'Jurgen, Grand Central, 4.15 p.m.'

  'This is a note to meet someone called Jurgen, is it not?'

  'Yes.'

  'In your handwriting?'

  'Yes.'

  'Who is this Jurgen?'

  'Jurgen Rosenblum. A colleague from my pre-war days. I was arranging to meet him in New York.'

  'And did you?'

  'Yes.' Petrosian was beginning to feel faint. His back and thighs were wet with sweat.

  'What precisely was the nature and purpose of this meeting with Rosenblum?'

  'Why do you make it sound like something sinister? It was a simple social meeting. We have a common bond. We'd both been persecuted by the Nazis, we'd both escaped from Nazi Germany. You clearly haven't the faintest idea what that means to those of us who came through. As to the purpose of the meeting? The purpose was talk. We talked about people we knew who'd made it out, people who hadn't. We talked about science. We talked about books. We talked about the ladies. We talked and we talked —'

  'Was political discussion part of all this talk?'

  'Stuff like that, yes, of course.'

  'I'll bet,' Alvarez said. He paused. Then: 'Did you not meet Rosenblum in an internee camp for enemy aliens in Sherbrooke, Canada, in 1939? And did you not there register with the Communist Party through Rosenblum?'

  'Register? What are you talking about?'

  'You know perfectly well, and before you continue with that insolent tone, sir, I ask you to remember who you're talking to. I'm not suggesting that application forms or membership cards changed hands. How was it done, Doctor Petrosian? With a handshake in some quiet corner? A nod and a wink? An understanding that in due course you might be approached for information? Were you ever a loyal resident of America? Or have you not always been a mole, a sleeper, a Trojan horse, first in Harwell and then Los Alamos?'

  'No.'

  Alvarez said, 'Mister Chairman, I wish to enter the following documents in the record. They are, first, decoded extracts of messages obtained in 1939 by the British MI5 between Moscow and the Russian Embassy in London. They refer to one Leo, a GRU officer planted amongst the internees for the specific purpose of befriending refugee scientists and opening up what they call "channels of communication". The second document is an assessment by MI5 that the GRU agent in question was probably Jurgen Rosenblum.'

  'Why was this Rose in Bloom allowed into America?' Mister Arkansas asked.

  'The fog of war,' Alvarez replied. 'The MI5 filed their report away, and our FBI wasn't notified of their suspicions until 1943. A long surveillance failed to come up with anything until 1951. That was the meeting between Petrosian and Rosenblum.'

  'Where is Rose in Bloom now?' Mister Arkansas wanted to know.

  'He is living openly in New York City.' Alvarez turned his attention again to the sweating physicist. 'I'd like to get back, if I may, to the meeting you attended on July 7th at the home of Paul and Hannah Chapman.'

  'It was a social evening. Their wedding anniversary, as I recall.'

  'So you said. Who else attended this social evening?'

  'You want me to name names?'

  'You ain't a commie, right?' the Arkansas congressman asked. Lev nodded. 'So what's the problem?'

  Petrosian momentarily closed his eyes. He hesitated, took a deep breath, and then said, 'Okay. Okay. Okay. I did attend one meeting of the Communist Party. There were about twenty of us present.'

  The room went still.

  'We were addressed by a very important Hollywood personage.' Petrosian's voice was shaky, and he was taking breath in deep gulps.

  'Take your time. Tell us about it.' Mister Arkansas's eyes were gleaming. Confess your sins, my son. Unburden your soul.

  'This was July 7th, just after the Chapman party. I was directed to go to Greers Ferry Park after dark.'

  'Who delivered this message?'

  'My—' Petrosian lowered his voice '—my controller.'

  The tip-tip of the stenographer; the faint whirr of the movie cameras; something rustling in the parched grass outside.

  'Your controller?' The congressman's voice was almost a whisper. Don't break the atmosphere. Let the confession flow. He leaned forward across the desk.

  'Yes. My controller.'

  'Who was this controller?'

  'I've never set eyes on him.'

  'How did he deliver his message?'

  'It came to me by thought rays.'

  A bewildered expression crossed the congressman's face.

  Petrosian continued, 'There was a flying saucer in the park. It was about fifty feet across and twenty high. There was an open ramp and I went into it. I sat at a porthole and it took off. We went right up there at amazing speed but I didn't feel any acceleration. We flew over to Los Angeles to collect John Wayne. He just materialized right there in front of us, in the middle of the saucer.' There was a suppressed belly laugh from the back of the room. Petrosian continued: 'Then we went on to Saturn, which by the way is my home planet. It only took us half an hour. There we met the Leader. He was tanned with long blond hair and kind blue eyes. He told us that world domination by aliens is the only way forward for the salvation of mankind and world communism was only a step on the way and asked if we would help in this great enterprise.'

  The deathly hush had been replaced by a scattering of giggles, and now laughter was surging through the room. The congressman, his face contorted by anger, was hammering the gavel. He shouted, 'I hairby cite Doctor Lev Paytrojan for perjury and contempt of these hair proceedings,' but Petrosian, mouth up against the microphone, was still testifying: 'Then the Duke gave us the low-down on how his boys were infiltrating Hollywood and influencing American minds while he acted the part of the anti-red to fool people like you. There are lots of fine Hollywood Americans in this enterprise, I'll give you that list now.'

  The audience had split into two camps, half of it booing angrily, the other half laughing and applauding. The congressman was hammering the gavel sharply and shouting 'Remove this man from the microphone,' but Petrosian's voice was still coming over the uproar. 'There are three hundred names on it, people like Gary Cooper and Daryl Zanuck at the top.'

  The security men, big hulks of overweight menace, were bearing down. Petrosian stood up. At the door, he glanced back at the scene of bedlam he had created. Mr Arkansas was still hammering at the desk. Dodds-Himmler was staring through his steel-rimmed spectacles at the physicist as if he had just landed from a flying saucer. The nervous twitch in Alvarez's cheek was in full swing. Half a dozen reporters were scribbling furiously.

  Powerful hands gripped Petrosian's elbows. His last view of the room was the clock. The interview, it had seemed to him, had lasted a gruelling three or four hours. He was astonished to see that it had taken only twenty-five minutes.

  * * *

  In the corridor, Lev was startled by a sudden blaze of popping flashlights. He found himself wedged in by a scrum of reporters. He pushed his way along the corridor, answering a babble of questions as politely as he could. In the playground, near the school entrance, another movie camera had been put in place.

  As he drifted towards the street, dragging the entourage, a taxi stopped and disgorged a man and woman. The man was small, round-faced and nearly bald. The woman was about thirty, with long dark hair and dressed in a long green coat. She took the man's arm and they walked unnoticed in the direction of the school. It was some moments before Lev recognized her, but when he did the reporters and the microphones and the gabble faded away, and a lump rose in Lev's throat. Their eyes met briefly as they passed. Contact was impossible. She gave a brief, wan smile and then was gone, and Petrosian thought that, apart from a little extra weight around the hips and a few wrinkles around the eyes, Kitty had changed little in eight years, and as he fought back the tears he realized that he had always loved her and always would.

  * * *

  'You bloody fool,' Brogan said for the fourth time in an hour.

  'I'm in love with your wife, Max,' said Petrosian, smiling over at her. She raised her eyebrows and rattled a skillet onto the big electric hotplate. 'It's her crawfish pie,' said Petrosian, helping himself to more.

  'Then you'd better fill up on it. You won't get any where you're headed.'

  A black waitress came in through the swing door, carrying a pile of plates on each arm. 'Nummer Four wann bare an fraid aigs an oyster po-boy with dirty rice, the main in One say is yawl gone fishin for ma baked grouper, an Three doan finish their bean stew,'

  'Gombee faive mins for the grouper,' Mary Brogan called back. She poured Southern Comfort into the skillet, shook it, and flames leapt towards a burned-black patch in the ceiling.

  Max waved his arms. 'Some grand gesture that achieves nothing, as in zilch, as in a big round frigging zero. What the hell got into you, Lev? A good career down the tubes and maybe a year in some godawful pokey.'

  'Stuffed with queers and sadistic wardens,' Petrosian suggested.

  'Why did you do it, Lev? Why did you throw away your future?'

  Petrosian sipped at the Coca-Cola. 'Those creeps just got up my nose.'

  'Lev, maybe you can afford the grand gesture, but I have kids to get through school. And what if people start to boycott this place? All it needs is some American Legion redneck to hand out leaflets at the door and we might as well rename this place The Commie Diner.'

  'Mary's not a communist, is she?'

  'Come on, Lev, what the hell has that got to do with anything? Association is all it takes.' Max's expression was pained.

  Lev said, softly, 'Out with it.'

  There was an unbearable stress in Brogan's voice. 'Look, Lev, I'm sorry. But maybe you shouldn't come around for a while. You know — career. Mary and the boys.'

  Lev nodded sadly. 'I understand fully, Max. Don't worry about it. Nothing in our friendship says you have to stand up to the bad guys like Gary Cooper in High Noon. I'll stay away awhile.'

  The relief was palpable. Brogan extended his hand and Lev shook it silently. The Texan looked quizzically at his friend. 'I finally get it.'

  'What's that, Max?'

  'Your testimony to these creeps. It was the absolute truth. You really do come from Saturn.'

  15

  The Super

  'Don't stop,' Stefi ordered.

  The Chinese take-away had grown cold in the kitchen, and Romella's voice was becoming strained with the translation. Stefi had found a long, silk dressing gown with a dragon motif in one of Doug's wardrobes and was wearing it over yellow pyjamas. She was sitting on the floor with her legs folded underneath her. A black marble clock, all Victorian angels and curlicues, was about to strike one a.m.

  'All this red scare stuff,' Romella asked. 'Was there any substance to it?' The swollen flesh around her right eye had developed a yellowish-green hue.

  'It was before my time,' Findhorn said. 'I think the hysteria peaked in the 1950s. You know, it was a sort of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers thing. Your neighbour may look just like you but his mind may be under alien control.'

  'Or her mind,' Stefi said. She was resting her head wearily on her hands.

  'But surely it wasn't all hysteria, Fred. The communists wanted a world ruled by Moscow. And there were spies. Hell, we've just been reading about Klaus Fuchs.'

  'Sure there were spies, but the witch-hunters didn't find them. Their success rate was practically zero. Imagine shooting your neighbours at random on the off-chance that one of them might be a spy. With all that misdirected effort, I suspect the McCarthy era was a golden age for the KGB.'

  'What about Petrosian?' Stefi asked. 'Was he really a spy? And why are people fighting to get their hands on the diaries? Why do they want to kill you and what's in the diaries worth millions and —'

  'Okay. Stefi wants her ten per cent. Read on, Romella.'

  * * *

  Petrosian's habits were those of a quiet and studious bachelor. In the evening he would take something easy out of the icebox and stick it in a frying pan. While it was frying he would pour himself a Martini. He would eat whatever it was, and watch whatever was on his small black-and-white television set, without paying much attention to either. The rest of the evening would be spent reading, writing or marking student exercises. On Fridays, however, he let his hair down: he ate in Mary's kitchen, and played five-stud with Max and friends until the early hours, generally winning enough to pay for the beers he brought along.

  But that was before the loyalty trials. Now a barrier, invisible and yet almost tangible, had come between Petrosian and his acquaintances.

  This Friday evening, having had a last supper in the Sweet and Tart, he was sipping a cold beer on his porch, a light sweat on his brow and arms. It was a sultry thirty-two degrees. Down the road, through an open window, Ella Fitzgerald was 'Eating Baloney on Coney', but she was having problems being heard over the insect night life and a distant yelping dog.

  Tonight, Lev had put his normally restless mind on hold; mentally drained, he was finding simple pleasure in watching a near-full moon drift behind the willow tree in his neighbour's garden. Satchmo took it through the branches and into a starry sky. The dog was still yelping.

  Around ten o'clock a big car, all whitewall tyres and tail fins and with an out-of-town number, gurgled slowly past Lev's house. Two men inside, clearly unfamiliar with the area, were scanning the street. A couple of minutes later the car returned, turned into Lev's driveway, and disgorged the two. One had short, neat hair and was incongruously dressed in a dark suit and tie. The other could hardly have been a greater contrast: he was unkempt and casually dressed, with a creased open-necked shirt and a jacket draped over his arm.

  'Doctor Petrosian?'

  'You look like FBI,' Petrosian said.

  'Lieutenant Mercier, sir, Army Intelligence.' A badge was briefly flashed in the half-dark. 'And this is Mister Smith. Can we talk?'

  'Sure.'

  In the living room, hospitality was politely declined. The three men sat round a small circular table. The longhaired Mister Smith gave Petrosian a calculated smile. His affiliation, Lev noticed, was going unannounced.

  Petrosian tried a shot in the dark. 'You look like an academic,' he said to Smith.

  Smith kept smiling.

  Petrosian finished his beer and leaned back, puzzled. 'Okay, I give up. Who are you?'

  The army man said, 'This meeting is not taking place. We're not here.'

  'Okay,' Petrosian said cautiously.

  'And nothing said here is to be repeated outside this room.'

  'There's a problem with that. I'm a card-carrying communist. Anything you say to me goes straight to Moscow.'

  Mercier looked as if he was taking the comment seriously. 'We know all about the College enquiry, and we know exactly what was said at it today.'

  Petrosian shook his head, mystified. 'I'll be out of work and on a blacklist within a week. What could the army possibly want with me?'

  Mercier said, 'The army wouldn't touch you with a barge pole.'

  'So why are you here?' Petrosian asked, baffled.

  The army man reached down for his briefcase and pulled out an envelope. Petrosian's visitors watched him closely as he put down his empty beer glass and tore it open. He read the letter twice, and looked at his guests with surprise.

  'Look at it from this point of view, Doctor Petrosian,' said Smith. 'As you say, you'll be out of a job within days. And once you're on that blacklist you'll never work in America again, except maybe emptying trash cans. Try to leave America and you'll find that the State Department denies you a passport.'

  'And you turn up waving this letter under my nose. Your timing is supernatural.'

  Smith still had the calculated grin. 'All you need worry about are the address and the signature.' The sharp, crabbed scrawl of Norris Bradbury — Oppenheimer's successor at Los Alamos — had leapt out at Petrosian the instant he had unfolded the letter.

  'And my loyalty?'

  Petrosian's visitors didn't react. Lev assessed their blank stares. Then he continued, 'I think I can guess what you people are up to.'

  Now Mercier raised a finger to his lips, shaking his head urgently. He mouthed the word: Bugs.

  Petrosian looked astonished. 'Are you serious?'

  'Why not? You're a suspected commie.'

  'They surely have no legal right.'

  The army man finally grinned. 'Oh my. You really do come from Saturn,' he said, and Petrosian wondered how on earth they had managed to bug the Sweet and Tart's busy kitchen.

  * * *

  Smith sat with Petrosian in the back of the car, the better to brief him as they drove through the hot night. 'By the way, my name is Griggs. Ken Griggs.'

  Mercier, at the wheel of the car, glanced back. 'And I'm Mercier.'

  'So we're going for the Super?'

  In the half-dark, Petrosian saw Griggs give a nod. 'We're in a race, Lev.'

  'I don't know if a hydrogen bomb is even feasible.'

  'If the Soviets get one before us…'

  'Somewhere in Russia there are guys talking exactly the same way.'

  Mercier said, 'Pravda regularly accuse us of planning an atomic war.'

  'Are we?'

  'The President doesn't confide in me. Still, if we built a couple of dozen H-bombs we could rule the world.'

  'Or end it in an hour,' Griggs added playfully.

  'Hey, maybe I'd rather empty trash cans,' Petrosian said.

  Mercier was slowing to avoid a pothole. 'What gives with the angst? It's a simple matter of national security. The Russians are doing it, so we have to.'

  Griggs said, 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, if you want peace prepare for war, and those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. That'll be fifteen bucks. I charge five dollars a cliche.'

  'Hey, watch your tone,' complained Mercier.

  'I asked you about my loyalty,' Petrosian said.

  Mercier spoke over his shoulder, 'If it was up to me you wouldn't get within a hundred miles of Los Alamos.'

 

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