knifed herself, Professor. And they say they can prove it.'
Bekuv looked away.
'Anyway.' said Mann, breathing a sigh. 'The fact of the matter is that the investigation is closing as far as you are concerned. My people have lost interest in you — you've cost the American taxpayer too much money already. You'll be allowed to live wherever you like — within reason — but you'll have to find a place for yourself… the same goes for getting a job. No chair at N.Y.U. You will have to read the vacancies in the papers. For the time being the two of you are being kept separate but that's for your own protection. My people say that there will be more chance of your K.G.B. squads killing you if you are together. Next year, of course, the danger will have subsided a little. By then there will probably be no objection to your living under the same roof again.'
'Now wait a minute…' said Bekuv.
'Sorry it had to go this way, Professor. As your wife understood so well, this could have been a big one for us.' He smiled to show that he held no ill feelings. 'You'll be able to keep the hi-fi and the recordings and stuff of course.' He picked up papers from his desk and tapped them edge-down on the desk to tidy them.
It was only then that Bekuv seemed to become aware of my presence in the dark corner of the office. He turned to me. 'Is Miss Bancroft with my wife?' he asked.
'That's right,' I said. 'She'll be with her for a little while.'
'How long,' he said. 'I don't want my wife to be with Miss Bancroft.'
'No one tells me anything, Professor,' I said.
Mann said, 'Your wife wanted Miss Bancroft along for company.' Bekuv nodded. Mann had been making a great play of rummaging round his desk and, as Bekuv turned to leave, he suddenly produced a flimsy sheet of paper, waved it and said, 'Oh, this is something for you, Professor. It's a copy of a letter to your wife.'
He passed it to him. It was a carbon copy of a letter. There were a couple of official rubber stamps on it and a paper-clip. Bekuv took it without a word, and moved over to the window to read it by the grey morning light. He read it aloud in his careful English…
'Dear Mrs Bekuv, This is to confirm our conversation of yesterday. As promised, I have applied for the necessary documents in connection with your immigration and naturalization. You will appreciate that, although you have been admitted to the U.S.A. under the special provisions granted to certain government agencies, your continued stay and permission to take up gainful employment must remain subject to the usual procedures. Yours truly…'
'Just a lot of legal evasions and doubletalk,' pronounced Bekuv when he finished reading.
'I quite agree,' said Mann, who had invented it and typed it.
Professor Bekuv put the flimsy copy back on to Mann's desk. Bekuv had been close to the security business long enough to understand such a message.
'You're going to send us back to Russia?' said Bekuv. He walked across the room and opened the door a fraction so that there was a bar of blue fluorescent light cutting him into two halves. 'Either we do exactly as you demand, or you will send us back to them.'
Mann didn't answer but he was watching Bekuv's every move.
'This letter is just the beginning,' said Bekuv. 'It is typical of you, Major Mann. You'll let your official government departments carry out the execution for you. Then you will be able to say you had no hand in it.'
'You've got it a little bit wrong haven't you, Professor? The U.S. immigration department has no executioners on its payroll. These executions you want to make me responsible for will be carried out after you return. They'll be carried out by your little old K.G.B. comrades. Remember the K.G.B., Professor? Those wonderful people who gave you the Gulag Archipelago.'
'You have never lived in the Soviet Union, or you would know how little choice a man has. The K.G.B. ordered me to work for them — I did not volunteer to do so.'
'You're breaking my heart, Professor.'
Bekuv stood in the doorway, with the door to the corridor open just an inch or two. Perhaps he wanted to let enough light into the room to be able to see the expressions on our faces.
'Is that all you have to say, Major Mann?'
'I can't think of anything else, Professor… except maybe farewell.'
Bekuv stood in the doorway for a long time. 'I should have told you about the place in Ireland… I should have told you earlier.'
'You jerk,' said Mann. 'Three people died.'
'I was with the trade delegation in London,' said Bekuv. 'It was years ago. I had to meet a man from Dublin. I met him only once. It was at Waterloo Station in London. He had some documents. We used the copying machine on the station.'
'The maser programme?'
'We were falling behind,' said Bekuv. 'This man brought drawings and calculations.'
Mann pulled the desk light so that it shone on to a bright blue blotter. Under the light he arranged a row of photos. One of them was a passport picture of Reid-Kennedy. 'Do you want to come here a moment, Professor.' Mann's voice was precise and quiet, like that of a terrified parent coaxing a small child away from an electrified fence.
'He wasn't a scientist,' said Bekuv, 'but he understood the calculations.' He walked over to the desk and looked at the photos arranged neatly like winning tricks in a bridge game. Mann held his breath until Bekuv placed a finger on the face of Reid-Kennedy.
Mann shuffled the pictures together without commenting on Bekuv's choice. 'And the K.G.B. were running the operation?' '
'Entirely,' said Bekuv. 'When the maser programme was given a shortened development target, the K.G.B. became responsible. I'd been reporting to the K.G.B. since my time in university and I was a senior man in the maser programme. It was natural that the K.G.B. chose me. When the scientific material started to arrive from America, the K.G.B. told me that I would get it first, and that the department would not be notified.'
'That gave you a chance to shine,' said Mann.
'It was the way the K.G.B. always did such things. They wanted their own people promoted, and so they gave their own men the best of the foreign intelligence material.'
'And no one suspected? No one suspected when you went into the lab next morning and shouted eureka?'
'It would have been a reckless fool who voiced such suspicions,' said Bekuv.
'Jesus,' said Mann sourly, 'and you corrupt bastards have the nerve to criticize us.'
Bekuv didn't reply. The telephone rang. Mann picked it up and grunted into it for a minute or two before saying goodbye.
'Why don't you take a coffee break, Professor,' said Mann.
'I hope I've been of help,' said Bekuv.
'Like a good citizen,' said Mann.
'I will be happier,' Bekuv said, 'when I can read what those duties are, on the back of a U.S. passport.' He didn't smile.
'We're going to get along just fine, Professor,' said Mann.
Neither Mann nor I spoke until we heard Bekuv go into his room and switch on the radio. Even then we observed all the usual precautions for not being overheard.
'It was her all the time,' said Mann. 'It was Mrs Bekuv. We had it the wrong way round. We thought he was clamming-up.'
I said, 'Without his wife, he'll be singing his way through the hit parade by weekend.'
'Let's hope so,' said Mann. He went over to the light-switch and put the lights on. They were fluorescent tubes, and they flickered a dozen times before filling the room with light. Mann searched the drawers of his desk before finding the box of cigars his wife had 'given him at Christmas. 'Makes you wonder what kind of hold she had over him,' said Mann. He lit the cigar and offered the box to me. Already half the contents had been smoked — I declined.
'Perhaps he loves her,' I said. 'Perhaps it's one of those happy marriages you never read about.'
'I hate those two Russian bastards,' said Mann.
'Having his wife join him was the worst thing that happened to this investigation,' I said.
