“I used to think sometimes that if I just went into a police station or an FBI office and told them the whole story they’d laugh me right into the nearest insane asylum.”
“Did you often think of doing that?”
“Betraying them? Every day. From the first day I arrived here I wanted to explode the whole thing.”
“Because you didn’t believe in it?”
“I don’t know what I believed in. I’d been conditioned as if I were a laboratory animal—but I didn’t recognize that at first. I’d grown up believing in Communism. Born and raised in the Soviet Union. I thought of myself as a loyal citizen—why shouldn’t I? I let Les talk me into joining them and he convinced me that what we were setting out to do was right and necessary and just. He really believed that—and so did I.”
“But you said you wanted to get out of it from the first day you came here.”
“That wasn’t political conviction, Alan. It was realizing all at once that I just couldn’t live my whole life under that stress, every moment waiting for somebody to discover the truth about me. Afterward I began to open my eyes and see how insane the whole thing was.”
“But you still didn’t try to get out.”
“I asked them to send me back to Russia. They refused, of course—they said they had an investment in me.”
“They?”
“Ramsey Douglass and my brother Les.” Her face was masked by the weight of her hair; her voice was a monotone. “The more Les saw of American politics the more he was convinced it was an evil regime of rich men and thugs exploiting the people. He had a curious way of rationalizing the way he went on practising the kind of chicanery he claimed to loathe so much—his reasons never made sense to me but he said I just didn’t have the right kind of mind to follow it.”
“He was part of it, and Ramsey Douglass, and Ross Trumble, is that right? Why did they all behave like dedicated right-wing reactionaries? Was it intended as camouflage, to throw off suspicion?”
“Partly. We came here with instructions to act ultra-American. But it was more than that. We had to infiltrate the defense establishment and the political power structure, and down here they’re both pretty much in the hands of the conservatives. You’re not a conservative, of course, but the Republican Party has pretty firm control over Arizona’s politics, and you were a Republican, so Les and I attached ourselves to you.” In a lower voice she added, “Like leeches.”
He clasped his hands together and scowled at his knuckles. “They refused to let you go back to Russia but you still didn’t try to break loose from them. Why? Because you were afraid they’d kill you?”
“I think I could have accepted that. No, they never make do with so simple a threat as that. You see, as long as Les was loyal to them I couldn’t do a thing. If I’d stepped out of line they would have killed him the way they killed my husband. They kept reminding me of that—Nicole did. They had Les and they had my family back in Russia. That’s the kind of weapon they’ve used against all of us.”
“What vicious bastards they are.”
“They’re frightened, Alan. Frightened people do desperate things.”
Spode, at the front window, turned his head. “That’s no excuse.”
“I don’t suppose anything excuses us,” she replied. Her eyes were fixed sightlessly on Forrester’s hands. Spode put his back to the window and stared at Ronnie. Clearly Top could not understand why she had gone along all these years without totting up the odds and deciding, quickly and without regrets, either to remain loyal to the Russians or to betray her comrades and take her chances: one way or the other, it would have been done, over with, a clean decision. To Spolde loyalty was not divisible by two; there was no room in his mind for the idea that anyone could love two people on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gap.
Forrester knew that much about Spode; he wished he knew as much about himself. The silence was beginning to stretch, and he knew it was time to move, to act, but his attention was imprisoned by the look on Ronnie’s face when she turned toward him. Her eyes had receded into dark tunnels. He felt a great rushing-out, a desire to embrace her tightly and protect her against them alclass="underline" he had lost One woman he had loved deeply and now he had lost Ronnie too and it was too much to bear, too much to think about, and yet it was of no importance by comparison with the crisis Ronnie faced. The lie she had lived for twenty years had been terrible enough but at least it had cloaked her in a kind of safety; now even that had been stripped from her and there was no place left for her to turn. How could he protect her? What would happen when she began to think about the future—when the panic set in? What would she do? There was nothing.
Spode’s voice clacked abruptly, directed at Ronnie: “You still don’t know exactly what they’re planning?”
She twisted away from Forrester. “My mind’s full of gaps, Jaime—I don’t remember everything. Something to do with the base—something to do with the missiles. And we’re all supposed to gather at the airport to get away on a plane. To Cuba, I think.”
Spode had opened the door; he pushed it shut and came back. “We can get through the arroyos, I think. There’s no time at all, you know that—we ought to call the President. Put it in his lap. He can get on the hot line with Moscow and tell them to pull their people out of here or else.”
“Or else what, Top? That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“We can’t just sit on it.”
“We’ve been over that. It wouldn’t be kept secret. Once it got out there would be public hysteria. Even assuming war could be avoided the yahoos would demand war and when they didn’t get it there’d be riots, armed troops, panics, shooting.”
Spode said, “It doesn’t have to get out. There’s machinery. We had to keep it oiled when I was in the Agency. The Office of Emergency Preparedness has a chief censor with powers to clamp the lid on everything in a national emergency. We were ready to use it in the Dominican crisis in sixty-five. Once the President invokes those powers nobody can tell the American public it’s under nuclear attack unless the White House clears it.”
“Top, the minute I’m convinced we’ve got no alternative I’ll call the President. But if I called him now he’d have only one thing to do—he wouldn’t have time to uncover their whole net down here and so all he could do would be to slap Moscow with a war ultimatim. As you yourself put it—get them out of here, or else. But if we can pull this off without the use of the hot line we avoid that risk.”
“Pull it off how?”
“Find this man Belsky. We’ve got an opening now: Ramsey Douglass can lead us to him. That may be enough.”
“Jesus God.”
Spode drove at high speed along the freeway. The whine of the tires echoed off the concrete bridge abutments and the car snickered on the bends. Ronnie sat tight against Forrester at hip and knee, her shoulder in the hollow of his armpit. Her face was drawn; she looked old. She had already withstood too much and there was no hope of release. His fingernails dug into his palms and he was filled with a wild rage—and the fearful sense of loss.
He felt the touch of her hand. When he turned, her glance locked his with tremendous impact. Her mouth trembled; she shuddered clear through to her fingertips.
Forrester stirred in the chair, groggy; something was cold against the side of his forehead. When he sat up he realized he had been slumping with his head against the window. When he looked out into the dawn it took him a moment to orient himself. They were back in his motel. Outside, the scene had a squinty-eyed hung-over aspect. Travelers were heaving suitcases into jammed trunk compartments, wiping morning dew off their windshields, slamming doors; faintly he could hear them yapping at their children. The aftermath of yesterday’s flooding had left flotsam blocking the corner drains and puddles in the pavement. He saw deep tire tracks in the motel lawn where someone had sought a route to the parking lot when the water had been flowing eight inches deep.