“Listen, I think you should know that the police have been following me since he died. I mean, I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Bielak said easily. He looked at Nick seriously. “Your father was a hero. What do they know? Traffic cops.” Nick caught the tone: rival agencies, then, not colleagues, like the squabbling offices in the embassy. Who did Bielak work for? It occurred to him, a grisly irony, that he had inadvertently picked the perfect chauffeur, the only way he could ever have left Prague without an escort.
“How far is it?” Bielak asked.
“Out past Theresienstadt.”
“Oh, nice,” Bielak said. “The country, I mean.”
What Nick hadn’t counted on was that Bielak would want to talk, using the long drive as a pretext for a fishing expedition, casting for information. Nick’s life. His father’s health. And after a while Nick began to welcome the distraction, so preoccupied with shaping his answers, the careful feints, that he had no time to think about what really concerned him, what he would do if the list wasn’t there. A wasted trip. But it had to be. All of it had to be true. Everything he’d said.
The questions told him something else-Bielak hadn’t known about him before, which meant his superiors hadn’t known either. The connection had come out with the death, surprising them as much as the police, the unexpected son. His father had been careful right up to the end. The order to kill had come from somewhere else.
They fell behind a convoy of trucks, back flaps open to reveal sitting rows of soldiers. When the road opened out to a long stretch, Bielak beeped his horn and passed, waving to them as he pulled in front.
“Russians?” Nick said.
“And Poles. Some Hungarians. They’re here for the Warsaw Pact maneuvers.” Did he really believe it?
“You never see them in town. I thought they’d be everywhere. You know, since-”
“The invasion?” Marty said, almost playful. “That’s what they call it in the West. Some invasion. See for yourself. You notice they never say NATO troops have invaded Germany. They’re guests. Only the Russians are occupiers. But the Americans stay and the Russians go home when the maneuvers are over. So where’s the occupation, Germany or here? It’s always the same. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
“No. So when do they go home?”
“When the Government asks them to. Right now it’s useful. We could use a little order. Things go too far. These kids-they play right into the hands of the capitalists, and they don’t even know it. Your father understood. That’s why he came last year, to help out.”
Nick froze. “Help out how?” he asked quietly.
“Well, the Czechs wouldn’t look at a Russian cross-eyed. But a Czech-American with a Czech wife? He could talk to anybody.”
And report back. Selling them, the way he had sold sailors who jumped ship in San Francisco. Still in the game, not retired, not everything true. What had he been buying this time? The flat with a view? A way to bring Anna home? Or the chance to get in the files again, get something worth a few dissidents?
“How do you know this? Did you work with him?” Nick said, remembering his father’s easy dismissal.
Bielak squirmed in his seat. “No, no. But you hear things.” He paused. “He wasn’t wrong, you know. Things were going off the rails here. They see the flashy cars, but they forget what the West is really like.” He paused. “But maybe you don’t agree.”
Nick glanced at him, the unlikely defender. Who still believed in the great dialectic, without his wife, thousands of miles from the old Glen Island Casino. A capacity for self-deception as limitless as faith.
“What are your own politics?” Bielak said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I don’t have any,” Nick said. “My father had enough for one family.”
Bielak was quiet. “You know,” he said finally, “when you get to be my age, you don’t point so many fingers. It takes a lot of guts to do something for what you believe in. I mean, the Order of Lenin, that has to count for something.”
“If you’re a Communist.”
“It still has to mean something to you. Isn’t that why you want it?”
“It meant something to him.”
“It’s a shame you didn’t get to know him better, how he thought. Maybe you have more in common than you think.”
The voice was no longer casual but insinuating. Nick looked at him, amazed. Was Bielak recruiting him? Was this the way it worked-the awkward fumbling, looking for the right spot, promising something else? Like teenage sex.
“I never cared about politics,” Nick said, trying to be light. “I don’t think I’d make a very good spy, either. I don’t even know if the police are still following us.”
“No, we lost them just outside the city,” Bielak said, sure, not inept, a professional after all.
The driveway was still muddy.
“I’ll only be a minute,” Nick said, but Bielak got out too, looking curiously at the cottage. Now he’d have an audience.
He went toward the woodpile at the side of the house, where his father always hid the key. But before he could reach down and scoop it out, Bielak said, “Here we go,” taking a key from under the terra-cotta planter near the door. Nick stopped, disconcerted. People don’t change. But maybe the planter was Anna’s idea, better than fumbling under logs.
“I figured,” Bielak said. “If it’s not the mat, it’s always the flowerpot, isn’t it? You’d think people would know better. Where’re you going?”
“I have to take a leak,” Nick said, improvising. “I don’t know if the water’s turned on. Go on in.”
“Well, me too,” Bielak said, moving away from the house. “That last half-hour.”
So they peed together at the side of the house, backs to each other, while Nick looked toward the woodpile, wondering. Where else?
Inside, he switched on the lamp. The same room, so familiar to him that he could have moved through it in the dark. The table by the window where they’d had lunch, gloomy now in the fading light. Everything spotless, still. But not his. He walked quietly to the desk, feeling like a burglar.
Bielak had stopped by the door, looking around. “Not much, is it?”
“No.”
“I mean, a man in his position, you’d think they’d-” He seemed genuinely surprised, a little shaken. What had he imagined? A hero’s dacha.
“He said they never really trusted Americans,” Nick said, then, seeing the wounded expression on Bielak’s face, instantly regretted it. Why not leave him his faith, when it was all he had left?
The medal wasn’t on the side table. Now there were two things out of place. Nick opened the desk drawer and pushed papers aside. The list wasn’t at Holeckova; it had to be here somewhere. Bielak, subdued now, was looking at the bookshelves. Nick sorted through clipped articles from Russian magazines. Papers. It could be anywhere. Wedged behind a book. Think.
He went upstairs, leaving Bielak to the shelves, and turned into the bedroom. The nightstand drawer, nothing. Then Anna’s, face creams and tissues. He found it on the bureau, a flat box next to their picture, out in plain sight. He opened it to find the medal and its piece of ribbon lying on a square of velvet. But what about the other? Somewhere personal, where she wouldn’t have looked. He went to the bathroom and opened the medicine chest. Pill bottles, about the size of a roll of film. He started opening them, twisting off caps, his fingers clumsy.
“How we doing up there?” Bielak called. “Got it,” Nick shouted down. Two more bottles. Nothing. He took a last glance at the room where he’d helped his father to bed and went downstairs. He handed Bielak the box.
“A few more minutes, okay?” he said.
“Take your time.” Bielak opened the box. “This is something, isn’t it?” He fingered the medal, fascinated.
Nick went over to the shelves. English books. Anna never would have bothered with them. He ran his hands over the titles, pulling a few out, squatting to reach the lowest shelf, half expecting to find one hollowed out, a jewel cache. But they were neat and dusted, part of Anna’s house too.
