Spode knew what was coming. “I don’t work for you guys any more, George.”
“Cut that out. This is big and you know it.”
“Nobody’s paying me to stick my neck out. I’m on the Senator’s payroll, not yours. He’s got things he wants me to do—I can’t just cop out on him.”
“Lose a little sleep—work two shifts.”
“I’ve got a girl waiting on my front porch right now wondering where the hell I am. If I don’t get home soon it’s going to be a cold night.”
There was a stretch without talk and he heard Art Miller breathing. George said, “You mind hanging up, Art?”
“Not at all. Talk to you later.” There was a click and shortly afterward Spode heard the darkroom door latch shut.
Spode talked quickly, trying to forestall the grey-faced Virginian at the other end of the line. “I’m going home, George. It’s not my war any more.”
“It never was, was it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Jaime, you never got a commission in the Army and you never worked your way above the subaltern level in the Agency.”
“So I ain’t got a whole lot of ambition. So what?”
“You don’t need ambition, Jaime. You just need to get yourself together. You want to figure out where your loyalties are. You’ve never wanted responsibilities and you’ve never wanted to take initiative. You always had to have somebody hand out the assignments—tell you what to do.”
“Okay, there’s chiefs and Innuns. Everybody can’t be a chief.”
“You could. Any time you decided to get off the fence.”
“George, I haven’t got time for a fifty-dollar-an-hour consultation.”
“This is for free. Belsky’s dropped a responsibility in your lap and you’ve got to decide whether or not you’re going to accept it. And you’ve got to think about something bigger than yourself when you weigh it out.”
“Oh Jesus. Now you’re waving the fucking flag at me.”
“You’re the only one who can get to him.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“Jaime, you didn’t ask to be born.”
“The answer’s still no. It ain’t my job.”
“Then think about this. Belsky knows your face. He’s got some connection with Ross Trumble and you’re also involved in something that Trumble’s involved in—the Phaeton project. It’s not unlikely you’ll cross Belsky’s path again. But in the meantime he’s not going to ignore the meeting you had. He won’t be able to let it alone, he’ll pick at it until he finds out what you were doing at the house and who you are and who you work for. He’ll find out you’re on Senator Forrester’s staff and he’ll decide there’s a chance you didn’t report the meeting to anybody else. You see what that could lead to? He’ll want to cover his tracks and he may decide he can do it by silencing you.”
“I’ve been shot at before.”
“What about Senator Forrester? You want him shot at too?”
“You bastard,” Spode said wearily.
“Belsky will look for you, Jaime. It’s not my fault, it’s just a fact. He’s going to look for you anyway so you may as well let him find you, because that’s the best way for us to find him.”
Spode sagged into the chair with the phone against his ear. “All right, George. Let’s have all of it.”
“We’ll put people on Trumble to try to find out what connection he’s got with Belsky. I’ll keep you up to date. We’ll put some men on Forrester to cover him. Is there any intermediary you usually report to on the staff or do you work direct with Forrester?”
“I work with him. Sometimes Lester Suffield’s in on it—the Senator’s aide.”
“All right. We’ll do the legwork. Maybe Belsky’s registered somewhere under the Meldon Kemp name—we’ll cover that. I’ll have Art put one or two people on you so you won’t have to feel too exposed.”
“Tell them not to get in my way. I hate tripping over eager beavers.”
“I wouldn’t use second-string people on this, Jaime. You know better than that.”
“Just keep them out of my hair,” Spode said with a good deal of force. “Tell them to stay out of my goddamn bathroom. I don’t like being spied on when I crap.”
“Look, we’ve been over all that before and I’ve apologized to you before. It was a mixup with the FBI, some crank anonymous accusation, and it shouldn’t have happened.”
“You’re damn right it shouldn’t.” Somebody had written a letter saying he was a fag and all the departments from FBI to the Agency were paranoid on that subject. Spode tightened his dark face into a savage grin. “Suppose I was a faggot, George?”
“Shut up and get to work.”
“Yeah.” He hung up and glanced at Belsky’s automatic pistol on the table and called back through the house. When Art Miller appeared Spode said, “I’ll see you. You may as well hang on to that iron. Might find out who it was registered to.”
“You back on the team, Jaime?”
“Let’s just say I’m free-lancing on a one-shot contract. The day I sign onto you guys’ payroll again is the day you better have me inspected for rabies.” He turned to the door. “You know my phone number,” he said morosely by way of parting, and went.
Chapter Ten
Friday in Moscow the snow was falling as if dumped out of shovels and scattered by big-bladed fans. The Chaika moved along the Official Cars Only lanes with its wipers thumping, snow building into little cakes in the lower corners of the windshield. Inside the car Rykov felt overheated, partly because of his overcoat and partly because of the big meal he had put under his belt at the Aragvi.
He had stuffed himself to the belching point with canakhi and shashlik and Georgian tea and watched Yashin pick at his chakhokhbili; the sword dancer had whirled by, fast pirouettes with the sword pointed at his own body, and the music had been high and frantic, and through it all Yashin had maintained his ascetic detachment and infuriated Rykov. Men without passions were abominations.
At the height of the featured dance Yashin had removed his rimless glasses to polish them. “My dear Viktor, surely you know the old Japanese proverb, ‘You can see another’s arse but not your own.’” The wintry glance, never quite a smile. “What you propose is a Carthaginian peace. Annihilation of peoples. Really I think you need a rest.”
“Comrade First Secretary, the news from China—”
“I have seen all your evidences and I am not impressed. Xenophobia is the root of the Chinese character, but there’s no reason for us to have it—it is not a communicable disease. Viktor, you suffer from messianic fantasies, you wish to think of yourself as the supreme player in an immense global chess game, you are obsessed by the notion that if power is disused it may atrophy and therefore it must be exercised—and since we are not at war with anyone at the moment we must go to war with someone.”
But the dark winter of Asia was ending; the Chinese war machine stirred with rumbling vibration; there were no responsible leaders to halt it: China was a country which boasted of its ancient civilization yet remained politically adolescent, full of immature ambitions to achieve rule over all of Asia. Yashin had rested his case on the supremacy of the Soviet retaliatory plan and that was that. In the Kremlin they made a Plan and the Plan was all, the Plan was always right and invincible, only people could be mistaken, and if people made mistakes they were punished. Yashin’s plan was the wrong plan and when it proved wrong Yashin would be punished—but that was no satisfaction: that would be too late.