Defectors

by Joseph Kanon

  “Yes, I have,” he said, disgruntled.

  “Nine o’clock, then. In the lobby. I’ll tell the others. Sorry to wake you.”

  An hour’s start. Enough distance. He went over the room again to make sure he had everything he needed. Visas. Raincoat, just in case, a convenient pocket for the gun. He’d have to leave the manuscript, but his notes, folded, slipped easily into the other pocket. No luggage, just a day at the Peterhof, admiring the fountains.

  He opened the door and froze. Down the hall a woman was slipping out of Boris’s room, her back to Simon as she closed the door. Still in last night’s dress, her hair tangled, holding her shoes. Marzena turned, looking up and down the hall, a cat burglar, and started for the elevator. Simon watched her through the crack of his doorway. Had he been the assignment? Stick to Simon. Tell me what he says. Do what you have to do. But when had it started? A woman suddenly alone, her privileges—the flat, the dacha—now at the whim of—? Or had she listened to Perry too? Listened to Frank. Boris keeping watch. Her protector now. Everybody cheating. She passed Simon’s door, eyes focused on the end of the hall, raising her head and trying to ignore the woman with the keys, a last gasp of dignity. At least she wouldn’t be going down to the lobby. A change, a bath, a new meeting time. Two down.

  The breakfast buffet was at the far end of the lobby but screened off from it. The Lehmans were just finishing, Frank and Jo not yet down. Simon ignored the spread of food and gulped some coffee, chewing on a brick of dark bread.

  “Car ready?” he said to Hal.

  “Out front.”

  “It’s going to be a squeeze.” A glance toward Nancy.

  “I thought there were two cars,” she said.

  “But we’re going in one,” Simon said, looking at Hal, a question mark.

  “She knows,” Hal said. “Honey, you could still take the train. Finland Station. Do a Lenin in reverse. Meet me in Helsinki.”

  Simon shook his head. “How do we explain it to Frank? We’re all going to the summer palace. We’ll have to manage somehow.”

  “I couldn’t stay in Moscow,” Nancy said. “Not without Hal. Besides, it would look funny. Wives always go on the Helsinki runs. We do the shopping.”

  “Ah, there you are,” Frank said, coming in with Jo. “Bright and early.”

  “Not that early. Boris has already finished. Better hurry.”

  “God, how can they eat all that,” Jo said, looking at the buffet, avoiding Simon. She poured coffee.

  “Apparently Marzena had a rough night,” Simon said. “It’s going to take her a while. Boris said he’d wait. We should start and they’ll catch up.”

  “He wants us to leave without him?” Frank said.

  “But not alone. There’s another car following. To make sure we get there.”

  “By the book. Didn’t I tell you?” Frank said. “The station chief here—”

  “I can go with them, if you like,” Simon said, chancing it, keeping it plausible. “So we won’t be so crowded.”

  “No, no, you have to be referee. Make sure he asks the right questions.” He smiled at Hal, the full Frank charm.

  “I’ll go,” Joanna said.

  “It’s only an hour, less,” Frank said. “We’ll be all right.”

  “We’ll meet you out front then,” Hal said, getting up. “It’s the Volvo.”

  “Really?”

  “We bought it in Helsinki. It was either that or a Saab.”

  “No, I mean, it’s your car? You drove here?”

  “We’re going on to Helsinki after. Shopping run. It’s cheaper to bring the stuff back with you than to have it shipped. And sometimes it gets—lost. Stockmann’s will ship, but it doesn’t always arrive.”

  “Stockmann’s?”

  Hal grinned. “The Macy’s of the north.”

  “And what do you buy?” Frank said, curious.

  “Whatever you can’t get in Moscow. People make a list. The other correspondents, I mean, not Russians. You have to have foreign currency.”

  “I had no idea,” Frank said.

  “Well, you have your own stores. You don’t need—” He stopped, a sense of overstepping. “That’s what I’ve heard anyway.”

  “And thank God,” Joanna said. “Otherwise you’d never see a vegetable in the winter.”

  Simon glanced at her. Service hospitals. Service food stores. Where they lived. A Russia inside the other one.

  The Volvo was at the curb, next to the bus waiting for the Chinese. Frank got in front with Hal, so they could talk, Simon in the back, wedged between Jo and Nancy. “The rose between the thorns,” Jo said, but halfheartedly, still not catching his eye. They drove out of the broad square, leaving St. Isaac’s behind.

  “Where do you want to start?” Frank said to Hal.

  “Let’s start with the book. As far as I know, you’re the first KGB officer who’s ever written one. Why’d you do it?”

  “Am I the first? I hadn’t realized,” Frank said, his public voice. “I suppose I wanted to set the record straight. We all want to do that, don’t we? We just—most of us—don’t get the chance.” Concentrating, finding the right word, oblivious to the city outside his window.

  Simon took a breath. The first gamble, hoping that Frank didn’t know Leningrad, wouldn’t see its geography in his head, just streets and canals and bridges. He worried when they crossed the Neva, away from the route to the Peterhof, but Frank didn’t seem to notice, deep in the interview now, one bridge like another. He was enjoying himself, the familiar anecdotes told like moves in some version of cat and mouse, a game. After the Tuchkov Bridge there were few landmarks and no directional signs, no way to tell they were heading up to the shore road. How did anyone find it unless they’d driven it before? But Hal had.

  “Late night,” Jo said to Simon, dipping a toe in.

  “You all looked like you were having such a nice time,” Nancy said, just to say something.

  “Well, we’ve known each other forever,” Jo said, deciding to be pleasant, make the best of it. “I hope I didn’t keep you up,” she said to Simon, some kind of apology.

  “No, I enjoyed it,” Simon said. “Feel all right?”

  “You mean do I have—?”

  “It’s an early start. That’s all I meant.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly, a quick thank-you glance.

  “Why won’t they let the defectors talk to the press?” Hal was saying.

  “What makes you think we want to? What good would that do? Getting misquoted. It’s always trouble.”

  “Why misquoted?”

  “Well, people do—get misquoted. Not by you, let’s hope, but you have to admit it happens. Anyway, what would you want us to say? That we were wrong? You think that. We don’t.”

  “None of you? No regrets?”

  Frank lit a cigarette, taking a minute. “It’s a funny word, defector. Latin, defectus. To desert. Lack something. Makes it sound as if we had to leave something behind. To change sides. But we were already on this side. We didn’t leave anything.”

  “Your country.”

  “Countries don’t matter. In a way, I was already here.”

  “But Mr. Weeks—”

  “Frank.”

  “Frank. Then why—?” Catching Simon’s frown in the mirror. Not yet.

  Frank waited.

  “I mean, you didn’t want to come to Moscow, did you? If you hadn’t been exposed?”

  “I wanted to be wherever I’d be useful.”

  “And the Rubins? Perry Soames. Gareth. Burgess. Maclean. They all came because their cover was blown. Wouldn’t you all have stayed right where you were if that hadn’t happened? Not come to Moscow?”

  “I don’t think anybody thought about it. You don’t think about—getting caught. You’re too busy not getting cau
ght.”

  “But you were.”

  “Professional hazard. And not my fault. For the record. None of us expected Malenko to turn. But then if you’re lucky, you end up here. Where you can still be useful. Look at some of the others. Alger. Harry. Wouldn’t they have been better off here?”

  “The Rosenbergs.”

  “Well, yes. The Rosenbergs. You know, when you start, you don’t think, can I get away with this for the rest of my life? You don’t think. You just do it. It feels—urgent. People are depending on you. Right now. You don’t think about later.”

  “Alger,” Hal said. “That’s never been confirmed.”

  “It’s not being confirmed now either. Hypothetical.”

  “It would be a big story.”

  “You’ve already got one. My first interview.”

  Hal smiled. “And it’ll be a lot bigger when—” Another look from Simon.

  “When what?” Joanna said.

  “When it runs,” Simon said. “UPI’s in four hundred papers.”

  “What did you think when you first got here?” Hal said, moving on. “Was it what you expected?”

  “Oh, that’s all in the book,” Frank said, swatting this away.

  “Okay, tell me something that isn’t in the book.”

  “I can’t,” Frank said, fencing now. “If the Service is involved.”

  “That doesn’t leave us with much.” He paused. “Who do you think killed Gareth Jones?” A left jab, unexpected.

  Frank was quiet for a minute. “I don’t know.”

  Simon raised his head. Through the looking glass again.

  “I don’t think it was political,” Frank said, “if that’s what you’re implying. MI6 didn’t do it because they can’t. Not here. And I don’t think we did it. Why would we?”

  “Then why the witch hunt at the Lubyanka? Bringing Elizaveta back.”

  “Have they?”

  “I heard you were the one who—”

  “You should check your sources then.”

  Hal let this pass. “We’re on the same side here, aren’t we?”

  Frank sighed. “I don’t know about Gareth. Really,” he said, easy as breathing. “A guess? Off the record? I think he met someone he shouldn’t have. These things happen.”

  “There is no crime in the Soviet Union.”

  “But there are accidents. We’ll have to leave it at that.” He turned to the window. “Where are we? More Khrushchyovki. Khrushchev slums,” he translated for Simon.

  Rows of concrete apartment blocks, already cracked and stained with damp. Then pine trees and allotments. The farther they got from Leningrad, the poorer the countryside, sagging wooden farmhouses and muddy ditches, the same land he’d seen from the plane, open to tanks. They must be more than halfway there now. Vyborg had been a Finnish port before the Soviets snatched it. Simon imagined pitched tiled roofs and cobbles. A train station with a park in front, a quayside with a boat waiting.

  “What happened to our friends?” Frank said idly, turning around. “I thought they were following.”

  “Probably behind a truck,” Simon said. Not yet.

  Frank went back to Hal, a question about wartime Washington, batting it back and forth (“the drop was in Farragut Square”), something he could answer without thinking, old stories. Then he sat forward, looking out the window, one side, then the other, working something out.

  “The water’s on the left,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The Gulf. It’s on the left. It should be on the right. You’re on the wrong road.”

  “No.”

  “We should be south of it. Going west. It should be on the right.”

  Hal looked up into the rearview mirror. Frank followed the look and turned in his seat to face Simon, puzzled, then alarmed.

  “We’re going the wrong way.”

  A moment, suddenly tense. Now.

  “DiAngelis changed the plan,” Simon said evenly.

  “Who? What plan?” Jo said.

  “He’s sending a boat to Vyborg,” Simon said, watching Frank’s eyes, panicky, just for a second.

  “He can’t go to Vyborg. It’s Russia.”

  “He’s sending some Finns. They’ll pick us up there.”

  “But no DiAngelis.” Sorting this out. “When was this decided?” The eyes his own again, calculating.

  “Too many people knew about Tallinn. It’s safer.”

  “Simon, Simon, what are you doing?” Focused on him, trying to see through him. “Not like this. We can’t.”

  “That’s the way he wants it.”

  “So he tells you? But you don’t tell me.”

  “I was his contact. It’ll work. It’s a better plan.”

  “It’s not the plan.”

  “A backup. The one nobody expects.”

  “What?” Jo said, upset now. “What plan?”

  Simon and Frank stared at each other. Whose move? Finally Simon turned to her. “We’re leaving. We’re going home.”

  “What do you mean, home? Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “We’re going to Finland. Then home. The States.”

  “Are you crazy? We can’t.” She turned to face Frank. “What is he talking about? Did you know about this? Did you?” This to Hal. Finally, almost a squeal, to Nancy, “Did you?” Nancy turned her head away. “Who am I supposed to be, the crazy lady?”

  “I didn’t want to—” Frank began, and Simon saw that he wasn’t going to tell her—say that he hadn’t told her because it wasn’t going to happen—because he was trapped in his own story now, the ­double lie.

  “What?” Jo said. “Who’s sending a boat?”

  “The Agency,” Simon said. “To get you out.”

  “The Agency,” she said, her eyes moving, someone being chased, then looking up at Simon as this sunk in.

  Suddenly, too fast to anticipate, her hand came up, then both hands, hitting him, his arm raised to protect his face, the slaps falling on his chest.

  “The Agency? They sent you? That’s why you came? To trap us? You?”

  Simon grabbed her hands. “Stop it.”

  But she was shaking. “You.”

  Behind him, Nancy was taking quick nervous breaths, not expecting this.

  “You’d do this to him? To me?”

  “Stop it. I don’t work for the Agency. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Kidnap us. Send us to prison.”

  He turned to Frank. “Tell her.”

  Another unguarded moment, a kind of pleading look, and for a second Simon thought he might do it, tell the truth, but then the eyes cleared, disciplined, back in his story. Not even to her.

  “He’s not with them. I asked him to help us.”

  “Help us.”

  “It’s time. You need to go home.”

  “I need?”

  “I couldn’t tell anybody. It’s too dangerous.”

  “But they knew,” she said, spreading her hand to take in the rest of the car. “And now what? We get in a boat? Sail away?” She nodded to Hal. “Are you going to take pictures? For UPI? And what happens to us?”

  “We’ll be protected,” Frank said.

  “Protected. Who arranged that?”

  “I arranged it.”

  “And what’s the price?” She turned, swatting Simon’s hand away. “Well, what else could it be? And you’d do that.”

  “But you’ll be out,” Simon said.

  “No we won’t. You can’t. Not here. We’ll be killed.”

  “Killed?” Nancy said.

  “Not if we do it right,” Simon said.

  “And that’s your job?” Frank said, still trying to make sense of things. “Stop. Go back before it’s too late. This isn’t the arrang
ement. I go with DiAngelis. Only him.”

  “You mean he comes back with you. I know. That’s always been the plan. Yours, anyway. Your Gary Powers. A gift to the Service. Another show trial. But I couldn’t let you do that. Help you. That would be treason.” He stopped. “I’m not you.”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed, as if they were taking aim.

  “Treason?” Jo said. Nobody listening.

  “So we’ll go through with the original plan. You go to DiAngelis. Tell him what he wants to know. A little payback. For everything.”

  Frank was still staring at him.

  “What made you think I’d go along with this?”

  “You have to. The only way to save yourself now is to go through with it. Defect.”

  “The Service knows all about—”

  “Your plan? With the Estonians who aren’t there? Except they’re already there. Where you put them. They’ll be sacrificed whatever happens, won’t they? And now you pull in DiAngelis. A real Cracker Jack prize. Your plan. And they’d believe you. If you’d stuck to it. But you didn’t. You ditched Boris. Took off in a car with UPI. To the border. A day ahead of plan. There’s no other way to interpret that. Their worst nightmare.”

  “I was forced.”

  “By me? The naïve little brother? Who’d believe that?”

  “The Service. I’m an officer.”

  “You think so? I don’t. They’ll eat you for breakfast. Just what they like. The double-dealing foreigner. Their favorite story. You’re not going to talk yourself out of this.”

  “And you? What are you going to say? You don’t actually think this can work, do you? You’ll be—you’ll be the Gary Powers. You don’t want that. I didn’t bring you here for that.”

  “No. Just to use me,” Simon said, his voice suddenly bitter. “Play me like a harp. Use Joanna—‘you have to save her.’ Knowing I’d want to. Use Richie. Jesus Christ, Frank, a dead child. Making me feel sorry for you. And it’s just part of the bait. Even use yourself. How’s your health? I’ll bet you’re not even close to dying. I’ll bet you’re in the pink.”

  “No,” Frank said, still looking at him. “That part’s true. Maybe not as soon, that’s all.”

  “What part?” Jo said. “What do you mean, dying?”