the sectional aeronautical charts he had been annotating and slipped his pencil into his pocket. Their guest, Mikhail Goncharov, had gone upstairs to He down. He and Callie had been talking all afternoon. ‘He is a very brave man,” Callie said forcefully.
“I suspect so,” Jake murmured.
“He was a Communist and got into the KGB through his uncle, who was a bigwig there. A major general, I think he said. He’d worked in the Fifth Directorate for eight years when he was picked for the archivist job. He didn’t get along with his boss, who campaigned hard to get rid of him. I think by that time he was disillusioned with the KGB and the Communists, but if he resigned from the organization he would have been unable to get other work.”
“And he would have been a security risk.”
“Yes. He was stuck and knew it. So he made the best of the archivist assignment. It was actually a very low-pressure, low-visibility job. He said that in effect he was merely the head clerk, overseeing the typists who transcribed handwritten notes, overseeing the clerks who logged the files in and out, preparing the department’s budget, supervising the guards who were on duty twenty-four hours a day, and so forth. The amazing thing is that the files for all the directorates were kept in his archives — all of them — for security purposes. Regulations forbid anyone, even the top people, from keeping files in their private safes.”
“Why did he begin making notes?”
“Disillusionment, he says. He doesn’t want to talk of that decision, but it is the key to his personality. He saw the reports and reviewed the files for completeness for every single activity the KGB engaged in — everything — from internal security to bugging foreign embassies in Moscow and overseas, running spy rings and counterintelligence operations, the campaigns against the dissidents, the show trials, covering up scandals among the party elite, all of it. And he had time to review the old files in the archives, the files from Lenin’s and Stalin’s time. Those files were sometimes incomplete, he says. In the past highly sensitive material was removed ffom the files. The example he gave me was of the arrest record of Stalin when he was a young man. The file was there be-
cause it was numbered and had to be accounted for, but the folder was empty.”
“You like Goncharov, don’t you?”
“I admire him, yes. The pressure he put himself under by betraying the state! Living with that day in and day out for all those years, living with the constant fear of being found out. He doesn’t say so, but I think they would have executed him if they had learned what he was doing.”
“I have no doubt they would have,” Jake agreed.
“His wife is now dead because of what he did.”
“She must have known what he was doing. At some point all that paper accumulating in their small apartment had to be explained.”
“Oh, she knew, all right. And shared his conviction that he was doing the right thing. Still, the guilt is hard to bear.” Callie fell silent, thinking about the afternoon’s conversations.
Finally she passed her hand over her face, then said, “I asked him the questions you suggested. He can’t remember anything on any of those people.”
Jake studied his toes. “Can’t or won’t?” he prompted.
“I believe he can’t. He has nothing to hide. He risked his life and his wife’s life for all those years to make notes on the files and threw their fate to the wind to bring the information to the West.”
Jake Grafton nodded.
“But Jake, if he can’t remember, perhaps those files don’t exist. Perhaps they never existed.”
“The copies are being reviewed. Quickly read, not analyzed. We’ll know more in a day or two. Perhaps three.”
“Who knew the files had been copied?”
“MI-5, of course, and probably a few senior people in the CIA. But no one else. British intelligence had secretly copied the files without permission, and the people who knew it didn’t want that fact leaking back to Goncharov. They wanted his cooperation.”
“So whoever went after him thought the files had not been copied?”
“Apparently.”
“But I don’t understand. If he can’t remember, perhaps the files they thought were there never existed at all.”
“Perhaps.”
“Then why would any of those people want him dead and nonexistent files destroyed?”
“That’s the nub of it.”
They talked on, and even went on to other subjects, but after a while Callie came back to this one. “If it had been your decision and Goncharov refused to allow the files to be copied, would you have betrayed his trust and copied them against his wishes?”
“In a heartbeat,” Jake said. “When Kelly Erlanger said he had been in Britain a week and a few days in America and there was only one copy of the files, his, I knew that couldn’t be true. No competent, responsible intelligence officer would take the chance that the most precious intelligence treasure of modern times might be lost in a plane crash or house fire. Not one. Those files were duplicated the instant they were out of his sight.”
“So who ordered the files destroyed and Goncharov murdered?”
“Someone who isn’t an intelligence officer.”
Dorsey O’Shea was as forthcoming about her reasons for being in New York as I had been. Baldly, she was evasive, but unlike me, she didn’t have the classified information laws to hide behind, not that she needed them. Over white wine at the restaurant on the Upper West Side, she told me that she and the yacht dude hadn’t hit it off, so she decided to come home.
“I felt like a fugitive,” she said earnestly, leaning forward to give me a good view of her ample cleavage. “I wanted to come home so if anyone wanted to question me, they could see that I had nothing to hide.” The irony of that remark was not lost on me.
“Been home yet?”
“To Maryland? Not yet. I thought I’d spend a few days in New York and do some shopping, see some friends. The political theater is just a bonus. Tommy, I need something to take my mind off that—.” She made a gesture.
Well, that certainly was plausible. Shopping and socializing was all Dorsey had ever done since she left college — without a degree, I might add. The educators had gotten stuffy about the difference between required courses and electives, according to her, so she packed her checkbook and told them good-bye. After all, people who know things can usually be hired by the hour. I suspected there was a young male involved in Dorsey’s college adventure, but I had never pressed her on it.
Inevitably our conversation returned to the convention. “What do you think of the chances of having a woman vice-presidental candidate?”
“The country is ready,” she said matter-of-factly. “I think it will happen this week. I hope it does. I meant it when I said the moment is historic. If it happens, life will be different for every woman in America.”
I wasn’t about to argue that. “Think Zooey has a chance to be picked?”
“God, that would be awesome! She’s presidential timber. But whether the president has the guts to make the choice, I don’t know.”
“You’ve given a lot of money to the president’s campaign,” I remarked, “so why don’t you tell Dell Royston what you think? He has to listen to big contributors.” Actually I didn’t know that she’d ever given a politician a dime, but I felt that this shot in the dark was likely to hit something.
And it did. For a second she looked startled, but she said, “Perhaps I should talk to him.” She laughed to cover up letting her face slip. “And maybe I should write the president a letter. If enough people want her, he will have to choose her. Right?”
Our dinner arrived, and she picked at it. Skinny rich women never eat much. “Have you ever personally met Zooey?” I asked casually.
She took her time before she answered. “Several times, as I recall. Parties and receptions.”
“Did you ever go to the White House?” I asked warmly, as if that were a big deal.
Again the hesitation. Her answer could be checked, and she knew it. “One of the receptions was at the White
