“I am not a member of the movement. I was asked this through my father,” she said. “My father is not a member of the movement. But it is no small thing, to be from a homeland that you cannot be part of again, that does not even exist in the eyes of the world. Russia. It is a terrible thing to be in the embrace of a bear, to feel its paws on you all the time, to feel its teeth marking your flesh.”
“Come here,” he said.
She put her hand on his sex and felt it and said, “I want only that. The other thing — those are words and we will not understand each other, not ever. You make me act like a spy, change hotel rooms, want me to make a call to that man in London.… I am not a spy, I am a woman only. I know languages as easily as I know that I want you, I have always wanted you, I have waited for you to come and possess me all my life. Do you understand me?”
He didn’t, but he was beyond caring.
42
There were the sounds of bagpipes, beautiful and clear in the still November air. The sun stood straight up in the sky and flooded the ancient city with unexpected light. Every brick and stone was polished by the sun. The day was as fresh as a child beginning his life.
Devereaux stood among the tourists, not looking for anyone, not expecting anything until the moment he saw Henry McGee. Henry grinned at him.
Henry followed him into the park, and they found a bench and sat on it. The day was cold enough to make their words form puffs of breath.
“I need a deal.”
“What kind of a deal?”
“I need money.”
“Everyone needs money. It’s the one thing capitalists and communists agree on.”
“I saw Viktor Rusinov. I iced him, but I got it on tape. It was a setup, like you thought. I got the same from the radio man on the Leo Tolstoy. On tape. The only thing I ain’t got on tape is the main thing. What this whole thing was really about — even I didn’t know.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Devereaux stared at him. “You’re a congenital liar, Henry. Why should I believe anything you say?”
“I thought about that all the way here. Then it seems obvious to me. I iced Skarda. They’re all going to come after me like a wolf pack. That won’t be a setup. They want to ice me, and that ought to prove myself to you. Except if I wait until then without taking precautions, I get iced and you stand there at the grave and say, ‘Well, I shoulda listened to ol’ Henry this time, because this time he was goin’ to tell the truth.’ That doesn’t do either of us any good.”
Devereaux thought about it. Hanley had already learned of Skarda’s death in Copenhagen. The shit was hitting the fan.
“All right. What would be worth it to me?” Devereaux said.
“Skarda is a software program designed to prevent viral attacks on computer systems. Years ahead of what the Americans have. Except it is also a viral attack by its very nature, and when your people program it, it is going to direct a missile, a fucking missile, to land in the middle of Quebec City. Kill SDI. This is going to fuck up the American military program for months, for years — I can see that. But it will never trace back to Skarda. Skarda will just be there, in place, working fine, and it will never trace back to the Russians. The Russians want their glasnost and friendship and all that, and they want it bad enough to use Skarda to get it. The man is dead but not the program.”
“When is this going to happen?”
“December twentieth. A missile-launching test in Utah.”
“Is that right?”
“I gave you the day and time and target. What else do you want?”
“The only thing that makes it sound genuine is that you didn’t produce a tape of it.”
“It is genuine.”
“And what do you want?”
“I got maybe ten thousand left after all my expenses. I got to have some money to run on.”
“You’re a convicted felon. You escaped from prison. You should turn yourself in.”
Henry grinned. “I used to think about killing you. Inside. Cutting your nuts off or something. I see why you had to get me, but I didn’t see why you had to dirty my trail so that they believed it, believed I betrayed them.”
“Just a personal touch, Henry. I don’t like you.”
“I also don’t like you,” Henry agreed. He slipped his hand out of his pocket just enough to show Devereaux the grip of the revolver.
“What are you going to do?”
“I coulda come to shoot you, but I need money.”
“How much money do you need?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
“Ten thousand,” Devereaux said.
“Jesus. You’re talking the bottom of the basement.”
“Government austerity,” Devereaux said.
“I really hate you, you know that. I could just kill you now and walk away. I don’t owe you anything.”
Devereaux waited.
“Fifteen,” Henry said.
“And both tapes,” Devereaux said.
43
The problem at first was with the tape recording itself. R Section managed to override the no-copy signals imbedded in the tape, but it took nearly thirty-six hours of work and the Soviets were howling for the tape. When the tape was finally copied, the original was turned over to the Soviet Union.
Within three days, the first part of Skarda was transmitted to the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Also, the president of the Soviet Union, in a stunning gesture of goodwill, announced that the first of thousands of Soviet Jews who had applied for permission to leave the Soviet Union would be allowed to do so and that the number of departures would reach ninety thousand by the end of the following year. The Soviet Union said it had made this decision after intensive negotiations with the United States as part of the Malmö meeting of the superpowers.
The newspapers were filled with stories of the emigration of Soviet Jewry. The refugees were being processed through in Vienna as well as in Stockholm. Everyone had praise for the negotiating skills of the U.S. administration and, particularly, the secretary of state.
The president announced a new Soviet-American summit would be held in New Jersey in early spring.
The world reveled in the spirit of the Christmas season, in the apparent friendship of the two great powers, in the good feeling it felt toward the Soviet Union for living up to the spirit of reason and glasnost.
Among the 90,000 exit visas would be 1,298 visas for members of the Committee for State Security, the KGB.
Douglas Court sat dining alone in the great restaurant in the Willard Hotel. He ate with delicate enjoyment of the small portions of very rich food. He ate in the European manner, fork in one hand and knife in the other, because he had spent so many years abroad.
He was only slightly annoyed when the two men came up to him and stood before his table. He looked up at them. One he had never seen before, the other was only vaguely familiar. He hated to remember a face, but he tried. Who were they?
“Yes?”
“Yes, that’s him, all right.”
Douglas Court remembered the face then. He even connected it with a name. Rolf Gustafson. He remembered the name and face and time and place, and he understood then that the second man, the one with gray eyes, would not be a friend.
“We have a car outside waiting for you,” the second man said.
Douglas Court, with the good manners born of a lifetime of civility, dabbed at his lips with his napkin and put it down. He saw the way it was.
“Which agency?” is all he said.