The prodigal spy

He took the direct route home, then doubled back across the Mall, where they were putting up a stage for the peace rally. Still no obvious tail. Then, at the hotel, he saw they hadn’t bothered. The two men approached him in the lobby, said the boss wanted to see him, and led him to the car. When they hustled him into the back seat with a peremptory shove, he was at Holeckova again, the same helpless anxiety, his palms damp, as if he were back in handcuffs.

The office, a suite of rooms, was on the fifth floor of the Justice Department, past a secretarial pool and a corridor lined with autographed pictures and plaques and framed awards, the tokens of a grateful nation. The visitors’ office made Welles’s look like a closet: a huge room with an oversize desk between two flags, whose only purpose seemed to be for taking pictures. A vast blue rug with the Bureau seal. A ghoulish death mask, mounted-Dillinger, 1934. More photographs, all of them with Hoover. Burly, in a double-breasted suit and crisp fedora, leading a fugitive up the stairs. Bending over to shake hands with Shirley Temple.

Nick’s escorts knocked on the inner office door, nodded to the prim woman in a high collar who opened it, and backed away, like courtiers. One more large room, with windows looking out over Pennsylvania Avenue, this one for working-a line of wooden memo trays, another football-field desk, with telephones and a single open file. Standing behind the desk was the director himself, bulldog jaw sticking out just like it did in his pictures, glowering up at Nick with a theatrical intensity. A silence.

“Am I under arrest?” Nick said.

“No. I want to talk to you,” Hoover said, the words coming as fast as bullets. Nick wondered if he had worked on it, practicing in front of a mirror until speech too had become an intimidating prop. “I hear you want to talk to me. If you don’t, you can leave right now. I’m a busy man. Thank you, Miss Gandy,” he said to the secretary, so that, ironically, the next sound Nick heard was the door clicking shut behind him.

“Now we could start friendly, but I haven’t got the time. Nobody bothers my agents, Mr Warren. Nobody. Interrogating them. Who do you think you are? Of course I know who you are.” He tapped the open file with his finger. “The only reason I’m talking to you at all is that your father’s been a friend to the Bureau.” Nick realized after a second of confusion that in Washington he was always Larry’s son first. “Sometimes. Depending. But I don’t hold grudges, and the Bureau takes care of its friends.”

“I’ll bet.”

Hoover jerked his round head and stared at Nick. “Don’t do that again,” he said evenly. “Talk smart to your father. Maybe he’s used to it. I don’t like it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just some kid who thinks he’s having fun with the Bureau, and that’s not smart. Ask your father, he’ll tell you.”

“He’s my stepfather.”

“I know that too. I know everything about you.” He touched the file again. “War record. Not much, but at least you weren’t one of the dodgers. I’m not surprised you changed your name. We can’t help our parents-I don’t hold that against you. Maybe I should. They usually don’t fall far from the tree. But right now I just want to know what you think you’re doing. Talking to Lapierre, playing cute with us in New York.”

“I wasn’t trying to play cute. I just left early. They weren’t there around the clock.”

“You’re not worth twenty-four-hour surveillance,” Hoover said. “You’re not that important.”

“I’m not that important now, either. So call off the guys you have watching me here. I haven’t done anything. If there’s something you want to know, ask and I’ll tell you. I don’t like being followed. I had enough of that in Prague. But you expect it there. I didn’t think we were like that yet.”

Hoover peered at him curiously, sizing him up, then moved out from behind the desk. Involuntarily Nick glanced down to see if his shoes had lifts. Hoover had always been described as short, but here, on his carefully constructed set, the sight lines seemed to exaggerate his bulk, and the broad shoulders and thick neck gave the impression of a large man barely contained by his suit. What caught Nick’s eye, however, was the hair, short but still dark, at his age a color that could only have come from a bottle. Nick wondered if he did it himself, towel wrapped around his neck at the mirror, or if a barber had been sworn to secrecy.

“Not yet, Mr Warren. And we’re not going to be. We’ve still got a free country here, no thanks to people like Walter Kotlar. Why did you go see him?”

“Because he asked me to. Look, you’re busy-let me make this easy for you. He sent a message that he wanted to see me. I went. I spent a few days with him and his wife. He didn’t tell me any state secrets and he didn’t tell me about the old days. He did tell me that he was sick and he’d like to come home. One of your people there-a legat, isn’t that what you call them?”

Hoover nodded almost imperceptibly.