Bearpit (39 page)

He was sagging from fatigue but like a child again, unwilling to leave the best birthday party it's ever known, he spooned some of the red eggs upon some black bread, although he wasn't hungry, and tugged open the champagne, although he was not thirsty nor did he want to drink. Glass in one hand, spilling caviar in the other, Willick went to the window, gazing through the misted gauze curtains at the darkened, hushed and deserted street beyond. Who would his neighbours be, he wondered. Doubtless get to know them, in the way one got to know one's neighbours. Hadn't happened in Rosslyn, though. Not his fault. Eleanor's fault. Everything was Eleanor's fault: stand-offish, snooty bitch. Different this time. Wouldn't rush it – no need to rush or be in a hurry – but respond properly when the invitations came, accept theirs and respond to theirs, after the proper length of time. Wouldn't be able to say what he did, of course. Hadn't been able to in Washington, either. I work for the government: the customary reply, so customary that everyone knew he worked for the CIA. Get guidance about that. Plenty of time and he didn't want to offend, through ignorance. Would he be awarded a car? Certain to be, if he were allocated accommodation like this. And a driver? Almost certain again. Have to drive himself sometimes, though. Enjoy that. Especially at the speed at which the driver had come in from the airport. Seventy miles an hour at least: maybe eighty.

Willick looked at his watch, blinking to focus, trying to work out the difference between Washington and Moscow, and realized he had not altered the time from his departure from Dulles Airport. He frowned, surprised at the oversight. Five, he saw. They'd be worried now. Checking with the section head to see if he'd called in sick, panic rising from his name being on the list of internal transfers, then the hurried swoop at Rosslyn. To find nothing: empty fridge, empty bottles, empty bed, empty everything. Lots of bills, though. Who'd be responsible for those now? The Agency? Or Eleanor? Supreme but fitting irony if Eleanor were judged responsible for all the shit he'd left behind and ordered by some court to clear it up. He belched and had to swallow, quickly: have to be careful against being sick. Where had that been? Coney Island, he remembered. Long time ago. Didn't live anywhere near there any more. Lived here. Had champagne and caviar. Didn't want any more though, not right now. Tired. Wanted to sleep.

When the KGB attendant entered the suite the following morning he found Willick lying in his underwear across the bed, which had not been opened, half a glass of champagne and the remainder of his caviar and bread on a side table, upon which the light still burned. The debris was cleared away and the clothes were collected to be valeted and Willick was rolled, grunting, between the covers for two more hours' sleep before being properly roused. He took the proferred robe but refused any breakfast, his stomach still loose from the excesses of the previous day. Pain was banded around his head and a shower didn't help.

Belov arrived carrying a briefcase, smiling broadly, and said with immediate briskness: ‘And today we work.' The smile, like the briskness, was forced. They'd succeeded in making the announcement of Willick's defection and from the overnight Washington embassy playbacks he knew all three national television networks had led their main newscast with it. It had also been the major item on subsidiary programmes throughout the nation, and in newspapers and on radio occupied major segments after the CIA confirmation that the man was missing. So now – today – should have been the start of his being acknowledged the architect of one of the most brilliant KGB coups ever. And would have been, but for the bastard Kazin.

‘What?' asked Willick.

‘Your defection has been made public,' disclosed Belov, without saying how.

Willick frowned at the word: until this moment he had not thought of what he'd done as defecting. He said: ‘When?'

‘Last night.'

‘Has a lot been made of it?'

‘Lead item throughout the media.'

He'd be famous, thought Willick. He said: ‘You didn't tell me what you meant, by saying I had to work.'

‘You're going to give a press conference,' announced Belov. ‘The Ministry has been inundated with press inquiries. We've said you'll be made available this afternoon.'

‘I don't want to give a press conference!' protested Willick. He'd shouted and he had not meant to. But why did it always happen to him? Why, when things looked good, did it always have to crumble? He'd be attacked, he knew: sneered at and called a traitor.

‘We want you to,' said Belov with quiet, contrasting insistence.

‘No!' said Willick. It was a plea more than an outright refusal. ‘I won't be any good at it; won't know what to say.' He'd be like some exhibit, a freak at a funfair. Like Coney Island.

Belov patted the briefcase beside him and said: ‘We'll prepare everything, you and I. So you'll know the answers to give.'

‘How, before we know the questions?'

‘Everything will be on our terms,' said Belov. ‘You'll make a statement …' He patted the briefcase again. ‘That's here, all ready. There will be people on the platform with you during the questioning. They'll help you, before you have to answer.'

‘Will I be on television again in America?'

‘Of course you will,' said Belov. That's the whole object, you stupid fool, the Russian thought.

Eleanor might see him: realize how important he was. Willick said: ‘No one will be allowed to attack me? Criticize me?'

‘We will control everything,' repeated Belov patiently.

‘I'm still not sure I can do it,' said Willick. What if he broke down halfway through; couldn't think of anything to say and made an idiot of himself while the cameras were running?

‘A doctor is coming,' said Belov, conscious of the other man's nervousness. ‘He'll give you something.'

‘A shot?' Willick did not like injections.

‘Pills.'

He could do it then, Willick decided. Pop a couple of pills, just to settle his stomach: appear on television right across America, show everybody just how important he was. He said: ‘All right. I think it would be OK if I had some pills.'

‘Of course it would,' encouraged Belov. He took the prepared statement from the briefcase and said: ‘You don't even have to learn it: just familiarize yourself. You can read it from the platform.'

It was shorter than Willick had expected, just two sheets, double spaced. There was an insistence that the CIA was an organization involved in illegality against every nation in the world, even its allies, and the assertion that it was working actively in several of those nations to undermine and subvert democratically elected governments. The document claimed Willick had become sickened by his growing awareness as a CIA analyst at how the Agency ignored its own country's laws and the restraints of Congress, and that his coming to the Soviet Union was as a protest against their pervasive control. The last paragraph read: ‘I know – because I have seen and handled the evidence practically every day of my working life – that America is controlled by a government within a government, a government about which the country I love is not aware and which remains in power despite any supposed election. Just as I know, within the Agency, there are others who feel as I do. That I am not, nor will be, the last to try to expose the Agency for the evil that it is.'

‘This isn't what I think,' said Willick weakly.

‘Would it sound better if you said you betrayed your country for money?' demanded Belov brutally. ‘That you didn't give a damn about anything, apart from how much you got paid?'

Willick winced at the abrupt change. ‘But I don't think it's true. It
isn't
true.'

‘That is the statement you will make,' ordered Belov. ‘And although there is no need to learn it all you
must
memorize the last two lines and not forget, under any circumstance, to say them.'

‘But it sounds …' Willick began and then stopped, nervous of offending the other man. ‘… strange,' he picked up. ‘Artificial.'

‘How it sounds is no concern of yours,' said Belov dismissively. ‘Learn it.'

The two men sat opposite each other for another hour until Belov was satisfied that Willick was familiar enough with the statement to utter it as if the views were his own and not as a recitation prepared by someone else. His valeted clothes were returned just before a lunch of cold, unidentified meats and boiled cabbage and potatoes. Belov refused Willick either booze or wine, reminding the American he was going to be prescribed a drug and that he needed to retain a clear head.

The doctor arrived unannounced as they were finishing the meal. He gave Willick a cursory examination and then tapped out three orange tablets from a sweet-shop array in the case he carried with him. He watched while Willick took them and said something in Russian to Belov.

To the American Belov said: ‘He says you are actually going to enjoy it.'

Belov led the way from the suite to the waiting car of the previous night. The streets were definitely busier but there seemed to be a reserved central lane along which they travelled again at a very high speed. A lot of the buildings
were
squatly monolithic, like Washington; at one junction, where they had to slow, Willick looked to his left and thought he saw the walled Kremlin and the oriental tips of St Basil's Cathedral, with the vast square in front. The drug began to work, the sensation at first unsettling but very quickly not disturbing at all. Willick was absolutely conscious of where he was and what he was going to do and what he had to say – large tracts of the statement came easily to mind – but there was none of the hollow-stomached fear he knew so well. He actually felt confident: eager, even. He was important, admired.

They entered the quadrangle of a huge, square building through gates that opened and closed immediately, and at once dipped into a long, darkened tunnel, from which they emerged into an inner courtyard. Willick followed Belov through a small door beyond which waited four men who were identified without name as the people who would help him through the press conference.

‘Aren't you going to be with me?' Willick asked Belov.

‘I'll be waiting,' said the Russian.

The journalists were already assembled when they moved on to the stage. The moment Willick appeared the television lights burst on and there were flashes from still cameras, and Willick found it difficult to see beyond the glare, to establish how many people there were wanting to interview him. From the noise, it seemed a lot.

A thin bespectacled man whom he'd met at the entrance unnecessarily introduced Willick (‘a brave American') and announced he had a statement to make. Willick cleared his throat, looking directly out to where he believed the television cameras were placed, and delivered the prepared speech perfectly, consulting the sheet occasionally but more frequently staring directly out at the journalists. The effect of the pills strangely seemed to make it possible for him to hear himself, as he talked: he knew he sounded calm and forceful. He enunciated the sentences upon which Belov had been most insistent with his eyes unblinkingly out into the room.

There was an immediate babble of questions when Willick stopped. The thin man held up his hands, quieting the uproar, pointing to individuals whom the American still had difficulty in isolating.

‘How long have you been a spy?' was the question and unprompted the Russian alongside cupped his hand over the microphone and leaned sideways to Willick.

‘It is not a sudden decision for me to come to the Soviet Union,' recited Willick, grateful for the prompt. ‘It is a process that has taken some time.'

‘That's not an answer,' protested the questioner but the Russian was already selecting someone else.

‘Have you told the Soviets of your work within the CIA?'

‘I have already outlined in my statement how I regard the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency,' replied Willick, guided again. The pills made him feel fantastic: he wondered if it would be possible to get some more.

‘Haven't you endangered the lives of fellow Americans by what you have done?'

‘The Central Intelligence Agency endangers the lives of fellow Americans' was the prepared reply.

‘Do you regard yourself as a traitor?'

‘I regard myself as someone driven by despair, at what I know, forced to speak out.' Willick thought that sounded good, if a little melodramatic.

‘How did you get here?'

‘Openly, by aeroplane.' Willick hadn't needed help that time.

‘Did your recent divorce have anything to do with your decision to defect?'

Willick supposed they would have delved into his background but the question surprised him. ‘Nothing whatsoever,' he said. Who would Eleanor get her alimony from now!

‘Do you have any involvement with anyone here, in Moscow?'

‘No.' Another question he found easy.

‘Were you blackmailed into defecting?'

The thin man came sideways but Willick was confident enough to reply by himself. ‘Certainly not,' he said.

‘What evidence do you have – can you give us – about the claims you've made about the CIA?'

Willick listened attentively to the whispered advice and said: ‘That is a demand that should be made by the American people to the CIA. And admitted by the CIA.'

‘What did you mean by the remark about others in the Agency feeling like you … that you will not be the last to expose the evils of the CIA?'

The assistance was immediate and Willick said: ‘I do not feel able to expand any further upon that remark. I think it speaks for itself.'

Willick was searching the blur of faces, enjoying himself like the doctor had promised, but the thin man rose abruptly, cupping his hand beneath the American's elbow to bring him up as well, and led him away to a cacophony of protests.