Secret Lovers

by Charles McCarry

  Christopher said, “Of course it can play the guitar. Otto said so when he read it in Russian.”

  “But?”

  “But how to do it. Whether to do it, David. What’s the news from the author?”

  “Kamensky is just as he was, rolling about in bed with his young Bohemian girl in his dacha.”

  “No one has bothered him?”

  “Not a whisper, not a hand raised in anger.”

  “You speak as if you’re completely sure.”

  “I am,” Patchen said. “We have certain … technical resources inside the dacha.” He rolled his eye. Patchen held the gadgetry of espionage in amused contempt, in the way that an old-fashioned mountain climber might despise pitons hammered into virgin rock. He whispered the next word: “Microphones.”

  There was nothing for Christopher to say. The risk to Kamen-sky, and to their operation, was appalling.

  “The Moscow station is very proud of those wires,” Patchen said. “They’ve got hours of Kamensky reciting poetry to his mistress, sounds of dishes being washed, teakettles bubbling. The real stuff.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what? Bug the dacha? Because it was there. They didn’t know Kamensky was a CA target.”

  “Do they know now?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Patchen said. “CA ops inside the Soviet Union! It makes their blood run cold.”

  Patchen explained. The report of Bülow’s death had been circulated within Headquarters to the head of the Soviet Russia Division, a man called Dick Sutherland. “Dick came to see me,” Patchen said. “He loves being chief of SR, he has a keen sense of ownership. He was not pleased that Kalmyk, a captain in the Red Army, had been part of the picture. ‘You’re putting another turd in my soup,’ Dick said to me.”

  “That was his expression?”

  “Yes. He calls CA agents Turds. He calls our division the Turd Shop. I want you to know where we stand.”

  “I know where we stand.”

  “You do? Well, Dick is one of those wastebasket cleaners who’d rather lose the Cold War than accept help from covert action to win it. Someday this inner tension in the outfit is going to cause an explosion and we’re going to be spattered, Turds and Sutherlands together, all over the scenery. But not today. I want to go on with this, because it’s something you have to know.”

  Before Patchen spoke again, he cut all the lamb on his plate into pieces and ate it. When the watchful waiter started toward the table to serve him more, Patchen held up a palm to keep him away.

  “Sutherland told me that Kamensky’s mistress is in the employ of the KGB,” Patchen said.

  “What a surprise.”

  “Ah, but there is a surprise. She is also in Sutherland’s employ. She was a KGB party girl. Her employers sent her to Stockholm last year to perform disgusting acts with an American colonel for their cameras, and Sutherland set her up. He got pictures of her enjoying a Swedish girl when she should have been munching on the colonel, doubled her, and sent her back to Moscow. When the KGB assigned her to make friends with old Kamensky, Sutherland thought he’d get first look at any manuscripts, and all the credit.”

  “And now he knows we got in before him?”

  “Yes. It appears there are some things Kamensky doesn’t tell young Masha, or whatever her name is. No doubt he learned caution the hard way.”

  “Or else there are things Masha doesn’t tell Sutherland, but does tell the KGB.”

  “Dick says no. Evidently he has a control of some kind on her reporting to the Russians.”

  “So the KGB doesn’t know we have the book?”

  “If it was the KGB that killed Bülow, then they know. We simply don’t know what they know.”

  Christopher asked for more wine. Patchen put a finger on the rim of his glass to stop the sommelier from pouring claret into it.

  “We seldom know anything,” Christopher said. “What are we assuming?”

  “Dick Sutherland talks about something called gaming. It’s what used to be called the scenario. The way Dick games it, the opposition knows everything, the opposition is responsible for the event in Berlin.”

  “Therefore?”

  “Therefore publishing The Little Death will protect Kamensky rather than put him in hazard because, if they kill him as a punishment for being a genius who wrote the truth, they will have to kill him in full view of the world public.”

  “That’s assuming a great deal.”

  “Yes, but don’t we always?”

  What Patchen said was true. For the most part, men like him had nothing to go on but assumptions. They guessed at the truth, seizing facts as a pack of hunting animals will rip mouthfuls of meat from a large beast they have surrounded in the dark. They assumed that everyone was an enemy and a liar. They believed nothing, especially not a concrete fact. Concrete, Patchen was fond of saying, could be poured in any shape. He and his colleagues never knew anything for certain. They had a dangerous weakness, and Christopher spoke of it now.

  “I have a feeling I’ve been here before,” he said. “Headquarters wants this operation. Therefore they are making the only assumption that makes the operation inevitable.”

  “You really don’t have to go on, Paul. I know how angry our frailties make you.”

  “Men die. You gamesters are always a long way away when that happens.”

  Patchen pointed at Christopher’s untouched food. Christopher didn’t pick up his silverware. They were almost alone in the restaurant, and the sound of traffic came into the room.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me that we’re making the precise assumption that Otto wants us to make?” Patchen asked.

  “Otto usually pushes the right buttons.”

  “Sometimes he’s right, Paul. He’s an old hand.”

  “If he’s wrong this time, we’ll have killed Kiril Kamensky,” Christopher said. “I don’t give a shit what Dick Sutherland wants to believe.”

  Patchen stretched and put a hand on the small of his back. He sat straighter in his chair, watching impassively while Christopher ate the food that had gone cold on his plate.

  At last Patchen said, “The significant fact is that the smuggling operation was airtight until it got to Berlin and Horst Bülow.”

  “Yes. Don’t you find it curious that the Soviet service would let the manuscript get that far if they knew what it was? Doesn’t Dick find it odd?”

  “It’s Dick’s job to blame everything on the Russians,” Patchen said. He broke off some bread and put it into his mouth and chewed while he spoke; the crudity of the act suggested Sutherland, as it was supposed to do. “The KGB makes Dick possible, after all,” Patchen said.

  A young black dressed as a Moorish servant brought coffee. Patchen drank his at a gulp. He tapped his watch; they were due at the Rothchilds’ in twenty minutes, and Christopher knew that he wanted to discuss ways of stimulating Rothchild to speak of his feelings about the Kamensky operation. There was time enough to do that on the walk to the Ile Saint-Louis. Patchen called for the bill.

  “There is,” Christopher said, “another possibility, of course. That Horst was set up by somebody from our side.”

  “Yes,” Patchen said, counting out bright French banknotes onto the tablecloth. “I’d thought of that.”

  2

  A bell system had been installed in the Rothchilds’ apartment so that Otto could summon Maria, or the maid, when he needed something. Now, as he pressed his foot on the concealed button, he explained apologetically to Patchen that he did not like the idea of having uninspected wires of any kind in his house, but the bells were a necessity because he could no longer speak loudly enough to be heard from room to room. Maria came in, and he said, “Give David and Paul to drink.” There were small lapses in Otto’s flowing English, as in his French. He spoke both languages with a faint German accent, because German had been the first foreign language he had learned.

  Rothchild was alert, almost nervous. Christopher thought that he must scent som
ething in the way Patchen was treating him. Patchen was more aloof than usual, less interested in Rothchild’s small talk. Rothchild was wary of small changes in men. He watched Patchen and Christopher, his head at one side as if he could hear, very faintly, the dying sounds of the words they had spoken to each other about him as they approached the apartment. Patchen was looking at a painting. Rothchild spoke his name sharply; Patchen turned.

  “Time is going by, David,” Rothchild said. “Why aren’t we moving faster?”

  “There are always delays, Otto. The bureaucracy worries about taking risks.”

  “There will be risk,” Rothchild said, “any way we do it. If you don’t take risks you don’t get anything done.”

  Patchen turned his eye from Rothchild to Christopher. “Otto’s Law,” he said.

  “I am trying to teach you,” Rothchild said. He closed his eyes. Patchen went on talking to him; he had discovered that Rothchild heard what was said to him even when he seemed to be unconscious.

  “It’s Christopher who’ll be taking the risks,” Patchen said. “You and I will stay inside while he does all the work. It’s his skin, and I want him to control the temperature of the operation.”

  Rothchild awakened. With a weak movement of his head he invited Christopher to speak to him.

  “Otto,” Christopher said, “I have to tell you that I have misgivings about this project.”

  ‘We’d all be astonished if you did not, Paul,” Rothchild said. “What bothers you?”

  “Security. We’ve had a man killed. Usually we take that as a sign that something is wrong.”

  Rothchild glared at Christopher. It was evident, whatever Maria thought, that the surgeons had not got all the anger out of him.

  “Paul,” he said, “I’m tired of hearing about Horst Bülow being run over in Berlin. The idiot from Security has been here half a dozen times, asking this, asking that, gnawing the bones of this dead German. The incident is irrelevant. Horst Bülow was irrelevant. He always was.”

  “You knew him?”

  Patchen, who had gone back to the bar, waited with an empty glass in his hand for Rothchild’s answer.

  Rothchild lifted a trembling hand, the shadow of his old fierce gesture of impatience. “Of course I knew him,” he said. “I recruited him. He was a prisoner in the French zone and he thought they would shoot him if they found out about his Abwehr connection. It’s all in the file. I keep telling that person from Security that simple fact–everything is in the file.”

  He began to cough. Maria strode across the room and held a glass of water to his lips.

  “This is very upsetting to Otto,” she said. “Do you have to talk about this particular subject?”

  “Yes,” Patchen said.

  “Bülow’s death doesn’t seem irrelevant to me,” Christopher said. “If it was the opposition.….”

  “Who else would it be?” Rothchild asked. “A careless driver?” “If it was the opposition,” Christopher continued, “then we have to assume they knew what Bülow was carrying, and that they’ll take reprisals.”

  “Reprisals? Against whom–Kamensky?”

  “Yes, and his friends who took the risk of getting the manuscript out for him.”

  “You keep forgetting. It was Kamensky who initiated this situation. He sent me the book. I didn’t ask him to do so.”

  “So you’ve said before. But, Otto, he instructed you not to publish while he was still alive.”

  “We can’t let ourselves be controlled by any such sentimentality as that.”

  Rothchild slumped in his chair again. His mouth was open, and he ran his pale tongue over his lips. Maria gave him another drink of water. Christopher sat back in his own chair and crossed his legs. He looked at Patchen but as usual could read nothing in his friend’s deadened face.

  “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 Metro the two stops to the Place de l’Odeon, 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 Kamenslcy.”

  “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.