Joseph Kanon - Defectors

“What?”

“Sick. Have a breakdown. I don’t know. That’s the story, no? Of course he wasn’t going to talk to me, and his wife’s careful, even with Nancy. They never tied him to the Rosenbergs, so it must have been a separate operation, sort of parallel tracks. Or the other theory.”

“What’s that?”

“They let the Rosenbergs take the fall to protect him. He gets here, they ship him right out to Arzamas, so he still must have had stuff for them. Then he checks out. So why? Maybe the science got ahead of him. Maybe he starts feeling guilty. That might do it, seeing the bombs every day, seeing what you’d done. But anyway he stops being useful to them. So Moscow. But what’s he thinking all this time? That’s the story.”

“And what makes you think Frank can tell you?”

“He saw him that weekend. That’s one of the things I want to verify. What did he say? What was on his mind? I mean, a guy shoots himself he must have said something. He’s sorry, something. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just sleepwalking through it. But if he could tell me—I wouldn’t have to quote him, I’d just like to know.”

Simon stopped at the corner. “He killed himself? I thought he—was sick. That’s what it said in the paper.”

“That’s what they wanted us to say. So we say it. Otherwise, you’re gone. But suppose it’s something else. Suppose he gets here and he realizes he did it all for this.” He waved his hand to take in the street. “And now there’s no way out. He runs to avoid prison and he just lands in a bigger one. That would be a hell of a story.”

“If true.”

“Well, you tell me. How does your brother feel about being here?”

Simon looked up at him, no more circling, at the point.

“You’ll have to read his book and see. I’ll tell you one thing, though. He doesn’t feel like that. Putting a gun to his head. He thinks he did the right thing.”

“Do you?” Hal said.

“No.” He waited, an emphasis. “But it doesn’t matter what I think. On or off the record. I’m not him. I spent years answering questions about Frank. What did he say to me. What did I say to him. What did he think about this. That. As if I knew. Wasn’t that the point? Nobody knew what he was thinking. He fooled us all. But he wasn’t thinking that. Maybe Soames was. How did they get to be such great pals anyway? I thought people didn’t—”

“The dachas. In the country. They’re in the same compound, so they got to know each other.”

“Compound?”

“It’s fenced. You don’t see the fence.” A country house, behind wires. “A KGB compound.”

Simon looked at him. Their own hospital. Food store. Even countryside.

“So the papers just said he was sick,” Hal finished. “Natural causes. No weakness. Not that shooting yourself is a sign of weakness—I don’t know how you go through with it. But they think it is. Raises questions. They don’t like that.”

“Nobody does.”

Hal nodded, touché, then cocked his head at the building on the other side of the busy square ahead. “Especially them. That’s headquarters. The Lubyanka.”

Simon gazed across. A tsarist office building with a yellow façade, so large it filled the entire block. A statue in the middle of the square, trucks lumbering by on either side. No black cars pulling up to the doors, no screams coming from the basement. Hoses to wash the blood off the walls. Thousands. More.

“It used to be an insurance company,” Hal said. “Rossiya Insurance. They put in the prison in the thirties. Dzerzhinsky, the founding father.” He nodded to the statue. “And now look.” He turned to the big building on their side of the square. “Detskiy Mir. Biggest toy store in Russia. The kids love it.”

“That’s—” Simon said, unable to finish.

“Yeah, I know. But it’s even stranger than that. I mean, they don’t have a lot of irony here. It’s okay about the store because that really isn’t there.” He waved to the KGB building. “It doesn’t exist. None of it happened. Because if it did, if you started to see it—so nobody does. That’s just a nice old guy looking down on the kiddies. Millions disappeared and no one saw them go. That’s what it’s like here. Things just aren’t there, even when they are. So how did Soames feel about that, or Weeks, or any of them? That’s what I’d like to know. When they saw who they were working for.”

Simon looked across again. Walls of light mustard, almost cheerful. Frank’s elite force, the country where everything worked.

“Of course, there’s another possibility. About Soames. Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe somebody else did.”

Simon waited a second. “Who?”

Hal made a wry face. “Who kills people in this country?” Looking across the square.

“One of their own?”

“Maybe they thought he was a double agent. Maybe he was a double agent. They always worry about that. If the defector’s a plant. Maybe he became a liability. Picked up the wrong intel at Arzamas. I don’t know why. But if they did, it would make some story. They’d kick me out, but a story like that, you could write your own ticket back to New York.” He glanced at Simon. “Maybe even a book.”

Simon turned to him. “Frank’s not going to talk to you about this. You know that, don’t you? He works for the KGB.”

Hal nodded. “But he might talk to you.”

“To me?”

“I just need background. Confirmation. I don’t need anything on the record.”

“Is that what this little guided tour was about? Make me a source?”

Hal hunched his shoulders. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

“Not this time. I didn’t come here for this—get you a byline.”

“Look, we’re on the same side here.”

“As long as I set you up with Frank.”

Hal took out a card. “This is where I am. Don’t worry, it’s not radioactive. Nobody’ll think anything of it. Meet another American and take his number, that’s all.”

“At UPI. With him listening,” Simon said, tipping his head toward the statue.

“Well, they do. Fact of life here. But what would they hear? You’d want the interview. It’s good press for the book. You’d want to set things up early. Strictly business.” He held up his hands to show them empty. “You should probably go back to the hotel alone, though. Just out for a walk. Follow left there. It’ll circle back. Past the Bolshoi. Moscow’s laid out in rings so you’re always circling back. See the big pile down there? House of Unions. Where they put Gary Powers on trial. Poor bastard.”

“You cover that?”

“Everybody covered it. If there’s one thing they know how to do here, it’s a show trial. One more cigarette?”

Simon offered him the pack, watching as he pocketed one.

“Just ask him about Soames and see what he says. If I’m right, I’d appreciate a call. Or maybe you see me at the National. At the bar. And we have a drink. Off the record.”

When Simon got back to the hotel Colonel Vassilchikov was standing out front, annoyed but trying to mask it with a formal smile. He was wearing a business suit today, but everything about him—buzz-cut hair, the pulled back shoulders—was military, a soldier out of uniform.

“Mr. Weeks. You’ve been out?”

“I wanted to see Red Square.”

“Ah. And what did you think?”

“Much bigger than I imagined.”

Improbably, Vassilchikov’s face softened, a patriot. “Yes, it’s very beautiful. That’s what it means, you know. The word for red is also that for beautiful. Nothing to do with the Soviets.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It was a market. There were stalls along the Kremlin walls. Well,” he said, catching himself. “But if you had told me, I would have provided you with a guide.”