The Mulberry Bush Read Online Free

his own counsel had been no great feat, since almost no one in the station or the embassy or in the American community, not even fellow old Blues, had the slightest interest in talking to a drunken outcast like him.
    Because the case officer manuals for the KGB and Headquarters and practically every other secret espionage service in the world contain the same hoary truths about handling potential traitors, Father understood that Vadim’s behavior—he was a little too compliant, a little too willing to part his knees—was likely to be a theatrical exercise. Routine skepticism suggested that Vadim’s masters had seen an opportunity to penetrate Headquarters, to dump a mother lode of false information on the American service, to have a good laugh at the stupid Americans’ expense.
    That was the beauty of Father’s prank. It would present the clique that ran Headquarters, the people who had banished Father into outer darkness, with an all but irresistible temptation. Whichever course they followed, they could never know if they had missed a bet or brought a disaster down upon themselves. In either case, they would rememberFather, they would remember what they had done to him, they would never be rid of him.
    As retaliation goes, it’s hard to do better than that.
    On a night when the silence in Sokolniki Park was so heavy that it seemed that it made you imagine you could seize it like fabric between thumb and forefinger, Father looked deep into Vadim’s eyes, which in the feeble light seemed as large as a horse’s eyes, and said, “My friend, this flirtation has gone on long enough. This is the moment of truth. Decide now or we forget the whole thing.”
    He laid an encouraging hand on Vadim’s coat sleeve and said, “Do what’s best for you and your family, my friend, whatever that is.”
    Vadim tried to speak but like a stutterer reaching in vain for a word he can pronounce without inviting ridicule, he stood mute.
    Father shrugged and said, “OK. It’s been good to know you.”
    Then he spun on his heel and walked away.
    In a voice that cracked, Vadim said, “Wait.”
    By then, however, Father had turned his back and stepped behind yet another curtain of falling snow. Because they were reading with different eyes from the same sheet of music, both men understood that this was not the end. Whether Vadim was behaving honestly (a possibility, after all) or dissembling, he would not, could not back off. If he honestly wanted to defect, he was already so compromised that he was a candidate for the KGB’s standard penalty for treason: to be placed naked in a coffin and cremated alive. If, on the other hand, he was under orders to feign defection and was this close to success, he would have to go through with the operation.
    Time would tell. Father and Vadim had the means to get in touch with each other. All either man had to do was chalk the Russian letter that looks like a mirror image of
R
on a certain lamppost on Tverskaya Ulitsa and they would meet at the time and place agreed upon.
    Father was ready first thing the following morning to spring his joke on the chief of station. He asked the chief’s secretary for an appointment.
    In an expressionless voice she said, “I’ll tell him you want to see him.”
    This happened on a Tuesday. It was Friday, during the last minutes of the workday, when the chief, a famously foulmouthed man who bore the Dickensian name of Amzi Strange, sent for him.
    Amzi Strange had never smiled in Father’s presence, nor did he smile now.
    In a toneless voice he said, “What?”
    Father handed him a bulging manila folder. Skilled bureaucrat that he was, he had organized a meticulous file on his mock operation.
    Amzi Strange said, “What’s this supposed to be?”
    Father said, “I think you should read it, and read it yourself instead of handing it off to someone else, and then if you