Joseph Kanon - Defectors

“No regrets?” Simon said, still writing. “You led them into—”

“We’ve been through this,” Frank said. “They knew the risks.”

“They didn’t know it was rigged.”

A silence so long that Boris looked over to see what was wrong.

“I’m not sure what you mean by this note,” Frank said, pointing to the page in front of him, moving on. “Here, pull up a desk chair and we can go through it together. Your handwriting—it’s like a doctor’s these days. I need a translator.”

Simon put the Latvian chapter down and went behind the desk, pulling up a chair next to Frank.

“That’s better. Like old times,” Frank said. “You still circle things?”

“I don’t get to do much editing these days.”

“Now that you’re a plutocrat. Buying off the rack at Altman’s.”

“What it says,” Simon said, pointing to the question, “is ‘what after Spain?’ You tell us you’re recruited there—you even tell us by whom, for a change.”

“He’s dead.”

“And then you go back home and it’s fuzzy until you join the OSS.”

“Well, it was fuzzy in real life. The Service knows how to play a long game. I kept thinking they were going to drop me. I’d meet with my control and I’d have nothing to tell him. But they hung on. Then Wild Bill fell into my lap—or I guess I fell into his—and we were off and running.”

“You don’t say how you fell into it.”

“You know how it happened. All Pa had to do was make a call. Which I didn’t think made anybody look good, so I left it out.”

“With everything else. Before Spain. Don’t you think a brief sketch—?”

“What, family history? The old Brahmin stock? Like something out of Marquand. You know I met him? During the war. He was at OWI, doing God knows what. I never got a thing out of him. I wonder what he thought later. Anyway, it doesn’t explain anything, all the Yankee stuff. This is My Secret Life. If we go with that title. That begins in Spain. You know what it felt like? Years you’re looking through a kaleidoscope, everything mixed up. And then one turn and all the pieces fall into place. Everything makes sense. The way things are. The way they should be. That’s where it began. Before that didn’t matter.”

“So one turn and you’re a Russian spy.”

“Spy. That’s somebody looking through peepholes. Like a house detective. I was an agent. Of the Party. The Service.” He looked over. “I still am. Is that so hard to understand?”

“You’d make it a lot easier if you told people who you were before, why everything clicked into place in Spain.”

Frank was quiet for a minute. “Maybe. But I can’t do it. Do that to him. It would kill him, being in the book. As far as he’s concerned, I’m not here. His son died during the war. Waving the Stars and Stripes. Anyway, he’s not part of the story, any of it. That starts with Spain. My secret life.”

Simon looked at him for a second, then turned the page. “Well, think about it.”

“Is that a way of saying ‘all right’ without saying ‘all right’?”

“It’s a way of saying ‘think about it.’ ”

“Stubborn.”

“Anyway, what do you mean, if we go with that? You having second thoughts about the title? What’s wrong with My Secret Life?”

“I don’t know. It sounds like one of those articles in Confidential. The love child I won’t acknowledge. The benders. You know. What do you think of The Third Department?”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s where I worked. The Third Department of the First Chief Directorate. In charge of intelligence operations against the West. It’s in the book. Don’t you remember?”

“My eyes probably slid right over it. So will the reader’s. Keep the love child.”

Frank smiled. “The siren call of the dollar.”

“We can call Chapter 2 ‘The Third Department.’ That’s where you begin working for them. During the fuzzy period.”

“But it was fuzzy. Do you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”

“Well, there we are in Spain. And you meet Paul on the road to Damascus—or Barcelona or wherever it was. The conversion. But we don’t tell anybody about it. The opposite. We don’t join the Party. We don’t go to meetings. We go to the other side. Except we’re still meeting someone on a park bench every once in a while. Was it a park bench, by the way?”

“It varied,” Frank said, enjoying this. “The seals at the zoo. Like that.”

“And what would we say? Nothing, you say now. Nothing until the war. Then there’s lots to say. But that’s a few years. When things were fuzzy. And the Service is happy to wait.”

Frank nodded. “They know how to do that. Be patient. It’s one of their strengths.”

“So you just gab about this and that. The state of the world. And watch the seals.”

“More or less.” He looked over. “Why? What do you think we talked about?”

Simon said nothing.

“You must have an idea or you wouldn’t have brought it up. So, what?”

Simon looked toward Boris, still reading the paper, then met Frank’s eyes.

“I think you were talking about Pa. His friends in the administration. Maybe what they were like. Maybe more if you happened to come across something. I think you were spying on him.”

For a minute there was no sound but the clock, Frank’s face ticking over with it, as if he were trying on responses, see which one would keep the mechanism going.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say,” he said finally, voice low.

“Is it true?”

“No. I never talked to my control about Pa. Why would we? He was out of government by that time anyway.” He paused. “We never talked about him.”

“I’m glad.”

“But you thought I did. Or might have. You really think I would do that?”

“I never thought you’d do what you did to the Latvians, but you did.” He held up his hand. “I know, they had it coming. I’m just saying I don’t know what you did. Except what’s in the book,” he said, touching the pages. “Which I assume is true, more or less?”

“More or less.”

“I don’t mind you covering your tracks. Everybody does that. But I don’t want to publish lies either. Be a mimeograph machine for the KGB. So I need to ask questions.”

“About Pa.”

“You’re in law school, then here and there in Washington, very junior. Pa knows Morgenthau, Hopkins even. Who else was there to talk about?”

“You really want to know? We talked about my friends. People we might bring along. They already had people to tell them about Morgenthau. I was talent spotting the future. Little acorns with promise. I doubt they got much out of it. But it kept me busy. And it kept me compromised. Reporting on my friends. So after a while the only friend you really have, the only one you haven’t—spied on—is your control. That’s the way it works. I’m not saying they were wrong. They played me. But I wanted to be played. We both got what we wanted. But I never talked about Pa. Or do you think this was worse?”

For a second Simon imagined himself on Frank’s shoulder, about to whisper the right thing in his ear. Whatever that was.

“I guess that would depend on what you said.”

“Not much,” Frank said easily. “Which means there’s not much to say now either. So fill in the blanks with me learning the ropes. How the meetings were arranged. Dead drops. The tricks of the trade. And then we’re in the OSS and now it matters, what I’m saying on the park bench. And we tell them. Beginning of story.”

Simon nodded, a tactical retreat. “So all that time they were just waiting— for something to happen to you?”

“And it did. I told you they know how to wait.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “And they knew something would. I was—well placed. It’s touching the faith they have in that. Got it from the English, I think. It worked that way there, so why not with us? Capitalists being all alike. And they weren’t far wrong, were they? One phone call.”