The Folks at Fifty-Eight (25 page)

Carlisle didn’t flinch. He apologized.

“I’m sorry, Hammond. It was nothing personal.”

Hammond let the anger go, but couldn’t resist twisting the knife.

“From what I’m told it didn’t even qualify for an apology. You weren’t the first, and I doubt you’ll be the last. Now you were telling me about The Poplars?”

“If it’s any comfort, my wife hasn’t slept in my bed for a hell of a lot longer than your wife hasn’t slept in yours.”

Carlisle seemed to need absolution. Hammond was in no mood to provide it.

“It’s not. So tell me about The Poplars: what is it, and where is it?”

“Think Spanish.”

“I speak German, Russian and a little French, but no Spanish, so tell me?”

“That’s a shame, because then you would have known the Spanish translation for The Poplars is Los Alamos.”

“You mean Manhattan?”

“I mean Manhattan.”

Hammond, taken by surprise, asked if Carlisle believed that Beria had an agent at Los Alamos. Carlisle nodded. He said, according to the latest official estimates, the Soviets should be fifteen years from developing nuclear weapons, but he thought they were a lot closer than that. He had heard that Beria’s priority was an order from Stalin to build and successfully test a nuclear bomb within three years.

When Hammond questioned the Soviet ability to achieve that, Carlisle said Beria had no choice. He knew the Americans were building a super-bomb. He also knew that if the Soviets didn’t catch up soon, it was unlikely they ever would. More to the point, if the Mingrelian failed to do his master’s bidding, Stalin would either shoot him for treason or force him to take a long-term vacation in his own Gulag.

Many of Russia’s nuclear physicists were either dead or on a one-way trip to the Gulag, ironically because of another of Beria’s purges. Many others had either defected or were hoping to do so. Lavrenti Beria had only one way he could make up the ground in the time available. Hammond voiced the only logical conclusion.

“Steal it from us.”

“Exactly.”

“But how the hell do you go about stealing an atom bomb?”

Carlisle was coming alive. It was obviously a pet subject. He said it was a lot easier than Hammond might think. First take a report full of holes, a report designed to justify spending on nuclear programs, for example, and use it as a flawed model. Then bring in somebody capable, like Igor Kurchatov, to identify where all the holes are. Then begin patching the holes with information your agents have stolen. After that you send out teams to collect the materials, the uranium and so forth. Suddenly you have a nuclear programme back on track.

“This Igor Kurchatov. . . he’s good?”

“Yes, he is.”

“And this report you mentioned. Does it exist?”

“Oh, yes. They hawked it around the media not long ago. They called it the Smyth report. It was the full technical history of The Manhattan Project.

“They published the Smyth report to make everyone look good and keep the funding rolling in. To that end they succeeded. But to Beria it was so much more. It was manna from heaven. It gave him the one thing he couldn’t steal: a full project organization, and tried and tested model, for the entire Soviet nuclear programme.”

Carlisle said there were people in Washington who didn’t agree with him. They thought him a zealot, but he believed the collation and publication of the Smyth report was one of the most foolish and damaging security blunders America ever made.

Hammond was suddenly nervous. If Beria did have an agent at Los Alamos, and if that agent was working at a senior level, with the necessary authorization, Russia could be almost there. America could be in trouble. Carlisle nodded furiously, but then contradicted him.

He said there had to be more than one agent. He said Beria was like Stalin; he was thorough, cautious, and paranoid. Lavrenti Beria believed that successful espionage was the product of concerted effort rather than individual craft. That was the way he had always worked: multiple teams competing for information, with none having any knowledge of the others. It was classic espionage, and it was classic Beria: infiltration by a series of independent cells, all autonomous and all reporting directly to him.

When Hammond asked why the FBI hadn’t gone through Los Alamos with a fine-tooth comb, Carlisle said it wasn’t as easy as he might think. The FBI didn’t believe these spies existed, and Hoover was still on a crusade to clean up the White House. He said Hoover didn’t care if somebody stole a few technical documents from somewhere way out in the desert. His only interest was finding Washington moles, and proving a point to Harry Truman.

Carlisle said he’d been working on this since Igor Gouzenko’s defection in forty-five had first alerted him to the possibility of spies in the Manhattan Project. Since then he had been working with Morton Simmonds and the people at Los Alamos. Carlisle seemed genuinely fond of the FBI’s notorious son. He said he’d first met Simmonds at Princeton. They were still friends today. One day they would go public with their findings, but that was long term.

“And in the short term?”

“There is no short term. Hoover wouldn’t give me the time of day without concrete proof.”

“But when you hand over Paslov they’ll have no choice. They’ll have to believe you.”

Carlisle shook his head.

“That’s not gonna happen. The last thing anybody wants is Paslov talking to The Bureau. He knows too much. . . Why do you think I wasn’t keen on taking him?”

Hammond couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“So you’re saying that a Russian spymaster knows more about the steps we’re taking to protect this country than our own federal government?”

“That’s about the gist of it.”

“So what are you going to do with Paslov?”

“If he tells us everything we need to know, that’s fine. Maybe we can deal.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I’ll give him to Conrad Zalesie.”

Until his argument with Howard Strecker, the name had been unknown to Hammond. Now it seemed to be on everyone’s lips. Carlisle provided some background.

Conrad Zalesie was an exiled Lithuanian count, and one of the wealthiest men in America. He ran the ATLI Corporation, and was one of the key players in the drive to build European networks. Zalesie owned property all over the world, but currently lived up in Connecticut, according to Carlisle, on an estate the size of Rhode Island. As for what he would do with Paslov? If Carlisle knew anything about Conrad Zalesie he would probably pull Paslov’s fingernails out one by one, and enjoy doing it.

“And this man Kube, this ex-Gestapo chief. Where does he fit?”

“Kube will work with us, integrating our new networks in Poland and Czechoslovakia.”

“What do you mean, work with us? The man’s a war criminal.”

“For god’s sake, don’t be so naïve.”

Carlisle glared. Hammond changed tack.

“And rescuing the girl was part of his price?”

Carlisle looked hard at him.

“No, whatever makes you think that?”

“Because he’s infatuated with her?”

“Seems he’s not the only one. No fools like old fools, huh?”

“Did you know that he raped her when she was twelve?”

“Now that I didn’t know, but it makes no difference. I can assure you, Hammond, Martin Kube had nothing to do with your trip to Germany.”

“Then who did?”

“I can’t tell you that. Anyway, the girl’s a serial killer. She’s mentally unstable.”

Hammond wasn’t letting him get away with that.

“She needs help. So would anybody who’d been through what she’s been through, but she doesn’t see it that way and neither do I. She sees herself fighting a war against the Bolsheviks. It happens to be the same war that we’re fighting.”

“You have become infatuated with her, haven’t you?” Hammond had been about to protest. Carlisle didn’t give him the chance. “I’m telling you to let it go, Hammond. This is all way above your head, so let it go.”

“And if I refuse?”

“In case the simple fact has escaped you, I’ve just given you a direct order.”

“A direct order from a Washington rake who sleeps with other men’s wives behind their backs, because his own wife doesn’t want anything to do with him?”

“If you’re expecting to survive in this job I suggest you do as you’re damn well told. Take a few days off. Give your wife a call. Perhaps you could try banging someone a little nearer your own age: maybe someone who doesn’t still wear pigtails and fit into her school uniform.”

Hammond leaned across the desk and hit him, hard across the jaw. The force of the blow rocked Carlisle back in his chair, but he recovered quickly. He wiped a smear of blood from his lip and smiled a rueful smile.

“I probably deserved that, but you ever do it again and I’ll have you back in that insurance company so fast your head will spin. Now if you want to keep your job you’ll do as I told you to do and take some time-out.”

Direct order or not, Hammond had no intention of abandoning Catherine. He wondered why, and tried to analyse his feelings.

He should have been angry about Carlisle sleeping with Emma. He should have been angry at being duped into risking his life in Germany. He should have been angry about being called an old fool. Strangely, he wasn’t especially angry about any of that, but he was angry about Carlisle’s obvious lack of concern for Catherine.

Carlisle made a belated effort to curb the antagonism.

“Look, man, forget what I said. I spoke in anger, and I apologize. If you take my advice, you’ll talk to Emma. At least talk to someone who’s not involved in all this mayhem, someone you can trust. It makes a difference when there’s someone there, even if they only nod their head and listen.”

Hammond held the glare. Carlisle shrugged.

“All right, have it your way. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to talk to Paslov. Now get the fuck out of here.”

Mathew’s own room was little more than a cupboard in the basement. His below-stairs work consisted of fetching and cleaning, and polishing anything and everything. However, the concierge would occasionally call on him to carry guests’ luggage during busy periods, and it was during one such period that he met the young woman in room 307.

Her name was Lara Therese Scholde, and she was the most perfect creature Mathew had ever seen. She smiled at him when he carried her bags to the room. When he refused a gratuity, and said her smile was more than enough compensation, her face lit up and the smile widened into radiance.

The following day he bumped into her when taking a stroll in the Tuileries. She was by the fountain, feeding the birds. He wandered over to bid her a badly-pronounced
bonjour
. He couldn’t believe his luck when she invited him to join her for coffee. When he told her the hotel didn’t allow such liaisons, she winked and told him she wouldn’t breathe a word.

They walked along the Champs Élysée for a while, and then stopped at a pavement café. He wanted to know everything about her, and began by asking where she lived. When she told him she was Austrian, he asked her why she was in Paris. She said her father had died in the war and her mother now ran the family fashion and accessories business in Vienna. She giggled and told him that she was in Paris looking for new ideas to steal. He thought she was wonderful.

Two hours and a long lunch later they crept their way back to room 307 and made love all that afternoon and into the evening. Lonely and vulnerable, Mathew Carlisle was instantly smitten. She ordered room service. He hid in the bathroom when it arrived. They ate and drank, and then made love again.

The following morning Mathew crept from her room at five a.m. and ran straight into the night concierge, who reported him to the day concierge, who took him to the duty manager. The duty manager was a pompous individual, who hated Americans almost as much as he hated Nazis. He gave Mathew a long lecture on morality and hotel standards, and then told him that he no longer enjoyed a position at the hotel. Two porters escorted him to his basement cupboard, to pack his bags. The same two men escorted him from the building.

When the girl complained about his treatment, they evicted her. The duty manager tore up the bill in front of her. He said the days when his hotel had to take Nazi whores as guests were long gone. Mathew stood waiting for her outside the hotel. He said he wanted to hit the pompous little man. Lara said he wasn’t worth it. She smiled and suggested the pompous little man was obviously jealous of Mathew’s good looks. Mathew positively beamed with pride. She said her eviction was the hotel’s loss and Mathew’s gain. When she hailed a taxi and asked him to come with her, Mathew was into the taxi and beside her in an instant.

They found another, cheaper, hotel, farther up the Champs Élysée, on the Rue de Beri, and settled into an idyllic five days of making love and drinking champagne. She talked of her home in Vienna, and he talked of how much he hated Washington. She told him about her father and said how much she missed him. She said she loved her mother dearly, but had loved her father more.

She asked him about his parents, and he blurted out all that had happened. He said his father was an important State Department official. He added that Alan Carlisle was also a rake. He told her of his reason for leaving the United States, and described his mother’s shocking behaviour and incestuous ambition in vivid detail. He said his parents sickened him. He said they needed help. He hadn’t known why he needed to share all those details of his shame and trauma with the young Austrian woman. He just knew that he had, and it had helped.