“I don’t quite understand the premise of this argument of yours anyway, Burt,” she said, buying a little time from her instinct to cease.
“Oh? Why not?” he replied, even though to all of them it was obvious.
“Surely the idea of my meeting Vladimir in the first place was precisely so that he would inform his superiors here. The only way Mikhail will know I’m here is if Vladimir does reveal it. Mikhail will pick it up very quickly. So we actually need Vladimir to inform his superiors. It’s not an option, it’s a necessity.”
There was silence in the room. Anna saw only Salvador move, a small movement, but he looked up at her for the first time, and then he looked at Burt.
Burt’s gaze hadn’t moved away from her.
“Let’s take a break,” he said suddenly and stood up. “All of you. Take a walk, have a coffee, whatever you like. All of you except you, Anna.” He turned to fix her with a neutral stare. “You’ll stay here with me, please.”
There was surprise, but all except Logan got to their feet. Logan was only just pushing back his chair as Marcie, Salvador, and Dupont were leaving the room.
“Logan?” Burt said.
“I’d like to stay,” he said.
“You’ll see Anna later. Don’t worry, I’m not going to strangle her,” Burt said without mirth.
Logan looked back at her as he left, and she saw something in his face she hadn’t seen before; an intensity, passion perhaps. Then he slowly turned and left the room.
She and Burt were left alone in silence.
Burt stayed standing and went to a sideboard, where he extracted a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He poured the liquor into them both without asking her and handed her one, while keeping the other cradled in his pudgy hand. He remained standing at the far end of the room and took a sip from the glass.
“So. Let’s proceed,” he said. “As you have just said with such admirable clarity, if Vladimir informs his chief here, Mikhail will pick it up?” He spoke smoothly. “Is that right?” He looked at her and beamed. “Or did you mean would pick it up? If he were in America, that is?”
She saw her mistake, remembered the voices calling her to stop, and she believed she could recover from it while knowing it was too late. Her only defence was in the semantics.
“Of course, I meant Mikhail would pick it up, if Mikhail is here,” she replied.
Burt let her explanation hang in the room, so that it became thin and then dissipated like smoke to reveal the landscape behind it.
“I think you were right in the first place,” he said. “You are careful with words, Anna. So—Mikhail won’t know unless Vladimir reveals the meeting with you to his superiors. Will he.”
It was a statement, not a question. Burt’s tone of voice was closing around her like a trap.
Anna withdrew into her thoughts but found no solace, no way out. She knew now what was coming. Burt’s artful, confusing pretence had done its work. In her effort to correct his apparent misconception about Vladimir’s options, she had overstepped her own watchfulness, the watchfulness that had safeguarded her knowledge of Mikhail.
She found she had nothing to say.
“Because Mikhail is in America, isn’t he,” Burt stated remorselessly. “So ‘will’ was the right word, not ‘would.’ That’s true, isn’t it?”
She waited for the blow.
“You know Mikhail is here, don’t you, Anna,” Burt said, leaning over the table with one hand supporting him. “You’ve known for a while. He’s on our list, isn’t he.” He pounced.
“Right then. How were you going to make contact with Mikhail?” he asked her. “Through Vladimir? Or was it in some other way?”
She felt the ground sliding from under her. “That was the way,” she said. “Exactly as Logan and myself and others were saying. By Vladimir informing his chief here, yes.”
“Oh, yes?” The apparent curiosity in Burt’s tone was flayed completely, to reveal the utter disbelief that lay beneath it. “Okay. Let’s try this, then,” he said. “Vladimir wasn’t going to inform his head of station here or anyone else, was he?”
“As I said, I’m sure he will.”
Burt stood up from his angled pose of leaning on the table. He looked at her with triumph in his eyes.
“In which case, why did you arrange to meet Vladimir, in secret, without my knowledge, at a café behind a gym? ”
She heard a sharp, involuntary intake of breath and realised it was hers. But she neither acknowledged Burt’s statement nor denied it.
Burt left the silence hanging once again.
“And if you and Vladimir were to meet in secret from me, then it was also in secret from Vladimir’s own people, wasn’t it? Both of you wanted to meet without surveillance. Which means that Vladimir wasn’t going to inform anyone he’d met you. And that means there was no way Mikhail would know you were trying to contact him. Correct?”
Her silence was the answer he was looking for.
“Your health,” he said, and raised his glass until she lifted hers. Then he drank greedily.
“You said no wires—,” she said.
Burt grinned at her, his bonhomie apparently returned in full. As ever, he was supremely pleased by his own cleverness, which was far more important to him than her attempts to deceive him. In fact, she felt that his cleverness needed her deceit in order to be exercised to the full.
“That’s what we said, yes,” he agreed, and gave his friendly chuckle. “No wires. But we had that café—and all his other regular haunts—wired so good you could hear the lettuce screaming.”
More sirens rose from outside the window—the only true voices of the city—and filled the pause like a dissonant musical interlude.
“Next stage,” Burt said, moving on now into the mopping-up operation. “Were you even intending to contact Mikhail at all? Or has this whole operation with Vladimir just been a farce from start to finish? I’d like to know that, please, Anna.”
“Yes. Yes, I was.”
“But not my way?” Burt said.
“No, not your way, not through Vladimir.”
Burt sat down.
“Okay. Good. I like this. Let’s say I believe you,” he said with flamboyant generosity. “Why not? Why weren’t you going to contact Mikhail through Vladimir?”
She didn’t answer.
“Come on, Anna. Tell me why you wanted to contact him your way?”
She collected her thoughts now at last. “Because Mikhail is too smart to be lured into making contact with me on the basis of his own side having knowledge of my whereabouts. He wouldn’t trust that. If my meeting with Vladimir reached him through Vladimir and then the KGB networks here, he wouldn’t take the risk.”
“Good, that’s very good, that’s very smart of you,” Burt said, and there was genuine admiration in his voice. “Your intuition is, as always, invaluable. So why not say that to me earlier, though? To me, Anna?” he said, as if he were hurt that his friendship and discretion were not above scrutiny. “That way, we could make a different plan. So in my way of thinking, there’s another reason for you planning to do it your way, isn’t there.”
“Yes. Yes, there is.” She looked up at him and met his eyes unwaveringly. She had found her strength, no matter what was to come.
“It’s personal,” she said. “Just how you like it, Burt. I wanted to give Mikhail the choice. Whether to work for the Americans or not. Can you understand that, Burt? I wanted that to be his decision, not something forced on him by you, the Russians, me, or anyone else.”
“Ah, choices. Choices are the chief source of confusion in the world,” Burt replied.
“No. That’s not true. Choices are freedom.”
“Then freedom is confusion,” Burt said.