The Prodigal Spy (23 page)

“People literally went hungry in those days. I had friends, children, who worked in the breakers. Half the miners were on relief. You picked up coal by the tracks, the pieces that fell off the cars. In a burlap bag. You had to drag it home if it got too heavy. But I was lucky–I got out. I was going to change all that.”

“She never believed you did it,” Nick said. “Grandma. She wouldn’t look at the papers. She said it was a mistake.”

His father stopped and took a breath, as if he’d been punched.

“In the early days we did change things,” he continued, refusing to be distracted. “Washington was exciting. The New Deal.” He pronounced it for effect, like a foreign phrase. “We were just out of law school–what did we know? We thought we could change anything. Nothing could stop us. But they did. I think we just knocked the wind out of them, and then, when they caught their breath, there they were again. The Welleses, the Rankins–they were always there, you know. We didn’t invent them after the war. Defenders of the faith. Whatever it was. Themselves, mostly.”

He turned, looking at Nick. “You know, when I first went to Penn, I remember I had a suitcase. Your grandmother bought it for me, and I saw right away it was all wrong. I hid it in the closet. Embarrassed, you know? And then I thought, what the hell? I’ll catch up. This was my
chance
. I had the scholarship and the job, and sometimes I didn’t even sleep, there was so much I wanted to do. But what I couldn’t understand–it was the first time I’d met people who thought they
deserved
their luck. They didn’t know they were lucky. They didn’t think at all about the ones who weren’t there. How can people be like that? Not see they’re lucky? Not have some—” He searched. “Compassion.”

“They’re afraid someone will take it away,” Nick said simply.

“Yes.” His father nodded. “But what makes them think they should have it in the first place? That’s what’s interesting. What do they believe in? What did Welles believe in? I still don’t know. Of course,” he said, a faint smile on his face, “they’re not very bright, are they? Maybe that’s all of it. Kenneth B. Welles. I remember when he first came to town. Not even a lightbulb on upstairs. He never did have anything except his
amour propre
.”

“And the right suitcase.”

His father glanced at him appreciatively. “Yes, he had that. His father–natural gas, of all things. That certainly ran in the family,” he said, a throwaway. “Anyway, things just–stalled. Maybe we ran out of steam. Maybe Welles and the rest of them learned how to block. Bills just sat in committee. After a while all we were doing was fighting them. Not politics, schoolyard stuff. And meanwhile things kept going to hell–there wasn’t
time
.” He stopped. “Impatient, you see. So I was ready.”

“What did you do? Walk into some office and sign up? Like that?” Nick said, sounding more sarcastic than he intended.

“No, they come to you,” his father said, ignoring the tone. “They fish. First the bait, then they play the line–it turns out that’s what they did best. In those days, that’s all they were doing, but I didn’t see that. No change. Just recruiting.”

“Who recruited you?”

His father stopped and looked toward the fortress walls. “Names. Well, what difference does it make now? He’s dead. Richard Schulman, a teacher at Penn. He was never exposed. You’re the only one who knows this,” he said, his voice suddenly conspiratorial.

Nick looked at him. “It was thirty years ago,” he said. “No one—”

“Cares,” his father finished. He shook his head. “Old battles. Still, it’s not easy, you know, even now, giving names. Anyway, he kept in touch. He came to Washington now and then. We had dinner. I think he saw I was —what? Discouraged. Ready for something else. It was a long process. A seduction.”

“Literally?”

His father smiled. “Like the Brits? No, he had four wives. I think he changed them if they got suspicious. None of them knew, not even them. I think that’s what he liked, the secrecy. Of course, in my case it made sense, being a secret member. If you were in government, you couldn’t be public. That’s how it started. We were secret for my protection, so I could keep the job. At least I didn’t have to go to the meetings,” he said lightly. “Self-criticism, that was the thing then, you know–all that breast-beating. I heard the stories later. I don’t think I would have made it through that, so it’s just as well.”

He glanced at Nick, expecting him to be amused, but Nick was still looking at the ground, waiting. “So. I was in place. Secret and in place. What else could the next step have been? It started with the trade agreement. We were being stupid about that–still trying to collect old war debts. Anyone could see the Soviets didn’t have that kind of money to spare. They couldn’t rearm against Germany without hard currency. But the talks just dragged on and on.”

“So you decided to give them a push.”

“Yes, a push. A little one, to move things along. It was important for them to know how to speed up the negotiations. We’re not talking about tank designs, just position papers, memos. Half the people involved had access to them. They weren’t sensitive.”

“Then what good were they?”

“Well, you have to understand the Soviets. They have a mania for information. It comes, I think, from feeling so isolated. During the war, they took planeloads of documents out. On the lend-lease planes–bags of them. Memos. Newspapers. Useless, most of it. Paper. But they always wanted more.”

“I don’t want to know what you gave them,” Nick said, flustered. “What matters is, you did.”

“No. It’s important for you to know. For what I’m going to tell you.”

Nick waited.

“It was never anything military. Office paper. Like emptying a wastebasket. Things we should have told them in the first place. Why not? We could tell England, but not them. They had to rely on–people like me. Just to know. But what could I tell them? Diplomatic reports. What Ambassador so-and-so thought, assuming he thought anything. What was the harm? I never gave them anything that would hurt us. I never
had
anything like that. Just my in-box.”

“Your in-box,” Nick said, facing him. “Is that why you sent for me? To tell me how innocent it all was? Just a little private Lend-Lease, out of the goodness of your heart? My God. Don’t you think it’s a little late for this?”

“No,” his father said, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean that. I knew what I was doing. I thought they had a right to know. It was never–innocent. The point is, I never gave them anything important.”

“So?”

“So why bring me out? Do you think I was Philby? I wasn’t. What made me so important to them?” It was a new idea to Nick, unexpected, but his father’s voice was even, the patient tone of a teacher leading him through a theorem proof. “All that trouble for me. Why?”

“You got caught.”

“No. I was accused. I was never caught.” Nick looked at him, picking up the odd, twisted pride in his voice. “What did they have? A salesgirl who said she knew me. Her word. My word. We could have beat it,” he said, a lawyer again, still preparing the case.

“The papers said she had more.”

His father waved his hand, an easy dismissal. “What more could she have? She was the messenger. That was Welles grabbing a headline. He did that, you know. On Fridays. By Monday people would forget he hadn’t actually told them anything. He was just trying to turn up the pilot light, make that poor girl think he had something. Shake her up a little and see if any more came out. It’s been known to work. Anyway, this time it went with her. But he didn’t have anything.”

“Maybe she’d already talked to him.”

“No, we’d have heard. Why would he keep it to himself? It cost him, that hearing. Smoke and no fire. People get fed up. He started looking like a bully. She didn’t tell him anything about me. She couldn’t have–there was nothing to tell. She sold the shirt, I left the papers. That’s all there was to it. Simple. Nothing to connect either of us. Of course, one way or the other, after the hearing I’d be out of business. That kind of spotlight doesn’t go away. As far as they were concerned, I was finished. But Welles was stuck–he didn’t have enough to put me away. So why not just retire me? Why bring me out?”

Nick stopped, rattled. “I thought it was your idea.”

“No.” His father slowly shook his head. “I had no choice, Nick. You believe that, don’t you?” He took Nick’s elbow, a physical plea. “To leave everything— No. I thought we could sit it out.” He took his hand away, dropping it with his voice. “We could have.”

“What are you trying to say? That it was all a mistake? Somebody jumped the gun?” This was worse somehow, their whole lives turned around in a careless haste.

“I did think that at first,” his father said, starting to walk again. “I tried to tell them. But there were orders. You didn’t argue with that. Ever.”

“In the phone booth,” Nick said quietly. “In Union Station.”

His father turned, amazed. “How did you know that?”

“I followed you.”

“You followed me,” he repeated. When he looked at Nick, he softened, as if he could see a child’s face again. “Why?”

“I knew something bad was happening. I thought, in case—” He stopped, surprised to find himself embarrassed.

“In case,” his father said, still looking at him. “So I made you a spy too.” Then he smiled. “A better one, it seems. I had no idea.”

“You weren’t looking.”

“We’re supposed to, you know,” he said wryly.

Nick shrugged. “People don’t see kids. You had things on your mind.” He saw him again, in the herringbone coat, walking slowly up the hill, looking down at the snow, preoccupied. “Is that when you decided? After the phone call?” As if the chronology mattered.

“I didn’t decide, Nick. I did what I was told.”

“But if Welles didn’t have anything?”

“We didn’t know that then, only later. I suppose I believed him too. That there was something. I didn’t want to go to prison.” He stopped, turning. “So I went.”

“Without us,” Nick said, picking at it.

“Yes. Without you. It was usual to have the families follow. Like Donald’s.”

“But we didn’t.”

“No. Did I think your mother would come? I don’t know. At first I hoped, but I never heard. And then–well, by that time I knew Moscow better. It was the terror all over again, until Stalin died. No one was safe. War heroes.” He snapped his fingers, making them vanish as casually as the black cars in the night. “Even Molotov. He denounced his wife. The fool thought it would save his job. She spent seventeen years in the camps. Soviet justice.” He turned to Nick. “It was no place for you. I didn’t want you there, can you understand that? It would have killed your mother, that life. Later, when things got better—” He spread his hands. “You were already someone else.”

They had made a circle through some trees and were heading back to the fortress, to the stillness. The guard had left his post and in their absence was inspecting the car, running his hand along the smooth finish as if it were an exotic animal.

“It’s clearing,” his father said, looking up. “We’ll have sun.”

“Then let’s finish.”

“Yes.” He stopped, touching Nick’s elbow again. “A moment.”

The words sounded translated. Nick looked at him quickly, wondering whether the walk had tired him. Or was he trying to keep a distance from the guard? But his face, lost in thought, showed something else: an old man trying to find his place in a prepared speech.

“So why bring me out?” he said finally, picking up the thread. “The propaganda? That was part of it. Just being there. They like to show us off. Like the Africans they bring to the university. Living proof. Marx is everywhere–even in the jungle. No color bar in the International. Of course, the people think they’re savages–they just stare at them in the metro–so who’s fooling whom?” He paused, catching himself. “But they never used me that way.”

“They gave you a medal.”

“Yes. One press appearance, then no more. A lot of trouble to take, don’t you think, for a minute on the stage?”

“They had to help you. Isn’t that part of the deal?”

“For a Russian, yes, they would do that. But the rest of us —it would depend on what we knew. And what did I know? So why take the chance, if I was being watched, for instance?” he said, glancing slyly at Nick. “Someone had to get me out. Why put anyone at risk? Why not just leave me to the wolves?”

“Okay, why?”

His father looked at him, his eyes burning, finally there. “To protect someone else.”

For a moment Nick was silent, trying to take it in. “Do you know that?” he said quietly.

His father nodded. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. At first you flatter yourself–you want to believe you are important. But I wasn’t. It was never about me, Nick, what happened. It was always about someone else.”

Nick stared at him, so carefully led to the point that now he felt pinned by its sinking inevitability, the event of his life reduced to an accident. Not about them at all.

“Who?” he said.

His father began to walk again, his voice slipping back to its instructor tone. “Well, who did I know? The logical person was Schulman. It fit. He recruited me. He must have been valuable to them. He would insist on being protected. Richard Schulman. I didn’t know it was possible to hate someone that much. During the bad times I had that to hang on to. He’d get caught–it would happen to him, too. It didn’t, though.” He took a breath. “Which was just as well. It wasn’t him, you see. It was someone else.”

“Who?” Nick repeated.

“That’s what I want to find out.”

For an instant Nick wondered if his father was all right, his anger finally curdled over the years into an old man’s obsession. “Find out? How?”

“The woman is the key. I was sent away and she–died. So someone would be safe. Schulman? No. It should have been him, but he died too.” He glanced at Nick. “Quite naturally —later. There was no question about that. I saw the coroner’s report.”

Nick looked at him, appalled. How long had his father been working out his old puzzle, playing detective while his life passed by? Then he saw himself in London, arranging index cards like clues.