“So why bring me out?” he said finally, picking up the thread. “The propaganda? That was part of it. Just being there. They like to show us off. Like the Africans they bring to the university. Living proof. Marx is everywhere–even in the jungle. No color bar in the International. Of course, the people think they’re savages–they just stare at them in the metro–so who’s fooling whom?” He paused, catching himself. “But they never used me that way.”

“They gave you a medal.”

“Yes. One press appearance, then no more. A lot of trouble to take, don’t you think, for a minute on the stage?”

“They had to help you. Isn’t that part of the deal?”

“For a Russian, yes, they would do that. But the rest of us —it would depend on what we knew. And what did I know? So why take the chance, if I was being watched, for instance?” he said, glancing slyly at Nick. “Someone had to get me out. Why put anyone at risk? Why not just leave me to the wolves?”

“Okay, why?”

His father looked at him, his eyes burning, finally there. “To protect someone else.”

For a moment Nick was silent, trying to take it in. “Do you know that?” he said quietly.

His father nodded. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. At first you flatter yourself–you want to believe you are important. But I wasn’t. It was never about me, Nick, what happened. It was always about someone else.”

Nick stared at him, so carefully led to the point that now he felt pinned by its sinking inevitability, the event of his life reduced to an accident. Not about them at all.

“Who?” he said.

His father began to walk again, his voice slipping back to its instructor tone. “Well, who did I know? The logical person was Schulman. It fit. He recruited me. He must have been valuable to them. He would insist on being protected. Richard Schulman. I didn’t know it was possible to hate someone that much. During the bad times I had that to hang on to. He’d get caught–it would happen to him, too. It didn’t, though.” He took a breath. “Which was just as well. It wasn’t him, you see. It was someone else.”

“Who?” Nick repeated.

“That’s what I want to find out.”

For an instant Nick wondered if his father was all right, his anger finally curdled over the years into an old man’s obsession. “Find out? How?”

“The woman is the key. I was sent away and she–died. So someone would be safe. Schulman? No. It should have been him, but he died too.” He glanced at Nick. “Quite naturally —later. There was no question about that. I saw the coroner’s report.”

Nick looked at him, appalled. How long had his father been working out his old puzzle, playing detective while his life passed by? Then he saw himself in London, arranging index cards like clues.

“So,” his father said, a blackboard pointer in his voice, “a new question. Who else did she know? Who recruited her?”

They were almost at the car now, and Nick turned to him, away from the guard. “Does it matter anymore?” he said gently. “So many years. Maybe he’s dead too.”

His father shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. It does matter. He’s still there.”

The guard, no longer shy, called over to them in rapid Czech, and Nick stepped aside when his father answered, jarred by the sudden volley of foreign words. Even the familiar voice seemed different, guttural and slurred. He looked at him, half expecting to see his face changed too, broad and Slavic.

“He wants to know what it can do on the highway, how fast,” his father said.

“I don’t know,” Nick said, his mind elsewhere. “What do you mean, he’s still there?”

“Later,” his father said quietly, then spoke in Czech again, affable now, sharing a foreign joke. Nick watched the guard widen his eyes, then shrug. “I told him ninety easy before it starts to rattle. He says his Tatra would fall apart.” The guard gave the car an admiring pat. “I think you’ve made a convert to the West.”

“Stop it,” Nick said, annoyed at his tone.

“Just smile and get in the car,” his father said, almost under his breath, and then spoke Czech to the guard again. Nick watched them chat for a minute, idle car talk outside the old camp walls, and felt again how surreal ordinary life was here. The past wasn’t forgotten, just ignored. Down the road, little girls had played in a pool.

“Never leave a bad impression,” his father said, getting in the car. “People remember.”

Nick put the car in gear and pulled away. “How do you know he’s still there?”

His father lit a cigarette. “Because I’ve been following him. Every agent has a pattern.”

“Following how?”

“Well, at first by accident,” he said, blowing smoke, easing into it. “We always acted alone in Washington. Burgess staying at Philby’s house–that kind of thing would have been impossible for us. We never knew each other. I had my contact, my control, at the Russian embassy, and that was it. No one else.”

“Then how do you know—”

“The code names. They liked to group us–it’s a convenience. Fish. Birds. Mythology. Whatever came to someone’s mind. I’ve often wondered who did that, who assigned the names. They’re supposed to be completely at random, but you know how it is, someone can’t help being clever. San Francisco was Babylon, Washington Carthage. Capitals of fallen empires. Some clerk’s idea of a joke.”

“What was yours?”

“Coal. I thought it was because of the union work, but it turned out we were all minerals. It had no significance at all. Schulman was Gold. Panning for gold? Maybe he was just first. Of course, I never had the cross-files, only the code names. But it became a kind of game to figure it out, to see whether I might have known any of them. I was pretty sure Iron was Carlson over in Commerce–the reports had his tone, just as dull as talking to him, and sure enough, when he died the reports stopped, so it must have been. Copper was someone at the Post, but I’m still not sure who. The others were mostly illegals, Soviets who were there without diplomatic immunity, so I wouldn’t have known them even if I had had the cross-files. Not that it mattered. It was just a game, to help pass the time.”

Nick stared ahead, amazed. A boys’ game for grownups, code names and passwords.

“Of course, this was all later,” his father continued. “After Josef, my embassy control, came home. At first I didn’t see anything. They had me reading newspapers. I was a sort of Reader’s Digest for Moscow Central. Then I got the traffic from the San Francisco residency.”

“They had an office in San Francisco? What for?”

“Originally to monitor the UN conference in ‘45,” his father said easily. “Afterward, well, some of the old GRU contacts were still there. It was useful to keep tabs on the Soviet merchant marine. Sailors had a bad habit of jumping ship once they were in Babylon. Defectors. That kept the office busy.”

“What happened to them, the sailors?”

“Does it matter?” his father said quietly.

“Yes.”

“They were found and shipped back home.”

Not a game. Hunted down, thrown into ships, sent back to prison camps.

“With your help,” Nick said.

His father was quiet, then sighed. “Yes, with my help. What do you want me to say, Nick? That I didn’t know?”

“No,” Nick said, absorbing it. “Go on.”

“So Josef came back–this would be after they finally got rid of Beria, lots of changes then–and we got together. He liked a drink. I’m a political analyst, I said. Isn’t it time I had something to analyze? I’m wasting my time here. No one is going to waste time now, he says. We’re going to clean house. You’ll see. Very important. As if it were up to him. It’s the drink talking, I thought. But no, reports did start coming. They threw out half the section, Beria’s goons, and Josef had everything his way for a while. He liked me, I don’t know why. I never liked him much, but we don’t pick our commissars, do we? I finally had some real work to do.