“I do not know this.”
“You are a liar, Denisov. You sent those men in the gray car after her.”
“I am alone. You know this is true.”
Devereaux suddenly made a guess. “Why did you see Ludovico?”
For a moment, Denisov appeared stunned. And then he turned away. “You think you know much, Devereaux. You do not sleep so well, I think, you must dream this. Why would I kill one priest and go to see another?”
“You know he’s here.”
“Perhaps.”
“Ludovico is here.”
“I am not concerned.”
“This is a pose, Denisov. You are not a simple man.” This time Devereaux stepped in front of him. “But this is not an interrogation. Did they treat you badly in Gorki? Did you tell them everything they wanted to know?”
“They are satisfied with me.”
“And now? Will they be satisfied with your failure?”
“You have failed. I gave you the proofs.”
“And I have the journal.”
Denisov stared at the cold, impassive face.
“Is this so?”
Devereaux did not speak.
“I do not know about a journal which you speak.”
“I know the secret.”
“There is no secret.”
“You have failed, Denisov.”
Denisov thought again of that confrontation in the darkened hotel room. Yes, he had wanted to kill Devereaux then but that was not the mission. And then Devereaux had asked him: What if you fail again?
“It is you who fail. I am held in regard in Moscow. You fail because you do not use the proofs and you let your CIA agent kill this priest.”
“They will not accept failure again. It will not be a matter of returning to Moscow. Or even questioning in Gorki. Perhaps you will be offered the chance of rehabilitation in Murmansk. You can work on the power project—”
The French-made automatic appeared in his hand as though it were a magic trick.
“A pistol, Denisov? Are you going to kill me?”
“Yes. It is time for that.”
Devereaux smiled. “You have failed, haven’t you? You know what they will do with you—”
“Where is the journal?”
“There is no journal.”
“Then your death will be unnecessary. Except that you will be dead in any case.”
“Success or failure depends on survival.”
“I will survive.”
“Yes,” Devereaux said. “That has already been arranged. You have defected. Welcome to America.”
Denisov stared at him.
“You are a problem and I have to put you in a box. For a little while. If the whole thing blows up, I have to survive and I need a cover. You are my cover; you are my little prize to turn over to them in case everything else fails. You are insurance.”
Denisov began to speak, in Russian, and then stopped.
“Again,” Denisov said sadly. “You betray me.”
“You are the enemy. You cannot betray those you do not trust.”
“You cannot have done this thing.”
“It is done all the time. By you, by us. Two cables were sent tonight—”
“My government will not believe—”
“Yes. Of course they will. It is not too difficult to feed the paranoia of an intelligence system. Especially the KGB. Two cables, sent in usual diplomatic code. We made sure your people were listening. Right now the intercepted messages are in the Committee for External Observation and Resolution.”
Denisov held the gun at belly level.
“The first says you have made contact with an American agent in Florida. As you had planned. The cable is to our British station, seeking background information. You have defected, the cable states. The second emanates from Cardinal Ludovico right here on the beach. He has informed the operations chief at the Congregation back in the Vatican that you have betrayed your masters, that you have defected to the Americans.”
Denisov did not speak.
“And now it will be nothing to me to kill you,” Denisov said at last.
“No. You won’t kill me.”
“You have betrayed me again.”
“No. Your knowledge of English is still not precise. We are enemies. I have beaten you.”
“For nothing. You beat me for nothing.”
“To survive,” Devereaux said. “Look over there, at the street. Two men. From the Tampa FBI. They’ll take you back to Washington. We will talk again.”
“I must not.” He stopped, looked around wildly. “I must escape this thing.”
Devereaux spoke in a flat voice, without pity. “You were a professional. You took the chance. You tried to use me and it didn’t work. There’s no place to run.”
“No. This would be without hope for you. You could have taken me. You could hold me, capture me. At least there would be exchange for me, for one of yours. It is worthless to have me not to exchange.”
“No. That was suggested, but no. Your exit is blocked, it has to be. If everything fails, I will use you to extricate myself. And now the cables have been sent.”
Denisov looked down at the gun in his hand. “I could kill you,” he said tonelessly.
“The life of a defector is not unpleasant,” Devereaux said. “The life of a murderer is spent in our prison system. Our jails are very unpleasant places.”
“I could kill myself.”
For a moment, Devereaux’s face softened. “No, Dmitri Ilyich. That would be an act of despair. That would not be forgiven.”
The music came to him in that moment, the last song on the record before he had followed Luriey out the door of the little apartment in Moscow.
“I will not see them again, my family,” Denisov said.
Devereaux waited.
“This is the cruel thing you have done.”
“It is not death, Denisov. You are not obliterated. You survive.”
“And you. You survive for nothing. You are still adrift, you are still left outside.”
“Yes.”
“What will you do to me?”
“Keep you. You know we won’t harm you.”
“My family will suffer.”
“Perhaps.”
“Would this be easy for you? To be taken away?”
Devereaux said nothing.
The moon came from behind the cloud; in the sudden stream of white light, Devereaux could clearly see the eyes of the Soviet agent.
They were shining with tears.
And then, slowly, Denisov let the pistol leave his fingertips and fall onto the sand without a sound.
31
Vanderglass studied the building directory in the lobby of the National Press Building for several seconds before going to the elevator bank. He rode up alone; it was shortly after ten on Monday morning, nearly a day after Leo Tunney had been killed. Official Washington was already at work. When the doors opened on the ninth floor, the corridors were empty. It was too late for stragglers going to work and too early for the first coffee break of the day.
He found the offices of World Information Syndicate. With his usual, cool attention to detail, Vanderglass noticed that the “S” was missing from the title on the glass door. Vanderglass noticed everything, remembered everything; it was part of his usefulness as operations director for international security at InterComBank.