"Have you seen him within the last six months?"
"All right. Yes."
"What did he want?"
"Help, I think. It was fairly evident he was in some sort of trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"Didn't say."
"What kind of help, then?"
"He was vague."
"Did he leave anything with you? Or did he want to?"
"I assume you mean a variation on the letter-to-be-opened-upon-my-decease theme?"
"Yes. But probably not that exactly. He had something that people wanted, wanted so much that possessing it made him a target. So I think he decided to pass it on. He was saying, in effect: I don't have it anymore, there's no point coming after me. When you saw him, did you have the impression that he felt himself in danger?"
"I'm not sure my impressions were that distinct."
"Then maybe you should have paid closer attention. He was in danger and was trying to cope with it — by passing on this particular item. It not only took him out of the direct line of fire but also worked as a kind of insurance. Since he was the only person who knew where it was, people interested in this item now had a vested interest in his well-being."
"I see. What you're saying is—"
"What I'm saying, Mr. Hamilton, is that he wasn't doing you any great favor. Anyone who possesses this item is in considerable danger. Don't make any mistake about that."
He got up, reaching toward my glass as he did so, but I shook my head. He went over to his fancy bar. As he poured himself some more whiskey, his back was to me. "This item… can you tell me what it is, more specifically?"
"If you have it, you know. If not… perhaps that's something you'll let me reserve."
He turned around. "All right. But what makes you think I do have it?"
"The choice of candidates isn't really that great. And you'll surely grant that Brightman and yourself had a unique sort of relationship."
He smiled. "Maybe. But I didn't know him well, you understand. Not as well as yourself, at a guess."
"If you're asking, I didn't know him at all. I'm just a friend of his daughter's."
"There you go. I didn't even know he had a daughter. Over the years, I think I met him precisely three times." He came over to the couch again and sat down in front of me. Leaning his head back and looking up at the ceiling, he made a show of remembering. "I guess the first time was somewhere in the early forties. I couldn't even say when exactly. Then '56. I remember that well enough. Then this last time… but that's it. I don't see why you, or anyone else, would assume that he'd come to me for a favor, especially a vital one. I scarcely knew him, and had never done anything for him in a personal way."
"So what did you do for him?"
I watched his face. For a moment he seemed undecided, but I wondered if this too wasn't show. After all, it was he who'd explicitly brought up the past, and I had the impression that he welcomed the excuse to start talking about it, that he'd already worked out precisely what he would say.
He shrugged and snatched a quick sip of his drink. "I took some science at school," he began. "Not much, certainly not worth boasting about, but in the U.S. Foreign Service, at least in my day, science was about as rare as straight talk. At the beginning of the war — people having worked out that science and warfare might have some connection — this meant that I gained a number of important assignments virtually by default. Some of these involved various advisory panels on the export of scientific equipment. To the combatants, during the period the U.S. was neutral, to our allies afterwards."
"Including the Soviet Union?"
He hesitated. "So far as I was concerned, Mr. Thorne, I was helping a nation that had been beleaguered since its very conception and was now fighting for its life against the same enemy we were fighting — the greatest enemy humanity has ever known."
I couldn't help smiling at the hypocrisy of these noble sentiments — as the barge was worked gently in the swell and the lamps pushed golden tongues of light through its luxurious interior. "I'm not sure that speech fits your style."
"It was my style back then. Believe me, it was."
"You were a Communist?"
"Don't be idiotic. I was trying to be a decent man, I was trying to do the right thing." His voice, to my surprise, suddenly trembled a little. "I was surrounded by fools, that was the trouble. Fools, who couldn't see the menace Hitler represented — and fools, once they had seen it, who let their own ideological prejudices prevent full cooperation with Russia."
I watched his face, trying to decide if he believed this now, as he spoke, or whether he was only recollecting a passion long since suppressed. Conceivably, too, it was even more subtle: those former beliefs, however briefly held, may nonetheless have been the only beliefs he'd ever had in his life. Today, even if he thought them ridiculous, he might have nothing else to fall back on. Except Hitler, of course. I wondered if that wasn't the most enduring legacy of the Nazis: their horrors had become a virtually limitless excuse for the lesser horrors of others. But, despite the annoyance I was feeling, I had no desire to argue with him. I said, "In effect, you had a fundamental disagreement with U.S. foreign policy?"
"If you like."
"And you used Brightman to… circumvent it."
He gave a little smile. "What a nice way to put it… But you needn't be so polite. I was, undoubtedly, a spy. And I knew precisely what I was doing."
I'd underestimated his ego; he had earned his title, "spy," and bore it proudly. "All right," I said. "You spied. What on? What did you tell him?"
He smiled. "You think I'm putting on airs, Mr. Thome, and I mustn't. It was all minor league. As I said, most of it revolved around scientific equipment. There were certain requests the Soviets were particularly anxious about, and I tried to make sure they were seen in a favorable light. As well, it was useful for them to know what other countries were asking for… I suppose it gave them a kind of index of their own efforts."
"What other countries?"
"Britain, of course… but Canada, Australia… any Allied center of war and scientific production. After the war, France, the Scandinavian countries—"
"So you kept on after the war?"
"To a degree."
"We're talking about atomic materials now?"
"No. Not materials. I told you — equipment, apparatus."
"And all of this," I said, "went through Harry Brightman?" He shook his head. "I couldn't say. That didn't concern me, you see. There were arrangements… I expect quite usual under such circumstances. But I was never precisely sure who received the information I transmitted."
"Then why did you meet with Brightman at all?" He shrugged. "Well, the first time was in the middle of the war. I was told to meet him in New York. It turned out that he wanted to obtain a particular piece of equipment — something electronic, I think, but I scarcely remember. He had money; any amount. I told him that what he wanted wasn't commercially procurable — it existed, but it had been custom-made in one of the university labs — and so we worked out a plan to get hold of it in a different fashion."
"Which was?"
He leaned back comfortably and took a quick sip. "It was his idea, and quite ingenious. I was to go back to my little committee full of pious anxieties: Wouldn't it be possible for someone to put together this piece of apparatus by combining items that were more readily available? Wasn't our security lax in that way? This set off a great flurry, and the researchers involved were asked to break the whole thing down and give us all the bits and pieces… most of which — confirming my conscientious worries and Brightman's suspicions—were available. I passed this list on to my contact, and I assume Brightman went off and got them." He shrugged. "It wouldn't have given them a hundred percent of it, but damn close."