Topaz - Leon Uris [16]
“Stop it, Olga!”
“Boris,” she said in the first outright defiance of him in her life, “you are going to tell the Americans everything.”
“No ... never ... never!”
Tamara was in the doorway, her eyes filled with tears. “Papa. I was raised as a good Communist and I loved Russia, too. I loved Russia until I was ordered to spy and report on you. I love you and Mamma more. Since I found out they meant to kill you, I’ve grown to hate them. Oh, Papa, do you know what it is like outside in this country? I’ve almost died from wanting it.” She knelt beside the fallen model of the woman they could create of her. “I want so much to be her.”
Tears streamed down Boris’ cheeks.
“Boris,” his wife said, “you must talk to the Americans. Tamara and I will not spend our lives running.”
He was boxed in. The choices were clear. The great secret within him was being squeezed out. The secret of Topaz.
11
“MICHELE, LITTLE DARLING!”
André embraced his daughter; they exchanged kisses on both cheeks. Robespierre, a scented, rhinestone-collared, silver-gray miniature poodle, bounced and yapped. Picasso, a mournful beagle, planted all four feet firmly and wagged so violently his whole body went into motion.
André held Michele off at arm’s length to inspect her and smiled. They moved through the house, upstairs, arms about waists trading the usual amenities. Everything at college was just fine. The New York theater was barely decent, but the Comédie Française would be playing a limited engagement.
“Will you come up for a few shows, Papa?”
“I’d love to, but I hate to promise. The work load ...”
“Promise. And I promise I won’t be disappointed if you can’t make it.”
“In that case, I promise to try.”
She branched off to her own room, to apply the last icing to perfect herself for the Franco-American Legion of Honor dinner at the French Embassy. Being many years the senior of her daughter, Nicole had started her routine two hours earlier. Nicole’s tension was apparent, particularly to Robespierre, who reflected her nervousness in his nonstop prancing. Nicole labored meticulously, plucking each brow, penciling the lines with a Da Vinci-like skill and creaming away the creases.
André grunted a hello and retreated to his sanctuary, donned his smoking jacket, fixed a bourbon, settled in his leather chair, and snapped open his briefcase.
Now came the microscopic search. The un-romantic stomach-turning labor necessary to an intelligence man in a day that never really ended, using amounts of stamina that could not be measured.
In the twilight hours, long after offices closed and other breeds of men took pause to reflect, he turned to just another phase of the day’s work. Now to pore through the cross section of clippings from some fifty magazines and newspapers of ten countries. There were stacks of memorandums, communiqués, and letters that came in the late transmission to study for possible action.
He set the trash basket at chairside, petted Picasso, and began going through the clippings with the dazzling speed of the highly trained eye. Most of them ended in the basket. A few were marked and kept.
What did he look for? The awarding of a new government contract. A riot in Africa. Ship movements. Transfer of military personnel. Publication of a technical study. Anywhere and nowhere could be that clue to fill in a space of the great, shifting, eternal puzzle.
Nicole’s bedroom door opened sharply. Robespierre was shooed in. “Do take him, André. He is being such a bother.”
The animal flitted across the room and leaped on André’s lap. He flicked the dog off as though it were an unwanted fly. After a second and third rejection, Robespierre bore a destroyed expression and took his place on the floor beside the always serene Picasso. Picasso lifted his sad face, sniffed the perfume on the poodle and moved away,