Joseph Kanon - The Prodigal Spy

He turned, looking at Nick. “You know, when I first went to Penn, I remember I had a suitcase. Your grandmother bought it for me, and I saw right away it was all wrong. I hid it in the closet. Embarrassed, you know? And then I thought, what the hell? I’ll catch up. This was my chance. I had the scholarship and the job, and sometimes I didn’t even sleep, there was so much I wanted to do. But what I couldn’t understand-it was the first time I’d met people who thought they deserved their luck. They didn’t know they were lucky. They didn’t think at all about the ones who weren’t there. How can people be like that? Not see they’re lucky? Not have some-” He searched. “Compassion.”

“They’re afraid someone will take it away,” Nick said simply.

“Yes.” His father nodded. “But what makes them think they should have it in the first place? That’s what’s interesting. What do they believe in? What did Welles believe in? I still don’t know. Of course,” he said, a faint smile on his face, “they’re not very bright, are they? Maybe that’s all of it. Kenneth B. Welles. I remember when he first came to town. Not even a lightbulb on upstairs. He never did have anything except his amour propre.”

“And the right suitcase.”

His father glanced at him appreciatively. “Yes, he had that. His father-natural gas, of all things. That certainly ran in the family,” he said, a throwaway. “Anyway, things just-stalled. Maybe we ran out of steam. Maybe Welles and the rest of them learned how to block. Bills just sat in committee. After a while all we were doing was fighting them. Not politics, schoolyard stuff. And meanwhile things kept going to hell-there wasn’t time.” He stopped. “Impatient, you see. So I was ready.”

“What did you do? Walk into some office and sign up? Like that?” Nick said, sounding more sarcastic than he intended.

“No, they come to you,” his father said, ignoring the tone. “They fish. First the bait, then they play the line-it turns out that’s what they did best. In those days, that’s all they were doing, but I didn’t see that. No change. Just recruiting.”

“Who recruited you?”

His father stopped and looked toward the fortress walls. “Names. Well, what difference does it make now? He’s dead. Richard Schulman, a teacher at Penn. He was never exposed. You’re the only one who knows this,” he said, his voice suddenly conspiratorial.

Nick looked at him. “It was thirty years ago,” he said. “No one-”

“Cares,” his father finished. He shook his head. “Old battles. Still, it’s not easy, you know, even now, giving names. Anyway, he kept in touch. He came to Washington now and then. We had dinner. I think he saw I was — what? Discouraged. Ready for something else. It was a long process. A seduction.”

“Literally?”

His father smiled. “Like the Brits? No, he had four wives. I think he changed them if they got suspicious. None of them knew, not even them. I think that’s what he liked, the secrecy. Of course, in my case it made sense, being a secret member. If you were in government, you couldn’t be public. That’s how it started. We were secret for my protection, so I could keep the job. At least I didn’t have to go to the meetings,” he said lightly. “Self-criticism, that was the thing then, you know-all that breast-beating. I heard the stories later. I don’t think I would have made it through that, so it’s just as well.”

He glanced at Nick, expecting him to be amused, but Nick was still looking at the ground, waiting. “So. I was in place. Secret and in place. What else could the next step have been? It started with the trade agreement. We were being stupid about that-still trying to collect old war debts. Anyone could see the Soviets didn’t have that kind of money to spare. They couldn’t rearm against Germany without hard currency. But the talks just dragged on and on.”

“So you decided to give them a push.”

“Yes, a push. A little one, to move things along. It was important for them to know how to speed up the negotiations. We’re not talking about tank designs, just position papers, memos. Half the people involved had access to them. They weren’t sensitive.”

“Then what good were they?”

“Well, you have to understand the Soviets. They have a mania for information. It comes, I think, from feeling so isolated. During the war, they took planeloads of documents out. On the lend-lease planes-bags of them. Memos. Newspapers. Useless, most of it. Paper. But they always wanted more.”

“I don’t want to know what you gave them,” Nick said, flustered. “What matters is, you did.”

“No. It’s important for you to know. For what I’m going to tell you.”

Nick waited.

“It was never anything military. Office paper. Like emptying a wastebasket. Things we should have told them in the first place. Why not? We could tell England, but not them. They had to rely on-people like me. Just to know. But what could I tell them? Diplomatic reports. What Ambassador so-and-so thought, assuming he thought anything. What was the harm? I never gave them anything that would hurt us. I never had anything like that. Just my in-box.”

“Your in-box,” Nick said, facing him. “Is that why you sent for me? To tell me how innocent it all was? Just a little private Lend-Lease, out of the goodness of your heart? My God. Don’t you think it’s a little late for this?”

“No,” his father said, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean that. I knew what I was doing. I thought they had a right to know. It was never-innocent. The point is, I never gave them anything important.”

“So?”

“So why bring me out? Do you think I was Philby? I wasn’t. What made me so important to them?” It was a new idea to Nick, unexpected, but his father’s voice was even, the patient tone of a teacher leading him through a theorem proof. “All that trouble for me. Why?”

“You got caught.”

“No. I was accused. I was never caught.” Nick looked at him, picking up the odd, twisted pride in his voice. “What did they have? A salesgirl who said she knew me. Her word. My word. We could have beat it,” he said, a lawyer again, still preparing the case.

“The papers said she had more.”

His father waved his hand, an easy dismissal. “What more could she have? She was the messenger. That was Welles grabbing a headline. He did that, you know. On Fridays. By Monday people would forget he hadn’t actually told them anything. He was just trying to turn up the pilot light, make that poor girl think he had something. Shake her up a little and see if any more came out. It’s been known to work. Anyway, this time it went with her. But he didn’t have anything.”

“Maybe she’d already talked to him.”

“No, we’d have heard. Why would he keep it to himself? It cost him, that hearing. Smoke and no fire. People get fed up. He started looking like a bully. She didn’t tell him anything about me. She couldn’t have-there was nothing to tell. She sold the shirt, I left the papers. That’s all there was to it. Simple. Nothing to connect either of us. Of course, one way or the other, after the hearing I’d be out of business. That kind of spotlight doesn’t go away. As far as they were concerned, I was finished. But Welles was stuck-he didn’t have enough to put me away. So why not just retire me? Why bring me out?”

Nick stopped, rattled. “I thought it was your idea.”

“No.” His father slowly shook his head. “I had no choice, Nick. You believe that, don’t you?” He took Nick’s elbow, a physical plea. “To leave everything- No. I thought we could sit it out.” He took his hand away, dropping it with his voice. “We could have.”

“What are you trying to say? That it was all a mistake? Somebody jumped the gun?” This was worse somehow, their whole lives turned around in a careless haste.