“Yes.”
“We must therefore arrange another negotiation. Through you to me.”
The shadows were back; and the thickness in her throat. She felt feverish, and really hoped she would wake up soon. She wondered if she had tried some of Jerri’s mezzroll after all: this whole thing could be a hallucination.
“This is some kind of joke,” she muttered. “It’s not real. It’s a trick.”
“No joke. No trick. I have nothing to gain by conning you, Miss Jensen, and, as you point out, I have taken a significant risk coming here. I trust no one else. I trust you, my superior trusts me, his superior trusts him, and that superior is the General Secretary. TWO layers between the Comrade General Secretary and you. Then you go to your President, and bring back his answer, and so on. You must meet with the President personally. No envoy. No opportunity for the war clique to interfere.” She listened, but the air of unreality was back. None of this was real, and soon she would wake. “The official negotiations will continue,” Fomin said. “And they should be played out as though they reflect reality. But they do not. Too many of our madmen are involved. Perhaps too many of yours as well. The only true negotiation will be between your President and the Comrade General Secretary, through you and me. That is the negotiation that will save the world.”
IV
Despite the night chill, Margo’s dress was damp with perspiration. She didn’t believe a word he said, and yet she believed it all. She didn’t know what he really wanted, and yet she did. She shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said for the third or tenth time. “What am I supposed to do? Walk up to the White House and ring the bell?”
“You are a resourceful young woman, Miss Jensen. You proved that in Varna. You are only nineteen years old, but you survived interrogation by the Darzhavna Sigurnost, and even escaped their custody, a thing that is unheard of, and all of this without ever admitting your true role—”
“I had no true role—”
Fomin waved this away, indulging a pedant. They were standing together in the silt near a ruined dock, listening to the slow lapping of the black waves. “Fine, Miss Jensen. Have it your way. You were an innocent tourist. A student on a fellowship. Whatever you like. My point remains the same. You are resourceful. Courageous. Inventive. Much like your father. You will surely work out some means of communicating the Comrade General Secretary’s message to your President. But that I leave in your hands.”
“You have the wrong girl.”
“On the contrary, Miss Jensen. You are the only one I trust to do this thing.”
Still watching the placid water, she let out a long breath. Dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return, said the traditional funeral service. Maybe so. But Margo had always hoped she would die near the water; better, in it.
“What’s the message?” she finally asked.
Fomin was lighting another foul cigarette. “You are,” he said.
V
Viktor Vaganian sat in his car on a downtown street that looked up at the waterfall. He was using a flashlight to study the Esso road map unfolded on the steering wheel. He was unfamiliar with this town and had lost Fomin’s car in the darkness. Odd that Fomin knew the twists and turns so well.
But Fomin’s presence in Ithaca was itself a surprise. Viktor had trouble working it out. Was this Margo Jensen the colonel’s agent now? Had he somehow turned her in Bulgaria, as in his time the legendary recruiter had turned the Rosenbergs and Fuchs and so many others? If so, the inexplicable decision to release her from custody would at last find a logic.
Of course, there were other, less attractive explanations available. Viktor was reluctant to embrace them. He did not want to believe that his own teacher could be the traitor he sought. But he would have to investigate the possibility.
He refolded the map, every crease perfect, and headed out of town.
TWENTY
The Recluse
I
Lorenz Niemeyer lived alone, in a small cottage on a bluff to the north of Fall Creek. Trees shrouded the house from the road. The winding driveway was marked with signs against trespassers and warning of vicious dogs, although in practice his mongrel, Demeter—half poodle, half something unknown—was more likely to do her business on a stranger’s leg than bite him. Around the bend, another sign, quite old, informed the unwary of land mines in four languages: a souvenir, it was said, from a dicey nighttime jaunt across the border between the two Germanies back in the days before the Wall. The great man wanted all the world to know that he preferred to remain undisturbed, but when she pushed the bell, three chimes rang loud enough to wake the dead, and although it was well past eleven, the butler, Vale, opened the door at once.
“Miss Jensen,” he murmured in his funereal tones, contriving to recognize her without ever looking anywhere but above her head.
“I know it’s late,” she said, conscious of the tremor in her voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I need to see Professor Niemeyer. It’s urgent.”
Still Vale did not look at her. He was tall and broad-shouldered and heavy-waisted, and his eyes had the dull and distant cast of a man on drugs. People said he had worked with Niemeyer in the war and was suffering from shell shock, or perhaps the aftereffects of his treatment by the Gestapo; because it was common ground that something terrible must have happened to him. Now he inclined his long head and stepped to the side. Despite the hour, he was fully dressed. “Do come in.”
She stepped past him into the foyer, which was large but low-ceilinged, and decorated with indifferent seascapes collected by a previous owner. She remembered her only previous visit to the house, early in September, when Niemeyer threw the annual party for his students. She had been one of two hundred young people crowding the lawn and spilling onto the porch and into the cottage proper, although a makeshift barrier of twinned chairs arrested the progress of the guests at the hallway leading deeper into the house. Now Vale led her down that very corridor to a cozy book-lined study, where, late as it was, a small fire burned in the grate. A book of chess games was open on a side table, where a position had been set up on a board.
“Please, wait here, Miss Jensen,” the butler said.
“Thank you.”
Vale pulled the double doors closed behind him. Alone again, Margo squeezed her hands together to try to control the shakes. Vale had seemed so calm; but, then, from what she understood, it was not unusual for undergraduates to visit the house at all hours.
Female undergraduates: or so the rumor mill had it.
Unable to sit still, Margo moved to the window. Niemeyer’s cottage backed on the woods. The night had gone overcast, but there was wind, and now and then the skittering clouds cleared for a moment, allowing silver shafts of moonlight to brush the trees. She wondered who was out there watching, for she had come to believe somebody always was. Harrington had told her to resume her normal life, but she wasn’t sure Harrington would know a normal life if it sat down for dinner. Margo nibbled her lip. A part of her mind still was not entirely sure that she wasn’t still in the dream. The borderline between this world and that was harder to find in the dark, and had been ever since—
The double doors opened, slowly but loudly, and even as Margo turned, she realized that Niemeyer wanted her to hear the sound so that she would not be startled when he entered the room. A dream Niemeyer, she decided, would not be nearly so considerate.
“Good evening, my dear,” he said. “This is indeed a delight.”
He was wearing pajamas and a robe and floppy slippers. His hair was disordered, and the bad hand was in his pocket, and it was plain that she had roused him from his sleep. His eyes were guarded. The bonhomie seemed forced. She could not at first put a name to what she read in his tired face. Then it occurred to her that he might be nearly as frightened as she.
“Good evening, Professor,” she said. Her voice still shook. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”
His smile was tentative but wry. “There was a time when
visits by comely young women such as yourself to my humble abode were a more common occurrence. But nowadays, I’m afraid I need my rest.”
She didn’t trust her voice this time, so she only nodded.
“You would appear to be in need of a drink, Miss Jensen.” He crossed to the sideboard, uncapped a decanter, sniffed. “Sherry, you know, doesn’t have an actual vintage the way other wines do, but this is a good one.” Another sniff, followed by a frown. “Fairly good, anyway.”
He poured two glasses, offered her one. She hesitated. “I insist,” he said.
“No, um, thank you, no.” Margo found herself babbling. “The drinking age for women—”
“There is a medicinal exception, Miss Jensen.” The humor was forced, the grin a ghastly imitation of the pompous smile that accompanied the worst of his jokes. “You need this. It will calm you down. Good. Now sit.”
She did as bidden. She had been doing as she was bidden quite a bit lately, but, in this stuffy library, began to feel somewhere deep down the banked fires of a rebellion.
“Better. One more sip. Good. Now, my dear. It’s the middle of the night, and you arrived here terribly upset. Now that you’re relatively calm, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”
“I didn’t know where else to go. Who else to talk to.” He waited. Her mind was galloping ahead of her mouth, or perhaps stumbling behind. Finally, she was able to form the words. “I think Dr. Harrington is working with Soviet Intelligence.”
II
Now it was Niemeyer’s turn to go mute. He had told them in class that the key to a successful interrogation was for the interrogator never to seem surprised. He did not seem surprised now, just thoughtful. He returned to the sideboard and unstopped the crystal decanter once more, taking his time, then topped up her glass and his own. He sat again, this time beside her on the sofa. He crossed those plump legs and sipped, watching her.
And Margo responded. She had not realized until tonight how badly she needed to tell the story. The story of her experiences. The reasons for her suspicions of Harrington came tumbling out: That she was being followed on campus even before Stilwell and Borkland visited. That Fomin seemed to know she was coming, to be waiting for her. That he already had a thick file on her. That he had a copy of the forged application the State Department had prepared. That he’d had her arrested and then, when he caught up with her after her escape, released her. It had to be a test, Margo said: a test to see whether she would be capable of carrying secret messages. But there was no way Fomin could have heard of her unless Harrington had been in touch with him …
And she wound down.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she repeated, not liking the weariness in her tone.
“Not a dream, I suppose,” he said after a moment. “And not a scheme to winkle yourself into my bed, hoping for a better grade, one supposes. Pity, that.” But the humor failed to rouse the slightest fury. Niemeyer took a longer drink. “This meeting with Fomin really happened, then.”
“Yes, sir.” The “sir” sounded odd in light of the occasion, but the habits of the classroom die hard. “But about Dr. Harrington—”
“First things first, Miss Jensen.”
“I thought it might be you,” Margo went on, eyes downcast, missing the point. “Who was in league with Fomin, I mean. But that didn’t jibe with the access to the State Department files, or with the detailed knowledge of my mission.”
“Unless I’m working with Dr. Harrington.” She looked up sharply. “Or maybe there’s another mole. It needn’t be me. It needn’t be Dr. Harrington. It needn’t be anybody. I wonder whether you’re allowing your imagination to run away with you, Miss Jensen. When you’re in the field, everything that goes wrong looks like conspiracy.”
“That’s what Agatha said.”
“And who’s Agatha when she’s at home? I don’t believe we’ve had an Agatha in the story.”
“My minder. She got hurt the night I got arrested. Nobody will tell me where she is, or even how she’s doing.”
“I can check, if you like.” He was topping off her glass, using his good hand. “Now, listen to me, Miss Jensen. There will be plenty of time to go mole hunting once the crisis is successfully resolved. For the moment, why don’t we stick to the facts and put the speculations to one side?”
“I—yes. Okay.”
“The basic information is this. In Bulgaria, you were interrogated by a man identifying himself as Fomin, who claimed to be a colonel in the KGB. Tonight you saw him again, he confirmed the presence of missiles in Cuba, and he asked you to serve as his conduit to the President of the United States. Fair summary?”
“Not his conduit. Khrushchev’s conduit.”
“Indeed.” A sip. “Granting that emendation, Miss Jensen, why precisely do you come to me?”
She was, for a moment, wordstruck. Wasn’t it obvious? “You’re the only one I know who can help. You know people in Washington. I assumed you’d know what I should do next.”
“I see.” He swirled his glass, studying the liquid, but Margo knew it was the quality of her story, not the quality of the sherry, that was under scrutiny. “Would it trouble you terribly were I to ask a few pertinent questions? By way of clarification, let us say?”
“You mean, to figure out whether I’m lying.”
He didn’t smile, or bother to respond.
“You came here straight from wherever this was?”
“Stewart Park. There was another man there, too. Also, Fomin said somebody was following me, and—”
Niemeyer raised a hand and actually covered her mouth. “An old trick. He says somebody’s watching you, and, just like that, you’re on the same side against the mysterious watcher.”
“He was lying?”
“No idea. Makes no difference. Now, listen carefully, Miss Jensen. I don’t want those details. Not yet. First, we establish the provenance of the information. Then we hear the story.”
His face had gone serious, and Margo knew this was his element, the real Lorenz Niemeyer beneath the flannel: she was face-to-face with the ice-cold spymaster he was reputed to have been, and some said still was.
“I came straight here,” she said.
“How?”
“I guess I walked.”
“You guess?”
The hard truth: “I don’t remember all the details. I was sort of in a fog.”
“Call your boyfriend? That Jellinek fellow?”
“No.”
“Your drug-addled roommate? Your friend Annalise? Littlejohn, or the other silly fools from your study group? Anybody?”
She registered no surprise that he knew her life as well as she did. “Nobody.”
“Anybody see you on the way here?”
“I don’t know. I walked all the way from Stewart Park.”
“That’s over a mile, mostly uphill. Cars must have passed you.”
“Probably. I don’t remember.”
“Did you change your clothes? Buy a soda?”
“No.”
“Wait here.” He stood up and walked toward the door. Vale opened it at once from the outside. Margo wondered how the butler knew his master wanted him; and, for that matter, how he had known her name when she rang the bell. In the hall, the two men had a whispered conversation. Vale vanished, and Niemeyer resumed his place.
“Did he give you any warnings? Not to talk about this—that kind of thing?”
“He said not to tell anybody but the President.”
Niemeyer’s face hardened. “So it’s been less than an hour, and you’re already breaking the rules.”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I tried to explain to Fomin. I can’t just walk up to the White House and knock on the door and ask for an appointment.”
“And what did Fomin say to that?”
She found herself reciting Fomin’s theory with a certain pride. “He said that any girl resourceful enough to escape custody at the DS headquarters could surely talk
her way into the White House.”
The great man thought this over. His frown deepened. The misshapen hand toyed with what remained of his hair. “Suppose you were able to reach the White House and persuade them to accept you as the conduit to Khrushchev. Did Fomin tell you what to do next?”
“He said I’d be contacted.”
“Did he say through whom?”
“No.”
“Did he say when?”
“No.”
“Did he say how you’d know the contact was authentic? Did he give you a word code, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Sometimes, after an experience like you had in Varna, people make things up. Trying to get attention. You wouldn’t be doing that, would you, Miss Jensen?”
“No.” The rhythm Niemeyer had established left her little choice but to keep giving the same answer.
“Exaggerating at all?”
“No.”
“Are you omitting any details?”
“No.”
“Fomin. What was he wearing?”
She shut her eyes, saw him in the darkness, heard the squeal of the unoiled swings. “A turtleneck sweater. A sports coat. Some kind of dark pants.”
“Was he smoking?”
“Yes,” she said, very surprised.
“What brand?”
“I didn’t see the pack. They smelled terrible. I never looked at the pack.”
A knock on the door. Vale stepped inside, crossed the room on silent feet, whispered in his master’s ear. The great man nodded. The butler went out.
Niemeyer resumed as if the interruption had never occurred.
“You’re sure Fomin said missiles—plural.”
“Yes.”
“Did he say how many?”
“No.”
“He told you the types.”
“Yes.”
“But he did say that the official negotiations wouldn’t go anywhere?”
“He said Khrushchev couldn’t afford to lose face.”
Niemeyer nodded. “We model the Kremlin as a zero-sum game. There’s only so much authority to go around. Whatever flows out of one set of hands flows into another. The General Secretary never holds all the power. Not even Stalin could act entirely unilaterally, although he had more freedom than the poor bastards who’ve held the office since.” He was talking to fill the void while he thought. “We saw this coming, you know—the missiles. We told Eisenhower. We told Kennedy. Nobody would listen. We have our water borders, we’ve never been successfully invaded—if you don’t count that small unpleasantness in 1812, when the Brits burned the White House—and, come to think of it, that particular unpleasantness is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year, isn’t it?”
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