The Prodigal Spy (53 page)

“You did it as a favor?” Nick said skeptically.

“Maybe you don’t understand how things work. Everybody thinks the Bureau’s on its own, but it isn’t. Hoover’s got his boss too. Sometimes the AG’s on your side, sometimes not. Depends on the man, whatever his agenda is. That was a funny time. Tom Clark had just left–never any problem with him. He never gave a damn one way or the other. But the new one—” He left it unfinished, still discreet. “And you never knew what
his
boss would do. The director hated Truman. Mutual, probably. So it was important to take care of your friends in Congress. Kind of an insurance policy.” He stopped. “Well, that’s the political side. The director wasn’t going to let Welles hang out there. He made Welles. But the fact is, Kotlar
was
guilty–you don’t need an excuse to go after a spy. You can’t blame the director for that one. I don’t say he does everything right–that case was no picnic
for
us, I
can tell you. No let-up. But hell, you’ve got a Red spy and you don’t go after him? That’s like putting blood under a hound’s nose and then sticking him in a cage. He’s
got
to do it. I don’t think you can blame him for this one.”

“I don’t blame him. I just want to know how he knew.”

Lapierre looked puzzled. “Kotlar was guilty. There’s no doubt about that.”

“Not now. But what made you so sure then?”

“I don’t think I understand you,” he said cautiously.

“One woman’s testimony. Not proven. What made you believe her? What made you go after her in the first place?”

Lapierre took a step backward, physically retreating. “That’s all before I got into it. You want to know that, you’re going to have to ask Hoover yourself.”

“And he’ll tell me,” Nick said sarcastically.

“The director?” A cool smile. “Not even on a good day.” He turned. “Anyway, what’s the difference? Turns out he was right. He usually is.” He looked at Nick, appraising again. “What do you really want to know? Is that why you came all the way out here? You know what happened. There’s no mystery about it. You know where he was. We looked for him, we didn’t find him. So what do you want to know?”

Nick waited. “What happened to the lighter,” he said finally, watching Lapierre’s reaction. “The police gave it to you. You didn’t put it in your report. Why did you lose it?”

Lapierre’s eyes narrowed, a new appraisal, and Nick saw that what interested him was not that Nick knew but how–a bureaucratic reflex, a fear the system had been violated. “The Bureau doesn’t lose things,” he said simply.

“But it’s not in the report.”

“That depends on which report you saw.” Again the narrow curiosity:
how
had Nick seen it? “Nothing was lost.”

“There’s more than one report?”

“The files are cross-indexed. It may be confusing to someone from outside.”

“So’s double bookkeeping.”

He glanced up, annoyed. “We’re an investigative agency. That means sensitive material. Sources, for instance. It’s more prudent not to keep everything in one place.”

“Where somebody might see it.”

“
We
don’t own the files. A request comes down from the AG’s office—” He shifted, careful again. “It’s not always appropriate. You don’t want the files used for, say, political reasons.”

“No, of course not.” Almost a laugh.

Lapierre hesitated. “You say he’s dead?”

Nick nodded.

“All right, you ask, I’ll tell you. The official file wasn’t the same as the internal one. Couldn’t be. We were investigating Communists, not murder. There are some who would have preferred that, you know, for political reasons. To take people’s minds off the real issue. But we didn’t want it to be a murder case.”

“Then it might have been sent back to the police. Right out of your hands.”

Lapierre looked at him sharply, then nodded. “With predictable results. You keep forgetting, he wasn’t there. There would have been no case. They’d be spinning wheels.” He paused. “Besides, we didn’t want to get him that way. Not for murder.”

“Welles would lose his Red.”

“You don’t think much of the Bureau, do you? Think we’re just like the feet. Fact is, I didn’t run it as a murder case because I never thought it was. I always thought she killed herself.” He looked up. “While he was playing Scrabble.”

“Then how did the lighter get there?”

Lapierre looked at him with mild scorn, as if he had missed the obvious. “She put it there. There weren’t any prints, you know,” he said, watching Nick. “A little clumsy anyway, don’t you think? Leaving it like that. It was her. She wiped it on her skirt, or something–and out. She was going to take him with her one way or the other. What you said before, about going after her? It was always my understanding that
she
went to Welles. Her idea. Of course, I don’t know where your information comes from.” Lapierre’s eyebrows went up.

“Welles got everything from the Bureau.”

“Well, maybe you know that. I don’t.”

Nick stood for a minute looking at the ground, thinking. “But you kept it. Even though—”

“You can’t destroy evidence. That’s illegal.”

“So is hiding it.”

“It’s not hidden,” Lapierre said blandly. “I don’t know where you get this idea. To my knowledge, no one’s ever asked for it.”

“You kept it just in case you needed it,” Nick said to himself. “A little insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“If the statute of limitations ran out.”

“Don’t let your imagination run away with you. We didn’t expect it to run out. We expected to catch him.”

Nick looked up. “And tell him you had it, in case he wasn’t feeling cooperative with the committee. Loosen his tongue.”

“I don’t know about that. I was just supposed to catch him. But I didn’t.” He shrugged. “So the statute did run out.”

“But there’s no statute on murder.”

Lapierre looked at him, eyes cold again. “That’s right. Not on murder.”

“You would have hanged him with it.”

“That would have been up to the jury.”

“With your help.”

“I would not have withheld evidence, no, if that’s what you mean. The Bureau would never allow that.”

Nick felt a band of heavy air tightening around his chest, a land of noose.

“What the jury made of it—” Lapierre wiped his hands again, free of dirt.

“One way or the other,” Nick said, again to himself. “He could never come back.” Silver’s insurance.

“Come back? Why the hell would he come back? He got away with it.”

The woman came to the back door again. “Dad.” Insistent this time.

“All right,” he said, turning back to Nick. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove. Everybody wants to get something on the Bureau these days. The Bureau didn’t do anything to your father. We never got the chance. We were the ones looking like jerks, not him. He got away with it.”

“Yes. He got away with it,” Nick said, seeing his father’s thin white legs as he put him to bed.

Lapierre began walking away.

“Tell me one more thing,” Nick said, stopping him. “You must have seen the Cochrane file.” A beat. “The internal one.”

Lapierre waited, interested.

“Was there a description of it, how she approached Welles?”

Lapierre thought for a moment. “No,” he said, “just the first interview.”

“Then how do you know she did?”

Lapierre began backing away. “Well, I guess I don’t know that either.” He gave Nick a thin smile. “Maybe you should ask Welles. He was there, not me.”

Molly, who’d been silent during the meeting, opened up in the car. “That was a mistake,” she said. “He’s going to report it. He thinks he’s still working for them. Did you see his eyes? Just like Jeff. I know something you don’t know. Even when they don’t. I’ll bet they’re all like that–they don’t know how to stop.”

“Well, so what? What if he does?”

“They’ll start watching again. How are we going to watch our friends if somebody’s watching us? God, it’s getting like Prague. Everybody watching everybody.”

“Maybe they’ll do the Navy guy for us,” Nick said lightly. “You don’t like the neighborhood anyway.”

“I’m serious. If they start tailing us, it’s like handing them the list. You know that.”

Nick nodded. “They have to find us first. Anyway, they’re not watching now. You want to take Mother Brown?”

Ruth Silberstein went to the movies. While Molly was parked in Chevy Chase, waiting for Brown, Nick trailed the Volkswagen to a suburban shopping mall. Her friend, a woman waiting at the box office, handed her a ticket and began a conversation that would last off and on through the show and into dinner afterward. They both chose the chef’s salad. Ruth drank several cups of coffee, her friend shared an envelope of snapshots–relatives or an office party, Nick guessed, when he passed by the table to look–and Ruth picked up a pint of ice cream on her way home. Then he saw the blue glow of the television set upstairs, the bathroom light as she got ready for bed, a small reading lamp for twenty minutes, and darkness. Nothing. It occurred to Nick as he sat smoking in the car that the only exciting thing about being a spy was the end, the final adrenalin jolt of exposure.

John Brown hadn’t returned.

“Just an evening with Mom,” Molly said, weary.

“One of them’s the connection,” Nick said. “It’ll happen.”

“I hope so. Who’s on tomorrow?”

“Try Irina again. I’ll do the Navy. Then I think I’ll take the Bureau’s advice and go see Welles.”

“Why?” Molly said, looking up.

“I want to know how it started, why she talked to him. It’s important.”

“Is it?” Molly said quietly, watching him.

“Silver didn’t start this. He just did what he had to do. Once it did. I want to know who started it all.”

“Who did it to you, you mean.” Her voice still quiet.

“Not just to me,” he said quickly, disconcerted. To all of us.

Molly started to say something, then backed off. Instead she went over to the mirror and started brushing out her hair.

“What makes you think Welles will talk to you?” she said. “You’re the last person he’d want to see.”

“I’ll use Larry’s name,” Nick said, thinking of Lutece. “It’s a real door-opener.”

HE DRIVE TO Anacostia the next morning was as uneventful as before, a careful swing southeast through the back streets, toward the sun and the crisp sentries’ uniforms. When the black officer’s car slid through the gates, barely pausing for its badge check, it seemed to melt into the lot in the slow motion of a dream. Navy whites. A few official cars. What did he do here? Nick watched his dark face move toward the building, unhurried. He decided to take a chance on the guard.

“That guy who just came in? I think he put a dent on my car.”

“Lieutenant Williams?” the guard said, amazed.

“I guess. How do I get in touch with him?”

“You can’t. Not without a pass.”

“You have an extension? I just want to call, for the insurance.”

The guard checked a clipboard. “5207,” he said. “Big dent?”

“No, just a scratch. Thanks.”

Nick pulled away, the guard not even bothering to look at the car, turning his face to the sun. The whole base was dozing, far away from the war.

The Senate Office Building, on the other hand, bristled like a command post, phones ringing, secretaries’ heels clicking along the halls, busy with itself. Nick dialed the Anacostia number from a pay phone in the lobby. A girl’s voice. “Naval intelligence.” Nick put the receiver back, nodding to himself, and went to find Welles’s office.

There were two secretaries, both with beehive hairdos, both wrapped in sweaters against the air conditioning. A leather couch, piled with unopened mail, the walls filled with photographs of Welles shaking hands with everybody in the world. A portrait of Nixon. A framed campaign poster. Peace With Honor. Nick heard voices coming from the inside office, laughter.

Now that he was here, he felt a quiet panic at the ordinariness of it all, that the demon swirling through years of his imaginative life would be reduced to a man making jokes in an office, harmless, like a funhouse ride after the doors open. Welles belonged in the newsreel, gavel banging, cowing them into silence, always oversize, his malevolence so large it needed an expanse of screen or it would become invisible, too large to be seen in a small room with posters and crank mail. His father had said that when you shook hands with Stalin, the act itself was a violation of scale, allowing you to believe he was just a man.

The inner door swung open. No longer screen-size but still large, grown fat, his bulk filling the door frame. Everything the same, the straight nose and square face softened by the years of extra flesh. He was wearing a bow tie and red-white-and-blue suspenders, sweating a little in the cool room. His arms were draped around a middle-aged couple whose faces had the pleased look of pilgrims granted an audience. When he saw Nick, his smile froze for a second, then spread back across his face.

“Well, there he is. Looks like Betty’s got them back-to-back this morning. I swear, they don’t give me time to pee sometimes.” Genial, for the benefit of the couple, who smiled. “Now, bless your heart, you tell the club I wouldn’t miss it. Wouldn’t miss it. You just make sure Betty here has that date.” He turned to one of the secretaries. “Darlin‘, you circle this one now, hear?” Then, to Nick, “Well, come on in if you’re coming.” And then a flurry of goodbyes and Nick suddenly felt himself being led into the room by a hand on his shoulder, everything smaller after all.

“Well, I
was
surprised. Your call. But you know, your dad–Larry and I go back a ways, both sides of the aisle, so I guess I owe him a favor or two. Hell, I owe everybody favors. Now, what’s so important he couldn’t call himself? They got phones in Paris last time I heard.” Before Nick could reply, he held up his hand. “Let me tell you up front, if it’s this peace talk business he’s got himself into, I can’t do it. No help at all. The people don’t want it–they’d have themselves a lynching party with me in the rope. And I don’t blame them. Peace with
honor
,” he said, last year’s slogan for war. “That’s what we’re looking for here. Now, Larry knows that. Hell, that was the whole campaign. Can’t have him giving everything away over there. We’ve been
there
before. All our fine boys getting shot up and we’re just going to hand it to the Commies? Another Yalta? No, sir.” His cheeks puffed now, like bellows. Everything the same.