The Prodigal Spy

by Joseph Kanon

  “About what?”

  “You. Your mother. What would happen. I still thought I could work things out, that you’d join me. I suppose I thought it would be like Yalta, not so bad. Pleasant. When it got calmer, not so rough, I began to enjoy it a little. Something new. The way you feel on any trip. I’d never been on the ocean before. At night the sky-” He broke off. “Anyway, none of that happened. It was just the first cell. But I didn’t know that then.”

  “They put you in a cell?”

  He smiled faintly. “House arrest. First for the debriefing, then for my protection. It was worse than the ship in a way, that town. I could walk around, like on a deck, but the air wasn’t as good. And of course now I wasn’t going anywhere. I was already there.”

  Why did they wait so long before they let you appear?“

  “The news conference? It was like the ship. They didn’t know what to do with me. Nobody knew what Stalin wanted. He never trusted foreign operatives, never. To him they were something from the old Trotsky days-internationalists. Real Communists were Russian. He was a peasant. People thought he was some kind of statesman because they saw his pictures at the conferences, but he had a local mind. A little like Welles, in fact,” he said, smiling slightly, amused at the comparison. “Never trust a foreigner. And I think he liked the game. Let the Americans wonder-was I there, was I dead? Why give anything away if it might come in handy later? He could afford to wait. I wasn’t going anywhere. If he hadn’t died-” His father paused. “But that changed everything. Now they wanted to show us off. Me. The English. They wanted you to think spies were everywhere. And of course it worked. How many of us were there? Three? Four? Not so many. And Welles had everybody looking under beds. But the only one he ever found got away. At least I had that satisfaction.”

  “He found two,” Molly said.

  Nick’s father looked at her, as if noticing her for the first time. “Yes, two,” he said quietly, and nodded.

  “And she got away too,” Molly said. “Just in time.”

  Nick felt it, the edgy disturbance in the air, but his father seemed not to notice.

  “I saw the paper on the ship. The captain got it before we left Canada, to give me something to read. I don’t think he had any idea who she was, why I kept looking at it.”

  “So you had that satisfaction too.”

  This time his father caught it, unmistakable, a piece being moved into place. He looked at her for a second, unsure why he was being attacked, and his voice, when he answered, was patient, calming a willful child. “No. I never wanted that. Never. Is that what you think?”

  “None of it would have happened,” she said evenly, “if she hadn’t started it.” Another piece.

  “She didn’t start it. Welles did. Do you think I blamed her?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No.” He paused. “At first, yes, of course. But I never wanted her dead.”

  “Somebody did,” Molly said.

  In the silence, Nick saw his father hold her eyes, debating.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Somebody did.”

  The answer rattled her. Not an admission. An invitation to join sides, in the open.

  “But not you,” she pressed.

  “Why would I?” his father said calmly. “By that time it didn’t matter what she said. I was gone. Why would I want such a thing? A terrible death like that.”

  “But so convenient.”

  “Not for me,” he said, checking her.

  “For everyone,” Molly said. “No more names. It must have been a relief. For everyone, I guess, except Welles. She was his only witness. Not so convenient for him.”

  He stared at her, waiting, then moved. “Unless she was going to change her testimony.”

  His voice, so reasonable, stopped her. She looked at him, surprised, as if he had turned the board around. “Why would she do that?”

  “It’s possible. It would have been the easiest thing to do. It’s what I would have advised, if I’d been handling it,” his father said, a lawyer walking her through it. “She thought she’d recognized me, but now she wasn’t sure. It might have been somebody else. She couldn’t swear under oath. She wouldn’t want to do that, make a mistake. She’d been so nervous when they first talked to her-” He broke off, looking at Molly, who had sat back, letting him lead. “She was young, you know, younger than you are now. They were already worried about her. Communists weren’t supposed to be young and pretty, not real ones. She was just an impressionable girl-they took advantage of people like that. She didn’t know what she was doing, and when the committee first talked to her, she panicked. But now — Anyway, she could have done it. Of course, he’d still have her, but what was that worth? You didn’t get elected by locking up salesgirls, not when you promised a conspiracy. If he could lock her up. He knew about her, but how much? Enough to convict? I’m not sure. She might have walked away. And that would have ruined everything, made him look-unreliable. No conspiracy. So maybe it was convenient for him. With her gone, the smear would stand-I’d always be guilty, at least in the press, which is what mattered. The court of public opinion, always his favorite. You don’t have to prove anything there. You can build a career on it. But then I got away, so he ended up with nothing.” He glanced pointedly at Molly. “That was the only satisfaction.”

  Molly said nothing, turning it over, and Nick saw that his father had shifted things again, that the story, just the possibility of it, was a kind of reproach.

  “Of course, we’ll never know what she intended to do,” his father said.

  Molly looked at him steadily, still examining the brief. “But why do that-to save you?”

  “No. Herself.”

  “Then why go to Welles in the first place? She was his witness.”

  He looked at her curiously. “But she didn’t go to him. He went to her. She wasn’t an informer, you know. Did you think that?” he said, then shook his head. “She wasn’t the type. It was Welles. He hounded her until he got a name.”

  “Yours.”

  “Yes, mine. One. If she’d been a friendly witness, she’d have told him everything she knew. Why volunteer if you weren’t going to talk? Look at Bentley, or-who was the other one? Coplon. They couldn’t stop. She never wanted any of it-you could see it in her face. She was afraid of him. She made a bargain, and then she saw it wasn’t a bargain. He’d never let her alone. With that press? She was all he had. He had to keep squeezing. Once he knew about her-”

  “How did he, if she didn’t tell him?” Nick asked.

  His father nodded as if they’d finally arrived. “Well, that’s the great question. How did they know about anything? Hearing after hearing. Where did it all come from?”

  “If you throw enough mud, some of it sticks,” Molly said.

  “But how do you know where to throw? Where did Welles get his information?” He turned to Nick. “What does Wiseman say?”

  “FBI files, usually.”

  “Yes, usually. Hoover. Our own Dzerzhinsky. Helpful to a fault. As long as someone else took the credit. Which of course they were eager to do. Welles, the great inquisitor. Or McCarthy, when he was sober. Where would either of them have been without those files? There was plenty of mud there to go around.”

  “And Hoover supplied it,” Molly said skeptically.

  “I said usually. There were other sources. Subscriber lists, donations. Sometimes they got lucky-the mud would stick. But the Bureau was the best. It was all there. It’s not easy to set up a police state. Which is what they were trying to do. It takes time. Files. Secretaries. Field agents. Legmen,” he said, glancing at Nick. “A whole organization. I know a little about this-it’s the one thing the comrades are good at. The committees didn’t have those resources. Who were they? Lawyers, football players.” Another glance at Nick. “Politicians, not detectives. You have to remember the scope of all this. The hearings were only a part of it. Most of the time HUAC was operating as a personnel agency, giving informat
ion to employers. A vetting service to make sure you had the right people. God knows how many they ran checks on.”

  “About sixty thousand,” Nick said. “Roughly.”

  “Roughly,” his father repeated, taking it in. He looked at Nick. “I see. Wiseman. Think what it means, the work involved. And that was just HUAC, not the Senate committees, the state committees. All of them looking for information so they could run their own circus. People didn’t ask where it came from. Maybe they thought Welles dug it up all by himself. But where else? Only the FBI had that much. Those were Hoover’s committees. McCarthy’s especially, but Welles’s too. Hoover fed them, and then, when it suited him, he cut them off. The trouble was, they didn’t know what to do with the stuff. McCarthy, for God’s sake. Welles, always shooting from the hip and never hitting anything. Disappointing, the horses Edgar picked.” He paused. “But it came from him.”

  “How?” Molly said, fascinated now.

  “The usual ways. Hoover had to be careful. The leaks were illegal, for one thing, a small point. But there was his reputation-not a small point. He couldn’t be seen to be leaking information. Sometimes the field offices would help the local police. Then they could pass it off as their detective work. Sometimes a journalist would be tipped, one of the friendly ones. With the committees it was usually more direct-that was helping the government, after all. But in this case I think it might have come directly from him-he was close to Welles and this was sensitive, the sort of thing he liked to handle himself. He might not have wanted anyone else to know, even in the Bureau.”

  “But does it matter? The fact is, they did know about her.”

  “But how? Did you ever wonder why it started with her? That’s always been the strangest part of the whole business. She was the last person in the chain who’d be under suspicion. She wasn’t in the Government. No access. No history. You didn’t have to pass a security check to work at Garfinkel’s. Why investigate her? She should have been at the end of the trail, the small fry you round up with the others. But there weren’t any others. They never connected her to anybody except me. So what led them to her? How did they know to go after her?”

  Molly said nothing, so Nick’s father answered for her.

  “Somebody told them. That’s how it all started, all of it. That’s what I thought about on the ship,” he said, looking at her. Then he sighed, finished. “I still think about it.”

  Dinner was roast pork and dumplings, whose lightness Anna demonstrated by slicing them with a string stretched taut between her forefingers, Czech style, but which then sunk back heavily in the thick gravy. Molly picked at her food, quiet and withdrawn, no longer interested in playing cat and mouse with his father. Instead she talked to Anna, complimenting her on the elaborate table setting, old china swirling with painted flowers spread across a stiff white tablecloth embroidered with gold thread.

  “It’s all I kept from the house in Bubenec. My mother had three closets just for the linens. And dishes-she prided herself on her china. All the women did. Of course, they had maids. So different then. You know, I never cared about these things when I was a girl. It was just the way we lived. Now it seems so beautiful-it reminds me, I suppose. Of that life. We had a large house, a villa. A music room, even. A greenhouse in the back-we always had flowers. But that was before the war.”

  “Is the house still there?”

  “Oh yes. But my father was killed, so we had to leave. The Germans took it. My mother lost everything-all those closets. But she kept these.”

  They were still talking about the world before Munich, all parties and piano lessons, when they heard the car in the driveway. The rain had gone, leaving only the sound of water dripping off leaves, and in the quiet the engine seemed a roar, sputtering, then stopping, unmistakably there to stay. Anna raised her eyes, her fork stalled in midair, and Nick saw that she was looking at him in alarm. He would have to be explained. The day, so placid and ordinary, had become a guilty secret. Even here, safe in the country, she was always expecting a knock on the door.

  His father, seeing Nick’s face, smiled. “Don’t worry, Beria’s dead.” He got up and went over to the window, peering through the curtain. “Frantisek,” he said. Then, to Nick, “A friend. It’s all right.”

  “What does he want?” Anna said, still uneasy.

  “A drink. What else?” his father said lightly, opening the door.

  But Frantisek had already had one. He was a bear of a man, tall and bearded, and when he entered the cottage, stooping to get through the door, his eyes had the wild, shiny look of drink. He stopped for a minute, weaving slightly, disoriented by the unexpected strangers and the formal table, then spoke to Nick’s father in rapid Czech. Without language, Nick watched them as a silent movie, forced to follow the story through gestures. He didn’t mean to break up the party. No, no, it was all right, come sit. Was something wrong? More Czech. Anna’s hand flew to her mouth in dismay, like Lillian Gish. No, his father said, then more Czech, placing his hand on Frantisek’s shoulder. At this, the tall man leaned into him, a sentimental embrace. Anna got up, then went over and led him to her chair, as if he were too upset to find it by himself. He looked at Nick and Molly and Nick saw his father introduce them. “Friends from America,” he said in English, at once a courtesy and a signal to Nick. The man nodded, too preoccupied to be curious, and the Czech began again, a volley of questions, Anna shaking her head. His father slumped into his chair, placing his hand on Frantisek’s. Anna brought out a bottle, some kind of brandy, and put it before him with a glass. Then, noticing Nick and Molly, she said, “I’m sorry. His brother has died.”

  “No telephone,” the man said to them in accented English, waving his hand to take in the cottage, apparently apologizing for having come.

  Nick’s father poured him a glass, then some for himself.

  “A suicide,” he explained to Nick, but the man understood the word and covered his forehead with his hand, and Nick saw his eyes moisten. When he spoke, in Czech, his voice was deliberate, almost without inflection, so that again only the gestures meant anything.

  Molly got up and began to clear, motioning to Anna to sit down, and Nick, excluded from the low murmur of Czech, retreated into the solemn politeness of funerals, his eyes fixed on the emptying table, the painted china removed piece by piece until there was nothing between them but white cloth and the amber bottle. The drink made Frantisek moody, and finally silent, until he sat staring at the table too.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” Anna said.

  Frantisek answered, but Nick’s father said to him, “In English,” nodding toward Nick.

  “English, yes. Excuse me. You don’t speak Czech?”

  Nick shook his head.

  “It’s better, Czech, for bad news. Very expressive. The Eskimos have the words for ice. But we-” He poured two more glasses. “What do you say, Valter? We have the words for bad news, yes?” A look of disgust. He took a drink.

  His father turned to Nick. “His brother was a writer.”

  “A writer. Under Dubcek, a writer. Then, poof, a tram driver, for Husak.”

  “He was fired from the Writers’ Union,” his father explained, “so he had to work on the trams. That’s the kind of job they give you. An embarrassment, so people see.”

  “They make you eat their shit,” Frantisek said. “To fill your mouth. No more words.” He glanced at his glass. “Then you’re quiet. So there is his brotherhood of Slavs. You remember that? He believed in that. We’re Slavs. They’re Slavs. Who else is there, the Germans? Now look at him.”

  “A writers’ movement,” his father said to Nick, a text gloss.

  “You like Prague?” Frantisek said suddenly. The opening, hopeless question.

  “It’s beautiful,” Nick said, the expected answer.

  “Yes, beautiful. For tourists. The Germans used to come. Not so many now.”

  But what was he supposed to answer? That it was sad and dingy? That the crabbed, suspicious lif
e inside the lovely architecture depressed him? A judgment no guest was allowed to make.

  “America.” Frantisek took another drink and looked up at Nick. “You were in Vietnam?”

  “Yes,” Nick said, embarrassed, expecting the usual arguments, the usual averted eyes, silent accusations. Aren’t you ashamed? Yes.

  “Good,” Frantisek said, slamming down the glass. “Kill the bastards. All the Communists.”

  Nick said nothing, too surprised to answer. Was that really how they saw the war here, a world away from America, turned now on itself? Maybe their suffering had brought them, finally, a simple myopia. There were no other politics but theirs.

  “Franku, please,” Anna said anxiously, putting down a coffee cup. “Here, drink.”

  But he had already turned from Nick, back in his grief. They took Milos‘s book,“ he said to Nick’s father. The notes, everything. Do you know what they said? It must have affected his mind. Now he’s a suicide too. Just like Masaryk. The pigs. That’s what they said to me.”

  “There must be a copy,” his father said.

  “How? Something like that.”

  “On film,” his father said simply. “It’s easy to hide on film.”

  Nick looked at him, curious, but his father misinterpreted his interest.

  “He was writing a book on Jan Masaryk,” he explained. “His death. It’s still a controversy here, how he died.”

  “Yes, Masaryk,” Frantisek said. “You know about Masaryk in America?”

  “Yes,” Nick said, to be polite, but in fact who did anymore? A forgotten name. Twenty years ago, a famous leap from the Czernin Palace that was the end of the republic. A national hero’s funeral. Pictures in Life. In the West, a murder no one could prove and everyone forgot. But here, evidently, still an open wound, a reminder of the world before, like Anna’s china.