He stepped slowly toward me… he had to, because I was between him and the drive. And now, for an instant, his eyes met mine and I was sure he had no idea who I might be. Slowly, his shoulder brushing the back wall of the house, he edged past me. Then stopped. He was at the corner of the house; to go up the lane, he'd have to turn his back to me or walk backwards along it. He chose the former — I think he was going to run — but as he began turning, he slipped: with one foot in the muddy yard and the other on the asphalt, he did the splits between them.
He swore under his breath.
And I went for him then, two steps and a dive: a dive that took him down so easily that my momentum carried me right over the top of him. On my back, in the wet and the dark, I frantically clawed for his arm, his right hand, the one with the gun, desperately jerking it into the air before I realized the gun was long gone. Still hanging on to him, I scrambled up. He grunted, kicked… and then swung with his other hand, which now held a knife. Jerking his right arm, I whipped him away from me. He staggered, lunged; I whipped him round once again, and again — he was stumbling, trying to keep his feet under him — until finally, with a ripping sound, his raincoat came away in my hand. The sudden release of his weight sent me staggering backwards, the raincoat fluttering off in the dark. I fell to one knee. My breath burned in my throat, the cold rain trickled over my lips — and when I looked up, I saw he still had the knife in his hand.
Slowly, I got to my feet. Took a step back.
Useless. Because he'd only trap me in the yard…
But in fact he took a step sideways, to his right. Which I countered with an identical movement of my own. Then another. Two more — we were circling each other. He stopped. I stopped. I peered at his face through the darkness. His eyes darted about, looking away from me; and now, as he moved again, I realized he was edging toward his raincoat, which was spread, like Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak, across a puddle at the back of the drive. He was welcome to it — given his knife, I couldn't have stopped him in any case — and my only concern was to stay out of his way. So I took a step straight back… and my foot grated down on the gun.
I think he must have guessed, from the sound: for he stopped dead in his tracks and for a frozen instant we stared at each other; but then I bent over, scooped the gun up, and leveled it at him.
Flee a knife, charge a gun. … It sounds good, but when the barrel's pointed at you, discretion is the better part of valor sounds better. He took one last look toward the raincoat — I thought he still might lunge for it — and then jumped back into the darkness. Before I got my wits back, he'd ducked down the drive.
I lowered the gun. The rain fell, I could still hear that plane… and now it was over, the shock finally hit me: my heart started pounding as if I'd just run a mile. I waited a second, gathering myself together. Then, with my breath back, I stepped into the lane, picked up the raincoat, and stared out toward the street. With the wind, the rain, and the gleam of the streetlamps along the slick pavement, it was easy to imagine figures lying in ambush on either side of the drive. But after three soaking minutes, I was sure it was safe, and eased the hammer back on the pistol. I own a Smith & Wesson, but this was a Colt. The two makes are quite different, and I was very careful to make sure it didn't blow off my foot. Finally, when I was certain the safety was properly set, I slipped it into my pocket and then walked out to the street.
In both directions, as far as I could see in the blackness, it was empty.
I got into my car. Driving slowly up to the corner, I turned right, then cut back and forth for the next dozen blocks, but I saw nothing. Which was probably what I wanted to see.
When I finally parked, and lit up a cigarette, my hand was still shaking.
Now, sitting in the dark, with the windshield wipers frantically beating at the rain, I took a look at the raincoat — apparently the prize we'd been struggling over.
It was ripped at the shoulder, but otherwise intact. An Aquascutum, though manufactured in Canada. It had an inside pocket, like a suit coat, and this contained a Parker ballpoint pen and an empty Air Canada ticket folder. In the left side pocket I discovered $12.87 in Canadian notes and coins, a crumpled Kleenex, and a brown leather key case with three keys, one with a Hertz tag. This was fun, though not very informative, but as soon as I turned the coat over and searched the right pocket, I found something a great deal more interesting: a brown manila envelope which had obviously been taken from Grainger's desk. "Jenny" was scrawled across it, and it had already been torn open to reveal a regular letter-sized envelope inside. Clipped to this second envelope was a note:
JENNY. You 'll remember my visitor this afternoon, the man I spoke to in my study. I expect he'll be back. Tell him you don't know where I am and try to get rid of him, but if he starts making a fuss, give him this envelope. I'll be gone for a week, so cancel my appointments next Friday. Don't worry about this — just do as I ask. Dr. Charlie.
I'd been right, then. Grainger had realized I was going to discover the truth and was trying to avoid me. But at the same time, it seemed, he was prepared to give me some sort of explanation, for when I tore the second envelope open, I found half a dozen foolscap sheets, handwritten, that were addressed to me. Looking about, making sure that the black, wet street was empty, I turned on the dome light and started to read:
Mr. Thorne—
If you have this in your hands I can assume you've now discovered that what I told you this afternoon wasn't the truth. Probably I should apologize for that, but I'm not sure that I want to. I only told those lies to fulfill a solemn pledge made many years ago and which I found, as I talked to you, I couldn't abandon. As you will have guessed, that promise was made to Harry Brightman, and perhaps he wouldn't want me to break it now. But I don't see the point of going on. Having spoken with James Murdoch, you will know our story is false, and your attempts to discover what I can easily tell you may only distress many innocent people. Besides, it was all so long ago that I hardly think it can matter.
Having said this, however, I must now disappoint you: what I'm going to tell you here isn't the truth, only the truth as I know it — and I'm certain I was told a good many lies.
Again, of course, the source of those lies was Harry Brightman, and he told them to me right in this office, where we talked this afternoon and where I'm writing this now. That was in 1939, just after the outbreak of the war. By then I'd known Brightman for a number of years, and though I'd first met him much as I told you, we were a good deal closer than I implied. I liked him, almost to the point of fascination, and I think he liked me. A number of circumstances drew us together. We were both young men pursuing conventional careers but in an unconventional way. Brightman, a businessman, was making his fortune out of the Soviet Union, and I was attempting the difficult feat of being a practicing doctor and a practicing socialist at the same time. Brightman was a great storyteller; I, an excellent listener — and the tales of his trips to the U.S.S.R. enthralled me. I wouldn't have described him as sympathetic (to the Left, I mean), but he was genuinely curious and observed what was happening in Russia with an unprejudiced eye. Thinking back, I would guess that my youthful idealism amused him, but I believe he also respected me for it. When I opened up my first clinic, he made — unasked — a large contribution.
In any case, by the autumn of 1939 we were close friends, and I suppose the story he told me, even if it was false, was the sort of story you can only tell to a friend. It all began (he said) shortly before he'd first met me, at the time of his first visits to the Soviet Union. (I can't remember the precise date, but it would have been in the mid to late twenties.) As you may know, he went there originally to purchase furs at the invitation of the state agency concerned with fur exports (Sojuzpushnina). He'd described that trip many times: his own excitement, the slow passage up the Kiel Canal to the Baltic, his arrival at the Finland Station with its ghost of Lenin. That first time, he said, there weren't many buyers, only two or three dozen from a handful of countries. Nonetheless, the whole business was of great importance to the Soviet authorities: fur was one of their only exports to the West, and was therefore one of their few sources of hard currency. Consequently, Brightman and his companions were wined and dined in great style: there were official receptions, private droshkies to take them around, side trips to Moscow, visits backstage at the Bolshoi. (Brightman always joked to me that every official he met began their meeting with a vodka toast and the presentation of a special kind of chocolate with a picture of Pushkin on the box.) This courtship apparently went on for weeks, and in the course of it Brightman met a man named Grigori Zinoviev. I assume you know a little about Soviet history, but Zinoviev was a major figure, an Old Bolshevik, a close friend of Lenin's and the first head of the Comintern. Brightman had often told me about his meetings with this man — I was a little in awe of a person who'd met such a man — but now he told me that he'd had an affair with a woman on Zinoviev's staff named Anna Kostina. This was (in 1939) the first time he'd mentioned her, but as he spoke it was clear to me that he loved her. (I still believe that he did — and I suppose that belief made it easier to believe everything else.) Their affair, he claimed, had begun on his first trip and continued on subsequent ones. The last of these had been made in 1933 or '34, and on the eve of his departure Anna Kostina had told Brightman that he had made her pregnant and that she intended to bear his child.