But even after four years as a private citizen, more or less, Sasha still kept these residual instincts. His eyes still traveled to the drawers, to the doors, to the rug, and examined them—not even consciously—for disturbance. He couldn’t remember what, exactly, had told him all was not as he’d left it. He just knew. He told the children to wait in the living room as he went through the house, finishing at last in his own office, which he knew to be clean—there couldn’t possibly be anything there to interest the KGB, and yet still he felt this terror as he took out his key and opened all the drawers and felt along the horizontal panel where, in another desk in another city in another lifetime, he had once cut a small hole on a false bottom to form a cavity, and in this cavity he would keep his papers and his one-time pad for coding and his Minox camera.
Of course, this was a different desk, in a different city, in a different lifetime, and the thought of carving a hole hadn’t even crossed his mind, until now. Until his hand felt along the top of the middle drawer—right where the false bottom in his old desk drawer used to be—and encountered a square opening into a cavity that contained something peculiar.
A small electronic device he recognized as a one-way radio receiver.
Despite ransacking the entire apartment in a kind of delirious tantrum, like a child, he hadn’t found anything else. He had only this device that might have come from anywhere—he told himself—might have been left by a previous owner. Did he believe himself? He couldn’t say. He didn’t want to think about what it meant and who might have used it and for how long, and there was only one way to keep himself from thinking too much. He went to the liquor cabinet in which Iris kept a bottle of hospitable vodka in case of guests and he poured himself a glass, and when that was finished he went down to the liquor store around the corner and bought another bottle of vodka, and he had not stopped drinking until that bottle was empty and so was his head.
But now he’s sober again. That’s always the trouble, isn’t it? At some point you return to sobriety and nothing’s changed, except it’s probably gotten worse because you were drunk and did drunken things. And in addition to the crashing almighty hangover he woke up with this morning, he had experienced the peculiar confusion and indignity of being urged into the trunk of a car by Sumner Fox—you couldn’t argue with Sumner Fox, he was just too strong—because Iris was in danger. In danger of what? Fox wouldn’t say. The kids just thought it was a terrific adventure, but they weren’t in the trunk of the car. Sasha vomited twice, until there was nothing left to vomit. They stopped a couple of times and Fox, with a sympathetic face under a wig and hat, gave him water. They passed through some kind of border checkpoint, during which Sasha expected any moment that a guard would open the trunk and shoot him, but for some reason the guards asked no questions and waved them right through. Afterward Fox told him it was the border to Latvia, and they were going to pick up Iris and Ruth and the baby and go somewhere safe.
This is all he knows. This is what he’s said to this KGB woman across the table from him—leaving out the part about the one-way radio—with all the conviction of truth, because he can’t say for certain who put that radio receiver there, and when it was last used, and what it was used for. Every time his mind reaches out to touch that poisoned cup, he snatches it back. No, it’s not possible. It’s unthinkable! All those thoughtless conversations with Iris about his work, all those innocent questions she asked. All those papers he brought home with him, all those secrets he shared with her because she was Iris. They were devoted to each other. Her loyalty was so essential to his existence that he didn’t even think about it—like breathing.
But the KGB woman stares at him with her cold eyes, so he looks down obediently at the piece of paper in front of him and says, “It’s in code.”
“Yes, of course the message is encoded. Unfortunately our cryptographers have been unable to decipher it. It’s the recipient who interests us. Do you see the address line, in plain English? The name Lonicera?”
“Lonicera? I don’t know him.”
“It is the name of the owner of the flat. It is also the scientific name for the genus of plants commonly known as honeysuckle.”
“Honeysuckle?”
“Yes, it’s a funny coincidence, isn’t it? I understand you and your family stayed in a house with the same name, the summer before your defection. It was owned by a man named Philip Beauchamp, whom we know to have been employed by the British intelligence service during the war.”
“Philip Beauchamp is dead. I killed him myself. It was an accident, of course—”
“Of course. These things happen. Still, it’s a peculiar coincidence.”
The woman stares at him without blinking. He stares back. He knows his gaze has some power—something to do with the particular shade of his eyes, which others find mesmerizing. It’s a power he never realized until Nedda pointed it out to him, the first time she took him to bed. He wasn’t a virgin, but he’d only slept with a couple of prostitutes, so it was a new and exquisite experience to lie among clean sheets afterward and talk and touch and kiss. She covered his eyes with her hands and said, That’s better. He asked her what she meant, and she said that he could make her do anything with those eyes of his, that ultramarine color like the purest lake in the world. She murmured in her gravelly voice that she only had to look at those beautiful eyes and she came off, like that—she snapped her fingers. Of course, she was just speaking hyperbole, bed talk, but still. The idea of his magnetic gaze gave him confidence. He would never have dared to approach Iris without it.
Now he trains those eyes on this KGB woman—my God, he doesn’t even know her name!—as if he’s casting a spell, the old razzle-dazzle, except it doesn’t seem to have any effect on her.
She looks, in fact, a little bored.
“Let us cut to the chase, Dubinin. As you Americans say.”
“I’m not an American. I’m a Soviet citizen now, remember?”
She shrugs this away. “You have something I require—a full confession of your crimes, and a certain piece of information which we know you to be carrying to your Western handlers. I, on the other hand, have in my possession something terribly important to you—your wife, who is very sick, it seems, and your children.”
“Is that a threat? You’re threatening me with the lives of my family?”
“Of course not. The decision is yours. The power of life and death is in your hands.” The woman spreads her own large palms before him. “I merely offer you the chance for redemption from your crimes, like a good Communist.”
“I can’t confess to a crime I haven’t committed. I can’t give you information I don’t possess. You can torture me, you can do whatever you like with me, but I have nothing to say.”
“Torture?” She raises her eyebrows. “Don’t be dramatic. I don’t torture people for information. Goodness, no. It’s barbaric.”
“No, you’re exquisitely subtle, aren’t you? Bloodless.”
The woman cocks her head a few degrees. “You look as if you could use a little fresh air. Let’s take a walk, shall we?”
Outside, the night is cool and clear, a taste of salt. Sasha has no idea where they are. Some military facility, probably. He sees the shadow of barbed wire against the horizon. A ghost of a watchtower from which a bright light flares and disappears. A few squat buildings pass by, barracks by the look of them. Already dawn is approaching. A yellow, hazy glow like enemy bombardment illuminates the sky to the east. The KGB woman is tall and matches his long-legged pace. Their footsteps crunch along the gravel path. A few yards behind them, a guard follows discreetly.