An Honorable Man (20 page)

What surprised Mueller was that he hadn't seen it coming. He'd stepped around a privet hedge in his Alice in Wonderland world and fallen through a trapdoor. He felt like he was playing a walk-on role that someone had written for him. Things that had once been clear were now opaque and his options had narrowed. The motivations of men around him were suspect, and he no longer knew whom to trust. He no longer knew how much of what he knew he could believe. Yes, he had mistakenly taken his briefcase with him to the station, and that was an error, but that hid the deeper issue that infected his judgment. He just didn't care anymore and for that reason he hadn't seen this coming. He needed to get out.

Mueller opened his desk drawer and removed the envelope with the letter of resignation that he'd written but not sent. Three sentences. Short and to the point. He had already signed
the letter, so in a sense he had resigned in his mind, and all that remained was to announce his decision. He considered a brace of doubts. Would he be blacklisted? Would he lose the teaching position he'd been offered? And how would the cloud of suspicion over him play out in a long tail of an FBI inquiry? His mind repeated the questions, but he had no answers. He sealed the envelope.

He called his secretary.

Dorothy was at his door promptly. A young widow of the war who'd moved to the capital from the Deep South, and stayed on after she got the grievous news on D-day. She was polite, well educated, and smart beyond the needs of the office.

“Would you see that this goes to Rose, the director's secretary?” She stood alertly in front of his desk. He handed her the envelope.

“I'll take it now.”

“Monday,” he said.

“Not tomorrow?”

“I won't be in the office tomorrow,” he said vaguely.

“Are you taking the day off?”

“It doesn't really concern you.” He said this without thinking.

Afterward, it struck him that he hadn't needed to be brusque like that. She was only doing her job. It was up to her to manage his appointments and take his calls, and she'd need to know what to say if someone came looking for him. It would be a poor reflection on her if she didn't have an answer other than “I don't know.” He should have thought of that.

These thoughts came to him on the Greyhound bus to Cen
treville. It was late. He was alone on the last bus out of town Thursday ahead of the first weekenders who would start traveling in the morning. He didn't want to worry about who might be on the bus to see him, so he'd gone at an off hour. He needed time alone to consider his next steps.

He stepped off the bus at 11:00 p.m. Mist from the bay had rolled in and hung low to the ground between budding trees and the silence of the night. What struck him first was the quiet. The bus's growling engine had faded and there was only the mournful foghorn in the distance and somewhere along the street the tinny sound of a radio. He glanced up the street and then in the opposite direction toward the white church. There was no one out. Main Street was empty except for the sheriff's patrol car parked in front of the courthouse. He found his bicycle chained to the lamppost where he'd left it weeks before. A dog loped along the sidewalk but paid no attention to the stranger attaching a duffel bag to his bike. Alone and free. He wondered how long that would last.

He was a solitary bicyclist on the narrow road to his cottage. He had worried his leg wasn't healed well enough to pedal that distance, but found he had no difficulty. Fresh air filled his lungs and he concentrated on the small world that opened in front of him on the dark road. Out of nowhere a car came up from behind and illuminated a tunnel into the night, and Mueller suddenly gripped the handlebars tighter, preparing for the impact of wind. Terror squeezed his chest and then just as suddenly the automobile sped past and disappeared into the night.

Mueller entered the cottage with the key above the door
jamb. The kitchen was cold, but little had changed since he'd left. Beth's flowers had dried and their colors faded. He tossed them in the garbage and then went to the living room. He didn't turn on the light, but lay on the sofa. Moonlight entered the bay windows where the owner had closed in the porch.

Mueller put his head on a pillow and gazed at the ceiling. His shoes were on and so was his overcoat. He placed his hands on his chest, palms down. The moon hung in the sky like a lantern and washed his face in metallic light. The room was otherwise dark. He lay on the cusp of sleep, but sleepless, for a long time. His eyes gazed at the ceiling looking at nothing and seeing only shimmering shapes as clouds disturbed the moonlight. His mind drifted to the past, and to the moments of his youth and regrets for things done, or left undone, and his whole body filled with powerful emotion. His mind was a jerky kinescope of scenes from college, the war, and from Vienna.

It seemed to him that all the moments of his life occupied the same space, the past collected in the present, and future events already existed and were waiting for him to find his way to them—just as he knew what to expect when he got to the office and his secretary greeted him with her predictable cheerfulness. He knew what to expect tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. He simply had to wait in his loneliness for his future to arrive.

For no reason he thought of May 5, Vienna, the night of the food riots, when he'd been stuck in the Soviet zone waiting for the turmoil to subside so he could return to the Innere Stadt. He remembered gangs of children racing through the narrow streets
without shoes, desperate, hungry, moving in waves, disappearing and then reappearing. He was on his way to visit his son at his estranged wife's apartment, and he'd been making his way to an unguarded spot where someone who knew the city grid could slip in and out of the Soviet sector. He remembered windowless Soviet military vehicles racing toward the children, the city frozen in terror that they'd be detained and sent east to a camp. He waited at a corner, taking longer than he should to make his way to safety, as he worried these children were at risk. Young boys no older than twelve or thirteen, and many younger, desperate for safety racing past barriers of smoldering car tires. No one knew how terrible it would be. Chaos had come suddenly from a single gunshot on the peaceful march, and then the noise, confusion, and desperate movements of children who'd been gathered together to show the world the face of a starving city. And he remembered seeing Roger Altman hard against a building seeking cover from the rampaging troops. He too was at the point of entry to the safe alley separating the American zone from the Soviet. That had surprised Mueller, and then he'd seen Altman risk his life for one of those children. A young girl had fallen, her leg cracked when she caught her ankle in a wide sewer grating. Altman ran out and took the innocent girl from the street just as a Soviet jeep bore down. He saved her life. Mueller came back to this uncomfortable recollection from time to time, and sometimes it would come to him out of nowhere, ambush him while he was resting, or reading, or waiting for the trolley. He'd look up at nothing and see that night in his mind's eye. He could be walking through a quiet neighborhood in Georgetown where nothing
had changed in years, and he'd see the face of a girl, and he'd feel, almost physically feel, the memory leap out at him, and time would slow down in the gravitational pull of the past. He never asked Altman why he'd been there that night. He never wanted to know. He remembered only how he'd saved the girl's life.

  •  •  •  

Fiery noon. Mueller looked out the cottage's sunroom window at the bay. The day's fine weather was almost mocking. Molten sunshine bore down mercilessly from a blue sky. A light breeze rustled spring flowers budding in the tired earth and two gulls, carried on the wind, held a vigil above the cove.

Mueller lifted his binoculars and looked at the pink Soviet compound across the narrow stretch of water. The green Buick and black sedan he'd seen before were again parked in the driveway. There was a strange quiet to the place. It was Saturday, but the tennis courts were empty and there was no sign of life. With the binoculars he saw that the second-floor curtains were drawn.

Mueller hadn't heard from Vasilenko and he was curious about that. He owed Vasilenko money for his last drop. News coming from Moscow was reverberating throughout the chain of command and the director had gotten it right that it was impossible to know whether Stalin had been dead for some time—murdered—or died in the way medical bulletins said he had. All signs pointed to a purge.

The loud honk of a car warned Mueller that someone had arrived. A car door slammed shut and he heard his name called, and then again. Then he heard the kitchen door burst open.

“So you are here.” Beth stood in the open door, arms akimbo. “Are you okay? You look like you haven't slept.”

“I'm fine,” he said. “I took a late bus.” He tried to smile to be pleasant, but the expression on his face was lost to a nagging preoccupation. Mueller stood slowly. It surprised him that he was touched she had come by, but he was at a loss for words, uncertain whether he should bring up the incident at the party. His eyes drifted as he searched for the right words.

“Your secretary didn't know where you'd gone. She said you'd taken the day off.”

Secretary?
He looked directly at Beth.

“I got your number from Roger. I wanted to invite you to dinner. To make up for being rude at the party. If I was rude. So, here I am, in person.”

“I see.”

“You missed the winter races.”

His expression was blank.

“You know, people on sailboats trying their best to finish first.”

He'd forgotten.
“Who won?”

“A crew from the Naval Academy.” She laughed. “Roger thought they cheated.”

There was a beat of silence.

“How was your week?” she asked.

Mueller shook his head. “Miserable. About as bad as it could get.”

“We have that in common, for what it's worth, but I expect it's not worth much. We had a scare when our dog disappeared, but then she came back. The threatening calls have stopped. Will you to come to dinner tonight?”

Her hands were plunged in her pockets, and she stood awkwardly like a schoolgirl. “Will you?”

It bothered Mueller that he had the power to disappoint her. He wasn't ready for that responsibility. “What time?”

“Early if you want a drink. Say six. Roger will be there. Shall I pick you up?”

He nodded at a canoe that he'd pulled ashore earlier that morning. “I'll paddle. It's not far.”

They stood side by side at her red convertible in the gravel driveway, hesitant, each waiting for the other to say a word, or make a gesture of separation—but neither did. She waited for him to say something, and when he didn't, she slipped into the driver's seat and slammed the door. She drove off.

  •  •  •  

Quiet dusk. Mueller sipped iced tea on the back porch of the Altmans' grand Victorian home and stared at a girl playing under a wide oak tree. He was alone at a table set for dinner. The little girl was playing by herself in the deepening shadows, only a child. Six years old, if that. From a low branch there was a swing made of rope and an old tire. The scrawny little girl was skipping rope. Her face was pale, hair wild, feet without shoes, and her dress too large. She looked clumsy each time she brought the rope over her head and made an effort to hop.

Mueller gazed at the girl, about his boy's age, he thought. He heard vague, excited voices in the kitchen. Then a woman ran out of the back door and swept the child into her arms. It was Roger's fiancée. She wiped dirt from the child's face and then carried her
quickly in a protective embrace to the housekeeper's cottage that sat in the rear of the main house.

“The girl isn't Roger's, if you're wondering.”

Beth had come up quietly behind Mueller and now stood at his side, wiping her hands on her apron. She nodded brusquely toward the cottage where the woman had disappeared with her daughter. “He helped her out of a jam. They have an arrangement. He gives her a little money each month and she plays along as his companion. It's good for both of them.”

Beth looked at Mueller, suddenly appalled. “I'm telling you this in confidence. Do you understand? You must never repeat it.” Her eyes had opened wide and were worried. “Roger would kill me if he knew I'd told you.”

Mueller nodded agreement. He wasn't happy to have this obligation to her. A promise held within itself the source of its own disappointment.

She forced a smile. “We're almost ready to eat. Roger is finishing dessert. I think he's making a berry pie. He hates to cook, but he has one berry pie recipe that he makes when we have friends over. The kitchen here makes cooks out of all of us noncooks.”

She sat beside Mueller in a cane chair and poured herself a glass of red wine from the decanted bottle. She leisurely sipped from the stemmed glass. They sat in the gloaming with a view of the dying twilight sun on the horizon. High up above the trees there was a remnant of blue sky. Slowly, Beth leaned forward. “How long have you known my brother?”

Mueller was tempted to pour himself a glass of the wine. Alcohol made it easier to speak in half-truths. He saw it in all his
colleagues. Deception. Stress. Hard drinking. It was a bad combination.

“We were at Yale together.”

“Roommates?”

“Different years.”

“What was he like in college?”

“Like? Mixed up, like the rest of us. A little quiet, a deep reader. He impressed all of us with his intelligence. He read poetry. A lot of Ezra Pound. Shakespeare's sonnets. And then there was this other side of him—the political side. We said that he had the anticommunist fervor of an ardent socialist. If the Spanish Civil War hadn't just been lost, I think he would have volunteered. He was romantic about things like war and freedom and friendship. He liked to quote that line, I forget who said it, Kipling or Forster: ‘If one had the choice of betraying one's country or one's friend, one should hope for the courage to betray one's country.' . . . Idealism is an illness that strikes young men. We found it easy to believe what we wanted to be true.”