CHAPTER 52
Tania heard the phone ring, tied the belt on her towelling bathrobe and picked up the phone.
“Yes.”
“It’s Bill, Tania. Are you on your own?”
“Yes. Andrei’s gone down-town somewhere.”
“What happened—his mouth I mean?”
“Did you ask him?”
“Of course. But he just changed the subject.”
“I don’t know what happened, Bill. I asked him again and again but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“It looks like somebody hit him in the mouth.”
“Yeah. But whatever it was he isn’t saying.”
“How long was he away?”
“I can’t say, Bill.”
“You mean you don’t know or that it’s not my business.”
“It’s his life, Bill. I don’t get mixed up in it. He doesn’t want me to be part of it.”
“Do you mind?”
“Yeah. But I knew that was how it was going to be, right from the start. I’ve no cause to complain.” She paused. “He keeps me out from that part of his life so that if anything goes wrong I’m not involved.”
“I feel uneasy for him. I wish I could help him.”
“You can’t, Bill. Nobody can. Maybe one day but not yet.”
“What do you mean—maybe one day?”
“One day he’s going to run out of road and he’ll need help—but until then he has to do it his way.”
“Are we still meeting at Sam’s place tonight?”
“Yes, so far as I know.”
“Good. See you then. Love from us both.”
Tania replaced the phone and walked over to the window. It was three days before Christmas and the square was busy with last-minute shoppers. There would be shops open on Monday but the commuters were finishing today. Such things as Christmas and Thanksgiving meant nothing to Andrei. He went along with the present giving and the small rituals but for him a day was just a day. Whether it was a Monday or a Wednesday or Labour Day was no matter.
She realised that if she didn’t have an independent life and career of her own she might have been less tolerant of her husband’s life. But there had never been any deception or dissembling on his part, he was all of a piece. A believer in something that she found not only spurious but evil. But she found religions too to be evil and deceptive. Who could really believe that an unbaptised baby that died would spend an eternity in Purgatory? Or who could believe that if you died killing an infidel you would go to an Islamic paradise that sounded like a cross between Vermont and Madam Claude’s? What mattered to her right from the beginning was that his thoughts were for humanity. There was no drive to gain benefit for himself. His only failing was that he had never realised that it was humanity itself that made it impossible. Christians did not follow Christ’s teachings. Communists didn’t live by the manifesto. They behaved like men. Fallible, primitive, two-legged animals who killed and savaged for power and conquest, not for food. She wondered what he would have been like if his father had believed in some other creed or religion. Andrei was no more a Russian than she was. He wasn’t an American either. And then she smiled to herself—maybe he was more American than she thought. One of those fanatic TV evangelists who preached absolution in return for belief. And you didn’t even have to send him money.
Aarons had a meeting with Cowley in the last week in January. They met at the usual motel and Aarons had briefed him on the information that Moscow wanted. Cowley had brought specimen test papers used for testing potential recruits to Fort Meade and a test designed to highlight potential operatives capable of becoming experts on communications traffic analysis. There was also a report on the use of polygraph machines on both recruits and regular employees, together with a check-list used by clinical psychologists to check out staff who might eventually have access to highly classified material. There was a brief criticism of the use of EPQs, embarrassing personal questions, querying the relevance of a person’s sex life to his honesty and patriotism. The criticism noted that a congressional investigation was being carried out on the EPQ tests.
He had sent the new material to the new address in Quebec the same night. Ten days later there was a message from Moscow congratulating him and reminding him of the other material that they wanted.
They had both had a pleasant weekend with the Malloys at Hyannisport. Robert Kennedy had told them of the President’s rising concern over the integration of blacks in the southern States. They were trying desperately to avoid confrontation but it seemed that there were powerful people like George Wallace who were determined to defy the law to the bitter end.
He had two meetings with Cowley in February and March and the second meeting worried him. It covered so much material and a lot of anecdotal information that it meant staying at the motel overnight. The material that Cowley brought was of very high quality but what worried Aarons were the signs of a change in Cowley’s life-style. He arrived in a bright red Mustang convertible that looked brand new and it attracted a lot of attention outside Cowley’s cabin at the motel. What was more disturbing was that later that evening as they sat in Cowley’s cabin there was a knock on the door and when Cowley opened the door there was a young girl there who Cowley introduced
