Babayaga

“Okay, well now, we have some trouble,” said Will, focusing on the issues at hand. “In fact, we have some very serious trouble.” He then told Oliver about the photographed Hoffmann-La Roche file and the Soviet embassy. As Will sketched out the details, Oliver sat down, stunned, on the corner of the bed and stared at the floor, quietly taking it all in. He looked as close to being serious as Will had ever seen him.

“How did Brandon know the file came from your office?” Oliver asked. “There was no letterhead on any of it.”

“The agency knows what our files look like,” Will said, feeling as though he was confessing. “They’ve seen a lot of them before.”

“Yes, I see.” Oliver gave Will a funny look. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Will.”

“Here’s the deal,” Will said, ignoring the accusation. “I’m supposed to hand our personnel files over to the two guys Brandon has working on this—”

“What are their names?”

“I don’t remember their names, Mitchell and something.”

“Odd that Brandon wouldn’t take care of it himself—you’re his boy, right?”

“No, I’m not his boy. He says he’s working on something more important, he says he doesn’t have time for this.”

“More important than espionage at the Soviet embassy? Very interesting. The man does stay busy.”

“The point is, I’m not going to hand over personnel files to his guys so that they can go digging around in a bunch of innocent people’s lives. Who knows what they’ll uncover? Maybe they’ll find our janitor’s a member of the Communist Party, and then what?”

“Well, I doubt they’d be surprised at that. All the janitors in Paris are Communists,” said Oliver.

“You know what I mean. It’s serious, very serious.”

“Yes … Christ, of course it is … it’s the Soviets.” Oliver didn’t say any more as he drifted into thought, and then he nodded, as if reaching a decisive conclusion. “The wisest plan is to do as you say, confess the whole truth. Make a clean breast of it.”

Will exhaled with relief. He had not expected such a straightforward and simple solution from Oliver. “Yes, okay, that sounds right.”

“But of course,” said Oliver, “the only way you’ll come out of this completely unscathed is if you actually hand over the double-crosser. If you don’t, they’ll make you the fall guy. You see, a leak like this, it’s too important, they’ll need someone to go down for it. Lucky for us, we know who the culprit is.”

“That big guy Boris?”

“Absolutely not Boris.”

“He’s a Russian, isn’t he?”

“Boris hates the Russians because he hates Reds, and the Russians hate Boris because they hate queers.”

“Boris is a homosexual?”

“My god, you’re not very intuitive about these things, are you? They’re both queers. Boris and Ned. That’s what makes them such a good fit, they’re like an inverted husband and wife. But Ned’s the one we need to find, she was in charge of handling the drop-off, told me she was going down to the embassy personally. Foolishly, I forgot to ask exactly which embassy. I was never very good at details. Anyway, we’ll have to track her down.” He rose from the bed and began dressing. “Why don’t we leave the girls here for a bit and pop over to the Monaco Bar, it’s nearly lunchtime so she’s probably already there, or if she’s not, we’ll find Boris and he’ll tell us where she is. Either way we’ll talk to her, that’s probably our best shot at mopping this mess up.”

“What, we’re just going to ask her to turn herself in?”

“No, I sincerely doubt she’d do that, but I’d wager we can get some information out of her, she won’t know that anyone at the Russian embassy has been talking to the Americans. Who knows who’s playing whom here, this whole thing might be straight up or it could be as sideways and dirty as the damned Dreyfus affair. So let’s get Ned’s side of the story first. I wouldn’t want to hand her over to Brandon’s boys without giving her at least a chance to explain. Rather like your concern for those janitors, tu comprends?”

“Okay,” Will said, though he didn’t like it. He would have preferred if Oliver had simply picked up the phone and called the U.S. embassy to sort the whole thing out. But that did not look like it was going to happen.

Oliver smiled. “Excellent, let’s go.”

Back in the kitchen they found the two women sitting in awkward silence over coffee. Oliver clapped his hands together. “Pardon us, ladies, Will and I are going to pop over to the Monaco, see if we can’t find a friend. Don’t think there’s much fun for you two, so…”

“Fine with me, I’ve got loads of work waiting at the office,” said Gwen, getting up quickly.