“NO! I WON’T! LET me go, damn you!” Regina’s voice.
The woman known as Petra Hudson had been a regular churchgoer since the early 1950s (because James Hudson was, and it was her mission to be perfect for him) but only now did she feel there might be any reality to the concept of a merciful God. Her daughter was alive. Somehow, the men in Moscow had become convinced she was dead, and at death, they were experts. Petra Hudson did not deserve to have her daughter alive. But here she was.
“Just let her see you.” This was a man’s voice Petra Hudson didn’t recognize.
“I don’t want to see her.”
“Then close your eyes. Come on, you started this, honey. Am I going to have to carry you?”
Since Trotter had come into the room, Petra Hudson had been shooting emotions like drugs. Surprise to find him there at all. Hatred of him. Defiance. Disbelief when he told her who he was and that her situation wasn’t hopeless. Shock at learning Regina was alive. Relief. Guilt. It had left her numb. Only two coherent thoughts could fight their way to her consciousness: I don’t blame her for not wanting to see me and How could it possibly be her fault?
She had no time to wonder about it, because Regina was standing there. She didn’t have her eyes closed; she couldn’t have closed them if she’d wanted to. The loathing pouring out of them would have burned her eyelids off.
“Regina,” she said.
She turned to the white-haired man with her. “She’s seen me. Can I leave now?”
“You keep a room here,” Trotter said. “Wait there.”
“I’m never spending another minute under this roof.”
“Regina, darling.” Petra Hudson was almost startled at the sound of her own voice. She had never had to beg before. She was never so far out of control of things that begging was relevant. She’d known it would be like this. Her life, her life’s work (which was the same thing), the respect of her children, or their lives. As soon as the messages began, she had known she was going to lose them. She realized now that she had defied Moscow because something in her thought it could deal with losing Regina or Jimmy more easily than it could with their rejecting her. A selfish part of her. A stupid part.
“Regina, please,” she said again. “I—I didn’t know what to do. You couldn’t have wanted me to give in to them.”
“You betrayed them, too. You betray everybody. Them, America, Daddy. And Jimmy, me—you betrayed us the minute you conceived us! How could you—”
“That’s enough,” Trotter said.
Regina turned on him without bothering to stop the loathing. “You had me dragged in here, damn you.”
Trotter’s voice stayed low. “No, damn you, you had me dragged in here. If you don’t want to see little white crawly things, don’t ask someone to turn over a rock.”
“But I never knew—”
“Well, you sure know now. You went to Washington asking people to help your mother. Turns out she needs it more, and maybe deserves it less than you had in mind. Too bad. We’re not going to shoot her because you changed your mind. This is the big leagues, Bash. It hurts when you get beaned.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He spoke to the white-haired man. “Take her to her room, okay? Then get Albright up here to baby-sit her.”
Petra Hudson had given enough orders to know that the white-haired man didn’t especially enjoy Trotter’s sending him away, but all he said was, “Right. I’ll be right back.”
When they were gone, Trotter went back to his chair and sat. He gestured for her to sit, too.
“All right,” he said. “Are you ready to talk strategy, or do you have to cry or something first?”
“Do you have to enjoy this so much, Mr. Trotter?”
Trotter said, “Who, me?” but pain crossed his face.
“It doesn’t matter. I did all my crying when they first told me to hold myself ready to run the Hudson Group the way they told me to. I knew all this would happen.”
“You didn’t know your daughter would happen.”
“No. No. I thought they would kill her. She found you in Washington?”
“She found someone who found me. She was worried about you. She idolizes you.”
“Nonsense.”
“Don’t tell me nonsense. She does.”
Petra Hudson took a deep breath. The world didn’t hold enough air. “Well, she doesn’t now, does she? Mr. Trotter, never put yourself in a situation where there’s nothing you can do.”
“You could have done what your daughter did.”
“Come to you? I may not be much of a mother, but I’m not a fool.”
“We had to sit around letting people die, letting the Russians put enough pressure on you until you were ready to break. If you’d come to us, we could have devoted our time to catching this bastard who’s been killing children in your town.”
“She’ll never forgive me for letting those people die.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Let’s talk about how we’re going to save the Hudson Group for you.”
“Save it for you, you mean. Instead of planting articles and editorials for the KGB, I’ll be planting them for the CIA. It doesn’t matter if the strings go to Moscow or Washington, Mr. Trotter. I’m still a puppet.”
“No, I’ve got that one covered, too.”
“Oh,” she said. The sarcasm was fueled by exasperation. This young man had all the answers. “What are you going to do? Submit to brain surgery? All of you who know my secret, you’re going to have the cells that store the knowledge removed, how nice.”
“No surgery. And again, I’m not the one who’s going to do it. You are. You’re going to make it impossible for anyone, from any country, to blackmail you over this.”
“And save me from the Russians?”
“That’s right.”
“Very simply, I ask you, how?”
“It is simple. Two words.”
“Yes?”
“Go public.”
“Go what?”
“Public. Go public. You own a big whistle. Blow it.”
“On myself?”
“On the KGB slave masters who deceived you into coming to America as a spy and who would not let the past die.”
“And go to jail for the rest of my life.”
“Aside from coming into the United States under false pretenses, have you ever committed a felony?”
She knew why he asked. Part of the training for the Cronus Project had been in various ways to dispose of rivals, ranging from gossip to murder. Murder was recommended—that way the rival would have no chances to win the man back. “No,” she said. “Fortunately, James was a bachelor.”
“Okay. Did you in fact ever do any spying for Borzov? Or anybody?”
“No. They tried to keep contact with the Cronus operatives to a minimum. I never heard from them until—until all this started. Sometimes ...” She closed her eyes. “Sometimes I could forget all about it.”
“You committed no crimes; you did no spying. You are the mother of two American citizens. Your charity work is legendary. You’re a major employer. You have tried to put the past behind you, make it up to America for deceiving her that one time, so long ago, though you had no choice at the time but to do it or be killed.”
“You sound like a press release.”
“Just trying to channel your thinking in the right direction. You are a heroine. Lots of Americans work their way up from nothing—you worked your way up from minus one thousand. You built an important business and did great American things, all the while looking over your shoulder for the KGB.
“And something else, the most important thing from my point of view. You will tell them about the Cronus Project. I’ll back you up with all the documentation we’ve got.”
“How much have you got?” Impossible. It was ridiculously impossible. But there was something about this young man that made you forget you had already reached decisions other than the ones he wanted you to make.
“A decent amount. Enough to make somebody with an open mind think. Enough to make most of the op-ed regulars at certain non-Hudson Group newspapers purple in the face trying to deny it. You’ll hold press conferences. You’ll testify before Congress. You are a very persuasive woman, and it will only help that you’ll be telling the truth. The idea is to let people know, the way you know, what we’re up against. You’ll make them look bad.”
“And what about when someone asks me about letting innocent people die because I didn’t do anything about it? How will that make me look?”
Trotter raised his eyebrows. “Look, Mrs. Hudson, I know you’ve been through a lot here, but you don’t want to lose your journalistic instincts entirely. They won’t ask you.”
“They won’t? Why not?”
“Because Borzov has outsmarted himself, him and his ace assassin. All those deaths were accidents or suicides. All anybody has to do is check the police reports. Sadness over the deaths, and the realization that nobody’s children were safe, even without the KGB in the picture, has given you the courage to make your confession, but implications of anything else are cruel to all concerned.”
Petra Hudson was surprised to hear herself laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Trotter demanded.
“You said it would be easier because I would be telling the truth.”
“You’ll be telling the truth about everything important. The situation you were in, the fear for your children. You’ll be telling the truth about Cronus.”
“If I go along with this—”
“Go along with this? This is Christmas morning for you, Mrs. Hudson.”
“Perhaps I’m ungrateful. It is a better offer than I’ve had from Moscow, and I suspect I have as little choice in the matter. Very well, when I go along with this, of course I’ll tell the truth about Cronus. How I was mad to agree to it; how a man, or a woman without a child, can never know the sheer inhumanity of it. But with everything involved here, why is the exposure of Cronus in particular of so much importance to you?”
He showed her a twisted grin. “If I ever own a newspaper, maybe I’ll go public, too.”