‘Eight days,’ said Caroline, later, after they’d eaten the meal she’d prepared in her own apartment.
‘What’s eight days?’ he said.
‘How long since you’ve had an assignment. And how long I’ve been able to have you to myself. I think it’s great.’
‘It won’t last,’ predicted Yuri.
It didn’t.
33
The letter from Natalia arrived the following day, giving Yuri an earlier than expected opportunity to test the idea he’d had. He read it, deciding at once there was nothing of importance, but still took a copy for his files before re-sealing it. The mission official whose duty it was to liaise with the Americans over the correspondence was a Ukrainian named Votrin who was not a member of the KGB but who knew that Yuri was, and listened with nervous attention to the instructions he was given.
Yuri wanted the response from someone senior, in direct contact with Levin, so – aware from the correspondence and of his meeting with the girl how much it mattered – he ordered Votrin to relay that in addition to a letter there was some reaction from Moscow to Natalia’s exit request. And that it had to be collected from the UN building. David Proctor came personally.
Votrin positioned himself on the delaying second-floor corridor as Yuri instructed and the moment he witnessed the contact Yuri moved, needing to get outside, hoping the American would be held for at least five minutes by Votrin’s assurance that Natalia’s departure from the Soviet Union was being favourably considered.
Yuri walked as fast as he reasonably could without attracting attention across the vast forecourt of the UN building, dodged through the traffic on the Plaza and went two at a time up the Shcharansky steps, ironically named after the Jewish dissident whose emigration to Israel the Soviet Union had prevented for so long. The geological bump directly opposite the skyscraper gave Yuri the perfect elevation from which to see Proctor emerge from the buildings: using the camera that was part of his William Bell legend, Yuri took two photographs of the man for later possible identification and a third of the green Buick he was obviously approaching, in the car park. Precisely on time Votrin came from the UN, calling to halt and delay the man once more and again Yuri moved, this time to the car hired and parked within an hour of the letter arriving.
He drove impatiently out on to Second Avenue, took the immediate right on 44th Street and was at the junction with the UN Plaza when the green Buick nosed out opposite, its indicator showing the necessary right turn. The lights were in Yuri’s favour and he managed to get out two vehicles behind the other car, which he considered dangerously close but unavoidable on such clogged streets if he were not going be separated and lose it at yet another set of traffic lights. He gambled on the jammed traffic actually protecting him because there was no alternative but for one car to follow another: so near, he was able to see that the American was travelling alone. He thought the continuing blink of the indicator was a failed cancellation but then saw the car begin to move to the right and realized it was making for FDR Drive. Yuri allowed another car to intervene between them before following, deciding that his timed and distanced ring upon the map, calculated from the Washington destination Levin had disclosed in his letter, had already been enormously reduced. This could only be a northerly direction: upstate New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island or Massachusetts. And a large proportion of that area could be excluded by the time frame. He thought Long Island unlikely, because of the reference to the abundance of trees and skiing. And was proven right when Proctor ignored the turning, making instead for the Hutchinson River Parkway when he cleared the Bronx.
On the Interstate the traffic thinned more than he wanted and Yuri saw an additional risk of his being detected because of the slowness with which it travelled. He fell further back, tucking himself behind an enormous truck proclaiming that Habcocks Chicken Breasts were the best in the world, daring to emerge only occasionally to see the Buick remaining distantly in front. At White Plains, Proctor picked up Interstate 684 and Yuri mentally eliminated Rhode Island from his list. And when it divided and the Buick took the easterly route on Interstate 84, he erased New York State as well. Which left a limited section of Connecticut or a small area of Massachusetts. His protective lorry pulled off at Danbury, leaving him exposed, and the Russian decreased his speed further, so far back it was only just possible to distinguish the colour of the vehicle he was pursuing.
Yuri drove conscious of the frequent rock outcrops and of the denseness of what seemed to be perpetual forests, thinned though they were by the approach of winter. He decided later that it was the natural thinness which initially made him miss it, one of the references of hopeful significance he had isolated from the letters. And then it registered and he remembered the phrase – like the horrific pictures that came from Vietnam. It had been an exaggeration of Levin’s because Yuri’s recollection of the films that had been shown so often on Soviet television was that the American defoliation in Vietnam had been far more severe than this, but there it was, on several of the ridges when he looked closely, long swathes of stripped-bare trees whose absence of leaves had nothing to do with the nearness of winter. Close, thought Yuri: he was getting very close. But not close enough, he realized, in different awareness. He had concentrated too much, for too long, upon the surrounding countryside and not enough upon his quarry. When Yuri looked back to the road he could not locate the vehicle he was following. He jabbed his foot on the pedal, abruptly accelerating up to the clump of cars in which the Buick had been moving and when he reached it saw, sickeningly, that it was not there any more. There was a Buick in the group but it was brown and contained an entire family, the rear seat jostled by squabbling children.
Yuri let the cars pull away, looking for some identification and almost at once saw the turn-off sign indicating the next exit to be for Marion. He left the highway before that, at a rest stop, and using Marion as a marker on his map worked out where he was. And from there traced backwards along the Interstate, for possible earlier exits, over a distance of ten miles. Four, he concluded. With Waterbury the largest and most obvious. But in which direction from that turn-off, north or south? And why, necessarily, Waterbury? He’d been careless, Yuri recognized, irritated with himself. And hadn’t he decided he couldn’t be careless, about anything? He doubted that the encirclement on his map reached as far north from this point to include Massachusetts. So out of every state in mainland America he had achieved a remarkable pinpointing. And although he lost the man this time, he had not lost the eventual opportunity. He could use the letter delivery ploy again but next time carry out the initial pursuit differently now that he knew at least the route to Danbury, able to drive undetectably ahead of the American while keeping him in the rear-view mirror, with no need to reverse the positions until after that point.
Yuri used the Marion exit to loop back on to the Interstate and return to New York, but at the Waterbury turn-off he impulsively left the road again and for no other reason than that northwards had been the general direction in which he’d followed the American, Yuri drove towards Torrington.
What were the references that still baffled him? Rooftop verandahs to watch the sea where there is no sea, he remembered. Widow’s walks , which he guessed to be the same thing and of which Petr had written in his last letter. Ledge, which meant granite, but was a definition he could not substantiate. And perhaps the most incomprehensible of all, spies in statues and spies in history. Who was a spy commemorated by a statue and what was the link with a spy in history? Two separate people? Or one and the same?