Edge of Eternity (109 page)

He quickened his pace a little as he approached the end of the block. Turning the corner, he glanced back and saw that Mario was about thirty yards behind.

Just around the corner was a shop selling cigarettes and tobacco. Stanislaw was exactly where Cam expected him to be, standing outside the shop, looking in the window. Cam had about thirty seconds before Mario turned the corner—plenty of time to execute a simple brush pass.

All he had to do was exchange the newspaper he was carrying for the one in Stanislaw's hand, which was identical except that—all being well—it should contain the photocopies Stanislaw had made of documents in his safe at army headquarters.

There was only one snag.

Stanislaw was not carrying a newspaper.

Instead he had a large buff-colored envelope.

He had not followed his instructions to the letter. Either he had misunderstood, or he had imagined that the exact details did not matter.

Whatever the reason, things had gone wrong.

Panic froze Cam's brain. His step faltered. He did not know what to do. He wanted to scream abuse at Staz.

Then he controlled himself. He forced himself to be calm. He made a split-second decision. He would not abort the exchange. He would go through with it.

He walked straight toward Stanislaw.

As they brushed past one another, they exchanged the newspaper for the envelope.

Immediately, Stanislaw walked into the shop, carrying the newspaper, and disappeared from sight.

Cam walked on, carrying the envelope, which was an inch thick with the documents inside.

At the next corner he again glanced back and got a glimpse of Mario. The secret policeman was about twenty yards behind, apparently relaxed and confident. He had no notion of what had just happened. He had not even seen Stanislaw.

Would he notice that Cam was no longer carrying a newspaper, but held an envelope instead? If he did, he might arrest Cam and confiscate the envelope. That would be the end of Cam's triumph—and the end of Stanislaw's life.

It was summer. Cam had no coat under which to conceal the envelope. Besides, hiding it could be worse: Mario might be
more
likely to notice if Cam was suddenly empty-handed.

He passed a street newsstand, but realized he could not stop and buy a newspaper within Mario's sight, for that would draw attention to the fact that he no longer had his original paper.

He realized he had made a foolish mistake. He had been so mesmerized by the brush-past routine that he had not thought of the simplest way out. He should have taken the envelope and
kept
the newspaper.

Too late now.

He felt trapped. It was so frustrating he wanted to scream. Everything had gone perfectly but for one small detail!

He could step into a store and buy another newspaper. He looked for a newsagent's shop. But this was Poland, not America, and there was not a store on every block.

He turned another corner and sighted a rubbish bin. Hallelujah! He quickened his pace and looked inside. His luck was out: there were no newspapers. He spotted a magazine with a colorful cover. He snatched it up and walked on. As he walked, he surreptitiously folded the magazine so that the cover was inside and a page of plain black-and-white print was on the outside. He wrinkled his nose: there had been something disgusting in the bin, and the smell clung to the magazine. He tried not to breathe deeply as he slid the envelope between the pages.

He felt better. He now looked almost the same as he had before.

He returned to his car and took out his keys. This perhaps would be the moment they stopped him. He imagined Mario saying: “Just a minute, let me see that envelope you're trying to hide.” As quickly as he could, he unlocked the door.

He saw Mario a few paces away.

Cam got into his car and placed the magazine in the footwell on the passenger side.

Glancing up, he saw Mario and Ollie getting into their car.

It looked like he had got away with it.

For a moment, he felt too weak to move.

Then he started his engine and drove back to the embassy.

•   •   •

Cam Dewar sat in Lidka's bedsitting room, waiting for her to come home.

She had a photograph of him on her dressing table. Cam found that so pleasing that it almost made him cry. No girl had ever wanted a photo of him, let alone framed it and kept it by her mirror.

The room expressed her personality. Her favorite color was bright pink, and that was the shade of the bedcovers and the tablecloth and the cushions. The closet held few clothes, but they all flattered her: short skirts, V-necked dresses, pretty costume jewelry, prints with small flowers and bows and butterflies. Her bookshelf held all of Jane Austen in English and Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina
in Polish. In a box under the bed, like a secret stash of pornography, she had a collection of American magazines about home decoration, full of photographs of sunlit kitchens painted in bright colors.

Today Lidka had begun the tedious process of being vetted by the CIA as a potential wife. This was much more thorough than the investigation of a mere girlfriend. She had to write her life story, undergo days of interrogation, and take an extended lie-detector test. All this had been going on somewhere else in the embassy while Cam did his normal day's work. He was not allowed to see her until she came home.

It was going to be difficult for Keith Dorset to fire Cam now. The information Staz was producing was solid gold.

Cam had given Staz a compact thirty-five-millimeter camera, a Zorki, which was a Soviet-made copy of a Leica, so that he could photograph documents in his office with the door shut instead of feeding them through the photocopying machine in the secretaries' bullpen. He could pass Cam hundreds of pages of documents in a handful of rolls of film.

The latest question the Warsaw CIA station had asked Staz was: What would trigger a westward attack by the Red Army's Second Strategic Echelon? The files he had provided in answer had been so comprehensive that Keith Dorset had received a rare written compliment from Langley.

And still Mario and Ollie had never seen Staz.

So Cam was confident that he would not be fired, and his marriage would not be forbidden, unless Lidka turned out to be an actual agent of the KGB.

Meanwhile, Poland was lurching toward freedom. Ten million people had joined the first free trade union, called Solidarity. That was one in every three Polish workers. Poland's biggest problem now was not the Soviet Union but money. The strikes, and the consequent paralysis of Communist Party leadership, had crippled an already weak economy. The result was a shortage of everything. The government rationed meat, butter, and flour. Workers who had won generous pay rises found they could not buy anything with their money. The black market exchange rate for the dollar more than doubled, from one hundred twenty zlotys to two hundred fifty. First Secretary Gierek was succeeded by Kania, who was then replaced by General Jaruzelski, which made no difference.

Tantalizingly, Lech Wałesa and Solidarity hesitated on the brink of overthrowing Communism. A general strike was prepared, then called off at the last minute, on the advice of the Pope and the new American president, Ronald Reagan, both of whom feared bloodshed. Cam was disappointed by Reagan's timidity.

He got off the bed and laid the table with cutlery and plates. He had brought home two steaks. Naturally diplomats were not subject to the shortages that afflicted the Poles. They were paying in desperately needed dollars: they could have anything they wanted. Lidka was probably eating better than even the Communist Party elite.

Cam wondered whether to make love to her before or after eating the steaks. Sometimes it was good to savor the anticipation. Other times he was in too much of a hurry. Lidka never minded either way.

At last she arrived home. She kissed his cheek, put down her bag, took off her coat, and went along the hall to the bathroom.

When she came back he showed her the steaks. “Very nice,” she said. Still she did not look at him.

“Something's wrong, isn't it?” Cam said. He had never known her to be ill-tempered. This was unique.

“I don't think I can be a CIA wife,” she said.

Cam fought down panic. “Tell me what's happened.”

“I'm not going back tomorrow. I won't put up with it.”

“What's the problem?”

“I feel like a criminal.”

“Why, what did they do?”

At last she looked directly at him. “Do you believe I'm just using you to get to America?”

“No, I don't!”

“Then why did they ask me that?”

“I don't know.”

“Does the question have anything to do with national security?”

“Nothing at all.”

“They accused me of lying.”

“Did you lie?”

She shrugged. “I didn't tell them everything. I'm not a nun, I've had lovers. I left one or two out—but your horrible CIA knew! They must have gone to my old school!”

“I know you've had lovers, I have too.” Though not many, Cam thought, but he did not say it. “I don't mind.”

“They made me feel like a prostitute.”

“I'm sorry. But it really doesn't matter what they think of us, so long as they give you a security clearance.”

“They're going to tell you a lot of nasty stories about me. Things they've been told by people who hate me—girls who are jealous, and boys I wouldn't sleep with.”

“I won't believe them.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

She sat on his lap. “I'm sorry I was grouchy.”

“I forgive you.”

“I love you, Cam.”

“I love you, too.”

“I feel better now.”

“Good.”

“Do you want me to make
you
feel better?”

This kind of talk made Cam's mouth dry. “Yes, please.”

“Okay.” She stood up. “You just lie back and relax, baby,” she said.

•   •   •

Dave Williams flew to Warsaw with his wife, Beep, and their son, John Lee, for the marriage of his brother-in-law, Cam Dewar.

John Lee could not read, although he was an intelligent eight-year-old and went to a fine school. Dave and Beep had taken him to an educational psychologist, and had learned that the boy suffered from a common condition called dyslexia, or word-blindness. John Lee would learn to read, but he would need special help and he would have to work extra hard at it. Dyslexia ran in families and afflicted boys more than girls.

That was when Dave realized what his own problem was.

“I believed I was dumb, all through school,” he told Beep that evening, in the pine kitchen of Daisy Farm, after they had put John Lee to bed. “The teachers said the same. My parents knew I wasn't dumb, so they assumed I must be lazy.”

“You're not lazy,” she said. “You're the hardest-working person I know.”

“Something was wrong with me, but we didn't know what it was. Now we do.”

“And we'll be able to make sure John Lee doesn't suffer the way you did.”

Dave's lifelong struggle with writing and reading was explained. It had not oppressed him for many years, not since he had become a songwriter whose lyrics were on the lips of millions. All the same he felt enormously relieved. A mystery had been unraveled, a cruel disability accounted for. Most important of all, he knew how to make sure it did not afflict the next generation.

“And you know what else?” Beep had said, pouring a glass of Daisy Farm cabernet sauvignon.

“Yeah,” said Dave. “He's probably mine.”

Beep had never been sure whether Dave or Walli was the father of John Lee. As the boy grew and changed and looked more and more like Dave, neither of them had known whether the likenesses were inherited or acquired: hand gestures, turns of phrase, enthusiasms, all could have been learned by a boy who adored his daddy. But dyslexia could not be learned. “It's not conclusive,” Beep said. “But it's strong evidence.”

“And anyway, we don't care,” said Dave.

However, they had vowed never to speak of this doubt to anyone else, including John Lee himself.

Cam's wedding took place at a modern Catholic church in the small town of Otwock, on the outskirts of Warsaw. Cam had embraced Catholicism. Dave had no doubt the conversion was entirely cynical.

The bride wore a white dress that her mother had got married in: Polish people had to recycle clothing.

Lidka was slim and attractive, Dave thought, with long legs and a nice bust, but there was something about her mouth that suggested ruthlessness to him. Perhaps he was being harsh: fifteen years as a rock star had made him cynical about girls. They went to bed with men to seek some advantage for themselves more often than most people thought, in his experience.

The three bridesmaids had made themselves short summery dresses in bright pink cotton.

The reception was held at the American embassy. Woody Dewar paid for it, but the embassy was able to secure plentiful supplies of food, and something other than vodka to drink.

Lidka's father told a joke, half in Polish and half in English. A man walks into a government-owned butcher's shop and asks for a pound of beef.

“
Nie ma
—we don't have any.”

“Pork, then.”

“Nie ma.”

“Veal?”

“Nie ma.”

“Chicken.”

“Nie ma.”

The customer leaves. The butcher's wife says: “The guy is crazy.”

“Of course,” says the butcher. “But what a memory!”

The Americans looked awkward, but the Poles laughed heartily.

Dave had asked Cam not to tell anyone that his brother-in-law was in Plum Nellie, but the news had got out, as it usually did, and Dave was besieged by Lidka's friends. The bridesmaids made a big fuss of him, and it was clear that Dave could go to bed with any of them, or even—one hinted—with all three at the same time, if he was so inclined.