The Prodigal Spy (54 page)

“He didn’t send me. I wanted to see you myself.”

Welles stopped, surprised. “You did,” he said, marking time, not sure what was happening. “Well, what can I do for you?”

“Larry’s my stepfather. You know my real father was Walter Kotlar.”

A tic of recognition, not alarm, a reflex to a surprise question. “That’s right. Larry married the wife. I never did understand that. There was a kid.” Just a detail, lost over the years. “That’s you?”

Nick nodded.

“Walter Kotlar,” Welles said, sitting against the edge of the desk. “A lot of water over that dam.”

“He died last week.”

“Died? Well, that’s something,” he said slowly. “Dead. I’m sorry to hear that.” He caught Nick’s expression. “Oh, he was no friend of mine. Matter of fact, he was anything but for a while there. No end of trouble. Whole thing just folded up on me. But dead—” He shook his head. “You know, it’s not just your friends. Makes you feel old when the other ones go too. Maybe more. Nobody left who knows the war stories. Kids don’t want to hear it.”

“I do.”

Welles lifted his head. “No, you don’t. There’s no percentage in that. Scratching sores, that’s all that is–you’re better off letting them alone. It don’t pay, staying mad. Your dad, he almost put me out of business. Terrible, him and that woman. But what are you going to do? You pick yourself up and roll with it. You don’t want to look back. That’s what’s great about this country–you just go on to the next thing.”

Nick looked at him, amazed. Just something that had happened to him. Was it possible it had never really mattered, the whole thing no more important than a hitch in the campaign, patched over with a booster’s platitude? Or was this just another way of telling Betty to circle the date, a hand on your shoulder on your way out the door.

“My parents never talked about it.”

“Well, that’s right. They wouldn’t.” He peered at Nick. “So you came to see me, is that it? It’s all there, you know. Matter of record.”

“Not all of it.”

Welles gave him a serious look, on guard.

“Look,” Nick said, “my father’s dead. It can’t hurt anybody anymore. It’s history. I’d just like to know, to fill in the gaps.”

Improbably, this made him smile. “History. Well, I guess it is now. We did make some history there, didn’t we? He did, anyways. What do you want to know?”

“Did Rosemary Cochrane really have new testimony, the way you announced? Did she tell you anything?”

This was clearly unexpected. “She
would
have,” he said, with a sly glance back.

“But she didn’t.”

Welles frowned. “Now look, I’m not raking this up again. They all said I drove her to it, but that’s b.s. I didn’t drive her to nothing. You had to know how to handle her–you needed a little pressure if you were going to get anything out of her. In the beginning, you know, when she told me about your father, I have to say I scared her into it–had to, wouldn’t have got anywhere otherwise. She knew she had to give me something. Then she just clammed up again. My opinion? Her friends got to her. God knows with what–probably scared her worse. But she still knew plenty. Thing was, how do you get her to open up? You had to turn the heat on somehow. Hell, that’s just politics. You’re from a political family, you ought to know that. You tell the papers she’s already confessed, she’s not going to have her friends to fall back on. Can’t trust her. They’re running for cover. She’s out there all alone. Maybe facing perjury, if you play it right. And she didn’t want to go to prison in the worst way.”

“She was pregnant.”

Welles looked at him, stunned. “How do you—” A sputter, like a candle.

Nick didn’t wait but slipped in under the confusion. “Look, I never said you drove her to it. I just want to know what she said. After Hoover told you to talk to her, did she mention my father right away?”

Welles missed it. “I told you, with her it was always pressure. She knew she had to give me a name.”

“Or you’d go after her.”

“Of course. What else?”

“By the way, how did Hoover know?” Nick said, trying to sound casual.

“How does he know anything? You don’t ask.”

“But she didn’t mention anyone else,” Nick said, moving away from it. Hoover.

“No, just Kotlar.”

“And she thought that was the end of it.”

“I don’t know what she thought. How could it be the end?”

“But you offered immunity.”

“From espionage charges,” he said carefully.

“Which you couldn’t prove anyway. Without bringing the Bureau into it.”

Another sly look, nodding. “That was the tricky part. But she bit. She thought we could. You know, she
was
guilty. There’s no doubt about that.”

“No.”

“And after she gave me a name, well, then I had her.” He smiled, then looked down, troubled. “How do you know she was pregnant?”

“She told her family. It never came out.”

“I didn’t know that. It explains a lot. Why she’d be so upset. To take her own life.” Welles shook his head.

“If she did.”

He peered at Nick, alert. “What’s all this about?”

“I always wondered,” Nick said flatly. “If he killed her.”

“Killed her?” Welles said, surprised. “Now, don’t you start thinking that way.” He raised a finger. “He was your father,” he said, as sanctimonious as his peace platform.

Nick shrugged. “It’s possible. You must have wondered. There were a lot of people in the hotel. Anybody could have gone up and— Well, couldn’t they? I mean, you were there at the time.”

“Yes, I was,” he said slowly. “With Mrs Welles.” Only his name on the list.

“But you weren’t married,” Nick said involuntarily. Two glasses.

“We married later,” Welles said evenly. “She was my date.”

Nick tried an apologetic grin. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t asking for an alibi.”

“I don’t care what you’re asking for. Your time’s up.” Welles glanced at his watch, physical evidence, then stood up. “Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t be like your father, going off half cocked. That woman was probably crazy, I don’t know. You have to work with what you’ve got. What I do know is, it’s over and done with. You’d best put your mind at ease and get on. You don’t want to go digging around the past–there’s no percentage in it. I’ve lived a long time in this town and I learned. There’s only the next thing. There isn’t any past here. You let your father be.”

Nick nodded, message received, then glanced up at his eyes, now the same hard eyes that had peered over the microphones.

“When you looked at him,” he said, “at the hearing, what were you thinking?”

Welles stopped, framing an answer. “That he was the smoothest goddamned liar I’d ever seen. That I’d never get him.”

“Maybe it takes one to know one.”

Instead of taking offense, Welles smiled. “Maybe it does, at that.”

“Thanks,” Nick said, taking his hand, wanting to see how it felt. Small. Welles raised his eyebrows. “For your time. For telling me what I wanted to know.”

But Welles misinterpreted. “It’s true. Never thought I’d get him. And I knew he was guilty.”

“What about all the others?”

“The others?” All forgotten, like campaign workers.

“The ones who weren’t guilty.”

“Well, they must have been guilty of something,” Welles said easily, “or they wouldn’t have been there.” Attending meetings. Running mimeograph machines. Flubbing loyalty checks. Thousands. Welles put his hand on Nick’s shoulder and smiled. “You know, son, you don’t know shit about politics. You should just get on to the next thing.”

Welles walked him to the door, taking a deep breath and drawing up his shoulders, ready for a new meeting. As Nick watched, the buffoon suspenders seemed to expand, his body filling back up with air, almost newsreel size.

The break came the next day. Molly took the vigil in Chevy Chase again, and Nick decided, as if he were sticking a pin in a map, to follow Irina. He drove to Dupont Circle, and by seven A.M. he was waiting halfway down her sunny street, thinking that the whole random exercise was futile. They needed five watchers, not two. He imagined the contact being made–an exchange on a park bench? How was it done?–while they were both somewhere else, never in the right place at the right time. In this lottery, Silver’s luck could hold forever while Nick drew empty mornings of delivery vans and dog-walkers. Anyway, where was she? She’d be late for work if she didn’t leave the house soon. Nick stared at her door, so preoccupied he didn’t hear the steps behind him, stopping at his open window.

“There you are.” A woman’s voice. “I suppose I have you to thank.”

Mrs Baylor, carrying a brown grocery bag. Nick looked up blankly.

“I thought she’d be someone you’d
want
. Why send her back, if you don’t mind my asking? Was something wrong?”

“You mean she’s gone?” First Brown, now Irina.

Well, don’t
you
know?“

Nick shook his head, confused.

“Oh. Of course, she did say it was temporary, but she seemed to like it here.”

“When did she leave?”

“Yesterday. Said she found something better. I don’t know what she means by
better
. There’s nothing wrong with the apartment. It’s self-contained. I thought you people sent her home.”

“No, nothing like that. Did she leave an address? They’re supposed to.”

“No. Of course, they come and go, the girls. But one month? No more for me, I can tell you, no more foreigners. Not that she wasn’t nice.”

“She was only here a month?” Could the list have been that recent? But his father must have had it earlier, when he had first planned to leave.

“One month. Hardly worth the time it takes to clean the place. Flighty.” Mrs Baylor’s arm shot up in the air, waving. “There’s Barbara.”

Nick looked toward the house, where a girl on the stoop was waving back. His eyes stopped, and he felt a tingling along his scalp. Not the Russian, the other girl. She started down the street.

“Thanks, Mrs Baylor. Sorry for your trouble. She’ll probably check in with us this week, when she’s settled. If she does send an address, let us know, okay? Just in case.” He turned on the ignition. “By the way, how did she find you? She give you references?”

“Well, I never thought to ask. Barbara told her about it. They met at work, I guess. Not that I blame Barbara. She was good as gold about those records.”

By the time Nick was able to pull away, the girl had turned the corner into the next block, shoulder bag swinging. A miniskirt, short heels, blond like Molly. Reliable Barbara, who’d met Irina at work. But she was heading downtown, away from the embassy.

Nick followed slowly, but even at this pace the car was bound to overtake her. She passed a bus stop, clearly intending to walk. He went through the light into the next block, keeping her in his rearview mirror. A car pulling away from the curb. He slammed on the brakes and backed into the spot, adjusting the parking angle until she went by. When he started down the sidewalk he kept his eyes on her hair, a tracking beam, so that everything around her blurred out of focus.

She was walking quickly, not stopping to look at windows, heading toward Farragut Square. She took a diagonal path across the park, unaware of Nick in the crowd. Downtown. The Bureau wasn’t far away. Then she went into a coffee shop, forcing Nick to stop at the corner, exposed. He fed some coins into a newspaper vending machine and took out a
Post.
A peace rally. District police requesting additional crowd-control units. People streamed by, carrying briefcases. What if she was just a boarder after all? But the address had been there, on the list.

When she came out, sipping from a Styrofoam cup, Nick turned away and almost lost her. Then, in front of a DON’T WALK sign, the blond hair came into view again. She crossed the street and disappeared through a door: EMPLOYEES ONLY. Nick looked around, then at the block-long row of plate-glass windows, trying to orient himself. It was only when he stepped back to the curb, taking the whole building in, that he finally recognized it, as familiar to him as an old dream. Garfinkel’s. Still. His father had said the reports never changed, the same pattern. You could tell just by the prose. One of them will lead me to him.

Nick went through the door. Don’t show yourself. But how else could he be sure? He walked past aisles of cosmetics and women’s handbags. She could be anybody. But when he reached the men’s department, there she was, just arrived behind the counter, talking to another clerk as she arranged the tie display, the shelves behind her lined with row after row of white shirts.

“We have to figure out a way to get in there,” Nick said later, excited. “I can’t spend all day trying on suits.”

They were in the lobby bar at the Madison, the soft spring light still flooding into the windows from 16th Street, not yet evening. Molly, unexpectedly subdued, picked out a cashew from the bowl of nuts.

“You want me to be her,” she said, not looking up.

“No, he probably knows her by sight. But if you were there. They’re always looking for extra help. You could talk your way in. Anyway, it’s worth a try.”

“No, I meant
her
. Rosemary. You want me to be her.”

Nick said nothing, surprised at her mood.

“Do I have to?”

“Molly, we’re so close.”

She nodded and looked out the window. In the corner, a man in black tie was playing the piano. Cocktail hour. These Foolish Things‘, one of the songs his mother must have danced to.

“It’s funny,” she said. “All my life, my mother kept telling me I was like her. Political. That’s what she said when I wanted to go to Kennedy’s funeral. A whole bus went down from school. You don’t want to get mixed up in anything, not like her. God. Every time I brought someone home. You’ll turn out boy-crazy, just like—” She broke off. “But I never thought I was. I didn’t even know her. That was just my mother. Half the time I didn’t know what she was talking about. Now it turns out maybe she was right. I am like her. I know just how she felt.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she did it for him, didn’t she? Mr Right. Anything, right up to the end. New dress. Order up a bottle–I’ll bet it was the kind he liked. Everything was going to be all right.”