“Who are you?”
“The man who wants the tape.”
And the side door closed, and they were alone in the semidarkness of this hall between the walls of the church, standing over the prone, bleeding body, staring at each other and considering the worth of lives.
36
A scum of ice floated on the blue, still waters in Helsinki harbor. The Leo Tolstoy groaned at the ropes that restrained her, rubbed against the dock, struggled to be free in the waves at sea. She was here too long, and she felt it in her hull, in the quiet of her engines, in the agony of her empty gangways. The ship yearned for all the ports of the world, and this could be seen in the undulation of steel and wire pulling at the immense ropes that held her.
Arkady Yazimoff dozed at the radio table. There were no messages; there had been no traffic for hours. He was the prime radio officer and had to take his turns, but he had really wanted to spend this afternoon getting drunk in Helsinki.
He had missed Viktor Rusinov’s vodka. That was the only thing everyone agreed on: Viktor was a pain in the ass — and good riddance to rubbish when he had slipped over the side that day in Stockholm — but he knew how to brew the very best homemade stuff. God, it could put you out.
Arkady wanted to be put out. Oblivion was almost complete pleasure to him. He liked to drink, liked the raw taste on his tongue and throat, but most of all he liked the dreaminess that came just before oblivion. In those moments — it might be minutes, it might be hours — a warmth like sex overcame him and caressed him.
“Officer Yazimoff.”
He started in his chair, turned to the open hatch. A civilian in raincoat and hat.
He thought of KGB immediately and snapped to as much attention as you can manage in a chair.
The hatch closed.
“I am Garishenko, KGB.”
“Yes, Comrade.”
“Comrade. Be at ease, please.”
“Yes, Comrade.” Yazimoff strained for a little more attention. He thought his shirt buttons would pop or his neck would explode from the pressure.
“Comrade, this is in regard to the matter of Viktor Rusinov.” The KGB man sat down in the second chair of the cabin. He did not remove his hat.
“Yes, Comrade.”
“I have reviewed the whole matter, and I want to go over it again with you, at least your part of it, so that I can understand perfectly.”
“I don’t understand, Comrade Garishenko.”
The freighter was so silent. There were only groans, sounds of metal against sea, sounds of ropes squealing and the hull scraping like a lover against the wharf. Not a sound in the world because every sound was familiar and was in their souls already.
“Tell me how you approached Viktor Rusinov.”
“This is all in the report—”
“Tell me again.”
The voice chilled him. The voice was of the state and the cells of Lubyanka and the cold depth of Siberia or the bauxite mines deep in Kurdistan. Yazimoff had heard all the stories, because sailors get around and sailors live on their stories.
“As I was instructed, I became an associate of Comrade Rusinov. I was told to tell him certain things, that certain messages could be carried away if he wanted to defect to the Americans, and that the messages would give him a gift to give them that would ensure his acceptance into their confidence.”
“As who instructed?”
“But surely, you know that.”
“I want to know it as you know it.”
“Well, I know, but I don’t understand—”
“Who gave you this instruction?”
“One of yours. His name is Skarda, that is the name he has given me.”
“Of course,” Henry McGee said in Russian with a Siberian accent.
Yazimoff looked at him. He had a dark complexion — he might be an oriental Russian in part. It was hard to tell anymore. The damned foreigners were everywhere; they had jobs in Moscow and ate their filthy Eastern food with their fingers, like peasants. His eyes were black and small and mean. Mean. The mean look put fear into Yazimoff more than anything else.
“When Viktor decided to defect, he paid me, and I gave him the arranged message. The message is in my mind.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, Comrade: ‘Skarda. The time of Henry McGee is not past. Eagle will be penetrated. The operation… ’ ”
“That was the whole message?”
“Well, it was a broken message. It was intended that way, as though he had stolen one of the pads.”
“I see,” said the agent.
Yazimoff tried a smile. “But you know all this. Does my memory recollect with your report?”
“In every way,” said Henry McGee.
37
The reports came in all morning. Every listener and watcher and chaser made his or her report. They came in cipher or by digital code or by sound blip, with the message squeezed into a fraction of a second of radio transmission and then “ironed out” later in the receiver to its normal length. The reports were noted on flimsy paper and put on Vaughn Reuben’s desk. He looked at every report before he consigned it to the paper shredder at the side of his desk.
Vaughn Reuben was back in London, in the corner office of the subdirector of the CIA station at the United States embassy on Grosvenor Square. The fog was gone, and the sun was crackling bright above city and river. The streets looked fresh with new people on them and newly painted cars and buses. As usual, every inch of road was taken and no one was going anywhere very quickly. London was full, but it had been full for years, and the British philosophy was that to build more roads would only encourage more traffic.
Reuben picked up a sheaf of flimsies, weighed them, put them down. He looked at his visitor and said, “You don’t listen to your marching orders so good.”
Hanley said, “This doesn’t concern you.”
“By God it does. It does if the director says it does. You’re not running with some goddamn renegade agency that can set policy and do as it damned well pleases. You got an order, didn’t you?”
“Internal affairs of Section are not the business of anyone in Central Intelligence.”
“You pompous asshole, what do you think this is about?”
“I came here out of courtesy.”
“You came here because Mrs. Neumann ordered your ass to liaise with me, so you better start doing some liaising.” Vaughn Reuben was just letting the words steamroller out of his mouth. “Goddamn agent Devereaux — Don’t protest to me about your fucking security. I know goddamn well who you got running right now. Goddamn agent Devereaux shot and killed Michael Hampton at midnight. In Rome. Your Rome station was involved as well. You were supposed to pull Devereaux off of this, and you didn’t do it. You think we don’t have a station chief in Rome? You think we’re the three blind mice?”
“Hum me some of it,” Hanley said.
“I really don’t like you, Hanley,” Vaughn Reuben said.
“Really?”
“I am going to tell you once. Get your goddamn man on the first plane back to London, and then we’ll talk to him about things like murdering people in foreign lands. And I want that tape delivered personally to me, you got that?”
“I thought this was a matter for State. For State Department’s intelligence,” Hanley said. “I don’t understand this intense interest by Langley in matters that don’t concern Langley. Why don’t you start by explaining that to me?”
“Hanley.” Vaughn Reuben was definitely doing his John Houseman imitation. “None of this would have happened if Devereaux hadn’t been on the loose, and that’s your responsibility. Two dead Soviet agents in Brussels, and he kidnaps this… this Rena Taurus, and no one knows where she is, and there’s a report he was supposed to ice Michael in Bruges but he let him go—”