he tried it before the real attempt, a sort of rehearsal to ensure everything would go right, its harshness caught his breath, making him cough. Which in itself was a useful test because it meant he’d have to take his time, drinking it.
He chose a Friday night because there was no debriefing on a Saturday, so no drivers would be calling for him. There were six bottles and he lined them up like pins in a bowling alley, starting from the left. The alcohol burned at first, making his eyes water, but it was easier once he became accustomed to it. He didn’t feel drunk at all after the first bottle and worried he might not have collected enough, but his head began to go before he reached the end of the second, so he knew it would be all right. He began to belch so he stopped drinking for a few moments, not wanting to risk losing the effect by vomiting.
Willick decided he was ready halfway through the third bottle. He felt quite rational – knew exactly what he was doing – but there was no nervousness, none of the usual snatch in the guts.
He’d bought the rope on another shopping expedition, thick, heavy-duty stuff that he’d tested to carry his weight by hanging from it by his hands, looped around the curtain support which was high enough for the purpose. He’d assembled it and prepared the knots before he’d started drinking and moved the chair over now, needing it to climb up. He tugged, needlessly, ensuring the strength again and slipped the noose over his head, hesitating at the very last moment. And then he kicked the chair away.
He was even unsuccessful in killing himself properly. He’d tried to get the knot behind his ear, the way he’d thought it was done, but it slipped around so his neck didn’t break, killing him instantly as it should have done. He choked to death, instead. It took twenty minutes for him to die, ten of them conscious and in agony.
38
From the moment he entered the now familiar debriefing room at Langley, Levin was aware of an apparent but inexplicable attitude between the three men with whom he had spent so much time. Lightness was the word that came to his mind, but he dismissed it because it had to be wrong.
‘We’ve made some assessments, from what you’ve told us. Compared it against the defection of Willick,’ announced Myers.
Levin wondered how Willick was being treated in Russia. Cautiously he said: ‘I’m glad if I have helped.’
‘You’ve been invaluable,’ said Crookshank.
‘And we’re anxious for you to go on helping,’ said Norris.
Levin controlled any reaction. He said: ‘Of course.’
‘We are offering you the position of a contract consultant with the CIA,’ announced Myers. ‘In effect you will be permanently employed.’
Levin was not concerned at his difficulty in immediately replying because they would expect him to be surprised. Forcing himself to speak, the Russian said: ‘I would be delighted to accept.’
‘And we would be delighted for you to be with us here at Langley,’ said Crookshank, critic-turned- supporter.
‘Welcome to the CIA,’ endorsed Myers.
‘I hope to be very useful here,’ said Levin, a remark for his own enjoyment, the only celebration he could allow.
‘What will it involve?’ asked Galina, that night, when he made the announcement back in Connecticut.
‘Moving to the Washington area, I suppose,’ said Levin. ‘Being able to get a house of our own, instead of living like we do here: in a goldfish bowl.’
Petr, who was in the same room as his father, accepted it was time that he made his move. Which he did the following day. It coincided with Yuri Malik’s arrival at Kennedy Airport, after a circuitous flight through Canada.
Petr’s escape went as smoothly as he had known it would. He waited thirty minutes after being deposited at school and then complained of feeling unwell. He rejected the offer of the school recalling his car and was walking up Litchfield’s North Street before the hour was out. The lack of public transport was a minimal problem, because the first lift he picked up was going all the way to Naugatuck and from his map and timetable Petr knew there was a station there. He caught a train just after eleven, settling in a corner seat, bunched with excitement at what he had already done and in expectation of what he would soon be doing. Would they have him make some immediate public denunciation of his father? Or want to interview him at length first, to find out what had happened since their defection? Whatever, the boy decided: he’d do whatever he was asked. And enjoy it. God how he was going to enjoy it! His voluntary return showed he had no part in the defection and certainly Natalia hadn’t: important to make it clear that his mother was not involved, either. He could remember how bewildered she had been, that night at the Plaza. Only his father: his father the bastard. Puffed with imagined importance, boasting of some consultancy or job with the CIA: soon to be taught a lesson, though. His father would know something to be wrong, when he wasn’t there to be picked up from school that evening. Served him right. Bastard.
Petr mentally ticked the stations off his list, each one bringing him closer to New York, excitement building on excitement. He was free! In complete realization Petr decided the Connecticut house with its armed guards and suspended helicopters had been as much a prison keeping them in as a safe house keeping pursuers out. Hadn’t kept him in, though: he’d beaten them. They’d never suspected him; didn’t have a clue. He laughed openly, in the carriage, stifling the outburst at once to avoid drawing attention to himself. How surprised they’d be! What else? Angry, of course. Frightened, too. He hoped so much they’d be frightened, not knowing what he would do. What to do themselves. He wanted them to be frightened: his father particularly.
Old Greenwich, he saw. Only fourteen more stops and only then if they halted at each one. He consulted his timetable and saw that they didn’t: bypassed six. And from the schedule he calculated they were precisely on time for the noon arrival. Ten minutes, down 42nd Street and he would be there! Less than two hours. The expectation built up and he shifted impatiently in his seat.
The problem came to him abruptly and there was a twitch of annoyance that it had not occurred to him before. The United Nations was not a public place: certainly there were public tours but they were tightly controlled so he would not be able to walk in and roam the building until he found a Soviet delegate he could ask for help. There were guards who would demand his accreditation: and they would be Americans, who could intercept him and warn Proctor or Bowden or someone and get him hauled back to Connecticut. The resolve came, as quickly as the problem, and Petr smiled to himself again, pleased with the way he was thinking. Nothing was going to stop him: nothing could.
At the cavernous, echoing Grand Central terminal Petr found the telephone bank by the exit on to 42nd Street and politely, in English, requested the number of the Soviet delegation. He was confused when the telephonist demanded a reason, blurting without thought that he wanted information, which was how he came to be given the extension not of the delegation he sought but the public affairs department.
The call was taken, by further coincidence, by Inya who since that failed night had spread the story of Yuri’s impotence through the department. When Petr repeated his request she signalled to Yuri that it was for him.
‘You are Russian?’ asked Petr, still in English.
‘Yes.’
The boy switched immediately to their own language. ‘I am the son of Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin,’ he announced. ‘I was forced to go with my father. I want to return, to expose him.’
Yuri was astonished, for the first few seconds completely unable to respond. In Russian, too, he said: ‘Where are you?’
‘New York. I have escaped. I want to come in but I know I will be stopped without the proper documentation.’
Could it be a trick, some trap being set by the FBI or the CIA who had become suspicious of Levin? Yuri said: ‘Where have you been held?’
‘Connecticut,’ said the boy at once.
‘What was the nearest town?’
‘Litchfield. I was attending school there.’
That checks out: I know it checks out, thought Yuri. Other impressions tumbled in upon him, the most important being the recollection of Vladislav Belov only twenty-four hours earlier describing to him a KGB operation
