The Mulberry Bush (16 page)

Amzi was on the telephone when Tom Terhune and I entered his office. He was listening in silence to the voice at the other end of the line with a total lack of expression on his face. The call went on far longer than Amzi's usual ten-word limit, so the Director—the one person he couldn't hang up on—must have been the person at the other end. Amzi gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk.

After another five minutes by the clocks on the wall, he said, “It shall be done, sir.”

He hung up with a clatter, pointed a finger at me, and said, “Congratulations. Good shooting. Cool head. The Director's esteem is fucking boundless. Now tell me about Boris the Great.”

I described the conversation on the beach. I repeated everything I had already reported: The meeting at the party, the shootout on the football pitch, the chance encounter while running in the park, the chess games—everything I thought Headquarters needed to know.

Amzi said, “What do you make of all this?”

I said, “The obvious. Either this guy is on the level or it's a dangle.”

“Which possibility do you like better?”

“I waver. He's very good.”

“Make a guess. Is the material fake or genuine?”

“Genuine, but there's nothing very useful in it. He's trying to establish trust. Why would he give us stuff we'd know was crap?”

Amzi said, “That's the best you can do? What I need is guidance. Is this the real thing or not? We're done. Think, remember, read this pile of junk again, slower. Think some more. Then we'll talk.”

The second and third readings of the documents in Boris's package were no more enlightening than the first. I found nothing new, formed no fresh insights. In the bowels of Headquarters, I assumed, roomfuls of analysts were deconstructing the same papers.

So much for the drama, the excitement, the hairsbreadth thrill of spinning tangled webs.

Amzi called Tom and me back into his office exactly, to the minute, one week after our initial meeting.

The first words out of his mouth were, “Are we any the wiser?”

He pointed at me. “You first.”

I said, “Not me.”

“Any change in your gut?”

“No. But I say again, Boris isn't stupid enough to give us reason to doubt his good faith at the very outset of this operation. It's not gold, but it's genuine dross.”

Amzi said, “I'm staggered by your eloquence. Tom?”

“I second the eloquence.”

“So what to do?”

Tom remained silent. I followed his example. Amzi looked from face to face. He said, “You're here to help with the thinking. So help.”

Tom said, “There's really not much to add, Amzi. We all know the pluses and minuses. They won't change. In cases like this it's always a question of taking the chance or not taking the chance.”

“No shit?”

“The decision is yours. Whatever you decide we'll support unless it's so off the wall we feel the need for a footnote.”

To me Amzi said, “How about you, O wizard? Do you also vote for eeny meeny miny mo?”

“If you're asking what I'd do in your place, my decision would be to take it but also take precautions. It's the only way to find out if the offer really is genuine.”

“Better to get your fingers burned than not light a fire?”

Tom said, “You might light a fuse.”

Amzi said, “What's that supposed to mean?”

Tom said, “Sometimes doing nothing is the right thing to do.”

“So I've heard, but not lately,” Amzi said. “Doing zip's safer, that's for sure. In years gone by we had a chief of counterintelligence in this building who voted no on every Russian who ever wanted to defect. Fought tooth and nail against letting them walk in and tell us what they had to tell us. They were all dangles, he said, no exceptions. They would mind-fuck us. So, do nothing.”

Amzi drank coffee and studied me as if I were Boris and he was admiring the plastic surgery.

“The funny thing was that almost everybody took this nutcase seriously,” he said. “It never occurred to anybody that he might not want us talking to KGB defectors because sooner or later a walk-in who knew that he, the nutcase, was the actual sleeper, would show up and blow his cover.”

Tom said, “But he wasn't the sleeper.”

Amzi said, “He wasn't? You're absolutely sure about that? This guy was the asshole buddy of the worst and most destructive traitor the Brits ever uncovered, and supposedly this broke his heart instead of making him a suspect. That figures. Why? He was above suspicion because he
managed
suspicion for this outfit. But I wondered back then and I wonder now whether he was John the Baptist or the Manchurian candidate. And so
should you, because someday the fucker will be reincarnated and you may run into him on some road to Emmaus and walk right by.”

Wonders never ceased: Amzi knew his Bible. Tom studied the ceiling. After a time he shifted his gaze back to Amzi and said, “So what do you want us to do?”

“Let me repeat. Number one, I want you to
not
tell me what you think I want to hear or cover your asses by not telling me what you really think. Second, within twenty-four hours I want a balance sheet of the positives and negatives and a rough estimate of the bottom line for a yes and for a no. The Director will make the decision, not me. But he pays you to speak the truth that makes men free, so get to it.”

The gnarled finger jabbed the air. “You first.”

I said, “Accentuate the positive. Give it a try. It's the only way to find out if Boris is on the level. If he isn't, we can withdraw.”

“How do we do that?”

“We disappear without saying good-bye. If he refuses to give up, tell the Cheka what he's been up to.”

“They might cremate poor Boris alive.”

“That would solve our problem.”

Amzi bared his teeth. They were the color of ivory, large, even, and square. I had never before seen him smile.

He said, “Stout lad.” He pointed at Tom. “How about you, Tommy Tune?”

Tom Terhune said, “He's got a point. But if we want this apparatchik to have a little respect, we should negotiate his list of conditions. First principle: We control.”

“OK. Which demands do we deny?”

“He has to thumbprint something. The ritual is psychologically important. So is money. We should open a bank account for him somewhere in Scandinavia and set up dead drops inside Russia with foreign passports and cash in case he has to get out of the country in a hurry.”

“What else?”

“He shouldn't have the power to choose his own handler. This fellow”—he meant me—”is too valuable to devote himself to any one target. Any experienced case officer can do the honors.”

I said, “Excuse me, but so far I'm the only one of us he's made contact with and he wants to keep it that way, so what's the profit in introducing him to others and risk losing him?”

“I'll let you know what the Director decides,” Amzi said. “Meantime, think about this: Boris recruits his chess partner …”

Tom, plainly horrified by what he knew was coming next, started to rise from his chair.

He said, “I don't want to hear the rest of this.”

Amzi said, “Sit down. Listen.”

Tom stopped while half erect, his knees bent.

Amzi said, “What's the problem? It would be a fake recruitment. It would give Boris an ironclad reason to go anywhere in the world to meet this valuable agent who hobnobs with the big boys at Headquarters. If he tells Moscow up front what he's doing they can't catch him at it, now can they?”

Tom, seething, finished standing up.

He said, “Amzi, you're too clever by half.”

Amzi said, “Jolly good of you to say so, old chap. We're done.”

So was I, in Tom's plainly visible opinion. I myself thought I was halfway home.

The Director, covering his behind by expressing strong reservations for the record, gave us an amber light to put the ball in play. But what if I was unmasked, kidnapped, forced to confess, and put on video for all the world to see while gasping at the dirty tricks Headquarters played on the good people of the SVR who only wanted to do their bit to put an end to American deviltry?

Tom Terhune was uneasy about this possibility. To Amzi, it was simply what we were paid to do. In twenty words or less, he gave me my mission—outwit the wily Russian, take whatever chances were necessary but none that were not, win the game for America and don't fuck up.

I texted my flight details to Luz, but there was no sign of her at Ezeiza, as the
porteños
called the Ministro Pistarini International Airport. It was after midnight when I cleared customs. If Luz was still in the mood in which I had left her, I didn't want to deal with it, so I took a cab to my own apartment. None of the ingenious traps I had set to detect clandestine entry had been sprung. This meant nothing, since no professional burglar would have left signs of the intrusion.

I was dead tired. I had slept very little while in Virginia. I took a shower and fell into bed without bothering about pajamas. My brain went off the air. One second I was struggling to stay awake long enough to pull up the covers, the next—hours later in real time—I was wide-awake and in the grip of nameless dread. I called on my rational mind to come to the rescue. No answer. Dread gave me no hint as to where it came from, how it had gotten in, what it was warning me about. Was it in bed with me because I feared losing Luz? Because the gods were letting me know I had cooked my own goose?

I got out of bed, barely able to breathe and hardly remembering the way to the kitchen or where I kept the whiskey. I drank half a dozen glugs of Jack Daniel's from the bottle. The liquor went down the wrong way. I gasped, coughed like a tubercular, half-spat and half-vomited into the sink. Still coughing, I staggered into the bathroom and looked for a pill, any pill that would calm me down, but I don't take pills, so all I found were some morning-after tablets Luz kept in my medicine cabinet in case she ever needed them.

The phone rang. It was three o'clock in the morning. Luz's voice said, “I'm outside your door.”

I opened it, and there she was, wearing an ankle-length maxi coat, long out of style but just the garment for what she had in mind. She was barefoot, her gleaming hair was loose. She slowly unbuttoned the coat's many buttons and dropped it to the floor. She was naked. Of course she was naked.

I had absolutely no sexual response. Never before in my life had such a thing happened in these circumstance. Because I, too, was naked, Luz saw this at once. Astonishment flooded into her face.

“
Jesús, María, y José,
” she said, “what have they done to you?”

Though Luz tried everything, nothing changed in the night or even in the morning after the dread had at last gone back into hiding. In her eyes I saw a question:
Who had I been fucking in Virginia?

After a silent breakfast we went our separate ways.

That evening Luz did not return to my apartment nor did she call. Had the Luz I knew vanished? I knew this could happen without warning at any time. I had seen it happen. I relived with all five senses the time that followed my parents' final separation, a space in my memory that had been padlocked for twenty years. One day the two of them were married as they always had been, sleeping in the same bed, sharing a bathroom, appearing naked to each other, having breakfast together while reading different sections of the
Washington Post
just as they had done for half their lives and for all of mine.

And then one night for no reason I could understand, the film broke. A chalky squiggle appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen, the sound track ran down, the screen turned into a square of blinding white light. They went on living in the same city, they shopped in the same stores, they went to the same restaurants and movie houses as always, but they never saw each other again. Chance never once brought them together. It was uncanny. They had put up with each other for twenty years. Now, in a moment, neither of them any longer existed for the other.

Was Luz, too, gone forever? Would she and I become invisible to one another in the same way as my parents had done? Already, lying wide-awake in the dark with an emptied mind, I could not picture her.

The next morning was the third Saturday that Boris had set as a deadline for Headquarters's decision. He arrived at my door as usual at 5:57 A. M., the usual grease-spotted bag of
medialunas
in hand. I had set up the chessboard, and as soon as I let him in, we sat down to play as if this was a Saturday morning like any other. He won the first game, I won the second, and then he turned over the pieces one by one and crossed his arms and waited for me to break the silence.

Let him wait. I fetched a pot of espresso. I ate a
medialuna.
Boris, abstaining, watched wordlessly. My plan was to make him speak the first word. Winning that infantile contest of wills was the first step toward
control. I had tried this tactic in similar situations and I knew it worked even with very smart people, especially if they were used to being the dominant one. Ask any frantic mother whose kid won't eat his oatmeal.

It worked this time, too, though it took a little longer than usual. As I poured myself a second cup of coffee, Boris, moving a muscle for the first time in minutes, swallowed his cold espresso at a gulp. I refilled his cup.

As if he were the one in control, he said, “Do you have a message for me or not?”

This was a small victory. I had made him ask the question, to let his anxiety show.

I said, “I do. There are conditions.”

“The agreement was that there would be no conditions.”

I said, “What agreement? It takes two to make an agreement. You made a proposal. It was received for what it was, a starting point for negotiations. If we have misunderstood you, if you don't like what I'm about to tell you, if you want to walk away, fine. That will be the end of it. You and I will stop playing chess and say good-bye forever and you can go back to Moscow and find some other way to live with the situation you told me you want to change.”

“In that case you would get nothing.”

“True, but we would be no worse off than we are now. Shall we continue?”

Boris waved a hand:
Suit yourself.

The script for these farces is always the same, no matter what language is being spoken or who the target might be. The candidate for recruitment is a candidate because he wants something and he wants it now. The usual motivations are money, resentment over some personal slight, or disappointment. Boris wanted no money. That left disappointment and, unlikely as that seemed, idealism. Somehow Boris, in the face of his country's unbroken history of despotism, believed that Russia could be
reborn as a better society. Or so he wanted me to believe. And so I had to pretend to take him seriously.

I recited Headquarters's conditions. I left the part about my mock recruitment by him till last.

He said, “You're insane.”

He meant it. The arrangement violated every procedure he lived by.

I said nothing.

Boris said, “This is an insult to my intelligence. It is impossible to accept the arrangement they want.”

I said, “Then I'm sorry to say we're done.”

Boris shook his head in disbelief. He got to his feet and walked to the window. Was he thinking, was he cooling off, was he showing himself to someone watching in the street below as a signal that the deal was done or the deal was off?

Everything I had planned for was in the balance. I should have been on tenterhooks. Actually, I couldn't have cared less whether or not Boris was playacting. Suddenly, in the middle of this scenario on which so much depended, Luz had walked back into my mind. As if she were physically present, I sniffed the faint musk of her heat, felt her glowing skin against mine, glimpsed her tiny, knowing precoital smile.

Boris said something. I heard his voice but not his words. I willed myself to come back from the elsewhere into which I had slipped and asked him to repeat. He still stood at the window, his broad back turned to me.

Making no attempt to conceal his annoyance—or maybe faking it for effect—Boris said, “All right. I will take this tomfoolery under consideration.”

We were in business. I got out the standard secrecy agreement and the stamp pad on which Boris would ink his thumb. He did so without hesitation. On an impulse I inked my own thumb, too, and we both signed as if we were recruiting each other—as in fact we were, with strong mental reservations.

Boris said, “Helsinki, two months from today, same time, the sauna at the Scandic Park Hotel.”

He watched my reaction. Would I follow orders?

I said, “No, not there, not then. The next morning at seven-thirty, the sauna at Maunulan maja in Central Park. Meanwhile, no more chess. No contact whatsoever.”

After a flicker of hesitation, he said, “You know Helsinki. Good.”

“Until then.”

He nodded and departed.

Within minutes I was at Luz's door. I rang the doorbell instead of using my key. Minutes went by, and then she opened up. My intention was to rip off her clothes without wasting time by closing the door.

“No wonder I couldn't get you on the phone,” she said. “You have a visitor.”

“Who?”

“He's waiting for you in the living room.”

She pointed the way with a jerk of her head. Her hair swung, then hair by hair fell perfectly back into place.

Diego stood at the window in exactly the same position, back turned, eyes on the street, in which I had last seen Boris a few minutes earlier.

He said, “How did it go?”

His face was blank. I thought at first he was asking about my trip to the U. S.

However, knowing Diego, knowing that Luz kept nothing from him, I said, “How did what go?”

Diego turned around and faced me. “Your meeting with Boris.”

Oh,
that.

I said, “He won the first game with Alapin's opening, I won the second, we skipped the rubber.”

“You should be happy with the tie. He's a terrific player.”

“Yes, he is, but then again he's a Russian, so it comes with the passport.”

Diego said, “I wanted to have a talk with you. Do you have a moment?”

He wore a serious look.

What did he have to say to me?
Can you support my little girl in the manner to which she is accustomed?

He said, “As Luz has no doubt told you, her father entrusted her to me before he left us. He asked me to be a father to her, to protect her, to make sure that she was safe and happy. I promised I would do as he asked. Keeping that promise has been the chief preoccupation of my life. She is more than a daughter to me. In my mind she is also her father and mother. Within herself she carries their DNA, which used to be called the soul.”

He paused, then said, “Does that sound overwrought to you?”

“No.”

What came next didn't exactly surprise me. It did cause a knot of anger in my chest. I knew that Luz told Diego everything, that to her he was as much two persons—himself and Alejandro, not necessarily in that order—as she was to him. Her trust in him, trust that she extended to no one else, including me, was absolute.

Diego said, “Luz has told me the plan that you and she have to do damage to the primary enemy of mankind. From one point of view I find this frightening because you have put Luz in danger. From another viewpoint it's something I should have expected, given the blood that runs in her veins, and I'm proud of her. She is keeping something important alive. I am here to tell you that you had better keep Luz alive.”

He paused and looked at me, as if expecting me to comment. I didn't comment.

Diego went on. He said, “I have known about this plot of yours for some time. Soon after you and Luz came together, she told me your plan and asked for my help. As it happens, I knew Boris when we were both young men. Alejandro knew him, too, but less well. Boris helped our movement in many ways. More than anyone except Alejandro, he kept it alive. After Luz told me you and she were looking for someone
in the Russian apparatus who could help you, I spoke to Boris. He was intrigued. He instructed Arkady to have a party and invite you. The rest followed with no help from me.”

I said, “Diego, you take my breath away. You just said I was the one who put Luz in mortal danger. And now you tell me this? What do you call handing her over to the Russians?”

Anger flashed in Diego's eyes, and then in an instant disappeared.

He said, “In this as in everything I do in connection to Luz, I am keeping my promise to Alejandro. I am protecting her. I will go on protecting her because she tells me she loves you and it's obvious to me that that is the truth. She is prepared to die with you or for you. She is her mother's daughter, and if anyone ever died for love it was Felicia. Because it is part of protecting Luz, I will protect you, too. I want you to know that, so that whatever may happen, you will not make the mistake of thinking that I would do you harm as long as Luz lives and loves you.”

I said, “Let me ask you this. How exactly would you go about preserving Luz, and incidentally me, from harm?”

“Alejandro lives on in many minds in many places,” Diego said. “His friends will protect Luz and protect you, too—rescue you both—if ever you are in what you call mortal danger. Luz will call me, I will call them, they will make Luz and you safe. You have my word on it.”

He smiled. It was a charming smile. It almost made me like him. It was designed to make you trust him. Seeing that smile and reading what it said, any clinician would have made the same diagnosis I made. There was no cure for what ailed Diego.