“You gave him the poison to kill his guards?”
Wolkowicz hesitated, then shrugged. What did it matter?
“You were there when I did it,” he said.
“It was concealed in the book?”
“The Manchurian Candidate. Two needles, in the binding. The Russians are big on poison and books that shoot people and all that crap. It made Darby laugh, but it got him out of jail.”
“You liked Darby?”
Wolkowicz was genuinely astonished by the question. “Liked him?” he said. “Yeah, I liked him. Darby and your father and you—those are the people I’ve liked in my life. Until today, Darby was the only one who knew me. That was a problem for me. Stop talking, Paul. You don’t need to know anything else about my career. I want to explain two things, then we’d better call Patchen.”
Ilse looked anxiously into Wolkowicz’s face and took his hand again, massaging the hairy back, the swollen knuckles.
“I set up your father,” Wolkowicz said. “You know that. You knew it as soon as Graham put that shit about the way he died on the air. The file on your mother was a fake. The Russians put it together. It was the one sure way to hook Hubbard. He was so goddamned smart it was almost impossible to neutralize him. There was only one subject on which he was not intelligent—your mother. He wouldn’t believe that she was dead. I’m sorry, Paul, but that’s the way it was. I planted the file on him, I set up the meeting with Bülow; he was supposed to bring the rest of the Gestapo file on your mother. We said the file had turned up in stuff the Russians had captured. That was the bait.”
Wolkowicz talked in a steady, clear voice, without hesitation. He was reciting facts, setting the case in order.
“I didn’t know they were going to kill him,” Wolkowicz said. “I thought it was going to be a snatch, that he’d spend a few years in Russia and then they’d swap him for somebody. When I said I didn’t kill your father, that was a lot of shit. You can bet your ass I killed him. I killed him by being too dumb to see what was coming. I never made that mistake again.”
Wolkowicz was suffering. Suddenly he couldn’t bear to be touched and, after another little tug-of-war, he made Ilse let go of his hand. There were tears in her eyes. She kissed Wolkowicz on the face. He did not resist or respond or even move.
“Now, about you,” Wolkowicz said, forcing himself onward. “At first, in Vienna and then on the Darby case, I wanted you around because of what I’d done to Hubbard. I figured I could make it up, protect you. Then I saw you were just like him, a fucking genius. You and Hubbard and Darby are the only geniuses I’ve ever met. Do you know what makes a man a genius? The ability to see the obvious. Practically nobody can do that. Your father could, most of the time. Darby could, some of the time. I think you do it all the time. I don’t know how you’ve stayed alive.”
Wolkowicz’s throat was dry. He coughed harshly into his fist, then wiped his palm on the sofa. To the empty air he said, “We could use some water in here.” He knew that the room was equipped with hidden television cameras and microphones, and that somewhere Patchen was watching and listening.
“As soon as I realized what kind of a mind you had,” Wolkowicz said to Christopher, “I wanted you inside on my ops so I could control the information that got to you. If you’d been outside, Christ knows what you would have found out. I was so right. You got away from me and look what happened. You started sniffing around the fucking assassination, you got the Vietnamese all stirred up, you scared the Russians shitless. Just before you went to China, you were close to something that terrified them.”
“What was I close to?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it was, the Russians didn’t want to be blamed for it. Maybe they knocked off the President, maybe not. I don’t know. I didn’t give a shit. They wanted to kill you. I couldn’t let that happen again. China was the only place on earth where nobody—not even the Russians—could get at you. Anything is better than dying, Paul.”
“Anything?”
Wolkowicz made a gruff gesture of dismissal, as if Christopher’s question were an insect to be batted away.
“I got in touch with Chinese Gus,” Wolkowicz said, rushing on. “I told him what a red-hot agent you were. I had Pong break Gus Kimber’s neck and Chinese Gus stole his airplane. You thought I was lying to you about the Truong toc and Kim, but I did kill the bastards to protect you; I thought the Russians might be running them somehow. Even if they weren’t, why the fuck should they live to kill you? I did it all.”
Wolkowicz stopped, to give Christopher an opportunity to speak. But he said nothing.
“Let me tell you something else,” Wolkowicz said. “I’d do it again. You’re sitting here instead of lying under the ground, a fucking heap of bones.”
“Molly, too?” Christopher asked. “Would you do that again?”
Wolkowicz shook his head. For an instant, he was impatient, his old rude self. Then he seemed to realize that his answer was important to Christopher and he did the best he could. “I should have known they’d hit her after they set up the operation. They’re stubborn bastards, the Russians,” he said. “I thought Webster was smart enough to keep Molly inside, where they couldn’t get at her. I was wrong. It was my fault. And the answer is yes: I’d do it again if it would keep you alive.”
For once, Wolkowicz’s face showed what he felt. It glowed with affection and relief. He hugged Ilse again. Christopher had never seen Wolkowicz in such a mood, with words tumbling out of him. He seemed sure that Christopher could understand anything, forgive anything, if he could only see him as he really was.
Wolkowicz’s confession had freed him of a terrible burden. He actually said, “I feel better.”
He slumped on the sofa, exhausted. Ilse looked from Wolkowicz to Christopher with joy in her pale eyes. She was happy. So was Wolkowicz.
Christopher asked another question. Like all the others, it wasn’t really a question. “You weren’t working for the Russians at all, were you, Barney?” he said. “You were working for yourself.”
Wolkowicz and Ilse looked, smiling, into each other’s eyes.
“Don’t tell the Russians that,” Ilse said, “they’d be so disappointed. Do you know why I did it?”
“Yes. Because Barney asked you to.”
Nodding, Ilse took both of Christopher’s hands in hers. “I love this ape,” she said. “Isn’t that funny, a girl like me?”
Christopher looked at Wolkowicz. “You did all this,” he said, “turned yourselves into this, to get Waddy Jessup?”
“To get all the fucking Waddys,” Wolkowicz said. Abruptly, he laughed his snorting laugh which was so full of ridicule and contempt. “Jesus,” he said. “I never realized it. It was the class struggle—me against the Fool Factory. I’m a fucking Red!”
Overcome with mirth, Wolkowicz and Ilse held hands and shared this delicious joke with Christopher.
Christopher, grieving for his dead parents and his dead Molly and his deadened life, realized that this was his true homecoming. He covered his face and made a sound deep in his throat.
Ilse flew to him and pried his fingers away from his eyes.
“I know it’s hard, Paul,” she said. “But what Barney is talking about here is operations, not feelings. We’ve always loved you. Always.”
— 2 —
The chief interrogator for the Outfit had a theory. He believed that a man like Wolkowicz, who had once held up under torture, would break if he was threatened with torture a second time, because he would know too well what to expect. Patchen would not let him try it.
“If you make the threat, you may have to carry it out,” he said.
“That’s all right with me.”
The interrogator hated Wolkowicz, who had made it impossible, forever, for the Outfit to trust its own men and women. Outfitters had always been outcasts, but they had lived happily enough because they trusted each other absolutely. They had believed that the Outfit could not be penetrated: its people were
too patriotic, too bright, too idealistic. Now the greatest of all the Outfit agents had turned out to be an enemy; had turned out always to have been an enemy. Why? How? The interrogator was willing to use anything to get the truth out of him: clubs, electricity, water, surgical instruments.
“No,” Patchen said. “Leave his ego alone. Wolkowicz has always believed that we were too civilized. It will upset everything if he suspects he’s been wrong.”
Before the interrogation started, Wolkowicz asked to see Patchen. He wanted to ask him to be civilized about Pong.
“I just want you to realize that Pong is clean,” Wolkowicz said. “He was just doing favors for me, passing the stuff to Graham. He didn’t know what he was passing. Pong is a patriotic American.”
“I know that.”
“Okay. Just don’t fuck around with him.”
He glared at Patchen as if he had the power to make him pay if he dared to harm Pong, Wolkowicz’s loyal agent. Wolkowicz had always expected to be captured in the end. His status as a prisoner did not change his personality.
The interrogators used sleeplessness, drugs, the polygraph, and endless relays of questioners. Wolkowicz made no attempt to evade the questions they asked him. The interrogators were not always satisfied with his answers. Wolkowicz had survived dozens of lie detector tests in the past, and still the needles traced normal lines. They only jumped when he was asked about the Christophers. Any question about Ilse produced wildly erratic tracings.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the polygraph operator said. “He must be a pathological liar.”
Patchen studied the tracings. “No,” he said. “He just doesn’t feel any guilt.” He ran a finger over the nervous peaks marked with Ilse’s name and Christopher’s. “Love, yes,” Patchen said.
Once a week, Wolkowicz was shown a documentary film about a state mental institution in Arkansas. The hopelessly insane were confined there in conditions of unbelievable filth and squalor. Wolkowicz watched them fight, copulate, defecate and smear themselves with the feces. No one was ever released from this place. He watched the film, time after time, in fearless contempt. It had no effect on him. He supposed it was some sort of brainwashing technique devised by academics. It was not, he thought, nearly so effective as a bayonet and a block of wood.
After the first three months of interrogation, Wolkowicz asked for a piano and, on Patchen’s authorization, a spinet model was moved into his room for an hour each day. His guards, lithe young men in blue jeans who carried their Kulsprutas carelessly, like boys walking across a campus with lacrosse sticks, were as astonished as everyone else always had been by the delicacy of his touch on the keyboard. Each note, as it came over the earphones they used to monitor his every sound, was pure and free and separate from all the others. Sometimes, if the door was opened for a moment while Wolkowicz happened to be playing, a few strains of Bach or Mozart would drift through the soundproofed house. The chief interrogator had objected to the piano. Hearing the piano, Ilse would know that Wolkowicz was alive and in the house with her, and that would reduce the psychological pressure on her.
“It’s one of Wolkowicz’s tricks,” the interrogator said.
“Let him outwit us just one more time, then,” Patchen replied. “That will mean a lot to him.”
Wolkowicz himself had been surprised when they had given him his piano. He had nothing else, not even a book or newspaper, in his room. He had no blankets or sheets; the room was kept at a temperature that made them unnecessary. He wore coveralls with the sleeves and legs cut off so that there was no piece of cloth long enough to be used as a hangman’s noose or a strangling cord. Because he was not allowed to use a razor, his beard had grown long.
He knew that the interrogation had been completed when the guards came into his room with barbering tools. They shaved his grizzled whiskers and trimmed his hair.
That day, Patchen came to see him. It was the first time they had met since the morning Wolkowicz had been caught.
The youthful guard had brought a folding chair. He opened it and Patchen sat down. Patchen was wearing a lightweight suit. This meant that the seasons had changed. Shut away from windows, from noises and smells, Wolkowicz had become an even more avid reader of clues. For months, he had had virtually no clues to read. He had no idea what was going to happen to him. He was sure that Patchen had some plan for him. He waited for him to reveal it.
“Thanks for the piano,” Wolkowicz said.
In his cut-off coveralls, hairy Wolkowicz looked like an ape in rompers. Patchen had been ignoring his appearance for years. He paid no special attention to it now.
“I’m glad you’re comfortable,” Patchen said. “You seem a little thinner. It must have something to do with giving up liquor. There are a lot of calories in Rob Roys.”
Wolkowicz scratched himself, some sort of signal that he had not changed, that he could still repay a pleasantry with an insult.
“What,” Patchen asked, “are you going to do now?”
Wolkowicz cupped a hand behind his ear, as if he hadn’t heard, but Patchen did not repeat himself. Wolkowicz did not reply, not even with a joke.
“You’ll want to see Ilse before you go,” Patchen said. “A conjugal visit.”
Another man might have smiled or betrayed something by the movement of a hand, but Patchen sat still and expressionless.
“Before I go?” Wolkowicz said. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You’re all pumped out, they say. You may as well leave.”
Patchen stood up to go.
“Just a minute,” Wolkowicz said. “What about a trial?”
“Trial? I’m afraid not, Barney. No grand finale for you. You’re not going to be exposed as a Soviet agent. It would destroy the Outfit. Sorry.”
Wolkowicz, sprawled on his cot, glowered at Patchen.
“You think that’s going to save the Outfit, not trying me?” Wolkowicz said. “If you let me go, I can go right back to Graham and blow the whole fucking story.”
Patchen shrugged. “If you think he’d believe you, go to him. What are you going to say? That you passed him all that stuff through Pong? That you set out to destroy yourself, the best agent the Russians have ever had, as a way of ruining the Outfit?”
“It’s true.”
“Yes,” Patchen said. “But it’s insane.”
“You don’t think I can do it? Assholes like Graham will believe anything, as long as it’s what they want to hear. He’ll be enthralled to think that the Russians have been running the Outfit for thirty years. It’ll explain everything. You’re an even bigger bunch of assholes than he thought.”
“You may be right, Barney.”
Wolkowicz had to lean forward and cup his ear to hear Patchen.
“One last thing,” Patchen said. “I know why you did it. But why did the Russians do it? Why you? What was there about you?”
Wolkowicz snorted. Patchen’s question broke through to him in a way that months of drugs and sleeplessness had never done.
“Who the fuck did you think they were going to recruit?” he said. “Waddy Jessup?” He waved a hand in dismissal.
“No, don’t stop now,” Patchen said. “I want to know your opinion.”
Thirty years of exasperation with Patchen and his kind spilled over in Wolkowicz. “Out in Burma, before he ran away from the Japs, Waddy told me that I was the son of a worker,” he said. “That, asshole, is the key. I’m a member of the lower classes. So was Darby. We were the KGB’s aces, baby. The Russians are out to kill people like you. They’ll use you, but you don’t count. Look at the Brits. Philby, Burgess, MacLean, Blunt—all members of the bourgeoisie. All sacrificial lambs. The Russians didn’t give a shit for them, they didn’t give a shit for British intelligence. The Outfit was the target because the United States is the target.”
Patchen nodded. He had no more time for this interview. To the television camera in the corner of the bare, overlighted room, he said, “Come in no
w, please.”
The guards brought Wolkowicz his clothes—one of his checked polyester jackets, a pair of slacks, a drip-dry shirt, and a necktie, all freshly cleaned and pressed. They handed him an envelope containing his watch and his wallet.
“Good luck,” Patchen said, ready to leave.
Automatically, Wolkowicz counted his cash, seventy-six dollars—fifteen dollars less than he had had when he was taken. Then he remembered Ilse, waving the fan of bills at him in the bedroom: her taxi fare.
“Wait a minute,” Wolkowicz said. “What about Ilse?”
Patchen seemed surprised that he would ask.
“Oh,” he said. “She’ll stay with us. You’ll want to know she’s all right. You can write to her, she can write to you. We’ll give you a post office box number for yourself and one for Ilse. You can make two telephone calls a year, on your birthdays. You’ll have to give her a number to call in your letters. Is that reassurance enough?”
Wolkowicz understood Patchen’s plan.
“If you open your mouth, if one word of what you’ve been for the last thirty years appears in print, even if the Russians do it for you against your will, we’ll move her.”
“Where to?”
“An asylum. In Arkansas, say. If she tells them the truth about herself, she’ll never get out.”
“She could live for thirty years,” Wolkowicz said.
“I don’t see why not,” Patchen replied.
He turned around and walked out of the room.
Thirteen
— 1 —
Wolkowicz had been blindfolded in the car and in the small plane that carried him away from the house in Virginia. He had no idea where it was. He knew that it was beyond his resources to find it. Because of Patchen, he had to run from the Russians. What he would get from them was more months of interrogation, more drugs, and, in the end, Russia for himself and the asylum for Ilse.
Still, he was not without hope, not without resources.
The Last Supper Page 43
