Prologue (3 page)

Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me

While I’m alone blue as can be

Dream a little dream of me.

We do miss you, he thought as he walked past the obelisk and crossed the bridge. And you were blue, all right. You had your blue uniforms at
Saratoga
and
Brandywine
and, of course, at
Yorktown
. And we do dream of you. At least, I do.

From behind him he heard Mama Cass belt, “Stars fading but I linger on dear…” Maybe the Soviet star
was
going to fade. Maybe he, Paul deVere…

At the far side of the bridge he turned right and stepped down to the edge of the retaining wall above the river. He crouched down, shielded by the bridge from the road. Lewis Ginter had chosen the spot himself in a moment of whimsy.

“It should be there, about three inches below the ground, right at the corner. After all,” Ginter had added to Paul, “the first American killed by the British in the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, was an African-American. And you know that idiot, Major Pitcairn, who gave the order for the British to open fire at
Lexington
? The first shot of the Revolution? Well, he was killed at
Bunker Hill
by Peter Salem, another African-American. So I feel good about this locale. Besides,” he had added with a chuckle, “it’s on your way home anyway so if it fails hey, no big deal.”

Paul had grimaced but, as usual, had not argued. He shoved a crushed beer can aside. Teenagers drinking again, he thought as he glanced around to make sure he was alone. Satisfied, he used the trowel to scrape away the soil where the retaining wall met the bridge. There, three inches below the surface, as Lewis had predicted, was the canister. Paul turned it over once before opening it. The shiny chronometer inside read: Three hundred ninety-two days, six hours, fourteen minutes and twenty-seven…eight…nine seconds. He snapped it shut.

“It works,” he said aloud. “Beautiful God, it works.”

Chapter 2

The next day at MIT, Paul passed Lewis Ginter’s office. Lewis’ door was open, his back to the corridor. He was talking on the telephone in low tones–probably to a woman he had either slept with last night or hoped to tonight. Paul wondered what she looked like.

That was worrisome. Lewis was single and still handsome for mid-40s, with the same waist and chest he’d had as a high school football player. If the Central Agency brass in Vodkaville wanted to compromise Lewis all they’d need would be a half-attractive agent.

Paul leaned in. “I got that report. It was as you expected.”

Lewis didn’t turn around, but he stopped talking in mid-sentence. Paul thought that his friend hadn’t heard him clearly and was about to repeat himself when Lewis raised a hand and waved his acknowledgment. As Paul continued down the hall he wished he could have seen Lewis’ face. He had known better than to telephone when he had gotten home the previous evening.

In the lab he cordially greeted Natasha Nikitin, the department’s new government-assigned intern. He had to constantly remind himself to treat her normally, as if he didn’t suspect her.

“Good morning, Miss Nikitin,” deVere said.

“Good morning, Dr.
deVere
. You look chipper.”

She learned a new word, Paul thought. She was constantly trying out new words. She spoke excellent English, all graduates of the Central Agency language school did, and they all had the same peculiar accent. It was one way to tell who
was CA
.

“Oh, thank you. How’s everything?”

“Fine.”

“Oh Miss Nikitin, can you check the cyclotron? I’ll
be needing
it in half an hour.”

“Of course.”
She disappeared through a door.

DeVere drifted over to the file cabinet and opened the top drawer. The paper clip he had carefully positioned atop the middle of the sheaf of papers was now slightly to the right. He smiled to himself and softly closed the drawer.

Natasha returned and announced that the cyclotron was warming up and would be ready in 10 minutes.

“Thank you, Miss Nikitin.”

“By all means.
Please call me Natasha.”

“Thank you, Miss Nikitin. That will be all.”

“Yes, Professor.”

Natasha was tall and attractive, with angular features, bright blue eyes, and long brown hair that hung straight down her back. Those hairstyles were discouraged by the Central Agency but she apparently wasn’t interested in impressing the powers that be. Either that or she was too well connected to care.

She said she was from
Central Asia
, although she looked much more European than Asian. He hadn’t interviewed her himself–that had been Nigel’s prerogative–but Nigel mentioned that her parents had been killed in the Soviet Union’s Second Great War with China around the turn of the century when she was still an infant. That would make her 27 or so. The fact that her parents were martyrs of the Soviets’ Second Great War made him uncomfortable. After being raised in a Soviet political orphanage it was easy to see how a loyal spy could be created. And that she was a spy, Paul had no doubt. He, Lewis and Natasha were the only ones with access to the filing cabinet. He made a mental note to discuss her presence in greater detail with Lewis.

On his way home Paul shook his head at how complicated kids’ school projects had become since he was a kid. Ah, but Grace was doing well in school and seemed motivated. These days too many kids, even in the Northeast District, were looking to just get by and get a job, he thought as he turned and headed toward the Kennedy Library. Not that there was anything wrong with getting a job, but there should be…more to it than that, some sort of passion about what you did, finding something you loved and pursuing it.

Thankfully, Grace had an active mind. Her goal was to go to
Africa
and study wildlife

He pulled into the parking lot at the Kennedy Library, walked in and paused in the austere marble foyer. Disk, he was here for a disk. He headed in that direction when he saw a sign for a new exhibit, “
America
Since 1960: Sixty-six Years
Of Progress Toward A
Peaceful Workers’
Paradise
.”

He’d heard about that. It was Soviet propaganda sludge, of course, and
Boston
had voted against allowing it in until Vodkaville had promised to fund an additional six months of work on the Big Dig. The chief engineer said they would finish the project some time in the next couple of years.

He strode past the exhibit room on his way to burn the disk for Grace in the bookstore.

“Sir?”

He paused, and glanced around. The place was oddly empty for this hour–the boycott, that’s right, he’d read that
Boston
was unofficially boycotting the Library until the exhibit closed. He saw three people in the room that normally buzzed with activity. The librarian read a newspaper.

“Sir?”

He looked at the exhibit room and saw a young, petite woman smiling at him.

“Have you seen the exhibit?” she asked.

“Um, no, sorry, I...have to go to the bookstore, you see…”

“I can give you a personal tour,” she said, beaming. Obviously a Soviet girl, Paul guessed she also was from
Central Asia
somewhere. Why so many Central Asians in
Boston
?
he
wondered.

“Yes, well, thank you, but the bookstore is about to close, so I’d better-”

“The bookstore is open until ten tonight.”

Paul tried to think up another excuse, but she clearly wanted to give him a tour. No matter how many tours she gave, her pay wouldn’t change. She could sit in the corner and read, but she really wanted Paul to see the exhibit.

She cared about something.

This cheerful, beaming guide reminded him of Grace, who really wanted visitors to the deVere house to sit down and look through her books of African wildlife. The guide was now giving Paul that same look Grace gave people when she asked them to look at her pictures of lions and elephants and hear what amazing, incredible animals they were.

“Oh, all right,” Paul said. “It doesn’t take too long, does it?”

“It can take as long as you’d like, sir,” she said, nearly giddy with delight at finally getting to show someone around her beloved exhibit.

The tour began with John Kennedy’s defeat of Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. In 1961, the guide–Raisa–said, the good President Kennedy was unfortunately influenced by the military adventurists of the previous administration, and decided to attack the peace-loving Cuban workers.

“Previous administration?
The previous administration was Republican, there weren’t any holdovers,” Paul said.

Raisa lowered her eyes. “President Kennedy wouldn’t do that
on his own,
” she said softly. “He loved the working
class,
he fought for the advancement of the proletariat. It was the previous administration.”

DeVere opened his mouth to disagree,
then
realized all he would do was hurt this girl’s feelings.

“Yes, I see.”

Raisa perked up. “Then in 1962 the Cuban Missile Partnership paved the way for good relations and trust between
America
and
Cuba
.” She moved on to the next panel, celebrating Kennedy’s 1964 narrow re-election over the evil Barry Goldwater, his 1965 Civil Rights legislation ensuring the complete equality inherent at the center of Communism–“already we can see his longing to join the Soviet Union”–his ability to keep the U.S. from meddling in South and Central America during the successful Ché Guevara revolution in the late 1960s, his wise statesmanlike policy to allow Southeast Asian workers and revolutionaries to throw off the imperialist French shackles binding those societies, and the election of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Raisa looked at the picture of Robert F. Kennedy the way Grace looked at pictures of cheetahs in full stride.