Belov led the way from the suite to the waiting car of the previous night. The streets were definitely busier but there seemed to be a reserved central lane along which they travelled again at a very high speed. A lot of the buildings were squatly monolithic, like Washington; at one junction, where they had to slow, Willick looked to his left and thought he saw the walled Kremlin and the oriental tips of St Basil’s Cathedral, with the vast square in front. The drug began to work, the sensation at first unsettling but very quickly not disturbing at all. Willick was absolutely conscious of where he was and what he was going to do and what he had to say – large tracts of the statement came easily to mind – but there was none of the hollow-stomached fear he knew so well. He actually felt confident: eager, even. He was important, admired.
They entered the quadrangle of a huge, square building through gates that opened and closed immediately, and at once dipped into a long, darkened tunnel, from which they emerged into an inner courtyard. Willick followed Belov through a small door beyond which waited four men who were identified without name as the people who would help him through the press conference.
‘Aren’t you going to be with me?’ Willick asked Belov.
‘I’ll be waiting,’ said the Russian.
The journalists were already assembled when they moved on to the stage. The moment Willick appeared the television lights burst on and there were flashes from still cameras, and Willick found it difficult to see beyond the glare, to establish how many people there were wanting to interview him. From the noise, it seemed a lot.
A thin bespectacled man whom he’d met at the entrance unnecessarily introduced Willick (‘a brave American’) and announced he had a statement to make. Willick cleared his throat, looking directly out to where he believed the television cameras were placed, and delivered the prepared speech perfectly, consulting the sheet occasionally but more frequently staring directly out at the journalists. The effect of the pills strangely seemed to make it possible for him to hear himself, as he talked: he knew he sounded calm and forceful. He enunciated the sentences upon which Belov had been most insistent with his eyes unblinkingly out into the room.
There was an immediate babble of questions when Willick stopped. The thin man held up his hands, quieting the uproar, pointing to individuals whom the American still had difficulty in isolating.
‘How long have you been a spy?’ was the question and unprompted the Russian alongside cupped his hand over the microphone and leaned sideways to Willick.
‘It is not a sudden decision for me to come to the Soviet Union,’ recited Willick, grateful for the prompt. ‘It is a process that has taken some time.’
‘That’s not an answer,’ protested the questioner but the Russian was already selecting someone else.
‘Have you told the Soviets of your work within the CIA?’
‘I have already outlined in my statement how I regard the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency,’ replied Willick, guided again. The pills made him feel fantastic: he wondered if it would be possible to get some more.
‘Haven’t you endangered the lives of fellow Americans by what you have done?’
‘The Central Intelligence Agency endangers the lives of fellow Americans’ was the prepared reply.
‘Do you regard yourself as a traitor?’
‘I regard myself as someone driven by despair, at what I know, forced to speak out.’ Willick thought that sounded good, if a little melodramatic.
‘How did you get here?’
‘Openly, by aeroplane.’ Willick hadn’t needed help that time.
‘Did your recent divorce have anything to do with your decision to defect?’
Willick supposed they would have delved into his background but the question surprised him. ‘Nothing whatsoever,’ he said. Who would Eleanor get her alimony from now!
‘Do you have any involvement with anyone here, in Moscow?’
‘No.’ Another question he found easy.
‘Were you blackmailed into defecting?’
The thin man came sideways but Willick was confident enough to reply by himself. ‘Certainly not,’ he said.
‘What evidence do you have – can you give us – about the claims you’ve made about the CIA?’
Willick listened attentively to the whispered advice and said: ‘That is a demand that should be made by the American people to the CIA. And admitted by the CIA.’
‘What did you mean by the remark about others in the Agency feeling like you… that you will not be the last to expose the evils of the CIA?’
The assistance was immediate and Willick said: ‘I do not feel able to expand any further upon that remark. I think it speaks for itself.’
Willick was searching the blur of faces, enjoying himself like the doctor had promised, but the thin man rose abruptly, cupping his hand beneath the American’s elbow to bring him up as well, and led him away to a cacophony of protests.
‘I’m prepared to go on,’ protested Willick.
‘We’re not,’ said the man.
The American television networks only showed edited highlights, of course, but using the State Department as a front the Crisis Committee obtained complete transcripts from CBS and NBC and from their own wire services they got a full transcript from Associated Press.
‘We’ve got a wholesale fucking disaster on our hands,’ judged Harry Myers.
It was an assessment confirmed within two days, when KGB-supplied names of Central Intelligence Agency personnel whom Willick had identified were published in left-wing newspapers and magazines in Spain, France and West Germany.
In Bonn the deputy head of the station was assassinated by a group claiming to be the Red Army faction.
Petr Levin felt physically limited in his frustration, as if he were enclosed in some sort of straitjacket. He wanted so badly to let Natalia know she had not been abandoned in Moscow. And that it would not be long now before he was with her. And it wouldn’t be long. He’d made the checks carefully over several days and knew that having dropped him off at school the CIA driver did not hang around Litchfield but returned to the house. Which meant he was unescorted for six hours: six whole hours, to get to New York! They’d never even miss him, until it was too late. Petr knew he’d been equally clever discovering the necessary railway route, disputing it with a girl called Janie who thought he was interested in her until to prove an apparent argument she brought him the timetable of the New Haven Line which actually set out the stations. Not quite sure which one yet. Waterbury, maybe. Or Naugatuck. Then straight south and right into Grand Central. He would be able to walk to the United Nations in minutes.
Petr grimaced up through his bedroom window at the noise of the patrolling helicopter, catching a faraway sight of one of the armed patrols. Was there really a Soviet assassination search going on for his father, like they all said? They seemed to be taking it seriously enough. But then they seemed permanently to take themselves seriously. What would he say, if the Russians at the United Nations asked him where his father was? Tell them, he thought at once. He was a traitor, wasn’t he? His father had deserted Natalia, so he couldn’t love her, despite all the shit that he did. Couldn’t love any of them. Deserved all that was coming to him. Even to be killed.
The boy returned to his letter, bored with the emptiness of it. He scribbled a few more lines, describing the widow’s walk he could see from the schoolroom window and then recounted, because he thought it was funny, that the locals called the rock that was everywhere not granite, but ledge, and signed off as he always did that he hoped to see her soon, hoping she would read into the last line what he really meant it to convey.
And it would be soon, he told himself again, in familiar litany. Very soon now.
32
With desperate hopefulness the CIA attempted a damage assessment by expanding the Crisis Committee, not at executive level but administratively. Everything upon which John Willick had ever worked or been associated with was computer located, withdrawn from records and subjected to the most intensive scrutiny. And then independently double checked, to confirm or challenge that first analysis of likely or unlikely harm. The three original members remained in permanent session and in permanent occupation of the ground-floor room in which they had interviewed Yevgennie Levin, whose debriefings were temporarily suspended on account of the assessment priority. Because of the urgency, the reports were delivered individually, immediately they were released after the second clearance, and with each arrival the despondency of the three men worsened.