by Jack Fuller
But none of this prepared him for what he saw when the taxi turned into a narrow side street. Up ahead rose a cluster of spires like nothing he had ever imagined existing under the eyes of God. If it had not been for the scaffolding, he might have mistaken them for stalks of strange, petrified plants. He rolled down the window and leaned out to see better.
“Sagrada Familia,” said the driver.
“Do you speak English?” said Rosten.
“Yes,” said the driver. “Estamos cerca del hotel.”
When he got to his room, Rosten was disappointed to discover that his windows faced the wrong way. Fisherman’s orders were that he immediately call a local number and leave a prearranged message then wait by the phone. But he had to see more of the cathedral first.
Up close, it was something you awoke from. A great stone column stood atop a tortoise. Sprouting from a vertical element of a buttress was the boll of something like cotton. Form did not follow function. It did not even appear to abide by the ordinary formulas of balance and load. Not a single corner seemed square. This wasn’t architecture; it was evolution.
After about an hour he returned to his room, dialed the phone, and spoke the word. Then, for more than a day, he was frozen in place, waiting for the return call that would set him in motion. He chose his meals from the bland room-service menu. He spoke English to the waiters, not even attempting gracias with a lisp. He had not brought enough to read. Except for the same things over and over on CNN, the television was unintelligible. Finally the phone rang, and a man said it was time.
He took a taxi, alighting some distance from his destination, which was in a working-class neighborhood. Soon he was crossing an empty expanse of brown grass littered with discarded plastic and shards of glass, a haze flattening the gray faces of housing projects that bordered the open space. Rosten found the right building, its number painted by an unskilled hand on the concrete wall next to the door. The uric smell as he entered had no nationality. He pushed the elevator button.
“Tiene que subir las escaleras,” said a voice behind him. He turned and saw a man in a torn Chicago Bulls T-shirt with the number 23 on the back. He was pointing to a doorway with a sign whose pane and lightbulb had been broken a long time. Rosten made his way up three flights in darkness, and only when he emerged into the corridor did he realize that he was one story too low. The floor numbers started at zero, not one. He went back to the stairwell and felt his way upward again.
Derelict as the building was, each door had a metal plate with the apartment number. When Rosten found the right one, he gave a simple knock. The peephole darkened. Somebody worried the dead bolt. The door swung open. Nederlander was taller than Rosten had imagined from the photograph, but the long, oval face and wavy hair were a match.
“So you are Ernest Fisherman’s new boy toy,” said Nederlander.
An uncovered metal table and four chairs held the center of the room. A thin piece of fabric, which could have been the remains of a curtain, covered a couch pushed up against the side wall. Above it hung a print of the Virgin Mary wracked with mourning and another of Jesus bloody on the cross. Mother and Son gazed across at a kitchen sink marked by black melanomas where pieces of the porcelain had chipped off. Next to the sink stood an old refrigerator dirty enough on the outside that you did not want to think about what might be within.
“Very authentic,” said Rosten.
“How would you know?” said Nederlander.
“I am nobody’s anything,” Rosten said.
Nederlander showed a bit of pleasure at this and sat down at the table. Rosten remained standing.
“You will be the last to realize what you are,” said Nederlander.
His speech seemed a little off. Rosten was not sure whether this was because he’d had too much to drink, but his face and hands had a bluish color that Rosten associated with someone who, over the years, had had too much of something.
“There are better patrons than Fisherman,” said Nederlander.
“My bad luck,” said Rosten.
“He always likes to keep a young man close,” said Nederlander, “and make him think he has singled him out for glory.”
Nederlander dressed blandly enough to avoid notice, except for the little bow tie. His hair curled at the collar and over his ears. The razor had missed a patch of pinfeathers on his neck. The pulpiness of his nose told an old story.
“You speaking from experience?” said Rosten.
Nederlander gave a sniff.
“How much do you know about our Russian?” he said.
“I read the dossier,” said Rosten.
“They’re losing focus,” said Nederlander, “starting to slip. Some fall down on the simplest things. Forget to clear dead drops. Garble their countersignals. Go sightseeing rather than do what they’ve been told.”
“I behaved like the tourist I’m supposed to be,” said Rosten.
“They don’t know who to be afraid of anymore,” said Nederlander. “Every time Gorbachev turns his head West, a dozen of these guys come running to us.”
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. They were French. Tapping the pack against his finger made a few cigarettes poke out. He waved them in Rosten’s direction.
Rosten shook his head.
“I forgot,” said Nederlander. “You children have no vices.”
“If the Russians are coming to us because it’s the endgame, why should we cut deals with them?” Rosten said.
Nederlander let his chair down onto all fours.
“Isn’t the question what do we lose?” he said.
“Dealing with the enemy is always a risk,” Rosten said.
“Ah, the moles,” Nederlander said.
“More than one?” said Rosten.
“Now there’s a question for your boss,” said Nederlander. “And if you think of it, ask who.”
A knock on the door made Rosten flinch.
“Easy, boy,” said Nederlander.
The case agent was first in, having used a key. The Russian who followed could have been mistaken for a government bureaucrat from any country in the world. His skin had taken on the color of fluorescent light. He carried more weight than the tolerances to which he was built. He fidgeted with his ring, looked around the room with distaste, did not meet anyone’s eyes.
Nederlander put Shchusev between himself and Rosten so that the Russian could not see them both at once. The case agent sat on the couch directly behind him. The Russian sloughed off his leather jacket and placed his hands flat on the table. Whenever he lifted one of them from the surface, a trace of moisture stayed behind.
Rosten wanted to try the interrogation techniques he had learned in training, but Nederlander was in charge, and clearly his technique was to let the samovar steep. Name? Birthplace? Mother and father’s name? The questions droned on. Draw the organization chart of the Directorate in which you served. Who is in this box? What are his particular duties? Weaknesses? Shchusev replied as if from a script.
Eventually Nederlander hauled out a folder of photographs, the usual kind, taken with a long lens that eliminated depth on high-speed film that increased contrast, which made everything either black or a chalky white. He placed each photo before Shchusev in turn and asked for the identity. Rosten recognized some of them from the dossiers. These were men who had already been compromised or were offering themselves.
The process dragged on. It was an effort for Rosten to concentrate. Shchusev answered in a heavy monotone: “Yiez. Nau. Iz Dimitri Tsvilyenyev. Iz naubodye.”
As the interrogation wound down, Shchusev’s hands left no prints anymore. Nederlander began putting the photos back into the proper order in the file. Shchusev leaned back in his chair.
“May I ask something?” said Rosten.
“If you feel compelled,” said Nederlander.
Rosten had only one question. It was a name. When he spoke it, the Russian’s little finger became palsied just above the tabletop. He
looked at Nederlander. He said nothing.
The case agent touched his shoulder and pointed to the door with his chin. There were no do svidaniyas, no next steps established. Whatever the encounter had been, it was over. The Russian fumbled with his jacket and left. When he was out the door, Rosten stood.
“He didn’t answer,” he said.
“No recognition,” said Nederlander.
“He seemed afraid,” said Rosten.
“Point in his favor,” said Nederlander. “I always like to see fear in a man who is playing for his life.”
The Marine guard at the Embassy door when Rosten returned was a Polish kid from Connecticut named Ray Kowalczyk. Rosten had told him he was Polish, too, and they had gone out for an off-duty pint. Usually when Kowalczyk was on duty, he was all starch, but this day he leaned forward and whispered, “He’s already called three times looking for you. You’d better move.”
“Patience isn’t one of his virtues,” Rosten said.
“Hey,” said the Marine, “don’t say I didn’t warn you. Wait one. Don’t say I did either.”
Fisherman was waiting for him in the doorway of his inner office.
“Elevator broken?” he said.
“I stopped at my office.”
They assumed their positions opposite one another across the desk. Fisherman seemed to be in no hurry now. At first he busied himself with some papers as if he were alone. Rosten tried to find a comfortable position on the Rack.
“I think Nederlander is a drinker,” he said.
Fisherman looked up, flashing impatience. He controlled his signals like a cuttlefish.
“Many men drink,” he said.
“He clearly did not like having me there.”
“Interesting that he did not feel the need to hide this.”
A cloud must have passed, because the sun through the window behind him grew as bright as a Regency doorway, turning him into a shadow in the water.
“He called me your boy toy,” said Rosten.
“He worked for me once,” said Fisherman.
“Do they call all of your assistants boy toys?”
“They have used different words at different times but all to the same effect,” said Fisherman. “It started with the Dutchman, not because he was effeminate, but because he was a lickspittle. I couldn’t abide it. He never got over that.”
Rosten stood and laid out on the desk the photographs he had pulled out of the dossiers in the safe in his office.
“Nederlander showed all these men to Shchusev—excuse me, Khlestakov,” he said. “Would he have known that you had opened cases on them?”
“I don’t see how,” said Fisherman.
“But he surely would have known that they are ours or want to be.”
“Surely.”
“What better way to pass to Moscow the identities of its traitors?” Rosten said.
“Don’t you think he knew we would see this possibility?” said Fisherman. “If you had asked him, he would have said he was checking into bona fides.”
Rosten should have anticipated. Doubt the man. Doubt the doubt.
“With a man he wasn’t sure of?” said Rosten. “What was he really thinking?”
“If we knew that,” said Fisherman, “we would know whom we are dealing with.”
“And if we knew who we were dealing with,” said Rosten, “we would know what he was thinking.”
“So you remember how to construct a chiasmus,” said Fisherman. “You get an A in rhetoric. And so far an F in the assignment I gave you.”
Rosten retreated to the safety of surfaces, reciting the exact words he had heard. Fisherman’s silhouette was so motionless that he could have been listening or he could have been asleep.
“I left out one thing,” Rosten finally said. “I asked about one name myself—Anton Kerzhentseff.”
Fisherman’s head moved just enough to eclipse the sun.
“Khlestakov missed a beat,” Rosten said.
“I imagine he did,” said Fisherman.
“Something seemed to pass between Nederlander and him.”
“You know nothing of Kerzhentseff,” said Fisherman, “only what was told to you by someone else who also knows nothing. Don’t flatter yourself to think that you have read the minds of the Dutchman and the Russian. Our brains trick us into believing that we can. Does she really love me? Can I get his price down by 10 percent? Is my wife cheating? For trivial purposes our mind-reading ability serves us well enough, which is why it was selected for on the African savanna. But in the work you and I do, we do not deal with Homo sapiens sapiens. We are not natural human beings. We all have been remade for sovereign purposes. We are selected not by nature but by men.”
“I saw what I saw,” said Rosten.
“Seeing what we did not see and recognizing it,” said Fisherman, “this is what is required.”
As Rosten left the office, he heard what he had not heard. Fisherman had not asked how the Russian had answered the question about Kerzhentseff, had not asked why Rosten had thought to ask the question at all.
The next day on his desk he found a single dossier: “Anton Ignatyeff Kerzhentseff, aka Zapadnya, born Leningrad, April 10, 1920.” He was almost exactly Fisherman’s age. Rosten read through the file, which was unusual in many ways, but one stood out. The only weakness indicated was his lack of the use of his right arm, which had been wounded during his service in the Red Army during the long Hitler winter. Rosten wished there had been a photo in the file.
5
The Agency trainers provided many techniques to use in order to avoid being broken by torture. But nobody says that sometimes when a man confesses his whole truth, the torturer can be him.
“I imagined Kerzhentseff’s face as being as triangular as a balalaika,” he told Grace the night of revelation, “eyes like Ahab’s, traces of shrapnel scars still visible on his neck. Zapadnya’s traps had snared us many times over the years, probably more often than we realized. He was credited with rolling up our best deep-cover networks in Eastern Europe in the 1960s. Nobody knew how many people had ended up with bullets in the backs of their heads because of him. Fisherman had outsmarted him twice, but I came to think Kerzhentseff had been the one who was now destroying our networks—Prague, Bucharest, Warsaw—one by one. When Nederlander and Shchusev reacted to his name, it was complicity. It had to be.”
At some point he took Grace’s hand. He wished he could communicate through it, nerve end to nerve end, so she would experience the very intensity he had felt. But even touching, there was a vastness between them.
“Fisherman warned me that I was mistaken about Kerzhentseff,” he said. “‘I know him,’ he told me. ‘We are both men with no lives save when swords crash.’ That was Pound, but it wasn’t from the Cantos. It took me hours to track it down. The man was incredible.”
He felt her hand turn against his thumb. Maybe without realizing it, he had been putting too much pressure on her fingers.
“He was a fascist,” she said. “He was insane.”
“I mean Fisherman,” he said. “He was capable of anything.”
“Maybe we should stop now,” she said.
But Rosten did not stop. And much later, after he put her into the cab, he did not sleep. He went to work at 3:30. He had always been able to escape into the numbers, but now everything—the poetry shelf in his office, the music in the elevators, the silence of the corridors—was alive with her. And she was lost.
It was the Friday of a long weekend, and all morning Rosten sat useless at his desk. Then came his encounter with Gunderman and Lawton, who wanted him to go to Teddy Diamond about the security breach. He lost it and snapped at poor Dell.
Early in the afternoon, Alexa Snow put out a note freeing people to go home because of the threat of a big winter storm. This left the Dome in silence. Rosten got up, went to the window, the hall, did not see Grace, closed his door. He checked his e-mail. There was nothing from her. He looked at the phone. The scre
en again. He looked at his hands, touched one to the other, fingers to a mirror.
Someone knocked on the door. Rosten closed the PowerPoint board presentation he was supposed to be reviewing.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Gunderman said. Lawton stepped in behind him.
“Maybe we all ought to go home and give everything a rest,” Rosten said.
Lawton leaned so close that Rosten thought he could smell the sickness.
“Somebody has gotten into my account,” he said.
“When?” Rosten said.
“Sometime between the day my surgery was scheduled and the day Joyce told me what he had discovered,” said Lawton.
The first time Lawton had checked his data, he had been annoyed to find that Northwestern Memorial had made a credit inquiry. He had not followed up on it at the time. Then he had run into the hospital CEO at a luncheon and complained, and today the CEO had called him to plead not guilty. The hospital had never gone to Day and Domes or any other agency about him. This sent Lawton back to the database. The record of the inquiry was there, including the date it was supposedly made, a week before his surgery. Lawton closed his door and did a scan of every inquiry that had come into the system through the customer interface on that date. Nothing. He checked the ten days before and after. Still nothing. He searched on Northwestern, his doctor’s name, the firm that did physician billing.
“The algorithm would have found any intrusion,” said Gunderman. “There was none. And yet there’s a tiny turd on the counter. It’s someone inside.”
But Rosten knew how logic can lead you down a path a cunning man has set out for you, with arrows that took you into the dark wood.
“Maybe the hacker is smarter than you and your algorithm,” he said.
“Joyce is determined to go ahead with the deal, isn’t he,” said Gunderman.
