She looked at him with surprise. ‘I don’t know, Charlie. You should know that.’
‘I mean what is your father’s assessment?’
‘I’ve no idea. I don’t ask him about his work.’ She moved a pawn to bishop four. You seem very interested in my father, Charlie.’
‘Not really.’
‘Then why do you ask so many questions?’
‘It’s your move.’
‘No, Charlie, it’s yours.’
‘So it is.’ Pawn to king four. A good move you treacherous bastard.
‘Why are you so interested in my father?’
‘I’m not.’ A little impatiently to disguise the dishonesty. ‘Just making small talk, I guess.’
‘Talk for the sake of talk? We don’t have to behave like that, Charlie.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘It seems to me that you are only truthful when we are making love. Perhaps I should ask you questions then.’ The sheet fell to her waist but she didn’t bother to pull it up—nipples puckered after their passion. ‘Why aren’t you honest with me, Charlie?’
He nearly said, ‘I want to be.’ Instead he said, ‘I am. There’s nothing to be dishonest about. I’m not the world’s greatest talker, Natasha. Perhaps that’s the trouble. Perhaps you’re used to brilliant fiery talkers.’
(Like Georgi Makarov maybe.)
The smell of burned jet fuel trickled into the air-conditioned room. She moved a knight to king two. ‘There’s no chance for us if we start off with lies.’
‘There aren’t any lies,’ he lied. ‘For God’s sake, Natasha, there aren’t any …’ The luxury of the day receded: fear of losing her whimpered inside of him. But you couldn’t tell such a girl that you had picked her up to make her into a spy. Not yet. Not now. Later—in the Fall, maybe, when they were engaged, when she was able to understand that he had to do it.… But not now because he would lose her. He saw her then with other men, observed their intimacies with horrible clarity, forcing upon himself evasive anger which took root. ‘This is the way I am,’ he shouted. ‘Charlie Hardin. Mister Ordinary American, never a great orator. Not given to passionate speeches, not a great seeker of the truth like your other lovers …’
‘There was only one,’ Natasha said.
‘I believe you,’ Charlie said, implying that he didn’t, shocked at the ugliness he’d created.
She made a Russian gesture, throwing a handful of nothing at him. ‘You disappoint me,’ she said. And when he didn’t reply she added, ‘It’s your move.’
He moved a pawn.
‘That was a bad move,’ she said. ‘Check.’
‘To hell with it,’ Charlie Hardin said.
‘You resign?’
‘Yeah, I resign.’
‘Very well. And now we must go.’ She began to dress as if she were alone in the room.
‘I thought we were going to spend the day here.’
‘There’s no point. We will only hurt each other more.’
‘Okay. If that’s the way you want it.’
Outside the young summer heat wavered from the assembly lines of parked cars, and the jets, arriving and leaving as if there were half a dozen in circuit, flashed mirrors of light. The M.G.’s hood was down, the seats hot. They left with a squeal of tyres. They said nothing for half a mile, the wind pulling at their hair. Ahead the bridge and across it the nest of Washington D.C. Abruptly the anger spent itself and the road unfurled in front of them was the desolate future. He stopped the car.
‘Natasha.’
‘Yes, Charlie?’
‘I love you.’ He spoke in Russian.
‘I love you, Charlie.’
‘I always will.’
Her hand on his thigh, nodding, smiling, crying. Behind them cars hooted and swung into another lane as the drivers gave their views on young love.
He looked at his watch. ‘There’s a lot of the day left. Shall we go back,’
She nodded again, brushing the wind-blown hair from her eyes. He leaned over and kissed her. ‘And maybe we’ll have another game of chess.’
He showered, shaved and dressed, the guilt heavy on his back. I can’t go on with it any longer. Not for my family, not for any creed. What sort of democracy is it that expects it.
He knotted a silk tie between a striped button-down collar. But even if I told Walden I was pulling out what future do we have, Natasha and I? One day she’ll return to Russia and I’ll stay here; a small lost affair that accidentally wandered outside the thirty-mile limit.
But could he quit? His mother, his sister who deserved the same advantages as him, his country … for their country men shot a gook, became murderers. For freedom, Goddamit, and all the decent clichés into which he had been born.
‘… to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to Posterity.…’
And for the next lesson Winston Churchill …
He polished his shoes with aerosol shoeblack. Gazed at the group photographs and the baseball bat on the wall. A kid’s bedroom. The past written in campus slang. But you’re a man now, Charlie Hardin. The smell of jet fuel burning.
I can’t go through with it.
‘I can’t go through with it,’ he told Walden.
‘I know how you feel, boy,’ Walden said, pouring bottled spring water into a cardboard cup. ‘I know just how you feel. I often feel the same way myself.’
‘You do?’
‘Sure I do. I look out at this beautiful city of ours and I think Jesus do we have to protect it this way? But we have to beat them at their own game, son, otherwise we’re dead ducks.’ He gulped his water and leaned back in his chair behind his desk in the State Department. His voice, Hardin thought, was almost kindly. Almost. He went on, ‘I guess this is just about the first time you’ve been faced with any decisions like this.’
Hardin said yes it was.
‘Getting the peach-fuzz off your cheeks at last, eh? Well, give it a little thought before you start making any rash decisions.’
‘I’ve thought about it,’ Hardin said. ‘I think the assignment stinks.’
‘I agree.’ Walden took himself to the window overlooking his city. ‘Tossing a grenade into a tank stinks. Bombing a city with women and kids in it stinks. But we’re fighting …’
‘I know. We’re fighting a war.’
‘If we relax, the Commies will take immediate advantage. Here in the capital of the United States of America. The aims of the Communists are very simple, Charlie: they want the world. If we let up here, then one day they might get it. How would you like that? A world ruled by the Kremlin. Not being able to write a letter or a poem or design a new building without glancing over your shoulder. Not knowing if the guy next door is reporting you. The purges are over for the time being, but believe you me, Charlie, they still rule by fear over there. It’s only the Chinese keeping them in check now. Look around.’ Walden gestured vaguely, over the marbled history of Washington. ‘We enjoy a land of plenty.’
‘Not if we lived in the ghetto.’
Walden ignored him. ‘A heritage, Charlie. Shops and cars and fine houses. The rewards of enterprise. And the freedom we take for granted. The kids demonstrating on the campus, for instance. What do you think would happen to them in the Soviet Union? What happened to your girlfriend’s Georgi? Just for publishing some student magazine—the sort of screwball rag that students all over the world turn out. Why, they put him inside. You don’t go to Sing Sing for speaking your mind here, Charlie. Think about these things.’
‘I have,’ Charlie replied. ‘I’ve also thought about the drugs, the riots, the violence and the corruption in our country.’
‘Hmmmm.’ Walden filled his big burned pipe, pressing the tobacco home with his thumb. ‘I don’t go for that sort of bullshit, son. It makes me wonder who’s been brainwashing who.’
‘For Christ’
s sake,’ Hardin exclaimed. ‘I’m only pointing out things that are wrong with this country. Everyone knows about them.’
‘I got the distinct impression, Charlie, that you were comparing the United States of America with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And that the United States was coming out second best.’
Hardin shook his head. He got up and poured himself a cup of water. ‘Look, Mr Walden. I think the United States of America is the finest country in the world. Let’s make no mistake about that: It’s only that I think we should try and equate the advantages and disadvantages of both countries.’
‘That’s better, Charlie. I don’t like to hear that other kind of talk. Okay, so we make your equation. What the hell good does that do? They’ll still be against us and we’ll have to go on fighting them.’
‘I’m only trying to say that we should try and understand each other a little more.’ The words floated naïvely around them like soap bubbles.
‘Sure,’ Walden said, inhaling the smoke that smelled of autumn leaves burning. ‘I understand.’ He paused. ‘By the way, have you told your father that you aren’t going through with this?’
‘Not yet,’ Hardin said. ‘I thought I’d speak to you first.’
‘Why?’ A steel tip to his tongue.
‘Because you’re the boss of the whole operation.’
‘I co-ordinate it, that’s all.’
‘It’s the same thing. You’re the war-lord.’
‘Mr Hoover wouldn’t like to hear you say that.’
‘Well I understand you’re the boss in an operation like this when the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. overlap. When defections and subversion in Washington are involved.’
‘That still doesn’t explain why you came to see me first.’
‘I came to see you,’ Hardin said, ‘to let you know that my father has done everything in his power to persuade me to go through with it.’
‘I see.’ Steel tip snaking back. ‘He told you I had threatened him?’
Hardin recoiled from this bluntness so abruptly bared. ‘He said you were very insistent that I do the job.’
Walden crushed the cardboard cup in his hand. No sign of Bible-thumper or jingoist. ‘Is that all he did—hint?’
‘He suggested that you could make things tough for him.’
‘I could.’ Walden released the cup like a squashed insect. ‘And I would.’ He tossed the remains of the cup into the waste-paper basket and relaxed. ‘But I don’t want to, Charlie. I really don’t. I have to make these sort of threats to get things done. Our duty comes first. Yours and mine, Charlie.’
Hardin remembered what his father had said: that what Walden thirsted for most was defections. Big fat defections. Fugitives proclaiming the horrors of life in the Soviet Union and the delights of life in the States. Another Svetlana. Or, perhaps, a defection with romantic appeal … He decided to sound-out Walden. ‘What exactly do you want from the girl?’
‘Information,’ Walden said. ‘You know that. Access to documents that Zhukov may bring home. And if that’s asking too much we want her as an eavesdropper. Any chance remark by her parents or any of the Embassy staff which will give us an idea what they’re up to. Currently we’re very interested in the proposed Vietnam peace talks. Czechoslovakia, of course, and their real feelings about Red China. Just how tough are the Soviets prepared to get with China? Anything she can pick up.’
‘And you really expect me to make love to her and then ask questions like that? You must be crazy.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Walden said. ‘It won’t be the first time. A woman in love will do almost anything. Steal, cheat, walk out on her husband and kids, betray her country.’
‘Not Natasha. I’m telling you, Walden. I know.’ Intuitively he added, ‘And I think you know it.
‘I don’t know the girl.’
Hardin sensed that they were converging on compromise. Bartering for her soul. ‘She won’t do it, Walden.’
‘I think you’re wrong, Charlie. But …’ He paused to load his pipe. ‘Let me put it this way. In the first instance we were after a defector who could get up on the platform and counter some of this lousy propaganda we’ve been getting lately. We had this guy Tardovsky lined up but that fell through. So we had to look around again and who better than his successor, Vladimir Zhukov? But by this time all our leaks within the Soviet Embassy had closed and we needed information more urgently than defections. So we got to work on Zhukov. Then, like manna from heaven, his daughter turned up.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting one thing? Aren’t you forgetting that Natasha will be going back to Russia soon?’ He could smell the compromise now.
‘Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. That doesn’t stop us getting what information we can while she’s here. We need it badly, Charlie.’
‘I told you she won’t do it.’
Walden nodded, holding a match until it almost burned his fingers. Then he leaned across the desk, paternal once more. ‘Are you really in love with this girl, Charlie?’
‘I guess so.’
‘And you’d like to marry her?’
Which wasn’t any of his Goddam business. ‘Maybe.’
‘Then if she stayed in America everything would work out just fine for the two of you.’
‘You mean you want me to try to persuade her to defect?’
‘If all else fails.’
‘You know damn well all else is going to fail.’
Walden shrugged. ‘We want information. If we can’t get it …’
‘Then you want Natasha.’
‘I’m sure she’d make a wonderful wife, Charlie.’
A bubble of possibility expanded inside Hardin. Life in the States with Natasha. He saw them sitting together on the veranda of a white house surrounded by autumn woods. But first he would have to confess his duplicity, and he knew how she would react.
He said, ‘What about her family? It would knock hell out of them. I met her father briefly at a party the other day. He seemed like a nice guy.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Walden agreed. ‘I’m a family man myself. But Jesus, Charlie, there are more important considerations.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Hardin said doubtfully.
‘Play it by ear. Inside information is top priority.’ (Like hell, Hardin thought.) ‘If that fails, well you can’t say you haven’t tried. Then try to get her to stay. And maybe’—he spoke carefully—‘maybe the C.I.A. will bring Zhukov around to the same way of thinking.’
‘You’re getting a little ambitious, aren’t you?’
‘It might seem over optimistic. But there are many possibilities.’ His voice gloated with the possibilities.
‘You mean with this Massingham woman?’
‘Right. That and other things.’
‘What other things?’
‘C.I.A. business,’ Walden said.
‘I think I’m entitled to know when I’m trying to make a traitor out of a guy’s daughter.’
‘I guess you’re right. The truth is that we figure Zhukov’s wife is pretty high in the K.G.B. Think what an impact a discovery like that might have on a man like Zhukov.’
‘It would be pretty rough on him, I guess.’
‘Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get a out of a set-up like that,’ Walden suggested.
‘No,’ Hardin said. ‘Maybe it wouldn’t.’
PART THREE
16
DID you admire or condemn? There on this soupy June day, smelling of churned mud and exotic blossom, there before the portals of administration, lay the shanty town of impoverished frustration. The grapes of wrath spilled between Lincoln and the Monument. Resurrection City.
Warily, Vladimir Zhukov walked beside the Reflecting Pool where naked hippies bathed with bravado.
The temptation was to condemn. An indictment as easy as swallowing. Nearly 3,000 representatives of deprivation who had marched from all over this democracy to protest. And had built a plywood slum in t
he trench-mud a mile or so from the contented mansions of Capitalism.
Warily, Vladimir Zhukov peered into the shanties of Georgia, Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and into the ghettos within the black slum: Appalachian mountain poor, North Dakota Indian poor, hippies psychedelically poor, the Steinbeck poor. So much for the rotten system.
But could it have happened in Red Square?
Niet.
And in ten years—bearing in mind the boundaries of political promise—the President had promised to build 6,000,000 homes for the poor. Plus proposals to find jobs for 500,000 unemployed; plus food programmes for 256 emergency areas.
For this particular appraisal of the democracy Vladimir Zhukov wore old trousers put together in East Germany and a frayed nylon shirt that collected sweat like a sponge. Also he hadn’t shaved because, on an earlier occasion, his neat appearance hadn’t been appreciated by the shantytown inhabitants protesting outside the Supreme Court about the conviction of twenty-four Indians for breaking the fishing laws of Washington State.
Zhukov had been observing an Indian chief named George Crow Flies High in buckskin jacket and head-dress leading his team up the Roman steps, when a very black Negro astride a very white statue flung a paperbag bomb filled with mud at him. Zhukov moved to grab his sandalled foot but the mob closed in protectively, rubbing the mud into the suit bought with extravagance on F Street.
Zhukov shouted at the Negro in Russian, the language momentarily quelling the mob. Then left with muddy dignity as the Indian women whooped while their menfolk smashed windows and hauled down the American flag.
Now there were feuds within the ramshackle community steaming in the sun. Different pigments indicting: brown, red and white accusing black of pushing them around. From creeds to colours to nations to communities to football supporters to villages to neighbours, Zhukov thought.
Who is the enemy?
He turned away and headed down 17th, his shirt wet against his skin, the air damp after the rain. The Saturday streets were lazy, the open doors of shops advertising their coolness. Walk and Don’t Walk—it didn’t seem to matter with the cabs sauntering, Congress adjourning, nubile secretaries off to the beaches, only the tourists inspecting their rulers’ courts determinedly posing each other, in bright shirts and damp blouses.
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