Christopher remained silent. The great building and the trees in its courtyards absorbed the detonation of the Roman traffic, so that he and Klimenko stood in a pool of silence at the back of the roof.
“You won’t answer me,” Klimenko said.
“You haven’t asked me a question, Gherman.”
Klimenko turned his back to Christopher and rocked up and down on his toes.
“I’m worn out,” he said, as if speaking to one of the Swiss guards pacing below them in the garden. He turned around again. “I want to make a contact,” he said.
The wind nearly took Klimenko’s hat and they both reached for it; Christopher caught it and Klimenko screwed it down again on his forehead.
“Paul,” he said. “We can only talk for ten minutes. Don’t waste the time. You know what I want.”
“I think so. But I can’t help you, Gherman. Walk into the American embassy. You can be there in ten minutes in a taxi.”
“Christopher-don’t do this. They know. I’ve been running for a week. Where do you think they expect me to go? They’re waiting outside the embassy in the Via Veneto. You know the system-a car is waiting around the corner. They’d have me before I could walk across the sidewalk.”
Christopher shrugged. “Then go to Paris or Bern.”
“You’re my only hope. I’ve been waiting for three days. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Look,” Klimenko said. “I have no more energy for charades.” He seized Christopher’s arm. “I told you, I’m worn out.”
Klimenko’s teeth chattered. He walked back and forth rapidly on the roof, swinging his arms around his body to warm it. He came back, close to Christopher, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“Paul-have I ever given a hint that I knew about you in all the years? Ever? How many times have I seen you, in how many places? We drank whiskey together in the bar of the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi. We had lunch in the Fin Bee in Geneva, as if we were friends. We talked about opera, the ballet, the way BOAC is always late.”
“I’m glad you have such tender memories,” Christopher said, “but if you think you know anything about me, you’re wrong.”
Klimenko stood up to his full height. He was still a foot shorter than Christopher. Holding his clenched fists at his sides, he said, “All right. In 1959 you were in the Sudan; a Pole named Miernik was killed by the natives in the desert and you brought his body out. In 1960 you were meeting an agent named Horst Bülow in front of the S-bahn station at the zoo in Berlin; he was run down by a black Opel and killed before your eyes. In 1962 you penetrated the Chinese operation in Katanga with Alphonse Nsango and gave him gold to pay for the juju that broke one of their insurgent groups. In 1961 you were in Laos talking to a certain Hmong who is now a general. Your case officer is Thomas R. Webster, who lives at 23-bis, avenue Hoche, Paris. The chief of clandestine operations in Washington is David Patchen, and in practice you are answerable only to him. I can go on.”
Christopher said, “If all that is true, why do you think I won’t shoot you right now?”
Klimenko opened his eyes. “You people don’t kill. We know that, too.”
Christopher was not surprised at the quality of Klimenko’s information, and he knew that Klimenko did not expect him to be startled.
Klimenko took Christopher’s arm and walked him around the gallery. The mossy slope of Michelangelo’s dome rose behind them. Christopher heard the wail of pipes, and saw a shepherd walking across the piazza below; the man wore a sheepskin tied around his waist with a rope and a red cap like the bagpiper he’d seen by the Tiber. Straining his eyes, Christopher saw that this man had a different face.
“They close this gallery at four-thirty,” Christopher said. “We’d better go down.”
“I didn’t come out empty-handed, Paul. I can show you samples.”
Klimenko’s voice was growing thinner, as if he had suddenly caught cold. “Name a place,” he said. “Just make sure it’s secure.”
“This is not my work.”
Christopher put a hand on Klimenko’s shoulder; the flesh was loose under his thick overcoat. Christopher had always liked the Russian, but he knew what mistakes he could make. “How long do you expect to stay operational if you go around in public like this?” he asked.
“Not long. You see what’s happened to my nerves.”
“Why did you come out? You’ve always been a loyal Russian, haven’t you?”
The skin of Klimenko’s sagging face was blotched, brown and white like the meat of a bitten pear. “Loyal to Russia, yes -and I still am. I no longer agree with the line.”
“It’s no different than it ever was.”
“No. But I am. One gets tired. Doubts become more important-Klimenko’s Law: as life shortens, misgivings magnify.”
“Then I’m sorry you’ve come to the wrong man.”
“I can tell you how the arms come to the V. C. through Cambodia,” Klimenko said in a rush of words. “I can tell you what we are going to do with the structure of the Cuban intelligence service. I can give you names you don’t have. There’s been a change in the funding system-I set it up, I know the banks and the account numbers. Paul, don’t be foolish.”
Christopher shook his head.
“I know what you think,” Klimenko said. “You’re worried about your cover. But you have no cover with us. We know about you-we’ve known for years. When you begin thinking about yourself you lose your profession. I know.”
A Vatican guard appeared in the stairway door. “The gallery is closing,” he said in Italian.
“Do you want to go down first?” Christopher asked.
Klimenko uttered a little laugh; he was in possession of himself again.
“It’s comic how I fit the defector’s pattern,” he said. “I tell you how I love Russia, and offer you her secrets in exchange for safety. It’s no wonder people like you and me exist, Paul-men are so predictable, so easy to use. I know what you’ll do next. We’d better set up a meeting now. I don’t want to use the telephone anymore.”
“Gherman, I won’t see you again. I can’t help you. What I’m telling you is not technique, it’s the truth.”
“You don’t believe in the quality of the merchandise.”
“I care nothing about it one way or the other.”
“Signori,” the guard said, “you must descend now. The gallery is closing.”
Klimenko fluttered his gloved hand impatiently at the guard. He turned his back on the man and again put his face close to Christopher.
“There was an operation in the States last month,” he said. “The code word was Weedkiller. A million dollars went through a certain Swiss bank. An American got the money. A million dollars, Paul. Think about that.”
“When?”
“The money went into the bank in Zurich on November 25. It was taken out the next day, just before the bank closed.”
“By whom?”
Klimenko looked aside. “I don’t tell you that now. When we meet again, when I have assurances-but not on this roof, in the rain.”
“You’ll have assurances when I have this information,” Christopher said.
“Weedkiller?”
“Yes. All of it.”
“Tomorrow,” Klimenko said. “I can’t wait longer than that.”
Christopher nodded and smiled at the guard, who had come onto the gallery and was walking toward them with his arms thrown out and his shoulders shrugged to show that he was at the end of his patience.
“All right,” Christopher said. “Five o’clock in the morning, in the Protestant cemetery behind the Porta San Paolo. I’ll meet you on Shelley’s grave.”
“Romantic,” Klimenko said.
He walked away, leaving Christopher to talk to the remonstrating guard, who might remember him.
3
In one of the souvenir shops near Saint Peter’s, Christopher bought a postcard of John XXIII. He took a taxi to the main post office in the Piazza San Silvestro and, using the typewriter at the telegraph office, typed the name and address Nsango used in Elisabethville on it. In the message space he typed a Christmas greeting in French and signed the message with three initials. He could speak like a Frenchman, but his handwriting was plainly American.