What genius of public relations or propaganda had decided on that? Simeon smiled again. The exhibit amused him with its crude idealism, with the sense of the romantic adventure conveyed in the stirring sentences that captioned each pathetic photograph. Idealism and the fervor of war; everything fades at last, and what is left but these souvenirs?
Simeon thought then of his son, David, who lived in Rouen. David once argued with him about the horror of nuclear war in Europe. David did not remember his father’s war. David could afford idealism because his memory was uncrowded by remembrances of war.
Simeon had come to the museum in the remains of the old Beaubourg quarter because of the agreed signal that morning. When he had left his apartment building, there had been a letter in his mailbox. Inside the envelope was a postal card picturing the hideous bright bulk of the modern museum that squatted in the ruins near the old Halles district.
The time of the meeting was always the same, but not the place. The museum was immense, stretching up several floors to a rooftop restaurant. It was for Simeon to search the building, bottom to top, while they decided if he was alone and that contact could be made.
Now, in this empty room near the back of the third-floor exhibit, he saw the other man.
The other man wore an old-fashioned black coat and a large black hat, like an English butler. He crossed the room slowly and came beside Simeon and stared at the same photograph. The other man smelled of onions and liquor; his breath was foul, even as his face was bloated beneath the black hat.
“What did your signal mean?” His French was flawed, and Simeon had difficulty understanding him at times.
“Just what it means,” Simeon said. “We had eighteen CIA agents marked in place. And now there is this one from R Section. I don’t know who he is or why he has come. Except it must be about Manning and Madame Clermont.”
“This is a complication. Does it involve us?”
Simeon smiled. “Is that for you to tell me or for me to tell you?”
“There is no levity in this.”
“There is no levity in the Russian soul,” Simeon said. For that moment, his innate contempt for the people he dealt with was betrayed. He had never been to the Soviet Union but he felt that he could draw an accurate picture of Russian life just from talking to these secretive, paranoid, moody people who had streamed through Paris over the years on behalf of their country.
“Does this man present a threat to us?”
“I don’t know. I report to you and you pay me for my reports. You and I both know the complexity of the next…operation. Perhaps this American agent will help us, or perhaps not.”
“What do you want to do with him?”
“Find out more about him. Watch him for a time. Let him be afraid of me. Let me see if he conspires with Madame Clermont.”
“Are you worried by her?”
“Not as long as I can control her,” Simeon said. “The problem is in understanding what game she actually plays.”
“These are not games,” the Russian said severely, like a reproving parent.
“No. Not for you. You must struggle in deadly earnest to even survive,” Simeon said with a smile. His eyes were mocking because the words had come too fast for the Russian to translate. “You don’t understand, do you?”
“Does it satisfy you to mock me?” the Russian said. “Then be satisfied for a time. But remember that the events of June 6 cannot be delayed. And if this American is in a position to hurt our plans…”
“Then he will be taken care of. Yes, your pedantic warning is noted,” Simeon said. “Isn’t it ironic to have this exhibit now? No one attends. Everyone has forgotten the war. Everyone wants to remember how long peace has lasted.”
“We do not forget the war,” the Soviet said. “Not in Russia.”
Simeon smiled still, his face mocking the other man. “No. You do not forget it; the Soviets have long memories but learn nothing.”
“I do not understand.”
“Nothing,” said Simeon, still smiling. “I said nothing.”
“Do you mock the cause?”
“Of course,” Simeon said. “There is no cause, or I am my own cause. As long as your pay is generous, your cause is just to me.”
“You are too cynical not to believe…”
“In what? In a Communist god or a Christian one? In France, in la patrie? Vive la France, is that what you wish me to say, to wrap myself in the tricolor, to march on the Champs on Bastille Day? No, life is too short for causes, little one.” And in that moment, he thought of his father opening the cognac hidden for five years against the Boches in the grimy little apartment on the outskirts of Paris. What did he come to celebrate finally but his own death in the same miserable conditions he had lived under during the war?
And he thought of David, an absurd and touching pacifist. Simeon was the only generation of realism between the patriotism of his father and the pacifism contained in his son.
“No causes,” Simeon repeated, not to the Soviet but to himself. To the memory of his father.
To his son.
20
The war game had ended three hours before and the machines had been shut down and everyone had left the bunker for bed or for a postmortem in the officers’ and faculty lounge of the Frunze War College located in the basement of the main building.
Only Alexei Garishenko remained, slumped at his desk, staring at the bottle of vodka that had been drained an hour before. He had no energy, he had an overwhelming sense of dread. The room was dark; there was a single light still illuminating the remains of the operations room beyond his private quarters. He did not even hear Warnov enter the room.
Warnov sat down in the British officer’s chair across from his desk and crossed his legs. Warnov lit a cigarette, pulling the smoke slowly through his thin lips and letting it escape just as slowly through his nostrils. His eyes were shaped like almonds and were as flat as a cat’s eyes. His fingers were narrow, stained yellow by tobacco. He stared at the slumped figure of Garishenko without speaking for a long time.
“Why don’t you come over to the college with me? We can have a drink and something to eat.”
“I’ve drunk enough,” Garishenko said. “Nothing works on me anymore. This damned headache; I can’t get rid of it.”
“It was a game. You were well prepared, but it was a game,” Warnov said.
“It was more than that,” Garishenko replied slowly. His voice was the voice of a sleeper. The darkness of the room without windows seemed to shroud it. “You know that.”
“I know what I am told to know,” Warnov said. “Do you deny that the victory was logical?”
“Yes. I deny it. Nothing in the West indicates what Naya supposed. France did not enter the war until it was too late; the British suddenly sued for peace after the Americans bombed Gorki from the Lakenheath base. That’s absurd; worse, it is fatally wrong.”
“The computer is the mirror of the reality we give it,” Warnov said. “If you do not trust its judgment, then you question your own judgment.”
“Naya was wrong,” Garishenko said. “You know it, the Game Master knows it. It was wrong, it was not logical.”
“What did the Americans say when they sold us Naya? ‘Garbage in and garbage out.’ It is true, Alexei.”
“Dammit. There was something wrong. But you chose to believe it because you wanted to believe it. And now? What now? Will you act?”
“I cannot say.”
“You know this is a prelude. Every war game involving Western Europe was a prelude for action.”