Revelation

'I'll report this conversation to the FBI.'

'Who'd believe it? Would you if you were a fed?'

'Why not?'

'You have two ways of leaving this country, Lev. You can take the Rosenberg route.' The Rosenberg spies had gone to the electric chair only the previous summer. Petrosian was beginning to feel faint. 'Or you can be flown out in style, in your very own private aircraft. The Soviet Union would welcome a man of your talent and creativity. You'd lead a privileged life. But there's an entrance fee.'

'I'll bet there is.'

'All the information you can give about the Super.'

Petrosian shook his head sadly. 'From time to time I wondered about you, Jurg. And now all sorts of little things fit into place.' He leaned back in his chair, examined Rosenblum's face curiously. 'Tell me, what does it feel like, being a traitor?'

'I wouldn't know, pal, I'm a patriot. Only my loyalty isn't determined by accident of birth, or history or geography. It goes to the whole human race, not this or that tribe. I hated history and geography at school. All those battles and king lists.'

'Which school was that?'

'Come on, Lev, this is for the greater good. I'm your lifeline. Just what was in those letters you handed to Kitty anyway?'

'You don't need to know. Maybe I'll take my chances with the American judicial system.'

Rosenblum displayed yellow teeth. 'The courts go on the evidence before them. What else can they do? You got evidence to say you've been set up? Anyone can say they've been set up, if the courts were to start buying that, without evidence, every hood in the country would just have to turn up and declare they'd been set up and nobody would ever get convicted of nothing, you want to go to the FBI and say "I've been set up but I can't prove it," and they'll say, "Oh, that explains all this evidence pal, sorry to have bothered you"?'

'Calm down, I'm the one with his life on the line.'

'I need an answer. Take ten seconds.'

'I've had a bellyful of repressive societies.'

'This is a free society? McCarthy is Snow White and HUAC are the Seven Dwarfs?'

'What are you offering me, Jurg? Uncle Joe and the Soviet Union?'

'You'd rather be toast in Alcatraz? You want to fry in your own fat, hear yourself sizzle sizzle like bacon in a pan? Savour the aroma of fried Petrosian?'

'No.'

'Is that a yes or a no? Your ten seconds is up, Lev. For a man who has no choice in the matter you're taking a helluva time.'

Petrosian put his face in his hands. 'It's true, I don't have a choice.'

Rosenblum grinned. 'I take that as a yes. What tribute can you bring to the Motherland in exchange for your salvation?'

'I can't go back to Los Alamos. They'd arrest me.'

Rosenblum waited.

Then Petrosian said, 'I've kept a diary for twenty years. Everything I've done about the atom bomb and the Super is recorded in them. I can give you my diaries.'

'But like you said, you can't go back for them.'

'They're here in town. I moved them out of Los Alamos when the FBI started to poke around. After all they amount to a gross breach of security. They'll tell your scientists in the gulags where we're at, the complete state of the art.'

'What gulags? That's just Western propaganda. And the scientists will need technical stuff.'

'The technical stuff is there in summary. Deuterium-tritium reaction rates, implosion geometries, everything. And every significant conversation I've had. It's a complete record of the hydrogen bomb's development from the Los Alamos perspective. And there's even some stuff from Livermore.'

Rosenblum nodded happily. 'That sounds like your entrance fee. I'll put it to them. Hey, old pal, cheer up. You're about to start a new life in a socialist paradise.'

'I can't last long here. Your friends have forty-eight hours to get me out of the country. If they haven't fixed me up by then, I'll give myself up to the FBI.'

Rosenblum scribbled down a number in a diary, tore out the page and handed it over. 'You're a tough negotiator. Call me tomorrow morning. You'll have to avoid the dragnet until then.'

Petrosian managed to smile. 'I've done that sort of thing before.'

'Hey, it's good to see you happy. So have I.'

The snow was becoming blizzard-like. Petrosian watched Rosenblum scurrying towards a subway. He turned in the opposite direction, walking briskly north, ignoring the bitter cold. He had no clear intention in mind other than to retrieve the diaries and find, somewhere in the United States of America, some place safe and warm to sleep.

* * *

It was dark by the time Petrosian stepped off the bus at the Trinity Cemetery. He made his way along ill-remembered streets, navigating as much by his internal compass as by landmarks. Eventually he recognized the house, a white, wooden affair with a short driveway in which an old Ford was parked. The snow on the path was pristine; there were lights in the house.

Ant opened the door. She looked at Lev with surprise, and then a worried look came over her gaunt face. 'Kristel, hello. I've come to collect my briefcase.'

* * *

He heard the voices, low and businesslike.

She was stalling them.

He grabbed jacket, coat, briefcase with diaries. In the kitchen he put a finger to his lips and tiptoed out in exaggerated fashion. The children, mystified, suppressed giggles.

Quietly out the back door. Through the back garden. Over the fence, through the garden of the neighbour to the rear. Turn left, past Kristel's street. A Buick was parked at her front gate. Petrosian turned smartly right, taking a narrow lane with garbage cans; an old metal fence with a child-sized gap; trees beyond. He squeezed through the gap and was into a stretch of lightly wooded parkland. He walked through it to another street, out of ideas, aware only that he had to get as far away as possible.

He bought a ticket at the railway station and waited in an agony of impatience on the platform. Early morning businessmen began to turn up; he kept well away. The Pullman, when it turned up, was half empty. It sat at the platform for an excruciating ten minutes while he watched the entrance and wondered how they could possibly fail to check on something as obvious as a railway station. He thought they probably would check on the station; his photograph would be recognized by the clerk; and they would be waiting for him at the other end, a simple act which would culminate, a couple of years on, in his blood boiling and flames shooting from his mouth.

The train took off but Petrosian kept his eye on the station entrance, his imagination seeing men rushing onto the platform at the last second. The morning commuters started on their newspapers; regulars exchanged nods or greetings; someone started on an interminable story and ended up speaking to himself. Nobody even glanced at Petrosian and he marvelled that his inner fear was attracting no attention. The train ambled along the line for about ten minutes and then came to a halt. Commuters poured on. Nobody got off. Petrosian, his nerves at breaking point, pushed his way through the incoming passengers and jumped off the train just as it began to move away.

The ticket collector, a young, stooped man with a black waistcoat, looked at his ticket in surprise.

'Change of plan,' Petrosian explained.

'You want a rebate?' said the man.

'No thanks.'

'Won't take more'n five minutes.'

'I'm in a hurry.'

'Hey, it's worth four bucks fifty, Mister,' the man complained to the retreating figure, while Petrosian inwardly cursed the attention he had drawn to himself.

The word will be getting around. I daren't use public transport again.

As a middle-sized town in the State of New York, Poughkeepsie would have a taxi service. But taxis have radios. Petrosian visualised himself in the back seat of the taxi when his description came through; visualised the affected nonchalance of the driver as he pretended not to recognize it as that of his passenger; the man's fear that he might be murdered; the coded message to the office; the FBI men closing in.