“What are you talking about?” His voice was warm with sympathy. “What’s the matter, sis?”
“I just wondered.”
He laughed softly. “I know. I used to want it to be true, too. But he did what he did. There’s no changing that.”
“I see.”
A pause: they really had little to say to each other. She decided to make her excuses and promise to consider his insincere invitation to visit, and then she would hang up and—
“Although, now that you mention it, there was one funny thing,” said Corbin. “After the war ended—I think about 1946—I remember because I’d just turned seven, so you would have been, I guess, three—this man came to the house to see Mom. Caucasian. He said he knew Dad in the war, and that he wanted her to know how brave he’d been, and how he’d done important work, even though he wasn’t at liberty to tell her why.” The gentle laugh again. “I remember those words—‘not at liberty’—because I’d never heard that phrase before, and I had to ask Nana what it meant.”
“Do you remember anything else about him? What he looked like?”
“Just that he was a pudgy little fellow. Oh, and there was something wrong with his hand.”
“Something like what?”
“Come on, sis. It’s been a long time.”
“Please. Whatever you can remember.”
“Mmmm. Let me see. I think maybe it was his fingers. They were all bent, like they’d been broken or something.”
III
That night, she went with Jerri and Annalise to hear a speaker on the subject of the Freedom Rides that had begun last year. Jerri went in the hope of hearing evidence that the revolution was near. Margo went because Annalise dragged her: Niemeyer had hinted in class that he might ask them on next week’s midterm exam to use the tools of conflict theory to analyze the civil-rights demonstrations. There weren’t many black students at Cornell, but nearly all were in attendance tonight, and some few had gone South as Riders. Margo had talked about joining, but Nana forbade her: Nothing’s more important than your studies, child. You didn’t see the white kids skipping class to ride those buses down South. Let the cops beat on some other fool. Actually, a lot of white kids had gone, but arguing with Nana was like arguing with the weather. Sitting in the auditorium now, listening as the young Negro man in white shirt and dark tie described being beaten savagely for sitting in the wrong section of an interstate bus, and then spending a night in jail, Margo experienced none of the guilt she had anticipated. Instead, she sat serenely. She saw up on the stage not an individual who had made sacrifices she hadn’t, but a fellow sufferer. She was proud of him; but of herself, too.
Then she looked across the auditorium and spotted Phil Littlejohn looking back, and her mood faded.
“What’s he doing here?” she asked her friends as they left.
“Maybe he’s interested in race relations,” said Jerri, fumbling for a smoke.
“Or some kind of relations,” said Annalise. She smiled at Margo’s surprise. “He’s got a little crush on you.”
“He has a creepy way of showing it.”
“He’s accustomed to getting what he wants. He doesn’t know how to deal with a girl who says no.”
“How about taking her at her word?”
After the lecture, Margo split off from the others and headed for the library, where she was supposed to meet Tom to study together. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to, because she was tired of fighting and also tired of his treating her as if she had betrayed his trust. But she had never quite been able to shed the dependability her grandmother had drilled into her.
She was passing the statue of Andrew Dickson White when a tall man materialized from the shadows and fell into step beside her. When Margo heard the voice, she wondered if she might be asleep.
“Don’t look at me, Miss Jensen,” said Aleksandr Fomin. “There’s someone following you. Don’t turn around. It is important that we talk. Don’t go into the library. Just keep walking as if you’re headed into town. I will pick you up on the street. Look for a brown Chevy.”
She was about to rebuke him, but he had already melted into the night.
NINETEEN
Conduit
I
They drove in silence through downtown Ithaca. Fomin seemed to know the area well. He turned right, and they crossed the Cayuga Street bridge as Fall Creek raged noisily beneath. Margo wasn’t sure why she had gotten into the car; she wasn’t sure why she was so calm. She particularly wasn’t sure why she hadn’t run into the library and grabbed Tom, stopping off first only to call the emergency number Harrington had given her before she left for Bulgaria. She only knew that nobody on campus could understand what she had gone through, and seeing Fomin, the KGB colonel who had interrogated her and threatened her in Varna, was like running into a long-lost friend. Oddly, she did not feel in the least unsafe.
Although a part of her still wasn’t sure she wasn’t dreaming.
“It was not easy for me to get here,” Fomin finally said, his voice as flat and heavy as she remembered. “The movements of Soviet nationals in your country are severely restricted by the war clique in Washington.”
Margo wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to express sympathy for his plight or admiration for his courage. She chose to take the comment as rhetorical. A strange calm descended upon her. Harrington had warned her about this, too: the way the body and mind, once the weeks of fear were past, could come to miss the adrenaline rush of danger, so that in the end the only way to gain any peace was to put oneself back in harm’s way.
Maybe. Maybe not. All she knew for sure was that the sound of his voice had come as a relief.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
But the answer was obvious. They had turned in at the entrance to Stewart Park, bordering the southern shore of Cayuga Lake. Shadows yawned everywhere. Ithaca was a middle-class town; Stewart was very much a middle-class park. By day, it hosted ice-cream socials and small-boat races and Boy Scout events in warm weather; ice carnivals and snowmen and caroling in the cold. Margo had never seen the park so dark or so empty, and it had never occurred to her that the broad lawns and bold trees and lapping waves might take on this sinister mien. A gate stood open. There were very few lights. They wound along the pavement past a parking lot. In the night shadows, a somber edifice loomed menacingly, but it was only the former army-reserve training building, known locally as the Tin Can because of its corrugated construction. Nowadays, the structure was used for public-service activities. Margo had visited the Tin Can many times in connection with her volunteer work with the city’s kids. But she had never been here at this hour, least of all in the company of a Soviet intelligence officer.
“We must talk,” Fomin repeated. “This is a quiet place.”
“It’s a public park.”
“The park is closed at this hour.”
“The gate is open,” Margo began, because argument was how she identified her reality, but when she turned to look, she could tell even through the gloom that it was shut again. “You’re not here alone,” she said.
Fomin said nothing. They drove past the Tin Can. Fifty yards on the other side was a children’s playground. He stopped the car. They climbed out. Fomin led the way. He was smoking one of the foul cigarettes she remembered from Varna, although she did not remember seeing him light this one. The playground swings were as still as sentinels.
“I apologize for the drama,” he finally said. “Unfortunately, there is very little time. We have much to discuss, you and I.”
“About what?”
“About how we are going to prevent a thermonuclear war.”
II
They walked, along a path leading past the shuttered ice-cream stand, through the young trees, toward Cayuga Lake. Margo expected whoever else was out there to follow like a faithful guard dog, in the manner of Niemeyer’s teaching assistants, but when she looked over her shoulder there was only darkness.
&nb
sp; “I have sought you out because I trust you,” Fomin said. “There is no other reason. I am here because there are very few who can be trusted, on either side. It was difficult to get here,” he repeated.
She glanced at him. The calm was still with her. Class reunion. Old friends’ day. “Because you’re not allowed this far north,” she said, remembering the fact from some book Niemeyer had assigned. “You’re a Soviet diplomat. You’re only allowed in certain cities, or to travel between them, or within ninety miles of them.”
“This is correct.” His tone was rueful. “But I am ignoring the restrictions. I came here to find you, Miss Jensen. Our two countries are about to go to war, and you and I have to stop it.”
Margo stared. Her aplomb never faded. So. The dream at last. Her grandmother’s roof, the perfect blue sky, the bombs falling invisibly, the world an incinerated ruin.
“I’m not a spy,” she pointed out, the same line she had repeated ad nauseam in Bulgaria.
“Perhaps that is the reason I trust you,” he repeated. He gestured with the cigarette. In the darkness, the tip described a bright red arc. “An interrogation, Miss Jensen, is only in the second instance an effort to uncover information. It is, in the first instance, an effort to study another human being. To understand his strengths and weaknesses, his fears and his dreams, his degree of resilience. Or hers, as the case may be. I have interrogated you, Miss Jensen, and I trust you. There is no other American I trust.”
“Trust to do what?”
“Please, listen carefully. I have a message for your President.”
This brought her up short. They were standing in the sand now, a few covered boats bobbing nearby. Yellow moonlight flirted and played on the flat black water.
“My President. You mean Kennedy.”
“Yes.”
She felt slow and stupid. “If you have a message for the President, maybe you should be at the White House.”
“I wish you to deliver it.”
Again she shut her eyes, worrying that same fold of skin. She said nothing. Most of her didn’t believe him.
“There are missiles in Cuba,” Fomin said. “Actual missiles,” he continued, as the world did flip-flops. “They are intermediate-range missiles, type R-12 Dvina. Your military designates this as the SS-4, or the Sandal, the successor to what you previously labeled the SS-3, or the Shyster. Range, about two thousand kilometers. There are also R-14 missiles on the way. Your military calls these the SS-5, or Skean. Range, about four thousand kilometers, maybe a bit more. Has Niemeyer taught you these types?”
She heard her voice as if over a great distance. The shadows seemed to thicken, gathering a shuddery substance. She imagined capering demons just out of sight. “No. No, he hasn’t.”
“Listen, then. These missiles would be able to deliver warheads in the megaton range to more than half of your country. There would be very little warning. Less even than if you were to use your Jupiter missiles in Turkey, or the Polaris submarines. They are a first-strike weapon, Miss Jensen. Do you understand?”
Margo was gazing at the dark water. Niemeyer had shown them declassified films of thermonuclear tests. One of the explosions had been set off at sea. The water had boiled into what the narrator called, with understatement, a “water column.” The column weighed millions of tons. To Margo it had looked like the hand of some sea god, whose sudden lurch from beneath the surface caused a tsunami. The wave had knocked over heavy ships as if they were tin cans. The spray, felt at a distance of miles, was intensely radioactive. She supposed that Cayuga Lake would cease to exist.
“I understand,” she said, voice faint, remembering the dream.
“The President knows about the missiles, Miss Jensen. Your spy aircraft have been overflying Cuba for several days. He is presumably in the process of deciding how best to respond.”
“Okay,” she said, only because Fomin had paused, and seemed to expect some response.
“He has already met with our foreign minister, who of course denied everything, but our foreign minister is not fully informed. Our side expects that your President will shortly offer negotiations, probably in Washington. We will attend, naturally. Everyone will declare their desire for a peaceful solution to the issues that divide us. But here is the important part, Miss Jensen. Are you listening?”
She was listening.
“The negotiations will fail. There will be war.” She glanced at his face, but his gloomy visage was turned toward the water. “Thermonuclear war, Miss Jensen. The last war, very probably, that the planet will ever endure.”
III
The fog was lifting. She could dimly pick out lights on the far shore: houses, a car or two crawling along the road.
“This is why you had me arrested,” she said. Her throat felt clotted, perhaps with nuclear ash. “You wanted to find out if you could trust me.”
Fomin did not answer directly. “You are an extraordinary young woman. Much as your father was an extraordinary man.” He was walking again, taking long strides like a man late for an appointment. “It is difficult to trust someone not raised to doctrine, but you seem quite unsullied by bourgeois so-called freedom. You are young. You are of an oppressed minority. You are not part of the ruling class, despite your ambition. You are not a part of the war clique, despite your admiration for Niemeyer, who is among its leaders.”
“Even if you’re right about any of that, you couldn’t have known it at the time of my arrest. Not unless you were already investigating me.”
Again he ignored her challenge. “You are Niemeyer’s student. Therefore, tell me, please, the first rule of negotiation.”
The direct inquiry popped her back into A-student mode. “Each side must have something the other wants.”
“Exactly. The Soviet side has something you want: the removal of the missiles. But, Miss Jensen, at the moment, your side has nothing we want. There is nothing you are able to offer that would satisfy us. Not around a negotiation table.” He let out a sigh; flicked the cigarette away. “Yours is such a beautiful country, Miss Jensen. So large and rich and powerful. Your people are full of confidence. Your homeland has not been battered and brutalized as ours has, and so you cannot possibly appreciate the suspicion with which we look upon powerful neighbors.”
“We’re not neighbors,” Margo protested. The night shadows were whirling close now, enclosing her in empty darkness.
“In a world of nuclear missiles, Miss Jensen, we must behave as though we are. And this is the point. We lost twenty million people in the Great Patriotic War. Try to imagine it, Miss Jensen. Twenty million. After such devastation, we dare not trust any nation in the world. We cannot abide America’s growing military might. We cannot allow you to possess more power than we. This has nothing to do with your actual intentions. Our history has taught us to assume that everyone is ranged against us, no matter what words they use, no matter what terms they offer. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but—”
“Miss Jensen, let us be frank. You have many more missiles than we do. Your President told the country during his campaign that you are behind us, but this is not so. You have always had more. More missiles, more warheads, more planes. And, if we are honest, we must admit that your technology is advancing much faster than ours. Our long-range economic forecasts—the private ones presented to our leaders—are also not good. In ten years, perhaps even five, your country will have consolidated its technological and economic advantages. You will be so far ahead that we will be past the point where it is even possible to speak of a balance. You will be able to dictate, and we will have to follow. This, of course, is unsupportable.”
“I can’t believe—”
“This is our last chance, Miss Jensen. Either we strike you now, or we content ourselves to accept the failure of our great socialist experiment. That is why there are missiles in Cuba. And that is why we cannot withdraw them.”
She needed a moment to slow her heart, and to remember to breathe. “Are yo
u saying that your side wants a nuclear war?”
“Perhaps some on your side, too.”
We’re the good guys! she shouted—but only in her mind. Aloud she said, “I still don’t understand what you want me to do about it.”
Fomin was on the move again, along the lake, toward the boathouses that lined the western shore. For a while they marched in silence. He stopped near a small inlet where a slim one-man sailboat had been beached.
“This is a child’s boat,” he said, after a brief study.
“I guess so.”
“Do you wish to have children, Miss Jensen?”
“One day. Of course.”
He nodded. “I myself have three children. I see them rarely because of my duties, but I would like them to live. That is why I do the work that I do.”
“I understand,” she said, although she didn’t.
Fomin’s voice grew weary. “What I have told you is the truth, but it is only one version of the truth—the version that is believed by the party ideologues, by the leaders of our military, and even by many in our diplomatic corps. War with the Main Enemy is inevitable, and it is better to fight it sooner, on our terms, than later, on yours.” He was in motion again, the worried soldier unable to rest. “Those are the people who will dominate the negotiation. The Comrade General Secretary cannot act publicly without their support. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“But their view is not his view. The Comrade General Secretary is a good Communist, but he is also a pragmatist. He believes that your system will collapse in time because of its own contradictions. He believes it is an error to try to force matters now. So he would prefer to find a peaceful solution to the problem presented by the missiles in Cuba. The difficulty is that it cannot be pursued in the course of public negotiation. The ideologues will not allow it. If the public negotiation is the only one that takes place, there will be war. Do you understand, Miss Jensen?”
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