‘It’s Moscow,’ she said. ‘I know it’s Moscow. Anywhere else wouldn’t have been so difficult.’
‘Doesn’t Eddie like it?’ said Brinkman, attempting a brighter bait.
‘It’s very important for him here: it’s his career. He’s very good at what he does.’
So what’s he doing now! thought Brinkman. ‘Maybe it’ll be better when he gets back,’ said Brinkman, more direct than he had so far been.
She frowned at him, confused. ‘Why should it be?’
Tangled in his own line Brinkman said, ‘I thought maybe he might have gone back to discuss what happens next.’
Ann’s frown stayed. ‘I told you, it’s a family thing.’
‘So you did,’ said Brinkman. ‘Wasn’t thinking.’
‘It would be wonderful, though, to know there was another posting,’ said Ann, retreating into the reverie.
‘Where would you like?’ said Brinkman.
‘Anywhere but here!’ she said, suddenly vehement. ‘If there were an embassy at the North Pole I’d happily swop it for here.’
Momentarily – but only just – putting aside his personal interest, Brinkman decided that Ann was one very unhappy lady. Because of their professional contact he supposed he was closer to Blair than to his wife and thought Blair might have mentioned it at some time, because they didn’t always talk shop. Maybe Blair didn’t know. Brinkman thought that unlikely: he was a perceptive guy. ‘It’s not that bad,’ he said.
‘Not for a man,’ she said, still intense. ‘Not for you. You’ve got something to do.’
Brinkman hadn’t thought about it until now but he conceded things couldn’t be all that good for her, stuck here with nothing to do. Maybe he was lucky, not being married. He said, ‘You won’t be here forever.’
‘That’s what I tell myelf every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to sleep.’
Was it Moscow? he wondered. Or had she made it Moscow, transferring the pain of other things and blaming a difficult city? What other things? He’d never been aware of any strain between her and Eddie and he’d been with them enough times to think he would have noticed, if there had been. Had he got it wrong then? Had Eddie genuinely gone back to Washington for something to do with his first wife? What was it she’d said? – I don’t think it would have been a very good idea for the wife of the second marriage to get involved with the wife of the first, do you? Something like that. Things like that had happened before. But she’d said something else. Ruth’s super. She wouldn’t have said that – certainly not in her present mood – if anything like that was happening. The circle was getting tighter and tighter, he thought. ‘What does Eddie say?’ he asked outright.
‘He’s busy,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be right to bother him.’
‘You told me!’ said Brinkman, throwing the inconsistency at her.
Ann looked at him in sudden surprise. ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ she said. She actually blushed and Brinkman thought she looked very pretty and very vulnerable. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was unforgivable.’
He felt across for her hand and she let him take it. ‘You’re forgiven,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what friends are for, to have convenient shoulders?’
‘I’m not sure that other friends are supposed so openly to cry upon them,’ she said, still embarrassed.
‘It’s allowed, for special friends.’
‘Thanks, for being a special friend,’ she said.
After the meal – which he praised again – they left the table and drank brandy sitting in easy chairs. They listened to some Verdi and he promised to let her have the latest Graham Greene novel which he’d had sent from London and which he’d almost finished. Refusing – absolutely – to give up he told her to give his regards to Eddie when they next spoke and she said she would and then stopped, so he failed again. But she’d opened up to him about a lot of other things, Brinkman realised. Maybe he was expecting too much, too soon, in his impatience. There was the Bolshoi yet. Maybe he’d get a clue when they went to the Bolshoi.
‘It’s been a wonderful evening,’ he said, making to go. ‘And it was a super meal. Really.’
‘You said you lied all the time,’ she remembered, happier now the confession was over.
‘Not to you,’ he said. He extended his hand in invitation, little finger crooked. Joining in the game she linked her finger with his, in a child-like handshake. ‘I promise never to lie to you and if I break it the witches will see that all my teeth fall out.’
She laughed at the nonsense of it and said, ‘Eddie used to say things like that,’ and wished she hadn’t the moment she spoke.
Brinkman disentangled their fingers and said, ‘Thanks again.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said.
He leaned forward to kiss her goodnight and she offered her cheek, allowing it.
He hadn’t learned a thing – not a thing he wanted to learn – and the meal had given him indigestion, thought Brinkman, on his way home through the foreign enclave.
It had been a wonderful evening, decided Ann. She didn’t feel as uptight or miserable or lonely as she had. And it had been a comforting shoulder to cry upon. Jeremy Brinkman was very nice. She liked him.
That night they ate as a family, together, because Blair insisted upon it. Barriers were bullshit and he determined to bulldoze them, like you’d bulldoze barriers. Or bullshit. He thought he’d come close to losing the kids – in every meaning of the word losing. And he thought he’d been lucky, if it were possible to imagine luck emerging from what had happened to Paul, because it had brought him back and made him see what he was doing. Or not doing. It was their barriers that needing bulldozing. And his bullshit. Blair ignored their silences and their resentments, insisting they help him prepare the barbecue even though he knew they didn’t want to and he didn’t need them, deputing John to fan the coals into life and Paul to put on the hickory chips when the time was ready. He hadn’t discussed it with Ruth but she got a sense of what was happening and joined in as well, an actress enjoying the play, setting the table outside and bringing Blair beer which he drank from the can. John found it easier and because the child had tried in the morning, asking about Moscow, it was easier for Blair, too, because it looked initially as if he were fulfilling a promise. Which was how he started, intentionally, talking about the 1917 revolution and how Moscow hadn’t been immediately important, but St Petersburg. They didn’t know what his job was but he knew they’d be interested in spies because kids were always interested in spies and so he told them about Dzerzhinsky and the statue in front of the KGB headquarters. He could have lectured about all the others, of course, but he missed out the dull ones and concentrated upon those involved in the better anecdotes, like Yagoda who started as a pharmacist and who assassinated using his pharmacist’s expertise and Yezhov who epitomised the terror the like of which they could never imagine and Beria who came within an inch – maybe less than an inch – of seizing power after Stalin’s death. He told them about the decay of the Romanovs and of a monk called Rasputin and how – although a lot of people didn’t believe it – he was sure a woman called Anna Anderson who’d died within the last few years was genuinely Princess Anastasia, who had survived in a way no one knew from the Bolshevik massacre at Ekaterinburg. And he got them. Blair worked hard – physically worked hard so he ached – but he got them. He said, ‘You’ll like it.’
Blair had talked continuously, dominating everything, presenting a monologue. So when he stopped they didn’t at first realise it. It was John – more responsive throughout – who reacted first. ‘Like it?’ he said.
‘When you come,’ said Blair.
‘Come …’ started the younger boy and then jerking to a halt, remembering the obstruction.
The final stripping time, realised Blair. It was like exposing himself, nakedly, and he didn’t like the idea. But he disliked the idea of losing the kids more. ‘I wasn’t honest yesterday,’ he admitted. ‘I used the
word but I wasn’t honest …’ Blair looked at Ruth. She was sitting not looking at anyone, both hands cupped around a can of beer which she was drinking just like he was, without a glass. Their drug, thought Blair. He said, ‘I got near to something, when I talked about your mother and I not being together any more. What I didn’t get to say – get to admit – was that only your mother, who’s a very special lady, has fully adjusted to it. I hadn’t – haven’t – and you certainly haven’t. But it’s mostly my fault. Nearly all my fault. You can’t accept that I love you because I haven’t given you any reason for believing me. But I do love you. Now I want to say sorry and show how I feel. Your very special mother and I agreed when we divorced that we should each spend as much time with you as we could …’ Blair stopped, looking at Paul. If you were naked then everyone automatically looked at your private parts, so what the hell! He went on, ‘I accused you last night of copping out. Because you have. You’ve copped out. But so have I. More than you. I’ve known -understood – how you feel about Ann and instead of trying to find a solution for that I’ve used the difficulty of Moscow as an excuse …’ He stopped again. Paul and John were important, not his own stupid fucking pride. He said, ‘I ran away, Paul, I ran away from you and I ran away from John just like you tried to run away from whatever it was you didn’t want to confront. Which was probably the thought of me not wanting you any more, which was never the case but which I can understand you thinking …’
Ruth hadn’t moved and the boys were not looking at him either, embarrassed at the admission that Superman couldn’t really fly. He said, ‘I can understand why you hate Ann …’ Blair paused, qualifying himself again, unhappy at the exaggeration of hatred against someone he loved ‘… why you dislike her,’ he resumed. ‘I want that – am determined – that should stop.’ Blair slapped the table, to maintain their attention. ‘I’ve told you tonight about Moscow and I want you to come to see it. See it with me. And that means meeting Ann and understanding what things are like – not what you’d like them to be instead – and learning to accept that I have a new wife who won’t intrude into your life but would like to be part of it, if you’d let her. It means us becoming friends again – I’d like to be your best friend, the person you come to when you’ve got a problem instead of running away from it to some street corner. And it means that I’m going to come out of Moscow whenever I can – with or without Ann, while you’re learning to adjust to the fact that she’s now my wife – and be with you, as often as I can.’
Blair stopped, all the words used up, needing to gulp from the can. He didn’t – couldn’t remember – how it had sounded but it was the best he could do. He said, ‘As things are – as you know things are, not perhaps as you’d like them to be – let me come back. The track record so far isn’t particularly impressive and I’m ashamed of it, but let me start being a proper father again.’
The sort of silence developed when there seemed to be sounds when really there weren’t any. He’d taken control and now he had to exercise it, decided Blair. ‘Well?’ he said.
John, predictably, responded first. ‘Sounds good,’ he said. Then, hurriedly, ‘Dad.’
There was a further loud silence. ‘Paul?’ prompted Blair.
The key turned and the dam burst. The boy had tried to hold back so when he couldn’t, any longer, the tears burst from him and Blair felt forward for Paul’s hands – to have got up to move to comfort him would have been wrong and Blair was still measuring everything with a slide rule – and Paul felt forward for his and Blair started to cry, too, unashamedly, wanting to weep if it would help Paul, which was after all what he was trying to do.
‘Please, Dad,’ said the sobbing child. ‘Please!’
‘Sure,’ soothed Blair, ‘Sure.’
Ruth was crying, too. The reconciliation between Eddie and the boys was the excuse, not the reason.
Chapter Sixteen
Blair glanced at the statue of Nathan Hale, the American patriot hanged as a spy by the British during the American War of Independence, in its imposing setting in front of the CIA headquarters and then, while his ID was being checked at the entrance, at the inscription in the marble hallway. ‘And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’ Did he know the truth yet? He thought so, after the soul-baring with the kids. It seemed to have helped. He realised that it was too early to attach over-importance to omens, but the signs were good. John had made it very clear the previous night he wanted to be kissed and that morning’s breakfast had been like Blair remembered, actually some noise and the boys talking between themselves and then initiating some kind of conversation with him and Ruth. Blair’s thoughts stayed with the woman. He believed it was a breakthrough – of sorts – and would have imagined she would, as well. Yet she seemed strangley subdued. He supposed it was understandable. She’d gone through a lot more than he had; maybe knew the apparent signs weren’t what he thought they were at all.
The division chief’s office was on the fifth floor, high enough at the back for there to be a silver thread of Potomac just beyond the tree line; if there weren’t an Orioles game at the weekend maybe he’d take them out on the river. Ray Hubble strode across the room to meet him, confirming the acquaintanceship, hand outstretched. There were the predictable assurances of how good each other looked and had London really been that long ago and then Hubble said, ‘Sorry to hear about Paul.’
‘Seems a common problem, from what I’ve been told since I got back.’
‘Hope everything works out OK.’
‘I’ve got to see it has, haven’t I?’ said Blair. ‘Appreciate the understanding everyone’s shown here.’
‘No problem,’ said Hubble. He was a polished man, polished cheeks and oiled, polished hair and polished shoes; the sort of man to gleam in the dark. Having given the reassurance he immediately contradicted it by saying, ‘When do you think you’ll be able to go back?’
‘As soon as possible, obviously,’ said Blair, discerning the other man’s tone. ‘But I’ve got to make sure everything is settled here. There’s still the court appearance and I don’t know when that’s going to be. I’ll have to make sure the kid gets into some remedial programme, if the court doesn’t order it. So I can’t make positive dates.’
Hubble made an upward movement with his head, towards the sixth and seventh floors, where the Director and the deputies were quartered, to indicate that the pressure was not his doing and said, ‘You know how they are.’
‘I’ll let you know, as soon as I know myself,’ said Blair.
‘Just a bitch of a time to be away, that’s all,’ said Hubble. ‘Everything is popping over there and you’ve confirmed quite a reputation for yourself from it’
‘That’s good to know,’ said Blair. At least his professional life wasn’t screwed up, he thought, in brief self-pity.
‘You’d better believe it,’ said Hubble enthusiastically. ‘State were telling the President to behave quite differently over the Geneva offer but it was our counsel that prevailed. And when everything was examined the Soviet thing turned out to be a bunch of bullshit, just like you said it was …’ Hubble extended his hand, one finger crossed over the other. ‘That’s how the Agency and the President are at the moment. Hugger Mugger. And the Director likes it very much indeed. Which makes you a pretty important guy around here because although he’s a funny bastard in some ways, he doesn’t deny anyone the credit they’re due. Getting it as completely right as we did was down to you and he’s letting everyone know it.’
Blair felt the satisfaction stir through him. It seemed that his professional life was anything but screwed up. ‘That’s pretty decent of him,’ he said.
‘But he wants everything to stay that way …’ Hubble put out a finger-crossed hand again ‘… him and the President. Which means he’s nervous having you off base. Because it’s known to be so important, of course, I had to tell him. He said OK but he’s pressing to know just how quick you can get back.’
Blai
r was vaguely discomfited at the Director personally knowing why he’d had to return from Moscow. Would it have any effect upon his career? wondered Blair. The swirl of guilt was immediate. Of course not: and if it did, so what? The Agency could take their job and stuff it up their ass. That wasn’t true, he corrected at once. He loved the job – couldn’t imagine any other – and the ability that he seemed to have to do it. ‘As soon as possible, like I said,’ he reminded his immediate superior.
‘How long before Serada officially gets dumped?’ asked Hubble.
There might have been hints over the last few days, indications from something in Pravda or on Tass. Or a clue he could have got from some photograph. Or the way a proclamation was issued and signed. Or not signed. But he needed to be in Moscow – like they knew he needed to be in Moscow – to be able to detect the signals and the signs. ‘Difficult to say,’ avoided Blair. Aware how bad that sounded, Blair went on, ‘Maybe not yet awhile.’ That wasn’t much better. And it was an over-assessment, as well. He didn’t know – had no way of knowing – whether Serada would go tomorrow or next week or next month. To indicate that there would be some time was just trying to give them a reassurance and take the pressure off for him to get back. He wouldn’t be pressured, determined Blair. All right, so he liked the job and he liked the praise and he wouldn’t stay longer than he had to – he’d never intended that in the first place – but he was damned if he’d cut anything short, either.
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