Lucky Bastard (47 page)

By now Moscow knew that he was gone, and where to. Soon they would have more evidence of his treachery than they knew what to do with. Moles would confess, networks would cease to function, the whole worldwide apparatus would be infected with the virus that Peter had become. He was the ultimate defector; he knew so much and had learned it by such devious means over such a long period of time that no one could be sure what he knew and what he did not know. The KGB would never be able to trust anyone again. It would cease to function. The apparatchiks would have to start over, reinvent themselves.

Peter was doing all this to preserve Jack Adams.

The KGB would never know that Peter had kept one vital fragment of knowledge—the very existence of Jack—back from the CIA. Result? Jack and Morgan were untouchable from the KGB's point of view. Moscow must assume that Jack Adams had been named by Peter with all the hundreds of other assets with which Soviet intelligence had salted the American body politic.

But would the CIA report this fact, as a fact, to the White House? Think about this for a moment. How can they be sure that Peter is telling them the truth? And if he is, is it in their interest, is it in America's interest, to bring the issue to a head in the middle of an election campaign? The moment they did, the outraged American president would phone the new Russian president and demand satisfaction—such as a public apology for the plot and the dismissal and disgrace of the entire top leadership of the KGB, or whatever it was calling itself by then. Jack's opponents in his own party would join in the attack, along with the entire U.S. Congress and perhaps even the media. His enemies in the party were legion; few ever believed that he actually was a Democrat or a Republican or anything else that American politics could put a name to. Asses—famous asses, liberal asses, exquisitely tender asses—would be on the line all over America.

Besides, there was political reality to consider. Jack Adams was about to win his first primary. Who knew? He might after all become president. If that happened, no matter what the proofs of treason against him, Jack would be invulnerable. Who would dare to accuse him, the president of the United States, elected by the infallible will of the American people in the highest rite of democracy, of being the agent of a foreign intelligence service? The only possible accuser, the CIA, would destroy itself with such an allegation. Of all possible witnesses, it had the least chance of being believed by the media, the priesthood in charge of ritual executions in the United States. Besides, being a clandestine service, the CIA would prefer blackmail of the guilty president to exposure, would it not? Certainly that would be the KGB's choice of options in such a delicious situation.

So what now? It would take Peter at least four months to tell his CIA debriefers all that he knew—except, not to labor the point, the most important thing he knew. At the end of the debriefing, he would be fitted out by the CIA with a new identity, with a new face if he wanted one, with a house, a car, a generous stipend. A telephone number to call if he needed anything. And then the CIA would go away and leave him alone. Yes, incredible as it seems, that is what they would do. Why not? The whole world was having its memory edited. The USSR itself was vanishing. In a year it would be gone like God's great rival Baal after his statues were overturned by the Israelites and his temple walls tumbled, his bloody altars demolished. No mystery, no god; no god, no future.

Unless you believed in resurrection. Peter might fool the CIA, but not me, the last Soviet man.

6
Methodical fellow that I am, I had taken certain precautions against the day when the revolution decided to eat me. Your lip curls, your eye rolls, you mutter,
Preposterous!
Let me brighten your day with some statistics. Forty-eight million people of all nations were killed in World War II, about half of those in the USSR. At least twenty million perished in the Soviet terror, and perhaps sixty million more in China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and other outposts of the faith. I was looking for two of the vanished, my mother and father, when I met the black-and-tan dog on the steppe. All this—the snow, the dog, my parents, the emptiness—was real, no vision. I learned a lesson. In my parents' memory I had planned for the future. Remember, my cover in America was investor, rare-book dealer. I had been entrusted with large sums of money. In my suitcase, in the trunk of the car I was driving, I had just over one million dollars in cash. In investment accounts under two false identities, I had another couple of million. In warehouses in three different American cities I had stored valuable books and even more valuable manuscripts.
Ah-ha!
, you mutter.
A thief as well as a slanderer.
No, not one kopeck. All this wealth was interest earned on seed money provided by my masters. They got their original investment back; I kept what it had produced by breeding their cash with more vigorous American stock. Also in the suitcase, I had complete sets of documentation for two fallback identities—passports, driver's licenses, Social Security cards, credit cards.

I drove back to New York, arriving at four in the morning. I parked the Buick near the Port Authority Bus Terminal with thekeys in the ignition. Then I took the subway to Penn Station, a train to Baltimore, and finally a plane to Miami, changing in Winston-Salem, where I went into town and placed some things in a safe deposit box.

In Miami Beach I rented a modest furnished apartment and moved in. Over the weeks that followed I watched the news for traces of Peter and had some minor plastic surgery done: a higher bridge for my Slavic nose, a few millimeters off my Asiatic cheekbones, an eye job to get rid of the epicanthic fold. While waiting for my face to heal, I went on the Ultra Slim Fast diet—if it worked for Tommy Lasorda, why not for a mujik like me?—and shed thirty pounds. In a new voice, with new facial expressions, I carried on imaginary conversations in front of a video camera and then studied my performance on-screen. Gradually I exchanged old mannerisms for new ones and adopted a new way of walking—a sauntering, hands-in-pockets American shamble with a touch of sea legs.

In the mirror I still looked very much the same, but in matters of disguise, major changes are not necessary. A loss in weight and the mere act of exchanging suit and tie for shorts, sandals, and a Florida shirt would have been enough to render me unrecognizable to all but the keenest of eyes. Just the same, a little extra never hurts. I did not imagine that I could deceive Peter's eyes if ever they fell on me again. I merely wanted to pass unnoticed through the circle of disciples that would certainly surround him.

7
Jack won the New Hampshire primary, then Iowa. Three of the six original candidates withdrew from the race, including the one the party leaders had favored. All threw their support to the candidate who was Jack's closest competitor in the polls. No matter. The media, in their deep affinity for the unlikely and the implausible and in their historic affection for the right kind of scoundrel, had chosen Jack as the winner. His face was on every front page, every television screen. The camera, famous for capturing the great and holding them hostage, surrendered like a smitten trollop to Jack and made the world see him as more lovable, wiser, and more human than he actually was.

But that was what Jack was all about. He made liars of us all by recruiting us to defend a faith worth lying for.

By some bizarre alchemy that no one except Jack himself pretended to understand, film and videotape concealed his true character rather than driving the real Jack out of hiding for all to see. When I say that Jack alone understood this phenomenon, I mean that he believed that he had inherited his strange power over the lens from his real father, JFK, that it was in his blood, or was perhaps part of some pact the Kennedys had made with whatever invisible power controls such matters. Had he been Nixon's love child his image would have seemed to squirm and sweat no matter how much the human being that embodies it stood tall and smiled. Danny called this the Dorian Gray factor. In his sound bites, Jack was modesty itself, a man who was as mystified by the workings of the Lord as the next most humble citizen in the land. Actually he knew in his bones that he was under the protection of quite a different supernatural power. Jack smiled and spoke softly to turn away wrath; he hoped that he was worthy of the trust that was being invested in his ideas, his vision. He stood up for his ideas without really having any ideas. He defended grand concepts and proposed trivial solutions to meaningless problems. He was hailed by pundits as a thinker. Naturally he made enemies.

On the day before the next important primary after Iowa—who can remember them all?—a leading tabloid ran the full, delicious story of the girl bodyguard: smoking pistol, outraged wife, and all. She posed in a bikini, wearing her trooper Stetson and pistol harness. The story was a one-week sensation. Holding hands with Morgan and the twins—they were on their way to church—Jack told a television crew that he honestly could not remember this unfortunate young woman. His advisers told him she had indeed served on his staff of bodyguards for less than two weeks, and had been dismissed for losing her weapon and other items of equipment. With a smile of Christian forgiveness, Jack told the world he hoped with all his heart that this deluded young person would get the help she needed. He made his statement to the cameras while standing in front of a tumbledown little AME Zion chapel, Bible in hand. No one who saw Morgan's upturned face, beaming at Jack as he spoke, could doubt that she believed every word her husband said.

Jack won the primary, though more narrowly than forecast. His desperate opponents were encouraged by this faint evidence that he might be vulnerable on the character issue. Soon they had more reason to hope that the public was getting wise to this man they could not defeat. Half a dozen women who claimed to have performed sexual services for Jack, willingly and otherwise, come forward with their stories. Jack denied nothing. He merely repeated, in every case, what he had said in the first case: He honestly didn't remember the lady. His puzzlement gave way at length to anger—suppressed but all too evident to his friend the minicam—that his family should be put through this tawdry exercise in dirty politics. Finally, on a syndicated confession program watched by millions of women all over the world, Jack's beautiful and obviously loyal and adoring wife, flanked by their darling twin sons, broke the dignified silence with which she had previously treated these allegations.

“Morgan,” asked the host, the most influential woman in America, “how do you feel in your inner self when you hear these stories?”

A blush, a sigh. A search for words while staring straight into America's eyes. “To be honest, I just feel sorry for these women,” Morgan replied. “All they have is their fantasies. I have Jack Adams, and I'm the luckiest woman in the world.”

“Morgan, when you hear these terrible stories that you can't believe, do you ever ask yourself
Why?
”

A pause; how painful this was. “Of course I do, and I think I know—” Morgan broke off. “I'd better not say it. Jack Adams wouldn't want me to.”

“The audience wants you to say it, Morgan.”

Cries of
Say it, Morgan! Go for it!

At last Morgan said, “All right. Sorry, Jack. But what I think, after a whole lot of prayer and meditation, is this: My husband came from nowhere with a new idea for America, and nobody much gave him a chance of succeeding. But the people like what they see when they look at Jack Adams, and I think that scares some people. Now I'd really better stop before—”

Go on! Say it, girl! Morgan! Morgan!
A brief spontaneous chorus of Jack's song: “Jack, Jack, Jack!”

“All right,” said Morgan, “I will say it. I think that these accusations—and they hurt so much—I think they may just possibly be
forming a pattern
, and that this just might have something to do with the fact that my husband, Jack Adams, is the outsider in this race, the only candidate without powerful friends, without very much money, just an ordinary American orphan from a little village in Ohio. And as I said, I think that frightens certain people, and that they're all connected to each other, and that they are out to destroy Jack because he is right about America and they are wrong, and he is good and they are evil. That's what I really think, that it's some sort of plot. And oh, how I hope I'm wrong!”

Wise and sympathetic, the host said, “I don't think so, Morgan.”

Neither did the audience.

Jack's campaign really took off after Morgan's brave outburst. The media played Morgan's accusations big. The Unconscious Underground picked it up at once, as if it were a thought that occurred simultaneously in twenty million minds. It explained Jack. It explained everything. It got everyone off the hook. No matter what befell, it immunized Jack against exposure, even against prosecution and conviction, because it cast doubt on all future accusations against him. It wasn't only the elite who loved Jack. The common people showed that they did, too. Jack won primary after primary. Like all great natural politicians, Jack Adams was ordinary but ordinary in a way that magnified the virtues of all the people who instinctively perceived that he was a whole lot like them. This benevolent deception of the people delighted the intelligentsia. This was what made the media love him: He was their fantasy candidate. How they would have loved Peter, too, if only they had known him.

Two