“Why would Kallenbach do that?”
“At the CIA, there is absolute conviction that someone high-ranking is a traitor. The KGB knows this. If there is in fact a traitor, then accusing me and others protects them. If there isn’t a traitor, then it creates confusion. Either way, they win.”
“They can’t have settled on you,” Lila said.
“I’m on a short list.”
“Even before Kallenbach called?”
“We will both be prosecuted if you repeat what I am about to tell you.”
“I understand,” Lila said.
“In March,” Hillsinger said, “if you remember, I went to Virginia for the weekend. We had—we still have—two separate Russian defectors who disagree on important points. Their names are Astrakhov and Subotin. That trip to Virginia was what’s called a Wise Men panel, and we were asked to choose between them—to say who was lying, and who was not. I said they were both telling the truth. I didn’t know this at the time, but dangerous people internally had already decided that the second defector was a KGB plant—a provocation. Therefore, my view was automatically suspect.”
“Is it grounds for prosecution?”
“Angleton was already investigating my role in Hannah’s Board of Education situation in ’55, which came to light only recently. His people see a clear pattern of aiding and abetting known Communists.”
“Oh, Jim.”
Lila could no longer hear the bells off in the woods. And the water was so still that she had not yet heard the bellbuoy.
“Can you tell me anything else about Kallenbach,” Jim said. “Anything at all?”
“No.”
“Take some time.”
“No, I’m sure.”
“Over the last six months,” he said, “has any mail ever arrived opened?”
“No.”
“Did any strangers approach you, in any capacity?”
“A vagrant told me that millions now living will never die.”
“Anyone else?”
“It was odd that Kallenbach appeared at Billy’s house when he did. He said he was passing by, but then he somehow had presents for Ann and Barbara.”
“Would there have been any way he knew you were there?”
“I suppose it’s possible Billy told him.”
“Anything missing at home? Anything ever out of place?”
“No.”
Hillsinger had already decided Lila’s mistake was not nefarious. The simplest explanation also seemed like the right one: two grieving souls, an evolution of their purpose, some bad luck. If you went far enough back, Kallenbach was arguably Peregrine Wilkie’s fault.
It was now obvious to him that Lila’s affair was known to the KGB, and that her meeting with Kallenbach was not random. Kallenbach had guessed what was happening between Billy and Lila, or Billy told him, or KGB surveillance was in play. They saw in it a chance to turn Hillsinger or at least to sow confusion, since even without a mole the KGB would know that the level of tension at the CIA was elevated. The meeting was designed as a prelude to the “wrong number” phone call, so that Lila would sound on the (tapped) phone like she already knew Kallenbach. The FBI had duly recorded the exchange and forwarded it to the CIA. This one fact—that the KGB knew Jim Hillsinger was under active surveillance—was the clearest evidence Hillsinger had seen that there was a traitor at the senior level. If they had not known for sure, then having anyone call a CIA officer’s house was a needless risk. The wrong number was a key link in the chain of events leading to Angleton accusing Hillsinger of treason, and yet if Hillsinger actually were a Russian asset, then the KGB would never have let Kallenbach call the house and bring down so much scrutiny. Therefore—in directing Kallenbach to make that call, the KGB themselves had exonerated him. How had Angleton missed that?
And where did all this leave Billy? Was he working with Kallenbach?
It seemed unlikely. Even allowing for Hannah’s flirtation with the Communists, could he—could they all—have missed something that serious? And even if they had missed it, was Billy smart enough to manage a deception of that scale? Again, unlikely. By Hillsinger’s reckoning, Billy was either a master tactician—there was no way—or he was Kallenbach’s unwitting pawn.
“The children will adapt to New York,” Lila said. “Everyone adapts.”
Hillsinger paused.
“Catta’s on Baffin for the night,” he said. “We left him there this afternoon.”
“You said never.”
“The situation changed.”
“How?”
“Are you seriously asking me that?”
“What did you tell him?” Lila said.
“That we’d be back at three seventeen P.M. tomorrow.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all he needs to know.”
“Watch what I do.”
“You won’t do anything.”
“If Cyrus or Edward Peck won’t take me to Baffin, I’ll find a canoe. I’ll swim.”
“If you go and get him,” Hillsinger said, “or, really, if you are seen by him or anyone else as anything other than serenely confident in his ability to endure—then you will have created the worst of all possible worlds. You will not only have sent him to Baffin, but you will also have doubted that he could survive it.”
39
Out on the headland, Billy Quick thought their bonfire could engulf the whole island if the wind picked up. Right now the sparks were blowing out to sea, but that could change. Penny ran back and forth between the woods and the tip of the headland, collecting more and more firewood, resembling more and more a frantic pink hummingbird. Ann and Barbara emerged from the forest, Barbara carrying rolls of birch bark and Ann a bundle of dry twigs.