by Stuart Woods
“Sorry, I’m prying.”
“No, you’re not; I guess I just feel like talking about it, and I know I can trust you. It’s a rather unusual feeling, in my job, to trust somebody. I’ve missed it.”
“How’d you get into this business, anyway?”
“Well, I’d finished Barnard and Columbia Law, and I suddenly discovered I didn’t want to practice law, and I didn’t want to go into business, either. My roommate at Barnard, Brooke Kirkland, was in the Russian Studies program at Columbia, and she got me interested. Halfway through my last year, one of my professors—I was never sure which one—put an Agency recruiter onto me, and a month after graduation I found myself at the Quantico Marine Base firing submachineguns and learning to kill with a single blow.
“I’d better watch my step.”
“Damn right.”
“Do you think there’s somebody in Moscow keeping tabs on you, the way you’re keeping tabs on Majorov?”
She laughed. “There probably is, since I’ve worked abroad. The two sides nearly always know who the players are in an embassy. They probably have an embarrassing photograph of me scratching myself in Rome.”
“Or of you and Simon wading in the Trevi Fountain.”
“That would be embarrassing. Boris is probably still trying to figure that one out.”
He laughed and turned back to his cooking. “Listen, go sit out on the terrace and let me do this. Ready in half an hour.”
Rule refilled her glass and wandered through the French doors to the deck overlooking the paved garden below. She arranged herself on a chaise so that she could watch him moving about the kitchen. She liked watching him cook; it seemed such an unlikely thing for him to be good at. He was good at his work, good in bed, and good, in general, at making her happy. He was just what she needed for this time in her life: he was bright and funny, but he could be serious; he was genuinely fond of her without being oppressive; he wasn’t divorced, thank God; she’d had enough of divorced men, whining about their property settlements and wanting, desperately, to get married again. Will had never been married, and, while he didn’t seem terrified by the idea, neither was he looking for it. He got along with Peter if they were together, but he wasn’t always scratching at her door with a football, trying to endear himself to her through the boy. He was a big, husky man. She was five feet, ten inches tall, and he was taller, even when she wore heels; she liked that. He was thirty-eight, four years older than she, and that was about right, she thought.
He was security-safe, too, and for her, that was no small thing. They had met a couple of months before in the local supermarket; she’d thought he was just another legislative assistant, and she’d told him what she usually told people, that she was a lawyer for the Department of Agriculture (that usually stopped any further conversation about work). Neither of them had known quite what the other did until they had both turned up in the same committee hearing. There was a potential conflict of interest, she knew, since part of her job was getting more government funds, and part of his was making sure she didn’t get too much, but forbidden fruit was tastier. Since the divorce from Simon, she’d had a rule against going out with agency men, and she was sick of lying to outsiders about her work. Will had been the perfect answer; he had a top security clearance, and she had taken the precaution of reading his FBI file, something she felt secretly guilty about. They had rarely talked much shop, but once in a while when she was excited about something, like Majorov, it was good to let off a little steam, knowing it would go no further.
They’d been sailing a couple of times on Chesapeake Bay, where he had a boat, but they didn’t go out much—not that it mattered, since only a handful of people in Washington would be likely to know who both of them were—Will liked to cook, and she liked it here.
He had laid the table in the dining room and closed the shutters to make the most of the candlelight. It was a perfectly beautiful dinner: the sweetbreads were crunchy on the outside and creamy inside, the flavor of the wrinkled mushrooms blended perfectly with them, and the champagne was big and yeasty.
“God, this is wonderful,” she said. “Listen, do I know you well enough to ask how you live so well on a government salary? I mean, you do own this house, don’t you?”
He smiled. “Yes, I own it, and yes, you know me well enough.” He sipped his wine. “I’ve got some capital, from the family, and I’m still a law partner with my father. Lee and Lee, the firm is called.”
“Back in Georgia—what was the town, Delano?”
“You’ve got a good memory.”
“Your father was, what—lieutenant governor? Governor?”
“Both. He’s been out of politics for a while, concentrating on the law practice and the family cattle farm. He’s a good guy; he should have been president.”
“Why wasn’t he?”
“Didn’t want it badly enough to do what he had to do, I think. He wants me to run for the Senate next year, against the Republican, Abney.”
“Why don’t you? You’d make a terrific senator.”
“Oh, I’d like the work, I think; I’m not sure I’d like the campaigning. I don’t know if I can eat that much barbecue and live. Also, Abney is such a weak senator that half the Democrats in the state want to run against him. There’s going to be a ferocious Democratic primary.”
“Wouldn’t you have your father’s political friends on your side?”
“Some of them, I guess. I’d have all of his enemies against me, that’s for sure.”
“What about Senator Carr? Would he back you?”
“He might. I haven’t asked him, but he’s brought up the subject a couple of times. I guess I’m thinking about it.” He seemed to want to change the subject. “Uh, Kate, do you think we know each other well enough to travel together?”
She smiled. “Sure we do. What did you have in mind?”
“Well, a friend of mine in London has bought a new boat. He’d planned to pick it up next month at the factory, on the west coast of Finland, and sail it to England, but work has cut into his holiday. I’ve said I’d sail it as far as Copenhagen. I’ve never sailed in the Baltic, and it should be nice in June. It’s a nice boat, called a Swan; forty-two feet long, well equipped, including an autopilot. The two of us could handle it, easily; take us about a week, say ten days outside. Would you like to come?”
Rule thought for a moment. She’d enjoyed the outings on Chesapeake Bay, but she wasn’t as nuts about sailing as Will was, and she knew she’d end up as cook, which he could do better, too. It didn’t seem the most promising sort of vacation. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll pass on the sailing until I’ve had more experience; but I’ll meet you in Copenhagen. How’s that?”
He grinned. “Okay, great. I guess I can scare up a crew somewhere.”
She felt a sudden, jealous pang. She hoped he didn’t mean a female crew.
A little after two in the morning, she eased herself out of bed without waking him, and got dressed. She loved falling asleep with him but hated waking up at his house, she wasn’t sure why. Probably some qualm from her puritanical upbringing coming back to haunt her. She closed the front door quietly and started toward her house. There was a distant noise of traffic, but in the elegant, little street there was no one but her. Or was there? Rule thought she heard a shoe scuff against the pavement across the street. She stopped. Had it been only an echo of her own footsteps? She walked a bit more quickly, the leather heels of her loafers clicking against the cement, making their hollow sound in the deserted street. As she reached the corner and crossed into her own block, she heard the noise from the other side of the street again, and, simultaneously, a car started somewhere down the block behind her. She took one quick look over her shoulder; if there was someone on the other side of the street, he was behind a tree; the street seemed empty. Further back down the block, though, badly lit by the infrequent street lamps, she caught a glimpse of a car moving slowly toward her. Its headlights were off.
She moved still faster and thought. God knew Washington wasn’t short of muggers, but in Georgetown? At this hour of the morning? Pickings would be awfully lean for a mugger. She nearly sprinted the last fifty yards to her house. She ran up the steps and fumbled with the key. The car had stopped fifty yards away; the driver was only a shape. She heard another sound from the other side of the street.
The door finally came open, and she slipped quickly inside. She went immediately to a small desk in the hallway, opened a bottom drawer and took out a nine mm automatic pistol. She worked the action, flipped off the safety, and stepped to the front window. As she eased back a corner of the curtain, the headlights of the car came on, illuminating the figure of a man, crossing in front of it. Just a tiny second, but enough to know that it was the same man she had seen earlier.
The car drove away, unhurriedly; she heard it stop, then turn left at the corner. She leaned against the wall and let her pulse return to normal. Not muggers. For just a moment, she entertained the wholly irrational thought that Majorov knew she was after him, and now he was after her.
It was a stupid thought, but when she finally fell asleep, the pistol was still in her hand.
5
HELDER hooked his toes more firmly under the hiking strap and sat even further out until he was using all the tiller extension and the Finn dinghy was screaming along on a plane, doing better than ten knots and casting spray everywhere. It was a new boat, and he knew he could get it to do even better if he had the time to tune it properly. Still, it had been four years since he had taken the helm of a Finn, and what he felt now was pure joy. He tried to remember the last time he had felt this way. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so relaxed, either; probably never. He had spent the last week running, reading, watching the amazing American television, eating wonderful Scandinavian and French dishes and screwing Trina Ragulin, all with an enthusiasm and sense of wonder that still filled him. There was but one cloud on an otherwise uncluttered horizon; he was soon going to have to do something to pay for this glorious existence, and, with the sense of pessimism instilled by a lifetime of dealing with the Soviet system, he could not but believe that the price demanded of him would be high. As if in reply to this thought, there entered his field of vision a gleaming white electric cart, driven by colonel Majorov. The cart wound down the hillside toward the marina, and Helder somehow knew the man was coming for him. He’d give his new commanding officer a little display, he thought.
He turned the dinghy downwind and sailed toward the beach where the smaller boats were launched and recovered. Then he stood up in the notoriously unstable Finn and gybed, ducking easily under the low boom. A moment later he repeated the maneuver. He noted with some satisfaction that a group of his fellow officers ashore had stopped whatever they had been doing and were watching, transfixed. He continued to gybe and duck, tacking the dinghy downwind, still standing; then, when it seemed he would drive the boat right up onto the beach, he rounded up into the wind, let the boat stop, and stepped lightly into the knee-deep water. The group of officers stared silently at him for a moment, then turned back to their own boats.
As he pulled the dinghy ashore on its trolley, Majorov glided up in his electric cart. “Good morning, Helder,” the colonel said. “That was quite a demonstration.”
Helder feigned ignorance. “Good morning, sir. Oh, you mean the gybing? Well, the wind was in the right place.”
Majorov laughed and waved him into the cart. The little machine began whining its way back up the hill. “It was just such balance and precision that brought you to my attention in the first place,” the colonel said. “It may interest you to know, Helder, that in your entrance examinations for the naval college some years ago, you achieved the highest scores ever recorded on the spatial orientation tests, higher even than those of Yuri Gagarin, who had held the record up until that time.”
Helder had not, of course, known his examination scores, but he remembered that his examiners had seemed impressed. No matter what machines they put him on or how they had spun or turned him, he still had known which way was up.
Majorov continued. “There was, in fact, a little battle between the submarine fleet and the space arm about your future. At the time there was something of a glut of cosmonaut candidates, so the fleet won. I am very glad they did, or you might be orbiting the earth today instead of being here with us.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Helder replied, warming to the praise. There had been precious little of it the last few years, no matter how brilliantly he had performed. Majorov slowed the cart to allow a troop of men in sweat clothes, all jogging precisely in time, to cross the gravel path. “Have you been getting your land legs back? Getting some exercise?” he asked. “I want you fit.”
“Yes, Colonel. I have been running every day. I’d like to get in some squash, but I haven’t had a partner.”
Majorov nodded. “I know you must have been feeling a bit isolated. The others are training in classes, and you will be joining some of them, beginning tomorrow. But I am afraid that much of your training will be rather solitary. Today, I want you to meet Mr. Jones.” He swung the cart onto a new path and aimed it toward a lowlying building. “Mr. Jones is our name for your teller of tales, your legendmaker. Do you know what a legend is, Helder?”
“A historical myth, do you mean?”
“Exactly that, but in your case the meaning becomes more personal.” Majorov stopped the cart in front of the building but did not get out. “It is just possible that your assignment may take you abroad for a time. Should this occur you must be able to give a plausible account of yourself. With that in mind, Mr. Jones has created a legend, or new identity for you. You must learn all that he tells you quickly and well, then you must begin to live it. We cannot have you fall unprepared into the hands of a foreign police force, and this identity will keep you safe for a few days, which is the maximum time you might ever need it.” Helder followed as the colonel got out of the car and walked into the building, walking directly into an office. A man in a blue suit rose from behind a desk. “This is Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, this is .. .?” Majorov indicated Helder.
“Carl Bengt Swenson,” Jones replied. “Please sit down, Mr. Swenson,” he said to Helder. “May I call you Carl?”
Helder sat down. “Of course,” he said.
“I will leave you in Mr. Jones’s capable hands, now,” Majorov said. “Tomorrow, in addition to more sessions with him, you will begin other classes. I’ll see you then.” Majorov left the room and Helder turned to face Mr. Jones.
“Please come over here, Carl,” Jones said, walking to a corner of the room where a camera had been set up. “Put on these clothes,” he said, handing Helder a shirt, tie and tweed jacket that he recognized from the closet of his own room. He did as he was told and stood against a screen to have his photograph taken. Jones pulled the Polaroid film from the camera, stripped off the covering paper, and waited for it to develop. “Very nice,” he said, “if I do say so.” He turned over the sheet of four pictures and stamped something on the back of each. “Sam’s Fast Foto, Grand Central Station, New York City,” the print read. Jones cut the pictures apart, clipped two of them to a blank form, and pushed it across the desk to Helder with a pen. “This is an application form for an American passport. It needs to be filled out in your own hand and signed.” He pushed across a typed sheet of paper. “This contains the correct information.”
Helder took the pen and quickly filled out the application, learning in the process that he had been born in Duluth, Minnesota, to the former Helga Erikson and Bengt Swenson, both Swedish immigrants. He lived at 73 West Tenth Street in New York City.
Jones took the completed form, left the room for a moment, then returned. “Good,” he said. “The application will be made the day after tomorrow at the passport office on Fifth Avenue in New York. It will be issued the same day, and you will have it by the end of the week. The appropria
te entry and exit stamps will be entered later.” Jones took a wallet from his desk drawer and handed it to Helder. It was of black lizard and slightly worn, bent, as if it had been in someone’s hip pocket for a time. “Open it and sign the enclosed credit cards on the back.”
Helder opened the wallet and removed an American Express card, a Visa card, and charge cards for stores called Bloomingdale’s, Sak’s Fifth Avenue, and Barney’s. He also signed a New York State driver’s license, which Jones said would be laminated and returned to him, and a battered Social Security card.
“Some other possessions you must keep with you at all times,” Jones said, pushing various items across the desk. “This is a class ring from the University of Minnesota, suitably worn; See if it fits.” It did. “Here is a key ring from Tiffany’s which contains the keys to your apartment and mailbox.” Helder pocketed the keys. “And here is an artist’s pen called a Rapidograph. I believe you draw.” Helder nodded. Jones pushed across a sketching pad with the name of a New York art supply store printed on it. “Just sitting and drawing is an excellent way to pass the time in a strange place without calling undue attention to yourself. You may find it useful.”
Helder picked up the pen and examined it. “Is this a weapon of some sort, as well?”
Jones laughed. “No, nothing as exotic as that. People who work with such a pen daily often use it for everything else, too. You are a commercial artist, you see.” Jones thumped a thick stack of paper onto the desk. “This is a very detailed biography. You must memorize it, of course, but more than that, you must live it. You must invent the detail between the lines. Your mother, you will see, was a country school teacher with a nose broken in a childhood accident. You might extend that fact, for instance, to say that, although the broken nose gave her a tough-looking appearance, she was, in fact, the softest and kindest of persons. You must constantly imagine this sort of detail to flesh out the biography. Your legend will be greatly more convincing if you do that.”