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“Perhaps that is the reason I trust you,” he repeated. He gestured with the cigarette. In the darkness, the tip described a bright red arc. “An interrogation, Miss Jensen, is only in the second instance an effort to uncover information. It is, in the first instance, an effort to study another human being. To understand his strengths and weaknesses, his fears and his dreams, his degree of resilience. Or hers, as the case may be. I have interrogated you, Miss Jensen, and I trust you. There is no other American I trust.”

“Trust to do what?”

“Please, listen carefully. I have a message for your President.”

This brought her up short. They were standing in the sand now, a few covered boats bobbing nearby. Yellow moonlight flirted and played on the flat black water.

“My President. You mean Kennedy.”

“Yes.”

She felt slow and stupid. “If you have a message for the President, maybe you should be at the White House.”

“I wish you to deliver it.”

Again she shut her eyes, worrying that same fold of skin. She said nothing. Most of her didn’t believe him.

“There are missiles in Cuba,” Fomin said. “Actual missiles,” he continued, as the world did flip-flops. “They are intermediate-range missiles, type R-12 Dvina. Your military designates this as the SS-4, or the Sandal, the successor to what you previously labeled the SS-3, or the Shyster. Range, about two thousand kilometers. There are also R-14 missiles on the way. Your military calls these the SS-5, or Skean. Range, about four thousand kilometers, maybe a bit more. Has Niemeyer taught you these types?”

She heard her voice as if over a great distance. The shadows seemed to thicken, gathering a shuddery substance. She imagined capering demons just out of sight. “No. No, he hasn’t.”

“Listen, then. These missiles would be able to deliver warheads in the megaton range to more than half of your country. There would be very little warning. Less even than if you were to use your Jupiter missiles in Turkey, or the Polaris submarines. They are a first-strike weapon, Miss Jensen. Do you understand?”

Margo was gazing at the dark water. Niemeyer had shown them declassified films of thermonuclear tests. One of the explosions had been set off at sea. The water had boiled into what the narrator called, with understatement, a “water column.” The column weighed millions of tons. To Margo it had looked like the hand of some sea god, whose sudden lurch from beneath the surface caused a tsunami. The wave had knocked over heavy ships as if they were tin cans. The spray, felt at a distance of miles, was intensely radioactive. She supposed that Cayuga Lake would cease to exist.

“I understand,” she said, voice faint, remembering the dream.

“The President knows about the missiles, Miss Jensen. Your spy aircraft have been overflying Cuba for several days. He is presumably in the process of deciding how best to respond.”

“Okay,” she said, only because Fomin had paused, and seemed to expect some response.

“He has already met with our foreign minister, who of course
denied everything, but our foreign minister is not fully informed. Our side expects that your President will shortly offer negotiations, probably in Washington. We will attend, naturally. Everyone will declare their desire for a peaceful solution to the issues that divide us. But here is the important part, Miss Jensen. Are you listening?”

She was listening.

“The negotiations will fail. There will be war.” She glanced at his face, but his gloomy visage was turned toward the water. “Thermonuclear war, Miss Jensen. The last war, very probably, that the planet will ever endure.”

The fog was lifting. She could dimly pick out lights on the far shore: houses, a car or two crawling along the road.

“This is why you had me arrested,” she said. Her throat felt clotted, perhaps with nuclear ash. “You wanted to find out if you could trust me.”

Fomin did not answer directly. “You are an extraordinary young woman. Much as your father was an extraordinary man.” He was walking again, taking long strides like a man late for an appointment. “It is difficult to trust someone not raised to doctrine, but you seem quite unsullied by bourgeois so-called freedom. You are young. You are of an oppressed minority. You are not part of the ruling class, despite your ambition. You are not a part of the war clique, despite your admiration for Niemeyer, who is among its leaders.”

“Even if you’re right about any of that, you couldn’t have known it at the time of my arrest. Not unless you were already investigating me.”

Again he ignored her challenge. “You are Niemeyer’s student. Therefore, tell me, please, the first rule of negotiation.”

The direct inquiry popped her back into A-student mode. “Each side must have something the other wants.”

“Exactly. The Soviet side has something you want: the removal of the missiles. But, Miss Jensen, at the moment, your side has nothing we want. There is nothing you are able to offer that would satisfy us. Not around a negotiation table.” He let out a sigh; flicked the cigarette away. “Yours is such a beautiful country, Miss Jensen. So large and
rich and powerful. Your people are full of confidence. Your homeland has not been battered and brutalized as ours has, and so you cannot possibly appreciate the suspicion with which we look upon powerful neighbors.”

“We’re not neighbors,” Margo protested. The night shadows were whirling close now, enclosing her in empty darkness.

“In a world of nuclear missiles, Miss Jensen, we must behave as though we are. And this is the point. We lost twenty million people in the Great Patriotic War. Try to imagine it, Miss Jensen. Twenty
million.
After such devastation, we dare not trust any nation in the world. We cannot abide America’s growing military might. We cannot allow you to possess more power than we. This has nothing to do with your actual intentions. Our history has taught us to assume that everyone is ranged against us, no matter what words they use, no matter what terms they offer. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but—”

“Miss Jensen, let us be frank. You have many more missiles than we do. Your President told the country during his campaign that you are behind us, but this is not so. You have always had more. More missiles, more warheads, more planes. And, if we are honest, we must admit that your technology is advancing much faster than ours. Our long-range economic forecasts—the private ones presented to our leaders—are also not good. In ten years, perhaps even five, your country will have consolidated its technological and economic advantages. You will be so far ahead that we will be past the point where it is even possible to speak of a balance. You will be able to dictate, and we will have to follow. This, of course, is unsupportable.”

“I can’t believe—”

“This is our last chance, Miss Jensen. Either we strike you now, or we content ourselves to accept the failure of our great socialist experiment. That is why there are missiles in Cuba. And that is why we cannot withdraw them.”

She needed a moment to slow her heart, and to remember to breathe. “Are you saying that your side
wants
a nuclear war?”

“Perhaps some on your side, too.”

We’re the good guys!
she shouted—but only in her mind. Aloud she said, “I still don’t understand what you want me to do about it.”

Fomin was on the move again, along the lake, toward the boathouses that lined the western shore. For a while they marched in silence. He stopped near a small inlet where a slim one-man sailboat had been beached.

“This is a child’s boat,” he said, after a brief study.

“I guess so.”

“Do you wish to have children, Miss Jensen?”

“One day. Of course.”

He nodded. “I myself have three children. I see them rarely because of my duties, but I would like them to live. That is why I do the work that I do.”

“I understand,” she said, although she didn’t.

Fomin’s voice grew weary. “What I have told you is the truth, but it is only one version of the truth—the version that is believed by the party ideologues, by the leaders of our military, and even by many in our diplomatic corps. War with the Main Enemy is inevitable, and it is better to fight it sooner, on our terms, than later, on yours.” He was in motion again, the worried soldier unable to rest. “Those are the people who will dominate the negotiation. The Comrade General Secretary cannot act publicly without their support. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“But their view is not his view. The Comrade General Secretary is a good Communist, but he is also a pragmatist. He believes that your system will collapse in time because of its own contradictions. He believes it is an error to try to force matters now. So he would prefer to find a peaceful solution to the problem presented by the missiles in Cuba. The difficulty is that it cannot be pursued in the course of public negotiation. The ideologues will not allow it. If the public negotiation is the only one that takes place, there will be war. Do you understand, Miss Jensen?”

“Yes.”

“We must therefore arrange another negotiation. Through you to me.”

The shadows were back; and the thickness in her throat. She felt feverish, and really hoped she would wake up soon. She wondered if she had tried some of Jerri’s mezzroll after all: this whole thing could be a hallucination.

“This is some kind of joke,” she muttered. “It’s not real. It’s a trick.”

“No joke. No trick. I have nothing to gain by conning you, Miss Jensen, and, as you point out, I have taken a significant risk coming here. I trust no one else. I trust you, my superior trusts me, his superior trusts him, and that superior is the General Secretary. T
WO
layers between the Comrade General Secretary and you. Then you go to your President, and bring back his answer, and so on. You must meet with the President personally. No envoy. No opportunity for the war clique to interfere.” She listened, but the air of unreality was back. None of this was real, and soon she would wake. “The official negotiations will continue,” Fomin said. “And they should be played out as though they reflect reality. But they do not. Too many of our madmen are involved. Perhaps too many of yours as well. The only true negotiation will be between your President and the Comrade General Secretary, through you and me. That is the negotiation that will save the world.”

Despite the night chill, Margo’s dress was damp with perspiration. She didn’t believe a word he said, and yet she believed it all. She didn’t know what he really wanted, and yet she did. She shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said for the third or tenth time. “What am I supposed to do? Walk up to the White House and ring the bell?”

“You are a resourceful young woman, Miss Jensen. You proved that in Varna. You are only nineteen years old, but you survived interrogation by the Darzhavna Sigurnost, and even escaped their custody, a thing that is unheard of, and all of this without ever admitting your true role—”

“I had no true role—”

Fomin waved this away, indulging a pedant. They were standing together in the silt near a ruined dock, listening to the slow lapping of the black waves. “Fine, Miss Jensen. Have it your way. You were an innocent tourist. A student on a fellowship. Whatever you like. My point remains the same. You are resourceful. Courageous. Inventive. Much like your father. You will surely work out some means of communicating the Comrade General Secretary’s message to your President. But that I leave in your hands.”

“You have the wrong girl.”

“On the contrary, Miss Jensen. You are the only one I trust to do this thing.”

Still watching the placid water, she let out a long breath. Dust thou art, and to dust thou shall return, said the traditional funeral service. Maybe so. But Margo had always hoped she would die near the water; better, in it.

“What’s the message?” she finally asked.

Fomin was lighting another foul cigarette. “You are,” he said.

Viktor Vaganian sat in his car on a downtown street that looked up at the waterfall. He was using a flashlight to study the Esso road map unfolded on the steering wheel. He was unfamiliar with this town and had lost Fomin’s car in the darkness. Odd that Fomin knew the twists and turns so well.

But Fomin’s presence in Ithaca was itself a surprise. Viktor had trouble working it out. Was this Margo Jensen the colonel’s agent now? Had he somehow turned her in Bulgaria, as in his time the legendary recruiter had turned the Rosenbergs and Fuchs and so many others? If so, the inexplicable decision to release her from custody would at last find a logic.

Of course, there were other, less attractive explanations available. Viktor was reluctant to embrace them. He did not want to believe that his own teacher could be the traitor he sought. But he would have to investigate the possibility.

He refolded the map, every crease perfect, and headed out of town.

Lorenz Niemeyer lived alone, in a small cottage on a bluff to the north of Fall Creek. Trees shrouded the house from the road. The winding driveway was marked with signs against trespassers and warning of vicious dogs, although in practice his mongrel, Demeter—half poodle, half something unknown—was more likely to do her business on a stranger’s leg than bite him. Around the bend, another sign, quite old, informed the unwary of land mines in four languages: a souvenir, it was said, from a dicey nighttime jaunt across the border between the two Germanies back in the days before the Wall. The great man wanted all the world to know that he preferred to remain undisturbed, but when she pushed the bell, three chimes rang loud enough to wake the dead, and although it was well past eleven, the butler, Vale, opened the door at once.

“Miss Jensen,” he murmured in his funereal tones, contriving to recognize her without ever looking anywhere but above her head.

“I know it’s late,” she said, conscious of the tremor in her voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I need to see Professor Niemeyer. It’s urgent.”

Still Vale did not look at her. He was tall and broad-shouldered and heavy-waisted, and his eyes had the dull and distant cast of a man on drugs. People said he had worked with Niemeyer in the war and was suffering from shell shock, or perhaps the aftereffects of his treatment by the Gestapo; because it was common ground that
something
terrible must have happened to him. Now he inclined his long head and
stepped to the side. Despite the hour, he was fully dressed. “Do come in.”