The Prodigal Spy (28 page)

“How what happened?”

“Ask him. Before you start all this.”

“I’m asking you.”

“He can’t go back, Nick. He killed her. He thinks they don’t know, but they do. They’ve always known.”

“He didn’t kill her.”

She nodded. “He did, though. He was there, in the hotel room. It’s in the police report. You can see it for yourself. He was
there
. He’s lying to you, Nick.” She turned to him. “Still want to get him out?” Then she stepped out into the rain and started up the hill without looking back.

The storm went on all afternoon, trapping them indoors, and Nick retreated into a kind of hangover wariness, afraid that the smallest gesture might give him away while he waited for his head to clear. Around him they busied themselves with the usual motion of a rainy day. A fuss was made about their wet clothes, exchanged for dry upstairs, Anna’s old slacks and sweater hanging loosely on Molly, a child playing dress-up, his father’s fitting him comfortably, uncannily like his own. He watched his father make a fire in the wood stove, poking at the kindling, and then they were in their usual cabin places, his father in his rocker, sitting opposite, Molly curled up in the corner of the couch with a mug of tea. Nick looked at the coffee table, half expecting to see the Sunday paper folded open to the puzzle, a pencil lying across the filled-in blocks. What did they used to do? Play Hearts. Read. Now they talked, not free to withdraw, moving words like pieces in a board game to fill the time.

Molly avoided him, chatting lazily with Anna, afraid to meet his eyes. What police report? But the presence of the others, the makeshift family, made it impossible to talk about anything he wanted to know. They picked at conversation, strained, like old army friends who think they want to see each other but have only the past in common. What they should see in Prague. What it was like last August when the tanks rolled in, everyone’s trace memory. The almost comic surprise of the Soviet soldiers, expecting to be welcomed, dodging stones. Finally Anna got up to start dinner, leaving an empty moment of silence.

“Where did you go that night?” Nick said suddenly. “The night you left?”

His father looked at him, surprised by the shift. “That night?” He sat back, as if he needed to refresh his memory. “To Canada. There was a ship. I went to Detroit. It’s easy to cross there. We had to go all the way to Philadelphia to catch the plane, in case I was recognized at National. So unnecessary. That long drive–it took hours, I remember, because of the snow. The roads were still slippery. There had been a lot of snow.”

“Yes,” Nick said, remembering footprints.

“Hours. We almost missed the plane. I remember I was dying for a cigarette. I’d forgotten my lighter, and the driver didn’t have any matches. Can you imagine, a Russian who didn’t smoke? Finally I made him stop at a gas station outside Baltimore. He went in–he wouldn’t let me. I’d be recognized. By someone pumping gas in Baltimore.” He shook his head. “It never changes.”

Nick could feel Molly stir beside him on the couch, sitting erect, watching his father.

“I mean in Washington. Where did you go in Washington?”

“In Washington,” his father said, puzzled. “New York Avenue, I suppose. We took the Baltimore Pike. He picked me up out back and we took the pike, so it must have been New York. Does it matter?”

“You didn’t stop anywhere?”

“No,” he said easily, “of course not. We were in a hurry. He knew the roads would be bad. We could have had an accident, the way he drove. How different everything would have been. But he didn’t–we made it. Does it matter to you?” he said again. “All these details?”

“Yes.”

But his father eluded him, lost now in other details, telling stories beside the fire.

“I remember the ship. My bunk, anyway. I couldn’t go on deck. The crew wasn’t supposed to know I was there. They locked me in. Nothing to read. No air. A cell. I never knew what they were carrying. Grain? Pig iron, maybe. Who knows?”

Nick leaned back, listening.

“Then I got seasick, so they let me out, for the air. It was freezing. You had to hang on to something or the wind would knock you over. But at least it was outside. The crew pretended I wasn’t there–it was dangerous to ask questions in those days. I don’t know who they thought I was. I ate by myself. The captain had a little English, but nobody else. I don’t think I said ten words the whole trip.” He paused. “I had a lot of time to think.”

“About what?”

“You. Your mother. What would happen. I still thought I could work things out, that you’d join me. I suppose I thought it would be like Yalta, not so bad. Pleasant. When it got calmer, not so rough, I began to enjoy it a little. Something new. The way you feel on any trip. I’d never been on the ocean before. At night the sky—” He broke off. “Anyway, none of that happened. It was just the first cell. But I didn’t know that then.”

“They put you in a cell?”

He smiled faintly. “House arrest. First for the debriefing, then for my protection. It was worse than the ship in a way, that town. I could walk around, like on a deck, but the air wasn’t as good. And of course now I wasn’t going anywhere. I was already there.”

Why did they wait so long before they let you appear?“

“The news conference? It was like the ship. They didn’t know what to do with me. Nobody knew what Stalin wanted. He never trusted foreign operatives, never. To him they were something from the old Trotsky days–internationalists. Real Communists were Russian. He was a peasant. People thought he was some kind of statesman because they saw his pictures at the conferences, but he had a local mind. A little like Welles, in fact,” he said, smiling slightly, amused at the comparison. “Never trust a foreigner. And I think he liked the game. Let the Americans wonder–was I there, was I dead? Why give anything away if it might come in handy later? He could afford to wait. I wasn’t going anywhere. If he hadn’t died—” His father paused. “But that changed everything. Now they wanted to show us off. Me. The English. They wanted you to think spies were everywhere. And of course it worked. How many of us were there? Three? Four? Not so many. And Welles had everybody looking under beds. But the only one he ever found got away. At least I had that satisfaction.”

“He found two,” Molly said.

Nick’s father looked at her, as if noticing her for the first time. “Yes, two,” he said quietly, and nodded.

“And she got away too,” Molly said. “Just in time.”

Nick felt it, the edgy disturbance in the air, but his father seemed not to notice.

“I saw the paper on the ship. The captain got it before we left Canada, to give me something to read. I don’t think he had any idea who she was, why I kept looking at it.”

“So you had that satisfaction too.”

This time his father caught it, unmistakable, a piece being moved into place. He looked at her for a second, unsure why he was being attacked, and his voice, when he answered, was patient, calming a willful child. “No. I never wanted that. Never. Is that what you think?”

“None of it would have happened,” she said evenly, “if she hadn’t started it.” Another piece.

“She didn’t start it. Welles did. Do you think I blamed her?”

“Didn’t you?”

“No.” He paused. “At first, yes, of course. But I never wanted her dead.”

“Somebody did,” Molly said.

In the silence, Nick saw his father hold her eyes, debating.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Somebody did.”

The answer rattled her. Not an admission. An invitation to join sides, in the open.

“But not you,” she pressed.

“Why would I?” his father said calmly. “By that time it didn’t matter what she said. I was gone. Why would I want such a thing? A terrible death like that.”

“But so convenient.”

“Not for me,” he said, checking her.

“For everyone,” Molly said. “No more names. It must have been a relief. For everyone, I guess, except Welles. She was his only witness. Not so convenient for him.”

He stared at her, waiting, then moved. “Unless she was going to change her testimony.”

His voice, so reasonable, stopped her. She looked at him, surprised, as if he had turned the board around. “Why would she do that?”

“It’s possible. It would have been the easiest thing to do. It’s what I would have advised, if I’d been handling it,” his father said, a lawyer walking her through it. “She thought she’d recognized me, but now she wasn’t sure. It might have been somebody else. She couldn’t swear under oath. She wouldn’t want to do that, make a mistake. She’d been so nervous when they first talked to her—” He broke off, looking at Molly, who had sat back, letting him lead. “She was young, you know, younger than you are now. They were already worried about her. Communists weren’t supposed to be young and pretty, not real ones. She was just an impressionable girl–they took advantage of people like that. She didn’t know what she was doing, and when the committee first talked to her, she panicked. But now –Anyway, she could have done it. Of course, he’d still have her, but what was that worth? You didn’t get elected by locking up salesgirls, not when you promised a conspiracy. If he could lock her up. He knew about her, but how much? Enough to convict? I’m not sure. She might have walked away. And that would have ruined everything, made him look–unreliable. No conspiracy. So maybe it
was
convenient for him. With her gone, the smear would stand–I’d always be guilty, at least in the press, which is what mattered. The court of public opinion, always his favorite. You don’t have to prove anything there. You can build a career on it. But then I got away, so he ended up with nothing.” He glanced pointedly at Molly. “That was the only satisfaction.”

Molly said nothing, turning it over, and Nick saw that his father had shifted things again, that the story, just the possibility of it, was a kind of reproach.

“Of course, we’ll never know what she intended to do,” his father said.

Molly looked at him steadily, still examining the brief. “But why do that–to save you?”

“No. Herself.”

“Then why go to Welles in the first place? She was his witness.”

He looked at her curiously. “But she didn’t go to him. He went to her. She wasn’t an informer, you know. Did you think that?” he said, then shook his head. “She wasn’t the type. It was Welles. He hounded her until he got a name.”

“Yours.”

“Yes, mine. One. If she’d been a friendly witness, she’d have told him everything she knew. Why volunteer if you weren’t going to talk? Look at Bentley, or–who was the other one? Coplon. They couldn’t stop. She never wanted any of it–you could see it in her face. She was afraid of him. She made a bargain, and then she saw it wasn’t a bargain. He’d never let her alone. With that press? She was all he had. He had to keep squeezing. Once he knew about her—”

“How did he, if she didn’t tell him?” Nick asked.

His father nodded as if they’d finally arrived. “Well, that’s the great question. How did they know about anything? Hearing after hearing. Where did it all come from?”

“If you throw enough mud, some of it sticks,” Molly said.

“But how do you know where to throw? Where did Welles get his information?” He turned to Nick. “What does Wiseman say?”

“FBI files, usually.”

“Yes, usually. Hoover. Our own Dzerzhinsky. Helpful to a fault. As long as someone else took the credit. Which of course they were eager to do. Welles, the great inquisitor. Or McCarthy, when he was sober. Where would either of them have been without those files? There was plenty of mud there to go around.”

“And Hoover supplied it,” Molly said skeptically.

“I said usually. There were other sources. Subscriber lists, donations. Sometimes they got lucky–the mud would stick. But the Bureau was the best. It was all there. It’s not easy to set up a police state. Which is what they were trying to do. It takes time. Files. Secretaries. Field agents. Legmen,” he said, glancing at Nick. “A whole organization. I know a little about this–it’s the one thing the comrades are good at. The committees didn’t have those resources. Who were they? Lawyers, football players.” Another glance at Nick. “Politicians, not detectives. You have to remember the scope of all this. The hearings were only a part of it. Most of the time HUAC was operating as a personnel agency, giving information to employers. A vetting service to make sure you had the right people. God knows how many they ran checks on.”

“About sixty thousand,” Nick said. “Roughly.”

“Roughly,” his father repeated, taking it in. He looked at Nick. “I see. Wiseman. Think what it means, the work involved. And that was just HUAC, not the Senate committees, the state committees. All of them looking for information so they could run their own circus. People didn’t ask where it came from. Maybe they thought Welles dug it up all by himself. But where else? Only the FBI had that much. Those were Hoover’s committees. McCarthy’s especially, but Welles’s too. Hoover fed them, and then, when it suited him, he cut them off. The trouble was, they didn’t know what to do with the stuff. McCarthy, for God’s sake. Welles, always shooting from the hip and never hitting anything. Disappointing, the horses Edgar picked.” He paused. “But it came from him.”

“How?” Molly said, fascinated now.

“The usual ways. Hoover had to be careful. The leaks were illegal, for one thing, a small point. But there was his reputation–not a small point. He couldn’t be seen to be leaking information. Sometimes the field offices would help the local police. Then they could pass it off as
their
detective work. Sometimes a journalist would be tipped, one of the friendly ones. With the committees it was usually more direct–that was helping the government, after all. But in this case I think it might have come directly from him–he was close to Welles and this was sensitive, the sort of thing he liked to handle himself. He might not have wanted anyone else to know, even in the Bureau.”

“But does it matter? The fact is, they
did
know about her.”

“But how? Did you ever wonder why it started with her? That’s always been the strangest part of the whole business. She was the last person in the chain who’d be under suspicion. She wasn’t in the Government. No access. No history. You didn’t have to pass a security check to work at Garfinkel’s. Why investigate her? She should have been at the
end
of the trail, the small fry you round up with the others. But there weren’t any others. They never connected her to anybody except me. So what led them to her? How did they know to go after her?”