Joseph Kanon - Defectors

“And when is all this happening?” Jo said. “Do I get time to pack?”

“This week, if I can get the go-ahead from the office. Don’t you want to go? I thought you’d be—”

She waved this away and started rummaging in her purse for a cigarette. “Wonderful, isn’t it, to have a travel agent who comes to the house.”

“We have some other work,” Frank said blandly.

She lit the cigarette and rolled down her window to let the smoke out.

“I wish you’d stop,” she said, not looking at him. “Retire.”

Frank smiled, not biting. “And do what, crossword puzzles?”

“How many? Tonight.”

“Two.”

“It’s only soup. There’s plenty if they want to stay.”

“I’m sure they’ll want to get back.”

“To wherever it is they go.”

“Jo.”

But the air had settled, the friction seeping out with the smoke. Simon looked at Frank. They were going to Leningrad, the little back-and-forth not even a quarrel, just making it more ordinary for Boris. Putting the pieces into place. No one knew.

Frank caught his glance. “How are you doing up there? You know what this reminds me of? When we used to drive to Maine with Pa.” He looked at Jo, including her. “Simon always got the front seat, because he got carsick. Always in the front,” he said, warm, reminiscent. “So nothing changes.”

Simon looked back at him quickly, surprised, then turned to face the windshield again, the boy in the front seat. Nothing changes.

They had left the inner city and were passing the sprawling fields of garden allotments, each with its own hut, the dachas of the people.

“I thought the photographer was supposed to come next week,” Jo said.

“Monday,” Simon said.

“Monday?”

Simon turned. “I ran into him at the bar last night. At the National.”

“At the National,” Frank repeated, looking steadily at him.

“Mm. You know, the way you run into people.” Talking in code now, eyes on each other, the doubling effect complete. One person. “He’d like to get it done while we can.”

Frank nodded, accepting this.

“There’s no hurry,” Jo said. “I’d like Ludmilla to give it a good clean before—”

“Nobody’ll know the difference,” Frank said. “We’re not supposed to be grand. Like anybody else.”

“I told him ten,” Simon said to Jo. “Sorry, I should have checked. But he was so anxious—”

But Joanna had already moved on, bowing to the inevitable.

“So it’s the stringer for Look,” Frank said, asking something else. “Interesting.”

“What is?” Joanna said.

“Nothing. The foreign press. How many there are.”

“My hair will be a mess.”

Frank smiled at this. “No it won’t.”

They stopped at a farm stand in the village, a piece of tolerated capitalism since the farms were near the Service compound. At a signal from Frank, Simon got out to stretch his legs, leaving Boris sitting behind the wheel.

“Why the hurry?” Frank said quietly. “He’s the Agency contact?”

“He says he has a package to deliver. Papers. Maybe exit visas. They didn’t tell him what.”

“Exit visas? That’s not how we’re leaving,” Frank said, annoyed. “The last thing you want lying around. How do you explain that?”

“Maybe it’s something else.”

“I didn’t ask for—” He caught himself. “Well, never mind. Careful around Boris on Monday. You don’t think he notices, but he does.”

“He say anything about yesterday?”

Frank shook his head. “Not yet. No idea.” He looked up. “It’s why I thought we’d hurry our trip along. They’re bound to find him. Nothing to connect us, but you never know how people are going to react. You can plan everything, but there’s always an X factor. So let’s get ahead of it.”

“Will you know Monday? Time. Place. Look will be there. Easy to pass the—”

“No. Only to DiAngelis. Use Look to get to him, that’s all. I may know Monday. Depends on tonight.”

It was real country now, stands of birch and pine, fields lined with windbreaks, dark, thick patches of old-growth forest. They passed through a security checkpoint at a manned gate.

“It’s fenced,” Simon said.

“The perimeter. You’re not aware of it when you’re inside. They patrol at night.”

A weekend in the country.

The road split off in several directions, like veins, no signs, no visible houses, each dacha tucked away in the trees by itself, the fence and guards invisible. They followed the main compound road for a mile or so, then turned onto a dirt road that twisted through woods dense with undergrowth, a fairy tale track, then another turn onto a narrower road. Simon had expected a cottage, but the dacha was a substantial two-story house, surrounded by trees, with a broad open lawn in front and garden on the side. The step-up porch and gables were trimmed with gingerbread, like the houses he remembered on the Vineyard, Oak Bluffs, with their elaborate painted scrollwork.

“Smell the lilac,” Joanna said. “The rain brings it out.”

The bushes, some tall as trees, grew alongside the house, their heady perfume another memory of home. For a moment Simon felt that they had left Russia, even gone back in time, all of them who they had been.

They turned into the driveway to find another car already there, two men leaning against it, smoking.

“They’re early,” Frank said, recognizing them. “Well, so much the better.”

They were stocky, their raincoats stretched across their shoulders, hair cropped as short as Boris’s. They tossed their cigarettes when Frank’s car pulled in, but didn’t stand up, just watched sullenly, still slouching, like thugs. But what did DiAngelis look like in his raincoat? Not a gentleman’s business. Frank greeted them and led them up to the house without introducing them. Joanna watched them go up, heavy military clomps.

“God help us. Thomas Cook,” she said, a wry shrug to Simon.

Inside the house was country shabby, comfortable chairs that didn’t match and a fraying carpet, bookshelves everywhere, like the flat in Moscow. An old woman, dressed out of Tolstoy, was in the kitchen already starting the soup. Joanna greeted her in Russian, more halting than Frank’s but evidently understood since the old woman smiled back.

“You’re in here,” Joanna said, opening a door and switching on a light. “It’s a little lumpy, but they all are. Furniture here— Why don’t you unpack and then meet me outside. We’ll have a walk while it’s still light. They’ll be hours.” She nodded to a closed door. “With their timetables. And whatever else—” She stopped, hearing herself, and looked at Simon, then started down the hall. The way she’d always lived, not knowing.

When he came out she was picking lilacs, getting sprinkled by the wet overhead branches.

“Good. You found the boots.”

“Where’s the car?” he said.

“Boris took it. He has a place on the other side of the village. He’ll drive us back Sunday.”

“So we’re on our own?”

“Unless they’ve wired the trees.” She nodded. “On our own. Let me put these inside, then we can get some mushrooms.”

“You really know the difference? Between the poisonous ones and—”

She smiled. “No. I just pick one kind—I know they’re safe—and leave everything else. I don’t even like mushrooms, but it’s a good excuse to get out. They all do it. You’ll see them in the woods with their Little Red Riding Hood baskets. Just let me put these—”

But before she could go up there was a barking, then a dog racing across the lawn.

“Pani,” a voice called.

“Marzena,” Jo said, her voice neutral.