The Sisters (8 page)

The old man gently drew a cover over the Potter, stoked the fire, carefully allotted two more logs to it, and shuffling off to his bed in the far corner of the room, drew the Army blanket that served as a curtain and went to sleep himself.

The Potter woke up in the pitch darkness and heard the old man snoring from behind the curtain. Moving quietly, he struck a match, lighted a candle and made his way into the unheated room that Revkin used to store his vegetables for the winter. He found the loose floorboard without any trouble, pried it up with a kitchen knife and retrieved the package wrapped in a woman's kerchief. He unfolded the cloth and examined the contents. It was all there. He had hidden it away years before, when he had returned from his tour in New York. At the time he had been riding high, and the precaution had been a professional reflex; an act of tradecraft that wasn't spelled out in any of the textbooks; a hedge against difficult times that was second nature to people in his business. Later, when he had been obliged to retire as novator and move into a small apartment with another family, he removed the package from its original hiding place and stashed it away under the floorboards of the old man's cottage.

The Potter had started to slip the floorboard back into place when he noticed the second oval of flickering candlelight superimpose itself on the first. He turned to see the old man standing in the doorway, the hem of his nightdress brushing his bare feet.

"I knew it was there," he snapped, inclining his head toward the package. "And I know what brings you all this way."

"I would have come anyway-" the Potter started to protest, but the old man, smiling sadly, interrupted him.

"What brings you all this way, Feliks," he said, blinking away the film of moisture forming over his eyes, "is to say good-bye."

The Potter couldn't, didn't, deny it.

And then the old man astonished the Potter. "If you can get out the way Piotr got out," he whispered fiercely, "more power to you. My future is in my past. For you, for Piotr, there is still life before death."

The Potter was up and dressed at first light; he wanted to get back to Moscow as early as possible. He looked around for a scrap of paper on which he could jot a note. His eyes fell on the Army blanket that screened off the old man's bed from the rest of the room. It seemed incredibly still, as if there were no life beyond it. ... The skin tightened on the Potter's face. He tiptoed to the curtain and peeled back an edge. The old man lay on his back, his mouth gaping open, his eyes, unblinking, fixed on the ceiling over his head. The Potter stepped up to the bed and placed a palm on Revkin's chest. He felt his rib cage under the quilt. It was deathly still.

Another myth acted out! And what timing. For the old man had been the hostage that kept Piotr Borisovich on the straight and narrow. With him gone, the Potter would be free to betray his last, his best sleeper-and then, if he moved rapidly, save him from the results of that betrayal.

Carroll's cheeks were swollen from having swallowed a candy with finely chopped walnuts in it, and Thursday had trouble making out what he said.

Francis provided a running translation. "He says you are to touch base with the West Germans. He says it is a matter of protocol."

Carroll said, ". . . eason hern ang ound en u alk otter."

"He says there's no reason for them to hang around when you talk to the Potter."

"In other words," Thursday said, "I'm to skim off the cream, as we say in the trade, and leave the milk for them."

"Ite," Carrol! mumbled.

"Right," Francis repeated.

"I'm to get three items from him," continued Thursday. He wanted to show that he had memorized his instructions. He ticked off the items.

". . . r ack eeee oes," said Carroll.

"Or back he goes," translated Francis.

"If he doesn't come across with the aforementioned items," repeated Thursday, "back he goes, on the next plane out, wife and all."

"Ite." Carroll nodded, touching an inflamed cheek with his fingertips to make contact with his twitching

nerve.

"Right," Francis interpreted.

"Un ore ing," muttered Carroll.

"I got that," said Thursday, smiling brightly- "He said, 'One more thing.'

Carroll glared at him over his half-empty box of candy. In the Company's early days, a good man Friday was seen and not heard. Still, they were lucky to have one as thick as Thursday. If anyone could carry out instructions without really understanding what he was doing, it was him.

"Ve ev-ing," Carrol! said, "u unicate ith ol'ody, ot ven eetor. out is."

Francis raised a pencil and tapped Thursday on the shoulder as if he were knighting him. "He says, above everything, you communicate with nobody, not even the Director, about this."

Thursday giggled excitedly. "Mum's the word," he said.

"You what?"

"Svetochka couldn't abandon them like that, Feliks," she pleaded. "They would die of dehydration."

The Potter strained to control himself. No matter how many times he went over it with her, she still didn't seem to grasp the situation. They had to walk out of the house as if they were coming back in two hours, and avoid at all costs making it appear that they were going away for a long time. Not to mention forever! "What exactly did you tell them?"

"Svetochka didn't tell them anything," she insisted, fighting back tears. "Svetochka only asked them to water the plants."

Above all, he must not make her nervous, he reminded himself. "It is not serious," he told her. "They may think we are going to visit the old man in Peredelkino for a day or so."

Svetochka breathed a sigh of relief. "About my sister," she started to say, but the Potter cut her off.

"Not a word," he ordered. "News travels fast. If you tell her, she will phone up her husband, and his brother works as a Merchant for the Center and will immediately suspect something if he hears I am leaving the country. You can always send her a picture postcard from Paris," he added.

"Paris," she repeated wistfully, her round face relaxing into a distant smile. "Will she be jealous!"

It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to turn your back and walk away from everything you had, you knew, you were. The Potter understood this more than most people. He had discussed it at great length with Piotr Borisovieh before he had turned Iris back (albeit on assignment). They had come to the conclusion that you had to bring something with you from your past, no matter how insignificant it was, in order to get a hook into the future. It provided a transition. It helped you keep your sanity when you finally realized that none of what was happening to yon was a dream-or a nightmare. When his time came to leave, Piotr Borisovieh had taken with him a small, well-thumbed American paperback edition of Whitman poems, with the lines they both loved, the ones about the sisters Death and Night, underlined in pencil.

The Potter too had given in to the temptation of travelling with a security blanket. Locking up his attic workroom, he had treated himself to a last look around. It had meant a great deal to him, his workroom, especially since he didn't have an office to go to anymore. If he took something with him, he decided, it would come from here. He was sorry to leave his wheel behind-he had constructed it himself from a kit imported from Finland-but there was nothing to do about that. He would buy a new wheel in the West, an electric one maybe, whose speed was controlled with a pedal. His eye had fallen on the length of wire he used to cut his pots off the wheel. Piotr Borisovieh had made it for him with a middle A string from an old piano, and a thick piece of bamboo at each end to grip it with. On the spur of the moment, the Potter had pocketed the wire, switched off the bulb and left.

"You are absolutely positive there is no danger?" Svetochka asked him for the hundredth time as they prepared to leave the apartment. She was wearing her highest spikes and her shortest skirt, which was her idea of how women looked in Europe.

"There is no danger as long as you do precisely what I told you," the Potter promised her. He wondered, even as he spoke, if it were true.

"Paris," Svetochka repeated under her breath, as if the mere mention of the word could still her doubts, calm her nerves, give her the nervous energy she needed to cross thresholds. And the Potter understood that what she carried with her from her past in order to get a hook into the future was her longing for something that, until now, she could never have.

The little man with the shirred skin was waiting behind the wheel of the taxi parked in front of their door. Seeing the Potter and his wife, he crooked his emaciated finger in their direction. When they had settled into the back seat, he tipped his hat to them in the rearview mirror.

The last time the Potter had seen this gesture, the little man had accompanied it with a mischievous wink. Now he exhibited all the formality of an undertaker. "I am told," he said over his shoulder, throwing the taxi into gear, drifting out into traffic, "that you are going to the Holy Land."

Svetochka glanced quickly at the Potter, but he cut off her protest with a warning look.

"We are not paid for what we do," the little man continued intently, "we are volunteers. Getting Jews out of Russia is God's work. I take it as an honor to be part of Oskar's organization."

"How many have you gotten out?" the Potter asked politely.

The little man preened behind the wheel of the taxi. "I myself have been involved in fourteen confutations before you two." He laughed self-consciously. "For reasons I have never fathomed, that is what Oskar calls it when we smuggle someone out of the country. A confutation."

The little man's use of the word "confutation" had a calming effect on the Potter. It was a professional term, and reinforced the impression that Oskar was the professional he claimed to be. And getting out of Russia would very much depend on Oskar being a professional.

The little man maneuvered the taxi through afternoon traffic. He drove slowly, cautiously, observing every sign, signaling every turn until he came to a light turning red. Accelerating sharply, he shot across the intersection.

"Nicely done," the Potter observed, and he turned to look at their wake.

Nobody was following them.

The Potter noticed that they were heading in the opposite direction from Moscow Airport, but he said nothing. "Listen carefully," the driver called back over his shoulder. "There is a pedestrian island ahead, where the peripheric becomes Valovaya." He glanced at the dashboard clock. "We are right on schedule," exclaimed the little man. "I will pull over. You will get out and jump across the island into the taxi you will find waiting on the opposite lane."

The pedestrian island came into view ahead. "I wish you both Godspeed,"

the little man cried in an excited, high-pitched voice as he braked to a stop next to the island. The traffic piled up behind the taxi. Drivers leaned on their horns in annoyance. The Potter jerked open the door on his side, pulled Svetochka from the back seat and practically dragged her across the island into the back seat of the taxi that was headed in the opposite direction. Without waiting for the door to close, the driver-it was the squirrellike man who had kept a scarf over his lower jaw the first time the Potter had set out to meet Oskar-floored the gas pedal and propelled the taxi into the traffic flowing through the peripheric.

The Potter twisted in his seat to look behind them. The tradecraft was fairly elementary, but extremely efficient. One instant you were going in one direction. The next instant you were off in the opposite direction. If someone were following you, he'd have to make a highly visible U-turn.

Nobody did.

"We are as clean as the freshly scrubbed ass of a baby," the driver, who had been studying his rearview

mirror, said after a moment. He turned south at the next crossroad. The taxi passed under a sign that indicated the airport was dead ahead.

They crossed a circus caravan heading into the city, with several overweight lions lazing in cages in flat trucks, and the head of a giraffe projecting over the cab of a large van. Several dozen open trucks filled with cabbages and early apples from nearby collective farms were hacked up behind the caravan. The highway widened as they got closer to the airport. It was six lanes, three in each direction, when they finally spotted the hangars and control tower and radars and turned off onto the flat approach road.

"The meter is running," the driver reminded them in a tight voice. He adjusted his scarf so that it covered the lower part of his face. "Be sure to pay me when I let you off-it looks more natural that way. And for God s sake don't forget the two valises in the trunk compartment.'

"Svetochka is frightened," Svetochka suddenly whispered in the Potter's ear. She looked as if she were ready to throw up.

"Think of yourself as an actress playing a role-two roles, actually," he whispered back. "You had the makings of a great star once. You can do it."

Svetochka swallowed. "Svetochka will try," she murmured.

The taxi slowed as it entered the circular driveway in front of the terminal and pulled up before the main doors. "Remember," the Potter instructed Svetochka, "you are a happy Russian wife off with her husband to the Black Sea for some sand and sun."

Svetochka drew a deep breath. Then, moistening her lips, flashing her most superior smile, she slipped into the role. "Do pay the man, Feliks," she ordered in a loud voice. "I don't want to miss a minute more of sun than I have to.'

The Potter glanced at the meter and counted out some rubles. Then he went around to the trunk compartment and removed the two valises in it.

The taxi roared away from the curb before the Potter could close the lid of the trunk compartment. A uniformed policeman farther along the curb called after the squirrellike driver, but he never looked back and he never slowed down.

Standing in the gutter, the Potter stared after the departing taxi, then started to carry the valises toward the door. From the curb Svetochka berated him. "Darling, there are porters who do that sort of thing."