, Nick? I’m sorry? It’s a death wish, to want to defect. There’s only one way to do it. If he didn’t know about me, then he knew others. He was going to turn them. This isn’t school. What did you expect them to do?”

“Once you told them.”

“Yes, once I told them,” he said impatiently. “Of course I told them. You don’t wait. We’re all at risk when somebody defects. He had to be stopped before anything got out. It had to die with him.”

“It didn’t,” Nick said quietly. “He told me. That’s what led me to you. Names. Her, your new friend. You ought to change your pattern, Larry. You made it easy. It didn’t die with him.”

Larry crossed his legs and looked down at his trousers, picking at the fabric, seemingly at a loss. “Well, that creates a little situation, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. You’ll have to kill me too.”

“Does anyone know?” Larry said.

“Just me. Once I’m gone, you’re safe.”

“I didn’t mean that. I was thinking of you. Are you sure? What about that girl?”

“No,” Nick lied. “Just me. You’d be safe.”

“Don’t talk crazy. Kill you.” He turned to Nick, his eyes suddenly old and unguarded. “You’re all I care about. Don’t you know that?”

Nick felt a tremor, another shock to the system. Not a lie. His boy, the unexpected thing in his life, a knot too tangled to untie. Nick looked away.

“You should have been more careful in Prague then,” he said. “I almost didn’t make it. Or were you going to get me out of that one too?”

“But I didn’t know you were there,” Larry said, reaching over and putting his hand on Nick’s arm. “I didn’t know. You have to believe that. I would never involve you. Nobody said you were there.”

“Didn’t Brown tell you?”