Defectors

by Joseph Kanon

  “What about the boat?”

  “Taken care of.”

  “The station, then. We can call from there. I’ll drive. Hold him in the back.”

  Simon stared, his body beginning to shake. Don’t pee. Really happening now, a louder scratching against the glass, Frank still expressionless, not savoring it, just business, saving himself.

  “What about—?” Boris motioned toward the others.

  “Oh, I think they’ll stay right where they are. Won’t you? Otherwise, you’d be resisting arrest. Shot trying to escape. For real. Keep an eye on them, Jo.”

  “Oh,” Nancy said, a kind of yelp.

  “Frank—” Simon started, cut off by Boris pushing him more tightly against the car.

  “You should have thought about this before.” Bloodless. “You have him?” he said to Boris. “I’ll just get my coat.” He bent down to reach into the backseat, gathering up the raincoat.

  First the explosion, the air clapping over his ears, so loud that it seemed to go through him, his whole body knocked forward. Something sticky running down the side of his head, still pinned against the car, Boris slumping over him. No pain, the liquid coming faster now, hot. A groan, Boris’s body lying on his, dead weight, and then sliding down, pulling Simon with him, falling back, a thud on the pavement. Another groan, still alive. Frank stepped over, the gun in his hand, Boris’s eyes open wide, astonished, one last second and then the gun fired again and Boris’s head split open, dark liquid oozing out.

  Simon, weaving, tried to stand up, moving away from the car, feeling the side of his face, the streak of blood, not his. He looked up, eyes locked with Frank’s. Nancy screamed, then covered her mouth, as if a scream might bring someone running, only the gunshots drowned out by the clanging noise on the quay. Joanna stepped out of the car in slow motion, dazed, staring at Frank.

  “Jesus,” Hal said, looking down at Boris, blood and something else pooling beneath his head.

  “Now we have to leave,” Frank said slowly. “Boris.” Looking at him, then up at the others, in charge, trained for it. “Get him out of the street. Before anyone sees.”

  “They’ll come looking for him,” Simon said.

  “But not right away. Help me get him into the car,” he said, lifting the body from underneath the shoulders. “Get his feet.”

  Simon, still stunned, hesitated.

  “Quick.”

  Simon grabbed the feet, lifting the body, almost buckling under the weight, then staggering with it toward Boris’s car. Carrying Gareth out of the monastery grounds.

  “We have to stash the car somewhere. That alley. You’d have to be really looking to spot it there.”

  “The caretaker—”

  “Don’t go as far as the loading area. He can’t see the driveway.”

  A heavy thump as the body was dropped into the backseat.

  “I’ll take Boris’s car,” Frank said to Hal. “You follow. Wait at the end of the driveway.”

  Simon looked up, a flash of alarm. Frank, catching it, smiled a little. “Nobody’s going anywhere,” he said to Simon. “Not now. Come with me.” He handed him the gun. “Better? Here.” He took out a handkerchief. “Wipe your face. People notice blood. The eye goes right to it.”

  They got into Boris’s car.

  “Oh, my God, what are we going to do?” Nancy said.

  “We’re okay. Come on,” Hal said, putting his arm around her.

  “Have her ride up front with you,” Frank called over. “The way you usually would.”

  A car appeared at the corner.

  “Quick,” Frank said to the others. “Get in. Before they see your clothes.”

  He backed the car away from the Volvo, but by now the other car had seen them and slowed down, the eternal fascination of an accident. Not the men from the station. Frank rolled down his window, speaking Russian. They hadn’t seen each other coming and now who was going to pay for it? The other car knew someone who could fix the scraped fender. An address. All of it so interesting that no one noticed the dark splotch on the road.

  They drove around the block, both quiet, as if the body in the back had silenced them, a hush, Simon still shaky.

  “Thank you,” he said finally.

  Frank said nothing, leaning forward, checking the street at the corner.

  “So you were wrong,” Frank said, still not looking at him. “They would have believed me. The Service. I’m an officer.”

  “Boris would have, anyway.”

  Frank nodded. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. I couldn’t let them hang you. Pa would blame me.”

  “Is that what they do? Hang people? Still?”

  Frank made a half shrug. “I don’t know. Shoot them, probably. But it’s what they do before. You don’t think I’d let them do that to you, do you? You don’t think that.”

  Simon looked over at him. “Are you really sick?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t a lie. None of it. Actual lies.”

  “But you were never going to go.”

  “No.”

  “Jesus, Frank. All this, for what?”

  “I can’t leave the Service. Everything I did was for them. They were—the best. I’d never seen anything like it, even in Spain where things were such a mess. They knew what they were doing. I wanted to be part of that. People who always knew what they were doing. The best.” He turned to Simon. “And I was. I was valuable to them. I don’t know how much time I have left, you can’t trust the doctors, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend it doing crosswords. I want to be buried at Kuntsevo. Full honors. An officer of the Service.” He stopped. “But now— You can’t argue with a corpse,” he said, cocking his head toward Boris. “Not when there are witnesses. So, lucky DiAngelis.”

  Quiet again.

  “You’re going to lie to him, aren’t you?”

  “Let’s see how good he is. Jimbo, I’m going. That’s your pound of flesh. There isn’t any more.”

  He turned into the alley. “Here we go. Let’s hope they don’t find him right away. Start calling the border. We need the head start. A little luck.”

  He stopped the car before the driveway forked left, not yet visible from the loading ramp. He got out, then stood for a second, looking into the backseat. “Boris,” he said quietly. “You’re supposed to suspect everybody. Even me. Service rules.” He turned to Simon. “You realize they’ll never stop now. Until they find me. It’s bad enough, a defector, but to kill one of their—” He stopped, facing the end of the driveway. “Let’s go. They’re waiting.”

  They drove out of town, past the castle in the harbor, without seeing anyone tailing behind. How long would they have? The hour they needed? Less?

  “I’ve never seen that before,” Joanna said, between Frank and Simon but not really talking to either. “A man get killed.”

  “His head,” Nancy said.

  “We can’t go back now, can we?” Jo said to Frank.

  “No.”

  “So it’s over. Now what happens to us?”

  “We live somewhere. New names. The Agency protects us.”

  “New names. Like when we came here. Protection. So it’s the same. It’s always the same. I’m sorry,” she said to Frank, touching his hand.

  “But you’ll be home,” Simon said.

  “Like prisoners.” Moody, ready to snap.

  “What were you here?”

  “Yes, what? So it’s the same. That’s our choice.” She picked up Frank’s hand. “I’m sorry.” Her voice intimate, something between them.

  “No, no,” Frank said.

  “You should never have listened to me. I think about that all the time. What if we’d never started—”

  “What if,” Frank said. “But we did.”

  “And whose fault? Who said, yes, do it?”

>   “It’s nobody’s fault.”

  “If I had stopped you—”

  “Stopped him?” Simon said. “He said you never knew.”

  “Where did he say that? In the book? That’s all lies anyway. What else could it be? And you believe him?”

  “Jo—” Frank said.

  “What difference does it make now? He wanted to protect me. From what, I don’t know. But now—are you listening, UPI? Such a scoop. The innocent wife talks.” She turned to Simon. “Of course I knew. It was me. I said, do it. When he came back from Spain, he told me they had approached him. He thought I would be impressed. Since I was a Communist. And I said, you have to do it if they ask you. We all believed then. Oh, look at your face. Did you think there was nothing up here?” She pointed to her temple. “Just silly clubs? Dancing? Of course we believed it. And then—well, things changed.”

  “Changed how?”

  “How can I explain it to you? Like alcoholics, maybe like that. We started drinking together. And then I stopped. But Frank couldn’t. He couldn’t stop. One more. One more. You know what’s in the drink? Secrets. And he’s the only one who knows. That’s what he likes,” she said, facing him, her voice sour, a look between them. “It doesn’t matter what it is, the secret. As long as he knows it. And you don’t. So he can smile while he does it—betray you. Then one more.” She turned back. “He couldn’t stop. So I started drinking something else.”

  “We can fix that. When we get home,” Simon said.

  “Fix it. You never understand anything. The knight to the rescue. I don’t want to be rescued.” She looked at Frank. “When I saw you shoot Boris, it all went through my head. What we are now.”

  Nancy had twisted in her seat to listen, her eyes wide and shiny, like mirrors, and suddenly, looking at her dismayed expression, Simon could see Frank and Jo in them, finally see because she saw it, what they had done to each other.

  “And it’s my fault,” Jo said, skittish, her hands moving.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Frank said, calming her. Something they’d said before.

  Simon found himself edging away from them on the seat, as if he needed more air. An inch, any distance.

  “So there’s a story for you,” Jo said to Hal.

  “We have to be careful with that,” Simon said. “There’s a big difference between knowing and doing. You’ve never been charged—”

  “To the rescue again,” Jo said, lifting her hand, a mock call to arms. “They’re going to charge me? Where do they find me? That woman’s gone. A new name. Only the Agency knows where I am. You think they’d tell? Not as long as Frank is talking. All those secrets. After that, who knows?” Fluttering her hand, her voice drifting, eyes following, somewhere inside now.

  Frank looked over, a reassuring glance. “Give her a minute.” Moving her hand down, a caretaker.

  “She going to be all right? At the checkpoint?” Unpredictable, out of focus, guards peering at her.

  She turned to him. “I was so happy when you came,” she said, her voice still vague. “I never thought— So you’re good at it too.”

  In the front seat, Nancy had begun to shake, a kind of crying without tears.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Hal said.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Not you. Come on.”

  “I keep seeing his head. Everything coming out—”

  “Shh.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “That’s the same car for a while,” he said to the back. “What do you think?”

  Everyone turned to look, tense.

  “Let him pass you. Then you’ll know,” Simon said.

  Hal waited for an open stretch, then slowed the car. Almost immediately, the car behind swung out and overtook them, leaving a stream of visible exhaust.

  “They all look alike, that’s the trouble,” Hal said. “Not far now. We’re making good time.”

  But in the car they seemed to be not moving at all, the flat landscape the same one they’d seen minutes ago. Frank had sat back, his mind somewhere else, but the others fidgeted, nervous. How long before the watchman checked the alleyway? But he’d call the police, not the men at the station, another delay. Unless they’d already started combing the streets for the Volvo and found Boris instead. Or nothing had happened, the winches clanging on the quay, the caretaker having a peaceful smoke.

  “This is it,” Hal said. “Where the trucks are.”

  Up ahead, a cluster of low buildings, with trucks parked at the edge of the road, waiting for inspection. As they got closer, they could see the barriers across the road, the tollbooth-like stations on either side, topped with red stars, customs sheds and huts for the guards in the winter, uniforms.

  Simon reached into the raincoat pocket. “You’d better have these,” he said, handing over the passports and visas.

  “Give them all to Hal,” Frank said. “Let him be group leader. How’s your Russian?”

  “Good enough for this.”

  “So that’s what I looked like,” Jo said, opening hers.

  “You still do,” Simon said. “You all right?”

  “You keep asking that. And if I said no?”

  “I’m thinking about the others.” A nod to the front. “We have to do this right.”

  “Remember,” Frank said. “They’re not used to American passports. Americans fly in and out. They don’t drive. So they’ll be curious. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Until it does,” Jo said.

  A guard waved the car over to the side. Hal rolled down the window and handed him the passports and visas in a stack. Some Russian that Simon couldn’t follow.

  “Honey, he needs the registration,” Hal said, pointing to the glove compartment. “We have to get out. They want to go over the car.”

  Trunk. Under the hood. Seats, running their hands into the seams.

  “What are they looking for?” Simon said to Frank.

  “Nothing.”

  He turned his head slightly, away from the guard with the passports, peering now at their faces. As Simon had guessed, once he had matched the face to the picture, he moved on to the visas, in more comfortable Cyrillic. Frank’s name apparently not recognized. Old news. A sharp question and an exchange in Russian with Hal.

  “ ‘Where are we going?’ I told him shopping. In Helsinki. He wants to know why so many. People go to Helsinki, they want an empty car to bring the stuff back.”

  “Tell him we’re picking up another car there,” Frank said. “A new one.” He glanced at the car. “A Saab.”

  “You tell him.”

  “No, be point man. The Russian speaker. Let him deal with you.”

  “He says you’ll need papers to bring it in.”

  Frank nodded. “We know. The dealer’s arranged it.”

  “Why no luggage?”

  “Just pick up and back. We didn’t want to take up room in the car. With all the stuff. He buying it?”

  “I think so. It’s why any foreigner comes through here, so he’s not surprised. I can’t tell if we should offer to pick up something for him. They all want stuff, but maybe he’s—”

  “No, keep it straight.”

  Simon looked around the post. Guns everywhere, a fence on either side of the road. Beyond the barrier a pine forest. What did they do at night?

  The guard went back to examining the passports, the indecipherable English, any bureaucrat, making a show of being thorough. The others had finished with the car. Simon felt his leg jiggle, anxious, glancing back down the road. Why not just wave them through, everything plausible. The guard was handing Hal the passports, but now looked at Simon.

  “He wants to see your raincoat. If there’s anything—”

  Simon looked up, alarmed. What if he wanted to pat him down? He felt the weight of the gun in his jacket pocket. A
death warrant. But where else could he have put it? A body search at a border crossing? On an American passport? Led into one of the sheds, stripped. He handed over the raincoat, the guard jamming his hands into the pockets. Coming out with his notes.

  “He wants to know what these are.”

  Looking at the pages, scribbles in English.

  “Notes to myself. A diary.”

  “About Russia?”

  “No, no. Personal.”

  A frown on the guard’s forehead. Impossible to say the Service had already approved them. Impossible to say anything. Weeks of work.

  “Offer to translate one,” Frank said to Hal. “So he can see for himself. Make something up.”

  And then, as Hal was saying this, another guard came up.

  “Dobry den,” he said to Nancy, smiling. “Kak dela?” Then something to the first guard.

  “He remembers us from the last trip,” Hal said.

  “Stockmann’s,” the guard said, rolling out the word, not really flirting, genial, showing he knew them, a connection to the larger world.

  “Stockmann’s,” Nancy said, smiling back. “That’s right.”

  Something with a laugh to the other guard, then some Russian to Hal.

  “He wants to know what’s on the list this time. They think it’s something out of a dream, that you can just go and buy anything you want.”

  Nancy began to tick off a list on her fingers, playing along, Hal translating. “Sheets, pillowcases, summer dress, Band-Aids, toilet paper—”

  The guard was shaking his head at the list, enjoying this. “Cigarettes? American?”

  “No, only Russian,” Hal said, taking out a pack.

  The guard held up his hand. “We have.” He motioned to the other guard to return the raincoat and waved his hand toward the car. “So. Stockmann’s.” Another nod and smile.

  Simon watched the guard put the notes back in the coat pocket, almost an afterthought, and hand it to him. Get in the car. Hal and Nancy were saying good-bye, the first guard now one of the party too. Good wishes in both languages. Jo back in the car, Frank. They were going to get away with it. In the booth next to them, the telephone rang. Simon froze, hand on the door, still out of the car. The guard reached through the open window of the booth and picked up the receiver.