The Secret Lovers (11 page)

“What do you mean, Otto, by sentimentality?” Patchen asked.

“I’ve told Paul before. Kamensky
wants
to be martyrized for this great work of art he has sent to me. That’s why he sent it.”

“That’s not what he said in his letter.”

“No Russian, and in particular not Kamensky, ever says what he means. I used to be a Russian, David, Paul—trust me.”

“Kamensky trusted you,” Patchen said with his crooked smile, “and look what it’s getting him.”

3

Patchen chose to keep silent as they rode the Métro the two stops to the Place de l’Odéon, and then walked to the Luxembourg Gardens. He and Christopher
strolled side by side through the gardens, crowded because of the fine weather with mothers and children and with students from the university. Christopher removed his coat and slung it over his
shoulder; Patchen in his black suit walked with his hands clasped in the small of his back.

“Why did the French put so many statues in this park?” Patchen asked. “It doubles the crowd, having all these stone poets and politicians standing around.”

They were passing the marionette theater. Patchen had a weakness for the art, and he stopped to read the posters. Christopher watched the broad walk behind them: baby carriages, young mothers, a
couple lying together on the lawn; the girl was as blond as Cathy and she gazed as intently into her lover’s face. He saw, striding through the crowd, the person he and Patchen had come to
meet.

Maria Rothchild joined them, as Patchen had asked, by the Medici Fountain. Otto had returned to his bed, she said, exhausted.

“He thought Paul was taunting him,” Maria said. “He doesn’t like your way of playing dumb, Paul. After all, he knows you’re not stupid.” She smiled.
“Otto doesn’t even believe in your bleeding heart.”

“Bleeding heart?” Christopher said. “I was telling him the truth. I don’t understand the way he’s rationalizing what he wants us to do to Kamensky.”

“
Do
to Kamensky? He loves Kamensky. He wants to give him to the world.”

“Oh. I thought he wanted to sacrifice him. I don’t see why. Doing it for sound operational reasons would be bad enough, but that at least would be professional. But Kamensky is not
under discipline, he hasn’t accepted the risks, he isn’t being paid. He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”

“He’s dealing with Otto, his friend.”

“Hes dealing with an agent of U.S. intelligence. Our Otto is not Kamensky’s Otto. Kamensky isn’t an agent, Maria. He’s an outsider.”

Maria gave a giddy laugh, a sign that she was annoyed. Patchen stepped between them, smiling, and put a finger on his lips. He led them to the back of the fountain, where the crowd was thinner,
and pointed at the carving of Leda and the Swan. “I’ve always thought that this Leda rather favored you, Maria,” he said. She gave him a cold look. “I won’t pursue the
analogy.” Patchen said.

“Good,” Maria said. “Let’s say what we have to say. Otto doesn’t sleep long. He frets if I’m not there when he wakes up. Especially when you’re in town,
David.”

“I wouldn’t want to put a strain on your marriage. I want to ask you how you think Otto is doing, under the tension of work.”

“I’d say he’s thriving on it.”

“I thought so. Some of the bastard showed through today. It was like old times seeing Otto behave that way.”

“It’s not good for him, losing his temper. I hope you can have calmer meetings with him from now on.”

“Yes,” Patchen said. “I’m hoping the same. It’s delicate, you know, because Otto can’t really run this operation. Paul has to do it, and we all have to save
Otto’s feelings.”

“Is that my assignment?”

“It’s already your vocation, Maria.”

Maria filled her lungs and exhaled in exasperation; it was one of Otto’s lost mannerisms, and Christopher wondered if she knew it.

“Otto has been very ill,” Maria said. “The surgery changed a lot of things.” Patchen returned his attention to the fountain. The rush of water nearly drowned their low
voices, and Christopher moved a step closer to his companions.

“I was surprised to learn that Otto knew Horst Bülow so well.” Christopher said. “He never mentioned it to me before.”

“Did you ever mention Bülow’s name to
him?
” Maria asked.

“No.”

“Then the question wouldn’t arise, would it? I’ve learned not to be surprised when Otto turns out to have known someone. He knows everyone.”

“Did you know he knew Horst?”

“No. Even when I was Otto’s case officer, we spent very little time bandying names. He only talks about the people who are in play at the moment. He’s an activist, not a
raconteur.”

“I wonder why he kept telling me how irrelevant Horst and his death were,” Christopher said.

Maria made an abrupt movement with her hand, slapping the empty air sharply; it was another of Otto’s gestures, and Christopher saw that Patchen noticed, too. Maria turned her back;
Christopher tapped her on the shoulder and she spun on her heel and faced him.

“Because the murder of Bülow is not irrelevant at all,” he said. “Otto of all people must realize that.”

The tone of Christopher’s voice had drawn Maria into a silence. She was too well trained to show hostility. She was trying to show nothing. Patchen watched her intently.

“There’s only one way for Headquarters to read Bülow’s being killed as he handed me Kamensky’s manuscript,” Christopher said. “That the opposition killed
Horst. That the opposition knows we have the book.”

“All right, Paul,” Maria said. “I see your point.”

Christopher smiled at her; she moved back slightly, like a woman discouraging a kiss.

“If the opposition
knows
,” he said, “then every reason for protecting Kamensky is removed. We have to assume they’ll kill him, no matter what we do. Why
didn’t Otto see that, when it’s so plain to all the rest of us?”

Maria gave Christopher a defiant look, but when he took her hand and led her to an empty bench, she went with him unresisting.

“David wants to talk to you,” Christopher said.

4

Patchen and Maria sat on the bench, with Christopher on the grass beside them, facing the other way so that he could watch for listeners behind them. Patchen turned his calm
face toward Otto Rothchild’s wife.

“What I want you to understand,” he said, “is that I wish Otto to have this last success. We all do. But this is going to be a sensitive, difficult operation. Otto hasn’t
the powers he used to have.”

“He does, you know.”

“No, Maria, he doesn’t. He’s lost his bodily functions and some of his mental functions, and it scares him. He’s not the man he was.”

“Still,” Maria said, “he’s better than almost anyone.

“Granted. Otto is adaptable. He’s survived a lot in his life. As he’s always telling us, he’s lost things before—his money, his country, his politics. He’s
changed when he had to, always.”

“David, you’re contradicting yourself.”

“I’m describing Otto, so contradictions are bound to creep in,” Patchen said. “What I believe, what makes me anxious, is that Otto is adapting. He’s developing new
powers.”

Christopher saw a remark occur to Maria; it was reflected in her eyes, she parted her lips to speak, but kept silent.

“Otto has set things in motion,” Patchen said. “He’s created an operation. I’ve never seen him want anything as much as he wants this. I’m going to give it to
him because the target is irresistible. But I am not going to let him control it.”

“Otto knows that.”

“Yes, he does. And that’s why he’s struggling with me. I want you to help me to do him the kindness of letting him believe that he’s running things.”

“You want me to report on him.”

Another man, having been Maria Rothchild’s friend for years, might have put a hand on her arm. Patchen did not even raise his voice. “Yes,” he said.

“And it’s for Otto’s own good?”

Maria’s voice was weary. She crossed her ankles and put her head on the back of the bench. She had not expected an answer from Patchen. She watched the clouds, tinted red by the setting
sun. After a time she sat upright again. She spoke now as Patchen and Christopher had been speaking, without emotion.

“Otto’s idea,” she said, “is to wait a few more days for you to act. If you don’t, he’s going to take the Russian manuscript to a French publisher.”

“Where is he going to get a copy? I took the one I loaned him back to Washington after he’d read it.”

“I photographed it for him. Otto thinks ahead.”

Patchen, for the first time, smiled. Rothchild’s cunning had awakened his admiration for the agent. Christopher, watching Maria, saw no response.

Patchen said, “What else does Otto have in mind?”

“Claude de Cerutti,” Maria said.

“Kamensky’s discoverer. We’d thought of him, too. Otto knows him, of course.”

“Of course. He comes every Wednesday and brings champagne. Cerutti used to be silent partner in a restaurant where Picasso went and paid his bills with a sketch. That’s where Otto
got the one in the sitting room. They go back a long way.”

“All the way to Kamensky?” Christopher asked.

Maria lifted her glance. She made a thoughtful face, holding Christopher’s eyes. “That I don’t know,” she said.

Only that morning, Christopher had read the file on Cerutti; Patchen had brought it with him from Washington. Cerutti was a Frenchman, a disillusioned Communist who had left the Party even
before the purges. It was he who had first published Kamensky’s work in the West—a volume of poems, a book of stories, a novel. It wasn’t known how the work had come into
Cerutti’s hands; Kamensky was already in the camps when the books appeared in Paris, after the war.

“What Otto’s planning to do,” Patchen said, “is pretty much what we would have done anyway.”

“Otto couldn’t know that. Paul has reservations, and everyone knows you listen to Paul.”

“Not always,” Patchen said. “Will Cerutti accept a proposal?”

“Otto is sure he will. So am I. He hasn’t had a real success in publishing since the last time he brought out a book by Kamensky. He’d leap at the chance to do it
again.”

“On what basis?”

“For money, for respectability,” Maria said. “Cerutti is recruitable. Otto has used him in small ways. He knows what’s happening, all right, but he wants to wake up in
the morning clean as a whistle. He insists on being unwitting.”

Patchen nodded. He let a few moments pass. Maria showed no signs of nervousness. Guilt had come into her face only once, when she had confessed to photographing Kamensky’s manuscript, a
secret document belonging to the Agency.

“Can you bring Cerutti and Paul together?” Patchen asked.

“Yes. He’s coming to see Otto at four o’clock next Wednesday.”

“Is that the day Otto plans to hit him with the manuscript?”

Maria shook her head. “Otto is giving you a little more time than that.”

“How much more?”

“I don’t know. He’s waiting to get the feel of what you’re doing. You know how he is.”

Maria lit a cigarette, a Gauloise, and deeply inhaled its rank smoke. Patchen coughed and she put it out.

“Why is Otto in such a rush about this?” Patchen asked her. “Have you any idea?”

“No. He’s been in a mood since Paul brought the manuscript out. If it were anyone but Otto I’d call it apprehension. He has no reason to be so impatient.”

“His health?”

Maria gave a sudden brilliant smile. “Otto knows that he’s not going to die,” she said. “The doctors gave him a choice before the operation—death in the near
future, or what he is now for twenty years. He made his choice.”

“Not much of a choice for you, Maria,” Patchen said. He touched her gloved hand. Christopher saw that she was startled by Patchen’s sympathy; he saw something else, deep in
Maria’s disciplined face, that he hadn’t seen there before—a flash of mockery. Patchen had made a mistake with her, tried to come too close.

Maria walked away without a good-bye, her heels clicking vigorously on the paving stones, her skirt swinging. The near wall of the Luxembourg Palace lay in shadow as Maria approached it, and the
westering sun, behind it, left a strip of light around its edges.

“A good officer,” Patchen said. “She always was.”

“Do you think we can contain Otto?”

“Maybe, if Maria is the key.”

“What if he redoubles her?”

“Unlikely,” Patchen said. “Otto may have no scruples. But Maria has no illusions.”

1

Christopher took the Métro across the river. At the PTT on the Champs-Élysées, he placed a telephone call to Cathy in Rome, and, reading the Somerset
Maugham novel he carried in his pocket, waited for it to go through. At the end of an hour, the telephonist sent him into one of the booths. He closed the door behind him, and was enveloped by the
odors of old sweat and stale Caporals. The telephone rang a dozen times on the crackling line; at last the operator in Rome told him that there was no reply.

He walked up the Champs through the evening crowds. A man in an open car, a Lancia like Christopher’s, kissed the girl in the seat beside him as he waited for the light to change.
Christopher bought
Le Monde
at a kiosk and glanced down the wide street; it was impossible to spot surveillance in such a throng, but he looked from face to face in the approaching crowd,
so as to remember any that he might see in an emptier street. He sat at a table on the sidewalk at Fouquet’s and drank a glass of beer. Then he walked on, turning down the rue Marbeuf, and
took the long way around through quiet streets to the avenue George V. There was no one behind him. He had not expected that there would be.

On the stone wall of the American Cathedral, Christopher looked for the yellow chalk mark he had been told he would see. Patchen had apologized for it. “These fellows from Security are
great believers in elementary tradecraft,” he told Christopher. “You’ll just have to be patient, they like to play spy when they go overseas.” Christopher went inside the
church. Wilson was seated in the corner of the last pew, the bridge of his nose gripped between his thumb and forefinger. Christopher sat down beside him. Wilson’s eyes, the whites shining in
the dim light, swiveled toward him.