Us Conductors (20 page)

MY HANDS WERE FLAT
on the table at Mud Tony’s. Three men sat opposite me; one was a stranger. I had arrived late. I had almost not come at all. There was poison in my chest. There was withering jasmine. There was nothing. I do not know if it was fear that brought me to L’Aujourd’hui or simply the sense that things should have a sequence. This was the sequence. The restaurant smelled of smoke. I had not slept the previous night. Karl smiled, and Karl smiled, but the man sitting between them did not smile.

“So,” I said. I almost did not recognize my voice.

“So,” said the Karl on the left. “Do you have news to report?”

“No,” I said. We were speaking in English. My voice was acrid. It was as if every hidden inside part of me were made of ash, just ash, bare ash.

“Did you meet with Griffiths?” Griffiths was a man from Douglas Aircraft. They had told me to meet with him.

“No.”

“Lieutenant Groves?” Lieutenant Groves was a man from the navy. They had told me to meet with him.

“No.”

The Karl on the left opened a folder. “Did you deliver the proposal to G.E.?” The proposal was for a long-term teletouch contract. Its smallest print was full of tricks.

“Not yet,” I said.

The man in the centre had not spoken. Whereas the Karl on the left had a beard, and the Karl on the right had a moustache, this man had no hair on his face. His head was shaved almost to his scalp. He had square shoulders but a narrow chest. His forearms were like clubs.

The stranger gestured to the waitress. She went into the kitchen. He looked at me with his deep-set eyes. Next to the jocular Karls, this man seemed like a cinder block. I stared back at him. All three men, I realized, had the same kind of eyes.

The waitress came with four empty cups and four slices of pie.

The man in the centre stacked two of the cups and pushed them aside, beside the napkin dispenser. Next he placed one plate of pie on top of another plate of pie. Cherries sludged between the jadite. He stacked all four plates. It was a sickly, stupid mess. He pushed these aside. He placed one empty glass in front of me and one in front of himself. One of the Karls poured vodka into the glasses. These were not the small shots I was used to drinking with the Karls: spirits filled each glass to the brim. “Drink,” said the other Karl.

I knew enough to obey. I took it in sips. They waited. My eyes began to water. When I had finished, the man lifted his to his lips. He drank the vodka in one swift movement, as if he was swallowing a cup of water. He put down the empty glass. He stared at me.

“What?” I said.

He took out an eyeglasses case and withdrew a pair of spectacles. They were unfashionable, large and square and thick, like a grandfather would wear. He put these on.

“This week you are going to meet with Howard Griffiths,” he said. “You are going to meet with Lieutenant Leslie Groves. You are going to deliver your proposal to Theodore Scott at G.E.”

“Yes?” I said.

The man picked up the bottle of vodka. He poured two more glasses. As we drank, he watched me through the thick lenses of his spectacles. The room began to swim. I felt as if there were ball bearings in my joints.

“How long have you been in America, Lev Sergeyvich?”

“Five years.”

“Are you here legally?”

“Yes.”

“With a visa?”

“Yes.”

“How many times has your visa been renewed?”

“Ten?”

“Eleven times,” he said. “Who renewed your visa?”

I hesitated. “You did.”

“We did.” The man lit a cigarette. “We allowed you to come here. We pay your expenses. We keep you from harm.”

I wanted to say:
You do not pay my expenses
. I wanted to say:
You have not kept me from harm
.

“What are you working on now?” asked the man.

“Teletouch,” I said. “Assorted teletouch applications. These men know—”

“Yes,” said the man. “What else?”

“The theremin,” I stammered. “Also, a device that can sense metal objects. And the altimeter …”

“An altimeter. For aeroplanes?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

The man squinted.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, like for aeroplanes.”

“Submarines?”

I had not thought of submarines. “Maybe. Different principles would have a bearing, but—”

“What else?”

I took a breath. “Many things.”

“ ‘Many things,’ ” he repeated, without humour. “Where were you yesterday?” I felt as though he was shoving our conversation across the room.

“At my workshop.”

  “What were you doing there?”

    “Many th—” I began to say. “Instructing a student.”

         “Which student?”

         “I don’t recall.”

    “You don’t recall?”

  “I don’t recall.”

“Try to recall.”

“I need to go,” I said. I stood up, unsteadily.

“Sit down,” said the man.

I began to edge out of the booth.

“Sit down,” the man repeated.

I was in the aisle. The man looked suddenly grotesque, red-lipped, staring at me. His eyes were large behind his square glasses.

“I need to go.”

The two Karls stood up. I was walking past them. The one at the edge of the booth followed me. I could hear his footsteps. I could feel his shadow over mine. I imagined his fists swinging at his sides. I swivelled on my heel. “Do not come closer,” I murmured.

“Or?” he said.

I replied in Russian. “Or I will knock your head from your shoulders.”

Above his little beard, Karl’s expression flickered.

The man had not moved from the table. His back was to me. “Your time is not your own, Termen,” he called out. He was still using English. “It is a gift from your state.”

“I have to go,” I said in a hard voice.

“Where are you going? To flee into the hills? To ask Walter Rosen for another loan? To give another music lesson to a Reisenberg?”

At this, I took a step toward him. “What is your name?” I snarled.

“Come here,” said the man.

Who was this man whose face I could not see, with the voice of an executioner?

He said, “Come here and I will tell you.”

I moved no closer.

The Karls watched me as if I were a wild animal.

The man in the booth stood up. He was my height. He slipped into the aisle, standing at the foot of the table. He turned to look at me. “My name is yours.”

“What?”

“It is Lev.”

“Lev?”

“My name is Lev.”

“Lev what?” I asked.

The man said, “We have given you five years, Lev Sergeyvich. What have you given us? How many months? How much of yourself?”

“I have given you everything,” I said.

“You have not.”

I clenched my jaw. “Fuck you,” I said. It was the first time I had ever said such words in English. “Every idea I have, every invention, I give to the Soviet Union.”

He shook his head. “You are a liar.”

“What?” I shouted. I was drunk. I jumped onto one of the diner’s leather benches. The Karl who had come after me clenched his hands. “What do you call me?” I stood over them, above them. I stared down at this cinder-block Lev. He was a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. I was precarious on the seat, felt precarious inside, but still I knew I could leap across the booth and push the toe of my shoe into this spy’s soft jaw. He stood immobile. He had sunken eyes. He shot a glance at the waitress and she disappeared into the kitchen.

“I am a scientist!” I yelled. I took a deep breath. “I am a scientist,” I repeated, more quietly. “I study things. I learn, I probe, I assess. But I am here in New York City, two thousand miles from home, two thousand miles from my institute. Why? Why did I come to this city of strangers?” I looked at him. With my gaze, I tried to say,
Answer me
. The man did not answer. “I came because I was
asked
,” I shouted. “My countrymen asked; I came. When I arrived I knew only one man. He has disappeared. My friend has disappeared. I have continued to do my work, to meet here with these
olukhi
, to sign their papers and make their deals and give everything to Russia. I have given over everything. Now what am I left with? Alone, two thousand miles from home? Nothing. Nothing! I am abandoned. I am drunk in a dingy restaurant. And you call me a liar.” I spat. “Damn you.”

I could hear the cars in the street outside. I could hear the murmuring American voices on the kitchen’s wireless. The man in glasses wore an expression of sadness. He lowered his eyes and picked up the bottle of vodka. After a moment he put it down. He lifted his gaze to mine. He slipped past the Karl and
stepped up onto a banquette, and we were facing each other across the rear of a booth, like two children.

“You’re not alone, Lev,” he said.

I wondered if his name was really the same as mine.

“We have work for you to do today.”

THE MAN HAD TWO PIECES
of paper in his pocket, folded into his wallet. The first was a map of the Dolores Building in uptown Manhattan, with a red X on the room numbered 818. The second page was a list of numbers. 3105-GH-4X88L. 3011-MM-2A37B. 3102-TY-1O49B. PERS 07. In all, he said, there were twelve files.

“What is this?” I said.

“They are secrets,” he said.

I felt as if my spirit was stumbling through the channels of my body. I was opening and closing my hands. I couldn’t distinguish whether I was even truly angry anymore. I wanted to work myself up to make another speech, vehement, full of affirmations; yet my mind just stuttered, racing and seizing, past images of absent Pash, distant Russia, and you. It ran and ran, like unspooling film.

The man put his palm on my shoulder.

I was a ruined mine, caving in.

In a vanishing voice I asked, “Why should I help you?”

He spoke very gently. “We are Russian,” he said. “You and I—we are comrades.” He left a long silence.

“Yes,” I murmured.

“We carry one another, Lev. We stand side by side.”

I forced a bitter laugh. “Oh yes?”

“Yes,” said the man. He turned his head and I saw the way his eyes were magnified, huge, on the interior of his glasses. “Lev, you are gifted,” he said. “You are an exemplar of our people.
Brilliant, with a bold heart, tenacious and brave. Yours is work that no one else can do. You must not doubt for one moment what a treasure you are, for your comrades.”

I swallowed. I said nothing.

“You have a meeting at the Dolores Building. We need you to go there and steal some documents.”

In my peripheral vision, the Karls seemed to grow fainter.

I told him I had never done anything like this before.

He said it was all right. He gazed at me. He smiled. He muttered something I could not make out. I think he said, “You are a king.” I just nodded. I looked at his pages of paper, the columns of letters and numbers. I felt a pang of homesickness for the Cyrillic Φ, the Җ. For the Neva, the Volga, their lifting bridges. I thought of you, Clara. The vodka was still swinging through my heart. I thought of you for a long moment and then I tore my thoughts from that wasteland. I took the pages from him. I folded them. I put them in my jacket pocket. “What else,” I said.

He talked of details. My appointment, my alibi, the place where the documents were stored—room 818.

“The meeting with Mr Grimes is at eleven o’clock,” the man in glasses said. He looked at his watch. “It is almost ten thirty. It will be lunchtime when you finish. The hallways will be empty.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Understand that these files are a matter of Russian security.” He did not look away from my face. “You are the only operative we have who has a reason to be at the Dolores.” He took out a tiny envelope. He slipped out a key and two silver pins. “Take these.”

The key was light, sheer, recently cut.

“For 818?” I said.

“Yes.”

“And these?” The pins, one flatter than the other.

“For the cabinets.”

I shook my head. “I do not know how.”

“It will not present you with a problem, Professor Termen.”

With two fingers, the man signalled to Mud Tony that we were leaving. The cook nodded his head. He was drying cutlery. He raised a knife to the light.

There was a moment and then I followed.

On the street, the Karls disappeared around the corner. The man named Lev took off his glasses. He scanned up and down the block. I wondered what he was looking for, and dreaded it. A squat Chevrolet pulled up around the bend, Karl and Karl in its front seats.

“So,” Lev said. He did not finish the sentence.

I opened the car’s rear door. There was a small moment when I thought this man might embrace me.

When I was inside the car, he leaned across the opening. He said, “Go safely, comrade.”

“Thank you, comrade,” I said, in a dry voice.

He pushed the door shut.