The Debriefing (15 page)

“There’s more, I hope?” asks the admiral.

“Not much more,” concedes Stone. “The other detail that bothers me is that everybody associated with the Kulakov affair seems to be tied, in one way or another, to the military establishment.”

“Spell that out for me,” instructs the admiral.

“Kulakov’s wife ran off with a tank officer. The wife’s friend, Natalia, the one who came to collect her things, is married to an officer in the Army transport section. The rector who expelled Kulakov’s son from the university is a retired Army general. The actress who seduced him is separated from an Air Force pilot. Kulakov was being charged with lying about his father by a military prosecutor. The evidence he was shown consisted of a notation in an Army divisional diary.”

“Hmm. And the pouch?”

“It’s the same with the pouch,” says Stone. He is beginning to talk with more confidence, almost as if he is being convinced by the sound of his own voice. “Look what they gave away, Admiral. The night sight on their T-62. A defect in the SAM tracking system. Those are military secrets. The sleeper who supposedly passed our naval code to the Russians that his girl friend swiped worked for military intelligence, not the KGB, which is the party’s intelligence arm. The eighteen letters about MIG spare parts came from Ministry of Defense procurement officers. The letter to the ambassador about Chinese troop movements came from a general. The love letter to the female translator came from the niece of the minister of heavy armaments, who happens to be a former tank general. The instructions to pay ten thousand Swiss francs into a numbered account were sent to the military intelligence resident, and led to exposure of an agent controlled by the military. Even Khrustalev-Nosar, who seems to be one hundred rubles ahead of the game, is suspected of being the military intelligence man on the Soviet negotiating team.”

The admiral swivels back to face the window, and sits for a long while smoking and gazing out over the Capitol. At last his voice comes floating back over his shoulder. “You’re not giving
me much to go on, are you?” Another long pause. “Still, if Charlie Evans is putting his head on the chopping block, I’d be an ass not to take a swing at it.” He swivels briskly back to face Stone, all business. “What if you took another crack at Kulakov?”

“He’s been wrung dry, Admiral,” says Stone. “Even Evans didn’t bother to ask for a turn. I’ll go back at him if you like, but there’s nothing more to be had.”

“What about taking a look at the pouch, then?”

“Same thing,” says Stone. “Evans’s people are very good at what they do. He wouldn’t have put himself on the line if he hadn’t first examined every angle under a microscope.”

The admiral studies Stone carefully. “What’s left, then?”

“What’s left,” Stone says carefully, “is to take a closer look at some of the military threads running through Kulakov’s life.”

“Are you proposing we send someone in?” the admiral asks. The idea seems to amuse him.

“Not someone,” replies Stone. “Me.”

Stone sits cross-legged on the sheets, naked and surprisingly unaware of his nakedness. Thro, also naked, also cross-legged, her spine pressed to his, takes another drag on the hand-rolled cigarette, holds the smoke in as she passes what’s left to Stone. The butt burns his fingers as he takes a last puff and drops it into the ashtray. His head angled back, his eyes closed, he grips his ankles to keep from rising like a balloon; it feels as if the top half of his head is about to lift off. “We drift through life,” he says dreamily, slurring some of the words, “with one eye absently on a rear-view mirror. Somewhere ’long about the age of forty—yes, forty is about right—we become aware someone is tailing us.”

“Who is it?” asks Thro, exhaling. “The angel of death?”

“It’s us as we might have been,” replies Stone.

“You see,” cries Thro, turning in slow motion and twining her limbs around his body as if she is a vine. “You talk differently when you smoke. You’d never say something like that if you weren’t high.”

“I’d never even think it,” admits Stone.

“I love to make you smoke,” says Thro dreamily. “I love to smoke. The cold becomes colder. The hot is hotter. The lukewarm is lukerwarm—or is it lukewarmer?”

Stone laughs and folds her in his arms. “Fuck Mozart,” he says. “Fuck Charlie Evans and Senator Howard. Fuck Nicholas Toland and Andrew Horrick and Ohm Berenson. Fuck Oleg Kulakov.”

“What about me?” Thro asks coyly.

“Be patient,” orders Stone. “I’ll come to you. Fuck most of all the admiral—”

“He must have hit the ceiling when you told him your idea,” whispers Thro, her head resting on his shoulder.

“He didn’t hit the ceiling,” says Stone. “The most dramatic he gets is a loud ‘Hmm.’ ”

“What’d he say exactly?”

“He was quiet for a long while.” Stone reconstructs the scene. “Then he swiveled back to me and thanked me for staying after class. Those were his exact words—thanks for staying after class!”

Thro sinks back on her haunches and stares at Stone. “You said you wanted to go into Russia, and he said thanks for staying after class?”

Stone starts to lean toward her breast, but she fends him off excitedly. “Answer, Stone.”

“That’s what he said, yes,” says Stone, puzzled.

“My God!” exclaims Thro. “Don’t you see it?”

“See what, god damn it?”

“Stone,
he didn’t say no!”

It is a long moment before Thro’s words penetrate. “He didn’t say no,” Stone repeats thoughtfully.

“The theory of plausible deniability,” she reminds Stone. “You’ve always assumed the order to go in would never be a written one, or even a direct one, so that if things go wrong, everyone could deny responsibility.”

“It’s true,” Stone says, suddenly very sober. “He didn’t say no.”

Stone’s informal note is hand-carried to the admiral. It says: “Due to pressing personal reasons, respectfully request four weeks leave.”

The note comes back, by messenger, three days later. Below Stone’s request someone has typed: “Accorded. Dictated but not signed, from the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Kulakov looks as if he expects Stone. “I knew it was too good to be true,” he says gloomily. “I knew it would never end.”

Stone installs Kulakov in a hotel room that he has already checked for bugs and patiently leads him over certain ground again. He tries to get closer to the identity of his daughter’s lesbian friend. “I had the impression she was Polish,” says Kulakov. “Nadia once spoke vaguely about going to live in Warsaw with her.” Stone is also interested in the identity of his wife’s lover, but Kulakov is unable to add anything other than that he is a tank commander. But most of all, Stone is interested in the duty officer Gamov. “You worked as a courier for twenty-eight years,” he tells the Russian. “How is it possible you never saw him around the ministry before?”

“He must have been posted in the field,” says Kulakov. “He must have been new to Moscow.”

“Did the name Gamov ring a bell at least?”

Kulakov shakes his head. “No; I knew a Gabov during the war, but he was killed.”

“Did the duty officer speak with any trace of an accent? Did his uniform look old or new?”

Kulakov turns away from Stone without answering. Finally he says, “If I were a plant, I would have to know about it. And I don’t.”

Stone nods. “You think you’re genuine; we all agree on that.”

“If I weren’t genuine, that would mean that everything that happened to me—Nadia, my son, my wife—everything was
made
to happen to me.”

Again Stone nods.

Kulakov runs his fingers through his thick hair. “I’ve got to go back,” he says. “I’ve got to find out for myself.”

“You can’t go back,” Stone tells him. “If you are a genuine defector, they’ll kill you for defecting. If you are a plant, they’ll execute you to convince us you were genuine.”

Kulakov raises the window shade and stares out over Los Angeles. “My English is beginning to improve,” he says absently. “This is a pleasant city.” Suddenly he turns on Stone. “Things like this don’t happen in real life,” he moans. “I must know which way it is.”

Stone assures him, “I’ll find out for you.”

The excitement is too much for the woman who follows the soccer scores; she bursts out of Stone’s office and stares with moist eyes at the section chiefs waiting their turns. “It’s really on,” she whispers distractedly, clutching thick dossiers to her bosom. “After all these years, it’s really going to
happen
.” The emotion overwhelms her; tears stream down her cheeks as she hurries from the room, heading (for the sixth or eighth time this morning) for the ladies’ toilet, which has a photograph of Akhmatova taped to the inside of the door.

Stone spends the day closeted with the various section chiefs, going over dossiers he knows by heart. Planes and Trains, nervously biting her fingernails, brings Stone up to date on transportation between Moscow and Leningrad, and Moscow and Alma-Ata. Entries and Exits, his ancient eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, traces with Stone how he will go in, and eventually come out, of Russia. Internal Contacts makes Stone repeat the precise location of the eight dead-letter drops, and the signals he will use (“To activate dead-letter drop number three, telephone 291-78-15, cough twice when someone answers and immediately hang up”) to have one of the military attachés at the embassy fetch a message. Identity provides Stone with a French passport, a French driver’s license, and several French credit cards which he’ll use going into the Soviet Union, and four separate Russian identities, each complete with internal passport,
work book, residence permit and various ministry ID cards, which will be smuggled into Russia (along with five thousand rubles in cash) in the false lining of his valise, which has already been supplied by Clothing and Accessories.

“What have we forgotten?” asks Mozart, who looks as if his Ivy League feathers have been ruffled for the first time in memory.

“As far as I can see,” says Stone, supremely calm, supremely in control, “we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

Mozart walks Stone to the stairwell. “Tell the truth, Stone, did you ever think the day would come?”

“I always thought it would come, yes,” Stone answers. “It’s what I’ve worked for for twenty years. If I didn’t think it would come, I would have taken up knitting long ago.”

Mozart accepts this. “I wish to Christ it was me going,” he says passionately. “I’d give anything to be in your shoes.”

It is a side of Mozart Stone has never seen before, and he almost feels sorry for him. Almost but not quite. “Your turn will come,” he says. “Meanwhile, someone’s got to mind the store. Remember, Mozart, when you deal with the admiral, don’t mention me. If things go wrong, he wants to be able to deny under oath that he authorized a penetration.”

“You really don’t think it’s risky?” Mozart asks.

“I’ve figured it from every angle,” says Stone. “If Kulakov is a genuine defector, there’s no way they can pick up on someone going over the ground again. They will have finished their own backgrounder, so there’s almost no possibility of my running into their field teams. And if Kulakov’s a phony, they’ll keep their hands off me—as long as I don’t come up with anything— so as not to tip their game. Either way, I should be all right.”

“And if you do come up with something?”

“If I come up with something, I’ll deposit it in one of our dead-letter drops, change identity and run for it. All I need is a reasonable head start.”

“Fifty yards suit you?” Mozart tries a joke.

“Fifty yards will be just about right—if it’s night.”

“The SALT talks reconvene in Geneva in a little over three weeks,” Mozart reminds Stone. “Does that give you enough time?”

“Three weeks should be about—” Stone opens the fire door and steps into the stairwell, to find himself before the Topology section chiefs and their assistants, sixteen people in all, lining both sides of the stairs down to the third-floor landing, quietly applauding as Stone makes his way between them. Planes and Trains and the lady who follows the soccer scores cry openly. So do several of the secretaries and assistants. The applause subsides. Entries and Exits offers his ancient hand to Stone. “The others have asked me … as I am more or less the senior man on board … we just want you to know, Stone, that our hearts go with you. …” The old man tries to summon up some graceful phrases, then bites his lower lip.

Thro keeps one eye on the big board with the flickering numbers for Stone’s flight to Paris. “You picked a good time to skip town,” she tells him huskily. She holds up her finger and flashes her ring in front of his face. It has turned black again.

Stone self-consciously kisses her cheek, and then her lips. “Don’t you have any new ways the world will end?” he asks her.

Thro laughs nervously. “What a coincidence you should ask,” she says. “I just read that the sun’s surface temperature dropped eleven degrees—I’m talking Fahrenheit—last year. If it keeps up at this rate, Stone, the earth will become glacial in twenty years. Imagine, all the oceans of the world—” Suddenly Thro buries her head in Stone’s neck. “Ah, Stone, my world will end,” she tells him—he can feel the wetness of her lashes on his skin—“if you don’t come back to me.”

The melting snow is overflowing the tin gutters of the wooden buildings in the military compound near Nikolina Gora. Inside the smallest building, which serves as an informal canteen, three officers, their tunics open at the neck, are washing down spoonfuls of marinated red cabbage with vodka. A fourth man, older and (judging from the respect the others show him) senior to the rest, stares moodily out the double window, which is fogged with his breath
.

“We must have the storm windows taken down soon,” he says absently
.

One of the vodka drinkers shakes his head in admiration. “You’ve got to give them credit,” he says. “To the naked eye, it was a perfect job.”

“They went in and out like cats,” says another. “There wasn’t a sound on our tape.”

“To tell the truth,” says the third, “I wasn’t ready to concede they had been into it until I studied the enlargements. It was the measurements that convinced me.”