Bearpit (34 page)

Her struggle for the right reply was pitifully obvious and Yuri felt a further wash of pity. Natalia said: ‘It was his job to be there.'

‘Were you able to travel at all?'

‘Once,' she said. To Disney World, in Florida.'

‘Did your father like it?'

‘He said it was for us,' she avoided.

‘Sometimes your father went away without you, didn't he?'

‘For his job at the United Nations,' she insisted defensively.

‘Did he ever talk about it?'

‘That would not have been correct.'

‘Did he ever talk about a particular part of America: somewhere he preferred more than anywhere else?'

‘No,' she said again.

Another cul-de-sac, accepted Yuri. It was hardly likely anyway that already the FBI would have settled Levin under a new identity in a location of his choice. At this stage there would be interrogations far harder than this, bleeding the man of everything he knew.

‘When she goes will I be able to go too?' demanded the old lady. ‘I'm Galina's mother. I've got no one else.'

Another confident expectation, thought Yuri. Improvising, he said: ‘There'll have to be the proper application.' It was the first time he'd known she was a grandmother. Which made incomplete the dossier Kazin had provided. What other more important things had been omitted, to entrap him?

‘Why are you asking all these questions?' blurted Natalia, abruptly and with forced braveness.

Yuri momentarily hesitated, seeking an answer. Then he said: ‘You can't understand why your father defected and neither can we: it could be that he was forced, in some way.' The reply was not as good as he would have liked it to have been but Yuri thought it was adequate. He didn't anticipate the development from it.

‘The letters don't indicate he is being forced to do anything he doesn't want to,' said the girl.

Which was true, Yuri accepted, another shapeless, unformed image from the correspondence hardening into a positive shape. Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin was a senior KGB officer with twenty-five years' service to his country. He had defected to a country regarded as the Soviet Union's chief enemy, subjecting himself, his wife and a son to a lifetime of false indentities in hideaway homes. And by so doing abandoned a daughter he unquestionably loved. Yet apart from Natalia, the letters showed no uncertainty or regret. Surely there would have been? If not uncertainty or regret, then at least an effort at justification or attempted explanation: I have taken the decision which makes me a traitor because … But there was nothing. Yuri made the decision to study them again, for that specific detail, but he was sure he was correct. It was, of course, an exaggeration but rather than the outpourings of a man who had taken the most momentous decision of his life, the tone of the letters could equally come from the back of a ‘wish you were here' holiday postcard.

Before Yuri could speak further the grandmother said: ‘I have read in
Pravda
and
Izvestia
of defectors being tried
in absentia'

‘I am not involved in such things,' said Yuri.

‘What will happen if he is tried?' asked Natalia.

‘That is a matter for the courts.'

‘I meant to me?'

‘That is not my decision either,' said Yuri, avoiding again.

At the possibility of some action against her father, Natalia's defiance leaked away as abruptly as it had come. Blinking against a fresh outburst of tears, she said desperately: ‘I want to be with my mother and father.'

Yuri recognized he had lost control of the encounter by feeling sympathy when he should have shown sternness. But this was not the sort of intelligence for which he'd been trained and was proud to perform: this was brutality and he had no stomach for it. Not against innocents like these anyway. What about other people in other environments? His father's words intruded into his mind –
I
think I could kill someone who tried to kill me.
And someone had. So would he be able to consider killing, by proxy? Striving for the attitude he'd so far failed to achieve, Yuri said: ‘Your difficulties are of your father's creation, no one else's.'

‘He loves me!'

For the first time since he'd entered the neat apartment, Yuri detected an indecisiveness in the insistence. Illogically Yuri thought of Caroline, in a New York which seemed at that moment to be part of another planet. The Caroline whose sympathy had obviously been sincere when he said he was having to go away because of his father's death (the least danger is in the least lies) and told him to get back as soon as he could and that she'd ache for him until he did. He searched for a comparison between the two, knowing there was not one. Not physically, at least. Natalia
was
reasonably pretty, despite the glasses, but the dark hair was untrained and a figure that one day might be desirable still bubbled with puppy fat. Wasn't there a possible connection, though? Levin had abandoned Natalia. Shouldn't he abandon Caroline? Too tenuous. No way comparable, either. He said: ‘Don't tell your father in letters of this visit.'

Natalia seemed about to respond but then closed her mouth tightly. If she did write about it Yuri knew he could intercept and prevent the letter.

‘What else must I do?' she asked obediently.

‘Tell him it's cold here.'

The girl looked blankly at him. ‘I don't understand.'

‘There's no reason why you should,' rejected Yuri. ‘And write frequently. I want there to be a lot of letters from you.'

As he splashed down the odorous steps Yuri tried to sift in his mind what he had achieved by the encounter. A lot, he decided. But still not sufficient to warn him where Kazin was setting his trap.

The questions routed to him from Paris, requiring the confirmation that Washington sought, was the signal to Victor Kazin that Levin was being debriefed by the CIA. Kazin felt dizzy at the immediate realization, passingly worried that he often felt dizzy lately and that thoughts seemed to wriggle away before he could grasp them. But then his head cleared, becoming clearer than it had been for longer than he could remember.

It had worked!

Now, at last, it was time fully to brief Comrade Chairman Chebrikov on his brilliant concept. There was too little remaining of Vladislav Belov's proposal for any shared credit. And as the unassailable head of the First Chief Directorate the credit was deservedly his anyway, as a matter of right.

Kazin prepared graphs and progress sheets for a formal presentation and felt the dizziness again at Chebrikov's ecstatic endorsement of everything that had been done. Not even Kazin anticipated that the KGB chairman would recommend he be awarded the Order of Lenin and when Chebrikov announced his intention Kazin relented and disclosed Belov's minimal involvement.

The Director of the American division learned from a memorandum of praise from the KGB chairman, congratulating him upon his ‘help and assistance', how the idea that had taken years to formulate had been stolen from him. Briefly Belov came close to physical collapse, slumped over his desk like a man suffering a stroke or a seizure: for a while his vision was actually hazy and blurred.

He'd been robbed, Belov acknowledged: robbed after five long, wearisome, jigsaw carving years of the recognition he had been sure would rocket him through the promotion ranks to at least the leadership of a Chief Directorate.

The next immediate awareness was worse. He knew that, trapped beneath Victor Kazin, there was nothing whatsoever he could do about it.

28

Yevgennie Levin was disturbed by the tightened security, some of the men in the guardhouse visibly having guns and clattering helicopters frequently overhead, but was glad it had not interfered with the altered system for Petr's tuition. Professionally the Russian felt an enormous satisfaction at having apparently succeeded, but there was an equal relief at Petr's adjustment. Straight As in every subject, without exception, and a completely changed demeanour, too: polite and respectful, both to him and Galina, actually ready to laugh, which had been impossible for them all, for too long. He seemed anxious, as well, to make friends with the FBI and CIA protective personnel whose now increased presence was almost claustrophobic. Only about Natalia did there remain a difficulty and even here there was no longer from the boy the resentful, hostile attitude of the early weeks. He talked of when, not if, she would be able to join them, actually boasting of what he would show her in that part of Connecticut he was getting to know, now that he was going daily into Litchfield to school.

Levin felt Galina slip her arm through his at the door of the house as they watched the car carrying Petr crunch down the drive and go out of sight, between the trees that concealed the largest of the guardhouses.

‘I never thought he'd settle,' she said.

‘Neither did I,' confessed Levin.

He felt her pressure, urging him further away from the house and people who might overhear. Having got far enough away from the house to talk it was momentarily impossible because of the overhead stutter from one of the guarding helicopters. The woman grimaced up in its direction, her free hand trying to hold her hair in place, and when she was able to speak said: ‘Why the supposed hunt?'

‘I don't know,' said Levin, in further confession.

‘Was it ever discussed?'

‘No.'

‘Natalia was supposed to be allowed to come with us. And she wasn't. Now this,' protested Galina. ‘I don't like things happening that we're not prepared for. It's difficult enough as it is.'

‘It can only be to make me seem more important to the Americans,' said Levin.

‘Was that really necessary?'

‘What else can it be?' he demanded.

‘I worry about Petr going out alone, to school.'

‘He isn't alone.'

‘OK, so he's driven there and back,' Galina conceded. ‘But there's no guard when he's there: we decided that to avoid the curiosity of the other kids.'

‘Darling,' said Levin patiently. ‘Not fifteen minutes ago we both agreed we never thought Petr would settle down. Now he has. And he's doing exceptionally well. You telling me you want me to risk it all by insisting he's tutored back in the house again?'

‘I suppose not,' she said.

‘Everything is going fine,' assured Levin.

There was the sound of another helicopter, this time the machine that was to carry him to Washington. Galina tried to protect her hair again and said: ‘Any idea what time you'll be coming back?'

‘No,' said Levin.

‘You
will
come back?' she said. ‘You won't be kept in Washington?'

She really was nervous, Levin recognized irritably. Why the hell had Moscow introduced something for which they were unprepared! He said: ‘There's never any suggestion of my staying over.'

David Proctor ran towards them, bent double under the rotor blades, blown by the downdraft which flattened the grass. How deafening would the sound be on those unseen sensors, wondered Levin.

‘All set?' shouted the American.

Levin nodded, making towards the machine. Because of his size it was more difficult for Levin to bend than it was for Proctor and by the time he belted himself in he was panting. Levin was no longer worried by helicopter travelling: in fact he rather enjoyed it. He gazed down at the bulging hills of the immediate Connecticut countryside, seeing how much thinner the tree covering was now from how it had been the first time he had made the trip, only the firs and some of the maple retaining any thatch. He switched his headrest button, enabling him to talk to Proctor during flight and said, nodding downwards: ‘Looks cold.'

The FBI supervisor nodded back and said: ‘You ski?'

‘Not any more.'

‘What about Petr?'

‘Yes.'

‘There are some great ski lodges in Connecticut,' came in Bowden, sitting on his other side. ‘When the snows come we can make a trip.'

‘When will that be?'

‘A month,' promised Bowden. ‘Maybe six weeks.'

‘Any news about Natalia?' demanded Levin predictably.

‘Still pressing,' said Proctor, giving the usual reply.

Levin went familiarly from the Langley helicopter pad towards the debriefing building, mentally parading what he had to disclose today. It was difficult for him to be absolutely sure but he believed himself to be precisely on the schedule devised by the KGB. At the entrance to his debriefing room Levin glanced back to the main CIA complex. There'd never been an indentity – a protection against his revealing it under hostile, drugged interrogation – but somewhere in there was a man who was going to cause a volcanic upheaval within America's overseas intelligence agency.

‘It's names we want, Yevgennie,' opened Myers at once. ‘What you're telling us is invaluable but we need better direction.' The checks were continuing through the personnel on both the Caribbean and Latin American desks and extending on into the analysis sections but so far there had not been the slightest breakthrough.

‘I know,' said the Russian. Don't hurry, he thought; let it come bit by bit, as it would from a deeply searched memory.

‘Let's go back to those mess hall meetings with Shelenkov,' suggested Norris patiently. ‘What time of year was it?'

‘Summer. June I think. Then the Fall. September, maybe October,' said Levin.

‘Hot then, the first time?'

‘Very,' agreed the Russian. ‘Humid, too.'

‘Always a bitch,' coaxed Norris. ‘Guess you felt like a drink when he suggested it?'

‘I hadn't thought about it,' said Levin. ‘When he did it seemed a good idea.'

‘He drank Scotch?'

A comparing question, Levin recognized: they were still testing him. He said: ‘Yes.'

‘A lot?'

‘Difficult to remember.' Frighteningly, Levin saw the trick when it was almost too late and added: ‘He must have done, mustn't he?'