Defectors Read online

  “And followed me.”

  Another smile. “At least I’m the only one.”

  “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure. After a while you get a sense.”

  “Then how about letting me enjoy my walk. Off the leash. Really, I don’t have anything to say. On or off the record.”

  Hal nodded. “That’s okay. I was hoping you’d take a message for me.”

  “To—?”

  “Your brother, who else? All these years, it’s no, no, no. No interviews. But now. You do a book I figure you want interviews, some press. So why not UPI? We get picked up everywhere. I mean, you’re his publisher. Don’t you—?”

  “That’s really up to him.” Simon paused. Not anybody. UPI. “Anyway, we’ve got a long time to go before pub. You’re early.”

  “Look, just ask him. I’ve been trying to get this since I got here. And that’s eighteen months, so who knows how much longer? Two years would be a long run. They usually throw you out before that.”

  “Really? Why?” Simon said, curious.

  Hal shrugged. “You’re bound to write something that offends somebody in two years. Khrushchev’s wife, somebody. And by then you might have some contacts, you might be able to do some reporting. So, out. New guy comes in, he’s just got the press handouts to work with. They like it that way. You have a cigarette? They’re hell to get here.”

  Simon hesitated, then offered him one from the pack. No longer a stranger asking for directions, if anyone was watching. A meeting, a conversation.

  “So why the interest in Frank?” Simon said, watching him light the cigarette. “All this time. It’s an old story now.”

  Hal inhaled. “Nice. You should see the stuff they smoke here. It’s not just him. I’m interested in all of them. Not what they did—you’re right, that’s old news. What they’re doing now.”

  “What they’re doing now.”

  Hal nodded. “Now that they’re ghosts. Kind of a ghost story.”

  “Why ghosts?”

  “They’re here and not here. Like ghosts. Look, you work for UPI you go to everything. Parties. Receptions at Spaso House. Everything. But you never see them.”

  “You really think the American ambassador is going to invite Frank to a Fourth of July? He’s a—”

  “Traitor. Right. So not the ambassador’s. But there’s other stuff, and you never see him. Any of them. You don’t see them with Russians either. You don’t see them at all. Once in a while you spot one at the Bolshoi, but that’s because I’m looking. I’m interested. The others don’t care. Time. The Post. You know they give us offices in the same building. Out on Kutuzovsky. So they can keep an eye on us, I guess. And that means we see each other all the time. So I know. The Brits—they’ll get to somebody like Gareth Jones once in a while. But the Americans don’t care. They’d rather do rockets. The space race. But I still think it’s a story. Being ghosts. I mean, what do they do all day? Gareth gets loaded, but what about the others? Do they like it here? I’m interested. So if he’s going to talk to anybody, it would be great if it’s me. I’d appreciate it, if you could help set it up.”

  Simon looked at him. “I’ll give him the message. You should know that Look has serial rights. He can’t talk before that. So it could be a while.”

  “It’d just be background if that’s better for him. You know, with his people. You heading back? Mind if I walk with you?”

  Simon smiled. “I was about to say it’s a free country, but it isn’t, is it?”

  “No, but interesting. You have to give it a little time. Thanks for this,” he said, indicating the cigarette. “I ran out a while ago, so I have to wait for the next Helsinki run.”

  Simon looked at him, a question.

  “To get things we can’t get here. Not even in the Beryozka—the hard currency stores.”

  “Helsinki. People can just come and go?” Simon said.

  “Well, they can’t,” Hal said, nodding toward the mausoleum queue. “And you use your press visa too many times, you’re asking for trouble, so we take turns. Maybe one trip a year. Everybody makes a list. And vegetables.”

  “You drive to Helsinki for vegetables?” Simon said, fascinated now.

  “Try getting through a winter. They even run out of cabbage. You can have things sent in, if you can afford the dollars, but something always falls off the truck, so it’s better to go get it yourself. Anyway, Nancy needed a new coat so we took the last run. My wife,” he said, seeing Simon’s expression.

  “You’re here with your wife?” Simon said, something he hadn’t imagined. Vegetables and new winter coats and ordinary life.

  Hal nodded. “I know. Everybody thinks it’s a bachelor’s job. And mostly it is. The Russians don’t like it. It means a bigger apartment. Usually it’s: here’s your forty square meters and here’s the key. Turn up this way. I’ll show you around a little if you have the time.”

  “I should get back.”

  “Well, we’ll make it short then. Just the highlights. It beats Intourist. They like to tell you how many tons of concrete the builder used. Look.” He stopped, tossing the cigarette. “I’m not expecting Weeks to jump at this. He—doesn’t. I mean, he never has. Just tell him it’s not about—what he did. He can keep his secrets. Whatever they are.” He looked up. “Unless he puts them in the book. But I’m not holding my breath.”

  They had already turned the corner at the north end of GUM into Nikolskaya, a narrower street with attractive nineteenth-century buildings whose plaster fronts were grimy and cracked. A few cars.

  “It was Nancy who got me into it,” Hal was saying. “The defectors. She said it would make a good story and nobody had done it. They get on a plane or a ferry or something and they just—vanish. But they don’t. They’re here. I mean, there she was, getting her hair done at the Pekin and Nancy recognizes her.”

  “The Pekin?” Simon said, trying to imagine it, a row of hair­dryers, the remodeled interrogation rooms upstairs. Green light, red light.

  “She likes the girl there. Anyway, Marzena was there too and Nancy recognized her so they talked and we got to know them a little.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry. Perry Soames and his wife.”

  “Perry Soames. The one Fuchs—?”

  “Right. You can’t get to them. Usually. The atomic spies. They send them straight to Arzamas and nobody talks there. Nobody.”

  Simon looked at him again, eyebrows up.

  “The nuclear lab. Off-limits. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? Considering.”

  Simon thought for a minute. “But his wife’s at the beauty parlor here?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. Of course, this is all later. After he moved to Moscow. But why leave Arzamas in the first place? I mean, people don’t. Unless they’re—”

  “What?”

  “Sick. Have a breakdown. I don’t know. That’s the story, no? Of course he wasn’t going to talk to me, and his wife’s careful, even with Nancy. They never tied him to the Rosenbergs, so it must have been a separate operation, sort of parallel tracks. Or the other theory.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They let the Rosenbergs take the fall to protect him. He gets here, they ship him right out to Arzamas, so he still must have had stuff for them. Then he checks out. So why? Maybe the science got ahead of him. Maybe he starts feeling guilty. That might do it, seeing the bombs every day, seeing what you’d done. But anyway he stops being useful to them. So Moscow. But what’s he thinking all this time? That’s the story.”

  “And what makes you think Frank can tell you?”

  “He saw him that weekend. That’s one of the things I want to verify. What did he say? What was on his mind? I mean, a guy shoots himself he must have said something. He’s sorry, something. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just sleepwalking through it. But if he
could tell me—I wouldn’t have to quote him, I’d just like to know.”

  Simon stopped at the corner. “He killed himself? I thought he—was sick. That’s what it said in the paper.”

  “That’s what they wanted us to say. So we say it. Otherwise, you’re gone. But suppose it’s something else. Suppose he gets here and he realizes he did it all for this.” He waved his hand to take in the street. “And now there’s no way out. He runs to avoid prison and he just lands in a bigger one. That would be a hell of a story.”

  “If true.”

  “Well, you tell me. How does your brother feel about being here?”

  Simon looked up at him, no more circling, at the point.

  “You’ll have to read his book and see. I’ll tell you one thing, though. He doesn’t feel like that. Putting a gun to his head. He thinks he did the right thing.”

  “Do you?” Hal said.

  “No.” He waited, an emphasis. “But it doesn’t matter what I think. On or off the record. I’m not him. I spent years answering questions about Frank. What did he say to me. What did I say to him. What did he think about this. That. As if I knew. Wasn’t that the point? Nobody knew what he was thinking. He fooled us all. But he wasn’t thinking that. Maybe Soames was. How did they get to be such great pals anyway? I thought people didn’t—”

  “The dachas. In the country. They’re in the same compound, so they got to know each other.”

  “Compound?”

  “It’s fenced. You don’t see the fence.” A country house, behind wires. “A KGB compound.”

  Simon looked at him. Their own hospital. Food store. Even countryside.

  “So the papers just said he was sick,” Hal finished. “Natural causes. No weakness. Not that shooting yourself is a sign of weakness—I don’t know how you go through with it. But they think it is. Raises questions. They don’t like that.”

  “Nobody does.”

  Hal nodded, touché, then cocked his head at the building on the other side of the busy square ahead. “Especially them. That’s headquarters. The Lubyanka.”

  Simon gazed across. A tsarist office building with a yellow façade, so large it filled the entire block. A statue in the middle of the square, trucks lumbering by on either side. No black cars pulling up to the doors, no screams coming from the basement. Hoses to wash the blood off the walls. Thousands. More.

  “It used to be an insurance company,” Hal said. “Rossiya Insurance. They put in the prison in the thirties. Dzerzhinsky, the founding father.” He nodded to the statue. “And now look.” He turned to the big building on their side of the square. “Detskiy Mir. Biggest toy store in Russia. The kids love it.”

  “That’s—” Simon said, unable to finish.

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s even stranger than that. I mean, they don’t have a lot of irony here. It’s okay about the store because that really isn’t there.” He waved to the KGB building. “It doesn’t exist. None of it happened. Because if it did, if you started to see it—so nobody does. That’s just a nice old guy looking down on the kiddies. Millions disappeared and no one saw them go. That’s what it’s like here. Things just aren’t there, even when they are. So how did Soames feel about that, or Weeks, or any of them? That’s what I’d like to know. When they saw who they were working for.”

  Simon looked across again. Walls of light mustard, almost cheerful. Frank’s elite force, the country where everything worked.

  “Of course, there’s another possibility. About Soames. Maybe he didn’t do it. Maybe somebody else did.”

  Simon waited a second. “Who?”

  Hal made a wry face. “Who kills people in this country?” Looking across the square.

  “One of their own?”

  “Maybe they thought he was a double agent. Maybe he was a double agent. They always worry about that. If the defector’s a plant. Maybe he became a liability. Picked up the wrong intel at Arzamas. I don’t know why. But if they did, it would make some story. They’d kick me out, but a story like that, you could write your own ticket back to New York.” He glanced at Simon. “Maybe even a book.”

  Simon turned to him. “Frank’s not going to talk to you about this. You know that, don’t you? He works for the KGB.”

  Hal nodded. “But he might talk to you.”

  “To me?”

  “I just need background. Confirmation. I don’t need anything on the record.”

  “Is that what this little guided tour was about? Make me a source?”

  Hal hunched his shoulders. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

  “Not this time. I didn’t come here for this—get you a byline.”

  “Look, we’re on the same side here.”

  “As long as I set you up with Frank.”

  Hal took out a card. “This is where I am. Don’t worry, it’s not radioactive. Nobody’ll think anything of it. Meet another American and take his number, that’s all.”

  “At UPI. With him listening,” Simon said, tipping his head toward the statue.

  “Well, they do. Fact of life here. But what would they hear? You’d want the interview. It’s good press for the book. You’d want to set things up early. Strictly business.” He held up his hands to show them empty. “You should probably go back to the hotel alone, though. Just out for a walk. Follow left there. It’ll circle back. Past the Bolshoi. Moscow’s laid out in rings so you’re always circling back. See the big pile down there? House of Unions. Where they put Gary Powers on trial. Poor bastard.”

  “You cover that?”

  “Everybody covered it. If there’s one thing they know how to do here, it’s a show trial. One more cigarette?”

  Simon offered him the pack, watching as he pocketed one.

  “Just ask him about Soames and see what he says. If I’m right, I’d appreciate a call. Or maybe you see me at the National. At the bar. And we have a drink. Off the record.”

  * * *

  When Simon got back to the hotel Colonel Vassilchikov was standing out front, annoyed but trying to mask it with a formal smile. He was wearing a business suit today, but everything about him—buzz-cut hair, the pulled back shoulders—was military, a soldier out of uniform.

  “Mr. Weeks. You’ve been out?”

  “I wanted to see Red Square.”

  “Ah. And what did you think?”

  “Much bigger than I imagined.”

  Improbably, Vassilchikov’s face softened, a patriot. “Yes, it’s very beautiful. That’s what it means, you know. The word for red is also that for beautiful. Nothing to do with the Soviets.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It was a market. There were stalls along the Kremlin walls. Well,” he said, catching himself. “But if you had told me, I would have provided you with a guide.”

  “That’s all right. Just a quick look around. I saw the Bolshoi on my way back. Very impressive too.”

  “Yes. Well, shall we go?”

  “I’ll just run up and get my bag.”

  “The briefcase? I took the liberty,” he said, nodding to the backseat.

  “Oh,” Simon said, feeling someone had been through his pockets. “Mind if I ride up front? It doesn’t seem right, you like a chauffeur. A colonel. Anyway, you can show me the sights.”

  Vassilchikov hesitated for a second, not sure how to respond, then opened the door for him.

  “You didn’t get lost,” he said pleasantly, slipping behind the wheel. “Without a map?”

  “No. But I suppose I should get one.”

  “Well, you know, it’s difficult. There were no maps during the war. And afterward—”

  “Then how does anybody—?”

  “They live here. They know. But visitors—that’s why it’s so useful to have a guide. Someone who can help you. I would be happy to do it myself. Or one of my
colleagues. Just let me know what you would like to see and we’ll arrange it. Moscow is a big city. So easy to get lost.”

  They drove toward the Manège, then turned right. Simon peered at the street sign. Bolshaya Nikitskaya. He’d spent days memorizing Cyrillic letters but still felt he was decoding, translating letter for letter.

  “The old university,” Vassilchikov said, evidently taking the guide role seriously. “Down there, Moscow Conservatory. Very beautiful hall.” He pointed to the statue in the forecourt. “Tchaikovsky. They say an excellent likeness.”

  “How long have you been Frank’s—bodyguard?”

  “I am his technical officer,” Vassilchikov said, his fleshy face pulling back in disapproval.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  But Vassilchikov was waving this away. “A matter of terminology. I think in your Service you say case officer?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” He waited. “I thought that was someone who ran agents in the field.”

  “Yes?”

  “But Frank isn’t in the field anymore.”

  “No, but I can be of use in many ways. You understand, Comrade Weeks is a hero of the Soviet Union. He is entitled to such privileges. In the beginning, it’s true, there was a bodyguard—we didn’t know if his life would be in danger. But now, it’s a question of—general assistance. You see there on the right?”

  Simon turned to a modern office building with a giant bronze globe hanging over the entrance.

  “TASS,” he said, the Cyrillic TACC easy even for him. “The news agency.”

  Vassilchikov nodded. “So you are learning Russian. It’s good. Some of the others—”

  “The others?”

  “Western friends. Who come here. Still only English. Gareth Jones—you met him last night at the hotel. All these years and no Russian.”

  “Maybe he understands more than you think. Someone like him, that would be par for the course.”

  “Course?” Vassilchikov said, bewildered.

  “Sorry. An idiom. I just meant, he was a spy. It might be in his nature to know more than he lets on.”

  Vassilchikov turned to him, his double chin moving up a little in a smile. “A generous assessment. No, he’s like the others. A fish out of waters. That’s correct? Except Comrade Weeks. And Maclean. He speaks Russian. His children are Young Pioneers. Sometimes, you know, the adopted land—you feel a powerful attachment. But Comrade Jones, I think not. Of course, that type—”