“Yes. You too.”
He depressed the cradle with his finger and released it again. “Lieutenant? Anything happening?”
“No, sir. Nice and quiet.”
“I’m going topside for a breath of air. I’ll be in hailing distance of the gate guard if you need me.”
Along the ramp the tunnel resonated with disembodied announcements on the PA loudspeakers. When he emerged through the great steel doors the dazzling brilliance made his eyes swim. The rain had passed on toward the east and a thin steamy mist hovered along the ground, burning off; his grainy eyes squinted out across the implacable indifferent desert. He began cursing in a lackluster monotone.
Chapter Twenty
Lamplight reflected from the night-black windows. A hard spiral of heat twisted Forrester’s abdominal muscles. He glanced up and Spode stared back wordlessly, his face a studied mask. Forrester took Ronnie’s hand.
She sat placid and wooden; her voice was flat. “I guess I went away for a little while.”
“It’s all right,” he said in a low voice from which he withheld feeling by an effort of will that made him break out in a fine perspiration.
He had sat with her for hours, speaking softly and trying to reassure her.
When she had first spoken, it had been erratically. She had mumbled about the storm’s end, talked childishly about her paintings.
But now she was coming back. She clung to Forrester fearfully. “Forgive me, Alan.”
“Forgive you?”
“For loving you. For bringing you such unhappiness.”
Her voice was stronger and he sat up. “Ronnie—”
“Les was my brother, you know.”
“Yes. Top guessed that.” Still he didn’t prompt her with questions because he had no way of being sure what might send her off. He touched his lips gently to her forehead. She said, “You have such huge hands.”
He managed to smile but her face did not change. “I have nothing more to lose, except you,” she said, “and I’ve lost you already.”
“Nonsense, Ronnie. I’m right here.”
“You’re here because you want to know what I know.”
“That doesn’t change the way I feel.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I wish it had. It would be easier if I knew I’d already hurt you as much as I was going to.”
He attempted a smile. What was the answer to that?
“I’m sorry I went to pieces. We didn’t have time for me to do that.”
“Are you all right now?”
She had the strength to make a wry face. “As much as I’m going to be.”
“Just take it easy for a while.” Meaningless homilies. He had never been good at comforting.
She said, “In a way it has to be a relief, doesn’t it—knowing it’s out in the open. It doesn’t matter what they do to me anyway, it can’t be worse than what I’ve lived through. I suppose you must have guessed: they made me watch them beat my husband to death.”
Spode’s “Jesus” exploded across the room and Forrester tried not to show his shock.
Ronnie said, “I guess I’ll handle it now. It was seeing Les …”
Spode said, “God knows I didn’t want it that way, Ronnie. But Les didn’t give me a choice.”
She took several deep breaths. Finally she lifted her head.
“I’ll tell you everything I can. I’ve got nothing left to lose—I already said that, didn’t I?”
“You’re alive, Ronnie.”
Spode said, “Help us get to this man Belsky in time to stop them from whatever they’re doing.”
She was puzzled. “Belsky? You mean the man from Russia who came to activate us? He’s calling himself Dangerfield. How much do you already know?”
“Mostly guesswork,” Forrester said. “You’d better tell us, if you feel up to it.”
“I wouldn’t blame you for not believing a word of it, Alan. It’s too fantastic for belief, isn’t it?” Her face was wholly without expression. She had talked for half an hour and she lay back, drained.
“I believe it all. I have no reason not to.”
“I used to think sometimes that if I just went into a police station or an FBI office and told them the whole story they’d laugh me right into the nearest insane asylum.”
“Did you often think of doing that?”
“Betraying them? Every day. From the first day I arrived here I wanted to explode the whole thing.”
“Because you didn’t believe in it?”
“I don’t know what I believed in. I’d been conditioned as if I were a laboratory animal—but I didn’t recognize that at first. I’d grown up believing in Communism. Born and raised in the Soviet Union. I thought of myself as a loyal citizen—why shouldn’t I? I let Les talk me into joining them and he convinced me that what we were setting out to do was right and necessary and just. He really believed that—and so did I.”
“But you said you wanted to get out of it from the first day you came here.”
“That wasn’t political conviction, Alan. It was realizing all at once that I just couldn’t live my whole life under that stress, every moment waiting for somebody to discover the truth about me. Afterward I began to open my eyes and see how insane the whole thing was.”
“But you still didn’t try to get out.”
“I asked them to send me back to Russia. They refused, of course—they said they had an investment in me.”
“They?”
“Ramsey Douglass and my brother Les.” Her face was masked by the weight of her hair; her voice was a monotone. “The more Les saw of American politics the more he was convinced it was an evil regime of rich men and thugs exploiting the people. He had a curious way of rationalizing the way he went on practising the kind of chicanery he claimed to loathe so much—his reasons never made sense to me but he said I just didn’t have the right kind of mind to follow it.”
“He was part of it, and Ramsey Douglass, and Ross Trumble, is that right? Why did they all behave like dedicated right-wing reactionaries? Was it intended as camouflage, to throw off suspicion?”
“Partly. We came here with instructions to act ultra-American. But it was more than that. We had to infiltrate the defense establishment and the political power structure, and down here they’re both pretty much in the hands of the conservatives. You’re not a conservative, of course, but the Republican Party has pretty firm control over Arizona’s politics, and you were a Republican, so Les and I attached ourselves to you.” In a lower voice she added, “Like leeches.”
He clasped his hands together and scowled at his knuckles. “They refused to let you go back to Russia but you still didn’t try to break loose from them. Why? Because you were afraid they’d kill you?”
“I think I could have accepted that. No, they never make do with so simple a threat as that. You see, as long as Les was loyal to them I couldn’t do a thing. If I’d stepped out of line they would have killed him the way they killed my husband. They kept reminding me of that—Nicole did. They had Les and they had my family back in Russia. That’s the kind of weapon they’ve used against all of us.”
“What vicious bastards they are.”
“They’re frightened, Alan. Frightened people do desperate things.”
Spode, at the front window, turned his head. “That’s no excuse.”
“I don’t suppose anything excuses us,” she replied. Her eyes were fixed sightlessly on Forrester’s hands. Spode put his back to the window and stared at Ronnie. Clearly Top could not understand why she had gone along all these years without totting up the odds and deciding, quickly and without regrets, either to remain loyal to the Russians or to betray her comrades and take her chances: one way or the other, it would have been done, over with, a clean decision. To Spolde loyalty was not divisible by two; there was no room in his mind for the idea that anyone could love two people on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gap.
Forrester knew that much about Spode; he wished h
e knew as much about himself. The silence was beginning to stretch, and he knew it was time to move, to act, but his attention was imprisoned by the look on Ronnie’s face when she turned toward him. Her eyes had receded into dark tunnels. He felt a great rushing-out, a desire to embrace her tightly and protect her against them all: he had lost One woman he had loved deeply and now he had lost Ronnie too and it was too much to bear, too much to think about, and yet it was of no importance by comparison with the crisis Ronnie faced. The lie she had lived for twenty years had been terrible enough but at least it had cloaked her in a kind of safety; now even that had been stripped from her and there was no place left for her to turn. How could he protect her? What would happen when she began to think about the future—when the panic set in? What would she do? There was nothing.
Spode’s voice clacked abruptly, directed at Ronnie: “You still don’t know exactly what they’re planning?”
She twisted away from Forrester. “My mind’s full of gaps, Jaime—I don’t remember everything. Something to do with the base—something to do with the missiles. And we’re all supposed to gather at the airport to get away on a plane. To Cuba, I think.”
Spode had opened the door; he pushed it shut and came back. “We can get through the arroyos, I think. There’s no time at all, you know that—we ought to call the President. Put it in his lap. He can get on the hot line with Moscow and tell them to pull their people out of here or else.”
“Or else what, Top? That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“We can’t just sit on it.”
“We’ve been over that. It wouldn’t be kept secret. Once it got out there would be public hysteria. Even assuming war could be avoided the yahoos would demand war and when they didn’t get it there’d be riots, armed troops, panics, shooting.”
Spode said, “It doesn’t have to get out. There’s machinery. We had to keep it oiled when I was in the Agency. The Office of Emergency Preparedness has a chief censor with powers to clamp the lid on everything in a national emergency. We were ready to use it in the Dominican crisis in sixty-five. Once the President invokes those powers nobody can tell the American public it’s under nuclear attack unless the White House clears it.”
“Top, the minute I’m convinced we’ve got no alternative I’ll call the President. But if I called him now he’d have only one thing to do—he wouldn’t have time to uncover their whole net down here and so all he could do would be to slap Moscow with a war ultimatim. As you yourself put it—get them out of here, or else. But if we can pull this off without the use of the hot line we avoid that risk.”
“Pull it off how?”
“Find this man Belsky. We’ve got an opening now: Ramsey Douglass can lead us to him. That may be enough.”
“Jesus God.”
Spode drove at high speed along the freeway. The whine of the tires echoed off the concrete bridge abutments and the car snickered on the bends. Ronnie sat tight against Forrester at hip and knee, her shoulder in the hollow of his armpit. Her face was drawn; she looked old. She had already withstood too much and there was no hope of release. His fingernails dug into his palms and he was filled with a wild rage—and the fearful sense of loss.
He felt the touch of her hand. When he turned, her glance locked his with tremendous impact. Her mouth trembled; she shuddered clear through to her fingertips.
Forrester stirred in the chair, groggy; something was cold against the side of his forehead. When he sat up he realized he had been slumping with his head against the window. When he looked out into the dawn it took him a moment to orient himself. They were back in his motel. Outside, the scene had a squinty-eyed hung-over aspect. Travelers were heaving suitcases into jammed trunk compartments, wiping morning dew off their windshields, slamming doors; faintly he could hear them yapping at their children. The aftermath of yesterday’s flooding had left flotsam blocking the corner drains and puddles in the pavement. He saw deep tire tracks in the motel lawn where someone had sought a route to the parking lot when the water had been flowing eight inches deep.
Spode sat with his hand on the telephone. He was shaking a Coke bottle in his fist and spouting foam into his mouth from three inches away. Ronnie sat curled up in a chair beside the bed, feet drawn up under her, small fists propped under her chin.
“Nothing yet,” Spode said. “The sun’s up. We haven’t even got twelve hours left.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Orozco’s got all his people out looking for Douglass. They tried to find him through Nicole Lawrence but she’s dead.” His teeth were showing. “Killed herself.”
Ronnie closed her eyes. “Then it’s got to be Ramsey, doesn’t it? I don’t know any other members of his cell. My brother was my own cell leader and there were only the four of us—Les and Ross Trumble and Gus Craig and me. Ramsey and Nicole had a larger group—after the first few years there was a reorganization and we were assigned to them for orientation but we never met their people.”
Spode said, “Orozco’s posted a few men at the airport. They’ll start showing up out there but it won’t be until late in the afternoon. We’ve got to get to Belsky sooner than that. Maybe we’ll find Douglass. Maybe not. You’d better set a time limit—when you’re going to call the President.”
Forrester dug at his eyes, yawned wide and stood up tottering. “Just find Ramsey Douglass.”
Ronnie had not opened her eyes. When Forrester had washed his face in the bathroom he returned and she still hadn’t stirred. He knew what it meant: the panic had begun to hit her, she had started to think beyond the now. Her former comrades were about to get on an airplane and go back—home, Russia. But Ronnie had betrayed them and how she had no choices left. She could not go on board the plane with them because once it was discovered that Forrester was on their track they would know they had been betrayed; and Ronnie would be the logical, if not the only, suspect. They would torture her until she confessed, and then they would have their final revenge. No, she could not go with them. Yet she couldn’t remain behind, because then they would send people back to find her. The only way she could be protected from them was by turning herself in, a confessed enemy of the United States.
The phone rang and Spode jerked it to his ear, grunted, listened, grunted again and put it down. “Douglass isn’t home, he isn’t at Nicole’s, and he’s not at his office. They’re looking around the Air Base for him but that’s a lot of area to cover. May take all day.”
“Just find him,” Forrester said. “Just find him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Rykov’s face had a puffed look; his eyes were shattered by bloodshot lines. Outside it was still dark, predawn; bare branches were silhouetted against the street lamps, jagged as cracks in a porcelain surface, and patches of snow had drifted across the glossy cobblestones.
Behind him Andrei said, “You shouldn’t stand like that. An assassin could shoot you easily from anywhere on the rooftops across the street.”
“It hardly matters now, does it.” But Rykov unrolled the blind to coyer the window and turned back to his desk. The enormous room seemed mausoleumlike; the only lamp lighted was the orange-shaded one on the desk. “In Arizona now it is past five in the afternoon.”
“About eighty-five minutes to go,” Andrei agreed. “You’ve failed, you know. You may as well signal Belsky to abort.”
“A cause is not lost so long as someone is willing to go on fighting, Andrei. I have not yet failed completely.” He added, “I assume Comrade Yashin has recommended as a matter of public sanitation that I be quietly executed. There can be no three-judge People’s Court of course. No public airing. I am to be terminated without fuss—suicided, perhaps? It would be fitting—Grigorenko would have his opportunity to trumpet that I had displayed the sincerest form of self-criticism. Or perhaps I am to spend the rest of my days in solitary confinement?”
“I shall do everything I can to see that you are comfortably maintained and that no one harms you.”
�
�Yashin will probably order you to kill me.”
“An order I should disobey.”
“Irrelevant, Andrei. He can always find someone willing to do it. I am not without enemies.”
“We have eighty-two minutes.”
The cabbage soup had gone cold on the desk; the piece of black bread sat on the saucer half-eaten. Rykov put a cigarette in his mouth. He had to hold the match with both hands.
“You must capitulate,” Andrei said. “The Chinese have already begun to withdraw their bluff. They saw it was not working.”
“They need to be taught their lesson, don’t they.”
“The remedy is worse than the disease.”
The back of Rykov’s hand struck his cigarette and showered sparks over his chest. “In any case I’ve been discredited, I’m officially out of office—I haven’t much to lose, have I? One who is already in disgrace can easily afford to indulge his principles.”
He tried to catch some hint of expression on Andrei’s cheeks. Andrei only said, “If I fail to persuade you to abort, of course it means my own head.”
“There are worse things than death, Andrei. As the proverb has it, it is simpler to die than to live.”
“Seventy-four minutes,” Andrei said. “And it will require about twenty minutes for your signal to be relayed to Belsky and for Belsky to act upon it. Say fifty minutes.”
“I am a patriot, Andrei.” Rykov sighed with the hopelessness of a failure beyond his power to correct: it was the first time he had ever faced anything too big for him and the knowledge was bleak. “I am a patriot.”
“One of your difficulties, Andrei, is that you are constantly thinking about the rules of the game without ever asking whether the game itself has meaning. You cannot merely—” He felt the warning run of heavy saliva in his mouth; his shoulders hunched up and his throat filled and he made a dash for the lavatory sink, limping clumsily. He clung to the rim of the basin, vomiting with long agony.
When he rinsed his mouth and returned to the desk he said, “An insufficiency of fortitude. I never suspected it of myself.”
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