you want to go, you can’t even have a conversation without worrying about whether somebody’s going to inform on you. You can’t agitate for reform, you can’t defend yourself against phony charges. The freedoms you take for granted — ”
It was all true and I was tired of it because it was beside the point. I cut him off: “The freedoms which you’re asking me to give up so that I can safeguard my freedom. Aren’t you bombing the hamlet in order to save it?”
“Nuts. I’m asking you for only one thing-a piece of information which isn’t rightfully yours anyway.”
“What makes it rightfully
“We’re both Americans.”
I laughed in his face.
He said patiently, “Harry, it does make a difference. I won’t torture you or throw you in prison. I draw the line at that.”
“There are heroin pushers who draw the line at rape. I’m not impressed by people who draw lines.”
“You ought to be. If you were having this conversation with Zandor there’d be blood coming out from under your fingernails.”
He led the way out of the dreary apartment and we went down the stairs. I said, “And now?”
“Now I take you back to your neighborhood and you walk back to your hotel.”
“Just like that?”
“What did you expect me to do? Hold you prisoner until you capitulated?”
The temperature had dropped sharply under a pewter sky. We crowded ourselves into the little car and he got the engine going and waited for it to warm up. Our breath fogged the windshield. Ritter said, “Do you mind if I make a suggestion? It’s for your own good. I think you ought to inform Comrade Zandor of the location of the treasure before you leave the Soviet Union. If the information was already out of your hands, your government wouldn’t have reason to harass you.”
I said, “What have you got to gain by advising me to spill everything to Zandor?”
“Just cutting my losses, Harry.”
“No.” I reasoned it out. “You’d have to inform Zandor in advance that I was going to volunteer the gold to the Soviets-as a favor to you. That way you’d get the credit, you’d still get reciprocity from Moscow. One good turn.”
“The KGB might get that impression,” he murmured. He switched on the defroster fan but it didn’t work very well. “Actually the way you’d better do it is write the information in a letter and mail it just before you fly out of the country. That way you’d avoid the tedium of questioning. No point taking unnecessary risks, is there.”
“I wonder how many people you’ve blackmailed into doing the right thing.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I told you before. I have no idea where the gold is. The whole thing’s a fantasy. Yours and MacIver’s.”
He put the Moskvitch in gear.
* Elsewhere, in a section deleted earlier by the editors, Bristow speculated on how’ the gold might have been hidden: “Several possible methods. (A) Much industry had been moved to Siberia. Spur rail lines remained, now unused. Some went through tunnels. Unload gold inside tunnel, then demolish both openings at ends of tunnel as if air-raid bomb damage. (B) Old smelters-numerous in South Russia. Slag piles-enormous. Pile up gold in area of slag heaps, cover it with layer of slag. (C) Several lakes and reservoirs adjacent to spur RR lines. Sink gold in one of them. It won’t corrode. (D) Several new highways then being laid amp; paved for military transport. Lay gold in road-fill, then pave over it. (E) The traditional way: dig a hole and bury it.”-Ed.
* Probably March 22, 1973.-Ed.
* Italics supplied by the editors. Written in growing haste, some of these passages are characterized by muddled verb tenses and uncertain syntax. As much as possible, we have left the wording alone, feeling that the best editing is the least editing.-Ed.
* Ritter, of course, is the name of the man in the blue suit. Below, Bristow gives him more of a formal introduction. As mentioned earlier in the notes, these passages were added as insertions in the manuscript after Bristow had completed the basic structure; they are written on odd scraps of paper with such indices as “page 382 -A, — B,” and so on, to indicate where Bristow wanted them to appear.-Ed.
* This is the next morning-probably Friday, March 23.-Ed.
* It is probably clear from the context that Bristow added this passage and inserted it here. Henceforth such insertions will not be pointed out unless it seems important to do so.-Ed.
* “The Organs” is professional argot for the Soviet KGB.-Ed.
* The reference is to Harris Bristow’s
15
He reached across my lap to unlatch the door.
I walked back to the hotel and fifty people seemed to spring out of the cement. None of them accosted me but I felt eyes on me.
In the lobby I found Yakov Sanarski and Timoshenko playing chess.
Sanarski greeted me without smiling and I explained my disappearance when he requested the explanation. I was not sure if he believed my story but he didn’t challenge it. He would report to Zandor and it would be up to Zandor to decide.
I did not want to be alone in my room. I pulled out a chair and watched the chess match. Timoshenko was an aggressive but careless player and Sanarski mated him easily. Then the KGB man went off, to a phone or a car, and Timoshenko asked what might be my pleasure for the evening; we had no interviews scheduled for the day. I was in a stage of delayed shock, the tremor starting in; I left the decision to him and resorted to my room to clean up and change. I remembered to put the old hat in one of my coat pockets and when we got to the restaurant I managed to leave it on the hat rack there.
I kept up with Timoshenko drink for drink until it occurred to me that if I had ever needed a clear head in my life it was now. The music was frenetic and earsplitting in the place and Timoshenko was enjoying it hugely, stamping both feet to keep time. There was no need to make conversation with him. The vodka in my blood made it easier to shut out the frenzy of the place; it helped to clear the nervous fears from my head and allow me to concentrate.
In the beginning the gold had been an orphan abandoned on my doorstep and I’d had the freedom to accept or ignore the responsibility of it. But I hadn’t covered my tracks well enough and the CIA was onto it, and Ritter was right-it wouldn’t be very long before Moscow got onto it too.
It meant I was under pressure of time. How long did I have? I didn’t know. I might have a month; I might not have forty-eight hours. The KGB was behind MacIver and Ritter, but how far behind?
At intervals I was disgusted by my own smug and pious moralizing. The rest of the time I thought myself a man of principle. But the road to hell.… I had to consider the temptations of chucking it in. I could still turn back; I still had options. I could give it to Ritter or give it to Zandor and I would be off the hook.
But it was too late for that because I’d taken the baby in off the doorstep and now it was my child.
I did not sleep. The rest of my life hung on the decisions of that night: I vacillated but I couldn’t procrastinate because soon they would take the decision out of my hands. I had to decide
But there were so many sides to it and I was cursed with vision that was too clear. I began to see myself contemptuously as a fool who insisted on equivocating about the state of the exact temperature while the building was burning down over my head. I entertained so many
