Honeytrap

by Aster Glenn Gray

  “See you later, alligator?” Gennady echoed, puzzled.

  “It’s from a song. The response is ‘After a while, crocodile.’” It felt inappropriately light, just as it had when he called it out to Anna. “You’ll look me up if you’re ever in America again, won’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Gennady said. And then, to Daniel’s surprise, he pulled Daniel into a bear hug, and held on until Daniel hesitantly hugged him back. “Not too tight, I’m wounded,” Gennady reminded him, and Daniel laughed and gingerly patted his back. Gennady let go and kissed his cheeks in the Russian fashion. “That’s how we leave for the wars in Russia,” he said. “That’s better, isn’t it? And then we say proshai.”

  “Proshai?”

  “Farewell.”

  Daniel’s eyes misted, despite his best efforts. “Proshai, Gennady.”

  “Proshai.”

  And then Gennady disappeared down the steps, into the darkness of the subway station.

  Daniel had a different subway line to catch, and he walked to the station slowly, to give himself time to fight back the tears. He could cry later – that night, he promised himself, once he was safe in a hotel room somewhere. But he couldn’t show up to see Mr. Gilman with bloodshot eyes. It would be ridiculous, a total waste of Gennady’s generosity in warning Daniel about the honeytrap, if Mr. Gilman guessed that Daniel had fallen for his partner again, after Mr. Gilman had given him a second chance…

  Maybe Daniel ought to quit.

  It was this thought almost as much as Gennady’s impending departure that had dogged Daniel’s spirits for the last few days, much more than any concern that Gennady would tell. Gennady’s attempt to soothe Daniel’s nerves by giving him correspondingly juicy blackmail material had been so gallant that Daniel would never tell him that it had been unnecessary, but Daniel had already believed implicitly in Gennady’s silence, based purely on the fact that Gennady had warned him about the honeytrap.

  The honeytrap.

  The Soviets had known enough about him to set a man as bait for a honeytrap. That meant he was a security risk.

  But he loved his job; he had always dreamed of being an FBI agent. Probably he ought to quit, but he couldn’t make up his mind to do it, and arrived at Mr. Gilman’s office still in a state of indecision.

  Mr. Gilman greeted him with a smile. “Agent Hawthorne,” he said. “The man of the hour. I’ve read your report, but I want you to tell me all about the case.”

  And, for a wonder, Mr. Gilman actually sat at his desk to listen, instead of meandering around the room as usual. At the end he leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh, as if he had a long cool drink on a parching day.

  “You’ve done well,” he said. “I knew you could do it.”

  Daniel’s cheeks grew hot. He hoped that if Mr. Gilman noticed, he would take it for pleasure, but it was mostly shame. “Thank you, sir.”

  “How did you get along with Lieutenant Matskevich?”

  “Well, I didn’t fall in love with him,” Daniel said, so dryly that Mr. Gilman laughed. Daniel laughed too, and felt like a world-class fraud. “No, really, we got along all right. It was a little difficult at first – you warned me that the Russians can be hard to work with. Suspicious, stubborn. Unfriendly. But we had a good working partnership by the end.”

  Mr. Gilman had drifted across the room to his window. Daniel wondered if he briefed everyone while staring out at the lawn, or only Daniel. “And how did he like America?”

  “Pretty well,” Daniel said. “Once he let himself show that he was interested in it. I guess they told him not to seem too impressed by anything. But he admired the roads and the heating and the natural beauty of the country. The covered bridges. The girls,” he added cravenly.

  Mr. Gilman’s eyes remained on the red dots of the early tulips on the lawn. “I imagine that’s why it took you so long to solve the case,” he said mildly. “His mind wasn’t on his work.”

  That was a fair criticism. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “But then,” Mr. Gilman mused, “How can you blame him? This must have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him. The Soviets give their people so few chances to travel…”

  His voice trailed off. He continued gazing at the lawn, and Daniel waited and shifted in his seat and finally burst out, “Mr. Gilman. Why did you give me a second chance?”

  Mr. Gilman turned to look at him. Daniel dropped his eyes to one of the many knickknacks on Mr. Gilman’s desk.

  “You’re a good agent,” Mr. Gilman said. “I didn’t want the Bureau to lose you.”

  “Yes, but…” The knickknack, Daniel discovered, was a Chinese puzzle ball. He might never lift his eyes again. Mr. Gilman trusted him, and if Gennady hadn’t stopped him, Daniel would have thrown that away like yesterday’s trash. “I don’t want to be a security risk,” Daniel said.

  “Agent Hawthorne.” Mr. Gilman came back over to the desk. “I know that your… peccadilloes, shall we say, may make you more vulnerable in certain respects than other agents. But… Daniel, look at me.”

  Daniel looked up. Mr. Gilman picked up the Chinese puzzle ball. “When I was in France during the last war,” Mr. Gilman said, “one of the MI6 officers that I worked with became a very dear friend. A very dear friend,” he repeated, with a meaningful look at Daniel. “You understand?”

  Daniel nodded, mesmerized.

  Mr. Gilman tossed the Chinese puzzle ball lightly in the air as he talked, as if it were a tennis ball and not an expensive piece of carved jade. “Of course, MI6 is just like that,” he mused. “They all came up through the great English public schools – boarding schools, you understand – where young men have almost no contact with women, which has a, hmm, stunting effect on their development. But still, many of them are excellent agents.”

  The Chinese puzzle ball landed in his cupped palms and stayed there. “Well, no one was paying much attention during the war, so we never got in trouble. Then the war ended, I came back to the United States, and I got married. And here I am today.” He set the puzzle ball down gently on its wooden base. “And here you are. And I imagine your story will work out much the same way. Agent Preston, on the other hand, seems rather… set in his ways… but after all, he does fine work too.” He adjusted the puzzle ball minutely, then looked Daniel in the face. “Do you understand?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Good.” Mr. Gilman leaned back in his chair and picked up a small lacquered box. “Do you think Lieutenant Matskevich would be interested in defecting?”

  Daniel started guiltily. “Sir?”

  “A Soviet agent so enchanted by his American trip that he can’t resist defection… It would be a real public relations coup. Do you think he might?”

  Daniel nearly blurted out everything Gennady had said about Khrushchev, and then veered too hard in the other direction. “No,” Daniel said firmly, and then hedged. “Well, he might. We didn’t discuss it, but…” Daniel’s thoughts bumped up against the obvious problem. “But now that we’ve closed the case, Lieutenant Matskevich and I won’t be working together anymore. I’m not going to have a chance to sound him out.”

  “Oh, right,” Mr. Gilman said carelessly. He turned back toward Daniel. “Someone’s been smuggling Baltic amber into the Boston. I realize is not your usual area, but the Soviets have some interest in continuing this unorthodox partnership in order to investigate the matter. Or so they claim. Mostly I think they’re just interested in giving Lieutenant Matskevich the opportunity to gather more information on the United States, and as this case will take you mostly up through New England, I see no harm in it.”

  “As it’s above the Mason-Dixon line,” said Daniel. His heart thundered in his ears so that he could barely hear his own voice. A reprieve. More time with Gennady.

  Mr. Gilman just laughed. “Enjoy your road trip,” he said. “And do try to bring him to our side. It would be a real feather in our cap if he defects.”

  Chapter 20

  Af
ter he parted from Daniel, Gennady crossed DC to see Stepan Pavlovich. “Good work,” Stepan Pavlovich said, and even such mild praise from a GRU boss was like a twenty-one gun salute. “I’ve filled out the transfer paperwork to move you into my department. It all came through this morning, I already called up Arkady Anatolyevich to let him know.”

  Gennady kept his face smooth, although a horde of smiles fought to get out. “Very efficient.”

  “Yes. He wants you to come in, to say goodbye I suppose. Of course I told him you would go.”

  “A courtesy call,” Gennady agreed.

  “Yes.” Stepan Pavlovich leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. “It’s good that we found this Baltic amber case for you to work with the American,” he mused. “Someone will shit everything up between our countries sooner or later and then it will all come to an end, but keep it up as long as you can. Your reports – it’s like getting a new chapter of Ilf and Petrov every week.”

  Gennady blushed with pleasure.

  He treated himself to an excellent lunch in celebration: steak, and bananas Foster, which he bought because he had never heard of it before. The waiter set the bananas alight by Gennady’s table, and then poured the caramelized bananas and caramel sauce over ice cream, and Gennady ate it in bliss. Beautiful American custom, setting food on fire.

  He got a bottle of champagne, too, and drank it all himself, the drink a perfect accompaniment to the golden bubbling happiness of his mood. Arkady must be furious – and he would be doubly so once Gennady told him the honeytrap failed. Gleefully he imagined the vein throbbing in Arkady’s temple, his whole face turning red with rage, and all the time Gennady would hug to himself the knowledge that he could have carried it through if he wanted to.

  He could have kissed Daniel back, standing in the moonlight on the grassy verge of the road, wrapped his arms around Daniel’s neck or – no – kept his hands planted on Daniel’s chest, pushed him down among the wildflowers (had there been wildflowers?), a tangle of arms and legs and mouths in sea of violets…

  He could have done all of that and more, and still lied to Arkady about it, and sat smugly in the knowledge of this secret vengeance while Arkady danced with rage.

  Gennady took a long walk after lunch: it would not do to show up at Arkady’s office still tipsy from champagne. A cigar store caught his eye, and he nearly walked into traffic in his desire to go in at once. (Perhaps drinking the whole bottle had been a little too much.) He would buy a box of cigars for Sergeyich, who loved cigars – Sergeyich who had been his only friend in Arkady’s office. A present to share his good fortune.

  Perhaps he should buy Daniel a present too? Not cigars, of course, Daniel didn’t smoke. And alcohol seemed out of the question, given Daniel’s proclivities when he was drunk. (Gennady felt very tender for him at the thought: it must make life harder and life was so hard already.) A book perhaps?

  But he could think about that later. For now Gennady focused on the wide selection of cigars, and finally settled on a handsome expensive box with a picture of a lightly clad lady. Sergeyich would like that.

  Afterward, Gennady walked to the old office with a bounce in his step. The bounce didn’t falter even when he found that the elevator was out of order – again! this was DC, not Moscow, what were they about? – and he had to climb three flights of stairs to the office.

  Maksym Sergeyevich Bondar – Sergeyich to his friends – ran the front desk, a disorganized mess of forms and ashtrays and fossilized doughnuts. He was almost forty, with a long hollow face and long yellow teeth like a mule’s – which explained, perhaps, why he remained so good-humored even though he had been in Arkady’s office longer than anyone else: he was too old and ugly for Arkady.

  Sergeyich sat more or less exactly as Gennady had left him four months ago, leaning back in his chair, his arms behind his head. Then, he had been watching the autumn leaves detach from the tree outside the window. Now he was gazing meditatively at a spider web.

  But he swung around when Gennady arrived. “Ilyich!” he said, and came around the desk to pull Gennady into a bear hug and kiss his cheeks, ending with the traditional smack on the lips. “Back at Finland Station?”

  “Only for a brief stop,” said Gennady. “I’ve been transferred into Stepan Pavlovich’s department.”

  “Comrade Matskevich!” Sergeyich slapped him on the back. “Congratulations!”

  “I brought you a parting gift,” Gennady said, and held up the box of cigars.

  “Ah! Well, Ilyich, you ought to get transferred every day if it inspires such generosity as this.” Sergeyich removed a cigar from the box, holding it under his nose and breathing in deeply. “Seriously, though, I’m glad for you, my friend. If I’d known your good news, I would have gotten you something, too. Let’s see if I have anything in my desk drawers.”

  “No, I would rather not have a petrified doughnut, thank you,” Gennady told him, but Sergeyich had already begun to disgorge the contents of his top desk drawer onto the desk, keeping a running commentary as he went.

  “Paper napkins, Chinese take-out menu – have you had American Chinese food, Gennady? It’s not bad. More paper napkins, more paper napkins… Well, they come with every takeout order, can you expect me to just throw them away? Ow! A tack. More paper napkins. A pen. Let’s see, what’s this?” He smoothed the crumpled sheet of paper and peered at it. “That might have been important,” he said, and added it to a towering stack of papers.

  “I see you’ll attend to it right away,” Gennady said.

  “Naturally. I’m the soul of efficiency, as you know, the only reason this office runs at all.”

  “The mainspring of this well-oiled clock of espionage.”

  “Ah! That’s nice. I like that. I shall say that to myself in the mirror tomorrow morning as I prepare for work. ‘Maksym Sergeyich, you are the mainspring of this – ’ Damn! Another tack.” Sergeyich shunted the cigar to one side of his mouth and stuck the tip of his thumb in the other. He mumbled something unintelligible, and took his thumb from his mouth and said, “Perhaps I shouldn’t go groping around in the drawer without being able to see what’s in there.”

  “What? Are there more paper napkins blocking your view?”

  Sergeyich gave him a bleak look. He put both hands in the drawer and removed two overflowing handfuls of napkins. Gennady shouted a laugh.

  “Take them home and use them for toilet paper.”

  “A man only shits so much, Ilyich.” Sergeyich’s eyes moved behind Gennady, and he said, “Speaking of. Nikolai, what is it you want?”

  “You’re back,” said Nikolai, with a stiff nod at Gennady.

  “Would you like a cigar?” Gennady asked. It was an offer prompted by guilt: he had forgotten to get Nikolai anything.

  Or no. Gennady had not so much forgotten Nikolai as drop-kicked his memory into the outer fringes of the solar system, somewhere out around Neptune. Nikolai had arrived in DC about a month after Gennady, and he had the bad fortune to be pretty: blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin and fine bones and a delicate mouth. “He looks like a German doll,” Sergeyich had commented upon his arrival.

  “Do you think it ever bothered the Germans that we are so much more blue-eyed and blonde than they are?” Gennady asked.

  “That’s why they tried to get rid of us,” Sergeyich said laconically. “Only if they killed us off would they be the blondest and bluest eyed of all.”

  It had been unpleasant to watch Arkady hang over Nikolai’s chair, his hands on his shoulders or his hair; unpleasant to hear Arkady’s shouts of “Nikolai!” ringing through the office. More unpleasant still when he called “Kolya!”

  At least he had never called Gennady Gosha.

  Unpleasant to think of Nikolai left behind in that stuffy office with Arkady always lurking, while Gennady larked around the United States listening to Elvis and trying out duckpin bowling. And so he had not thought about it.

  But of course Nikolai was still here. He was not so pre
tty now: his eyes had the bruised pouchy look of someone who was not sleeping well. “You’ll wake Arkady Anatolyevitch,” he said.

  This too Gennady had forgotten. Arkady took a nap in the afternoons, in his office, technically a secret though of course the whole office knew about it.

  And, as if Nikolai’s comment itself had wakened him, now Gennady heard the telltale squeak of Arkady’s door. “Gennady!” Arkady roared. “Are you finally here? Stepan Pavlovich called hours ago.”

  Gennady rolled his eyes at Sergeyich, but he headed down the hall with alacrity. “I’m sorry, Arkady Anatolyevich,” he said, falling instantly and without meaning to back into the old respectful tone. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Stepan Pavlovich sends his regards.”

  “Does he?” Arkady slammed his office door closed and gestured for Gennady to sit in the upright wooden chair in front of his desk. “Fucking bastard. He’s sent you to gloat, has he? He’s always stealing my best people.”

  Gennady sat gingerly. Arkady was not his boss anymore, he reminded himself, and attempted to relax. But he remained on the edge of the seat.

  Arkady flung himself down in his own padded office chair. “Well, go ahead and make your report,” he snapped. “Did you succeed?”

  Gennady knew that he was asking about the honeytrap, but he answered as if Arkady was asking about his official mission. “Didn’t Stepan Pavlovich tell you? We caught the villain who attempted to take our dear Nikita Sergeyevich’s life.”

  “Naturally I was informed!” Arkady glared at Gennady, and Gennady tried to look innocent and stupid. “I meant your other mission, Gennady, the one I asked you to do for me. Have you honeytrapped the American agent?”

  “No.”

  Arkady stared at him. Gennady looked back, wide-eyed, trying to enjoy the reddening of Arkady’s face. But he felt uncomfortably light-headed. He wished he had not drunk so much at lunch.