There was really nothing to say, so he just said her name. “Valentina.”
She moved out of the shadow and replied, “Adam.”
Twenty-one years, he thought in wonderment She must be turned forty. She looked like thirty, still raven-haired, beautiful, and ineffably sad.
They sat on one of the tombstones and talked quietly of the old times. She told him she had returned from Berlin to Moscow a few months after their parting, and had continued to be a stenographer for the Party machine. At twenty-three she had married a young Army officer with good prospects. After seven years there had been a baby, and they had been happy, all three of them. Her husband’s career had flourished, for he had an uncle high in the Red Army, and patronage is no different in the Soviet Union from anywhere else. The boy was now ten.
Five years before, her husband, having reached the rank of colonel at a young age, had been killed in a helicopter crash while surveying Red Chinese troop deployments along the Ussuri River in the Far East. To kill the grief she had gone back to work. Her husband’s uncle had used his influence to secure her good, highly placed work, bringing with it privileges in the form of special food shops, special restaurants, a better apartment, a private car—all the things that go with high rank in the Party machine.
Finally, two years before, after special clearance, she had been offered a post in the tiny, closed group of stenographers and typists, a subsection of the General Secretariat of the Central Committee, that is called the Politburo Secretariat.
Munro breathed deeply. That was high, very high, and very trusted.
“Who,” he asked, “is the uncle of your late husband?”
“Kerensky,” she murmured.
“Marshal Kerensky?” he asked. She nodded. Munro exhaled slowly. Kerensky, the ultrahawk. When he looked again at her face, the eyes were wet. She was blinking rapidly, on the verge of tears. On an impulse he put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him. He smelled her hair, the same sweet odor that had made him feel both tender and excited two decades ago, in his youth.
“What’s the matter?” he asked gently.
“Oh, Adam, I’m so unhappy.”
“In God’s name, why? In your society you have everything.”
She shook her head slowly, then pulled away from him. She avoided his eye, gazing across the clearing into the woods.
“Adam, all my life, since I was a small girl, I believed. I truly believed. Even when we loved, I believed in the goodness, the lightness, of socialism. Even in the hard times, the times of deprivation in my country, when the West had all the consumer riches and we had none, I believed in the justice of the Communist ideal that we in Russia would one day bring to the world. It was an ideal that would give us all a world without fascism, without money-lust, without exploitation, without war.
“I was taught it, and I really believed it. It was more important than you, than our love, than my husband and child. It meant as much to me as this country, Russia, which is part of my soul.”
Munro knew about the patriotism of the Russians toward their country, a fierce flame that would make them endure any suffering, any privation, any sacrifice, and which, when manipulated, would make them obey their Kremlin overlords without demur.
“What happened?” he asked quietly.
“They have betrayed it Are betraying it. My ideal, my people, and my country.”
“They?” he asked.
She was twisting her fingers until they looked as if they would come off.
“The Party chiefs,” she said bitterly. She spat out the Russian slang word meaning “fat cats”: “The nachalstvo.”
Munro had twice witnessed a recantation. When a true believer loses the faith, the reversed fanaticism goes to strange extremes.
“I worshiped them, Adam. I respected them. I revered them. Now, for years, I have lived close to them all. I have lived in their shadow, taken their gifts, been showered with their privileges. I have seen them close up, in private; heard them talk about the people, whom they despise. They are rotten, Adam, corrupt and cruel. Everything they touch they turn to ashes.”
Munro swung one leg across the tombstone so he could face her, and took her in his arms. She was crying softly.
“I can’t go on, Adam, I can’t go on,” she murmured into his shoulder.
“All right, my darling, do you want me to try to get you out?”
He knew it would cost him his career, but this time he was not going to let her go. It would be worth it; everything would be worth it.
She pulled away, her face tear-streaked.
“I cannot. I cannot leave. I have Sasha to think about.”
He held her quietly for a while longer. His mind was racing.
“How did you know I was in Moscow?” he asked carefully.
She gave no hint of surprise at the question. It was in any case natural enough for him to ask it.
“Last month,” she said between sniffs, “I was taken to the ballet by a colleague from the office. We were in a box. When the lights were low, I thought I must be mistaken. But when they went up at intermission, I knew it was really you. I could not stay after that. I pleaded a headache and left quickly.”
She dabbed her eyes, the crying spell over.
“Adam,” she asked eventually, “did you marry?”
“Yes,” he said. “Long after Berlin. It didn’t work. We were divorced years ago.”
She managed a little smile. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m glad there is no one else. That is not very logical, is it?”
He grinned back at her.
“No,” he said. “It is not. But it is nice to hear. Can we see each other? In the future?”
Her smile faded; there was a hunted look in her eyes. She shook her dark head.
“No, not very often, Adam,” she said. “I am trusted, privileged, but if a foreigner came to my apartment, it would soon be noticed and reported on. The same applies to your apartment. Diplomats are watched—you know that. Hotels are watched also; no apartments are for rent here without impossible formalities. It will be difficult, Adam, very difficult.”
“Valentina, you arranged this meeting. You took the initiative. Was it just for old times’ sake? If you do not like your life here, if you do not like the men you work for ... But if you cannot leave because of Sasha, then what is it you want?”
She composed herself and thought for a while. When she spoke, it was quite calmly.
“Adam, I want to try to stop them. I want to try to stop what they are doing. I suppose I have for several years now, but since I saw you at the Bolshoi, and remembered all the freedom we had in Berlin, I began thinking about it more and more. Now I am certain. Tell me if you can—is there an intelligence officer in your embassy?”
Munro was shaken. He had handled two defectors-in-place, one from the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, the other in Vienna. One had been motivated by a conversion from respect to hatred for his own regime, like Valentina; the other by bitterness at lack of promotion. The former had been the trickier to handle.
“I suppose so,” he said slowly. “I suppose there must be.”
Valentina rummaged in the shoulder bag on the pine needles by her feet. Having made up her mind, she was apparently determined to go through with her betrayal. She withdrew a thick, padded envelope.
“I want you to give this to him, Adam. Promise me you will never tell him who it came from. Please, Adam. I am frightened by what I am doing. I cannot trust anyone but you.”
“I promise,” he said. “But I have to see you again. I can’t Just see you walk away through the gap in the wall as I did last time.”