“Because Mikhail is in America, isn’t he,” Burt stated remorselessly. “So ‘will’ was the right word, not ‘would.’ That’s true, isn’t it?”
She waited for the blow.
“You know Mikhail is here, don’t you, Anna,” Burt said, leaning over the table with one hand supporting him. “You’ve known for a while. He’s on our list, isn’t he.” He pounced.
“Right then. How were you going to make contact with Mikhail?” he asked her. “Through Vladimir? Or was it in some other way?”
She felt the ground sliding from under her. “That was the way,” she said. “Exactly as Logan and myself and others were saying. By Vladimir informing his chief here, yes.”
“Oh, yes?” The apparent curiosity in Burt’s tone was flayed completely, to reveal the utter disbelief that lay beneath it. “Okay. Let’s try this, then,” he said. “Vladimir wasn’t going to inform his head of station here or anyone else, was he?”
“As I said, I’m sure he will.”
Burt stood up from his angled pose of leaning on the table. He looked at her with triumph in his eyes.
“In which case, why did you arrange to meet Vladimir, in secret, without my knowledge, at a cafe behind a gym? ”
She heard a sharp, involuntary intake of breath and realised it was hers. But she neither acknowledged Burt’s statement nor denied it.
Burt left the silence hanging once again.
“And if you and Vladimir were to meet in secret from me, then it was also in secret from Vladimir’s own people, wasn’t it? Both of you wanted to meet without surveillance. Which means that Vladimir wasn’t going to inform anyone he’d met you. And that means there was no way Mikhail would know you were trying to contact him. Correct?”
Her silence was the answer he was looking for.
“Your health,” he said, and raised his glass until she lifted hers. Then he drank greedily.
“You said no wires—,” she said.
Burt grinned at her, his bonhomie apparently returned in full. As ever, he was supremely pleased by his own cleverness, which was far more important to him than her attempts to deceive him. In fact, she felt that his cleverness needed her deceit in order to be exercised to the full.
“That’s what we said, yes,” he agreed, and gave his friendly chuckle. “No wires. But we had that cafe—and all his other regular haunts—wired so good you could hear the lettuce screaming.”
More sirens rose from outside the window—the only true voices of the city—and filled the pause like a dissonant musical interlude.
“Next stage,” Burt said, moving on now into the mopping-up operation. “Were you even intending to contact Mikhail at all? Or has this whole operation with Vladimir just been a farce from start to finish? I’d like to know that, please, Anna.”
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
“But not my way?” Burt said.
“No, not your way, not through Vladimir.”
Burt sat down.
“Okay. Good. I like this. Let’s say I believe you,” he said with flamboyant generosity. “Why not? Why weren’t you going to contact Mikhail through Vladimir?”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on, Anna. Tell me why you wanted to contact him your way?”
She collected her thoughts now at last. “Because Mikhail is too smart to be lured into making contact with me on the basis of his own side having knowledge of my whereabouts. He wouldn’t trust that. If my meeting with Vladimir reached him through Vladimir and then the KGB networks here, he wouldn’t take the risk.”
“Good, that’s very good, that’s very smart of you,” Burt said, and there was genuine admiration in his voice. “Your intuition is, as always, invaluable. So why not say that to me earlier, though? To me, Anna?” he said, as if he were hurt that his friendship and discretion were not above scrutiny. “That way, we could make a different plan. So in my way of thinking, there’s another reason for you planning to do it your way, isn’t there.”
“Yes. Yes, there is.” She looked up at him and met his eyes unwaveringly. She had found her strength, no matter what was to come.
“It’s personal,” she said. “Just how you like it, Burt. I wanted to give Mikhail the choice. Whether to work for the Americans or not. Can you understand that, Burt? I wanted that to be his decision, not something forced on him by you, the Russians, me, or anyone else.”
“Ah, choices. Choices are the chief source of confusion in the world,” Burt replied.
“No. That’s not true. Choices are freedom.”
“Then freedom is confusion,” Burt said.
“Maybe. But that’s as cynical as anything I ever heard in the KGB,” she said.
“Well, touche. But to win, you must adopt your opponent’s methods,” Burt said. “And then you must make their methods, no matter how terrible, twice as bad as they make them.”
“If you believe that, that’s where you and I fundamentally differ,” she said.
Burt smiled at her, as if he were enjoying a game.
“All right. Let’s say that Mikhail has a choice, then,” he said. “Why should I give him this choice?”
“Several reasons. For one thing, he deserves it. He’s earned it a million times. But more importantly than that, as a willing accomplice, he’s worth infinitely more to you than if he were forced. The reason Mikhail worked for the British before was that he would only work through Finn. No one else. Because he knew he could trust Finn and only Finn.”
“We think along exactly the same lines, you and I, Anna,” Burt said, in one of his customary volte-faces. “As I treat you, you treat Mikhail. We both understand that without willingness, there’s very little worth the gamble. With yours—and Mikhail’s—willingness, we can achieve everything.”
“That’s also what Finn believed,” she said.
Burt didn’t reply immediately. Then: “And will he trust you? Mikhail?” he said at last.
“I believe so. But it’s the only route anyway, as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s as I’ve always thought.”
He came around the table and took the seat next to her.
“You’re right in everything,” he said, “and everything is right.”
“What happens—” she said.
“—is always right,” he completed. “Sometimes, through distrust comes greater trust,” he said. “And that’s what has happened here. All this has been necessary. Thank you, Anna. You’re as good it gets.”
“So where do we go from here?” she said.
Burt smiled, and she found she was smiling back at him.
“Before you tell me who Mikhail is,” he said, “what was your plan for contacting him?”
She felt free again. The truth had released her.
“I was going to play along with Vladimir as we arranged,” she said. “Improvise with him for as long as it took. Then I was going to send something by courier to Mikhail at the Russian delegation in Washington. As soon as I could make myself some time alone.”
“Perhaps after your secret meeting with Vladimir?”
“Most likely.”
“Something he would recognise?” Burt asked, “but that no one else would?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“It was a
“The dagger you said was your grandmother’s—an heirloom, I believe?” Burt asked her.
“Yes.”
There was dead silence. Burt’s face gave nothing away. And then he broke the moment by smiling at her again.
