by John Gardner
“Why not? Great artiste. Nothing but respect for her. …” He wanted to add something but could not quite get it out.
“But, what, Lou?”
“Had a ring-a-ding with her.”
“Serious?”
“She just set me on fire. I was well alight. I used to look at myself sometimes, in the buff, you know, when I was with her. I used to think I was never that big. She brought out the best in me, and don’t you believe all that crap about Chinese women having short tongues …”
“So it was great sex?”
“We got close to Olympic standard. Then, somehow work got in the way. I was much in demand. Herbie, you know standing up there on the box isn’t just a wham-bam thing. Some conductors just stroll through it. They have good coordination, and great charisma, but they don’t work hard. Don’t think enough. You have to study, get immersed. Then you have to pass that immersion on to the orchestra. It all takes time. My little Chinese firefucker knew that, but it didn’t stop her from refusing to understand. Wanted to be with me all the time; got jealous—impossible. Then there were my four silent partners.”
“What of them?”
“Matthew comes to me. Says I’ve got to cut myself free of her, stand back. See, it had got in the papers: gossip columnists, those kinda people. I argued with him, Matthew. As I see it, my relationships’re none of his business. He says they are. Tells me some stuff. Lien Yao is a subversive. FBI on her tail. Connections with the Communist Party. Maybe damage what we’ve got going.”
“So you drop her?”‘
“It was as good a time as any. She’d become a pain.”
“You’re a ruthless old bastard, Lou.”
“No, I’m a pragmatist. A realist. I didn’t believe that crap about her being a subversive.”
“What if I told you it was, to some extent, true?”
“How would you know?”
“I’m in the business, Maestro. Read the files. I can tell you, in the eyes of some people, she was a subversive. When did you drop her?”
“Seventy-two, maybe seventy-three.”
“So your case officer, Paul, was out of the picture?”
“By then, yes. But what about the lovely Chinese beauty being a subversive? Tell me about that.”
“As you would say, Lou, that comes later. Lots of things I tell you about later. Straws in the wind. Who came after Paul? Someone took over early seventies. Who?”
Passau scratched his head, he looked like a Norman Rockwell character, an old guy looking puzzled, nonplussed. “Funny that. For the next ten years they changed a lot, like they had problems keeping me with one guy.”
“Maybe they did. Case officers come and go, you know that, or you should.”
He nodded, solemn, as though he understood the whole mystery of life. “Several, over ten years. Rubin, another guy who asked me to call him Aristotle—ever heard anything like that?—Denny; a girl, Sybil.”
“Everything went on just the same. Regular?”
“Not really. No. Not when I come to think back. In the seventies it slowed down a lot, as though they didn’t need me so much, or they weren’t happy with me. Meetings didn’t happen all that often.”
“They give you a funny name also, Lou?”
He gave a puffing little laugh. “You want to know what they called me? ‘Kingfisher’ How about that. I was Kingfisher. King of the fishermen, trawling secrets.”
“You ever wonder about those secrets?”
“Didn’t think about it. I was serving my country, that was all.” His voice had suddenly become flat and, for the first time, Kruger suspected he was lying.
“So you didn’t, at any time, take a peek at what they gave you?”
“Too busy.” Too fast.
“And you didn’t get concerned about the fact you always had to bring something back to your four flying friends?”
“Why should I?”
“Thought you might have wondered why. You were the one who was handing them intelligence, on a plate. Why would they send anything back?”
“Why not? They told me the Soviets wanted it to look like two-way traffic, only the Agency—CIA—was giving them the dog food. Simple. What was there to understand?”
“What about ideologies?”
“You mean politics?”
“Faith. Politics. Your place in the system. Which way should the world go: power to a few, or power to the people?”
“Same thing, ain’t it? People who get power misuse it. Every time. Law of nature. Give anyone power and they’ll misuse it.”
“You had power. Power of music. You misuse it?”
“Different, Herbie my friend. Very different. I only have power to interpret. Power to make people feel happy or sad. Not real power. Nothing life or death. No power to drain the poor and enrich the rich; couldn’t soak the rich and give it to the poor. All political systems suck. No time for them.”
“But you had time to help the American intelligence service fight against communism?”
“Minute business. Tiny. Dust mote in time. We get philosophical and I want to throw up, Herb. If we talk, I have to tell it like it happened to me. Through my eyes. Through my viewpoint, and I don’t have any viewpoint when it comes to politics or religion.”
Kruger shifted in his chair, glancing outside. The rain was bucketing down, streaming in a sheet across the windows. “They ever get back on track? Give you one case officer instead of a football team?”
“Oh, sure. Seventy-nine, eighty. A doozy. Female of the species. Thérèse.” He put the first finger and thumb of his right hand together, touched his lips with them and blew the kiss towards Herbie. “Handled me all possible ways. We stopped the walks in the park and meetings outside public buildings. It was very comfortable. She came to me, the Lexington Avenue place. Always came with a little electronic gizmo. Said she had to sweep the place for bugs every time. Not allowed even to say hello until she did the search.”
“Ever find anything?”
“Never. But she was thorough. Oh my goodness, she was thorough. Said she was there to comfort me with apples. Biblical.”
“I know.” Big Herbie Kruger felt the tears well up inside him. Knew his eyes were hard and cold. She had said the same to him, but in German—
“Oh, darling Herbie Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.” Her dark hair untidy on the pillow and her lips bruised with kisses. He could taste her now, just as he could hear her voice—“Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” She had loved the Song of Solomon, or so she said. Was it all part of the training, he wondered? Did they teach them the words? Learn these poems by heart, for these are the phrases that will press this target’s buttons: the words that will finally drive the target insane.
“Hey, Herb, where’d you go?”
“To Therese. I knew her also, Lou, but that’s a different story.”
“You knew … ?”
“Different story, Maestro. Another place. Another time. I get some tea, eh?”
Passau shrugged.
In the kitchen, Herbie waited for the kettle to boil. He thought of the great emerging conundrum. The facts he had seen in black and white back at Warminster. The odd little hiccup back in the early seventies when suspicious minds had pressed the Chinese pianist to report back to FBI Counterintelligence. Was her boyfriend, Louis Passau, being used by some other government agency, or was he Mr. Clean? The FBI had some kind of hold over the girl, but the file did not specify, anymore than it determined the source of their original suspicions. A terse note was appended to the file—“Closed: No corroboration.” He thought of what Louis had just told him.
“Matthew comes to me. Says I’ve got to cut myself free of her. Stand back … tells me some stuff. Lien Yao is a subversive. … Maybe damage what we’ve got going.”
So who was lying? Who was game playing? Closed: No corroboration.
He had just made the tea when he heard Pucky’s key in the door. She fla
shed him a smile, gave him a thumbs up—all set, everything fixed—as she turned in the small lobby, shaking herself and pulling back the hood on her raincoat, sopping. He nodded, then took Passau his tea.
“Tired, Lou?”
“Getting to me some.”
“You were perky earlier. Spry.”
“Catches up with you when you get older, Herb. You wait till you’re my age.”
Herbie said that he should try to get an early night. “Have some rest. Still a long way to go. Pucky’s come in with more food. You fancy some liver? Liver and tomatoes. Liver does wonders for your blood count.”
“Fuck the blood count. I’ll have it with bacon.”
Passau turned away, chose a CD and listened to music, sipping his tea and looking out at the teeming rain. Bach, the Goldberg Variations. Soothing. An antidote to insomnia.
In the bedroom, Herbie consulted with Pucky, who told him the details and slipped him the items he needed. He worried about the weather, for she said the driving conditions were almost impossible. “If we don’t leave until two thirty, perhaps it’ll have eased up.”
He loaded the Polaroid camera, putting it out of sight under the bed-covers, then they packed what was needed before cooking the liver and bacon. It was only six thirty when they finished eating.
“I want you to listen, Lou,” Herbie began, raising his voice for the benefit of the listeners.
“Sure. Don’t I always listen to you?”
“Art tells me they got some security problems. So, to help out, we’re going to sleep in the apartment downstairs tonight. Just for tonight. Puck’ll come through and see what you’re going to need. We should all get some rest, okay?”
It brought Art over on the double. He was there, dripping all over the carpet almost before Passau had meekly followed Pucky into his bedroom.
“What the hell’re you up to, Herbie?” His voice was raised a tenth higher than normal, which for Art was serious.
(21)
“TRYING TO HELP, ART. What you think I’m doing? Contorting with the enemy?”
“Consorting, Herb.” Railton had slipped out of his plastic rainslicker, tossing it into a corner of the small vestibule. His eyes were wary. When he spoke it was in a series of barks, and his face showed the strain. Sitting in a holiday apartment on the Gulf Coast, listening to Kruger interrogating the old man, waiting for coded telephone calls, watching for strange faces. All that had started to take its toll.
“What you think?” Herbie snapped again. He had a glass of Budweiser in his hand, and he saw Art’s eyes flick towards it. “Don’t like the local customs. Don’t like drinking it from a can.” He grinned. “Want some beer?”
“No. Thank you, no. What do I think, Herbie? I don’t know what to think, that’s why I’m here. What’s going on? You almost doze away the afternoon, going around in lazy circles like a buzzard. What’re we getting here? Selected gems from three decades of deception? Taking your time, playing nice to that evil old sod.”
“Who’s he talking to, Art? Who’s making the running? Who’s doing the interrogation?”
“I said we had to push him along. Fast.”
“Sure. Art, all we’re going to get is highlights. He probably doesn’t even remember most of it. You heard him—and I believe him. This was a hobby, a sideline, something that gave him an extra fix of adrenaline. He really played a game—at least most of the time. Some things are still there, important things. He’ll regurgitate them, given time and the following wind. That’s right isn’t it? Following wind?”
“Fine, okay, but I still want the highlights fast.”
“You ain’t going to get them fast, Art. Nobody’s going to clean him out quickly. You notice how the detail has gone? All the early stuff, the time in Chicago; the horrors—Rita Crest; the terrible Traccia years—he has those times etched out, clear; even remembers conversations. Now, the last three decades are blurred: except what he wants to remember. I understand that.” He stopped, staring at Art as a thought struck him. “We got orders to move? London finally coming up roses?”
Art shook his head: an angry movement, eyes down, then up, glaring. “Sounded like you’d lost heart. If that was pushing …”
“Hey, Mr. Railton, sir. I cut my teeth on technique with your devoted daddy. Don’t tell me how to do it. Think, Art, just fucking think. I got an old man here. A very old man. Went through hell and gone yesterday. Brought the debris of his life out of the dark. Screwing his daughter all that time. In sodding love with his daughter. I sat with him, like some doctor in the intensive care unit. Louis Passau and his self-respect have parted company. So today he’s almost untouchable. You say I was doing gems from thirty years. Sure I was, but did you catch the gems, or aren’t you listening proper?”
“Properly, Herb.”
“Shut the fuck up, Art. You’re not hearing it as it is. We got two major things from him today, right?”
Art opened his mouth to answer, but Herbie’s huge banana hand shot forward, landing very gently across Art’s lips as though he was pushing the words back into the man’s larynx. “Two very major items for the files. We got the identity of Duncan. That thin snake Urquart sodding Bains. Best singleton the Agency ever had. You forgotten that? You forgotten that guy. Slid around Europe, over the Wall, behind the Curtain, even into Moscow itself. Like a ghost. For years he worked under the eyes of the Sovs. Christ, I remember the old days, when the Cold War was giving people bloody hypothermia. I remember your father, Art. Your father and the old Chief. They used to get worried about Urquart fucking Bains.”
For a second, no more, Big Herbie’s mind engulfed a huge piece of his past. He heard the long-dead old Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service talking to Naldo Railton. “The American, Bains, Naldo. He worries the hell out of me. It’s as if he’s fireproof. Comes and goes just as though he has an arrangement with the Ks.” The Ks being how they spoke of KGB.
In the same second, Herbie saw other things that did not quite go with the words he heard. His last, illegal, trip into East Berlin. The time they had taken the great and visible Herbie Kruger, with the help of their long-term honeytrap, Ursula Zunder. There had been a point when he came back to consciousness, for a brief time, minutes, seconds maybe. He lay in what seemed to be a hospital bed. Now it was as if his own subconscious had allowed things to float to the surface. In those few seconds, years ago, he had glimpsed someone among the KGB team. Over the years the face had come back to him in nightmares, but had stayed hidden because Big Herbie Kruger was immersed in the personal way he had been betrayed. Since that time he had remained obsessed by the lovely Ursula Zunder whose laugh, sense of history, and devotion, together with her velvet thighs, had kept Herbie in thrall. Still kept him, trapped in that terrible past. Now he was nine-tenths sure who the face had belonged to. Urquart Bains.
The flash of insight calmed him, so that he now looked at Art in a different light. Big Herb was the one with an experience young Railton could never touch. Not anymore. “Art,” his voice almost full of tenderness. “Art, we got Urquart Bains. Got him bang to rights. Duncan. Nail him to the wall now. Nail all of them—Marty Foreman, who I thought was my friend; Tony de Paul, who I hardly knew; Alfoot who was too high and mighty for me to be buddies with. We almost got them all. Matthew, Gregory, Vincent and Duncan.”
“You think the Agency knows?” Art had come down from the speeding paranoia which had enveloped his body.
“If they do, then it’s doubtful if the old man was going to live to be interrogated. Times’ve changed, Art. It’s the Year of the Cuddly Bear. The Year of the Friendly Eagle, and the Nice Playful Brit Bulldog. Either they know and want to keep it very quiet, avoid scandal at all costs, or the old Soviet Office people think they’re untouchable. Wouldn’t put it past friends Gregory, Vincent and Duncan to be on the interrogation team. A fast pill in Passau’s coffee and his heart would give out. They’d be home and dry. Christ, Art, Moscow’s about to give up a lot of its secrets; the Kr
auts’re putting people on trial for being part of the old evil empire. We all know the Agency has to be purged, reorganized. Same with us. If those four Americans floated to the surface, they’d stand trial. In a changing world there have to be sacrifices. So the Cold War’s over, but what about the Cold War traitors? They’ll hang them out to dry.”
“And the old man? Is he an innocent babe? Did he know? Was he part of it?”
“Did he fall or was he pushed?” Herbie regarded Art Railton with cheerful eyes. Grinned. Made a little laughing, puffing sound with his lips. “That’s what I’m here to find out. Long-term—very long-term—deception, treachery, betrayal. Does it matter? Probably not. Not as far as old Passau’s concerned, but America the beautiful will probably want to render up its traitors. If they don’t, there’s no justice, so we got to point the way. So let me find out.”
“Sorry, Herb. Yes. Yes, of course. Yes, you have to do it your way.” He patted the side of his slacks with an open palm. “You touched on the Chinese girl as well.”
“Sure I did. Give the man a lollipop. She’s in our Passau File, and we still don’t know who she was working for. We don’t know shit about that, Arthur Railton. Who tipped the G-Men, if they were tipped at all? Who asked her to take a look-see? We don’t know. But we do know that Matthew—friend Marty Foreman—was frightened as hell. Told old Louis to knock it off with Lien Yao, which he did. Not a nice man, basically, your Maestro Passau. You notice how, for the best part of ten years, the whole thing was scaled down?”
Art nodded. “You’re right, of course, Herb. Sorry.” Then the old snake of suspicion moved deep in his eyes. “What’s this about moving downstairs? Why that little game?”
Herbie gave the greatest performance of his life, consisting of a small shrug, and a lifting of his forearms, hands palm upwards, fingers splayed, as though tossing his entire inner self at Art. It was over in a second, but the movement was a piece of business that the late Lord Olivier would have picked up and used without hesitation. “Art,” it said. “Art, you know me. I am beyond suspicion. There’s a job to be done and I’ve come back to do it. Art, for God’s sake, trust me and don’t try to sell me short. Believe in me. I’m yours. I obey orders.” All that in the shrug and the movement of forearms and hands.
