Joseph Kanon - Defectors

“Arrange it?”

“To keep Perry happy. They like to keep their old boys happy. And keep an eye on them. This way they’ll know his every waking thought. Even what he says in his sleep. They got Gareth a boyfriend. Why not a loyal wife? Mostly loyal anyway. They like doing that. Using someone close.”

“The car is here,” Boris said from the window.

“Oh, and we were having such fun,” she said, her voice forced, then looked down. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the way I wanted this to go. I wanted it to be—I don’t know, like it was.” She looked up. “I haven’t changed so much, have I?”

“We’ve all changed.”

“Not you,” she said, patting his chest. “Don’t disapprove. I couldn’t bear that. I’ll be right as rain in the morning and then we’ll start over, okay?”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Frank said, getting ready to go. “Did you bring a coat?”

“A coat?” Joanna said, dazed.

“It’s still cold, nights. Boris, take home anything you like.” He nodded to the spread of food. “I’ll send someone up to clear,” he said, a show of normalcy, as if nothing had happened, just a drink and appetizers.

Joanna came closer. “So tomorrow? We can talk and talk. I want to know everything. Diana. Everything.”

“Coming?” Frank said, almost at the door.

“Yes,” Joanna said, then hugged Simon, putting her mouth near his ear, a low murmur. “He’s up to something. I’m not crazy. You live with someone, you can sense it. He wants something. I don’t know what yet. All of a sudden he wants you here. Why?”

“Maybe he wanted to see me,” Simon said gently. “I wanted to see him.”

“Oh, lovely Simon,” she said, touching his cheek. “It’s different here. You can’t trust him. Any of them.” She pulled back, a public voice. “Come early. There’s so much to catch up on.”

She followed Boris out, Frank lingering.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s the excitement—your being here. Her sister came after Richie died and that helped. But no one since. Her family, anybody. Until you.”

“Why not go see them? She still has her passport. She never renounced—”

Frank looked at him, then up at the chandelier, taking him by the sleeve and moving him out to the hall. Jo and Colonel Vassilchikov were at the other end, near the floor manager.

“It’s all right out here,” Frank said, voice low. “So you have been briefed. There’s no other way you could have known that.” Answering a question that hadn’t been asked. “We’ll take a walk tomorrow and talk. I do that every day. Boris won’t think anything of it. Was it Pirie himself? I’ll be curious—what he had to say.”

“Frank,” Simon said, dismayed, still hearing Jo, maybe everyone crazy.

“Be right there,” Frank said to the others, raising his voice loud enough to carry, then turned back to Simon, conspiratorial. “We’ll talk. You forget. I know Don. I know how he thinks.” Twelve years ago.

“Frank—”

“By the way,” he said, not listening. “Don’t say anything to Jo about—seeing her family. That’s not really possible. You’d just upset her. We’re—we’re here.”

And then he was gone, the long overcoat flapping around his legs. Simon watched them get into the elevator, then scanned the hall. No one but the old woman who kept the keys. And no doubt made a report. Boris listening in the car. Simon went back into his room. Were they listening now? “Run water in the bathroom,” DiAngelis had said. “The radio loud.” He glanced at the telephone, the light fixture again. Turn around. Leave. He went over to the window. Below Jo and Frank were getting into the car, a privilege, Boris looking out for them. What had the Germans called it? Protective custody. For your own good.

He looked over at the red stars on the Kremlin towers. A great space, big enough for parades to rumble through. You could talk there without running water. Line up to see Gareth’s “bod-y.” Watched. Listened to. In prison, some vast Victorian panopticon, so big you weren’t aware of being inside. But if you kept going, just walked out of the square and didn’t stop, over the endless flat land, reverse the trip he’d just made, you’d finally come to the visible fences—the barbed wire and attack dogs and watchtowers. No glowing red stars there. No way to pretend the surveillance was for your own good. One look at the wires and you’d know. He felt a tightening in his chest. He could get out, do his time, a week or two, and head back to Vnukovo, fly right over the barbed wire. But Frank and Jo— We’re here, Frank had said. A life sentence.

He glanced at his watch, then took out a cigarette and turned on the table lamp next to the window. Open the window, DiAngelis had said. That’ll be the signal you’re okay.

The spring air was soft but chilly. She hadn’t brought a coat, not feeling it.

“Smoke the whole thing. By the window, like you’re a tourist. Looking at things.”

“What if he doesn’t see me?” The street below empty.

“He will.”

“Who is he?”

“You don’t want to know that.”

“I mean, is he a Russian or—?”

“You don’t want to know anything. You’re just a guy here to see your brother. And now you’re having a smoke. Not one of us.”

“I’m not one of you.”

A RESTLESS NIGHT, UP TWICE, looking out at the deserted street. What did he expect to see? A man by a lamppost? Then morning coffee in the dining room, only a few other guests down this early, men in suits eating smoked fish and dark bread, buried in newspapers, columns of dense Cyrillic. He’d been told nobody read the papers—“propaganda sheets” according to DiAngelis—but here they were, as immersed and trusting as businessmen in Omaha. Outside the dining room windows the Kremlin, last night sinister and shadowy, was bathed in spring sunshine. Colonel Vassilchikov’s car wasn’t due until nine. He went out to the lobby, expecting to be stopped at the door, offered an escort, told he couldn’t leave unaccompanied, but no one seemed to notice him.

He crossed the broad street by the underground walkway, then up past the Hotel Moskva, glancing over his shoulder. No one behind, just office workers streaming out of the Metro. Red Square. A place he’d seen in a thousand photographs, filled with tanks and military salutes and politburo members who disappeared from the pictures a year later, airbrushed from memory. He’d always imagined a gray ceremonial square, boxed in by Kremlin towers, but instead it was open and bright, flooded with light, the onion domes of St. Basil’s at the far end swirls of color, GUM department store frilly and ornate, something a children’s illustrator might have dreamed up. People hurrying across to work. Anywhere. He looked at the high fortress walls. Where Stalin had sat up at night putting check marks next to names on a list. Names he knew, names other people knew, names that struck his fancy. Terror had no logic. Check. Gone. Night after night.

Now a line was already forming outside the mausoleum to see him, the embalmed king, a primitive ritual as old as Egypt. Shuffling along patiently for just a glimpse. Except for the man with the hat. Simon looked again. Not moving with the crowd, using it as a kind of screen. Had he seen the hat before? Without even noticing? Maybe on the shallow steps of the Moskva, but maybe not. He hadn’t felt anything, no prickly feeling at the back of his neck. But why stand there and not move with the crowd? To keep Simon in his sight line. He’d be one of theirs. “Nobody will contact you,” DiAngelis had said. “All the embassy people are watched. Just give the okay sign at the window. If there’s any trouble, or you need to make contact, go to the embassy. Ask for me.” “You?” “The name’ll get you to the right person. But only if you have to.” So not one of ours. Unless he was imagining things.