George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“There is a formal dinner, I think,” Tarp said.

“Well, I was the hors d’oeuvre. I didn’t stay for the meal.” He accepted a glass, sniffed it, made a face that suggested that Laphroaig’s smoky glory was a little stronger than he was accustomed to. Tarp sat down on the other side of the fire.

They took a sip in silence. “Mr. Smith” put his slippers toward the fire. “Fire feels good.” He sipped again, seemingly absorbed in reverie. Abruptly, however, he said, “We’re worried. Damned worried. I guess you know who we are.” He jerked his head. “The present occupant and me. And some others. We’re worried about you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Now look, Tarp…” A sudden toughness showed behind the aged boyishness. He had been a good politician, meaning that he had been cruel and opportunistic and perhaps unfair at times; the potential for that showed now. “They want me to talk to you.”

“Is this official?”

“Of course not. Some things can’t be said officially. But they can be said by somebody like me. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Now, look: We think you’re in a pretty big business. We — they — think it’s very big.”

“What business is that, sir?”

The former president held the whiskey glass between his hands and rolled it back and forth a little before giving Tarp a long look that was meant to seem straightforward. “Cards on the table, okay? We know that KGB Central is in an uproar. We knew it before you got involved. It looks like the cow-flop’s going to hit the fan unless somebody pulls it out for them — and somebody is you. Right? Well, am I right?”

“That seems to be the idea.”

“Okay. Now.” He bent forward. “ It’s okay with us . Understand? I was told to bring that message across the street. It’s okay with us . Let me tell you why.” He swirled his glass. “How about a splash more of that stuff. It kind of grows on you.” As Tarp was busy with the bottle, “Mr. Smith” settled back and said almost dreamily, “It’d be tempting to let the Soviets kill each other off. Most of all the KGB. That’s what the British are going to do, in fact. But it’s a very tricky time. Hell of a tricky time, with the arms negotiations, and a new ball game with Andropov in the driver’s seat. There’s this feeling that we could do a lot worse than Andropov — you follow? I mean, we may be able to deal with Andropov.”

Tarp finished pouring and handed over the glass. “Don’t count on it.”

“So we don’t want him to feel threatened. And we don’t want him to spend all his time putting fingers in the dike. We don’t want a potentially embarrassing KGB problem to blow up in his face. So we’re willing that they put their own house in order as quickly as possible.”

“With my help.”

“If need be, yes.” He cleared his throat. “The only trouble is, uh…”

“The only trouble is, what if Andropov himself is the rotten apple in the KGB barrel.”

“That’s about it. That’s just the question we’re asking. What if it’s Andropov himself?”

“Well?”

“Well, then…” The former president sipped his Scotch, looked into the glass, smiled, looked at the fire. “Then you’ll have to promise to do nothing.”

“Swallow it?”

“Not get him into trouble. Uh, that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t report it over here. In the right quarters.”

So you could blackmail him . Nice . “And if it isn’t Andropov?”

“Well, of course it won’t be. I mean, we don’t believe it will be. But just in case, you know what to do.”

“And if it isn’t Andropov?”

“Well, then use your own judgment. We’d like to ask a favor, however.”

“Sir?”

“We want you to give us the name before you tell the Russians.”

A gust of wind rattled the window, like a reminder of the cold darkness outside. The former president was sincere, Tarp believed — a decent man, as that expression was used nowadays. Tarp was not much taken with decent thoughts that night, however; instead, he was thinking of the indecencies of the agent. They have somebody in the KGB top brass , and they want to cover his backside . Tarp studied the friendly, decent face opposite him. They’re afraid I’ll turn up their man , of course . Because he could be their man and a bad apple at the same time . He thought of Hacker, and what a slimy specimen Hacker was; he imagined Washington’s KGB probe as the same type, motivated not at all by belief, but by greed. “What if I find out it’s the wrong man?” he said.

“I don’t follow you.”

“Don’t you, sir? What if I find the bad guy and he’s somebody your people don’t want blown to Moscow?”

“Kind of fishing, aren’t you?”

“I think it would be a little dangerous, Mr. Smith, if I found that the man Moscow is looking for is Washington’s man in place.” Tarp nudged a fallen log with his toe. “There I’d be, you see, a man with information that neither side would like him to have.” He looked calmly at the other man. “I wouldn’t like to be the victim of an unfortunate accident or an unexpected heart attack, Mr. Smith.”

“We don’t do things like that,” the other man growled. “Yes we do.”

“Now, look here—”

“Pardon me, Mr. Smith, but I know the business. I know how things are done.” Tarp stood up and went to the window, to stand there with his hands shoved into his pockets and his forehead pressed against the cold glass. Something reminded him of Juana; he could not see the connection. “Tell them that whatever I find will be put where it will be made public if anything happens to me. Tell them I keep my bargains, and I’ve made a contract with a Soviet. I’ll keep it, or I’ll give the job up. Tell them that I won’t protect Andropov or anybody else, because that wasn’t in my deal.”

“I’m asking you to think of the contract you have here.”

“I don’t have a contract here, Mr. Smith.”

“You’re an American.”

“Yes, sir.” Tarp leaned away from the window. Idly, he drew a finger through the circle of steam that his breath had left on the window. “You want me to say that I have an implied contract here because of loyalty and because of birth. Do you know why I left the Agency, sir?”

The other man cleared his throat as if to say something and then seemed to changed his mind. “No,” he said simply.

“I was fired. I was fired because I was ‘uncontrollable.’ What I couldn’t control was my conviction that we should win a war if we were in one.” Tarp mad more marks in the steam, which he had turned into the Chinese character for hope. The circle shrank and the character disappeared. “I don’t make contracts with the people who fired me anymore. You can tell them that, if you like.” He made it sound kind and gentle.

The former president changed his position, drummed his fingers on his glass, sighed noisily. “Can I tell them you won’t do anything to actively help the Soviets, other than this one thing?”

“Of course.”

“Some people think you’re going over.”

“Some people always think that.”

“Well… Well. Well, sit down, will you? You make me nervous, standing where I can’t see you like that.” The man was angry, and he was laughing to cover the anger, which showed in his eyes and the redness of his cheeks when Tarp looked at him. “Mr. Smith” shook his head. “They told me what you’d be like. One of the staff people laughed at me when I told him I was coming to see you. You know what he said? He said, ‘Get yourself a rock, Mr. President, and practice squeezing milk out of it, because that’s what it’ll be like.’” He shook his head. He was still angry. “You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with me.”