Tanya knew she was only damaging her career by contradicting Opotkin, but she was forty and sick of kowtowing to idiots. "Financial pressures made the Polish decision inevitable," she said. "Poland gets huge subsidies from us, but it needs loans from the West as well. President Carter was very tough when he went to Warsaw. He made it clear that financial aid was linked to what they call human rights. If you want to blame someone for the Pope's triumph, Jimmy Carter is the culprit."
Opotkin must have known this was true, but he was not going to admit it. "I always said it was a mistake to let Communist countries borrow from Western banks."
Tanya should have left it there, and allowed Opotkin to save face, but she could not restrain herself. "Then you face a dilemma, don't you?" she said. "The alternative to Western finance is to liberalize Polish agriculture so that they can produce enough of their own food."
"More reforms!" Opotkin said angrily. "That is always your solution!"
"The Polish people have always had cheap food: that's what keeps them quiet. Whenever the government puts up prices, they riot."
"We know how to deal with riots," said Opotkin, and he walked away.
Daniil looked bemused. "Good for you," he said to Tanya. "Though he may make you pay."
Tanya said: "I want some more of that champagne."
At the bar she ran into Vasili. He was alone. Tanya realized that lately he had been showing up to events like this without a floozie on his arm, and she wondered why. But she was focused on herself tonight. "I can't do this much longer," she said.
Vasili handed her a glass. "Do what?"
"You know."
"I suppose I can guess."
"I'm forty. I have to live my own life."
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know, that's the trouble."
"I'm forty-eight," he said. "And I feel something similar."
"What?"
"I don't chase girls anymore. Or women."
She was in a cynical mood. "Don't chase them--or just don't catch them?"
"I detect a note of skepticism."
"Perceptive of you."
"Listen," he said, "I've been thinking. I'm not sure we need to continue the pretense that we barely know one another."
"What makes you say that?"
He leaned closer and lowered his voice, so that she had to strain to hear him over the noise of the party. "Everyone knows that Anna Murray is the publisher of Ivan Kuznetsov, yet no one has ever connected her to you."
"That's because we're ultra-cautious. We never let anyone see us together."
"That being the case, there's no danger in people knowing that you and I are friends."
She was not sure. "Maybe. So what?"
Vasili tried a roguish smile. "You once told me you'd go to bed with me if I would give up the rest of my harem."
"I don't believe I ever said that."
"Perhaps you implied it."
"And anyway, that must have been eighteen years ago."
"Is it too late now to accept the offer?"
She stared at him, speechless.
He filled the silence. "You're the only woman who ever really mattered to me. Everyone else was just a conquest. Some I didn't even like. If I had never slept with her before, that was enough reason for me to seduce her."
"Is this supposed to make you more attractive to me?"
"When I got out of Siberia I tried to resume that life. It's taken me a long time, but I've realized the truth at last: it doesn't make me happy."
"Is that so?" Tanya was getting angrier.
Vasili did not notice. "You and I have been friends for a long time. We're soul mates. We belong together. When we sleep together, it will just be a natural progression."
"Oh, I see."
He was oblivious to her sarcasm. "You're single, I'm single. Why are we single? We should be together. We should be married."
"So, to sum up," Tanya said, "you've spent your life seducing women you never really cared for. Now you're pushing fifty and they don't really attract you--or perhaps you no longer attract them--so, at this point, you're condescending to offer me marriage."
"I may not have put this very well. I'm better at writing things down."
"You bet you haven't put it well. I'm the last resort of a fading Casanova!"
"Oh, hell, you're upset with me, aren't you?"
"Upset comes nowhere near it."
"This is the opposite of what I intended."
Over his shoulder, she caught the eye of Daniil. On impulse she left Vasili and crossed the room. "Daniil," she said. "I'd like to go abroad again. Is there any chance I could get a foreign posting?"
"Of course," he said. "You're my best writer. I'll do anything I can, within reason, to keep you happy."
"Thank you."
"And, coincidentally, I've been thinking that we need to strengthen our bureau in one particular foreign country."
"Which one?"
"Poland."
"You'd send me to Warsaw?"
"That's where it's all happening."
"All right," she said. "Poland it is."
*
Cam Dewar was fed up with Jimmy Carter. He thought the Carter administration was timid, especially in its dealings with the USSR. Cam worked on the Moscow desk at CIA headquarters in Langley, nine miles from the White House. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was a tough anti-Communist, but Carter was cautious.
However, it was election year, and Cam hoped Ronald Reagan would get in. Reagan was aggressive on foreign policy, and promised to liberate intelligence agencies from Carter's milk-and-water ethical constraints. He would be more like Nixon, Cam hoped.
Early in 1980 Cam was surprised to be summoned by the deputy head of the Soviet bloc section, Florence Geary. She was an attractive woman a few years older than Cam: he was thirty-three, she was probably about thirty-eight. He knew her story. She had been hired as a trainee, used as a secretary for years, and given training only when she kicked up a stink. Now she was a highly competent intelligence officer, but she was still disliked by many of the men because of the trouble she had caused.
Today she was wearing a plaid skirt and a green sweater. She looked like a schoolteacher, Cam thought; a sexy schoolteacher, with good breasts.
"Sit down," she said. "The House intelligence committee thinks our information out of Poland is poor."
Cameron took a seat. He looked out of the window to avoid staring at her chest. "Then they know who to blame," he said.
"Who?"
"The director of the CIA, Admiral Turner, and the man who appointed him, President Carter."
"Why, exactly?"
"Because Turner doesn't believe in HUMINT." Human intelligence, or HUMINT, was what you got from spies. Turner preferred SIGINT, signals intelligence, obtained by monitoring communications.
"Do you believe in HUMINT?"
She had a nice mouth, he realized; pink lips, even teeth. He forced himself to concentrate on answering the question. "It's inherently unreliable, because all traitors are liars, by definition. If they're telling us the truth they must be lying to their own side. But that doesn't make HUMINT worthless, especially if it's assessed against data from other sources."
"I'm glad you think so. We need to beef up our HUMINT. How do you feel about working overseas?"
Cameron's hopes leaped. "Ever since I joined the Agency, six years ago, I've been asking for a foreign posting."
"Good."
"I speak Russian fluently. I'd love to go to Moscow."
"Well, life's a funny thing. You're going to Warsaw."
"No kidding."
"I don't kid."
"I don't speak Polish."
"You'll find your Russian useful. Polish schoolchildren have been learning Russian for thirty-five years. But you should learn some Polish too."
"Okay."
"That's all."
Cameron stood up. "Thanks." He went to the door. "Could we discuss this some mo
re, Florence?" he said. "Maybe over dinner?"
"No," she said firmly. Then, just in case he had not got the message, she added: "Definitely not."
He went out and closed the door. Warsaw! On balance, he was pleased. It was a foreign posting. He felt optimistic. He was disappointed she had turned down his invitation to dinner, but he knew what to do about that.
He picked up his coat and went outside to his car, a silver Mercury Capri. He drove into Washington and threaded through the traffic to the Adams Morgan district. There he parked a block away from a storefront massage parlor called Silken Hands.
The woman at the reception desk said: "Hi, Christopher, how are you today?"
"Fine, thanks. Is Suzy free?"
"You're in luck, she is. Room Three."
"Great." Cam handed over a bill and went farther inside.
He pushed aside a curtain and entered a booth containing a narrow bed. Beside the bed, sitting on a plastic chair, was a heavyset woman in her twenties reading a magazine. She wore a bikini. "Hello, Chris," she said, putting down the magazine and standing up. "Would you like a hand job, as usual?"
Cam never had full intercourse with prostitutes. "Yes, please, Suzy." He gave her a bill and started taking off his clothes.
"It'll be my pleasure," she said, tucking the money away. She helped him undress, then said: "You just lie down and relax, baby."
Cam lay on the bed and closed his eyes while Suzy went to work. He pictured Florence Geary in her office. In his mind, she pulled the green sweater over her head and unzipped her plaid skirt. "Oh, Cam, I just can't resist you," she said in Cam's imagination. Wearing only her underwear, she came around her desk and embraced him. "Do anything you like to me, Cam," she said. "But please, do it hard."
In the massage parlor booth, Cam said aloud: "Yeah, baby."
*
Tanya looked in the mirror. She was holding a small container of blue eye shadow and a brush. Makeup was more easily available in Warsaw than in Moscow. Tanya did not have much experience with eye shadow, and she had noticed that some women applied it badly. On her dressing table was a magazine open at a photograph of Bianca Jagger. Glancing frequently at the picture, Tanya began to color her eyelids.
The effect was pretty good, she thought.
Stanislaw Pawlak sat on her bed in his uniform, with his boots on a newspaper to keep the covers clean, smoking and watching her. He was tall and handsome and intelligent, and she was crazy about him.
She had met him soon after arriving in Poland, on a tour of army headquarters. He was part of a group called the Gold Fund, able young officers selected by the defense minister, General Jaruzelski, for rapid advancement. They were frequently rotated to new assignments, to give them the breadth of experience necessary for the high command to which they were destined.
She had noticed Staz, as he was called, partly because he was so good-looking, and partly because he was obviously taken with her. He spoke Russian fluently. Having talked to her about his own unit, which handled liaison with the Red Army, he had then accompanied her on the rest of the tour, which was otherwise dull.
Next day he had turned up on her doorstep at six in the evening, having got her address from the SB, the Polish secret police. He had taken her to dinner at a hot new restaurant called the Duck. She quickly realized that he was as skeptical about Communism as she was. A week later she slept with him.
She still thought about Vasili, wondering how his writing was going, and whether he missed their monthly meetings. She was viscerally angry with him, though she was not sure why. He had been crass, but men were crass, especially the handsome ones. What she was really seething about was the years before his proposal. Somehow she felt that what she had done for him during that long time had been dishonored. Did he believe she had just been waiting, year after year, until he was ready to be her husband? That thought still infuriated her.
Staz was now spending two or three nights a week at her apartment. They never went to his place: he said it was little better than a barracks. But they were having a great time. And all along, in the back of her mind, she had been wondering if his anti-Communism might one day lead to action.
She turned to face him. "How do you like my eyes?"
"I adore them," he said. "They have enslaved me. Your eyes are like--"
"I mean my makeup, idiot."
"Are you wearing makeup?"
"Men are blind. How are you going to defend your country with such poor powers of observation?"
His mood became dark again. "We make no provision for defending our own country," he said. "The Polish army is totally subservient to the USSR. All our planning is about supporting the Red Army in an invasion of Western Europe."
Staz often talked like this, complaining about Soviet domination of the Polish military. It was a sign of how much he trusted her. In addition, Tanya had found that Poles spoke boldly about the failings of Communist governments. They felt entitled to complain in a way that other Soviet subjects did not. Most people in the Soviet bloc treated Communism as a religion that was a sin to question. The Poles tolerated Communism as long as it served them, and protested as soon as it fell short of their expectations.
All the same, Tanya now switched on her bedside radio. She did not think her apartment was bugged--the SB had their hands full spying on Western journalists, and probably left Soviet ones alone--but caution was an ingrained habit.
"We are all traitors," Staz finished.
Tanya frowned. He had never before called himself a traitor. This was serious. She said: "What on earth do you mean?"
"The Soviet Union has a contingency plan to invade Western Europe with a force called the Second Strategic Echelon. Most of the Red Army tanks and personnel carriers headed for West Germany, France, Holland, and Belgium will pass through Poland on their way. The United States will use nuclear bombs to try to destroy those forces before they reach the West--that is, while they are still crossing Poland. We estimate that four hundred to six hundred nuclear weapons will be exploded in our country. There will be nothing left but a nuclear wasteland. Poland will have disappeared. If we cooperate in the planning of this event, how can we not be traitors?"
Tanya shuddered. It was a nightmare scenario--but terrifyingly logical.
"America is not the enemy of the Polish people," said Staz. "If the USSR and the USA go to war in Europe, we should side with the Americans, and liberate ourselves from the tyranny of Moscow."
Was he just blowing off steam, or something more? Tanya said carefully: "Is it just you who thinks like this, Staz?"
"Certainly not. Most officers my age feel the same. They pay lip service to Communism, but if you talk to them when they're drunk you'll hear another story."
"In that case, you have a problem," she said. "By the time the war begins, it will be too late for you to win the trust of the Americans."
"This is our dilemma."
"The solution is obvious. You have to open a channel of communication now."
He gave her a cool look. The thought crossed her mind that he might be an agent provocateur, assigned to provoke her into subversive remarks so that she could be arrested. But she could not imagine that a faker would be such a good lover.
Staz said: "Are we just talking, now, or are we having a serious discussion?"
Tanya took a breath. "I'm as serious as life and death," she said.
"Do you really think it could be done?"
"I know it," she said emphatically. She had been engaging in clandestine subversion for two decades. "It's the easiest thing in the world--but keeping it secret, and getting away with it, is more difficult. You would have to exercise the most extreme caution."
"Do you think I should do it?"
"Yes!" she said passionately. "I don't want another generation of Soviet children--or Polish children--to grow up under this stifling tyranny."
He nodded. "I can tell that you really mean it."
"I do."
"Will you help me?" br />
"Of course I will."
*
Cameron Dewar was not sure he would make a good spy. The undercover stuff he had done for President Nixon had been amateurish, and he was lucky not to have gone to jail with his boss, John Ehrlichman. When he joined the CIA he had been trained in the tradecraft of dead drops and brush passes, but he had never actually used such tricks. After six years at CIA headquarters in Langley he had at last been posted to a foreign capital, but he still had not done clandestine work.
The U.S. embassy in Warsaw was a proud white marble building on a street called Aleje Ujazdowskie. The CIA occupied a single office near the ambassador's suite of rooms. Off the office was a windowless storeroom that was used for developing photographic film. The staff was four spies and a secretary. It was a small operation because they had few informants.
Cam did not have much to do. He read the Warsaw newspapers, with the aid of a dictionary. He reported the graffiti he saw: LONG LIVE THE POPE and WE WANT GOD. He talked to men like himself who worked for the intelligence services of other countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, especially those of West Germany, France, and Britain. He drove a used lime-green Polski Fiat whose battery was so undersize that it had to be recharged every night or the car would not start in the morning. He tried to find a girlfriend among the embassy secretaries, and failed.
He felt a loser. His life had once seemed full of promise. He had been a star student at school and university, and his first job had been in the White House. Then it had all gone wrong. He was determined not to let his life be blighted by Nixon. But he needed a success. He wanted to be top of the class again.
Instead he went to parties.
Embassy staff who had wives and children were happy to go home in the evenings and watch American movies on videotape, so the single men got to go to all the less important receptions. Tonight Cam was heading to the Egyptian embassy for a gathering to welcome a new deputy ambassador.
When he started the Polski, the radio came on. He kept it tuned to the SB wavelength. Reception was often weak, but sometimes he could hear the secret police talking as they tailed people around the city.
Sometimes they were tailing him. The cars changed but it was usually the same two men, a swarthy one he called Mario and a fat guy he thought of as Ollie. There seemed to be no pattern to the surveillance, so he just assumed he was more or less always being watched. That was probably what they wanted. Maybe they deliberately randomized their surveillance precisely in order to keep him permanently on edge.