LITMIR.BIZ

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on Washington Square, facing across the trees to the university buildings. It had been owned by the CIA – through a land-management front – for many years, and used for various clandestine purposes that included extra-marital exploits by certain senior members of the Operations Division.

      Technically, Major Mann was responsible for Bekuv’s safety – which was a polite way of saying custody, as Bekuv himself pointed out at least three times a day. But it was Mann’s overt role of custodian that enabled Bekuv to believe that the interrogation team were the NYU academics that they pretended to be. The interrogators’ first hurdle was to steer Bekuv away from pure administration. Perhaps it was inevitable that a Soviet academic would want to know the floor-area his department would occupy, spending restrictions, the secretarial staff he was entitled to, his voting power in the university, his access to printing, photography and computer and his priority for student and postgraduate enrolment.

      The research team was becoming more and more fretful. The reported leakage of scientific information eastwards was reflected by the querulous memos that were piling up in my ‘classified incoming’.

      Pretending to be Professor Bekuv’s assistants, the interrogators were hoping to recognize the character of the data he already knew, and hoping to trace the American sources from which it had been stolen. With this in mind, slightly modified data had been released to selected staff at various government labs. So far, none of this ‘seeded’ material had come back through Bekuv, and now, in spite of strenuous protests from his ‘staff’, Bekuv declared a beginning to the Christmas vacation. He imperiously dismissed his interrogators back to their homes and families. Bekuv was therefore free to spend all his days designing a million-dollar heap of electronic junk that was guaranteed to make contact with one of those super-civilizations that were sitting around in space waiting to be introduced.

      By Thursday evening the trees in Washington Square were dusted with the winter’s first snow, radio advertisers were counting Christmas shopping time in hours, and Mann was watching me shave in preparation for a Park Avenue party at the home of a senior security official of the United Nations. A hasty note on the bottom of the engraved invitation said ‘and bring the tame Russkie’. It had sent Mann into a state of peripatetic anxiety. ‘You say Tony Nowak sent your invite to the British Embassy in Washington?’ he asked me for the fourth or fifth time.

      ‘You know Tony,’ I said. ‘He’s nothing if not tactful. That’s his UN training.’

      ‘Goddamned gab-factory.’

      ‘You think he knows about this house on Washington Square?’

      ‘We’ll move Bekuv tomorrow,’ said Mann.

      ‘Tony can keep his mouth shut,’ I said.

      ‘I’m not worrying about Tony,’ said Mann. ‘But if he knows we’re here, you can bet a dozen other UN people know.’

      ‘What about California?’ I suggested. ‘UCLA.’ I sorted through my last clean linen. I was into my wash-and-wear shirts now, and the bath was brimming with them.

      ‘And what about Sing Sing?’ said Mann. ‘The fact is that I’m beginning to think that Bekuv is stalling – deliberately – and will go on stalling until we produce his frau.’

      ‘We both guessed that,’ I said. I put on a white shirt and club tie. It was likely to be the sort of party where you were better off English.

      ‘I’d tear the bastard’s toenails out,’ Mann growled.

      ‘Now you don’t mean that,’ I said. ‘That’s just the kind of joke that gets you a bad reputation.’

      I got a sick kind of pleasure from provoking Major Mann, and he rose to that one as I knew he would: he stubbed out his cigar and dumped it into his Jim Beam bourbon – and you have to know Mann to realize how near that is to suicide. Mann watched me combing my hair, and then looked at his watch. ‘Maybe you should skip the false eyelashes,’ he said, ‘we’re meeting Bessie at eight.’

      Mann’s wife Bessie looked about twenty years old but must have been nearer forty. She was tall and slim, with the fresh complexion that was the product of her childhood on a Wisconsin farm. If beautiful was going too far, she was certainly good-looking enough to turn all male heads as she entered the Park Avenue apartment where the party was being held.

      Tony greeted us and adroitly took three glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter. ‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony Nowak – or Nowak the Polack as he was called by certain acquaintances who had not admired his spike-booted climb from rags to riches. For Antoni Nowak’s job in the United Nations Organization security unit didn’t require him to be in the lobby wearing a peaked cap and running metal detectors over the hand baggage. Tony had a six-figure salary and a three-window office with a view of the East River, and a lot of people typing letters in triplicate for him. In UN terms he was a success.

      ‘Now the party can really begin,’ said Tony again. He kissed Bessie, took Mann’s hat and punched my arm. ‘Good to see you – and Jesus, what a tan you guys got in Miami.’

      I nodded politely and Mann tried to smile, failed and put his nose into his champagne.

      ‘The story is you’re retiring, Tony,’ said Bessie.

      ‘I’m too young to retire, Bessie, you know that!’ He winked at her.

      ‘Steady up, Tony,’ said Bessie, ‘you want the old man to catch on to us?’

      ‘He should never have left you behind on that Miami trip,’ said Tony Nowak.

      ‘It’s a lamp,’ said Mann. ‘Bloomingdales Fifty-four ninety-nine, with three sets of dark goggles.’

      ‘You could have fooled me,’ said Tony Nowak, ‘I thought it was a spray job.’

      Behind us there were soft chiming sounds and a servant opened the door. Tony Nowak was still gripping Bessie’s arm but as he caught sight of his new guests he relaxed his grip. ‘These are the people from the Secretariat …’ said Tony Nowak.

      ‘Go look after your new arrivals,’ said Mann. ‘Looks like Liz Taylor needs rescuing from the Shah of Iran.’

      ‘And ain’t you the guy to do it,’ said Tony Nowak. He smiled. It was the sort of joke he’d repeat between relating the names of big-shots who had really been there.

      ‘It beats me why he asked us,’ I told Mann.

      Mann grunted.

      ‘Are we here on business?’ I asked.

      ‘You want overtime?’

      ‘I just like to know what’s going on.’

      From a dark corner of the lounge there came the hesitant sort of music that gives the pianist time for a gulp of martini between bars. When Mann got as far as the Chinese screen that divided this room from the dining-room, he stopped and lit a cheroot. He took his time doing it so that both of us could get a quick look round. ‘A parley,’ Mann said quietly.

      ‘A parley with who?’

      ‘Exactly,’ said Mann. He inhaled on his cheroot, and took my arm in his iron grip while telling about all the people he recognized.

      The dining-room had been rearranged to make room for six special backgammon tables at which silent players played for high stakes. The room was crowded with spectators, and there was an especially large group around the far table at which a middle-aged manufacturer of ultrasonic intruder alarms was doing battle with a spectacular redhead.

      ‘Now that’s the kind of girl I could go for,’ said Mann.

      Bessie punched him gently in the stomach. ‘And don’t think he’s kidding,’ she told me.

      ‘Don’t do that when I’m drinking French champagne,’ said Mann.

      ‘Is it OK when you’re drinking domestic?’ said Bessie.

      Tony Nowak came past

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