nothing? He’d be destroyed, Willick accepted: utterly destroyed. Christ, what a mess!
‘In reality, the life of an American cowboy was very dirty, wasn’t it?’ said the Russian, approaching as Willick stood unseeing before some original photographs of a cattle drive to Chicago.
‘Very,’ agreed Willick. Who the fuck wanted to talk about dumb-assed cowboys!
‘You were early.’
‘Found a parking place first time,’ mumbled Willick, trying not to disclose his anxiety.
‘Moscow were extremely pleased with the names you provided,’ announced the Russian.
Hope flared at once through Willick. He said: ‘It has proved my worth?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Oleg mildly.
‘So what was their reaction?’
‘They’ve agreed the increase as from this meeting,’ said the Russian, quite matter of fact.
Willick had to bite his mouth closed to prevent the mew of relief. He’d made it! Everything was going to be all right! That’s good,’ he said tightly.
‘But in return we want very specific things,’ said the man.
‘Like what?’
‘The complete structure, names and biographies… on everyone possible within the CIA. From the Director downwards…’
‘That’s not all held in the records to which I have access!’
‘Everything that there is,’ insisted the Russian. ‘For the increase to $2,000 we want absolutely everything. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Willick emptily. ‘I understand.’
24
Yevgennie Levin had never before travelled in a helicopter and the moment it lifted off he decided he didn’t like it; his stomach dropped with the sudden upward movement, so that he had to swallow against the risk of being sick and when that passed he grew uncomfortable at the fragility of everything. There seemed to be more glass than protective metal. The control panel did not appear big enough and the constant vibration jarred through him, shaking a machine too flimsy to withstand that sort of disturbance. He forced himself to concentrate upon landmarks, trying to lose himself in tradecraft. From above he saw again the withered, stripped-bare trees he had described to Natalia and then the black snake of the Naugatuck and realized there was river along the valley floor. From its direction he was able to isolate Litchfield and because the pilot initially took a south-easterly route, to pick up the coast, Levin knew how accurate he had been in describing the captain’s walks as look-outs to watch the sea where there was no sea.
Bowden, who was sitting to his right, gestured and mouthed the name when they approached New York but it was an unnecessary identification: Levin had already isolated the sprawl of Queens and Brooklyn and New Jersey and the jammed-together centrepiece of Manhattan. From the air there hardly looked to be any roads or avenues at all between the stuck-together skyscrapers, as if all the buildings had been neatly packaged up to be shipped elsewhere. It was easy for him to pick out the United Nations, its greenness obvious even from this height. What would have happened to Vadim Dolya? And Lubiakov, the other sacrifice? Would the FBI surveillance still be on Onukhov, for when he made his mistake? Always questions.
The pilot continued to fly south with the shoreline in view and Levin stared down, thinking how vast a country America was. Of course the Soviet Union was as large – larger – but Levin had never flown over it like this, from literally a bird’s-eye vantage point. My home now, he thought. Forever. Providing he did not make any sort of mistake: never relaxed. At least the worry – and distraction – with Petr was over. He had actually begun to fear that the rift between them was permanent and would worsen, and knew Galina thought the same. Her mood had visibly improved with Petr’s acceptance of the situation. Only one major distraction remained. Would Natalia have got his last letter? Was there one on its way from her? More questions. It was important to go on stressing the concern over Natalia when he got to Langley.
Which would not take much longer, Levin guessed. The pilot made a circular approach, looping over the Capitol and then coming back upon himself, giving Levin a tourist’s overflight of The Mall and the Washington Monument, and the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, before picking up the Potomac and flying parallel with it to the headquarters of the CIA. There were three cross-marked landing areas; they came down upon the first, the nearest to the hotch-potched building, wings and extensions obviously added to the original, inadequate structure. With objective comparison, Levin supposed the additions here had been made with slightly more success than those built on to Dzerzhinsky Square by Stalin’s prisoner-of-war slaves.
They were expected, Levin guessed from some radio warning from the pilot. Two unidentified men approached and nodded to Bowden and Proctor, but made no gesture towards Levin. The Russian walked in the middle of the group not towards the main complex but to a small, separate building to one side. He was not surprised to be kept from the most secret centre of America’s external intelligence organization; his surprise, in fact, was at being brought here at all. It would not have been the way a defector’s debriefing would have been conducted in the Soviet Union, even a defector apparently with information as important as his. The encounter would have taken place somewhere far removed from the organization headquarters.
The route took them in front of the main building and directly by the statue of Nathan Hale, the American patriot hanged as a spy by the British during the American War of Independence. The history had naturally been part of Levin’s instruction, which was why he had immediately recognized the name of the American chief of intelligence during that war when they had toured Litchfield with the attendant Bowden as a guide, aware that Benjamin Tallmadge had been a friend of Hale’s.
Levin glanced towards the memorial, showing no particular interest, recalling as he did so a forgotten part of that long-ago basic training. As he ascended the English gallows, Hale was supposed to have said: ‘I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.’
Which was all he had, acknowledged Levin. Remembering his helicopter reflection on the journey from Connecticut, the Russian thought again how careful he was going to have to be, now he appeared to be within finger-touching distance of making work the operation he’d been sent to perform. If they found out what he was really doing then he really could lose his life, he realized.
At the entrance to the outbuilding Proctor and Bowden went through the required identification and screening and Levin guessed he was being photographed by various unseen cameras positioned in the foyer. When the security officials completed their checks of the two Americans they took prints of Levin’s every finger and thumb, photographed him with an instantly produced Polaroid – which Levin thought created a very bad picture – and had him sign against it and the prints on a large, official-looking form. Levin wondered with whom or with what the details were going to be compared in a further effort to confirm his bona fides.
The unspeaking escorts took them to a ground-floor room at the back, overlooking a packed car park which Levin thought larger than the square separating the KGB headquarters from the GUM department store, back in Moscow. A Cona coffee machine steamed on a side table and Levin nodded acceptance to Bowden’s invitation.
‘Feel OK?’ asked Proctor.
‘Fine,’ lied Levin. Persist with his genuine concern over Natalia and volunteer no more than the very minimum to any question, he thought. String it out, in fact: ideally there had to be as many sessions as possible.
Harry Myers led the committee into the room, with Norris immediately behind and Crookshank coming last. The formation told Levin that Myers was in charge, although no introductions were made, which he did not expect. Myers jerked his head to Proctor and Bowden with the familiarity of the earlier escorts and then smiled, with surface politeness, at the Russian.
‘Appreciate your coming here today, sir,’ said Myers. ‘Believe you might have things to tell us that we’d find extremely interesting.’
Although he hoped for more meetings between them, Levin studied the three CIA officials with instinctively intense professionalism, trying to memorize in one interview every personal detail for later recall and possible – although now unknown – use. The chairman was a huge bear of a man, obese with neglect and indulgence, flowing beard unkempt, strained suit sagged and bagged around him. Maybe an intentionally careless appearance – as he
