Ely was surprised. “How did you know?”
“More important, how did Father Cunningham know,” Rita Macklin said. “He knew Parker was a British agent. The priest wasn’t a fool.”
“It sounds as though Parker was,” Ely said.
“Did you — did your people kill Father Cunningham?”
“Of course not. Why would we want to do that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know anything about this—”
“His… demise surprised our people,” Ely said.
“You know I’m not a spy, that I’m not a terrorist—”
“I know nothing, Miss Macklin. You protest your innocence, which can mean that you are all the more guilty. I don’t know.”
“Damn you,” she said at last. “You hurt me.”
Ely said nothing for a moment. Then: “Why do you want to go to Leningrad, Miss Macklin.” Softly, insistently.
“Because I think Tomas Crohan is alive. And that he’s in Kresty Prison there.”
“How brave of you. Will you break him out of prison?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have to go there first.”
“Why is Tomas Crohan alive?”
“I just think he is. Instinct.”
“No, Miss Macklin. Instinct will take you across the street, not halfway around the world. Let us get down to the matter now, Miss Macklin, so I can let you go home.”
For a moment, Rita did not speak. She felt defeated and terrified at the same time. Ely was gentle, almost innocuous. And yet there was some truth in his voice when he said he would not permit himself to fail at this little mission. Even at the expense of her life.
“How do I know you will let me go?”
“Because I would have no reason to hurt you.”
“You have no reason now.”
“Tell me about the old priest,” Ely said softly.
She hesitated.
“And Tomas Crohan,” Ely said. “Tell me about him as well.”
15
They had given him a suit of clothes and he had been examined once again by the doctors. He had shaved closely and he had placed the razor in the little leather packet they provided for him. The last part had involved the private interview with the man called Tartakoff.
He had stood during the interview.
At the beginning, Tartakoff had watched the prisoner in silence with an edge of amusement on his lips. His eyes sparkled in the harsh light. Tomas Crohan felt tired, as though his seventy-one years had become a weight at two in the morning that dragged at him and made him shrink before the gaze of Tartakoff.
“Do you know why you have been given a suit of clothing?”
“No, Commander.”
“You are being transferred to the workforce at Gorki. I have discovered that you have an ability with languages.”
“Yes. I am not as good as I was, Commander.”
“Your Russian is very good. Can you speak English?”
“It is my native tongue, sir. But I do not speak it often.” Tomas said in English.
“Good. Continue in English for a moment,” the Russian said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you been badly treated here at Kresty?”
“No, sir. I shall be sorry to leave here, sir.”
“Yes. Perhaps you shall be sorry,” Tartakoff said and again he smiled.
“What shall I do at Gorki?”
“I’m not certain. But it might involve work with languages. We have many prisoners at Gorki, many nationalities.”
“The Americans—”
Tartakoff looked sharply at him; his face, genial a moment before, was transformed to ice. “What about the Americans?”
“I’m sorry, sir. There was talk. In the wards. That the Americans were kept in the camp at Gorki.”
“Talk is dangerous at times,” Tartakoff said. Magically, the mellowness returned to his features as his scowl faded. “In one hour, you will be taken from here and you are to obey all instructions, do you understand?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“And you are to speak Russian only.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“You speak with a Polish accent. I thought that was useful.”
“I learned very early from the Poles in my first camp.”
“Did you? Well, it is useful. Remember. Only Russian. And one other matter.”
He stood still.
“You are Ivan Tiomkin.”
Tomas Crohan blinked. He remembered the mad commandant in Siberia. He remembered the men freezing to death because they worked naked in the snow. He stared at Tartakoff but he did not see madness in his eyes. “Yes, Commander.” In any case, he must obey the lawful orders of the State. It was a matter of survival; one did not resist the law and one was not punished. It was quite simple.
“Now you will wait in this room.” Tartakoff rose. He smiled again and patted Tomas Crohan on one bony shoulder like a child petting a broken bird. “You will wait, Ivan Tiomkin. And then you shall go.”
16
Mrs. Neumann, wearing her customary sweater because she knew Hanley’s office would be at sixty degrees Fahrenheit, walked through the open doorway and threw a manila file on his desk. He glanced up at her with an expression of annoyance. It was just after one in the afternoon and it was snowing and Hanley had been forced to work through his lunch hour again.
“There it is,” Mrs. Neumann said in her raspy whisper. She towered over the government-issue gray metal desk with something like superiority. This annoyed Hanley further.
“There what is?”
“After the last signal from November. In Helsinki. You remember?”
“Yes. I told him to come out as soon as he could. We don’t need problems with the authorities in Finland just now.”
“I told you I could get it.”
“Get what?”
“The Crohan file.”
“How did you accomplish that?”
“I went over and got it,” Mrs. Neumann said and she laughed a sudden, short burst like a rusty machine gun cranking up.
Hanley put down his pen very calmly and looked up at the large, handsome woman. He knew that she was prompting questions from him and he had no desire to act as her straight man, but the matter was too fascinating. He did not touch the manila file.
“No wonder they didn’t want to let it out,” Mrs. Neumann said. “Even to us.”
“How did you get this and why is it relevant anymore? The matter of our defector is closed. Devereaux is due out tonight.”
“Because I was stubborn. Because I was damned if I would let them tell me what files I can see and what files I can’t see. We’re in the same government—”
“We all have secrets, Mrs. Neumann,” Hanley said gently.
“Not secrets because they just say they’re secrets. That’s not good enough,” she said. She decided to sit down on the only straight-back chair provided for guests of the operations director of R Section.
“Besides,” she continued. “They only had the case file on this Crohan because they had inherited the paper files of OSS when the outfit was disbanded and the Central Intelligence Agency was set up. They weren’t even CIA files.”
“And so why did the CIA want to keep them secret?”
“Damned embarrassing stuff.”
“For Langley?”
“For all of us for a change, Hanley. For the whole country.”
“And you walked over to Langley and got them?”
“To an extent. I told you I would get them. So I made a computer request.”
“And they gave them to you,” Hanley said with sarcasm.
“Something like that, although it was more complicated. I could tell you all the details but if you only want the main points—”
“Just the main points, Mrs. Neumann, I’m not very well acquainted with computers—”
“Yes, I know. It involves setting up a Q into the National Security Council and then flashing the Q back to Langley, this time with an NSA identification out of the Council.”