The little things, the insignificant things-they were vital. A back door at the Kubinka Armory. “What else?”
“So many inconsequential things that a person might not consider significant, but they can be. Say, being mugged in a city street at night—what should you do, what shouldn’t you do? Remember, many of our candidates, and all of the younger ones, are trained in self-defense, but depending upon the circumstances, it may not be advisable to use those skills. Questions of background could be raised. Discretion, always discretion. … For me, as an experienced part-time tak govorya, of course, I’ve always preferred the more imaginative situations which we are permitted to implement whenever we care to as long as they fall within the guidelines of environmental penetration.”
“What does that mean?”
“Learn always, but never appear to be learning. For example, a favorite of mine is to approach several candidates, say, at a bar in some ‘location’ near a military testing ground. I pretend to be a disgruntled government worker or perhaps an inebriated defense contractor—obviously someone with access to information—and start ladlin’ out classified material of recognized value.”
“Just for curiosity,” Bourne had interrupted, “under those circumstances how should candidates react?”
“Listen carefully and be prepared to write down every salient fact, all the while feigning total lack of interest and offering such remarks as”—here the Novgorod graduate’s Southern dialect became so rough-mountain South that the magnolias were replaced by sour mash—“ ‘Who gives a barrel a’ hogshit ’bout that stuff?’ and ‘They got any of them whoors over there lak people say they got?’ or ‘Don’t understand a fuckin’ word you’re talkin’ about, asshole—all Ah knows is that you’re borin’ the holy be-Jesus outta me!’ … that sort of thing.”
“Then what?”
“Later, each man is called in and told to list everything he learned—fact by salient fact.”
“What about passing along the information? Are there training procedures for that?”
Jason’s Soviet instructor had stared at him in silence for several moments from the adjacent seat in the small plane. “I’m sorry you had to ask the question,” he said slowly. “I’ll have to report it.”
“I didn’t have to ask it, I was simply curious. Forget I asked it.”
“I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”
“Do you trust Krupkin?”
“Of course I do. He’s brilliant, a multilingual phenomenon. A true hero of the Komitet.”
You don’t know the half of it, thought Bourne, but he said, with even a trace of reverence, “Then report it only to him. He’ll tell you it was just curiosity. I owe absolutely nothing to my government; instead, it owes me.”
“Very well. … Speakin’ of yourself, let’s get to you. With Dimitri’s authority I’ve made arrangements for your visit to Novgorod—please don’t tell me your objective; it’s not in my purview any more than the question you asked is in yours.”
“Understood. The arrangements?”
“You will make contact with a young trainer named Benjamin in the manner I will describe in a few moments. I’ll tell you this much about Benjamin so you’ll perhaps understand his attitude. His parents were Komitet officers assigned to the consulate in Los Angeles for nearly twenty years. He’s basically American-educated, his freshman and sophomore years at UCLA; in fact, until he and his father were hurriedly recalled to Moscow four years ago—”
“He and his father?”
“Yes. His mother was caught in an FBI sting operation at the naval base in San Diego. She has three more years to serve in prison. There is no clemency and no exchanges for a Russian ‘momma.’ ”
“Hey, wait a minute. Then it can’t be all our fault.”
“I didn’t say it was, Ah’m just relayin’ the facts.”
“Understood. I make contact with Benjamin.”
“He’s the only one who knows who you are—not by name, of course, you’ll use the name ‘Archie’—and he’ll furnish you with the necessary clearance to go from one compound to the other.”
“Papers?”
“He’ll explain. He’ll also watch you, be with you at all times, and, frankly, he’s been in touch with Comrade Krupkin and knows far more than I do—which is precisely the way this retired Georgia cracker likes it. … Good huntin’, polecat, if it’s huntin’ you’re after. Don’t rape no wooden Indians.”
Bourne followed the signs—everything was in English—to the city of Rockledge, Florida, fifteen miles southwest of NASA’s Cape Canaveral. He was to meet Benjamin at a lunch counter in the local Woolworth store, looking for a man in his mid-twenties wearing a red-checkered shirt, with a Budweiser baseball cap on the stool beside him, saving it. It was the hour, within the time span of minutes: 3:35 in the afternoon.
He saw him. The sandy-haired, California-educated Russian was seated at the far right end of the counter, the baseball cap on the stool to his left. There were half a dozen men and women along the row talking to one another and consuming soft drinks and snacks. Jason approached the empty seat, glanced down at the cap and spoke politely. “Is this taken?” he asked.
“I’m waiting for someone,” replied the young KGB trainer, his voice neutral, his gray eyes straying up to Bourne’s face.
“I’ll find another place.”
“She may not get here for another five minutes.”
“Hell, I’m just having a quick vanilla Coke. I’ll be out of here by then—”
“Sit down,” said Benjamin, removing the hat and casually putting it on his head. A gum-chewing counterman came by and Jason ordered; his drink arrived, and the Komitet trainer continued quietly, his eyes now on the foam of his milk shake, which he sipped through a straw. “So you’re Archie, like in the comics.”
“And you’re Benjamin. Nice to know you.”
“We’ll both find out if that’s a fact, won’t we?”
“Do we have a problem?”
“I want the ground rules clear so there won’t be one,” said the West Coast-bred Soviet. “I don’t approve of your being permitted in here. Regardless of my former address and the way I may sound, I haven’t much use for Americans.”
“Listen to me, Ben,” interrupted Bourne, his eyes forcing the trainer to look at him. “All things considered, I don’t approve of your mother still being in prison, either, but I didn’t put her there.”
“We free the dissidents and the Jews, but you insist on keeping a fifty-eight-year-old woman who was at best a simple courier!” whispered the Russian, spitting out the words.
“I don’t know the facts and I wouldn’t be too quick to call Moscow the mercy capital of the world, but if you can help me—really help me—maybe I can help your mother.”
“Goddamned bullshit promises. What the hell can you do?”
“To repeat what I said an hour ago to a bald-headed friend of yours in the plane, I don’t owe my government a thing, but it sure as hell owes me. Help me, Benjamin.”
“I will because I’ve been ordered to, not because of your con. But if you try to learn things that have nothing to do with your purpose here—you won’t get out. Clear?”
“It’s not only clear, it’s irrelevant and unnecessary. Beyond normal astonishment and curiosity, both of which I will suppress to the best of my ability, I haven’t the slightest interest in the objectives of Novgorod. Ultimately, in my opinion, they lead nowhere. … Although, I grant you, the whole complex beats the hell out of Disneyland.”
Benjamin’s involuntary laugh through the straw caused the foam on. his milk shake to swell and burst. “Have you been to Anaheim?” he asked mischievously.
“I could never afford it.”
“We had diplomatic passes.”
“Christ, you’re human, after all. Come on, let’s take a walk and talk some turkey.”
They crossed over a miniature bridge into New London, Connecticut, home of America’s submarine construction, and strolled down to the Volkhov River, which in this area had been turned into a maximum security naval base—again, all in realistic miniature. High fences and armed “U.S. Marine” guards were stationed at the gates and patrolled the grounds fronting the concrete slips that held enormous mock-ups of the stallions of America’s nuclear undersea fleet.
“We have all the stations, all the schedules, every device and every reduced inch of the piers,” said Benjamin. “And we’ve yet to break the security procedures. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Not for a minute. We’re pretty good.”
“Yes, but we’re better. Except for minor pockets of discontent, we believe. You merely accept.”
“What?”
“Your crap notwithstanding, white America was never in slavery. We were.”
“That’s not only long-past history, young man, but rather selective history, isn’t it?”
“You sound like a professor.”
“Suppose I were?”
“I’d argue with you.”
“Only if you were in a sufficiently broad-minded environment that allowed you to argue with authority.”
“Oh, come on, cut the bullshit, man! The academic-freedom bromide is history. Check out our campuses. We’ve got rock and blue jeans and more grass than you can find the right paper to roll it in.”