“Not advice, my love. Just comment.”
“And if you do this you’ll be content just to be a bookseller.”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “To me I always was a bookseller.” He smiled. “A bookseller with a dream. A dream that could have worked. But didn’t.”
“Does it anger you that it doesn’t work?”
“Oddly enough it doesn’t depress me.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are people here in America, people with power, who believe in the same dream and are going to make it work.” He paused. “The Kennedys have all the money they could possibly want but they give up their lives to making Americans care about one another. They don’t need the power or the money or the status.”
“Will you go on helping them?”
“Yes. If they want me to.”
“Who was it said—‘No man is an island …’?”
“John Donne in Devotions. Why do you ask?”
“Because he was wrong. You are an island. I am your wife and I know so little of your life. Nobody does. Anna and Ivan don’t, not even the people in Moscow know you.”
“We’ll make up for lost time,” he said quietly, and she knew that he meant it.
He had spent two hours with Malloy, telling him of what he intended doing.
“Can I tell the Kennedys?”
“If you think they would be interested.”
“Of course they will. They value your advice. Will you still advise them?”
“If they want me to.”
“Will you be able to live off the bookselling business?”
“Yes. And we have Tania’s income too. We’ll be OK.”
“Is there anything I could do to make things easier?”
“Could it be fixed so that I’m an American citizen?”
“But you are already, aren’t you?”
Aarons smiled. “I’ve got two American passports and supporting documents. And a Canadian passport, a German one, a French one and a Spanish one. All of them are false. I’d like the genuine thing.”
Malloy smiled. “At least your Soviet passport’s for real.”
Aarons shook his head. “I’ve never had a Soviet passport.”
“The President’s going to Berlin. Can it wait until he gets back or do you need it right away?”
“I can wait. It will take me some weeks to close down my operation.”
The Aarons and the Malloys had watched on TV the President’s official visit to West Berlin. Taking a look at the Wall and Check-Point Charlie and afterwards on the balcony of the Rathaus draped with a huge American flag and the short speech that brought the thunderous applause from 150,000 West Berliners packed into the square facing the City Hall. “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ ”
It was a speech that sent a message to the world about America’s support for freedom of passage and drew attention to a regime that had to build walls with barbed wire, guard dogs, armed guards and minefields to keep its citizens from voting with their feet for freedom and prosperity. The speech re-emphasised the Russian repression and bloody-mindedness that caused the Allies to mount the Berlin Air-lift to prevent the Russians from starving the West Berliners into submission.
Malloy had talked to Bobby Kennedy about the documentation for Aarons. It would take some time but both Kennedys were delighted with the news. It would be a longer process than usual because such things would normally be dealt with by either the FBI or the CIA. Those agencies were used to creating new identities and backgrounds for defectors, but Aarons was not a defector, neither must his identity be revealed to any government agency. But Aarons was in no hurry. He had to close down his network without arousing anyone’s suspicion that that was what he was doing.
Then in August there was tragedy in the Kennedy family. Jackie Kennedy gave birth to a premature baby. It was a son, five weeks premature and born with a lung ailment. The baby lived for less than two days and the President was grief-stricken.
CHAPTER 54
Tania looked up from the copy of Life that she was reading and watched Aarons as he sat at the small desk by the window. A shaft of pale November sunlight slashed across his face, emphasising the furrows and lines that made it look as if it were a piece of sculpture. The deep-set eyes, the full lips and the aquiline nose made it look like the head of some Aztec god or a Sioux warrior.
He was going over his check-list of things that had been done to close down the network. There was little more to be done before he finally notified Moscow that he was no longer a player. She had never seen him so relaxed. As convinced as any college-boy that the White House was a new Camelot, swept along by the charm and energy and good intentions of the Kennedy brothers. Impressed by their determination to make America in the image that those old men had worked out all those years ago when they drew up the Constitution. And now he was no longer a hanger-on but part of it, eager to help in any way they wanted. Already she could discern a change in his outlook, a touch of optimism about the human race and where it was heading. Old habits die hard but Andrei Aarons was well on the way to being an American.
She put aside the magazine and went into the kitchen, switching on the coffee percolator and putting two slices of bread in the toaster. Almost without thinking she switched on the radio for the 3 p.m. news. At first she assumed that it was a hoax like Orson Welles and The War of the Worlds. But as the announcer went on with comments from the Dallas priest who had administered the last rites and the confirmation that Lyndon Johnson was now the President of the United States of America she knew that it was no hoax. She was stunned and disbelieving. Why
