Joseph Kanon - Defectors

“Nasty how?”

“His specialty was blackmail. After he got them into bed, had his fun.” He looked away. “It takes all kinds.”

Simon glanced toward the bar where Gareth was already tossing back a drink. Even the Service had its pecking order, some treacheries more acceptable than others, like prisoners who looked down on molesters but didn’t bat an eye at murder.

“Come on, let’s celebrate. I ordered caviar.”

“Caviar?”

“Who’s better than us?” he said, their grandmother’s old line, usually before she clinked a champagne glass. “Besides, it’s still cheap here. Not like it used to be, but still— You must be hungry. They never have anything decent on the plane.”

He had ordered not just caviar, but a whole spread of food, laid out and waiting for them on a big round table in Simon’s room, a suite with the promised Kremlin view. Smoked fish and caviar on ice and beet salad and pickled mushrooms, anchored by a board with black bread and sweet butter.

“Zakuski,” Frank said, an Intourist guide. “In the old days they’d have a few appetizers put out before dinner to keep the hunger pangs away, but then it kept getting bigger and bigger until it became—” He opened his hand to the table. “Zakuski. Of course, most people had nothing. Kasha, if they were lucky. We forget that. Boris, some vodka?”

Colonel Vassilchikov, who had come up with them, opened the bottle and poured out three glasses. The room, like the bar downstairs, had red flocked wallpaper and antique furniture, an exercise in fin de siècle nostalgia, but seemed even more faded and musty, velvet drapes with lace trimming so old and fragile you thought it might come apart in your fingers. Simon looked up at the heavy chandelier, another relic from the tsars. Where DiAngelis had said there’d be microphones.

“Don’t bother looking for them—you’d never get them all. Just assume someone’s listening. They’re all over the place. In the walls. The phone. That’d be easy enough, screw off the mouthpiece and there it is. But then they know you’re looking. And you’re not that kind of guy. You’re someone—it wouldn’t even occur to you, the bugs.”

But now, looking up, he couldn’t help imagining the listeners, sitting in some windowless room with headphones, recording every sound, the clink of vodka glasses as Boris welcomed him, a toast curiously official and secret at the same time, with no one there to hear it but the ears in the walls.

Frank raised his glass again. “The British Navy. In the seventeenth century.” He nodded to Simon, smiling. “To making me look good.”

“To making you look good,” Simon repeated, hearing himself saying it.

“Here, have something to eat,” Frank said, filling a plate, playing host. “Boris, what about you?”

Simon looked over at him. Here for the evening, apparently. A bodyguard who didn’t stand outside the door, part of the family.

“I’ve been thinking,” Frank said, handing Simon the plate. “About the Latvians. I can put them in, if you think I should.” Shoptalk, directly to Simon, as if Boris weren’t there.

“All right,” Simon said, not sure where Frank was going.

“I’ll have to clear it. The Agency might see it as a provocation. And we want to be careful about that. The line these days is make nice, hands together.”

“That’ll come as news to them.”

Frank smiled. “I didn’t say it was true. I just said it was the line.” He looked over. “I won’t apologize,” he said quickly. “But I’ll say what happened to them. My part in it. I had to, you know. They never should have—” He took another drink. “Well, water over the dam. So. Round one to you.”

“It’s not a fight.”

“No. But I’ll give you this one. Be the bad guy of the piece.” He fingered his glass, tracing a ring. “I’m sorry about—any trouble I caused you. The worst of it, all this business, is having to lie to people. To keep cover. It’s nothing personal, you know. Just the way things have to be. Still.” He looked up. “It’s good to see you.”

And suddenly, in a quick second, maybe the drink, it was. Simon felt a rush to his face, the old affection. An involuntary smile, sharing a joke no one else heard.

Frank looked away first. “Boris, caviar? Mustn’t let it go to waste. Boris is a great one for caviar. Eat it every day if he could.”

Boris said something in Russian. Frank laughed and answered back, a different voice again, as if the language put him in another body. He refilled Simon’s glass.

“So did Pirie brief you himself?” he said to Simon.

Without thinking, Simon looked up at the chandelier.

“Don’t mind about that—you get used to it. Half the time the tape just ends up on a shelf somewhere.”

“And the other half?”

“Does it make a difference? I’m in the Service. Anything you tell me, you’re telling them. So not Pirie?”

“No.”

“Not even a hello? You’d think he’d take a personal interest. After all we’ve been through. Chip then? It’s not a briefing you farm out. You’d want someone who knew me.”

“Frank—”

Frank held up his hand. “All right, just asking. It had to be somebody. Or have I just slipped off the raft?”

“Guidelines for the book, that’s all. They have to vet it. You know that.”

“Mm. Their own special blue penciling. A courageous publisher would have told them to fuck off.”

Simon nodded. “But you wanted a respectable one.”

Frank looked up; your ad. “So not even a message? Something cryptic to keep me guessing at night? I thought Don might want to have a little fun.”

“No.”

Frank made a face, then let it go. “Old Don. He’s as crazy as Dulles. But predictable. Lucky for us. Whenever you want to know what they’ll do, his section, just figure out the dumbest response and—bingo. Chip was all right, though. A good head on his shoulders. Which I suppose means he was never promoted.”

“I don’t know. Really. I don’t work for the Agency. I never even go to DC anymore. So how would I hear?”

“I just thought you might—be in touch. You and Chip go back—the OSS days, for chrissake.”

“I haven’t seen him. People—scatter.”

“So who do you see?”

“From that world? No one. If you want to talk about old times, I can’t be much help. They’re your old times, not mine.”

Frank looked at him, then walked toward the window. “Well, some are yours too. I like old times. That’s what we have now, isn’t it?” He was quiet for a second, looking out, then turned. “Anyway, that’s all the book is, old times, so one way or another—”

He stopped, jarred by the telephone ringing, something unexpected, his face suddenly wary. He nodded to Boris, now a secretary, who picked up the receiver and started talking in a lowered voice, as if Simon could understand Russian. Then more Russian to Frank.

“What is it?” Simon said.

“Oh, nothing. The battle-axe in the hall. You know, the one who keeps your keys. God knows where they get them. War widows, I suppose.” His voice nervous, caught off guard. “Boris will fix it. Whatever it is.” A forced easiness now, watching Boris leave, then turning back to the window. “Come look at this. I want to show you something.” Distracting them both. “See the building over there? Catty corner. Hotel Moskva.”

Simon looked out. An ugly big building hulking over an open square.

“See how the two halves don’t match? Story goes they brought two sets of drawings to Stalin, to choose, but he just said yes, fine, and nobody had the guts to say ‘which?’ so they built them both, one on top of the other. That way nobody got in trouble.” Talking just to talk, his mind elsewhere, out in the hall where something had happened.