They continued up the valley to its head, turning the car in the space between some old abandoned mine buildings. On the way back they stopped again at the chosen spot. Visibility in each direction was about a quarter of a mile; the valley sides were covered in densely packed pines and already, in the late afternoon, the rays of the sun had departed for the day. The valley floor was no more than fifteen yards wide, leaving room for just the stream, the tracks, and the road. It was easy to imagine how dark it would be at night, even with the half-moon.
Amy took out her camera and took several pictures, making sure that at least one of them included Joe. He rolled the car forward to pick her up and they drove back to the main road.
“No problem, no problem at all,” he said contentedly.
Neither of them spoke again until they reached Scottsboro, where they checked into another hotel, this time as brother and sister.
The long drive back to Washington consumed most of Sunday, and by the time Amy reached her apartment she wanted nothing more than an early night. She stepped out of the elevator to find Richard sitting against the wall by her door, obviously drunk.
“The lady no longer vanishes,” he said solemnly, pulling himself to his feet.
“The lady’s tired,” she said, more kindly than she felt.
“Then let’s go to bed,” he said, following her into the apartment and half-collapsing into an armchair.
She looked at him. He wasn’t given to drinking, at least not to this extent.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, sitting down in the other chair. She knew he wanted her to make some physical gesture, but for some reason the thought of touching him filled her with revulsion.
“Nothing’s the matter. I’ve been celebrating. Why don’t you keep anything to drink?” he asked, looking around wildly.
“Stop playing the drunk,” she said acidly, “it’s not your style. I’ll make some coffee.”
He followed her into the kitchen. “I said I’ve been celebrating,” he said. “Don’t you want to know what I’m celebrating?”
“Enlighten me.” She sighed inwardly. Were all men in their late thirties just larger adolescents? “Has Jean kicked you out?” she guessed.
He laughed. “Oh no, it’s much worse than that. She’s pregnant. She’s locked me in,” he said, as if he was shocked by the discovery.
Amy had difficulty restraining the impulse to throw the coffee at him. “I suppose you had nothing to do with it,” she said, brushing past him as she carried the cups into the living room.
He almost ran after her, and for a second she thought he was going to hit her. But his face relaxed and he sank back into the chair. Poor Richard, she thought, you can’t even make it as a full-fledged bastard.
They sat for several minutes in silence. There had been a time, she thought, when this would have mattered to her, a time when she’d even flirted with the idea of giving up everything for him. It hadn’t been for long, just a couple of weeks after they’d come together, when his kindness — and, she had to admit, his imagination in bed — had concealed his lack of character. But the romantic glow had soon disappeared as if it had never been, and she had settled for the sex, safe in the knowledge that Richard had nothing else to offer. Now she just wanted to be rid of him.
“Can I stay tonight?” he asked without looking up.
“No.”
“Why not?” he asked angrily.
“Because I don’t want you to.”
“Amy, I love you. I—”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know the meaning of the word.” She felt angry, angrier than she wanted to be. She ought to be showing him that she didn’t gave a damn about Jean’s pregnancy.
It was too late. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Look, I’ll sort it out. I do love you. I don’t love her. It’s as—”
“No — no — no,” she shouted. He looked at her with astonishment. “Richard,” she said, her eyes closed, her fists clenched on her thighs, “will you just go?”
He didn’t move. “Look, I’ve said I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“Just go.”
“Is there someone else?”
“What?” She couldn’t believe it.
“You heard.”
She laughed. “You come here, tell me you’ve gotten your wife pregnant, and then ask me if there’s someone else?”
“Is there? I need to know.” He was looking straight at her, his voice completely calm. He might have been asking someone the time. She suddenly realized that he was holding himself together only by a thread.
“No,” she said softly. “Satisfied?”
He smiled, an utterly meaningless smile. “Of course.” He looked at his watch. “Time I was getting back,” he said, and without another word walked out of Amy’s apartment.
Six
Kuznetsky lowered himself through the hatch and dropped nimbly onto American territory. After almost four days in the air, frequently punctuated by stops at godforsaken airstrips in the middle of the Siberian wilderness, his mind felt like running a hundred-yard sprint, his body like collapsing in an exhausted heap. He compromised, leaning against the Antonov’s wing and surveying the Alaskan landscape.
For a minute he thought they’d landed at the wrong location, then remembered what he’d been told about Ladd Field, that it was built underground. Above ground there were only the gaunt hangars and a few offices, and it was to one of these that the pilot led him. Inside, a flight of stairs led down into a brightly lit tunnel. “It’s five miles long, in a circle,” Brelikov told him. He tried to look suitably impressed.
“Welcome home, Jack,” he murmured to himself as Brelikov led him along the tunnel toward the Soviet pilots’ mess.
It was hard to believe they were in America; the only non-Russian speakers were conversing in Uzbek. The mess hall was crowded with fifty or so Soviet pilots, most of them washing down hamburgers with bottles of Coca-Cola. Kuznetsky asked an officer the way to Anisimov’s office, and was coldly pointed farther down the tunnel. The local boss was apparently not popular with the masses.
It didn’t take Kuznetsky long to understand why. Alexei Anisimov, the Soviet head of the Lend-Lease Purchasing Commission, was a prime example of a particular NKVD stereotype — slightly built, elegant, with a supercilious air and an ascetic’s face. He was probably younger than Kuznetsky, but the way he said “Welcome, Colonel” was nicely judged to emphasize his superior rank. Kuznetsky replied in kind, passing over his First Priority credentials with a condescending smile and making himself comfortable in the seat he hadn’t yet been offered.
“Yes, Colonel,” Anisimov said, offering him an American cigarette and lighting it with a contraption bearing a portrait of Mickey Mouse. “I cannot see any difficulties. I have of course been given advance warning of your requirements, but there is really nothing to it. We’ve been sending men into the United States for three years now without any trouble. They just hop off the plane at the Lend-Lease staging post in Great Falls, Montana, and catch a taxi to the railway station. No one has ever been stopped.” He smiled contemptuously and carefully scraped the ash from his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. “I sometimes think we could land a platoon of T-34s and they’d be halfway to Washington before the Americans delivered a mild protest.”
Then any fool could do your job, Kuznetsky thought. But there was no point in antagonizing Anisimov, no point at all. “What about the return journey?” he asked. “There’s still no inspection of outbound planes?”
“None whatsoever. Well, there was one incident in January. The American in charge at Great Falls, Major Jordan, took it into his head one night to inspect one load, and he found quite a lot of… well, to call it diplomatic baggage was stretching the usual meaning of the term. Jordan was quite upset. He raced off to Washington and kicked up a fuss. Nobody took any notice of him. In fact we received an apology from the State Department, here…” He pointed out a framed letter on the wall behind him. “Since then, no more inspections. We could probably bring out the Statue of Liberty.”