Saving the Queen (16 page)

He shook himself awake from the trance when the airplane touched the ground and wondered whether this would prove to be his last landing. He had been recalled frequently for consultations in the preceding three years, but never quite so abruptly as this time around, and he knew—everyone in the embassy knew—that the center of their earth was heaving and fuming and causing great eructations of human misery in its writhing frustration over the failure of Soviet scientists to develop the hydrogen bomb at the same rate as, he knew, the Americans were proceeding with it. Stalin knew, because Boris had passed along the information, that Clement Attlee had secretly promised Harry Truman to endorse the American use of the bomb in the event a cease-fire in Korea was achieved, and then violated. And he knew, again through Boris, exactly how many atom bombs the British had, even though the majority of the members of the House of Commons were ignorant of the fact that the English had built a single bomb. In fact, Boris mused, his knowledge of British secrets was vastly more extensive than that of any one member of the House of Commons, except perhaps the Prime Minister. He knew, moreover, that the brilliant success he had achieved during the past two years would not satisfy his superiors, who were satisfied only with the satisfaction of their superior, which would not come in Boris's time on earth.

There was a car waiting for him. A driver, no escort. Bad sign. He stepped into the car—the only car that had met that flight—and the driver sped off down the lonely, empty highway, the snowy innards of the vast, awful city, where ten thousand bureaucrats dictated the movements of 350 million people, seeking only to please the one figure whose displeasure loosed the Arctic gales of Siberia, and whose wrath dispatched bullets to the brain.

It did not matter that it was now nine at night or that he had been traveling all day. He was taken directly to the Lubyanka Building and noted with relief that the driver had swung into the official entrance, rather than to that irreversible entrance, at the east end, where the prisoners were taken on what was so often their last ride.

A plump and cheerless woman with dirty blond hair and fingers that looked as if she had been changing typewriter ribbons all day long gave him a prepared pass, with a small identity photo, and told him to proceed to Comrade Ilyich's office—he knew where it was.

The initial greeting was perfunctory, but then it usually was; so far, Boris had detected nothing unusual.

“A cup of tea, Boris Andreyvich?”

“Thank you, yes.”

Pyotr Ivanovich Ilyich depressed a button on the elaborate console in front of him and gave the orders.

“You are tired, comrade?”

“Well, it is a long trip, but it is refreshing to be back in the Soviet Union,” Boris lied.

“Yes,” said Ilyich perfunctorily; “yes.” He had grown much older, Boris noticed, and surely he had not seen the sun in months? Years? His dark eyes were ringed with fatigue and tension. Once upon a time Pyotr Ivanovich would have dared to say, under the circumstances—to such a friend and colleague of long standing—that these days it was safer to be away from Russia than in it.
No more
. To
no one
would Pyotr Ivanovich say such a thing, save possibly to his wife in moments of great intimacy. Never in front of the children or the maid or the butler—he wondered which of his subordinates the butler worked for, and who replaced the batteries in the microphones buried in his apartment.

Once, on the pretext that he feared the possibility of foreign intercepts, he had ordered his own top microphone-detection crew to sweep the place. They found three microphones, one in the bedroom, one in the lounge, one in the dining room. Fine. Only then did he realize the dreadful dilemma he was in. If he reached the official conclusion that the microphones were the work of foreign spies, he was guilty of not having exercised the necessary precautions to prevent foreign spies from planting microphones in the home of the director of the NKVD. But the alternative was officially to concede that he had less than the full confidence of Comrade Stalin, whose agents were listening to Ilyich's conversations. In a flash of inspiration, he solved the problem. He lined up the three members of the crew and, ceremoniously, praised them mightily, telling them that he had had an expert place the microphones in order to test the skills of the sweepers. They had passed their test with flying colors, and he would put in their names for a decoration. After they left, he carefully replaced each of the microphones exactly where it had been. And, sitting in the little drawing room that had served as the children's nursery, he explained to his wife why, in the future, they must retreat here for any intimate discussions, and routinely after dinner, when, he knew, the postprandial relaxation loosens the tongue. Experience in such survival tactics had equipped him for moments such as this—handling Bolgin.…

“Boris Andreyvich, we have got to get more information out of London concerning developments in the United States—don't interrupt me quite yet, let me speak. I am aware that security precautions have been taken in Great Britain as a result of the valor of Fuchs, Burgess, and MacLean. But in the United States, matters are far worse. The proddings of McCarthy have resulted in immobilizing many of our operatives. They have not been detected, but they are greatly neutralized. New security precautions taken in the laboratories where the work is going ahead on the hydrogen bomb has resulted in a nearly impenetrable situation. It has been a full year since we succeeded in getting any reliable technical data from the inside. In that year, however, great strides have been made in the development of the great weapon which Comrade Stalin so rightly tells us we cannot permit the United States to have without our having it also. It is
the key
. Alongside it our atom bombs are mere … what,
blockbusters
, as they say in America. The potency of the hydrogen weapon staggers the imagination. What would you say, Boris Andreyvich, if I were to tell you that our scientists estimate, on the basis of all the information we have been able to collect, that a single such bomb could destroy the whole of Moscow!”

He was breathing heavily.

“Now, the whole of Moscow means, among other things,
destroying Comrade Stalin
. Comrade Stalin, the heart and soul of the international Communist movement, and Moscow, the heart and soul of the Russian and socialist fatherland—all with a single bomb. There is only one certain way to contain its use, and that is to have one of our own. Comrade Stalin told us two evenings ago that there is no substitute for this achievement, no other priorities, save this one, no other sources of concern, save this one. That's when I sent for you.

“Now,” he said, “you. Where do you figure? You have in the past year fed us a most remarkable fund of important information. I don't mind telling you, Boris Andreyvich, that I consider your operation the most successful of any we have. I have said that to Comrade Stalin, mentioning you
by name.
” Boris Andreyvich shuddered. “He wisely concludes, with his usual magnificent grasp, that England has really become the center of our American intelligence effort. There is a close collaboration between British and American scientist's, and a regular flow of information was promised by Truman to Attlee at their most recent conference. Some of that information has already come in to us.
But we must have
more. We must have some direct answers to certain technical questions, and some not so technical.”

“Such as?”

“We need to know, for instance, when exactly it is projected that the United States will detonate a test bomb. And when it will go into production after that. And what are the characteristics of that bomb. How heavy will it be? What is the proposed vehicle for delivery? Are there American missiles yet designed which would carry its weight?

“Now, your contact, this ‘Robinson.' I must know more about him. I trust greatly in your judgment, but it is only by a careful study of him and his entire range of contacts that we can conclude here whether he is passing along all the information he might have access to. I need therefore to know everything about him—everything. Begin.”

“I know nothing about him, Pyotr Ivanovich.”

The director of the NKVD rose behind his huge desk and shouted, “You know nothing about Robinson! What are you talking about! It is from Robinson that we have been getting information for over a year!”

“I know that, Pyotr Ivanovich. But Robinson is a very peculiar man. I have never laid eyes on him.”

Pyotr Ivanovich was a volatile man who felt that genuine emotion cannot be communicated except by totalist vocal measures. So he cried out at the top of his voice. “
You have never laid eyes on him! Are you mad
?”

Boris replied calmly. “One question at a time. Three times I asked him to disclose his identity. The third time he told me if I made the request again he would disappear, never again to surface.”

“How does he communicate with you?”

“In a confessional.”

“In a what?”

“A Roman Catholic confessional.”

“Where?”

“I shall answer that question if you insist, Pyotr Ivanovich. But I must have your request in writing, and I will insist that you overrule my written reservations. These reservations are based on my estimate of Robinson's turn of mind. If I give you the information, someone on your staff might decide, on his own initiative, to have Robinson followed so as to discover his identity. If that should happen, it is my prediction that Robinson will cease to be useful to us in any way. Remember, we could not blackmail him even if we discovered who he is: because there is not a shred of evidence that he is the source of the information we have collected. To attempt to get between me and Robinson is to jeopardize the most important source of information we have in the Western world.”

Pyotr Ivanovich tapped his fingers on the desk, his eyebrows lowered in deep thought.

He would on no account overrule Boris Andreyvich in writing.

And he doubted that, when he conferred with him, Stalin would instruct him to do so. Boris Andreyvich's posture was bureaucratically perfect: He
would
obey
any
order, but that order had to be carefully and deliberately given.

“How does Robinson reach you?”

“By telephone, a pay telephone.”

“Your telephone is surely intercepted by the British?”

“Not
surely
, comrade.
Probably
. Still, we proceed on the assumption that it is. The British are extraordinarily carefree about security, and they still feel it is somehow ungentlemanly to intercept private conversations. They are perfectly capable of commissioning an assassination, but half measures are frowned upon. In any event, at the first meeting—or rather, conversation—Robinson and I worked out a code, which is simple, but I think very effective.”

“What is the code?”

“I must give the same answer as before, Pyotr Ivanovich.”

“What happens then—you proceed to a prestipulated confessional?”

“That is correct. He is always there before me. The confessionals are vacant at the hour he sets, and the church is quite dark. Sometimes we spend as much as a half hour in conversation. He is, oddly, rather loquacious, and enjoys our intercourse. To be sure, during these sessions he is sitting, and I am kneeling, and no doubt that contributes to his sense of leisure and to my occasional impatience. Like all agents, he has no one else to talk to. When it is over, the understanding is very rigid. He leaves, I stay a full three minutes.”

“Has he ever given you false information?”

“Yes, once. But he called me the very next day and set up another appointment. He then corrected the misinformation. He had himself been misinformed. But I should ask you, Pyotr Ivanovich—you who have far greater resources than I do to check the information I pass along. Have you ever found it to be false?”

“No,” Pyotr mused. “No. Much of it we cannot know to be true or false, since there is neither corroborating evidence nor discrediting evidence. But so much of it has proved to be correct we are required to believe it is all correct, or in any case that it is correct insofar as he knows.”

Pyotr felt stymied. He must report some progress at his next meeting with Stalin. (The thought of any such meetings caused the flesh to crawl with apprehension, and he was happiest when, as sometimes happened, a month would go without his being summoned. But this last week he had been summoned three times, and this recall of Bolgin had been at the specific instructions of Stalin.)

“Very well then. We are required to play it your way.”

“His way.”

“Yes. Your instructions, therefore, are to tell Robinson exactly what it is we want, and see if he can exert himself to get the proper answers. I will arrange for you to see Comrade Sakharov in the morning. He will familiarize you with the technical information we need, to give you an idea of the lacunae in our own work. You will acquaint Robinson with this information and urge him to use his own devices to come up with it. And you will ask him what is the American timetable.” Ilyich scratched his nose. “Tell me, has Robinson ever asked any favors of you?”

“No.”

“You recognize that you are authorized to grant him anything he wishes—
any
thing? Compensation; asylum—later.”

“I have a feeling, Pyotr Ivanovich, that if I were to suggest compensation of any sort, Robinson would leave and I would not hear from him again. He is a very sensitive man.”

“Comrade Stalin does not believe in Sensitive Men.”

“I am aware of that, Pyotr Ivanovich.” The moment he said it, Boris was sorry. It violated his rule: no inflections, ever, of any kind, that might be misunderstood. Quickly he added: “Comrade Stalin is a great leader of men, and individual sensitivity is often a way station to selfish and unproductive behavior. But there is no way we can change the character of Robinson. He is very self-assured and obviously disdains a lot of the things we find useful to reward our people. He is a very, very close student of Marxism, and likes every now and then to talk with me about the fine points. I remember once,” Boris mused, “when he brought up a work of Comrade Lenin I hadn't consulted in thirty years. I went straight to the embassy and reread it right through and brought it up at our next meeting. Robinson told me that Lenin's predictions were often influenced by political crises, and that is why this tract isn't stressed so much nowadays. He gave me a learned lecture on the subject, and then suddenly he told me that although he knows nothing very much about me, he knows that I could never understand British society. ‘You may prove to be very good at wrecking it, Boris,' he said, ‘but you will never really understand it. I don't, though there is much to it that is entirely lovable.'” Boris began to feel, coming in across the desk, a certain fatigue—which awakened his own. He closed off the discussion. “He is,” Boris said, “altogether unique—though, of course, I do not know many Englishmen on such a basis!”