Tool of the Trade Read online

  Computers are a boon to this business. More lists.

  Foley was waiting for me at the diner, finishing what appeared to be a Bloody Mary. I was perversely certain there was no alcohol in it; at any rate, I’m not a good quarry for that particular trap. One drink and I’m halfway to dreamland. I sat down and signaled for coffee.

  We exchanged greetings. “You’ve decided?” I asked.

  “Yes, pretty much.” He also righted his cup, and neither of us said anything while the waitress served us coffee and thimbles of ersatz milk and the phrase “witcha ’n minnit.”

  “My wife and I discussed the alternatives. We decided the best thing would be to wave a magic wand and make you disappear.”

  That gave me a premonitory shiver. “Meaning?”

  “We’ve decided not to decide, not yet. We both need more time to weigh it.”

  This had not been on the tape. “How long?”

  “Nine days.” He blew on his coffee and stared at me over the top, through the steam.

  “That’s too long… why so specific?”

  “Business trip. To Paris.”

  “Out of the question.” He checked his watch, an odd gesture. “You have to decide sooner—and no matter what your decision, we can’t let you out of the country.”

  “Why not? If I turn out to be a bad guy, you’ll be deporting me anyhow.” That did make a certain amount of sense. “Why not just send somebody along to keep an eye on me? Why not come yourself?”

  “I’d enjoy that,” I said. “I haven’t been to France in years.”

  “Would the Agency pay for it?”

  “I can put in a request, but I doubt they’ll honor it.”

  He nodded. “Well, you could come on your own. Make a holiday of it.” The waitress came then and took our orders. Then, I swear, we started chatting about various places we’d been in Paris, what it would be like this time of year, what his linguistics conference would be like, and what his paper was going to be about—with neither he nor I questioning that we were both going there next week.

  After listening to the conversation several times (I had a small tape recorder in my pocket) I’m forced to admit that he did somehow hypnotize me—or in some mild way bring me under his control. He’s a persuasive man, and earnest and friendly, but certainly not what you would call charismatic. It wasn’t the strength of his personality that kept me from bringing up the unpleasant business of what-we-can-do-to-you-if-you-don’t-cooperate. He did something. Next time I’ll be on the lookout, catch him at it. Probably some sort of parlor-trick thing; I’ll have to read up on hypnosis.

  There were still a few spaces left on the cheap open-seating flight to Paris that Foley will be taking. I bought a ticket just in case. Maybe I just wanted to see Paris one more time before I die.

  CHAPTER SIX: NICK

  That was a risky session with Jacob. I had to be circumspect, assuming that we were being recorded, and not give him any direct, unambiguous orders. But I think it worked. At least several days have gone by and I haven’t yet been arrested, Uzi’d, or pushed beneath a subway train.

  I got a memo through interoffice mail, presumably from the KGB, arranging for a rendezvous on Saturday with “Lynn.” He or she was to meet me at two in the afternoon outside the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge. That would be difficult, since I’d be in Paris. Of course there’s no way I could get in touch with them—other than going down to the Soviet embassy in Washington, which I have always assumed was against the rules. I put a prominent note on my office door saying I would be out of town from the ninth through the thirteenth and hoped the news would get to them.

  I shouldn’t have worried. The day before the trip I was hunched over my bicycle, fighting the Kryptonite lock, when a familiar voice behind me said, “So you’re going to Paris, Nikola?”

  I hadn’t seen Lubinov in almost two years, and I greeted him with honest warmth. We walked and traded politenesses for a minute while my brain ground through the various possibilities, and finally I decided there was only one safe course.

  “Vladimir, there’s a real problem. I may…no longer be useful.” He just looked at me, expressionless. “I’ve been approached by the CIA. They know I have KGB contacts and want me to be a double agent. They’ve threatened me with deportation.”

  He squeezed my shoulder and actually smiled. “I’m glad you told me this. Cooperate with them, at least for the time being. Try to gain their confidence.”

  “You knew?”

  He shrugged. “Let me not say. What hotel are you occupying in Paris?” I told him. “Good. We may have people there who want to be, would want, will want to talk to you. My English,” he said, smiling.

  “Much improved,” I said. Actually, it seemed about the same as ever, which was odd. He’d been in the country longer than I.

  “Yes, of course. And your French? If our representatives must use it?”

  “My French is good. I could probably struggle along in Russian if I had to.”

  “I should not think,” he said, and stopped. “Well. I will see you next time.” We said good-bye, and he walked briskly down Main Street.

  I crossed over to Legal Seafood and sat in the noisy bar nursing an expensive beer, trying to reason things out Did the KGB have a contact in Jacob’s group? I would have to act as if it were so. Should I take the playing-both-ends-against-the-middle game one step further and tell Jacob? No. Not yet—

  And whose side am I on? Besides my own, and Valerie’s?

  Could Jacob himself be the double agent? The note on my door didn’t say Paris, but Vladimir knew. Because Jacob knew?

  Too paranoiac. Vladimir could have called MIT; the departmental secretary knows where I’m going and would have no reason not to tell anybody who asked.

  Still, “tightrope” is more than a metaphor for this situation. I must proceed with extreme care.

  I turned on the watch as we approached the security stop on the way to our flight. I took the lead-lined bag out of my carry-on luggage and handed it to the attendant. “Just a camera and film,” I said.

  She looked in the bag at the camera and film and nine-millimeter automatic. She nodded and handed it back. I kept the watch generator running as we walked to the International Departures Waiting Lounge. Hot and stuffy; smell of European cigarettes.

  We found two isolated seats together. Ninety minutes, plenty of time. When Jacob sat down, I handed him a notebook. “Read this,” I said.

  On the first page of the notebook I’d printed:

  1. SAY, “THIS IS INTERESTING.”

  2. WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING THE CIA KNOWS OR SUSPECTS ABOUT ME.

  3. WHEN YOU ARE DONE WRITING, HAND ME THE NOTEBOOK AND FORGET EVERYTHING ABOUT IT. YOU WILL REMEMBER HAVING NAPPED FOR THE PAST HOUR.

  “This is interesting,” he said. Then he turned the page and started writing. I had to hope we weren’t being watched, a reasonable risk for the return. I did assume that the conversation was going on tape, but hoped that silence wouldn’t be too suspicious. While he was writing, I started the horror novel that Valerie said would keep my mind off the flight. It was so absorbing that I jumped when, an hour later, Jacob touched me with the edge of the notebook.

  I took it, and he rubbed his eyes. “Must have dropped off.”

  “It’s awfully warm. Up late last night?”

  “Oh yeah. Last-minute details.”

  I turned on the watch again. “You’ll want to sleep on the plane, then.” He nodded. We talked amiably until our flight was called, then we filed into the 747, and in the process of buckling up he began to snore.

  He had written four fascinating pages. Not surprisingly, in some matters the CIA knew more about my life than I did myself—for instance, the actual name of my KGB primary contact is Vladimir Borachev; he’s a market analyst for the Soviet trade mission in New York City. My wife’s dossier from the sixties includes suspicion of complicity in burning down an ROTC building; she didn’t go to trial, but that may have been
because she was sleeping with the FBI informer.

  Of my own amorous excesses he only notes the ones that Valerie is aware of, so they’re probably the result of our apartment being bugged (she does occasionally refer aloud to my checkered past). There is no suspicion of my Social-Darwinism-with-a-gun hobby, or infirmity.

  They are on the track of my device, though, at least to the extent of making a connection with hypnotism. A woman who interviewed my test subjects noted that two of them remembered my asking them to do ridiculous things, and they both were dropped from the study soon afterward. She correctly interpreted this as a test of hypnotic technique. Jacob has added his own suspicions.

  I read the four pages over again, with mounting despair. There was no going back; no matter what happened, our comfortable life in Cambridge was over. We were going to be compelled either to move to the Soviet Union or to drop out of sight in the “Free” World, eventually to emerge with new identities.

  Of course I had given this some thought before. With new identities in the West, neither of us could practice our true professions, and we would go through life perpetually looking over our shoulders, being suspicious of everyone—which would also be true in the Soviet Union, to some extent. But at least in the USSR we wouldn’t have to pretend to be something we weren’t. And I could probably continue my researches, even if Valerie was not allowed to. Abnormal psychology is rather a different line of work in the Soviet Union.

  I spent much of the flight thinking about the options within those two limited options. On the Soviet side, Valerie could possibly wind up with an interesting job in intelligence—nothing requiring high security clearance, of course, but something that would take advantage of her being a natural-born American. I remembered my teachers at Rivertown and wondered how many of them were recycled spies or relatives of spies. She might perversely enjoy the work. Or she might have a belated attack of patriotism.

  Of course we weren’t limited to the United States if we decided not to go to the Soviet Union. We could obtain citizenship papers wherever we wished to go; my watch is better than any passport. Valerie can get along in French and Spanish, and with our savings we could live fairly well in Spain or Mexico or on some Caribbean island. I entertained that fantasy for a few minutes before realizing that wherever we wound up, we couldn’t afford to be conspicuous. Not with both the KGB and the CIA after us. So we probably had best not stray from the States or Canada.

  North America’s a big place, though. By the time the plane landed, I’d made my decision. Unless Valerie was dead set against it, we’d just pull up stakes and start over in the United States. Screw the CIA, the KGB, the FBI, the American Association of Psychologists. We’d find something.

  Having slept all the way, Jacob was ready to kick up his heels. He’d been to Paris only once for a few days as a student, and working for the CIA (popular conceptions to the contrary) restricted rather than expanded his opportunities for foreign travel. But I was exhausted; once we’d cleared Customs and found the hotel, and all I wanted was sleep. This presented an obvious dilemma, since he was not supposed to let me out of his sight. I turned on my watch and told him it was all right: I’d stay put; he could go out and enjoy himself. I hoped for his own sake his enthusiasm wasn’t being recorded.

  (I suppose I should know more about these things. Could he be wired up with a recorder and yet not trigger the airport search alarm? Maybe it was in his briefcase, disguised as a tuna fish sandwich. Maybe it was implanted in his skull.)

  So I put up my feet and went over the paper I was going to deliver, hoping that its familiarity would put me to sleep. Perversely, it stimulated me into wakefulness. I wandered out to a magasin store and chose some good bread, cheese, and wine to keep in the room. My French did not meet with the merchant’s approval, but he did manage to find all the proper items.

  I tried to summon up enthusiasm for being in Paris again, but it was rush hour; murderous traffic and poisonous air; so after walking around the block deciding not to do this and not to do that, I just picked up a newspaper and retreated to the room, and found it had been searched by an amateur.

  Well, perhaps only by someone who didn’t care whether the search was discovered—or wanted me or Jacob to discover it, as a warning. I had aligned the typed page I was reading exactly along the first line of the page beneath it, an elementary precaution. The person who went through the pages had simply stacked them afterward and had not even put them back in quite the same position, squared with the corner of the table’s blotter. I wondered whether he’d found what he was after; he couldn’t have had more than ten or twelve minutes, even with a lookout posted downstairs to say, “Go.”

  The lead bag with the gun was where I had hidden it, out of sight on top of the old-fashioned toilet tank. From now on I would take it with me when I left the room.

  American, Russian, or French? Checking up on me, or Jacob? It could have been Jacob himself, actually, waiting for me to leave and then doubling back. But in that case I should think he’d be more likely to follow me. Rather than read through a speech he could see for the asking. I decided not to waste time worrying about it Opened the box of dime-store Burgundy and drank off a fast, sour tumbler of it They hadn’t had wine in boxes the last time I was in France, and with luck they won’t have them the next time. Then I stretched out in the semidarkness and told my toes to relax, then ankles, shins, and so forth; old autohypnosis routine for falling asleep. Just as I reached the chin, which normally does it, a key rattled in the door, and it creaked open. “Jacob?”

  “Nyet.” I looked up, and there were two men in honest-to-God trench coats standing in the doorway. “Please, light?”

  “Sure.” I switched on the light by the bed. “—Would you have wine?” I said in Russian, sitting up. “—It’s nothing extraordinary…”

  “—Thank you, no. Come with us.” It took me a moment to place his accent: Bulgarian. That was a bad sign. You don’t have to know much about the trade to know who does wet work for the KGB in Europe.

  I started to get my jacket. “—Not necessary. We’re not going outside.” They were a real Mutt-and-Jeff team. The one who was doing all the talking was a tall, blond, handsome fellow with a fixed, intense expression. Like the TV Russian spy who gave me so much secret amusement on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in my youth. His partner, from another division of Central Casting, was short and swarthy, with organ-grinder mustaches, carrying a large, shabby briefcase. He seemed to be concentrating on something else.

  I turned on the watch and tried to think of some test that would be innocuous, in case we were being monitored. “—Do have a glass of wine while I use the bathroom.” This time they both nodded, and I poured two tumblers. Fairly strong evidence, if not really conclusive. I’d tested the machine on foreign students and American students speaking second languages, but never on a Bulgarian who was speaking Russian.

  In the bathroom I considered the pistol. It would look pretty obvious stuck under my shirt; I decided to do without. I replaced it over the tank and waited for a biologically reasonable length of time, then flushed the toilet.

  They looked odd, standing there in trench coats with their water glasses of wine, their serious expressions. “—Did you search my room earlier?” I asked.

  Jeff, the tall one, shook his head slowly. “—Search room?”

  “—Guess I was mistaken.” I turned off the watch. “—Shall we go?”

  The room they’d rented was obviously the cheapest available, a one-bed closet with bathroom down the hall. They evidently hadn’t seen it before; Mutt grumbled something in Bulgarian about the expense for how small it was. We had to do a kind of dance while they took off their trench coats.

  “—Please sit.” There was only the bed and a hard chair. Jeff sat in the chair, after reversing it so he could prop his forearms on the back. The bed made a rusty squeak when I eased myself onto it. Mutt leaned against the door, looking lethal with an obvious shoulder-holster bulge. They both h
ad an almost neutral, vaguely hostile stare. Probably part of the Bulgarian KGB uniform. Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

  “—Who are you?” I said as a sort of icebreaker.

  “—That is none of your concern.” He waited a long time, stroking his chin in a stylized gesture of thinking, then almost shouted. “—You are here with an agent of the American CIA.”

  “—Yes, of course. This has been reported to my KGB section chief in America.”

  Mutt addressed me for the first time. “—We know nothing of this.”

  “—Is that true?” Jeff didn’t answer. He just stared. He was starting to annoy me. “—Then I suggest we go no further until you have had a chance to confer with your superiors.” I started to get up.

  “—Sit!” they both said. “—We have no superiors here,” Jeff said. “—Does this CIA man know of your connection with the KGB?”

  “—He does. He’s trying to recruit me as a double agent. I’m supposed to go along with it, to a point.”

  “—So he takes you to Paris with him,” Mutt said.

  “—It’s the other way around. I’m here on legitimate business, academic business. He’s tagging along to make sure I don’t defect.” Mutt nodded wisely at that, as if I couldn’t “defect” from the United States by buying a plane ticket out, but Jeff frowned.

  “—Please do not joke with us. You claim that this man knows you are a KGB agent and yet he allows you to go to a foreign country, to be alone in a foreign country?”

  “—That’s correct.”

  “—It seems fantastic.”

  “—I don’t believe him,” Mutt said. “—There is more to this. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been alerted.”

  “—So go to the people who alerted you and ask for more information. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “—Indeed you are not.” Mutt opened his briefcase and brought out a coil of about five yards of clothesline. “—Get in the chair.”