And then he was there, and so close I almost jumped — a bulge in the darkness I might have reached out and touched. I think he must have crawled the last yards flat on his belly. But now, slowly, he rose. His shape disengaged itself from the shadows. He came up to the water. At the edge, he stepped out, onto a stone… Twelve feet. No more. One step. Only one single step more… The barrel of my gun was actually under the surface, the action and butt resting on my flexed knee… One motion. Don't think. Do it, do it. Up and point and squeeze the front trigger…
Did Brightman know I was there? Had he seen me? Or did he just sense me, or perhaps Subotin himself — the old fox now turning the tables and scenting the hound? I never found out, afterward there was no time to ask, but even as my own finger tensed on the trigger, a shot erupted high on the bank. I think he must have fired into the air, certainly he didn't come close to Subotin, but if he'd been trying to draw the other man out, he couldn't have done any better. Because Subotin now flashed on his light. Its beam traced a brilliant path through the darkness, sparkling on the water, glistening lustrously across the wet stones, and turning his face into a smooth, silver mask. And that's when I fired. Once. Then again. For a split second, an image was burned into my retina: the banks of the stream, the water rushing up to my chest, the man tumbling back, his arms outflung… Then there was only the echo, a vague red pulse before my eyes, and I was staggering up, stumbling and splashing in horror.
"Thome, is that you? Are you all right?"
"Yes… for Christ's sake don't shoot."
My voice, that strangled sound — it had to belong to somebody else. I was dazed and I was freezing; freezing and trembling all over. Brightman came down the bank, clattering over the stones. "I only hoped you understood what I meant. He didn't know there were two of us, I was certain…" But I didn't hear anything more. I was staring down at this bloody shape in the water. The current bubbled around him, eddying against the curve of his shoulders; bobbed his hand on the surface, splayed out his arms. And this time I could not look away; could not retch, could not even spit the foul taste from my mouth. For the shot whose echo had now faded in the night air could only summon another, and the sight in front of my eyes was merely a memory made real.
Coming up, seeing me, Brightman must have understood this. For I'm sure his words were meant only to comfort — they could hardly be revenge for the dark thoughts I'd had about him — but their kindness delivered the only blow I wasn't expecting.
"Thorne, I did all I could. I swear. That afternoon, we tried everything, your mother and I, but nothing we said, nothing we did, could—"
I looked at him in horror. " 'We'—what do you mean?"
"What I say. We…" But then his face turned aghast. "Dear God, I assumed you knew that. They were in it together, your mother and father. Both of them. From the very beginning."
All I could say about the next hour was that it passed: like certain hours in the depth of an illness, it took all I had to get through it.
I was stunned, physically, spiritually — if, in fact, any spirit was left to me. Half of me was already dead; the other half wanted to die. And indeed, I probably came very close to getting my wish. I'd never felt so cold in my life; pneumonia was a foregone conclusion, death by hypothermia a very near thing.
Yet there was almost no time to worry about dying. We had to move fast. This was Pennsylvania, we were into the hunting season, but it was possible that our shooting had attracted attention. There wasn't even time to feel the horror of the irony: we were now acting out the same scenario that Bright-man and my mother had acted out long ago. A bloody corpse… a death that had to be turned into an accident… what else could we do? Since I was already wet, I went through Subotin's pockets for his keys and spare clips of ammunition, and checked to make sure that nothing in his wallet tied him to either of us. His gun — a Valmet semiautomatic — had fallen into the stream, but I was able to find it and threw Brightman's shotgun down in its place. After that, there wasn't much we could do. If the body was found right away, there'd be lots of questions, but this was a deserted spot and he might lie here all winter; by spring, no one would be able to say what had happened.
We returned to the cabin. It was vital that I get into dry clothes, and though Brightman was certain that no one in the area had recognized him, we had to make the place look as if no one had been here for weeks. He began cleaning up while I changed into a pair of his pants and then huddled close to the fire. Slowly, I began to thaw, and since the fire was going anyway, I made us some coffee, the first swallow sending a marvelous spill of heat through my chest. When I had that down, Brightman went to a cupboard and got me some whiskey; I stirred in a splash and its burning sweetness began washing away the bitterness that now filled my mouth. I came back to myself; rose through the fever; focused my eyes. And that's when I said, "Tell me what you know… what you know of my mother."
He was rolling a sleeping bag. He paused, just for an instant, then went on, stuffing it into a blue nylon bag. "I don't know very much."
"Maybe. But about some things, you know more than me."
There was another instant of hesitation; then, abruptly, he said, "I didn't meet her till 1942, Mr. Thorne, when she came to America. I think she was at the Sorbonne and became involved with the PCF in the ordinary way. Communism, idealism, the Popular Front — in those days, it was all part of being young and alive."
"Except with her it went further."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps that was just chance. I don't know how it happened… I think — but this is only a guess — that she mixed herself up with some of the expatriate leftists who were in Paris then. I know she met Melinda Marling, for example — the American woman who married Donald Maclean. There were a lot of Americans. That's probably how she met your father."
"Had she been recruited by then?"
"Yes, I think so."
"So their marriage—"
"No. No, you shouldn't think that. She always knew, you see, that he wasn't a Communist, not really. She once told me that: 'But I love him anyway,' she said."
"So what he did… what he did for you — that all came through her?"
"No. That would be unfair to both of them. He wasn't seduced, Mr. Thorne, at least not in that sense. They each acted from slightly different motives, but both were completely sincere." He paused then, and looked back at me, lighting one of his cheroots and throwing a tin box of them toward me. "He was a decent man, a diplomat who knew what the Nazis were doing and was appalled at his own country's lack of response. He once told me that the most horrible and shameful period of his life was the years when America stayed out of the war. That showed what America really was, he said."
I thought of Hamilton then — the "decent" man; I couldn't help it. And to place my father on the same level made my stomach turn over. But I steadied myself. "At that time, though, the Russians weren't in the war either."
"No, but he excused them. They signed the Molotov-Rib-bentrop Pact to buy time, not because they wanted one quarter of Poland. That was true, in a way: they in fact wanted both."
"Then that's when he started working for them?"
"Yes."
"But that couldn't have been through my mother. He sent her away — before Paris fell."
"Francoise — your mother, I mean — was an amateur. By then the professionals had taken over."
"Like you?"
"I'm not sure I deserve the title, but yes — like me. Though I wasn't the first. I only assumed control over him after the war."
I'd been sitting wrapped in a blanket; now I tossed it over to him and he used it to bundle up some of his food. Watching him work, I thought: I discovered his secrets but he's telling me mine.