The Secret Lovers (16 page)

In Paris, Wilson sought him out. His voice was strained and he had more trouble than ever meeting Christopher’s eyes.

“I want you to know,” he said, “that we had our German girl plant a transmitter in Moroni’s apartment.”

“Do you really think that’s going to produce anything?”

“Somebody had to blow your meeting with Bülow. If you’ve got a better candidate than Moroni I’ll be glad to hear about it.”

Christopher ceased replying. Wilson, at length, shook his head, looked at the floor, and clumsily squeezed Christopher’s shoulder. “
She’s
not a suspect,” he
said.

“Her voice is on the tapes?”

Wilson yawned; Christopher had never observed in one man so many signs of embarrassment.

“I’m the only one that recognizes her voice,” Wilson said. “Moroni doesn’t call her by name, he calls her Bella.”

“Small
b
,” Christopher said, “bella. Beautiful.”

2

Patchen was more comfortable in Paris now that it was May and his conversations with Christopher could take place without discomfort in the open air. On the day of his return to
Paris, they met at the café in the Pré Catelan in the Bois de Boulogne. Patchen arrived first but ordered nothing until Christopher joined him; he read French perfectly, but he let
Christopher speak for him to the French; to be misunderstood was, to Patchen, humiliation. With a vermouth cassis before him, he began to talk; it was too early for the luncheon crowd and he and
Christopher were all but alone.

“We’ve got a crypt for the Kamensky operation,” he said. “It will be called Tuning Fork.”

“Then there will be an operation.”

“Yes. Beginning now.”

“I’ll point out for the last time that we’re risking Kamensky’s life.”

“You do insist on that point, don’t you?” Patchen said. “You’ll be glad to know that I’ve got the Tuning Fork Working Group to act on your scruple.”

Patchen’s voice had no timbre; one had to infer his tone from his choice of words, and he was never more sarcastic than when he had done a favor. It’s no wonder, Christopher thought,
that you have enemies. Patchen continued, fingering his untouched drink.

“We’re going to try to get Kamensky out. It was decided, even Dick Sutherland agreed, to give them something for him, something important.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Trade goods. Sutherland is looking in his cupboard.”

Christopher said, “What if the opposition doesn’t buy it?”

Patchen watched a woman and a child as they fed a flock of birds. He kept his eyes on them when he spoke to Christopher again.

“Then we’ll have done our best. We’ll publish and Kamensky will be left behind.”

‘We’ll execute Otto’s plan, in short.”

“Yes. I circulated the plan. It reinforced what the whole working group wanted to do. Otto foresaw that, of course. No one in Washington really wanted to make the case for publication of
the novel, on the record. It might look bad if, after all, the KGB killed Kamensky. Otto has always been hailed as an unimpeachable expert on the Russian mind. Maybe he is. In any case, he gave
them the rationale to do what they wanted to do, and if anything goes wrong, it will be Otto who looks bad. And that doesn’t matter.”

“How will you and I look?”

“Like fools. As you might suspect, there’s an element of hope back home that that’s the way we
will
look. The area divisions are with us in case we win. If we lose,
and Kamensky is murdered and the KGB can find a way to prove we had a hand in causing them to do it, then our allies at Headquarters will have to say, as they have said before, that covert action
operations really ought to be given to the real pros. Themselves.”

Patchen put money on the table and stood up. He and Christopher walked through the Shakespeare Garden. Patchen was amused by the idea of making a garden of all the trees, plants, and herbs
mentioned in the works of the Bard. “Where,” he asked, “does the wild thyme grow? Some Frenchman must have known God’s own amount about Shakespeare’s botany. Another
expert in the trivial.” Patchen strolled on. “Isn’t there a place to rent rowboats here?” he asked. “Let’s have a ride on the water before lunch.”

From the lake, the huge studio windows of the Kirkpatricks’ apartment could be seen, like mirrors in the midday sun. Patchen sat erect in the stern of the rowboat. Christopher shipped the
oars.

“I’ll give you the scenario,” Patchen said. “It isn’t exactly what you’ll want, but, then, it never is. You’re free to modify it, within reason, in the
light of conditions in the field.”

Christopher’s eye was drawn to the Kirkpatricks’ windows. He envisioned the room beyond them glowing in sunlight that magnified the objects within and intensified their colors. He
uttered Cathy’s name. Patchen raised his eyebrows. Christopher told him to go on with what he was saying.

“It has been decided,” Patchen said, “to use this Frenchman, Claude de Cerutti. He is, after all, Kamensky’s discoverer. He’s in a bad financial position. Otto
knows him. Otto will introduce you to him under a cover name. You’ll be an innocent young man, just back from Russia. This manuscript has fallen into your hands by means you cannot, as a
matter of honor, describe. You will be jumpy about the whole transaction. You will give Cerutti the notion that he, not you, is the old hand at international intrigue. So far, it sounds just like
you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. You’re quoting my operational proposal.”

“I know. You are going to give Cerutti world rights to this book and let him peddle it in other countries in other languages.”

“World rights? They might be worth millions.”

“A thought that will, I’m sure, occur to Cerutti. But you’ll have a secret agreement with him, that one quarter of all profits will be paid into a numbered Swiss account.
Ostensibly, that will be your share of the take.”

“What if he doesn’t pay?”

Patchen put a hand in the murky water of the lake and snapped the moisture from his fingers onto the bottom of the boat.

“People pay,” he said. “Cerutti is not, according to Otto, a cretin. In the end, he’ll certainly figure you for what you are, and I think he’ll surmise that
it’s a matter of sound business practice to play it straight with you.”

“What happens to the money in Switzerland?”

“Another point for you, Paul. We deduct operational expenses and hold the rest for Kamensky or his heirs. Sooner or later he or his kids will get out of Russia. When they do, they’ll
be rich. It’s a little gift from us to them, in addition to the regular royalties that will be put into a blocked account for Kamensky.”

“Why did Headquarters agree to that?”

“It was something you said to me. I paraphrased it, of course. You said Kamensky wasn’t an agent, so we had no right to sacrifice him. Of course, he
is
an
agent—unwitting, yes, but an agent from the moment we got our hands on his book. That’s the way the KGB would look at it. Kamensky’s spent twenty years in prison camps. If one of
our fellows is captured and put away, we give him his back pay when he gets out, no matter how long he’s locked up. Same principle for Kamensky. At first the concept baffled everyone back
home, but then they saw it as a way of congratulating themselves on their instinctive human decency. And, of course, it cost the Treasury nothing. So they approved.”

“Very nice,” Christopher said. “Worthy of Otto.”

“I’m glad you approve. I want you to seduce this Cerutti before the end of the month. Put all your other ops aside, cancel all your agent meetings. Stay in Paris. I don’t want
any paper on you in true name anywhere for at least two weeks. I have a Canadian passport for you and other black ID. Move into a hotel. Don’t give Cerutti a moment’s rest until
you’ve got him. I want this book printed, bound, and ready to go, if we have to go, in sixty days.”

“How is Cerutti going to pay for all this?”

“An angel is going to appear with a black bag. That’s how Claude will know that God is on his side. You can remind him that He’s a jealous God.”

Christopher put the oars back in the oarlocks.

“Pull for the island,” Patchen said. “Isn’t there a restaurant there?”

3

Maria Rothchild brought tea on a silver tray. Patchen, who had full use of only one hand, refused a pastry. So did Christopher, who did not like sweets. Maria ate a
mille-feuilles. “I do this in the intervals when Otto’s eyes are closed,” she said. “He thinks I’m reckless about my figure.”

Patchen walked with his teacup around the four walls of the sitting room. He looked intently at each picture. “Otto, you’ve collected wisely,” he said. Rothchild gave Maria a
look: what does this bureaucrat know?

“Have you had this place swept, as I asked?” Patchen asked.

“Yes. Wilson-Watson-Wharton had his technician do it. No enemy is listening.”

“Is Wilson still coming around?”

“Every day, practically,” Maria said. “It’s not as bad as all that really, but he does come often. You heard about the great polygraph adventure?”

“Yes. Evidently those Swiss surgeons disconnected your conscience, Otto. You ought to tell Paul the cost of the operation. I think we could justify it as an operational expense in his
case.”

Without preamble, Patchen told Rothchild that the Kamensky manuscript would be published.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I want you to introduce your pal Claude de Cerutti to your young Canadian friend, Paul Cowan, here.”

“Paul will handle the seduction?”

“Yes, and all the legwork. He’ll keep you posted.”

“I am to know nothing of what is going on between Paul and Cerutti, so far as Cerutti knows?”

“Nothing. You just bring them together.”

“I’ve known Cerutti for twenty-five years. He will know.”

“No, Otto, he will not
know.
He’ll suspect. We know how to live with that.”

Rothchild whistled through his bloodless lips. Patchen refused to believe in Rothchild’s boredom.

“I’m going to speak plainly to you, Otto,” Patchen said. “This is your operation. You conceived it. But in its execution, you’re in the background. You must not
show up on anybody’s screen. If there was some other way of putting Paul and Cerutti together, I’d do it.”

“Then let Paul walk in on him cold.”

There was a sound of breathing in the quiet room. Maria, lips and fists clenched, was staring fixedly at the pattern in the carpet.

“David,” she said, “what, exactly, is the point of treating Otto like some GS-8 just off the Farm? I don’t understand you.”

“Then I must make myself plainer. The security of this operation was compromised at the beginning. I don’t want it compromised again, not in the smallest way. Not through ego, not
through mistakes.”

Rothchild glanced from face to face, as if he were chairman of the meeting. “If there’s no more to be said on this subject,” he said, “I suggest we discuss more pressing
questions.”

Patchen described to Rothchild the outlines of the operation. Rothchild said, “You’ve changed very little of what I recommended. The money arrangement is good. Cerutti will be
dazzled by it. He’ll have too much to lose to compromise us.”

“That’s the idea.”

“You haven’t said what language you intend to publish in.”

“We’re using a French publisher.”

“A French publisher,” Rothchild said, emphasizing each word, “who was once the leading publisher of Russian-language books in Europe.”

Maria, as Rothchild spoke this last sentence, stirred on the sofa beside Christopher.

“Paul has read the Russian original,” Rothchild said. “What does he think of it?”

“I’ve told you, Otto,” Christopher said. “It’s a great novel.”

“Could you do it justice in your attempts to fix up the English translation?”

“You know the answer. Kamensky’s writing can’t be translated. It’s still very powerful in English, but it hasn’t the heat of his Russian.”

“Exactly. If you cannot do it in English, and you’re a man with a mind and a poetic gift very like Kamensky’s, Paul—if not in English, which is the closest language to
Russian in its depth and its resonance, what will happen in French?”

“French isn’t
big
enough,” Maria said. “French is too limited a language to encompass such a vast work of art as
The Little Death.
”

“French managed to contain Voltaire and Flaubert and Baudelaire,” Christopher said.

“And Victor Hugo, hélas,” replied Maria.

Patchen avoided Christopher’s eyes. “I thought I understood you wanted this book published first in French, Otto. Did I miss something?”

“No, David,
I
missed something. Incessantly, you and Paul talk about Kamensky, Kamensky, Kamensky. Well, what about him?”

No one replied. Rothchild waited until he had their full attention.

“What Kamensky wants is for his work to be published in Russian,” Rothchild said. “Cerutti has the printer to do it. He can bring it out in French and in Russian on the same
day.”

“It’s brilliant,” Maria said. She went to Rothchild and put her hands on the back of his chair, caressing the fabric as if it were part of his body.

Patchen now looked full at Christopher. “Yes,” he said. “It is brilliant. Dick Sutherland will love it. Russian émigrés will be smuggling copies into the Soviet
Union like girls into Arabia.”

“That may happen,” said Rothchild. He stirred in his chair. “It might even make a nice little secondary op for Sutherland’s shop, to keep him happy. But the main thing is
Kiril Alekseivich Kamensky. We’ve decided to give his work to the world. Let’s give it to the world whole, as he made it.”

As he spoke, Rothchild actually leaned forward in his chair, panting with the effort, pointing a trembling forefinger at them.

It was dusk when Patchen and Christopher left the Rothchilds. They walked over the Pont Sully and along the boulevard toward the Bastille. Patchen was limping badly. They found
a café and Christopher ordered beer for them both.

“You said nothing to Otto about getting Kamensky out.”

“No,” Patchen replied. “I don’t think Otto needs to know about that.”