“How long does he dangle?”
Hanley shrugged. “As long as it takes. As long as we need.”
Seven weeks and there had been three meetings with the Soviet defector named Tartakoff and there had been no message from the Section.
Devereaux would buy the new English-language papers in the afternoon at the red granite Helsinki train station. He would savor the newspapers, not daring to read them too quickly like a child who saves parts of his candy bar against a time when he will want them more. He walked the streets of the city until he could remember all the street names. He walked down to the frozen harbor where the vegetable market was held in the open in the warm weather. A squat cathedral in the Russian style sat on a hill above the harbor and brooded over the silence and the ice stretching into the Baltic waters. Channels were cut in the ice for some ships and the Silja Line ferry left on time each evening for Stockholm fifteen hours to the west.
The city was less than two hundred kilometers from the western border of the Soviet Union. Soviet television filled one drab channel on the set in Devereaux’s room at the Presidentti. Sometimes, driven by boredom, he would sit and watch the channel and watch endless propaganda films about heroic Soviet workers or endless panel discussions. The signal was distorted on the station, jammed by Finland; but still Devereaux would watch until the very drabness of the life portrayed on the Soviet screen could make him bear another long Helsinki winter night.
Across the street from the hotel, from the window on the fourth floor, Devereaux could see the frozen remains of an open construction pit dug during the summer. Winter had stopped construction. The walls of the pit were revealed to be rock on rock.
He would drink Finlandia vodka in the bare, cold lobby bar or in one of the raucous taverns at the edges of the main shopping district along Mannerheimintie.
In the basement of the hotel were a sauna and a small pool. He would rent trunks and then swim back and forth in the small pool until exhaustion plucked at his muscles. Then he would sit in the sauna and let the heat fill him. He would close his eyes and remember when he had not been an exile in the cold, sterile West; he would remember Asia and its blood-red suns, the farmers squatting in the fields between watery rows, bent to ancient tasks. But the heat of the sauna would become too great in time and then he would stop his dream and plunge back into the cold pool and swim again until his strength was finally gone and he could sleep.
Four reports to Hanley and a final conclusion.
And still, Hanley did not answer.
Devereaux had found comfort always in the isolation of the cabin in Virginia. He had not needed words or companionship or human contact of any kind. But now he did not feel isolated by choice; he felt imprisoned, shut in, kept away, held in silent chains.
So he understood much later why he accepted the invitation of the prostitute who had approached him around midnight one Friday in the lobby bar of the Presidentti. Her name was Natali and she said she was part Russian and part Swedish. Her hair was black and her eyes were a sort of lazy blue. She said she thought Devereaux was English.
Of course it could have been a trap. He understood that at the time and much later. But he had yearned to speak to her and when he led her to his room, he had touched her gently and he had slept next to her and he had cupped his body next to her so that he could touch and feel her nakedness beneath the sheets and become lost in her. He kissed her because she wanted to kiss him. But he held her as a child holds to a promise.
Natali had arched her back and he could feel the bones beneath the pale, milky skin when he held her. He had kissed the nipples of her breasts. When he had made love to her, he held her so tightly that she thought she could not breathe.
“Who are you?” she had asked once and he had thought of a name. When she had left him in the morning, he realized he had slept and he had not felt the perpetual chill in him that had nothing to do with winter.
He stepped from the shower on the fifty-first morning of the winter he had spent here. It was seven-fifteen. He shaved slowly but not carefully. He still saw Natali in his mind’s eye. And saw the image of Tartakoff — a now-frantic Tartakoff — who would meet him in two hours in the vast underground shopping mall that extends from the train terminal to the shopping district.
Who are you?
Devereaux stared at himself and carefully drew the single-edge razor down across his throat and then rinsed it in the hot water in the sink. It doesn’t matter, he had told Natali at first. And then he had given her a name plucked from a memory of stolen names.
Tartakoff had been left to dangle.
Devereaux would cut the string this morning. There was no point to this. He would end it because it had to be ended by someone.
Morning broke reluctantly at last. The red sky at dawn had become pale at midmorning. A sickly yellow flooded the sky. Bundled men and women from the suburbs arrived in the city at the bus terminal across from the hotel. The buses belched and blew black smoke against each other.
At the entrance of the train station, heroic figures were carved into the soft red granite of the walls. Devereaux entered the terminal from the side and slowly passed the newsstand where the Times of London sat side by side with Pravda. He crossed to the steps that led to the subterranean shopping plaza that had been carved out of the rocks beneath the Helsinki streets.
The underground was a Finnish solution to winter. Lights were low in the low ceiling but all was bright. People in heavy furs and wool coats shuffled past with dark, scowling faces. There was a perpetual smell of roasting coffee coming from a dozen shops.
Devereaux stood for a long moment in front of the designated shop and looked at the faces of those inside.
Satisfied, he crossed and took a seat at the counter. He ordered coffee using one of the hundred or so Finnish words and phrases he had taught himself.
The coffee was black and bitter but welcome. Those around him wore heavy coats. One man with a red face and small, black eyes was actually sweating in the steamy atmosphere of the shop but he did not open his jacket as he poured black coffee down his throat. There were slabs of black bread smeared with soft cheese on the counters. The smells of the shop were earthy, full of sweat and breath, of dark foods and dark coffee.
Devereaux saw him then but made no sign.
Tartakoff was dressed well, in a black fur cap and a black fur coat. He was tall and large-boned; his face was wide. He stared without expression across the crowded shop at Devereaux at the counter. He stared until he was certain that Devereaux had seen him. And then he turned and left the shop as though he had decided it was too crowded.
Devereaux left a ten-markka note on the counter and the waitress scooped it up as though she had been waiting for it. He pushed through the first door of the shop and turned to the left, going around the shop to the side hallway, following the retreating figure of the Russian.
They were suddenly in an empty corridor that led to the rear entrance of a department store that was not yet open for the day. The corridor was quiet but beyond was the murmur of a thousand people speaking, the shuffle of a thousand feet pushing along over the slush-streaked tiles.
“What is the answer?” the Russian asked in his thick voice. He spoke English well but with a burring accent, as though the words were caught in a web in his throat before they emerged.
“There is no answer.”
“Damn you, Messenger.”
Devereaux had told him from the beginning that he was Messenger. The name implied a certain powerlessness and implied that any decision would come from beyond Devereaux and this place.
“They must have their cautions,” Devereaux said.