“How?”
“I’m not at liberty to explain the details. You understand.”
“All right,” I said. “Why have you told me all this?”
“To gain your sympathy. Do I have it?”
“Up to a point.”
“Up to what point, Mr. Bristow? The point of willingness to help us?”
MacIver had been right. I felt as if Nikki had kicked me in the pit of the stomach.
I straightened up on the bench. “I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t fight. “I understand. I had hoped …”
“Under other circumstances I might have.” That was a shabby attempt and I regretted it the instant I had spoken. But I didn’t retract it; it was too late for that.
I don’t know if he understood what I meant. If Nikki hadn’t chosen to take advantage of our relationship in such a way I might have been far more open to his suggestion. But I wasn’t sure of that; I’m still not sure what I might have done under other circumstances. Anyone who is exposed to the product of the modern world’s massive news-gathering machinery learns very quickly that he cannot possibly concern himself with even a small fraction of the injustice and misery that infects his planet. And since he cannot help everyone he soon becomes indifferent to anyone. I think this is really why witnesses to muggings watch but do nothing—it is why none of us wants to “get involved.” We are assailed by too many appeals, all of them worthy; we are threatened by an avalanche of “problems” which cry out for “solutions”; finally in defense of our sanity we close our ears and isolate ourselves.
The moral rectitude of such a course is dubious but the pragmatic necessity is clear. In such a mood of defensive isolation I might well have reasoned that the Jews now had a strong and capable ally—the people and government of Israel—and that I, who was neither a smuggler nor a Jew, had no obligation to assist them. I might have; I might not. I can’t say. The issue was clouded by Nikki’s involvement in it; this was what I reacted to—it was my personal sense of betrayal that dictated my decision.
Bukov got to his feet, carrying the umbrella. “I apologize for taking so much of your time.”
“It’s quite all right.”
“We’d better get back. Your friend will be waking up soon.”
We walked through the dim empty station. As we passed through the door and he unfurled the umbrella he said, “Please remember my offer of assistance. If the need arises, I’m at your service.”
“I shouldn’t think you owe me anything.”
“It wasn’t intended as a bargaining point, Mr. Bristow. The two questions are separate. The one never depended on the other.”
“Well since I’m not joining your fifth column I don’t see how the need should arise.”
“I hope it won’t,” he said with resonant sincerity, and we picked our way across the square, around the puddles.
* March 9, 1973.—Ed.
* The Soviet Committee for State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Besopast-nosti)—the Russian Secret Police, the world’s largest and most elaborate intelligence organization, founded and headed until 1953 by Lavrenti P. Beria, one of Stalin’s closest and most vicious associates. It is a sort of cross between the CIA-FBI and the Gestapo.—Ed.
* Respectively, “Hebrew” and “Jew.”—Ed.
† Respectively, “yids” and “Abies.”—Ed.
* The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, although it ramified from Berlin starting in 1919, was an invention of a Russian fanatic organization called the Black Hundred. The Protocols purported to be the minutes of several meetings of the heads of a worldwide, sinister Jewish conspiracy in which the Elders outlined their plans to overthrow all existing regimes and build a Jewish world empire. Obviously the Protocols were a forgery, and a crude one at that, but as ridiculous as they may have been, they were convincing to a great many people—including such Americans as Henry Ford and Father Coughlin. (From Bristow’s notes.)
* Presumably Bukov was referring to Sebastopol.—Ed.
There were questions I should have asked Bukov but they didn’t occur to me until we were driving back to Sebastopol that night with rain oiling across the windshield and Timoshenko hunching over the steering wheel, peering out, trying to keep the car on the road. I should have asked Bukov exactly what Nikki had told him about me—exactly what instructions she had given him, and what kind of help he wanted from me. Wasn’t it possible that I was reading too much into it? Perhaps they only wanted inconsequential assistance from me—the sort of thing you would ask any friend who happened to be traveling in an area from which you required something.
I tried to believe that but it didn’t work. Any trivial favor in the area could have been done by Bukov himself or members of his group. If they wanted my help it meant they wanted to use my mobility—the fact that I was soon leaving the Soviet Union. It could only mean smuggling, whether of documents or something else: information perhaps, the sort of thing you could carry in your head—verbal messages.
No, it wasn’t that either. They already had lines of communication—otherwise how could Nikki have got the message about me to Bukov? It came back to espionage. The documents sewn between the layers of shoe soles; the microdot pasted onto your carnet; the spool of film imbedded in your bar of soap—all the tiresome rigamarole I had studied and written about.
I tried to find excuses but it was no good. She had tried to use me and it made me angry because it destroyed something precious.
Timoshenko was unaware that he’d been duped. He dropped me off at my hotel and from the shelter of the portico I watched the car take off in splashing shards, sweeping through rainy puddles and flinging up arched sheets of water like a destroyer’s wake.
On the opposite side of the street a dark car moved slowly, its tires hissing on the wet paving. It almost stopped opposite me. In the end it accelerated slowly and I watched it go out of sight. The rain made a black shine on the surface of the empty street and I felt anxiety: I realized it was probably the atmosphere but there had been something sinister about the slow passage of that second car and suddenly I was alarmed—wondering if it had been following us; if so, had Bukov and I been watched?
I retreated into the hotel. The woman at the desk nodded to me. I collected my key from her and went into the room. The chambermaid had turned down the bed and set the electric fire; it was warm and close and I was unpleasantly aware of the rank smell of my wet clothes. I opened the window a crack before I made ready to retire.
It had been a long and emotionally exhausting day but I was too keyed up to sleep. There was nothing to drink in the room. I lay staring at the darkness above me and listened to the rain trickle down the air shaft outside my window. There was fear in the room—I hadn’t found it an oppressive room before but I did now. Fantasies ran away with me: what if the KGB had a make on Bukov and knew him to be subversive? What if I was now tied in to him by today’s meeting? They would need no more evidence than that; I knew their methods. I wouldn’t be the first American visitor they’d charged with improper activities. I recalled One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and I pictured myself among Solzhenitsyn’s starving convicts.…