She looked at him closely. “What is it? What’s wrong, Tony? Something to do with Pat O’Brien? He’s dead, isn’t he? You can tell me. I’m not a child.”
He could see tears forming in her eyes. He didn’t know which news was worse: that Patrick O’Brien was missing, or that her father was not. He said, “O’Brien’s plane crashed Sunday night. His body was not recovered. We can assume he’s dead or kidnapped.”
She nodded slowly, but before she could say anything, Abrams went on quickly. “While I was in the Russian house, I wandered off by myself and came face-to-face with Henry Kimberly.”
Katherine was drying her eyes with a handkerchief, looking at him, and he could see she did not comprehend a word of it. He said, “I met your father. He’s alive.”
She still didn’t seem to assimilate it. Then she suddenly shook her head and stood. He stood too and held her shoulders. They looked at each other for a long time, then she nodded.
“You understand?”
She nodded again quickly, but said nothing. She was very pale. He eased her down onto the sofa and gave her the Scotch. She swallowed a mouthful, then took a deep breath. “Odysseus.”
Abrams replied, “Yes, the warrior has returned.” He put his hand on her cheek. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes.” She stared into his eyes. “You knew, didn’t you? You tried to tell me… and I guess I understood what you were saying… so it’s not a complete shock.”
“I only suspected. Now I know.”
She took his hand in both of hers. “You recognized him?”
He nodded and forced a smile. “The Kimberly eyes.”
She smiled faintly in return, thought a moment, and said, “My God… Oh, my God… Tony… What does this mean?”
Abrams shook his head. “I don’t know, but it does not bode well, does it?”
She squeezed his hand tightly. “No. No, it is—grave and foreboding.”
Abrams nodded. Henry Kimberly’s presence in America would have to be taken as a signal that the countdown had begun.
And if, in fact, that basement was full of people, then all systems were go.
50
The attic room was still, and Peter Thorpe heard the low hum of the electronic consoles, and felt the machines’ vibrations in the floorboards. The big, open room reminded him of his own garret in the Lombardy, where he would have preferred to be at the moment. This place, however, was more elaborate. This was the fabled Russian spy center of North America, the subject of press editorials, congressional debates, and television documentaries. This facility also had diplomatic immunity, and his did not. Also, his attic room had to serve as both a communications center and an interrogation room, which was not always convenient. The Russians used their cellar for the messy stuff. This was the advantage of a nice big house in the suburbs over an apartment in town. He smiled grimly at his own forced humor.
Thorpe looked at his watch. The four Russians had left to put people and systems on alert status and had not yet returned. He turned from the window and saw the communications officer walking down the line of consoles, making entries into a logbook. Henry Kimberly was sitting nearby, ignoring Thorpe and reading a Russian newspaper by the light of a computer’s video display screen.
Thorpe noticed that odd smell in the room that electronics emitted, and he felt the heat that was generated by the radios and computers.
Thorpe regarded Kimberly. All was obviously not well in his attic. Thorpe recognized that his own peculiarities of the mind were inherent and inborn. He was certain that Kimberly’s strangeness was acquired. The old term brainwashing came to him. But it was more than that. Forty years, he thought. Not only was the brain washed, but so was the heart and soul.
In fact, though, they had probably done nothing more to him than they’d done to 270 million other Soviet citizens; they had made him live there.
Thorpe remembered his two brief, furtive trips to Russia. As he walked the streets of Moscow, he had had the impression that half the population was going to a funeral and the other half coming from one.
As he looked at Kimberly, he wondered how the Russians were going to present this bloodless man to the American public as their new leader; his speech, his movements, his facial expressions, his whole persona, reminded Thorpe of an alien from another world trying to pass as an earthling. Thorpe was sure the KGB had kept Kimberly abreast of the developments in American life, but the American Training School on Kutuzovsky Prospekt was a poor substitute for the real thing.
Kimberly sensed that Thorpe was staring at him and looked up from his newspaper. Thorpe hesitated, then asked, “Was it you, or James, or someone else, who sent my parents to their deaths?”
Kimberly seemed neither surprised nor put off by the question. He replied, “It was I. One of the agents on that jump was a Communist. One of my people. After he hit the ground, he tipped off the Gestapo, anonymously. The twelve people on that jump were all eventually arrested and shot. What difference does it make to you?”
“I’m not certain.”
“You’re hardly in a position to make a moral judgment of me, or any sort of judgment for that matter.”
“I’m not making judgments. I just wanted to know.” He hesitated again, then said, “James, and others, speak well of them.” He looked at Kimberly.
Kimberly shrugged. “De mortuis nil nisi bonum—speak only good of the dead. But if it’s the truth you’re after, and I suppose you are, your mother was a French whore, and your father a pompous, spoiled dilettante.”
Thorpe replied, “That hardly sounds like the type of people who would volunteer to parachute into enemy territory.”
Kimberly replied, “Their motivations were as confused as yours. It must run in the family.”
Thorpe bit back a reply and took out a cigarette.
Kimberly let the silence drag out, then said, “How is she? Does she mention me at all?”
Thorpe saw his possible salvation in these questions. He answered, “She’s a bit of a bitch, actually. Takes after her mother, I understand. And, yes, she mentions her deceased war-hero father from time to time.” He added, “Katherine and I had a good relationship until recently, regardless of what you may hear to the contrary.”
Thorpe was amazed at the things he was thinking and saying. It must be, he thought, the shock of knowing America was finished, and that he himself might be finished. He was not contrite over what he had done, only angry at himself for playing a bad hand.
Kimberly smiled but said nothing.
Thorpe added, “I can fill you in about Ann, too. I know her. And I can answer other questions you may have about things in general over the next several months.”
Again, Kimberly smiled. “Someone once wrote that the true genius is the person who can invent his own job. Well, Thorpe, I suppose you’d make a passable presidential advisor. Or perhaps a White House court jester.”
Thorpe’s eyelids twitched, but he kept control of himself.
Kimberly leaned back in his chair. “Before you arrived, we were discussing Katherine’s fate. She’s next door.”
“I know that.”
“Did you know that they’ve all been poisoned and will begin dying in a few hours?”
Thorpe’s eyes widened.
“There is a way to save her. Do you want her?”
Thorpe had the feeling again that he was navigating a minefield. “Do you?”
Kimberly’s expression took on a faraway look as he mused aloud. “There are times when I think I’d like to see a reunion of family and friends. There are other times when I want to obliterate the past… ” He looked at Thorpe. “Did you know I married a Russian girl over there? She’s still there, of course. Hardly a presentable first lady. I have two sons… one is a colonel in the KGB… Do you think it would be a good idea to annihilate the American Kimberly line? That would strengthen the Russian Kimberly family.”