Shift: A Novel

another city. If we could get her on a boat to Cuba, we could handle the transfer from there much more easily.”

“I have contacts in a few coastal cities,” Song added. “Miami, New Orleans, Houston …”

“Jesus Christ, I wasn’t serious. You really want to send Naz to the fucking Soviet Union?”

This time it was Song who looked at Ivelitsch before answering. “We should at least get her away from Washington. Then, if we decide we need to move her out of the country, we can.”

“In the meantime, we have something else to deal with—namely, the real reason why you were released last night. It’s not because you managed to explain your way out of trouble. Everton let slip on his last visit to Song’s that you’re going to be sent to Dallas to retrieve an agent—”

“It’s Caspar,” Song cut in.

“Caspar? What the hell is he—no, wait.” Melchior turned back to Song. “I thought you said Everton came in on the second Thursday of the month. That was almost a week ago.”

“The Company decided to send you when they found Rip’s body,” Ivelitsch said smoothly. “Angleton’s pretty sure you killed him. He thinks Raul doubled you in Cuba.”

“If he believed that, why didn’t he have Everton hold me when I went in last night?”

Ivelitsch sighed as though he were trying to explain quantum mechanics to a three-year-old, or a German shepherd. “Are you familiar with Anatoliy Golitsyn?”

“The KGB officer who defected in ’61? What about him?”

“Mother was convinced he was a KGB plant, and he was a little, shall we say, zealous in his attempts to get him to confess. If Golitsyn went public with the details of what was done to him, it would be very embarrassing to the Company, especially on top of the flak it’s taken over the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis. He apparently commanded a healthy settlement as hush money, and Drew Everton doesn’t want something like that happening on his watch. So rather than do anything excessive in-house—”

“They want Caspar to kill you,” Song said.

Maybe it was because he was so tired—that pinhead Everton had kept a light shining in his face for twelve straight hours—but Melchior’s mind filled with an image of Caspar at four years old, looking up at him with trust— love—in his eyes. He saw Caspar at six, eight, ten, twelve, the love steadily replaced by a dead smirk as he attempted to maintain some sense of self while the Company put him through the wringer. Finally Caspar at eighteen, on leave from the Marines. “They’re sending me to Japan,” Melchior remembered him saying, both hands wrapped around a glass to keep them from shaking. “I guess it’s finally starting.”

“Melchior?” Song’s voice cut into his thoughts.

Melchior shook himself. “Last I heard, the Company’d got Caspar stationed at Atsugi. The idea was that he would stage a defection, then buy his way into KGB with secrets about the U2 program. Although, after Powers, the cat was pretty much out of the bag.”

“That was four years ago,” Ivelitsch said. “Caspar arrived in Moscow in October 1959. Of course we suspected him of being a Company operative. Who in his right mind wants to move to the Soviet Union? We spent months trying to crack him, but he proved intractable. This seemed less due to any fortitude than simple instability. Caspar”—Melchior found it telling that Ivelitsch chose not to use Caspar’s real name, since neither he nor Song had—“suffered from paranoia and delusions of grandeur and general confusion about who he was and what he believed in. He started calling himself Alik for some reason—his wife didn’t even know his real name until after they were married.”

“He got married?”

“A whirlwind romance,” Ivelitsch said wryly. “Less than two months passed from the day they met until their nuptials.”

“Hmph,” Melchior said. “That doesn’t sound convenient at all.”

Ivelitsch didn’t respond to Melchior’s innuendo. “When Marina became pregnant, Caspar requested to return to the United States. He said he was ‘disillusioned’ by Communism.”

“If everyone who felt that way was allowed to leave the Soviet Union, the country’d have fewer living inhabitants than Pompeii after Vesuvius blew its top. Lemme guess, you let him take the wife, too? Because she was pregnant.”

“Ultimately we decided it was easier letting him leave than watching him all the time. As soon as he got back here, he immediately resumed his pro-Communist persona, and became a very visible supporter of the revolution in Cuba—even as, behind the scenes, he made connections with several persons involved with CIA’s program to assassinate Castro, including some associates of Sam Giancana.”

“Giancana, huh?”

“Do you know him?”

“Let’s just say his name keeps coming up.”

“Melchior,” Song said, “Caspar wouldn’t—couldn’t—kill you, could he? After all you’ve been through?”

Melchior shook his head. “I dunno. It’s been a long time.”

“CIA feels Caspar’s behavior has become alarmingly erratic,” Ivelitsch said. “Angleton suspects we might have doubled him even.”

“Golitsyn, me, Caspar. Is there anyone Angleton doesn’t think is a double agent?”

“Yes. Kim Philby.” Ivelitsch chuckled, then went on. “At any rate, Caspar’s involvement with Giancana is entirely self-initiated. Last month he even tried to get a visa to Cuba, presumably to make an attempt on Castro’s life. And the Company’s pretty sure he was the person who took a shot at William Walker back in April.”

“Walker’s a fascist, Castro’s a Commie,” Melchior said. “And Kim Philby’s in Russia.”