by Alex Dryden
There was a stunned silence around the room. Mikhail had suddenly been presented as a balance sheet item, rather than a figure of national importance to America’s security.
It was Dupont who broke the silence. He spoke in the soft, rumbling tone of voice he used in matters of urgency.
“Because we don’t want Vladimir to bring in his own people by informing the Russian intelligence services here,” he said carefully, “and because we don’t want the agency responding to their subsequent presence on the streets, that doesn’t mean it’s not an option for Vladimir.”
Anna sensed for the first time that what Burt wanted was interfering with the facts. She was reminded, chillingly, of Adrian. When people got in Adrian’s way, Finn had once said, he ignored them, as if they and what they represented didn’t exist. But there was something else too in Burt’s behaviour that she couldn’t detect, which sent off an alarm in her mind. Burt wasn’t like Adrian. Be wary, an inner voice told her. Be wary of the man who behaves out of character.
In the deeper recesses of her mind, she sensed that Burt was weaving some landscape of deceit, against which the truth, when it came, would be starkly illuminated. There was some purpose behind Burt’s almost nonsensical denial of his cohort’s objections.
But she thrust her instincts away, unable to comprehend them, whether through tiredness, from the intrusive presence of others in the meeting, or simply from the need to think in the present rather than listen to her inner voices. In her logical mind, she analysed and understood the competitiveness that Burt was trying to inspire in his team. But it was an unfamiliar form of competition to her. It was more of a competitive hunger engendered against the rival powers of Cougar within America’s own intelligence community, than against Russia. How many fronts was Burt fighting on?
“And if that happens,” Burt continued, ignoring Dupont’s considered interjection, “if other firms like Cougar get in on this, then they’ll interfere. And that will simply have the effect of putting more distance between us and Mikhail than ever. We don’t want Mikhail developing into some common asset. The more competing interests there are on the ground, the greater the risk of blowing the whole thing. And then, like as not, nobody will win the prize. It is therefore a matter of national security to keep it to ourselves.”
It was Logan who volubly refused to accept Burt’s thesis.
“But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” Logan insisted again, his voice betraying exasperation that now bordered on incredulity. “We have to plan for Vladimir informing the Russians that he’s met Anna, even if he doesn’t. It’s madness not to!” He was looking aghast at Burt, as if unable to comprehend that Burt didn’t see, or was ignoring, this simple fact.
There was now visible confusion fluttering around the table at Burt’s wilful disregard of the most likely outcome of Anna’s meeting with Vladimir. And once again she heard the voices inside. Confusion is the aim. But for a second time, she ignored her better instincts.
Burt was now looking amiably around the long table. Marcie was staring down at her hands to avoid meeting his eye in this confrontation; Anna flickered her eyes in acknowledgement of nothing. Bob Dupont was silently fidgeting with a pencil. For a moment the scene reminded Anna of a set of courtiers in the presence of an omnipotent but mad king.
Only the dark-eyed Salvador remained still, contained in himself and apparently unaffected by Burt’s disruption of clear thinking. Whoever he was, Anna thought, he was either too far on the inside to be troubled by Burt’s curious and illogical insistence on his point, or he was observing Burt from a different position than the rest of them, a position that derived from knowledge.
As Burt rested his gaze on Logan once again, Anna felt she saw a challenge.
“Logan?”
“Burt,” Logan said, giving no ground.
There was a tense silence as Burt seemed to be gauging Logan’s opposition. But then Burt relaxed again, allowing a broad grin to spread across his face.
“Anna,” he said, and glanced down the table at her as if she were the last resort of sanity in the room. “Why don’t you give your opinion. You are the mind and heart of the operation in so many ways. Will Vladimir go to his chief? Will he really reveal that he’s met you—at this stage? Tell us what you think.”
She thought for a moment, but only in order to appear to be giving Burt some vestige of support through her opposition to him.
“Not out of personal choice—no, he won’t,” she said carefully. “You’re right about that, Burt.” But that was all the meat she could throw Burt in the circumstances. “Vladimir would rather keep it to himself, I’m sure. But don’t forget, he’ll be afraid as well. So I think we can assume he will make a report, formally or not,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s less of a risk for him than concealing it,” she said. “He’ll weigh it up, see the risk attached to concealment, and then go to his boss. That’s my opinion, and it’s based on knowing a little about the way his mind works, as well as what any intelligence officer would do in the circumstances. He’ll be uncertain whether the meeting between us was under surveillance by his own people. So he won’t take the risk.”
Burt’s grin faded, and Anna saw the showman that was Burt by its very absence. She saw the ruthless core of him, the powerful ambition that had propelled him through life in the guise of good humour. Burt, like Adrian, hated to be denied. But Burt was not Adrian.
He continued to look at her, willing her on, his face an open invitation to her to spread enlightenment. She felt she had said enough, that her words were already excessive. But she nevertheless felt driven onwards, unable to listen to the voices that were telling her to stop now, to wait, not to be led by Burt. For one thing was certain. He was leading her—them?—somewhere that was too obscure for her to see clearly.
“I don’t quite understand the premise of this argument of yours anyway, Burt,” she said, buying a little time from her instinct to cease.
“Oh? Why not?” he replied, even though to all of them it was obvious.
“Surely the idea of my meeting Vladimir in the first place was precisely so that he would inform his superiors here. The only way Mikhail will know I’m here is if Vladimir does reveal it. Mikhail will pick it up very quickly. So we actually need Vladimir to inform his superiors. It’s not an option, it’s a necessity.”
There was silence in the room. Anna saw only Salvador move, a small movement, but he looked up at her for the first time, and then he looked at Burt.
Burt’s gaze hadn’t moved away from her.
“Let’s take a break,” he said suddenly and stood up. “All of you. Take a walk, have a coffee, whatever you like. All of you except you, Anna.” He turned to fix her with a neutral stare. “You’ll stay here with me, please.”
There was surprise, but all except Logan got to their feet. Logan was only just pushing back his chair as Marcie, Salvador, and Dupont were leaving the room.
“Logan?” Burt said.
“I’d like to stay,” he said.
“You’ll see Anna later. Don’t worry, I’m not going to strangle her,” Burt said without mirth.
Logan looked back at her as he left, and she saw something in his face she hadn’t seen before; an intensity, passion perhaps. Then he slowly turned and left the room.
She and Burt were left alone in silence.
Burt stayed standing and went to a sideboard, where he extracted a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He poured the liquor into them both without asking her and handed her one, while keeping the other cradled in his pudgy hand. He remained standing at the far end of the room and took a sip from the glass.
“So. Let’s proceed,” he said. “As you have just said with such admirable clarity, if Vladimir informs his chief here, Mikhail will pick it up?” He spoke smoothly. “Is that right?” He looked at her and beamed. “Or did you mean would pick it up? If he were in America, that is?”
She saw her mistake,
remembered the voices calling her to stop, and she believed she could recover from it while knowing it was too late. Her only defence was in the semantics.
“Of course, I meant Mikhail would pick it up, if Mikhail is here,” she replied.
Burt let her explanation hang in the room, so that it became thin and then dissipated like smoke to reveal the landscape behind it.
“I think you were right in the first place,” he said. “You are careful with words, Anna. So—Mikhail won’t know unless Vladimir reveals the meeting with you to his superiors. Will he.”
It was a statement, not a question. Burt’s tone of voice was closing around her like a trap.
Anna withdrew into her thoughts but found no solace, no way out. She knew now what was coming. Burt’s artful, confusing pretence had done its work. In her effort to correct his apparent misconception about Vladimir’s options, she had overstepped her own watchfulness, the watchfulness that had safeguarded her knowledge of Mikhail.
She found she had nothing to say.
“Because Mikhail is in America, isn’t he,” Burt stated remorselessly. “So ‘will’ was the right word, not ‘would.’ That’s true, isn’t it?”
She waited for the blow.
“You know Mikhail is here, don’t you, Anna,” Burt said, leaning over the table with one hand supporting him. “You’ve known for a while. He’s on our list, isn’t he.” He pounced.
“Right then. How were you going to make contact with Mikhail?” he asked her. “Through Vladimir? Or was it in some other way?”
She felt the ground sliding from under her. “That was the way,” she said. “Exactly as Logan and myself and others were saying. By Vladimir informing his chief here, yes.”
“Oh, yes?” The apparent curiosity in Burt’s tone was flayed completely, to reveal the utter disbelief that lay beneath it. “Okay. Let’s try this, then,” he said. “Vladimir wasn’t going to inform his head of station here or anyone else, was he?”
“As I said, I’m sure he will.”
Burt stood up from his angled pose of leaning on the table. He looked at her with triumph in his eyes.
“In which case, why did you arrange to meet Vladimir, in secret, without my knowledge, at a café behind a gym? ”
She heard a sharp, involuntary intake of breath and realised it was hers. But she neither acknowledged Burt’s statement nor denied it.
Burt left the silence hanging once again.
“And if you and Vladimir were to meet in secret from me, then it was also in secret from Vladimir’s own people, wasn’t it? Both of you wanted to meet without surveillance. Which means that Vladimir wasn’t going to inform anyone he’d met you. And that means there was no way Mikhail would know you were trying to contact him. Correct?”
Her silence was the answer he was looking for.
“Your health,” he said, and raised his glass until she lifted hers. Then he drank greedily.
“You said no wires—,” she said.
Burt grinned at her, his bonhomie apparently returned in full. As ever, he was supremely pleased by his own cleverness, which was far more important to him than her attempts to deceive him. In fact, she felt that his cleverness needed her deceit in order to be exercised to the full.
“That’s what we said, yes,” he agreed, and gave his friendly chuckle. “No wires. But we had that café—and all his other regular haunts—wired so good you could hear the lettuce screaming.”
More sirens rose from outside the window—the only true voices of the city—and filled the pause like a dissonant musical interlude.
“Next stage,” Burt said, moving on now into the mopping-up operation. “Were you even intending to contact Mikhail at all? Or has this whole operation with Vladimir just been a farce from start to finish? I’d like to know that, please, Anna.”
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
“But not my way?” Burt said.
“No, not your way, not through Vladimir.”
Burt sat down.
“Okay. Good. I like this. Let’s say I believe you,” he said with flamboyant generosity. “Why not? Why weren’t you going to contact Mikhail through Vladimir?”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on, Anna. Tell me why you wanted to contact him your way?”
She collected her thoughts now at last. “Because Mikhail is too smart to be lured into making contact with me on the basis of his own side having knowledge of my whereabouts. He wouldn’t trust that. If my meeting with Vladimir reached him through Vladimir and then the KGB networks here, he wouldn’t take the risk.”
“Good, that’s very good, that’s very smart of you,” Burt said, and there was genuine admiration in his voice. “Your intuition is, as always, invaluable. So why not say that to me earlier, though? To me, Anna?” he said, as if he were hurt that his friendship and discretion were not above scrutiny. “That way, we could make a different plan. So in my way of thinking, there’s another reason for you planning to do it your way, isn’t there.”
“Yes. Yes, there is.” She looked up at him and met his eyes unwaveringly. She had found her strength, no matter what was to come.
“It’s personal,” she said. “Just how you like it, Burt. I wanted to give Mikhail the choice. Whether to work for the Americans or not. Can you understand that, Burt? I wanted that to be his decision, not something forced on him by you, the Russians, me, or anyone else.”
“Ah, choices. Choices are the chief source of confusion in the world,” Burt replied.
“No. That’s not true. Choices are freedom.”
“Then freedom is confusion,” Burt said.
“Maybe. But that’s as cynical as anything I ever heard in the KGB,” she said.
“Well, touché. But to win, you must adopt your opponent’s methods,” Burt said. “And then you must make their methods, no matter how terrible, twice as bad as they make them.”
“If you believe that, that’s where you and I fundamentally differ,” she said.
Burt smiled at her, as if he were enjoying a game.
“All right. Let’s say that Mikhail has a choice, then,” he said. “Why should I give him this choice?”
“Several reasons. For one thing, he deserves it. He’s earned it a million times. But more importantly than that, as a willing accomplice, he’s worth infinitely more to you than if he were forced. The reason Mikhail worked for the British before was that he would only work through Finn. No one else. Because he knew he could trust Finn and only Finn.”
“We think along exactly the same lines, you and I, Anna,” Burt said, in one of his customary volte-faces. “As I treat you, you treat Mikhail. We both understand that without willingness, there’s very little worth the gamble. With yours—and Mikhail’s—willingness, we can achieve everything.”
“That’s also what Finn believed,” she said.
Burt didn’t reply immediately. Then: “And will he trust you? Mikhail?” he said at last.
“I believe so. But it’s the only route anyway, as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s as I’ve always thought.”
He came around the table and took the seat next to her.
“You’re right in everything,” he said, “and everything is right.”
“What happens—” she said.
“—is always right,” he completed. “Sometimes, through distrust comes greater trust,” he said. “And that’s what has happened here. All this has been necessary. Thank you, Anna. You’re as good it gets.”
“So where do we go from here?” she said.
Burt smiled, and she found she was smiling back at him.
“Before you tell me who Mikhail is,” he said, “what was your plan for contacting him?”
She felt free again. The truth had released her.
“I was going to play along with Vladimir as we arranged,” she said. “Improvise with him for as long as it took. Then I was going to send something by courier to Mikhail at the Russian delegation in Washington.
As soon as I could make myself some time alone.”
“Perhaps after your secret meeting with Vladimir?”
“Most likely.”
“Something he would recognise?” Burt asked, “but that no one else would?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“It was a kidjal, a Caucasian dagger. It was something Mikhail gave to me on the night that Finn died, the only time I met Mikhail. Finn had given it to him.”
“The dagger you said was your grandmother’s—an heirloom, I believe?” Burt asked her.
“Yes.”
There was dead silence. Burt’s face gave nothing away. And then he broke the moment by smiling at her again.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” he said at last. “We’ll send him this dagger.”
She looked at him, half believing it was going to be this easy.
“You were right, Burt,” she said. “Mikhail was on the list.”
“I guessed so,” Burt replied. “But I had to be sure.”
“He’s Vasily Dubkov. At the Russian cultural centre in Washington, D.C.,” she said.
“So you’ll send him this dagger as a cultural artefact to be identified perhaps?”
“Yes.”
“Just one thing, before we move on,” he said, and put his hand on her arm. “Mikhail’s identity is to remain just between the two of us. For the time being. This goes no further than you and me.”
She nodded her assent.
Then he stood up and looked down at her.
“And now, thank Christ, I can dispense with the services of Salvador,” he said. Behind the triumph in his face, she saw a kind of relief, even compassion for her. “I’m not sorry to do that,” he said. “Salvador is very effective at extracting information.”
“Your chief company enforcer?” she said.
“And a very good one too,” he replied. “Though we don’t call them that these days.”