by Joseph Kanon
“What?”
“Publishing a KGB debriefing. That’s what most of it is really, the book. My debriefing. A first for Keating, I’ll bet.” Said with a twinkle in his eye, having fun. “Take that chair. You’ll be more comfortable. I’ll have another look at the escape chapter. You had a question about that?”
“You said you got a phone call. So who was it?”
“Well, I can’t tell you that.”
“You mean he’s still there?” Simon said, feeling uneasy, drawn into it, protecting someone.
“What does it matter who? I got a call. ‘Now.’ So I moved. And I got out. If Pirie put two and two together he could probably figure out who—at least where he was, who had access—but since he hasn’t, I’m not going to tell him now. Do we need it?”
“It’s the best part of the book, getting to Mexico. Like a movie.”
“With the Bureau nipping at my heels. So does it matter who’s on the phone? You just want to see what happens. If I make it.” He sat back. “I was lucky. I admit it.”
“And you were tipped off.”
He looked at Simon. “I can’t, Jimbo.” He paused. “So how about the Latvians?”
Simon started to read. It was all here, the joint project with the Brits, meetings they’d both attended, moments from his own life, but seen now from the other end of the table, Frank’s side of the looking glass. The plan details, copied and passed on. The Latvian recruits, the list of names. The meeting with Frank’s control. Getting the signal that the mission had started out. The landing at night. The radio transmission suddenly cut. The frantic attempts to make contact, already knowing it was too late.
Simon looked up. “You don’t say what happened to them.”
Frank stared back at him. “The whole pound of flesh? But as a matter of fact none of us knew. I’m just writing what happened at the time. I wasn’t there, in lovely old Riga.”
“But you do know. Now.”
Frank said nothing for a minute, his eyes on Simon. Finally, he reached for a cigarette. “All right, how about this? ‘As for the Latvians, we never knew what happened to them. But I can make an educated guess.’ ” He lit the cigarette. “Does that make me a big enough shit?”
Simon held his gaze for a moment then started to write. Outside, Boris turned another page, not glancing in their direction, maybe not really listening either.
“No regrets?” Simon said, still writing. “You led them into—”
“We’ve been through this,” Frank said. “They knew the risks.”
“They didn’t know it was rigged.”
A silence so long that Boris looked over to see what was wrong.
“I’m not sure what you mean by this note,” Frank said, pointing to the page in front of him, moving on. “Here, pull up a desk chair and we can go through it together. Your handwriting—it’s like a doctor’s these days. I need a translator.”
Simon put the Latvian chapter down and went behind the desk, pulling up a chair next to Frank.
“That’s better. Like old times,” Frank said. “You still circle things?”
“I don’t get to do much editing these days.”
“Now that you’re a plutocrat. Buying off the rack at Altman’s.”
“What it says,” Simon said, pointing to the question, “is ‘what after Spain?’ You tell us you’re recruited there—you even tell us by whom, for a change.”
“He’s dead.”
“And then you go back home and it’s fuzzy until you join the OSS.”
“Well, it was fuzzy in real life. The Service knows how to play a long game. I kept thinking they were going to drop me. I’d meet with my control and I’d have nothing to tell him. But they hung on. Then Wild Bill fell into my lap—or I guess I fell into his—and we were off and running.”
“You don’t say how you fell into it.”
“You know how it happened. All Pa had to do was make a call. Which I didn’t think made anybody look good, so I left it out.”
“With everything else. Before Spain. Don’t you think a brief sketch—?”
“What, family history? The old Brahmin stock? Like something out of Marquand. You know I met him? During the war. He was at OWI, doing God knows what. I never got a thing out of him. I wonder what he thought later. Anyway, it doesn’t explain anything, all the Yankee stuff. This is My Secret Life. If we go with that title. That begins in Spain. You know what it felt like? Years you’re looking through a kaleidoscope, everything mixed up. And then one turn and all the pieces fall into place. Everything makes sense. The way things are. The way they should be. That’s where it began. Before that didn’t matter.”
“So one turn and you’re a Russian spy.”
“Spy. That’s somebody looking through peepholes. Like a house detective. I was an agent. Of the Party. The Service.” He looked over. “I still am. Is that so hard to understand?”
“You’d make it a lot easier if you told people who you were before, why everything clicked into place in Spain.”
Frank was quiet for a minute. “Maybe. But I can’t do it. Do that to him. It would kill him, being in the book. As far as he’s concerned, I’m not here. His son died during the war. Waving the Stars and Stripes. Anyway, he’s not part of the story, any of it. That starts with Spain. My secret life.”
Simon looked at him for a second, then turned the page. “Well, think about it.”
“Is that a way of saying ‘all right’ without saying ‘all right’?”
“It’s a way of saying ‘think about it.’ ”
“Stubborn.”
“Anyway, what do you mean, if we go with that? You having second thoughts about the title? What’s wrong with My Secret Life?”
“I don’t know. It sounds like one of those articles in Confidential. The love child I won’t acknowledge. The benders. You know. What do you think of The Third Department?”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s where I worked. The Third Department of the First Chief Directorate. In charge of intelligence operations against the West. It’s in the book. Don’t you remember?”
“My eyes probably slid right over it. So will the reader’s. Keep the love child.”
Frank smiled. “The siren call of the dollar.”
“We can call Chapter 2 ‘The Third Department.’ That’s where you begin working for them. During the fuzzy period.”
“But it was fuzzy. Do you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”
“Well, there we are in Spain. And you meet Paul on the road to Damascus—or Barcelona or wherever it was. The conversion. But we don’t tell anybody about it. The opposite. We don’t join the Party. We don’t go to meetings. We go to the other side. Except we’re still meeting someone on a park bench every once in a while. Was it a park bench, by the way?”
“It varied,” Frank said, enjoying this. “The seals at the zoo. Like that.”
“And what would we say? Nothing, you say now. Nothing until the war. Then there’s lots to say. But that’s a few years. When things were fuzzy. And the Service is happy to wait.”
Frank nodded. “They know how to do that. Be patient. It’s one of their strengths.”
“So you just gab about this and that. The state of the world. And watch the seals.”
“More or less.” He looked over. “Why? What do you think we talked about?”
Simon said nothing.
“You must have an idea or you wouldn’t have brought it up. So, what?”
Simon looked toward Boris, still reading the paper, then met Frank’s eyes.
“I think you were talking about Pa. His friends in the administration. Maybe what they were like. Maybe more if you happened to come across something. I think you were spying on him.”
For a minute there was no sound but the clock, Frank’s
face ticking over with it, as if he were trying on responses, see which one would keep the mechanism going.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say,” he said finally, voice low.
“Is it true?”
“No. I never talked to my control about Pa. Why would we? He was out of government by that time anyway.” He paused. “We never talked about him.”
“I’m glad.”
“But you thought I did. Or might have. You really think I would do that?”
“I never thought you’d do what you did to the Latvians, but you did.” He held up his hand. “I know, they had it coming. I’m just saying I don’t know what you did. Except what’s in the book,” he said, touching the pages. “Which I assume is true, more or less?”
“More or less.”
“I don’t mind you covering your tracks. Everybody does that. But I don’t want to publish lies either. Be a mimeograph machine for the KGB. So I need to ask questions.”
“About Pa.”
“You’re in law school, then here and there in Washington, very junior. Pa knows Morgenthau, Hopkins even. Who else was there to talk about?”
“You really want to know? We talked about my friends. People we might bring along. They already had people to tell them about Morgenthau. I was talent spotting the future. Little acorns with promise. I doubt they got much out of it. But it kept me busy. And it kept me compromised. Reporting on my friends. So after a while the only friend you really have, the only one you haven’t—spied on—is your control. That’s the way it works. I’m not saying they were wrong. They played me. But I wanted to be played. We both got what we wanted. But I never talked about Pa. Or do you think this was worse?”
For a second Simon imagined himself on Frank’s shoulder, about to whisper the right thing in his ear. Whatever that was.
“I guess that would depend on what you said.”
“Not much,” Frank said easily. “Which means there’s not much to say now either. So fill in the blanks with me learning the ropes. How the meetings were arranged. Dead drops. The tricks of the trade. And then we’re in the OSS and now it matters, what I’m saying on the park bench. And we tell them. Beginning of story.”
Simon nodded, a tactical retreat. “So all that time they were just waiting— for something to happen to you?”
“And it did. I told you they know how to wait.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “And they knew something would. I was—well placed. It’s touching the faith they have in that. Got it from the English, I think. It worked that way there, so why not with us? Capitalists being all alike. And they weren’t far wrong, were they? One phone call.”
“Which they told you to make. Or have Pa make.”
Frank took a second, looking at him. “They didn’t tell me to make it. They suggested it would be very valuable if they had someone there. On the inside. So I took the hint.” He paused. “I asked him to make the call.”
“To plant a Soviet—”
“I think you’re making this worse than it was. Yes, I worked for the Soviets. No, he didn’t know. And neither, God knows, did Bill. But what harm did it do in the end? We were on the same side. We just didn’t like telling the Soviets what we were up to. So I did. And probably a good thing. They’d know they didn’t have to worry about us. They do worry, they’re suspicious, it’s their history. But everything was about the Germans. Not them. Not then, anyway.” He looked away, tapping ash off his cigarette. “So I asked him to make a call. He thought he was giving me a leg up. In my career. And he was. Just not the one he thought. I did a good job for Bill, you know.”
“I know.”
“So where was the harm? Look at Ray. Evan. Who made calls for them? They probably did more damage than I ever did. They thought it was still Friday night at the Porc. Fun and games.”
“They weren’t passing documents.”
“No,” Frank said, stubbing out the cigarette. “So where were we? What was the question?”
“How you felt asking Pa to do it. Knowing—”
“Was that the question? I don’t remember you asking that.”
Frank got up and went over to the window, looking out to the back courtyard, Stalin’s high-rise in the distance.
“You know, it’s good, you playing devil’s advocate. Good for the book, I mean. Push-pull. But it’s not always going to be what you want to hear. You want me to say I had mixed feelings—using Pa. Deceiving him. Maybe I should have. But I didn’t. Not for a minute. They needed someone inside. There was an old boy network ready to put me there. I used it. Not a qualm. I was fighting to keep a system alive. Something I believed in. I didn’t have time for— So I did it. There was a war on. Things were different later. But the OSS chapter? You want me to be sorry or—what? feel guilty? I didn’t.” He stopped, then turned to face Simon. “Not then. So let’s keep Francis Weeks Senior out of this, shall we? He wasn’t in it. Anyway, why complicate things? How many chapters like this do we have? All the Rough Rider stuff. I thought maybe we could use ‘Wild Bill’ as a chapter title. What do you think?”
Asking something else, an odd truce.
“Perfect,” Simon said with a slight nod.
“A vote of enthusiasm,” Frank said with a smile.
“No, it’s fine. Bill’s always good copy. You’re right about the chapter. Once we get you in, everything just sails along.” He looked up. “So let’s move on.”
“Do you want a break?”
“No, let’s get through the OSS anyway. See if we can finish this week.”
“Listen to you. You’ve just arrived and you’re halfway out the door.”
“I have a business to run. We’re publishing a few other books this year too.”
“Not like this,” Frank said, putting his hand on the manuscript.
“That’s what every author thinks.”
Frank dipped his head. “I’m just being greedy. Having you here. But we want to get it right, don’t we? Anyway, I thought you might want to see something of the place, as long as you’re here. How many times are you likely to come? I thought we could go up to Leningrad. St. Petersburg as was. Would that interest you?”
“What?” Simon said, surprised.
“A shame to leave without seeing the Hermitage. Of course we’d need to get permission, but that shouldn’t be too hard to arrange. There’s an overnight train. All the comforts. Better than a Pullman.”
Simon was staring at him now. Frank had turned away, not looking at him, his voice pitched somewhere else, to Boris, to whoever was listening in the walls. When he finally met Simon’s eyes, the question in them, he said, “Jo would like it, I know,” keeping his voice even, and Simon understood that for some reason he was meant to go along, play to the unseen galleries.
“Well, the Hermitage—” he said, neutral.
“After we finish. A kind of treat. Unless you really have to go back,” Frank said, eyes steady.
“Let’s see how we do. The Hermitage.” Being persuaded.
“Of course there’s lots to see in Moscow. All work and no play. After we finish this we’ll take a walk. It’s so nice out. We could have a picnic. What do you say, Boris?” he said, raising his voice, as if Boris had been out of range before.
“A walk is good. For the mind.”
“If Ludmilla were here, she’d make sandwiches. There’s some salami. But we can pick something up.”
“I can make,” Boris said.
“That’s okay.”
“Pickles?” Boris said, paying no attention.
Frank opened his hands, a conceding gesture.
They were another hour, then left by the far end of the courtyard, a passageway leading out to the Garden Ring.
“We’ll make a little circle,” Frank said, turning left.
Simon moved closer to him. “Leningrad?”
“Well, it’s an idea,” Frank said, dropping it.
Boris, carrying a string bag, walked with them and not with them, a few steps behind, a courtier’s distance. When they rounded a curve in the road, another Stalin skyscraper came into view, closer than the one they could see from the study window.
“Kudrinskaya,” Frank said. “That one’s apartments. Pilots.”
“Pilots?”
“Housing authority likes to bunch people together. I don’t know why. Maybe they think it gives them something to talk about in the elevator. Anyway, lots of air ministry people. American embassy’s just down from there, past the square. I suppose you’ll have to check in?” Another veiled glance, his voice pitched to Boris.
“At some point,” Simon said vaguely, waiting for a cue.
“We’ll have Boris fix you up with a lift. Right, Boris? But it’s just down there, if you want to walk. Ugliest building in Moscow. And that’s a hard contest to win.”
They were almost at the square when Frank pointed to a two-story house on their left. Faded pink plaster, a side entrance through a gate.
“Take a look. Chekhov’s house. Where he used to see his patients. There’s really nothing much left, but it’s his house, so at least they won’t tear it down. Put up something else.”
They turned down Malaya Nikitskaya and walked to the end of the block. Another house, this one pale blue, partly hidden by a high wall. “Beria’s house,” Frank said. “They say this is where he brought the little girls. Eight years old. Nine. Nobody said a word. You wonder if the neighbors heard anything.”
Boris said something to Frank in Russian.
“Boris doesn’t approve. Bringing you here. Raking up the past. So, on to better times. We’ll swing back this way,” he said, leading them down the side street. “But imagine. Chekhov, Beria. Just one block away. You wouldn’t see that anywhere else.”
“You wouldn’t have Beria anywhere else.”
“Yes, you would,” Frank said calmly. “Lots of variations on that theme. He just had a longer run than most of them. A monster. But he gave Stalin his bomb.”
