Defectors Read online

  Burgess drank, then shuddered a little. “After my time.”

  “But it’s been there forever.”

  “No. No such place when I left. You forget, it was years before you did,” he said into his glass. “Years before.”

  “Certainly a lot more sensational,” Gareth said.

  Burgess stared into his drink, apparently not hearing, all the old notoriety and insouciance now slack and vague. But the good posture was still there. Eyes half-closed, he sat with his shoulders back, as if he were waiting for a valet with a clothes brush.

  “That’s the trouble,” he said. “You think everything will be the same and it’s all changed. I don’t think I’d recognize it now, London.”

  “Oh, are we planning to go, then? Get tickets from Cook’s?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Burgess said, reaching for the bottle. “Do you mind?”

  “Quite a welcome that would be. Bands out and everything. Handcuffs more likely.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Burgess said, his voice serious, considering this. “The last thing they’d want. A trial. Think who’d have to take the stand. Admit they hadn’t the faintest clue. For years. Very embarrassing. They hate being embarrassed. Calls the whole thing into question.”

  “So you’d just slip in on the quiet, is that it? Go see Mum. Maybe a few drinks at White’s. And then what?”

  “I don’t know,” Burgess said, his eye on Gareth. “Maybe ­better just to stay here. It’s nice, being able to come and go and nobody notices. Best thing about Moscow. Of course someone always is noticing. Bless their suspicious hearts. But not the general public.”

  “Why would they be suspicious of you?” Simon said.

  “You know, I don’t know. It does seem a waste of manpower, doesn’t it? I mean, I cashed in my chips years ago. But there they are, keeping an eye. Like a bloody great croupier,” he said in exaggerated French. “Except he’s supposed to watch who’s winning. Not—” His voice fell, letting this drift.

  “Well, they’re not watching here. Nobody’s even looked at the table,” Jo said.

  “And you call yourself a Service wife,” Burgess said, dipping his head, courtly.

  “You mean they are? Where?” She looked around the room.

  “They’re not supposed to be obvious,” Gareth said.

  “Well, one,” Burgess said. “Then you don’t notice the other. Check the sight lines to the table, bound to be somebody taking an interest. Didn’t they teach you that? But you’d get him soon enough. You’re supposed to. It’s the one you’re not supposed to see you have to watch out for.”

  “And where might he be?”

  Burgess smiled. “I’m much too drunk to know that. Anyway, he’s not watching me. I booked at the Praga. Probably some lonely comrade there still waiting. Fuming. One of the nice things about getting drunk—you don’t see them anymore. They’re in some blur on the margins.”

  Gareth, who’d been looking out at the room, suddenly stood up.

  “Back in a sec. Have to use the Gents. Right back.”

  “Which way is he going?” Burgess said, not turning in his chair.

  “Toward the bar.”

  Burgess sighed. “It’s a wonder he didn’t get caught sooner. The Gents. Don’t they train them anymore?” he said to Frank. “We’re agents, we’re supposed to know how to do these things. Be discreet. But that’s Gareth, isn’t it? Anything for a leg up. He wants to be part of it all. Not tossed in the bin. Let me guess. He’s talking to someone at the bar now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I were still in the game, I wouldn’t look. Too obvious. But what the hell.” He turned. “Ah yes.”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve seen him. Gareth’s always running over to him, eager to help. Share some tidbit. Much good it will do him. He can’t accept that it’s over. A field agent without a field. What could be more de trop?”

  “Man at the bar seems happy enough to listen to him,” Simon said.

  Burgess looked over, slightly surprised, as if he’d just noticed Simon was there.

  “To all his very important state secrets. What could they be, do you think? Whisper, whisper. About who?” He paused. “About whom. Not me, that’s one mercy. Washed-up old snoop. Maybe you,” he said to Frank, then looked at Simon. “Who’s this, anyway?”

  “His publisher,” Simon said, formal.

  “Oh, the memoir. My Deceitful Life. What a lot of mischief you must be up to,” he said to Frank. “All those skeletons in the closet. But I suppose they have to stay there, don’t they? The Service wouldn’t like it. You ought to do his other book,” he said to Simon. “All the bits he’s left out of this one. Quite a read.”

  “So is this.”

  “Really? Well, quite a career. I guess there’s enough there to pick and choose. You know he got the Order of Lenin? The rest of us got—well, Gareth got little Sergei, but the rest of us got fuck all.” He made a soft burp. “And the honor of helping the cause, of course. Maybe I should write my memoirs. Would you be interested? You could start a series. Trouble is, it all seems so long ago now. God, the Foreign Office. I remember people in cutaway coats, actually in cutaways.” He was quiet for a second. “But to tell you the truth, I doubt I’d have the energy. I quite like being washed up. It’s a soft life. I enjoy the leisure. Not Gareth. Look at him. The game’s still afoot. Still hoping to get back in. It must be about you,” he said to Simon. “New girl in town. Mind what you say to him. It all goes right back.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Well, that’s always best, isn’t it? Make him work for it. But imagine, right out in the open. In my day that wouldn’t have been allowed. We were trained.”

  Simon looked out at the room, Burgess’s voice like a radio narrator’s. Who was anybody? Maybe there were watchers everywhere, people glancing away, then back. Gareth at the bar now, eager to report in, like one of Winchell’s runners, and suddenly, absurdly, the room seemed like the Stork, everyone people spotting, feeding items to the columnists, the room dotted with them, KGB Winchells and Sullivans. He sipped the brandy. But no one knew the real story. How much was Jo drinking? Would Burgess make a scene? Was the American publisher just what he seemed? No one knew. A cable sent, a man already betrayed, just the beginning. He looked over at Frank, still listening politely to Burgess. No one knew. In this room of gossip and lapdog agents, only Frank seemed to sit in a calm center. Back where he’d spent most of his life, above suspicion.

  They left Burgess with the rest of the bottle and made their way to the door, Jo leaning on Simon’s arm, Gareth still at the bar, his face slightly alarmed as he saw them leaving, as if something had slipped out of his hands. A car was waiting at the curb.

  “We’ll drop you,” Frank said.

  “That’s all right. I’ll walk.”

  “No, we’ll drop you,” Frank said, an order.

  Jo, still holding on to Simon’s arm, swayed a little, unsteady.

  “Here, let me help,” Frank said, maneuvering her into the car.

  “I’m fine.”

  They all sat in the back, Jo patting Simon’s hand.

  “Like old times. But we never talked. There’s so much I want to know.” She stopped, looking down, slipping into a private conversation. “But maybe not. What, really? What happened to everybody? Well, what did? The usual. Except me. Imagine the class reunion. Everybody coming up to say hi and looking—” Her voice drifted off.

  Frank glanced over at him, a signal to let it play itself out.

  The driver swung into Gorky Street, heading down toward Red Square. One or two cars, the sidewalks deserted, even on a late spring evening, the doorways pools of dark now, everything in shadow. They were at the National in minutes.

  “Get some sleep,” Simon said to Jo, kissing her cheek.

/>   “Oh, sleep,” she said, her head already nodding.

  Frank got out with him.

  “Same time tomorrow?” Simon said.

  “You never change. I can still read your face,” Frank said, a fond smile, the intimacy of drink.

  “Yes? What’s it saying?”

  “You’re worried. You don’t want to take your hand off the checker, until you’re sure. Remember how you used to do that? No move until you thought it was safe.”

  “This isn’t checkers.”

  “No.” He paused. “It’s safe for you. The board. I promise.”

  “Well, it’s done now. The message.”

  Frank nodded. “Which means from now on I’m a dead man here. You realize that, don’t you?” He put his hand on Simon’s arm. “I need you to stay with me on this. Keep your head. It’s going to work.”

  “This is why you wanted me to come, isn’t it? Your plan. What if I hadn’t?”

  “Jimbo, it’s us. Of course you’d come. So would I. I never thought I’d have to ask, involve you, but—” He looked up. “I didn’t think it would end like this.”

  Simon was quiet for a minute. “How did you think it would end?”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t think it would end.” He looked around, toward the darkened Kremlin. “Oh, in the triumph of socialism, I suppose. And it did. It just didn’t end that way for me. Sometimes you get—taken by surprise.”

  Simon looked at him. Move the piece. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Get some sleep.”

  He was halfway across the lobby when Novikov, evidently waiting, came out of the bar.

  “Nightcap?” he said, the American voice somehow at odds with his Russian bulk and features.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough.”

  “Have one anyway,” he said. “Just one.” He guided him toward the bar and signaled the bartender, who brought two small brandy snifters. “Armenian,” he said. “The vodka will make you blind.”

  “This a social visit?”

  “Delivery.” He took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Simon. A thick cream-colored invitation with an embossed American eagle at its top. The ambassador requests your presence—

  “Spaso House. I’m moving up in the world.”

  “Bring the invite with you. They check them at the door.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Me? I’m just the delivery boy. To make sure you get it. Make sure you come.”

  “To meet—?” He looked at the name on the card.

  Novikov shook his head. “That’s who the reception’s for. ­Theater people. My guess is somebody else wants to meet you.”

  “Your guess.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing all day. You come in, send a cable, and the next thing I know the telex is going like you just started World War III. Did you?”

  Simon smiled. “Not yet.”

  “And that’s as much as you’re going to say.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, I like working in the dark. Keeps you on your toes. Look,” he said, suddenly serious, “you need anything, you just ask, right?”

  Simon nodded. “I appreciate it.”

  “And maybe someday you tell me what it was all about.”

  Simon took a sip of brandy. “Who am I supposed to meet?”

  “Tomorrow? Just show up,” he said, nodding to the envelope. “My guess is, he’ll find you.”

  * * *

  The embassy had been ugly and barely functional, but Spaso House, the ambassador’s residence, was a handsome mansion in a quiet Arbat square, just a block or two off the noisy main street. Simon had taken a taxi, which he assumed was the same as riding with Boris but at least gave the illusion of independence. They swept past a church with a tall white bell tower and pulled up to the residence’s outer gate. People were already spread across the lawn and a circular porch ringed with Ionic columns. A soldier checked invitations.

  The reception was being held for a visiting American theatrical troupe, and the sounds from inside, almost a tinkling effect, seemed livelier than the usual diplomatic cocktail party with its polite bows and apologies for missing wives. There was an informal receiving line, easily ignored, and waiters passing with drinks trays. Simon stood for a minute, looking around the reception hall, a two-story room so large that the rest of the house seemed an appendage, the vast space sitting under a gold and crystal chandelier that looked as if it required a special staff to keep it gleaming. There were a few gray-suited Russians, presumably from the Theatrical Union, talking to each other, and a good turnout of what Simon guessed was the expat community, correspondents and embassy workers. And Pete DiAngelis, leaning against a pillar with a drink in his hand, watching him. Simon took a drink from a tray and waited.

  “I didn’t expect you,” he said when DiAngelis came over to him.

  “That was a pretty powerful smoke signal you sent. Pirie thought I’d better come see what it meant. What the fuck is going on?”

  “You get Kelleher?”

  DiAngelis nodded. “So to what do we owe the favor?”

  “Have you seen the lawn?” Simon said.

  “A few days and he’s a field op. Okay, let’s go have a smoke. You’re here but that doesn’t mean the ambassador wants to pose for any pictures with you.”

  “I’m not Frank.”

  “Close enough. And now you’re going to embarrass everybody with his book. That puts you right off the guest list.”

  “Unless you put me back on. And who are you? Here, I mean.”

  “GSA. In town to go over the embassy books. Make sure your tax dollars are going where they’re supposed to. Light?”

  They walked across the porch, past women in cocktail dresses and pearls, and onto the lawn.

  “How old do you think it is?” Simon said, looking up at the giant shade tree, one of whose lower branches was propped up with a pole.

  “So what was Kelleher?” DiAngelis said, ignoring this.

  “A down payment.”

  DiAngelis drew on his cigarette, eyes squinting, taking this in. “What’s the joke?”

  “No joke. He wants to go home.”

  DiAngelis said nothing, his expression blank, preoccupied, as if he were rifling through a card catalogue of responses.

  “This your idea?”

  “His idea.”

  “I mean, we didn’t send you here to talk him into—”

  “You didn’t send me here. I told you I’d keep my ears open, that’s all. It’s the last thing I expected.”

  “What makes him think he can do it?”

  Simon shrugged. “He thinks he can. He didn’t tell me how. The question is what kind of reception committee does he get at the other end.”

  “Why would we want him back? His intel’s about ten years late.”

  “Why did you come then?”

  DiAngelis dropped his cigarette, rubbing it out with his shoe.

  “He said Pirie would know what it meant—when he gave you Kelleher. What else he knew. What he could tell you. Isn’t that why Pirie sent you?”

  “And he’s going to give us the whole organization chart. All his buddies. Why? He doesn’t like the winters here anymore?”

  “His wife is sick. He thinks she’ll get better there. This would be for two. And new identities when they get there. Protection.”

  DiAngelis nodded. “He’s going to need it. So what’s he offering, exactly?”

  “Ask him. I don’t know. I’m just supposed to set up a meeting. One. Someone with authority to make an agreement. That’s you, yes?”

  “It could be.”

  “It better be. Or you’ll lose him. You don’t want him to get away again.”

  “And what if it’s a trick? A little disinformation for the Agency.”

 
“It’s a little late for tricks. Once he leaves— But you decide. I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve seen his wife. And—I know him. He wouldn’t ask me to do this if he didn’t mean it.”

  “And nobody knows about this but you.”

  “And you.”

  DiAngelis looked at the ground, thinking. “Nothing thicker than blood, is there? So he gets you to front this.”

  “No. He talks to you. You work it out between you.”

  “Nobody’s ever done this before,” DiAngelis said, still looking at the ground. “A switch back.” He smiled to himself. “The Russians will go out of their minds. Right out of their minds. Almost worth it, just to see their faces.” He looked up. “Nice for you too, huh? With the book. He’ll be famous again.”

  “In hiding. With you. Different kind of famous.”

  “How’s he going to do this? We can’t exfiltrate him. Operate on Russian soil.”

  “I don’t know. He says he has a plan.”

  “Something he worked out in his leisure time. And now he drops it into our laps. You know what I think? I think it’s going to be a fucking mess. And for what? Kelleher? We were going to get him anyway. KGB ops on the ground in 1949? Some old boy network stuff. Maybe a seating plan for the Third Directorate. The current one, or the one used to drive Pirie nuts? While your brother was taking notes—” He stopped. “Fuck. He’ll want to do it, won’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “Pirie. He never got over that time. None of them did. And now your brother’s going to bring it back for them. Who did what to who and who gives a fuck? They do.” He looked at Simon. “Let me talk to Washington. I’ll have all the authority he needs. When’s all this supposed to happen, by the way? He got his suitcases packed yet?”

  “I don’t know. The important thing is for the two of you to meet. Work things out.”

  “What, and then you negotiate the fine points?”

  Simon shook his head. “It’s not a book contract. I wouldn’t even know what to ask.”

  “But you’re a quick study.” He smiled. “Christ, we ask you to keep your ears open and the next thing, we’ve got this.” He looked across the lawn, hesitant. “You know what I said before, nothing thicker than blood? You don’t want to forget who you’re working for.”