Azrael (28 page)

“He left it up to me.” Rines sounded miserable. “The old man had told him about me, by the way. He said I was the one on the scene, but he would back me all the way.”

“Nice of him. But he thought it was a good idea, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he thought it was a good idea, but what the hell does that mean? He doesn’t know anything about this kind of work. When you discover an enemy operation in progress, you don’t blow the whistle on it, dammit—blow the whistle, hell. You’re talking about sirens. Bursting bombs and a symphony orchestra!”

“And the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,” Trotter told him. “The bigger, the better.”

“But if you take the enemy operation and
don’t say anything
—”

“You can infiltrate and create disinformation and maybe double some of their people. That’s what the book says. I know what’s in the book. You may remember I learned the craft from one of the
authors
of the book.”

“What’s wrong with the book?” Rines demanded.

“Nothing’s wrong with the book, as far as it goes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, it only goes as far as
spies.
If the whole world were like Russia, there would never be any reason to go outside the book. Everything would be secret, we’d win a few, they’d win a few, and World War III would never happen, because we’re all having so much fun.”

“But?” Rines said.

“Didn’t my father teach you anything?”

Regina said, “Your father?”

Trotter felt panic. He couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

Rines saved his life. Without missing a beat, the acting head of the Agency said, “Code name, Miss Hudson. Please forget you heard it.” To Trotter he said, “Yeah, he taught me a lot.”

“Yeah,” Trotter echoed. He was still catching his breath. “Didn’t he teach you the Russians absolutely cannot hurt us without our help? Didn’t he tell you that all that bullshit about the people running things in this country is the truth?”

“I never doubted it.”

“So all we have to do is give the people a decent chance to do the right thing.”

“Granted. But why does that make this the only way to go?”

“Because we’ve got a chance to show the country what fucks we’re up against. We’ll have proof of their wrongdoing that does
not
involve an American traitor. And—and this is the most important part—we win a big one, and we let the public
know
we’ve won it.”

“All right, you’ve got me convinced.”

Trotter smiled. “Are you sure? I’ve got more if you’re not.”

“Guess who you remind me of,” Rines growled, then smiled. “Like what?”

“Like we pull the plug on Cronus forevermore. They wouldn’t dare try to use it again.”

“What’s Cronus, for God’s sake?” Regina said.

“That, my dear, you will find out in a very few minutes.” He took a deep breath, held it, then released it as a sigh. “Let’s go inside.”

A maid let them in. Rines waved the magic wallet, found out Mrs. Hudson was in the drawing room, then told the maid to go do the laundry or something.

“The laundry was done this morning, sir,” she said.

“Then go polish the washing machine. You want to be out of earshot.”

She looked at Regina, who said, “Go ahead, Wanda, it’s all right,” as though she really believed it. Wanda went.

Regina showed them the way to the drawing room. Trotter told her to wait outside with Rines and listen. Then he walked through an open archway into a beautiful, tasteful white room. Petra Hudson was looking out the window, absorbed, apparently, in the way the wind blew dead leaves across her tennis court.

“Mrs. Hudson?” he said.

She turned to him. Her head moved as slowly and heavily as the door of a bank vault.

“So it’s you,” she said. “I thought it might be.”

“Did you?”

“It crossed my mind. I could see you weren’t a fortune hunter, and you were too—what difference does it make?”

“I’m interested. Please go on. May I sit down?”

“As if I had the right to say no to you. All right, I’ll go on. I suppose this is part of the punishment. You were too
calm;
you were too in control. My daughter is a very wealthy young woman, and I am”—she gave a little laugh—“I
was
very powerful in my own right. If you and Regina were truly in love, you would have felt at least a
little
nervous. Or, if you’d come from the kind of background that would have allowed you to handle the situation with ease, I would have heard of you.”

She looked out the window again. “I tried to keep her away from you, but what could I do? I was trapped. There was no way out.”

That was the most encouraging thing Trotter had heard all day. If she’d held out this long believing there was no way out, she’d fight like a tiger once he’d convinced her there was.

“You used my daughter dreadfully, didn’t you?”

“I used her,” Trotter admitted.

“She loved you. She may not have known it herself, but she loved you. Does that make you feel good?”

“You used her father. He undoubtedly loved you.”

“I was following
orders!”

“Of course you were. You, me, Eichmann, Lieutenant Calley ...”

“Did you make her suffer before you killed her?”

“She didn’t suffer,” Trotter said.

Petra Hudson closed her eyes and took a breath. “Thank you. I’ll give you that much. The ones you killed didn’t suffer.”

“No,” Trotter said. “They didn’t, did they?”

“Are you surprised about it? Didn’t you mean it that way? Don’t worry. You made the living suffer enough.”

“You could have prevented it,” he told her. “You could have prevented all of it.”

“Don’t you think I know that?
Don’t you think I lay awake at night thinking about it? Hating myself? Knowing I was inviting the day when the same thing would happen to my friends and my children?”

“It had to go pretty far before it affected you.”

“You have no right to say that to me. You’re the one who did the killing. Remember, young man, I had the same training you did; and mine was under
Borzov.
It takes a long time to get over expert training in ruthlessness.”

“I guess a woman who would come to a foreign country, seduce a man and bear him children, knowing all the time they might be used as weapons against him, would have to be fairly ruthless.”

She leaned forward, as though preparing to bite his throat.
“Yes, she would.”

“Still, your part in Cronus died with your husband. What you were asked to do was no more than your duty. Yet you let those people die rather than do it.”

“I was trying to save my
own
life. Self-preservation is something else that dies hard.”

“Your life was in no danger. As long as you do what you’re told, you’re in no danger now.”

She looked disgusted; at him, at herself, at life in general. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“
I built something!
Damn you,
I
built something! I took over when James Hudson died and built that company! I built it to be strong, and honest. And because I
owned
it, I knew there would be no committee overseeing my decisions. I could appoint the best people to jobs they could do well—I didn’t have to go out of my way to surround myself with incompetents so that I would shine by comparison. I was free to hire people who could do the job I needed them to do, without regard for their ideologies. I set the policy for the Hudson Group, but not for its employees. I was a free woman, leading free men and women,
and it worked!.”

“You became a capitalist.”

“Yes, I did! Tell that to Borzov; tell it to the Chairman; release it on TASS! But you won’t, of course. You wouldn’t dare. The Americans are right, Mr. Trotter. You are wrong. When I think of the Russian people—”

“The Soviet people.”

“The
Russian
people, damn you! When I think of the Russian people, their patriotism, their pride, and I think of what they could do if they were free, it makes my heart ache.”

She looked at him. “What are you grinning at?”

“Until this very moment, you never looked Russian to me.”

“You look it to me. That was something else that made me suspect you.”

“My mother’s side of the family is Russian.” She turned away from him but he kept talking. “You hate me right now, don’t you?”

“Forever,” she said.

“And you hate Moscow.”

“Yes.”

“You’d fight back, if you could.”

“When I was young, you made my life a mockery. I redeemed it, but now you have come to make it a mockery again. If I could, I would kill you all.”

“Well, you can’t kill them all.”

“There is no need to tell me.”

“But you can fight them.”

“How could I fight you?”

“Not me, them.”

“What—what are you talking about?”

“I’m on your side.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not the KGB man you were waiting for. I’m not KGB at all. I’m an American agent.”

“Liar!”

“You may have heard of the Congressman?”

“No.”

“The General, then.” He was the General when she would have heard of him.

“He was a legend. Borzov himself respected him.”

“That’s who I work for. And I tell you this: You can fight them. And you can win. And you’re going to.”

“You’ve ruined everything! You’ve doomed my son, and me, and my life’s work!”

“Not after we’ve beaten them. They wouldn’t dare.”

“You can’t beat them.”

“You’re having a lot of trouble with your pronouns lately. Not me. You. It’s so simple, you’ve probably never thought of it.”

“It’s insane!”

“You haven’t even heard it yet.”

“It’s insane, whatever it is. And whatever it is, it won’t bring my daughter back.”

Trotter scratched his nose. “Well, that
I
can do.” He looked over toward the archway. “You can come on in now, Bash.”

“N
O! I WON’T! LET
me go, damn you!” Regina’s voice.

The woman known as Petra Hudson had been a regular churchgoer since the early 1950s (because James Hudson was, and it was her mission to be perfect for him) but only now did she feel there might be any reality to the concept of a merciful God. Her daughter was alive. Somehow, the men in Moscow had become convinced she was dead, and at death, they were experts. Petra Hudson did not deserve to have her daughter alive. But here she was.

“Just let her see you.” This was a man’s voice Petra Hudson didn’t recognize.

“I don’t want to see her.”

“Then close your eyes. Come on, you started this, honey. Am I going to have to carry you?”

Since Trotter had come into the room, Petra Hudson had been shooting emotions like drugs. Surprise to find him there at all. Hatred of him. Defiance. Disbelief when he told her who he was and that her situation wasn’t hopeless. Shock at learning Regina was alive. Relief. Guilt. It had left her numb. Only two coherent thoughts could fight their way to her consciousness:
I don’t blame her for not wanting to see me
and
How could it possibly be her fault?

She had no time to wonder about it, because Regina was standing there. She didn’t have her eyes closed; she couldn’t have closed them if she’d wanted to. The loathing pouring out of them would have burned her eyelids off.

“Regina,” she said.

She turned to the white-haired man with her. “She’s seen me. Can I leave now?”

“You keep a room here,” Trotter said. “Wait there.”

“I’m never spending another minute under this roof.”

“Regina, darling.” Petra Hudson was almost startled at the sound of her own voice. She had never had to beg before. She was never so far out of control of things that begging was relevant. She’d known it would be like this. Her life, her life’s work (which was the same thing), the respect of her children, or their lives. As soon as the messages began, she had known she was going to lose them. She realized now that she had defied Moscow because something in her thought it could deal with
losing
Regina or Jimmy more easily than it could with their rejecting her. A selfish part of her. A stupid part.

“Regina, please,” she said again. “I—I didn’t know what to do. You couldn’t have wanted me to give
in
to them.”

“You betrayed them, too. You betray everybody. Them, America, Daddy. And Jimmy, me—you betrayed us the minute you
conceived
us! How could you—”

“That’s enough,” Trotter said.

Regina turned on him without bothering to stop the loathing. “You had me dragged in here, damn you.”

Trotter’s voice stayed low. “No, damn you, you had
me
dragged in here. If you don’t want to see little white crawly things, don’t ask someone to turn over a rock.”

“But I never knew—”

“Well, you sure know now. You went to Washington asking people to help your mother. Turns out she needs it more, and maybe deserves it less than you had in mind. Too bad. We’re not going to shoot her because you changed your mind. This is the big leagues, Bash. It hurts when you get beaned.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He spoke to the white-haired man. “Take her to her room, okay? Then get Albright up here to baby-sit her.”

Petra Hudson had given enough orders to know that the white-haired man didn’t especially enjoy Trotter’s sending him away, but all he said was, “Right. I’ll be right back.”

When they were gone, Trotter went back to his chair and sat. He gestured for her to sit, too.

“All right,” he said. “Are you ready to talk strategy, or do you have to cry or something first?”

“Do you have to enjoy this so much, Mr. Trotter?”

Trotter said, “Who, me?” but pain crossed his face.

“It doesn’t matter. I did all my crying when they first told me to hold myself ready to run the Hudson Group the way they told me to. I knew all this would happen.”

“You didn’t know your daughter would happen.”

“No. No. I thought they would kill her. She found you in Washington?”

“She found someone who found me. She was worried about you. She idolizes you.”

“Nonsense.”