He went back to staring into some unseen middle distance. “A man comes to you one day, out of the blue, and volunteers to trade all he knows for asylum. He’s up and coming in the KGB, protégé of an influential colonel. He’s building connections, receiving favors, in line for a driver and a dacha and all the other capitalist treats the Communists pretend don’t exist. His wife loves it, his kid’s getting a good education, and yet he asks you to pull him out. Even in a non-cynical world, you’d have to ask yourself, ‘Why?’ ”
I ventured a wild guess. “The colonel was Padzhev?”
“Yeah. He and Antonov, like Batman and Robin, since Antonov was always the go-fer. Lew was their latest project. But their enthusiasm had blinded them to his growing disenchantment. To them, it was a great game-Padzhev was a chess fanatic-but Lew kept looking beyond the job, to a corrupt society of un-admitted haves and have-nots, to the lie of equal opportunity and total employment. Not that our system was that much better. But as he saw it, we weren’t hypocritical about it, and we were pretty much free to try to do something to change it.
“I didn’t believe him at first. Angleton would’ve been proud. I thought for sure he was trying to pull a fast one on us. He gave us some information-to show good faith-and it checked out, but of course it would, so that didn’t weigh much. But the more time I spent with him-the more I listened to him talk-the more I came to think he was the real McCoy. And with that I realized what he was proposing to give up.”
Rarig shifted in his seat and stared at me intently. “Over that span of time, to me Lew Corbin-Teich turned from a prize catch into a hero of sorts. The irony was, of course, that I was totally alone there. My colleagues ended up thinking he was a born liar, and his countrymen labeled him a traitor and put a price on his head.
“But that was fine with him. He even asked me once, ‘What did you expect?’ Knowing everything that was going to happen to him, at least theoretically, he still went ahead. And the kicker is, he was right. After it was all over and I’d gotten him into Middlebury, it was like he’d arrived in Shangri-la. I used to kid him about campus politics-all those academics trying to nail each other’s hide to the wall. He’d just laugh. It meant nothing to him.”
“What about his family?” I asked.
“His wife didn’t suffer much. She was a survivor and remarried well. His son was old enough when he left to take it in stride. He’s in Russia still and apparently doing fine.”
“Sounds like you became his family, in a way.”
“Well, I guess there’s always a bonding between defector and case officer. They even warn you about it. But when they treated him so badly and he bore them no grudge, something snapped inside me. Besides Olivia Kidder, I’d say Lew’s the best friend I ever had.”
I let a long reflective silence follow before rephrasing my original question, “So if it is Padzhev who’s after him now, what’s the motivation?”
“I said it might be Padzhev. And I don’t know why. Padzhev took the defection hard. It was a personal failure, and it stopped his climb within the organization. I sometimes thought one aspect of the Yuri kidnapping was that since I’d been Yuri’s case officer, snatching him would give me a black eye in return. In the long run, though, my career ended because I finally pulled the plug, not because of Georgi Padzhev.”
“But it was connected, wasn’t it?”
He frowned dismissively. “Vaguely. Things had been building to a head. The deal with Lew had left a bad taste, which didn’t improve with time, but I wasn’t as close with Yuri. His disappearance hurt mostly because of the stupidity leading up to and following it. It revealed how out of sync I’d become with the people I was working with. It took me years before I actually retired.”
“Must’ve been weird finding Antonov under that tree-all those memories flooding back,” I said, trying to take advantage of the conversation’s confessional tone.
But he saw me coming. “I never said I found him.”
His cautious reaction hit me with unexpected force. I slammed on the brakes, put the car into a skid, and pulled over to the edge of the road. “You’re something else, you know that?” I yelled at him, feeling days of repressed anger finally exploding. “You go blabbing on about your walk-on-water buddy ’cause of his high moral tone, and then you cover your ass just like Snowden would. You’re the one guy out of all of us who’s risking nothing so far. My people have stuck their necks out on your say-so; I’m looking at jail time ’cause I decided to trust you; even Olivia, I bet, has put her job on the line for you. And you sit there playing hide-’n’-seek.”
I grabbed the door and threw it open, almost losing it to a passing car, whose windy vortex blew around inside the passenger compartment. “Well, fuck you,” I said, getting out and shouting back across the seat at him. “I’ve been dicked around by every bastard I’ve met so far, and I’m goddamned sick and tired of it. All that crap you fed us about turning the inn into a place for people to unload and to share. What a crock. You’re as self-serving as all the jerks you’ve just been dumping on for the last half hour.”
I slammed the door and walked to the back of the car, staring off at the distant hills, fighting to control my breathing. Never before had I lost it so completely-not even when Gail had been raped. I prided myself on keeping cool, keeping my emotional cards out of sight, maintaining a professional stance so that progress could take place, unimpeded by any histrionics from me.
And now I was standing by the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, a warrant about to be issued for my arrest, having thrown the temper tantrum of a lifetime.
And I’d been worried about Rarig at the wheel.
He got out tentatively and took a couple of steps in my direction. “You okay?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the slight breeze.
I turned toward him, much calmer, actually feeling pretty good. “I’m in better shape than you are.”
He nodded. “That’s probably true. It was right, what you said.”
“That you’re a self-serving jerk?”
He looked slightly confused. “I guess. I meant about finding Antonov.”
“And you’re the one who dumped him in the quarry?”
He nodded. “I wanted to see what would happen-who might show himself next. I hadn’t intended that the body be found. Just that someone might come looking. That’s why I took such pains-wrapping him up in a tarp I later burned, ditching him in the boondocks. Lucky he was so small and light. I would’ve buried him if I’d had the time.”
“So you put the finger on Snowden just to stir us up.”
“No. He may’ve been Antonov’s killer. I don’t know why, but I don’t know why not, either.” He spread his hands to both sides. “I honestly can’t tell you what’s going on here, Lieutenant, but my friend is in danger. I’ve been out of things a long time. Alliances shift. I don’t know who the players are anymore-who to trust. I’m sorry I upset you. I guess old habits are hard to break, especially when you’re under pressure.”
Mollified, knowing I really didn’t have any choice but to follow the course I’d set, I returned to the car and got back behind the wheel. Rarig slid in beside me.
I didn’t immediately start driving, however. I faced him instead and asked him point-blank, “You said you had the evidence to clear me. That was baloney, too, wasn’t it?”
“I think the brooch was planted in your coat the night before the jewelry store window was broken-by a black bag crew who entered your home without your knowing it.”
I just stared at him. He stared at his hands. “But I don’t know that for a fact, and I don’t know who might’ve done it.”
I let that sink in, grateful my motivation for being here hadn’t hinged on that detail alone. Then I put the car into gear and pulled out. “Well,” I finally said, “at least that’s a start.”
Chapter 16