Bearpit (41 page)

On the Interstate the traffic thinned more than he wanted and Yuri saw an additional risk of his being detected because of the slowness with which it travelled. He fell further back, tucking himself behind an enormous truck proclaiming that Habcocks Chicken Breasts were the best in the world, daring to emerge only occasionally to see the Buick remaining distantly in front. At White Plains, Proctor picked up Interstate 684 and Yuri mentally eliminated Rhode Island from his list. And when it divided and the Buick took the easterly route on Interstate 84, he erased New York State as well. Which left a limited section of Connecticut or a small area of Massachusetts. His protective lorry pulled off at Danbury, leaving him exposed, and the Russian decreased his speed further, so far back it was only just possible to distinguish the colour of the vehicle he was pursuing.

Yuri drove conscious of the frequent rock outcrops and of the denseness of what seemed to be perpetual forests, thinned though they were by the approach of winter. He decided later that it was the natural thinness which initially made him miss it, one of the references of hopeful significance he had isolated from the letters. And then it registered and he remembered the phrase –
like the horrific pictures that came from Vietnam.
It had been an exaggeration of Levin's because Yuri's recollection of the films that had been shown so often on Soviet television was that the American defoliation in Vietnam had been far more severe than this, but there it was, on several of the ridges when he looked closely, long swathes of stripped-bare trees whose absence of leaves had nothing to do with the nearness of winter. Close, thought Yuri: he was getting very close. But not close enough, he realized, in different awareness. He had concentrated too much, for too long, upon the surrounding countryside and not enough upon his quarry. When Yuri looked back to the road he could not locate the vehicle he was following. He jabbed his foot on the pedal, abruptly accelerating up to the clump of cars in which the Buick had been moving and when he reached it saw, sickeningly, that it was not there any more. There was a Buick in the group but it was brown and contained an entire family, the rear seat jostled by squabbling children.

Yuri let the cars pull away, looking for some identification and almost at once saw the turn-off sign indicating the next exit to be for Marion. He left the highway before that, at a rest stop, and using Marion as a marker on his map worked out where he was. And from there traced backwards along the Interstate, for possible earlier exits, over a distance of ten miles. Four, he concluded. With Waterbury the largest and most obvious. But in which direction from that turn-off, north or south? And why, necessarily, Waterbury? He'd been careless, Yuri recognized, irritated with himself. And hadn't he decided he couldn't be careless, about anything? He doubted that the encirclement on his map reached as far north from this point to include Massachusetts. So out of every state in mainland America he had achieved a remarkable pinpointing. And although he lost the man this time, he had not lost the eventual opportunity. He could use the letter delivery ploy again but next time carry out the initial pursuit differently now that he knew at least the route to Danbury, able to drive undetectably ahead of the American while keeping him in the rear-view mirror, with no need to reverse the positions until after that point.

Yuri used the Marion exit to loop back on to the Interstate and return to New York, but at the Waterbury turn-off he impulsively left the road again and for no other reason than that northwards had been the general direction in which he'd followed the American, Yuri drove towards Torrington.

What were the references that still baffled him? Rooftop verandahs
to watch the sea where there is no sea
, he remembered.
Widow's walks
, which he guessed to be the same thing and of which Petr had written in his last letter. Ledge, which meant granite, but was a definition he could not substantiate. And perhaps the most incomprehensible of all,
spies in statues and spies in history.
Who was a spy commemorated by a statue and what was the link with a spy in history? Two separate people? Or one and the same?

Because Torrington was the name he'd chosen to follow, Yuri drove into the town. It was early afternoon and very empty. He had a choice of parking meters and stopped in the main street, not immediately getting out of the car. It was, he realized, his first time in small-town America and the comparison with the New York he now knew well and the Washington he'd briefly visited was absolute. There was none of the noise to which his ears were so accustomed that he closed it out, no longer hearing it, and there were no teeth-jarring breaks and holes in the road or any strewn rubbish, at least none that he could see. And the construction seemed to be equally divided, between brick and concrete and wooden clapboard. It occurred to him, as it frequently did on the journey into Manhattan from Kennedy Airport, that wooden buildings always gave the appearance of being insubstantial. So why didn't he feel the same about such houses in Russia? Yuri shrugged, finally leaving the car: he had enough unanswered questions without encumbering himself with more.

The sign on the side of one of the wooden houses gave him the idea and when it came Yuri grew as annoyed at himself as he had been earlier, because it was so obvious. The place identified as the local historical society was closed, but the adjoining tourist office was open and Yuri pushed his way in to be greeted by a white-haired, apple-cheeked woman around whom clung the vague aroma of lavender and cooking. Adopting his protective persona, Yuri said he was an Englishman touring the area and she said it was late in the year to be doing that and he agreed that it was, but that it was the only time his job allowed. He waited for her to ask about it, but she didn't.

‘What are you looking for?' she asked.

‘Nothing particular,' said Yuri casually. ‘Local colour. History. That sort of thing.'

‘Plenty of history around here,' said the woman. ‘Connecticut has always been a pretty important state in the Union.'

‘One phrase I have come across that intrigues me is widow's walk,' chanced Yuri. ‘I think it's got something to do with houses.'

‘Sure has,' she agreed at once. ‘It's the way the old whaling captains and shipowners used to build their houses, with a walkway around the roof so that the returning sailships could be seen on a horizon and registered home. The story grew that their wives used to walk there, on the day their husbands were due in port, to see whether it had been a safe voyage or not. If it hadn't been, they would have been widows, wouldn't they?'

Yuri felt the bubble of hope but balanced it against the phrase:
to watch the sea where there is no sea.
He said: ‘Built on the coast then?'

‘Still see quite a lot around Boston,' she assured him. ‘Heard there are some in Providence, too.'

‘None around here?'

‘Oh sure,' she said. ‘Litchfield. It's the cutest place: colonially preserved. I guess they just copied the idea.'

The bubble ballooned and then popped. Yuri said: ‘And that's close?'

‘Fifteen minutes, due south on the 202 …' She gestured through the window. ‘That way.'

‘Save me a journey to Boston, won't it?' said Yuri, turning to go and then stopping. ‘What's the rock called all around here?'

‘Ledge,' said the woman. ‘It's granite really but it's always been called ledge. No one knows why.'

‘You've been very helpful,' thanked Yuri sincerely.

‘Like to buy a local guidebook?' asked the woman, remembering her function.

‘I'd like very much to buy one of your guidebooks,' said Yuri, in small but literal repayment.

His car was even pointing in the direction she'd indicated and Yuri got to Litchfield in ten, not fifteen minutes. It was cute and preserved, like she'd promised, a place of all-wooden houses painted in uniform white and set amid barbered lawns around a central grassed area. He thought it looked as if it were kept permanently under the protection of glass. He counted seven rooftop verandahs within a hundred yards of the pointed-roof church and found the tourist office in the middle of the central reservation. He bought the guidebook at once this time, from a waistcoated man with white hair and metal-framed spectacles, but asked about the township's history without opening it. He heard about it being named, but wrongly, after a town in Staffordshire, in England, and listened patiently about someone called Tapping Reeve who'd opened the first law school ever to exist in America and of another academy that had been the first to provide higher education for women. Then the man pointed to a road he identified as North Street and said it was possible to see the house that had been occupied during the American War of Independence by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, who had been chief of intelligence for the American rebels. Who had been, finished the man, a friend of Nathan Hale, who had actually been hanged by the British for espionage. Complete, thought Yuri. Almost.

‘Does it have a school?' he asked.

‘One of the best,' assured the man. ‘Forman. Down that street, about three hundred yards. Can't miss it.'

Yuri didn't. The boy he recognized as Petr Levin from the photographs with which he had been provided in Moscow was the third to come out when school ended that day, lingering for a moment with a blonde girl and then entering a car in which the driver sat waiting. It was a Buick, blue this time.

The solitary waiting – and not knowing what he was waiting for – got on Willick's nerves, and the second day he went through what he regarded as the ridiculous charade of lifting the telephone and asking to be allowed to go out of the apartment for a walk at least. The man said, simply, ‘No', and put the telephone down, and when Willick tried to go out anyway he found that the gates leading from the courtyard were locked. When he turned the man who had earlier refused him was watching from a ground-floor doorway. He didn't do or say anything and Willick slowly climbed the stairs back to his suite feeling like an admonished child.

A supply of Scotch was maintained and thin red wine was made available at midday and in the evening, and so Willick drank a lot. On the third day the alcohol stopped and when he asked for it the man, whom he'd first thought of as an attendant and now, properly, regarded as his guard, shook his head in refusal, not even bothering to talk this time. On the telephone Willick yelled for someone in charge to come to see him, but nobody did, not for a further four days.

‘Why am I being treated like a prisoner?' Willick demanded the moment Belov entered the room.

‘Because it is necessary,' said the American division chief.

‘Why?'

‘Some of the Western correspondents might have tried to find you: it is doubtful they would have succeeded but we had to take precautions.'

‘There's still a lot of publicity about me?'

‘There was, for a few days. Not any longer.'

Willick felt disappointed. ‘I was impressive, at the conference though, wasn't I?'

‘I told you so at the time.'

‘I can go out now?'

‘That's what I'm here for,' said Belov. He didn't like the American and was glad this was the last occasion he'd have to deal with the man.

Willick trailed respectfully behind the Russian and in the courtyard smiled in some imagined triumph at the attendant who'd refused to let him out. Surprisingly, the man smiled back. The car was smaller than it had been on other occasions and Willick felt further disappointment. Belov sat pulled away in the far corner, looking out of the window, apparently uninterested in him, so Willick looked out too, conscious that everyone was bundled up against the weather and realizing he would have to get some thicker clothing. There was so much he had to do. They drove for what seemed a long way and Willick saw that the grandiose architecture of central Moscow was giving way to smaller buildings, a sprawl of suburbia.

‘Where are we going?' asked the American.

‘Karacharovo.'

‘What is that?'

‘An area of Moscow.'

‘What's there?'

‘Your home.'

‘My what!'

‘Your home,' repeated the Russian.

‘But I thought …' said Willick, foolishly twisting in his seat, as if the luxury building beyond the gated courtyard would still be visible, like Coney Island had been that day when they drove away.

The man beside him laughed. ‘Don't be ridiculous!' he said. ‘Gorbachov himself doesn't live in a place like that!'

‘I don't understand,' said Willick, weak-voiced.

‘We wanted you comfortable to perform a particular function, which you did,' said Belov.

‘And now?'

‘You are being allocated an apartment of your own in a block at Karacharovo,' disclosed Belov. ‘That in itself is a concession: housing is not easy in Moscow. Each day be ready at 8.30. A car will call for you: there are a lot of questions we need answering, upon the information you provided over the years.'

It was crumbling again, like it always did, thought the American desperately. ‘What happens after I've answered all your questions?' he asked.

‘You will be allowed to attend school to learn Russian.'

‘How will I live? Money, I mean,' said Willick.

‘A job will be found when you are considered qualified. There'll be a pension, for what you've done in the past. And a salary when you start working. You really will be treated extremely well.'

The apartment was in an isolated block on what looked like the beginning of a new housing estate. A lot of side roads were unpaved, puddled and rutted, and a second block stood half finished, girders and metal rods sticking up like a giant rib cage. No one was working on it and the impression was of desolation. They had to balance on planking because the outside pavement was not completed and the area hollowed out for it was one huge, water-filled ditch. The elevator shaft was an empty, unprotected hole, but Willick's flat was fortunately only on the second floor. Belov handed him a key, for the American to admit himself. In contrast to its outside appearance everything inside the apartment seemed old and worn. The scrap of carpet was threadbare and the seats of two chairs either side of a small dining table were greased by previous use. The kitchen led directly off. The stove was slimed and black and there were several rings grimed around the sink. There were further rings around the bath and the toilet and the similarly stained mirror over the handbasin was cracked so that it reflected a distorted image. The bedroom had a mirrored dresser, a small wardrobe and a narrow single bed, covered in thin, grey linen.