Deep Lie (7 page)

She stopped. Had it been only an echo of her own footsteps?

She walked a bit more quickly, the leather heels of her loafers clicking against the cement, making their hollow sound in the deserted street. As she reached the corner and crossed into her own block, she heard the noise from the other side of the street again, and, simultaneously, a car started somewhere down the block behind her. She took one quick look over her shoulder; if there was someone on the other side of the street, he was behind a tree; the street seemed empty. Further back down the block, though, badly lit by the infrequent street lamps, she caught a glimpse of a car moving slowly toward her. Its headlights were off.

She moved still faster and thought. God knew Washington wasn’t short of muggers, but in Georgetown? At this hour of the morning? Pickings would be awfully lean for a mugger. She nearly sprinted the last fifty yards to her house. She ran up the steps and fumbled with the key. The car had stopped fifty yards away; the driver was only a shape. She heard another sound from the other side of the street.

The door finally came open, and she slipped quickly inside. She went immediately to a small desk in the hallway, opened a bottom drawer and took out a nine mm automatic pistol. She worked the action, flipped off the safety, and stepped to the front window. As she eased back a corner of the curtain, the headlights of the car came on, illuminating the figure of a man, crossing in front of it.

Just a tiny second, but enough to know that it was the same man she had seen earlier.

The car drove away, unhurriedly; she heard it stop, then turn left at the corner. She leaned against the wall and let her pulse return to normal. Not muggers. For just a moment, she entertained the wholly irrational thought that Majorov knew she was after him. and now he was after her.

It was a stupid thought, but when she finally fell asleep, the pistol was still in her hand. HELDER hooked his toes more firmly under the hiking strap and sat even further out until he was using all the tiller extension and the Finn dinghy was screaming along on a plane, doing better than ten knots and casting spray everywhere. It was a new boat. and he knew he could get it to do even better if he had the time to tune it properly. Still, it had been four years since he had taken the helm of a Finn, and what he felt now was pure joy. He tried to remember the last time he had felt this way. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so relaxed, either; probably never. He had spent the last week running, reading, watching the amazing American television, eating wonderful Scandinavian and French dishes and screwing Trina Ragulin, all with an enthusiasm and sense of wonder that still filled him. There was but one cloud on an otherwise uncluttered horizon; he was soon going to have to do something to pay for this glorious existence, and, with the sense of pessimism instilled by a lifetime of dealing with the Soviet system, he could not but believe that the price demanded of him would be high.

As if in reply to this thought, there entered his field of vision a gleaming white electric cart, driven by Colonel Majorov. The cart wound down the hillside toward the marina, and Helder somehow knew the man was coming for him. He’d give his new commanding officer a little display, he thought.

He turned the dinghy downwind and sailed toward the beach where the smaller boats were launched and recovered.

Then he stood up in the notoriously unstable Finn and gybed, ducking easily under the low boom. A moment later he repeated the maneuver. He noted with some satisfaction that a group of his fellow officers ashore had stopped whatever they had been doing and were watching, transfixed. He continued to gybe and duck, tacking the dinghy downwind, still standing; then, when it seemed he would drive the boat right up onto the beach, he rounded up into the wind, let the boat stop, and stepped lightly into the knee-deep water. The group of officers stared silently at him for a moment, then turned back to their own boats.

As he pulled the dinghy ashore on its trolley, Majorov glided up in his electric cart.

“Good morning, Helder,” the colonel said.

“That was quite a demonstration.”

Helder feigned ignorance.

“Good morning, sir. Oh, you mean the gybing? Well, the wind was in the right place.”

Majorov laughed and waved him into the can. The little machine began whining its way back up the hill.

“It was just such balance and precision that brought you to my attention in the first place,” the colonel said.

“It may interest you to know, Helder, that in your entrance examinations for the naval college some years ago, you achieved the highest scores ever recorded on the spatial orientation tests, higher even than those of Yuri Gagarin, who had held the record up until that time.”

Helder had not, of course, known his examination scores, but he remembered that his examiners had seemed impressed.

No matter what machines they put him on or how they had spun or turned him, he still had known which way was up.

Majorov continued.

“There was, in fact, a little battle between the submarine fleet and the space arm about your future. At the time there was something of a glut of cosmonaut candidates, so the fleet won. I am very glad they did, or you might be orbiting the earth today instead of being here with us.”

“Thank you. Colonel,” Helder replied, warming to the praise. There had been precious little of it the last few years, no matter how brilliantly he had performed. Majorov slowed the cart to allow a troop of men in sweat clothes, all jogging precisely in time, to cross the gravel path.

“Have you been getting your land legs back? Getting some exercise?” he asked.

“I want you fit.”

“Yes, Colonel. I have been running every day. I’d like to get in some squash, but I haven’t had a partner.”

Majorov nodded.

“I know you must have been feeling a bit isolated. The others are training in classes, and you will be joining some of them, beginning tomorrow. But I am afraid that much of your training will be rather solitary.

Today, I want you to meet Mr. Jones.” He swung the cart onto a new path and aimed it toward a low-lying building.

“Mr. Jones is our name for your teller of tales, your legend maker Do you know what a legend is, Helder?”

“A historical myth, do you mean?”

“Exactly that, but in your case the meaning becomes more personal.” Majorov stopped the cart in front of the building but did not get out.

“It is just possible that your assignment may take you abroad for a time. Should this occur you must be able to give a plausible account of yourself. With that in mind, Mr. Jones has created a legend, or new identity for you. You must learn all that he tells you quickly and well, then you must begin to live it.

We cannot have you fall unprepared into the hands of a foreign police force, and this identity will keep you safe for a few days, which is the maximum time you might ever need it.” Helder followed as the colonel got out of the car and walked into the building, walking directly into an office. A man in a blue suit rose from behind a desk.

“This is Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, this is… ?” Majorov indicated Helder.

“Carl Bengt Swenson,” Jones replied.

“Please sit down, Mr. Swenson,” he said to Helder.

“May I call you Carl?”

Helder sat down.

“Of course,” he said.

“I will leave you in Mr. Jones’s capable hands, now,” Majorov said.

“Tomorrow, in addition to more sessions with him, you will begin other classes. I’ll see you then.”

Majorov left the room and Helder turned to face Mr.

Jones.

“Please come over here, Carl,” Jones said, walking to a corner of the room where a camera had been set up.

“Put on these clothes,” he said. handing Helder a shin, tie and tweed jacket’ that he recognized from the closet of his own room. He did as he was told and stood against a screen to have his photograph taken. Jones pulled the Polaroid film from the camera, stripped off the covering paper, and waited for it to develop.

“Very nice,” he said.

“if I do say so.” He turned over the sheet of four pictures and stamped something on the back of each.

“Sam’s Fast Foto, Grand Central Station. New York City.” the print read. Jones cut the pictures apart, clipped two of them to a blank form. and pushed it across the desk to Helder with a pen.

“This is an application form for an American passport.

It needs to be filled out in your own hand and signed.” He pushed across a typed sheet of paper.

“This contains the correct information.”

Helder took the pen and quickly filled out the application. learning in the process that he had been born in Duluth, Minnesota, to the former Helga Erikson and Bengt Swenson. both Swedish immigrants. He lived at 73 West Tenth Street in New York City.

Jones took the completed form, left the room for a moment, then returned.

“Good,” he said.

“The application will be made the day after tomorrow at the passport office on Fifth Avenue in New York. It will be issued the same day, and you will have it by the end of the week.

The appropriate entry and exit stamps will be entered later.” Jones took a wallet from his desk drawer and handed it to Helder. It was of black lizard and slightly worn. bent, as if it had been in someone’s hip pocket for a time.

“Open it and sign the enclosed credit cards on the back.”

Helder opened the wallet and removed an American Express card, a Visa card, and charge cards for stores called Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Barney’s.

He also signed a New York State driver’s license, which Jones said would be laminated and returned to him. and a battered Social Security card.

“Some other possessions you must keep with you at all times.” Jones said, pushing various items across the desk.

“This is a class ring from the University of Minnesota, suitably worn; See if it fits.” It did.

“Here is a key ring from Tiffany’s which contains the keys to your apartment and mailbox.” Helder pocketed the keys.

“And here is an artist’s pen called a Rapidograph. I believe you draw.”

Helder nodded. Jones pushed across a sketching pad with the name of a New York art supply store printed on it.

“Just sitting and drawing is an excellent way to pass the time in a strange place without calling undue attention to yourself. You may find it useful.”

Helder picked up the pen and examined it.

“Is this a weapon of some sort, as well?”

Jones laughed.

“No, nothing as exotic as that. People who work with such a pen daily often use it for everything else, too. You are a commercial artist, you see.” Jones thumped a thick stack of paper onto the desk.

“This is a very detailed biography. You must memorize it, of course, but more than that, you must live it. You must invent the detail between the lines. Your mother, you will see, was a country school teacher with a nose broken in a childhood accident. You might extend that fact, for instance, to say that, although the broken nose gave her a tough-looking appearance, she was, in fact, the softest and kindest of persons. You must constantly imagine this sort of detail to flesh out the biography. Your legend will be greatly more convincing if you do that.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now, let me take you through the biography in broad strokes to give you the picture. Your name, as I have said, is Carl Bengt Swenson. Your parents emigrated to the United States from Sweden in 1948, vouched for by cousins who had been in Minnesota for a generation. You attended the University of Minnesota as an art student. In the spring of your senior year, both your parents were killed when a tornado struck the family farm. You sold the land and went to New York City to be an artist. There, you spent some years trying to paint successfully, but failed, and when your inheritance began to run out, you turned to commercial illustration. It was tough at first, but gradually, you established yourself, and now you do quite nicely. You earned eighty-four thousand dollars last year.

You live in the basement and ground floor of a Greenwich Village townhouse and work in your home studio. You have a girl friend, whose picture is in the wallet, suitably signed. It’s a quiet life, though, and you don’t have many acquaintances, working at home as you do. An agent solicits work for you and delivers it on completion. Most of your clients have never met you.”

“Tell me,” Helder said, “what will happen if someone tries to check on any of this?”

“It will hold up perfectly.” Jones said. “for the simple reason that Carl Swenson is real. For a short time. during your mission, he will leave New York for a holiday, and for that time. you will be he. He will cooperate perfectly, because he is addicted to heroin and cocaine, and his supply of these drugs is controlled by people who are sympathetic to our efforts. Oh. before I forget…”

Jones took a small tape recorder from a desk drawer and handed Helder a sheet of paper.

“Speak those words into the tape recorder, please, in your best midwestern accent.”

Helder picked up the paper and read.