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Page 82.

Chapter 17. Canterbury, 1991: The Haywardens Remember

Marianne sat at the lunch counter in Canterbury with the Haywardens and had a last cup of tea. Outside, the weather turned blustery. A mix of rain and wind peppered the broad store windows. Dim grayish light filled the interior, making the trundling shoppers and the colorful little neon displays all the more wan looking.

“Was there a Major Malone, or was it an impostor playing multiple roles?” Marianne asked.

Haywarden looked at her with a mix of sheepishness and belated insight, while his wife patted his hand and leaned against his shoulder as though they were reminiscing about some long-ago bobbysocks dance at a high school. “Western powers are just beginning to get access some of the old NKGB records. It will take years to sort it all out—half a century or more of Soviet espionage—if we ever manage to shed light in all the little nooks and crannies. I do have a contact for you, a man in Moscow who worked for the NKGB back during the war and later the KGB. His name is Viktor Mutsev, and I have a feeling he is the fellow we knew as Jaguar before he defected. Or rather, a triple agent who returned to his own people after his mission became too hot to continue.” Jack Haywarden slipped a piece of paper across the counter with a name, address, and number written in willowy ballpoint letters. “Try this,” he said softly. “Mutsev may be your man. You may find him in Moscow, if he is still alive.”

“He would know of my father?”

Haywarden said: “If your father is still alive somewhere. You have to understand that he became a hunted man after 1945. Being hunted by Stalin and his minions was no trivial matter, not even within the United States.”

“But my father had help?” Tears blurred her vision.

“Yes. That much I can tell you,” Haywarden said. “Your father was—is, if he is still alive somewhere—a fine man. He was young, searching for his place in life, well-intentioned, a good engineer (that’s all that clock-making, and who should know better than the New Englanders?). He was quiet and unassuming, sort of an iceberg if you see what I mean, but he was a deep searcher. His courage was exemplary, as proven in Africa.” Haywarden paused to choke back his own emotions a bit. “He was an accidental spy. Really more of a solid technical intelligence officer who liked to study machinery and blue prints. He found a few useful tidbits that helped the war effort, but his major contribution was in this Jaguar matter.”

“During which he met my mother?” she asked.

“Oh yes. She was a stunning woman, both for her courage and her loyalty, as well as her brash…well, almost craziness the way she threw herself recklessly…but then again, she must have felt she had no choice, playing one side against the other. That’s what OSS learned to do professionally, and here were these amateurs, these accidental players, going head to head with the Nazis, the Soviets, the Americans…it was quite breathtaking. Your father was one of those national heroes we never hear about, or think about. For every force pursuing him after the war, there was an equal and opposite force out to protect him.”

Mrs. Haywarden added in the bemused tone, of a spy master’s wife, who had seen much in her day: “And his women.”