The prodigal spy

“We’ll find out. It’s only the beginning, you know. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

“It’s not going to happen here at all,” Nick said, putting the key in. “You’re right. We’ll come back in the morning.”

“Wait. Let’s find out who he is, anyway. Be right back.”

She got out, walked over to the house, and rang the doorbell. What would she say if someone answered? She rang again, then looked around once and put her hand into the mailbox, pulling out a few pieces and shuffling through them. It took a second.

“Ruth Silberstein. Miss,” she said in the car.

“Silverstein?”

“Ber.”

He drove past the house. “We’ll come back.”

“She gets the New Republic, if that means anything. Where’s the last one?”

He looked at the list. “Chevy Chase.”

“God, they’re all over the place. Creepy, isn’t it? No one has the faintest idea. You can walk right up and look at their mail. They could be anywhere.”

“Undermining our way of life,” he said, using a newsreel voice.

“Well, they are, aren’t they?”

“We don’t know what they’re doing, Molly. Maybe they’re just passing on the wheat crop estimates so somebody can make a good deal. Do you think Rosemary was undermining our way of life?”

Molly looked out the window, quiet. “Just her own, I guess.”

“Maybe they’re just small fry.”

“Your father didn’t think so.”

“No.” Names he was willing to sell, worth a life.

“What are you going to do after? With the list.”

“I don’t know,” he said, a curve, unexpected. “I’m only interested in one.”

“I mean, they’re agents.”

“So was my father.”

“But they might be-”

“I don’t know, Molly. What do you want me to do, turn them in to the committee? I can’t. It would be like turning my father in. Besides, there isn’t any committee anymore. It’s over. Just cops. Let Jeff catch them. I don’t take sides.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Not anymore. Not with this.”

“So Ruth Silberstein just keeps getting her New Republics and doing whatever she’s doing.”

“I guess that depends on what she’s doing.”

“So you’ll decide,” she said quietly. “You’ll be the committee.”

A pinprick, sharp. “Yes, I’ll be the committee,” he said, the sound of the words strange, as if even his voice had turned upside down. “What’s the address?”

The house in Chevy Chase was a snug Cape Cod with shutters and a fussy herbaceous border running along the front. In December there would be a wreath on the door and candles in the window, a Christmas card house. The wide glossy lawn was set off on either end by tall hedges to separate it from the neighbors, modern ranch houses, one with a For Sale shingle stuck in the grass. There was no car in the driveway or other sign of life.

“You going to read his mail too?” Nick said.

“No, it’s a slot,” Molly said, having already looked. “They’re showing the house next door.”

“How do you know?”

“See, they’re huddling, and he keeps looking at the roof. The one in the suit’s the real estate lady. You can always tell. She’s wearing flats. With a suit. They all do that. I guess it’s hard on the feet.”

Nick grinned at her. “Are you kidding me, or do you really know all this?”

“Everybody knows that,” she said, pleased with herself. “You just never notice things.” She turned back to the window and watched the scene on the lawn, another pantomime of gestures and nodding heads. “How’d you like to live in the suburbs?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah,” she said, still looking out, “but when you see the right house.” She opened the door, then closed it behind her and stuck her head through the window. “Maybe you’d better stay here. You look like somebody from Immigration.”

He watched her dart across the street and up to the group on the lawn, disengaging the woman wearing flats, a nod toward the hedge, heads together, the couple left to the side, unmoored. A shake of hands, the woman rummaging in her purse for a card, a smile and a wave, every step light and sure. When she crossed the street she seemed to move like liquid, and he thought of her coming toward him at the Bruces’ party, walking into his life, like the songs. Now she was grinning.

“What did I tell you? They’re the CIA of the suburbs. Everything. His name’s Brown, John Brown. Like an alias, but then who’d use that? The house isn’t for sale-she’s tried. They won’t list it. But there are a few others I might like to see, just like it. He’s not married, by the way-he lives with his mother. Which is odd, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Where he works.”

He raised his eyes, waiting.

“How much do you love me?”

“Where?”

She grinned. “The Justice Department.”

“Bingo.”

They couldn’t sit there and wait, however, under the watchful realtor’s eye, so they drove into the next street, then the next, driving finally because they couldn’t stop, just being in motion a substitute for something real to do. Brown wouldn’t leave his office until five, later if he was the diligent type, so they had the rest of the afternoon to kill. Like a homing pigeon, Nick found himself drawn back to Washington, trying to make the streets familiar again.