The last part of the journey took him through a desert landscape of desolate beauty, with distant snowy peaks stained red by the sunset, which probably explained why they were called the Blood of Christ Mountains.
He went to the toilet where he changed his underwear and put on the new shirt he had bought in Saks.
He expected the FBI or Army security to be watching the train station in Albuquerque, and sure enough he spotted a young man whose check jacket – too warm for the climate of New Mexico in September – did not quite conceal the bulge of a gun in a shoulder holster. However, the agent was undoubtedly interested in long-distance travellers who might be arriving from New York or Washington. Volodya, with no hat or jacket and no luggage, looked like a local man coming back from a short trip. He was not followed as he walked to the bus station and boarded a Greyhound for Santa Fe.
He reached his destination late in the afternoon. He noted two FBI men at the Santa Fe bus station, and they scrutinized him. However, they could not tail everyone who got off the bus, and once again his casual appearance caused them to dismiss him.
Doing his best to look as if he knew where he was going, he strolled along the streets. The low flat-roofed pueblo-style houses and squat churches baking in the sun reminded him of Spain. The storefront buildings overhung the sidewalks, creating pleasantly shady arcades.
He avoided La Fonda, the big hotel on the town square next to the cathedral, and checked in to the St Francis. He paid cash and gave his name as Robert Pender, which might have been American or one of several European nationalities. ‘My suitcase will be delivered later,’ he said to the pretty girl behind the reception desk. ‘If I’m out when it comes, can you make sure it gets sent up to my room?’
‘Oh, sure, that won’t be a problem,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ he said, then he added a phrase he had heard several times on the train: ‘I sure appreciate it.’
‘If I’m not here, someone else will deal with the bag, so long as it has your name on it.’
‘It does.’ He had no luggage, but she would never realize that.
She looked at his entry in the book. ‘So, Mr Pender, you’re from New York.’
There was a touch of scepticism in her voice, no doubt because he did not sound like a New Yorker. ‘I’m from Switzerland originally,’ he explained, naming a neutral country.
‘That accounts for the accent. I haven’t met a Switzerland person before. What’s it like there?’
Volodya had never been to Switzerland, but he had seen photographs. ‘It snows a lot,’ he said.
‘Well, enjoy our New Mexico weather!’
‘I will.’
Five minutes later he went out again.
Some of the scientists lived at the Los Alamos laboratory, he had learned from his colleagues in the Soviet Embassy, but it was a shanty town with few civilized comforts, and they preferred to rent houses and apartments nearby if they could. Willi Frunze could afford it easily: he was married to a successful artist who drew a syndicated strip cartoon called Slack Alice. His wife, also called Alice, could work anywhere, so they had a place in the historic downtown neighbourhood.
The New York office of the NKVD had provided this information. They had researched Frunze carefully, and Volodya had his address and phone number and a description of his car, a pre-war Plymouth convertible with whitewall tyres.
The Frunzes’ building had an art gallery on the ground floor. The apartment upstairs had a large north-facing window that would appeal to an artist. A Plymouth convertible was parked outside.
Volodya preferred not to go in: the place might be bugged.
The Frunzes were an affluent, childless couple, and he guessed they would not stay at home listening to the radio on a Friday night. He decided to wait around and see if they came out.
He spent some time in the art gallery, looking at the paintings for sale. He liked clear, vivid pictures and would not have wanted to own any of these messy daubs. He found a coffee shop down the block and got a window seat from which he could just see the Frunzes’ door. He left there after an hour, bought a newspaper, and stood at a bus stop pretending to read it.
The long wait permitted him to establish that no one was watching the Frunze apartment. That meant that the FBI and Army security had not tagged Frunze as a high risk. He was a foreigner, but so were many of the scientists, and presumably nothing else was known against him.
This was a downtown commercial district, not a residential neighbourhood, and there were plenty of people on the streets; but all the same after a couple of hours Volodya began to worry that someone might notice him hanging around.
Then the Frunzes came out.
Frunze was heavier than he had been twelve years ago – there was no shortage of food in America. His hair was beginning to recede, although he was only thirty. He still had that solemn look. He wore a sports shirt and khaki pants, a common American combination.
His wife was not so conservatively dressed. Her fair hair was pinned up under a beret, and she wore a shapeless cotton dress in an indistinct brown colour, but she had an assortment of bangles on both wrists, and numerous rings. Artists had dressed like that in Germany before Hitler, Volodya remembered.
The couple set off along the street, and Volodya followed.
He wondered what the wife’s politics were, and what difference her presence would make in the difficult
