Joseph Kanon - The Prodigal Spy

“I’m with a girl.”

“Really?” Larry said, interested. “Serious?”

But Nick ignored it. “We’re only here for one night. To see you. We go to Washington tomorrow.”

“What’s in Washington?”

“Friends.”

“What friends?”

Nick smiled at him, the suspicious parent. “Hers. This must be your car.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s black and important. Big aerial. Isn’t it?”

“Wise guy,” Larry said fondly.

“By the way, did you get a call from Jack Kemper?”

Larry looked at him, suddenly alert. “No, why?”

“He’s with the CIA in London. I used his name. I told the embassy in Prague I was working for him. That’s why they got me out. Not the Bureau. You don’t owe Hoover anything.”

Larry blinked, taking this in. “How do you know he’s with the CIA?”

“You told me. At the Bruces’ party.”

Larry looked at him, then smiled, an insider’s laugh. “Who said my kid couldn’t think on his feet? They’d better watch you.”

“Well, they may. And you. I heard Kemper was upset. That’s why I thought you should know.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Larry said, taking his hand, but Nick leaned over and hugged him. Larry held him for a moment, surprised and pleased. “I’m glad you’re home,” he said, no longer joking, an apology for the lunch.

“Get us out of Vietnam,” Nick said as Larry got into the car.

“I’m trying, believe me,” he said, then rolled up the window and the car slid toward Fifth Avenue.

The photographer was in a rundown building on Delancey Street, near the bridge, two unlit flights up.

“You Nick, man?” he said, opening the door a crack. Long hair, a face corrugated with old acne scars. When Nick nodded, the door opened into a huge empty space with exposed pipes, littered with tripods, light cables, and back screens. The living quarters seemed to be a camp bed and a trestle table overflowing with Chinese takeout cartons. A young girl in a flimsy short dress sat on a stool, smoking a joint. “Molly’s in there,” he said, nodding toward a bare red bulb hanging over an enclosed space. “Your prints are still drying. What the fuck are they, anyway? I mean, they’re in fucking Russian.”

What had Molly told him? “ Samizdat,” Nick said.

“Samitz who?”

“Underground manuscripts. They have to smuggle them out. You know, like Solzhenitsyn.”

“Far out.”

“Want a hit?” the girl said dreamily, holding out the joint.

Nick shook his head.

“I’m not going to get in any trouble or anything, right?” the photographer said.

“No, nothing like that. I appreciate your help.”‘

“Hey, no problem. Old Molly. Samizyet,” he said, shaking his head.

“What kind of photography do you do?” Nick said, to make conversation.

“Fashion,” he said, grinning. The girl giggled.

Molly came out, stuffing an envelope into her bag. “Hey, thanks, Richie.” She went over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You do great work.”

“Fucking A. You got them all? Don’t leave nothing in there.”

“All here,” she said, patting the bag. “I’ll see you, okay?”

“Yeah. Say hi to your mom.”

As they were leaving, the girl with the joint began lifting the dress over her head, her body as thin as a child’s.

“The people you know,” Nick said when they hit the street, bright after the dark stairs.

“Richie? We went to high school together.” She laughed to herself. “In the glee club.”

They stopped at a bookstore on Fifth Avenue to buy a Russian-English dictionary.

“What’s the point?” Nick said. “We can’t translate this. It’d take months.”

“No, but we might get some idea what it is. What were you going to do, get one of the girls at the UN? Would you mind taking a look at these? Just a few espionage documents I happened to pick up. By the way, do you have a safe-deposit box or something? For the negatives.”

“No. I’ll put them somewhere at home. I have to see my mother anyway.”

“Alone?”

Nick nodded.

“A little too early to take me home to Mom, huh?”

“A little too early for Mom. She’s got other things on her mind.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll run up to Bronxville and see mine. Since we’re being so good.”

“But you’ll be back tonight?”

“Hmm.” She looked at him. “I’m not that good. Besides, I always wanted to stay at the Plaza. How rich are you, anyway?”

He smiled. “Rich.”

“And Catholic. You are Catholic, aren’t you?”

“Baptized, anyway.”

“She’ll die. She’ll just die.”

The photographs, in impenetrable Cyrillic, seemed to be a series of reports, not a simple list.

“See how they’re dated up here? Like memos.”

“This is impossible, Molly. Even if we figure out the letters, we still have to translate the Russian.”

“Well, the numbers help. We can figure out the dates,” she said eagerly. “And see the words in block capitals? They all have them. It’s a format, if we can figure it out. They sign off that way too.”

But the dates, once deciphered, were all recent, none of them reaching back to his father’s time.

“They’re the active ones, that’s why,” Molly said. “These are the reports they’re getting now. I’ll bet the caps are names. Look, this one’s Otto. So who’s Otto?”

“A code name,” Nick said, then sighed. “We have to know the context, Molly. Look at the dates-they’re not consistent. It’s a selection. Maybe they’re the incriminating ones. Each one nails somebody, if you understand it.”

“Hold on,” she said, distracted, looking something up in the dictionary. Nick walked over to the window and looked across the street to where the hansom cabs were idling in the afternoon sun.

“Serebro,” Molly said, running her finger down a page. “Yes. Come look.” But Nick was still eyeing the street, watching the taxis pull up under the 59th Street awning. She brought the book over to him, pointing to the word.

“Silver,” he said. “By him or about him?”

“By him. The signature.”

He glanced at the photograph. A report, exactly like the others, same format, so not original, typed by someone in Moscow. From cables? By Nina, perhaps, his father’s friend, Silver’s admirer. “Yes, but we have to know what it says. Didn’t any of your friends go into the translating business?”

“No, only dirty pictures.” She hesitated. “You could ask your father. He’d know someone.”

“You could ask Jeff,” he answered back. “Want the phone?”

“Look, let’s think about this. What would reports say? Not necessarily who they are, just what they’re passing on. I mean, the reports still might not identify them. You’d have to know who the code names referred to.”

“Great. No, we need the context. I mean, if it’s a trade report, it’s someone in Commerce. Like that.”

“But how would we know exactly who in Commerce? Are you listening to me? What are you looking at?”

“It’s a pickup zone,” Nick said, still watching out the window. “So why is that car just sitting there? The doorman acts like he doesn’t even see it.”

“Maybe it’s waiting.”

“I don’t think so. Two guys. Feels like old home week to me.”

“Let me see,” Molly said, getting up, accidentally knocking the photographs to the floor. “Shit.” She bent down, collecting them.

“One of them’s on the corner, so they’ve got both entrances covered.”

“Don’t get paranoid,” Molly said, still crouched down, sorting the pictures. “I’ll bet it’s a divorce. This isn’t Prague, remember?”

Nick said nothing. The man below lit a cigarette.