CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

George Jakes wore a new tuxedo. He looked pretty good in it, he thought. At forty-two he no longer had the wrestler’s physique he had been so proud of in his youth, but he was still slim and straight, and the black-and-white wedding uniform flattered him.

He stood in Bethel Evangelical Church, which his mother had been attending for decades, in the Washington suburb he now represented as congressman. It was a low brick building, small and plain, and normally it was decorated only with a few framed quotations from the Bible: THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD and IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD. But today it was decked out for celebration, with streamers and ribbons and masses of white flowers. The choir was belting out “Soon Come” while George waited for his bride.

In the front row, his mother wore a new dark-blue suit and a matching pillbox hat with a little veil. “Well, I’m glad,” Jacky had said when George told her he was getting married. “I’m fifty-eight years old, and I’m sorry you waited so gosh-darn long, but I’m happy you got here in the end.” Her tongue was always sharp, but today she could not keep the proud smile from her face. Her son was getting married in her church, in front of all her friends and neighbors, and on top of that he was a congressman.

Next to her was George’s father, Senator Greg Peshkov. Somehow he was able to make even a tuxedo look like creased pajamas. He had forgotten to put cuff links in his shirt, and his bow tie looked like a dead moth. No one minded.

Also in the front row were George’s Russian grandparents, Lev and Marga, now in their eighties. Both looked frail, but they had flown from Buffalo for the wedding of their grandson.

By showing up at the wedding, and sitting in the front row, George’s white father and grandparents were admitting the truth to the world; but no one cared. This was 1978, and what had once been a secret disgrace now hardly mattered.

The choir began to sing “You Are So Beautiful” and everyone turned and looked back toward the church door.

Verena came in on the arm of her father, Percy Marquand. George gasped when he saw her, and so did several people in the congregation. She wore a daring off-the-shoulder white dress that was tight to midthigh, then flared to a train. The caramel skin of her bare shoulders was as soft and smooth as the satin of her dress. She looked so wonderful it hurt. George felt tears sting his eyes.

The service passed in a blur. George managed to make the right responses, but all he could think was that Verena was his, now, forever.

The ceremony was folksy, but there was nothing modest about the wedding breakfast thrown afterward by the bride’s father. Percy rented Pisces, a Georgetown nightclub that featured a twenty-foot waterfall at the entrance emptying into a giant goldfish pond on the floor below, and an aquarium in the middle of the dance floor.

George and Verena’s first dance was to the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.” George was not much of a dancer, but it hardly mattered: everyone was looking at Verena, holding up her train with one hand while disco-dancing. George was so happy he wanted to hug everyone.

The second person to dance with the bride was Ted Kennedy, who had come without his wife, Joan: there were rumors that they had split. Jacky grabbed the handsome Percy Marquand. Verena’s mother, Babe Lee, danced with Greg.

George’s cousin Dave Williams, the pop star, was there with his sexy wife, Beep, and their five-year-old son, John Lee, named after the blues singer John Lee Hooker. The boy danced with his mother, and strutted so expertly that he made everyone laugh: he must have seen Saturday Night Fever.

Elizabeth Taylor danced with her latest husband, the millionaire would-be senator John Warner. Liz was wearing the famous square-cut thirty-three-carat Krupp diamond on the ring finger of her right hand. Seeing all this through a mist of euphoria, George realized dazedly that his wedding had turned into one of the outstanding social events of the year.

George had invited Maria Summers, but she had declined. After their brief love affair had ended in a quarrel, they had not spoken for a year. George had been hurt and bewildered. He did not know how he was supposed to live his life: the rules had changed. He also felt resentful. Women wanted a new deal, and they expected him to know, without being told, what the deal was, and to agree to it without negotiation.

Then Verena had emerged from seven years of obscurity. She had started her own lobbying company in Washington, specializing in civil rights and other equality issues. Her initial clients were small pressure groups who could not afford to employ their own full-time lobbyist. The rumor that Verena had once been a Black Panther seemed only to give her greater credibility. Before long she and George were an item again.

Verena seemed to have changed. One evening she said: “Dramatic gestures have their place in politics, but in the end advances are made by patient legwork: drafting legislation and talking to the media and winning votes.” You’ve grown up, George thought, and he only just stopped himself from saying it.

The new Verena wanted marriage and children, and felt sure she could have both and a career too. Once burned, George did not again put his hand in the fire: if that was what she thought, it was not up to him to argue.

George had written a tactful letter to Maria, beginning: “I don’t want you to hear this from someone else.” He had told her that he and Verena were together again and talking about marriage. Maria had replied in tones of warm friendship, and their relationship had reverted to what it had been before Nixon resigned. But she remained single, and did not come to the wedding.

Taking a break from dancing, George sat down with his father and grandfather. Lev was downing champagne with relish and telling jokes. A Polish cardinal had been made Pope, and Lev had a fund of bad-taste Polish Pope jokes. “He did a miracle—made a blind man deaf!”

Greg said: “I think this is a highly aggressive political move by the Vatican.”

George was surprised by that, but Greg usually had grounds for what he said. “How so?” said George.

“Catholicism is more popular in Poland than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and the Communists aren’t strong enough to repress religion there as they have in all other countries. There’s a Polish religious press, a Catholic university, and various charities that get away with sheltering dissidents and noting human rights abuses.”

George said: “So what is the Vatican up to?”

“Mischief. I believe they see Poland as the Soviet Union’s weak spot. This Polish Pope will do more than wave at tourists from the balcony—you watch.”

George was about to ask what the Pope would do when the room went quiet and he realized that President Carter had arrived.

Everyone applauded, even the Republicans. The president kissed the bride, shook hands with George, and accepted a glass of pink champagne, although he took only one sip.

While Carter was talking to Percy and Babe, who were long-term Democratic fund-raisers, one of the president’s aides approached George. After a few pleasantries the man said: “Would you consider serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence?”

George was flattered. Congressional committees were important. A seat on a committee was a source of power. “I’ve been in Congress only two years,” he said.

The aide nodded. “The president is keen to advance black congressmen, and Tip O’Neill agrees.” Tip O’Neill was the House majority leader, who had the prerogative of granting committee seats.

George said: “I’ll be glad to serve the president any way I can—but intelligence?”

The CIA and other intelligence agencies reported to the president and the Pentagon, but they were authorized, funded, and in theory controlled by Congress. For security, control was delegated to two committees, one in the House and one in the Senate.

“I know what you’re thinking,” said the aide. “Intelligence committees are usually packed with conservative friends of the military. You’re a liberal who has criticized the Pentagon over Vietnam and the CIA over Watergate. But that’s why we want you. At present those committees don’t oversee, they just applaud. And intelligence agencies that think they can get away with murder will commit murder. So we need someone in there asking tough questions.”

“The intelligence community is going to be horrified.”

“Good,” said the aide. “After the way they behaved in the Nixon era, they need to be shaken up.” He glanced across the dance floor. Following his gaze, George saw that President Carter was leaving. “I have to go,” the aide said. “Do you want time to think?”

“Hell, no,” said George. “I’ll do it.”

•   •   •

“Godmother? Me?” said Maria Summers. “Are you serious?”

George Jakes smiled. “I know you’re not very religious. We’re not, either, not really. I go to church to please my mother. Verena has been once in the last ten years, and that was for our wedding. But we like the idea of godparents.”

They were having lunch in the Members’ Dining Room of the House of Representatives, on the ground floor of the Capitol building, sitting in front of the famous fresco Cornwallis Sues for Cessation of Hostilities. Maria was eating meat loaf; George had a salad.

Maria said: “When’s the baby due?”

“A month or so—early April.”

“How is Verena feeling?”

“Terrible. Lethargic and impatient at the same time. And tired, always tired.”

“It will soon be over.”

George brought her back to the question. “Will you be godmother?”

She evaded it again. “Why have you asked me?”

He thought for a moment. “Because I trust you, I guess. I probably trust you more than anyone outside my family. If Verena and I died in a plane crash, and our parents were too old or dead, I feel confident that you would make sure my children were cared for, somehow.”

Maria was evidently moved. “It’s kind of wonderful to be told that.”

George thought, but did not say, that it was now unlikely Maria would have children of her own—she would be forty-four this year, he calculated—and that meant she had a lot of spare maternal affection to give to the children of her friends.

She was already like family. His friendship with her had lasted almost twenty years. She still went to see Jacky several times a year. Greg liked Maria, too, as did Lev and Marga. It was hard not to like her.

George did not give voice to any of these considerations, but instead said: “It would mean a lot to Verena and me if you would do it.”

“Is it really what Verena wants?”

George smiled. “Yes. She knows that you and I had a relationship, but she’s not the jealous type. Matter of fact, she admires you for what you’ve achieved in your career.”

Maria looked at the men in the fresco, with their eighteenth-century coats and boots, and said: “Well, I guess I’ll be like General Cornwallis, and surrender.”

“Thank you!” said George. “I’m very happy. I’d order champagne, but I know you wouldn’t drink it in the middle of a working day.”

“Maybe when the baby is born.”

The waitress picked up their plates and they asked for coffee. “How are things in the State Department?” George asked. Maria was now a big shot there. Her title was deputy assistant secretary, a post more influential than it sounded.

“We’re trying to figure out what’s happening in Poland,” she said. “It’s not easy. We think there’s a lot of criticism of the government from inside the United Workers’ Party, which is the Communist Party. Workers are poor, the elite are too privileged, and the ‘propaganda of success’ just calls attention to the reality of failure. National income actually fell last year.”

“You know I’m on the House intelligence committee.”

“Of course.”

“Are you getting good information from the agencies?”

“It’s good, as far as we know, but there’s not enough of it.”

“Would you like me to ask about that in the committee?”

“Yes, please.”

“It may be that we need additional intelligence personnel in Warsaw.”

“I think we do. Poland could be important.”

George nodded. “That’s what Greg said when the Vatican elected a Polish Pope. And he’s usually right.”

•   •   •

At the age of forty, Tanya became dissatisfied with her life.

She asked herself what she wanted to do with her next forty years, and found that she did not want to spend them as an acolyte to Vasili Yenkov. She had risked her freedom to share his genius with the world, but that had done nothing for her. It was time she focused on her own needs, she decided. What that meant, she did not know.

Her discontent came to a head at a party to celebrate the award of the Lenin Prize in literature to Leonid Brezhnev’s memoirs. The award was risible: the three volumes of the Soviet leader’s autobiography were not well written, not true, and not even by Brezhnev, having been ghostwritten. But the writers’ union saw the prize as a useful pretext for a shindig.

Getting ready for the party, Tanya put her hair in a ponytail like Olivia Newton-John in the movie Grease, which she had seen on an illicit videotape. The new hairstyle did not cheer her up as much as she had hoped.

As she was leaving the building, she ran into her brother in the lobby, and told him where she was going. “I see that your protégé, Gorbachev, made a fulsome speech in praise of Comrade Brezhnev’s literary genius,” she said.

“Mikhail knows when to kiss ass,” Dimka said.

“You did well to get him onto the Central Committee.”

“He already had the support of Andropov, who likes him,” Dimka explained. “All I had to do was persuade Kosygin that Gorbachev is a genuine reformer.” Andropov, the KGB chief, was increasingly the leader of the conservative faction in the Kremlin; Kosygin the champion of the reformers.

Tanya said: “Gaining the approval of both sides is unusual.”

“He’s an unusual man. Enjoy your party.”

The do was held in the utilitarian offices of the writers’ union, but they had managed to get hold of several cases of Bagrationi, the Georgian champagne. Under its influence, Tanya got into an argument with Pyotr Opotkin, from TASS. No one liked Opotkin, who was not a journalist but a political supervisor, but he had to be invited to social events because he was too powerful to offend. He buttonholed Tanya and said accusingly: “The Pope’s visit to Warsaw is a catastrophe!”

Opotkin was right about that. No one had imagined how it would be. Pope John Paul II turned out to be a talented propagandist. When he got off the plane at Okecie military airport he fell to his knees and kissed the Polish ground. The picture was on the front pages of the Western press next morning, and Tanya knew—as the Pope must have known—that the image would find its way back into Poland by underground routes. Tanya secretly rejoiced.

Daniil, Tanya’s boss, was listening, and he interjected: “Driving into Warsaw in an open car, the Pope was cheered by two million people.”

Tanya said: “Two million?” She had not seen this statistic. “Is that possible? It must be something like five percent of the entire population—one in every twenty Poles!”

Opotkin said angrily: “What is the point of the party controlling television coverage when people can see the Pope for themselves?”

Control was everything for men such as Opotkin.

He was not done. “He celebrated mass in Victory Square in the presence of two hundred and fifty thousand people!”

Tanya knew that. It was a shocking figure, even to her, for it starkly revealed the extent to which Communism had failed to win the hearts of the Polish people. Thirty-five years of life under the Soviet system had converted nobody but the privileged elite. She made the point in appropriate Communist jargon. “The Polish working class reasserted their reactionary old loyalties at the first opportunity.”

Poking Tanya’s shoulder with an accusing forefinger, Opotkin said: “It was reformists like you who insisted on letting the Pope go there.”

“Rubbish,” said Tanya scornfully. Kremlin liberals such as Dimka had urged letting the Pope in, but they had lost the argument, and Moscow had told Warsaw to ban the Pope—but the Polish Communists had disobeyed orders. In a display of independence unusual for a Soviet satellite, the Polish leader Edward Gierek had defied Brezhnev. “It was the Polish leadership that made the decision,” Tanya said. “They feared there would be an uprising if they forbade the Pope’s visit.”

“We know how to deal with uprisings,” said Opotkin.

Tanya knew she was only damaging her career by contradicting Opotkin, but she was forty and sick of kowtowing to idiots. “Financial pressures made the Polish decision inevitable,” she said. “Poland gets huge subsidies from us, but it needs loans from the West as well. President Carter was very tough when he went to Warsaw. He made it clear that financial aid was linked to what they call human rights. If you want to blame someone for the Pope’s triumph, Jimmy Carter is the culprit.”

Opotkin must have known this was true, but he was not going to admit it. “I always said it was a mistake to let Communist countries borrow from Western banks.”

Tanya should have left it there, and allowed Opotkin to save face, but she could not restrain herself. “Then you face a dilemma, don’t you?” she said. “The alternative to Western finance is to liberalize Polish agriculture so that they can produce enough of their own food.”

“More reforms!” Opotkin said angrily. “That is always your solution!”

“The Polish people have always had cheap food: that’s what keeps them quiet. Whenever the government puts up prices, they riot.”

“We know how to deal with riots,” said Opotkin, and he walked away.

Daniil looked bemused. “Good for you,” he said to Tanya. “Though he may make you pay.”

Tanya said: “I want some more of that champagne.”

At the bar she ran into Vasili. He was alone. Tanya realized that lately he had been showing up to events like this without a floozie on his arm, and she wondered why. But she was focused on herself tonight. “I can’t do this much longer,” she said.

Vasili handed her a glass. “Do what?”

“You know.”

“I suppose I can guess.”

“I’m forty. I have to live my own life.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know, that’s the trouble.”

“I’m forty-eight,” he said. “And I feel something similar.”

“What?”

“I don’t chase girls anymore. Or women.”

She was in a cynical mood. “Don’t chase them—or just don’t catch them?”

“I detect a note of skepticism.”

“Perceptive of you.”

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve been thinking. I’m not sure we need to continue the pretense that we barely know one another.”

“What makes you say that?”

He leaned closer and lowered his voice, so that she had to strain to hear him over the noise of the party. “Everyone knows that Anna Murray is the publisher of Ivan Kuznetsov, yet no one has ever connected her to you.”

“That’s because we’re ultra-cautious. We never let anyone see us together.”

“That being the case, there’s no danger in people knowing that you and I are friends.”

She was not sure. “Maybe. So what?”

Vasili tried a roguish smile. “You once told me you’d go to bed with me if I would give up the rest of my harem.”

“I don’t believe I ever said that.”

“Perhaps you implied it.”

“And anyway, that must have been eighteen years ago.”

“Is it too late now to accept the offer?”

She stared at him, speechless.

He filled the silence. “You’re the only woman who ever really mattered to me. Everyone else was just a conquest. Some I didn’t even like. If I had never slept with her before, that was enough reason for me to seduce her.”

“Is this supposed to make you more attractive to me?”

“When I got out of Siberia I tried to resume that life. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve realized the truth at last: it doesn’t make me happy.”

“Is that so?” Tanya was getting angrier.

Vasili did not notice. “You and I have been friends for a long time. We’re soul mates. We belong together. When we sleep together, it will just be a natural progression.”

“Oh, I see.”

He was oblivious to her sarcasm. “You’re single, I’m single. Why are we single? We should be together. We should be married.”

“So, to sum up,” Tanya said, “you’ve spent your life seducing women you never really cared for. Now you’re pushing fifty and they don’t really attract you—or perhaps you no longer attract them—so, at this point, you’re condescending to offer me marriage.”

“I may not have put this very well. I’m better at writing things down.”

“You bet you haven’t put it well. I’m the last resort of a fading Casanova!”

“Oh, hell, you’re upset with me, aren’t you?”

Upset comes nowhere near it.”

“This is the opposite of what I intended.”

Over his shoulder, she caught the eye of Daniil. On impulse she left Vasili and crossed the room. “Daniil,” she said. “I’d like to go abroad again. Is there any chance I could get a foreign posting?”

“Of course,” he said. “You’re my best writer. I’ll do anything I can, within reason, to keep you happy.”

“Thank you.”

“And, coincidentally, I’ve been thinking that we need to strengthen our bureau in one particular foreign country.”

“Which one?”

“Poland.”

“You’d send me to Warsaw?”

“That’s where it’s all happening.”

“All right,” she said. “Poland it is.”

•   •   •

Cam Dewar was fed up with Jimmy Carter. He thought the Carter administration was timid, especially in its dealings with the USSR. Cam worked on the Moscow desk at CIA headquarters in Langley, nine miles from the White House. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was a tough anti-Communist, but Carter was cautious.

However, it was election year, and Cam hoped Ronald Reagan would get in. Reagan was aggressive on foreign policy, and promised to liberate intelligence agencies from Carter’s milk-and-water ethical constraints. He would be more like Nixon, Cam hoped.

Early in 1980 Cam was surprised to be summoned by the deputy head of the Soviet bloc section, Florence Geary. She was an attractive woman a few years older than Cam: he was thirty-three, she was probably about thirty-eight. He knew her story. She had been hired as a trainee, used as a secretary for years, and given training only when she kicked up a stink. Now she was a highly competent intelligence officer, but she was still disliked by many of the men because of the trouble she had caused.

Today she was wearing a plaid skirt and a green sweater. She looked like a schoolteacher, Cam thought; a sexy schoolteacher, with good breasts.

“Sit down,” she said. “The House intelligence committee thinks our information out of Poland is poor.”

Cameron took a seat. He looked out of the window to avoid staring at her chest. “Then they know who to blame,” he said.

“Who?”

“The director of the CIA, Admiral Turner, and the man who appointed him, President Carter.”

“Why, exactly?”

“Because Turner doesn’t believe in HUMINT.” Human intelligence, or HUMINT, was what you got from spies. Turner preferred SIGINT, signals intelligence, obtained by monitoring communications.

“Do you believe in HUMINT?”

She had a nice mouth, he realized; pink lips, even teeth. He forced himself to concentrate on answering the question. “It’s inherently unreliable, because all traitors are liars, by definition. If they’re telling us the truth they must be lying to their own side. But that doesn’t make HUMINT worthless, especially if it’s assessed against data from other sources.”

“I’m glad you think so. We need to beef up our HUMINT. How do you feel about working overseas?”

Cameron’s hopes leaped. “Ever since I joined the Agency, six years ago, I’ve been asking for a foreign posting.”

“Good.”

“I speak Russian fluently. I’d love to go to Moscow.”

“Well, life’s a funny thing. You’re going to Warsaw.”

“No kidding.”

“I don’t kid.”

“I don’t speak Polish.”

“You’ll find your Russian useful. Polish schoolchildren have been learning Russian for thirty-five years. But you should learn some Polish too.”

“Okay.”

“That’s all.”

Cameron stood up. “Thanks.” He went to the door. “Could we discuss this some more, Florence?” he said. “Maybe over dinner?”

“No,” she said firmly. Then, just in case he had not got the message, she added: “Definitely not.”

He went out and closed the door. Warsaw! On balance, he was pleased. It was a foreign posting. He felt optimistic. He was disappointed she had turned down his invitation to dinner, but he knew what to do about that.

He picked up his coat and went outside to his car, a silver Mercury Capri. He drove into Washington and threaded through the traffic to the Adams Morgan district. There he parked a block away from a storefront massage parlor called Silken Hands.

The woman at the reception desk said: “Hi, Christopher, how are you today?”

“Fine, thanks. Is Suzy free?”

“You’re in luck, she is. Room Three.”

“Great.” Cam handed over a bill and went farther inside.

He pushed aside a curtain and entered a booth containing a narrow bed. Beside the bed, sitting on a plastic chair, was a heavyset woman in her twenties reading a magazine. She wore a bikini. “Hello, Chris,” she said, putting down the magazine and standing up. “Would you like a hand job, as usual?”

Cam never had full intercourse with prostitutes. “Yes, please, Suzy.” He gave her a bill and started taking off his clothes.

“It’ll be my pleasure,” she said, tucking the money away. She helped him undress, then said: “You just lie down and relax, baby.”

Cam lay on the bed and closed his eyes while Suzy went to work. He pictured Florence Geary in her office. In his mind, she pulled the green sweater over her head and unzipped her plaid skirt. “Oh, Cam, I just can’t resist you,” she said in Cam’s imagination. Wearing only her underwear, she came around her desk and embraced him. “Do anything you like to me, Cam,” she said. “But please, do it hard.”

In the massage parlor booth, Cam said aloud: “Yeah, baby.”

•   •   •

Tanya looked in the mirror. She was holding a small container of blue eye shadow and a brush. Makeup was more easily available in Warsaw than in Moscow. Tanya did not have much experience with eye shadow, and she had noticed that some women applied it badly. On her dressing table was a magazine open at a photograph of Bianca Jagger. Glancing frequently at the picture, Tanya began to color her eyelids.

The effect was pretty good, she thought.

Stanislaw Pawlak sat on her bed in his uniform, with his boots on a newspaper to keep the covers clean, smoking and watching her. He was tall and handsome and intelligent, and she was crazy about him.

She had met him soon after arriving in Poland, on a tour of army headquarters. He was part of a group called the Gold Fund, able young officers selected by the defense minister, General Jaruzelski, for rapid advancement. They were frequently rotated to new assignments, to give them the breadth of experience necessary for the high command to which they were destined.

She had noticed Staz, as he was called, partly because he was so good-looking, and partly because he was obviously taken with her. He spoke Russian fluently. Having talked to her about his own unit, which handled liaison with the Red Army, he had then accompanied her on the rest of the tour, which was otherwise dull.

Next day he had turned up on her doorstep at six in the evening, having got her address from the SB, the Polish secret police. He had taken her to dinner at a hot new restaurant called the Duck. She quickly realized that he was as skeptical about Communism as she was. A week later she slept with him.

She still thought about Vasili, wondering how his writing was going, and whether he missed their monthly meetings. She was viscerally angry with him, though she was not sure why. He had been crass, but men were crass, especially the handsome ones. What she was really seething about was the years before his proposal. Somehow she felt that what she had done for him during that long time had been dishonored. Did he believe she had just been waiting, year after year, until he was ready to be her husband? That thought still infuriated her.

Staz was now spending two or three nights a week at her apartment. They never went to his place: he said it was little better than a barracks. But they were having a great time. And all along, in the back of her mind, she had been wondering if his anti-Communism might one day lead to action.

She turned to face him. “How do you like my eyes?”

“I adore them,” he said. “They have enslaved me. Your eyes are like—”

“I mean my makeup, idiot.”

“Are you wearing makeup?”

“Men are blind. How are you going to defend your country with such poor powers of observation?”

His mood became dark again. “We make no provision for defending our own country,” he said. “The Polish army is totally subservient to the USSR. All our planning is about supporting the Red Army in an invasion of Western Europe.”

Staz often talked like this, complaining about Soviet domination of the Polish military. It was a sign of how much he trusted her. In addition, Tanya had found that Poles spoke boldly about the failings of Communist governments. They felt entitled to complain in a way that other Soviet subjects did not. Most people in the Soviet bloc treated Communism as a religion that was a sin to question. The Poles tolerated Communism as long as it served them, and protested as soon as it fell short of their expectations.

All the same, Tanya now switched on her bedside radio. She did not think her apartment was bugged—the SB had their hands full spying on Western journalists, and probably left Soviet ones alone—but caution was an ingrained habit.

“We are all traitors,” Staz finished.

Tanya frowned. He had never before called himself a traitor. This was serious. She said: “What on earth do you mean?”

“The Soviet Union has a contingency plan to invade Western Europe with a force called the Second Strategic Echelon. Most of the Red Army tanks and personnel carriers headed for West Germany, France, Holland, and Belgium will pass through Poland on their way. The United States will use nuclear bombs to try to destroy those forces before they reach the West—that is, while they are still crossing Poland. We estimate that four hundred to six hundred nuclear weapons will be exploded in our country. There will be nothing left but a nuclear wasteland. Poland will have disappeared. If we cooperate in the planning of this event, how can we not be traitors?”

Tanya shuddered. It was a nightmare scenario—but terrifyingly logical.

“America is not the enemy of the Polish people,” said Staz. “If the USSR and the USA go to war in Europe, we should side with the Americans, and liberate ourselves from the tyranny of Moscow.”

Was he just blowing off steam, or something more? Tanya said carefully: “Is it just you who thinks like this, Staz?”

“Certainly not. Most officers my age feel the same. They pay lip service to Communism, but if you talk to them when they’re drunk you’ll hear another story.”

“In that case, you have a problem,” she said. “By the time the war begins, it will be too late for you to win the trust of the Americans.”

“This is our dilemma.”

“The solution is obvious. You have to open a channel of communication now.”

He gave her a cool look. The thought crossed her mind that he might be an agent provocateur, assigned to provoke her into subversive remarks so that she could be arrested. But she could not imagine that a faker would be such a good lover.

Staz said: “Are we just talking, now, or are we having a serious discussion?”

Tanya took a breath. “I’m as serious as life and death,” she said.

“Do you really think it could be done?”

“I know it,” she said emphatically. She had been engaging in clandestine subversion for two decades. “It’s the easiest thing in the world—but keeping it secret, and getting away with it, is more difficult. You would have to exercise the most extreme caution.”

“Do you think I should do it?”

“Yes!” she said passionately. “I don’t want another generation of Soviet children—or Polish children—to grow up under this stifling tyranny.”

He nodded. “I can tell that you really mean it.”

“I do.”

“Will you help me?”

“Of course I will.”

•   •   •

Cameron Dewar was not sure he would make a good spy. The undercover stuff he had done for President Nixon had been amateurish, and he was lucky not to have gone to jail with his boss, John Ehrlichman. When he joined the CIA he had been trained in the tradecraft of dead drops and brush passes, but he had never actually used such tricks. After six years at CIA headquarters in Langley he had at last been posted to a foreign capital, but he still had not done clandestine work.

The U.S. embassy in Warsaw was a proud white marble building on a street called Aleje Ujazdowskie. The CIA occupied a single office near the ambassador’s suite of rooms. Off the office was a windowless storeroom that was used for developing photographic film. The staff was four spies and a secretary. It was a small operation because they had few informants.

Cam did not have much to do. He read the Warsaw newspapers, with the aid of a dictionary. He reported the graffiti he saw: LONG LIVE THE POPE and WE WANT GOD. He talked to men like himself who worked for the intelligence services of other countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, especially those of West Germany, France, and Britain. He drove a used lime-green Polski Fiat whose battery was so undersize that it had to be recharged every night or the car would not start in the morning. He tried to find a girlfriend among the embassy secretaries, and failed.

He felt a loser. His life had once seemed full of promise. He had been a star student at school and university, and his first job had been in the White House. Then it had all gone wrong. He was determined not to let his life be blighted by Nixon. But he needed a success. He wanted to be top of the class again.

Instead he went to parties.

Embassy staff who had wives and children were happy to go home in the evenings and watch American movies on videotape, so the single men got to go to all the less important receptions. Tonight Cam was heading to the Egyptian embassy for a gathering to welcome a new deputy ambassador.

When he started the Polski, the radio came on. He kept it tuned to the SB wavelength. Reception was often weak, but sometimes he could hear the secret police talking as they tailed people around the city.

Sometimes they were tailing him. The cars changed but it was usually the same two men, a swarthy one he called Mario and a fat guy he thought of as Ollie. There seemed to be no pattern to the surveillance, so he just assumed he was more or less always being watched. That was probably what they wanted. Maybe they deliberately randomized their surveillance precisely in order to keep him permanently on edge.

But he, too, had been trained. Surveillance should never be avoided in an obvious way, he had learned, for that is a signal, to the other side, that you are up to something. Form regular habits, he had been told: go to Restaurant A every Monday, Bar B every Tuesday. Lull them into a false sense of security. But look for gaps in their watchfulness, times when their attention lapses. That will be when you can do something unobserved.

As he drove away from the U.S. embassy he saw a blue Skoda 105 tuck into the traffic two cars behind him.

The Skoda trailed him across the city. He saw Mario at the wheel and Ollie in the front passenger seat.

Cam parked in Alzacka Street and saw the blue Skoda pull up a hundred yards past him.

He was sometimes tempted to talk to Mario and Ollie, as they were so much part of his life, but he had been warned never to do that, for then the SB would switch personnel and it would take him time to recognize the new people.

He entered the Egyptian embassy and took a cocktail from a tray. It was so dilute he could hardly taste the gin. He talked to an Austrian diplomat about the difficulty of buying comfortable men’s underwear in Warsaw. When the Austrian drifted away, Cam looked around and saw a blond woman in her twenties standing alone. She caught his eye and smiled, so he went to speak to her.

He swiftly found out that she was Polish, her name was Lidka, and she worked as a secretary in the Canadian embassy. She was wearing a tight pink sweater and a short black skirt that showed off her long legs. She spoke good English, and listened to Cam with an intensity of concentration that he found flattering.

Then a man in a pin-striped suit summoned her peremptorily, making Cam think he must be her boss, and the conversation broke up. Almost immediately Cam was approached by another attractive woman, and he began to think it was his lucky day. This one was older, about forty, but prettier, with short pale-blond hair and bright blue eyes enhanced by blue eye shadow. She spoke to him in Russian. “I’ve met you before,” she said. “Your name is Cameron Dewar. I’m Tanya Dvorkin.”

“I remember,” he said, glad of the chance to show off his fluency in Russian. “You’re a reporter for TASS.”

“And you’re a CIA agent.”

He certainly would not have told her that, so she must have guessed. Routinely, he denied it. “Nothing so glamorous,” he said. “Just a humble cultural attaché.”

“Cultural?” she said. “Then you can help me. What kind of painter is Jan Matejko?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Impressionist, I think. Why?”

“Art really not your thing?”

“I’m more a music person,” he said, feeling cornered.

“You probably love Szpilman, the Polish violinist.”

“Absolutely. Such technique with the bow!”

“What do you think of the poet Wislawa Szymborska?”

“I haven’t read much of his work, sadly. Is this a test?”

“Yes, and you failed. Szymborska is a woman. Szpilman is a pianist, not a violinist. Matejko was a conventional painter of court scenes and battles, not an impressionist. And you’re no cultural attaché.”

Cam was mortified to have been found out so easily. What a hopeless undercover agent he was! He tried to brush it off with humor. “I might just be a very bad cultural attaché.”

She lowered her voice. “If a Polish army officer wanted to talk to a representative of the USA, you could arrange it, I guess.”

Suddenly the conversation had taken a serious turn. Cam felt nervous. This could be some kind of trap.

Or it could be a genuine approach—in which case, it might represent a great opportunity for him.

He answered cautiously. “I can arrange for anyone to talk to the American government, naturally.”

“In secret?”

What the hell was this? “Yes.”

“Good,” she said, and walked away.

Cam got another drink. What had that been about? Was it real, or had she been mocking him?

The party was coming to an end. He wondered what to do with the rest of the evening. He thought of going to the bar in the Australian embassy, where he sometimes played darts with amiable spooks from Oz. Then he saw Lidka standing nearby, again on her own. She really was very sexy. He said to her: “Do you have plans for dinner?”

She looked puzzled. “You mean recipes?”

He smiled. She had not come across the phrase plans for dinner. He said: “I meant, would you like to have dinner with me?”

“Oh, yes,” she said immediately. “Could we go to the Duck?”

“Of course.” It was an expensive restaurant, though not if you were paying in American dollars. He looked at his watch. “Shall we leave now?”

Lidka surveyed the room. There was no sign of the man in the pin-striped suit. “I’m free,” she said.

They headed for the exit. As they were passing through the door the Soviet journalist, Tanya, reappeared and spoke to Lidka in bad Polish. “You dropped this,” she said, holding out a red scarf.

“It’s not mine,” said Lidka.

“I saw it fall from your hand.”

Someone touched Cam’s elbow. He turned away from the confused conversation and saw a tall, good-looking man of about forty dressed in the uniform of a colonel in the People’s Army of Poland. In fluent Russian the man said: “I want to talk to you.”

Cam replied in the same language. “All right.”

“I will find a safe place.”

Cam could do nothing but say: “Okay.”

“Tanya will tell you where and when.”

“Fine.”

The man turned away.

Cameron turned his attention back to Lidka. Tanya was saying: “My mistake, how silly.” She walked quickly away. Clearly she had wanted to distract Lidka for the few moments the soldier was talking to Cam.

Lidka was puzzled. “That was a bit strange,” she said as they left the building.

Cam was excited, but he pretended to be equally mystified. “Peculiar,” he said.

Lidka persisted. “Who was that Polish officer who spoke to you?”

“No idea,” Cam said. “My car’s this way.”

“Oh!” she said. “You have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Nice,” said Lidka, looking pleased.

•   •   •

A week later, Cam woke up in bed in Lidka’s apartment.

It was more of a studio: one room with a bed, a TV, and a kitchen sink. She shared the shower and toilet down the hall with three other people.

For Cam, it was paradise.

He sat upright. She was standing at the counter making coffee—with his beans: she could not afford real coffee. She was naked. She turned and walked to the bed carrying a cup. She had wiry brown pubic hair and small pointed breasts with mulberry-dark nipples.

At first he had been embarrassed about her walking around naked, because it made him want to stare, which was rude. When he confessed this she had said: “Look all you want, I like it.” He still felt bashful, but not as much as before.

He had seen Lidka every night for a week.

He had had sex with her seven times, which was more than in his entire life up to that point, not counting hand jobs in massage parlors.

One day she had asked if he wanted to do it again in the morning.

He had said: “What are you, a sex maniac?”

She had been offended, but they had made it up.

While she brushed her hair, he sipped his coffee and thought about the day ahead. He had not yet heard from Tanya Dvorkin. He had reported the exchanges at the Egyptian embassy to his boss, Keith Dorset, and they had agreed there was nothing to do but wait and see.

He had a bigger issue on his mind. He knew the expression honey trap. Only a fool would fail to wonder whether Lidka had an ulterior motive in going to bed with him. He had to consider the possibility that she was working under orders from the SB. He sighed and said: “I have to tell my boss about you.”

“Do you?” She did not seem alarmed. “Why?”

“American diplomats are supposed to date only nationals of NATO countries. We call it the ‘fuck NATO rule.’ They don’t want us falling in love with Communists.” He had not told her that he was a spy rather than a diplomat.

She sat on the bed beside him with a sad face. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“No, no!” The idea almost panicked him. “But I have to tell them, and they will check you out.”

Now she looked worried. “What does that mean?”

“They’ll investigate whether you could be an agent of the Polish secret police, or something.”

She shrugged. “Oh, well, that’s all right. They’ll soon find out I’m nothing of the kind.”

She seemed relaxed about it. “I’m sorry, but it has to be done,” Cam said. “One-night stands don’t matter, but we’re obliged to report if it gets to be more than that, you know, a real loving relationship.”

“Okay.”

“We do have that, don’t we?” Cam said nervously. “A real loving relationship?”

Lidka smiled. “Oh, yes,” she said. “We do.”