An Agent in Place Page 4
The editor, whose long flowing beard and fervent eyes left him looking more like a Russian Orthodox priest than a man of letters, watched as she fitted eyeglasses over her slightly disjointed nose and started to read the proofs. He was toying with the idea of raising a delicate subject. "If you would tone down the feminist rhetoric and remove the word cunt from the third poem you submitted," he finally remarked, "I might be able to get that one published too."
Smiling faintly, Aida looked up. "And what is it about the word cunt that makes it inappropriate for a poem?" she asked innocently.
"I was trying to be helpful," the editor said defensively. He had been tempting fate to bring it up, but the damage was done.
From the rehearsal studio on the floor below came the muted sound of a soprano practicing scales. Ai'da gazed at the editor scornfully. "I suppose I should be more grateful. I suppose I should crawl across the floor for the crumbs you throw my way every few months."
"It is not a question of being grateful, but respectful."
AN AGENT IN PLACE
"I wholeheartedly agree," Aida retorted hotly. "More respect is what is needed here. Not only for people, but for poems. Most especially for poems that use what you may think of as dirty words to explore clean subjects, in this case the proposition that if two people were left on earth, one would invade the other, which is what you are doing to me now."
"I show respect for your poems by publishing some of them," the editor muttered in a voice laced with irritation.
"Some of them!" Aida exploded. She flung her head back and blew out air between her lips in a perfect imitation of a horse whinnying. Several junior editors, attracted by the whinny, gathered outside the open door of the office. The editor scraped back his chair and came around to plant himself in front of the desk with his arms folded across his chest. Aida noticed what appeared to be caviar stains on his beard and on the lapels of his checkered sports jacket. The sight provoked her. "So: What would happen if your readers came across cunt in print?" she inquired sarcastically. "Would the earth quit rotating on its axis? Would the polar ice cap melt? What hypocrites you all are. It is prudes like you who refused to publish stanzas from Pushkin's Tsar Nikita, who even now think Nabokov went too far with Lolita. Admit it, Joseph Mikhailovich, you are afraid of crossing some Party line, afraid of offending some male chauvinist cog in the Bolshevik wheel."
For a moment the only sound in the room was the hollow ticking of the wall clock. "When will you get it into that virago's skull of yours that there is no Party line anymore," the editor lectured her, raising his voice, tapping a forefinger against his own skull. "Our poets should be the first to understand this, the first to support those who are risking everything to bring a human face to Socialism."
Aida slid off the radiator and, producing some cheap tobacco and paper from the pocket of her blanket-lined overcoat, proceeded to roll a thin cigarette; as a young girl she had worked for eighteen months in a cigarette factory in central Asia, and had never lost the knack. "The business of poets," she said as her fingers worked the tobacco onto the paper, "is to permanently position themselves to the left of the official line. During the Brezhnev era we stood for glasnost. Now we must stand to the left of glasnost —it is clearly not ambitious enough if it cannot live with the publication of a poem that contains the word cunt." She licked the edge of the paper and threaded the
ROBERT LITTELL
cigarette closed and thrust it between her lips. "You would not happen to have fire?" she challenged, her eyes boring into his, and it was clear from the angle of her chin, from the slight smile on her trembling lips, that she intended the double meaning.
Shaking his head in frustration, the editor thumbed a lighter and held the flame to the tip of her cigarette. "How is it we always end up arguing when we are on the same side?"
"I suppose the answer is that we are not on the same side."
The minute hand on the wall clock lurched forward with a resounding click that sounded like a lock closing. Aida checked her wristwatch against the clock. Joseph Mikhailovich shrugged in exasperation. "Spare me your feminist song-and-dance routine," he said scornfully. He caught a glimpse of the editors eavesdropping at the door and turned on them in anger. "Don't you have anything better to do than stand around gaping in hallways?" He stalked over and kicked the door closed so hard Aida thought the opaque pane of glass in it would shatter.
Sh'e exhaled a lung full of foul-smelling cigarette smoke. "You should be opening doors, not closing them, Joseph Mikhailovich. You know the story about Pasternak on his deathbed—he kept mumbling the same thing over and over, but nobody could figure out what he wanted. Finally someone deciphered it—he was asking for the door to be opened."
That was too much for the editor, for whom Pasternak was a hero, an icon, a god. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Poetry is a moving target. Poets too. You have to stalk both of them. In other words, Joseph Mikhailovich, it means whatever you want it to mean."
"What a cunt you are!"
Ai'da produced a mocking half-smile. Though the editor could not have known it, the person she was mocking was herself; another battle had been won, another war lost.
Breathing heavily through his nostrils, flicking imaginary specks of soot from his lilac shirt, Joseph Mikhailovich retreated to his fortress behind the pile of manuscripts on the desk. "You ambushed me," he complained. He threaded his fingers through his long beard, absently working out the knots. "That is the thanks I get for going out on a limb and publishing your poems."
Aida grew bored with the game. "If you really want to help me,"
AN AGENT IN PLACE
she observed quietly, 'you can pay me for the two poems you have accepted."
"You know the magazine's rules," the editor told her. "We pay on publication, not on correcting galley proofs."
"You are so hot to restructure the country," Aida replied wearily, "why don't you start by restructuring the magazine's rules?" Suddenly she felt overwhelmed by a persuasive sense of despair. She had too many nagging problems, too much on her mind, too many people dependent on her. Everyone took her strength for granted. They did not understand how fragile she really was, how easy it would have been for her to fold her tent and run for the hills, leaving her son and her father and her future ex-husband and all the women's groups to fend for themselves. They did not understand how close she came at times to crossing that delicate threshold where dying seemed easier than living. Stubbing out her cigarette against the wall in a corkscrew motion and flicking it into a wire mesh wastebasket, she tucked her eyeglasses away in a plastic case and gathered her belongings. Thanks for nothing," she said as she started toward the door.
The editor noticed the droop to her shoulders. "How is Saava doing?" he called after her.
Aida turned back at the door. "Saava is, thanks to God, all right. It is the world that is sick."
The editor smiled in grudging agreement. "Come by tomorrow at six," he muttered. "I will see what I can do about getting you paid for the poems."
Aida stared at the editor briefly, nodded as if she had confirmed some obscure observation on the human condition and left.
AN AGENT IN PLACE
plumbing banged when it worked, which was rarely.) It took Ben three-quarters of an hour to track down the embassy's resident plumber, and another fifteen minutes to convince him that the situation was desperate. By the time Ben got around to collecting his mail in the administrative section, he was wilting with fatigue. He was reading the announcements on the bulletin board ("All those who agree there is too much salt in the commissary salads, put their John/Jane Hancocks below") when a woman tapped him on an arm.
"Hi, Ben," she said.
"Oh. Hello. ,,
"Sabine Harkenrider?"
"I remember your name," he lied.
"How are you getting on?"
Ben laughed under his breath. "I'll survive. What about you?"
Sabine rewarded him with a
shy smile and Ben decided she wasn't nearly as plain looking as he had first thought. The junior high facilities at the New Office Building are first rate," she told him. "I came to this job from a New Haven ghetto. For me, having shades on windows is sheer luxury. But the kids here ^re a bit snooty. The main topic of conversation is the latest killing they made on the black market—they seem to be able to get just about anything in exchange for jeans and sweatshirts." Sabine studied the bulletin board, and reached up to add her name to the list of those interested in participating in a cross-country ski outing being organized by the embassy's Weight Watchers the following Sunday.
"You don't look like a Weight Watcher," Ben remarked.
"I don't look like one because I am one." She glanced at Ben inquisitively. "Do you watch your weight? Do you ski?"
"No on both counts."
Sabine, fanning the ember of the conversation to keep it alive, said, "You and Mr. Custer didn't hit it off too well the other day."
Ben shrugged. "He ran true to type—he's still fighting the Cold War. It's pathetic." In fact Ben regretted having baited the embassy security officer. He should be steering clear of people like that and keeping a low profile.
"I don't follow politics," Sabine remarked. "I suppose it's because I don't really understand what motivates someone to become a politi-
cian."
ROBERT LITTELL
"Power."
That's what everyone says. Power." She shook her head. 'There's got to be more to it. It's like saying a businessman is only motivated by money. I don't believe that."
She waited for Ben to respond. When he didn't she said, "Well," and smiled at the ground. She started to walk away, then turned back. "There's a happy hour over at Sam's Lounge in the New Office Building at four. Come on by, Ben. I'll buy you a drink."
Ben thought: The last thing I want to do in Moscow is get involved with an American. He said something about having to see someone at four fifteen. "Another time maybe."
"Sure. Another time." Turning away, she smiled again and then laughed out loud. Ben thought he detected a note of pain in her laughter. He wondered if he had reopened an old wound—or inflicted a new one.
He did have an appointment at four fifteen—with Charlie In-kermann, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief at the embassy. At ten minutes past the hour Ben took the elevator to the ninth floor, had his green badge checked by a marine with a plump baby face crawling with acne, then walked up one flight to the tenth floor and made his way down the hall, past the defense attache offices, past the deputy chief of mission's office, to a door with only a number on it. He knocked and stuck his head in.
A young secretary in a flaming red miniskirt was filing documents in a metal cabinet. She waved him into the room. "We're expecting you," she said cheerfully. She threaded a steel bar through the drawer handles and secured the bar with a combination lock at the top and activated the electronic alarm. Drifting over to her desk, she gave Ben the kind of frank once-over that women wearing flaming red miniskirts get from men. "I'm Mehetabel Macy," she announced breathlessly. "You're probably asking yourself, what kind of name is Mehetabel? The answer is, it's biblical—it means 'beloved of God.' It makes you wonder, doesn't it? I mean, if I got posted to Moscow, imagine where the ones who aren't beloved of God get posted!" She held up a hand when Ben started to say something. "You're Mr. Inkermann's four fifteen. That's what I'll call vou from now on no matter what time I see you—you'll always be our four fifteen." Eye-
AN AGENT IN PLACE
ing Ben, she stretched across her desk and flicked a lever on an intercom. "Your four fifteen is here, Mr. Inkermann."
An impatient nasal whine filtered back over the box. "Send him on in.
The secretary uncoiled herself from the desk and opened one of the four doors giving off her outer office and lazily stood aside. Ben got a whiff of lilac perfume as he strolled past her into a murky inner office. As the door closed behind him, cutting off most of the light, he had the peculiar weightless sensation that comes when you plunge to the bottom of a lake. What light there was seemed to mingle uncomfortably with shifting shadows. Gradually his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and he began to make out the CIA station chief. A short, meaty man with strands of hair slicked back in an only partially successful attempt to cover a bald spot, he was sitting at a bridge table illuminated by a low desk lamp, manipulating something with his stubby fingers. When Ben approached he saw that Inkermann was fitting tiny stanchions onto a model of a warship. "Right with you," the station chief mumbled without looking up. He dabbed some Super Glue onto the end of another stanchion and delicately stuck it into place. Peering at the model through a magnifying glass, Inkermann said, "You're looking at a World War Two Sumner class destroyer named the U.S.S.John R. Pierce. She's the one that stopped the first Russian freighter off Cuba when John Kennedy quarantined the island during the missile crisis." Inkermann contemplated the model of the ship with something akin to nostalgia. "I had the great good fortune to be serving on the Pierce at that historic moment in time." Tearing his eyes away from the model with reluctance, he angled the desk lamp so that it illuminated his visitor. "So you're Bassett," he growled. He didn't offer to shake hands.
Ben appeared startled to hear Inkermann pronounce his name out loud. "Just the other day," he noted wryly, "Mr. Custer warned us that walls have ears."
"Custer's an asshole," Inkermann snapped. Gesturing with his head for Ben to take a seat, he walked across the room to a very cluttered desk and settled into the wooden swivel chair behind it. "Fact of the matter is some walls have ears, some don't. These particular walls don't." He reached over and switched on a desk lamp with a green shade. This office was constructed by Seabees. The windows have double panes to prevent lasers picking off voice vibrations.
ROBERT LITTELL
The Venetian blinds are always closed. Neither the Russians, nor your coworkers in the embassy for that matter, will know you've been up here. If there's one thing we're meticulous about, Bassett, it's tradecraft. You will have noticed that my secretary referred to you as my four fifteen. That's because her space is not considered one hundred percent secure." Inkermann, who was trying to give up smoking, planted a plastic cigarette between his thick lips and started to work it in his jaw. "I was told you were with Army Intelligence. I was told you could do no wrong. I was told that was all I would be told. By my superiors in Washington. By you."
Inkermann observed his visitor with thinly disguised hostility. He was not tickled at the idea of someone free-lancing out of his shop. Some sort of operation was obviously under way. For the station chief to be cut out of the chain of command was not unheard-of, but it was rare. To Inkermann it meant one of two things: Either he wasn't completely trusted, or the operation in question was especially tightly held. He hoped to hell it was the second, but worried himself sick that it was the first. Still, Inkermann liked to think of himself as a team player, and a professional; he liked to say that he only had to be given a compass heading for him to set sail. So, swallowing his pride, he asked, "What can I do for you?"
Ben supplied the station chief with a verbal shopping list. He would need the sealed attache case that had been sent to him in the diplomatic pouch. He would need a room to himself; it didn't have to be big, but it had to be secure. He would need a safe and a shredding machine and a burn bag. He would need access to the station chief's backlist of enciphered Sensitive Compartmented Information Cables —a category so secret the messages were always BIGOT listed, which meant that the addressee controlled dissemination and all copies were numbered. Oh, he had almost forgotten his last but not least. He would also need the station's cipher logs.
"Anything else?" Inkermann asked with a thin smile.
Ben indicated with a quick shake of his head that that would be all.
Inkermann asked him how far back he wanted to go in the cable files. Ben said he planned to start with 1967. Inkermann wanted to know what hours Ben would be wor
king. Ben said he would hold down his housekeeping job to keep his cover intact, and work on the cables nights, weekends. When Inkermann observed that it would
AN AGENT IN PLACE
take months to work through the station's Sensitive Compartmented Information Cables, Ben only shrugged.
As Ben was leaving Inkermann asked him, "Just as a matter of curiosity, has Custer been briefed about you?"
Ben said, "Nobody but you has been briefed about me. Not the ambassador. Not Custer."
Inkermann said, "The marines checking green badges on the sixth floor keep a log. Custer might find out you've been coming up here. You'd better have a story ready."
"One of my housekeeping chores for the Seven Dwarfs involves enciphering their status reports to the Pentagon. If Custer asks I'll tell him you loaned me a safe to keep my ciphers in, and a table to work on when I encipher."
Inkermann heaved himself out of his chair. "He won't get a different story from me. You can count on it."
Ben could have said, "I am." But he wanted to put some maneuvering room between himself and Inkermann. So he said, "We are," knowing Inkermann would notice the "We" and draw the appropriate conclusion.
He did. ^
AN AGENT IN PLACE
the worst glass of tea Viktor had ever tasted, one that no amount of confiture could save. On top of everything she whined.
She was whining over the telephone now. There's a Captain Kruchtin out here—"
Viktor could hear his irritated chief of section correcting her. "My name happens to be Krostin, not Kruchtin."
"Kruchtin, Krostin, whichever," the secretary whined into the phone. "He wants to know if he can have a minute of your time. What do I tell him?"
"You tell him you are sorry you mispronounced his name. You tell him to come straight in."
"I would offer you a glass of tea," Viktor told his section chief when he had been admitted to the office, "but you might never drink that particular liquid again if I did."