In the racket I could barely hear him. “I’m an American. You’re in trouble, Bristow. We’ve got to meet tonight. Half-past six, leave your hotel and turn right—north. Keep walking up the street until we pick you up. If you’re being followed we’ll spot it and you won’t be contacted. In that case stop and wait by the phone kiosk at the corner by the postal exchange—we’ll call you there with further instructions. Got it?”
“Yes. But what danger——”
“Shut up. Beat it.”
He got the door open and slid into the car. It pulled out into the traffic and I took my eyes off the display of radios and cheap clocks in the shop window.
Central Intelligence Agency, obviously. Their penchant for trench-coated melodrama is infamous.
But he’d scared me. I kept my fears buttoned down tight because if I let my imagination go I knew I could go to pieces.
The breeze blew the smell of diesel exhaust across my face. A block distant, smoke spurted from the tailpipe of the blue-suited man’s ramshackle Russian car. I remembered him stooping there, fiddling with the key and very carefully not looking in my direction; probably talking out of the side of his mouth like a ventriloquist. Something comical about it: the television absurdity of it.
I went back to the museum but my nerves were in a bad state.
The street meeting he’d proposed was one of the standard ploys to reveal shadows and make safe contact. Abwehr and MI-6 agents had used it in Madrid and Lisbon and Istanbul. It didn’t prove my blue-suited man had any imagination; it only proved he’d read the book. Mine or his agency’s manual.
I dismissed Timoshenko for the evening and at half-past six I left the hotel and went up the street as instructed. The postal exchange was nine blocks distant. The sky was heavy with clouds; it was cool and a bit steamy. Caution had led me to carry the most important of my notes in the pockets of my suit; they made bulges here and there but my coat concealed them.
A woman like a bosomy Druid waited patiently by a cable pole for her dachshund to finish. I went past her trying to gauge the light automobile traffic in the street beside me. I did not detect any sound or reflection of a car moving along behind me at walking pace, but then they wouldn’t have handled it that way. They’d be hanging back a few blocks watching me—watching what happened behind me.
I made no effort to disclose a tail. It was up to my contact to discover him. Those are the rules of that game.
I did not know what to expect. There were too many possibilities; guessing was pointless. Danger, he’d said.…
I reached the postal exchange without contact.
Suddenly I realized what a poor scheme it was. They disclose a tail on me.* So I’m under surveillance. Now I’m supposed to answer that telephone? They’re idiots. The minute it rings and I answer it, whoever’s watching me knows I’m making a contact.
If my erstwhile friends were watching me from a car—he had implied they were—it would take them a bit of time to get to a telephone. I turned abruptly and walked back the way I had come; I wanted to be away from that kiosk before the telephone in it began to ring.
Half a block ahead of me a man turned into the entrance of a building. When I passed it he was not there; he’d gone inside. He’d been vaguely familiar; I’d seen him before—possibly at the museum. One of Zandor’s? My backtracking had caught him off guard; I wasn’t supposed to have seen him.
A block farther I made a right turn and strolled down a side street. I didn’t check to see whether Zandor’s man was behind me; there was little doubt of it. I didn’t want to return directly to the hotel because he would have been puzzled by my direct hike to and from the corner where the postal exchange stood. This way I might still persuade him I was simply out walking, limbering up the joints, with no particular destination in mind. I took a circuitous and unhurried route back to the hotel.
I insert these details because it illustrates Ritter’s* clumsiness and helps to show why I later resisted his approaches. “Intelligence” is a poor word for the operations of most espionage and counterespionage organizations. An unpleasant number of their actions tend to serve as self-fulfillment of gloomy prophecy. On the way back to my hotel I had ample time to reflect angrily that even if I had not been in “danger” before, Ritter’s stupid plan would have guaranteed it in the end, if I’d obeyed his instructions.
By nature the operation of intelligence activities is supposed to be passive. All too often it fails in that objective because in the course of gathering intelligence the operative brings attention upon himself and his illegal behavior. This in turn creates exactly the kind of international “incident” which Intelligence, ideally, is supposed to prevent. If I had more time and felt more level-headed I could turn all this into an amusingly comic sequence; essentially that’s what it is, once you remove to a certain objective distance. But I was not, and am not, in that luxurious condition. I was afraid.
I was on my way out of the hotel to wait for Timoshenko’s arrival.* A familiar man was coming up the sidewalk toward me. I almost suffered cardiac arrest when he reached inside the lapel of his coat but what he produced was an envelope; he approached with the envelope extended toward me.
He identified himself stiffly as Yakov Sanarski and waited for me to open the envelope; I found that it contained a new, revised visa. It extended my permit by five weeks.
He asked if this was satisfactory and I tried to look pleased. “Tell Comrade Zandor I’m very grateful to the government.”
Sanarski bowed with a formal little twitch of a smile and walked away, back the way he had come, to a waiting car he had parked awkwardly at the very corner of the block, sticking out into the intersection. He drove away and I stuffed the new visa into my already overcrowded pocket.
Sanarski was the man who had been following me the previous afternoon, to the postal exchange and back. This morning connected him beyond question with Zandor; so at least I had confirmation—I knew who had me under surveillance. This relieved me somewhat. It makes things a bit easier when you know who your antagonist is.
Trepidation thundered through my blood through the whole morning. I couldn’t suppress the American agent from the center of my thinking, but there wasn’t a thing I could do that would alleviate the tension; the next move was his to make.
He made it at the same hour as yesterday. I went out during the lunch hour for that purpose—in case he was waiting for me as he had done before. I walked slowly along the exact route I’d followed yesterday. There was no sign of him. I reached the tavern and went in.
The place was not terribly crowded; about half its chairs were occupied. One of them was occupied by the American agent. He didn’t look at me.
I couldn’t very well sit with him; in any case I didn’t want to. By destroying state documents I had already committed a grave offense but there was a good chance it wouldn’t be discovered—ever. Unless that was what the agent had been referring to yesterday when he’d warned me of danger. But I’d just about convinced myself that couldn’t be it. If they knew about the theft of the documents they’d have arrested me, not given me an extended visa. I hadn’t done anything else to put me in trouble and I didn’t intend to, certainly not by making open contact with the American.
I took one glass of wine at the bar, intending to leave immediately.
From a corner of my vision I saw him get up to leave. He counted coins gravely in his palm and pressed them down onto the table singly, pocketing what was left; he still had his hand in his pocket when he came forward toward the door. His route took him immediately behind me. He jostled me. When I looked around I heard him mutter “Sorry” in Russian—not very good Russian, a terrible accent. He went on outside. His hand was no longer in his pocket.