Stardust(189)

“And Danny knew what you were doing?”

“There was a loyalty there, from Otto. He knew the FBI was watching the émigrés—his family, his friends—why not protect them?”

“But not the other? The work at the labs? The weapons?”

“It’s so important to you, this distinction? He worked for us. He was one of us.”

“But he didn’t know.”

“You have to understand how this worked,” Dieter said patiently, wrapped up in his story now.

Ben looked to the door again. The fire alarm. But he’d be dead before he pulled the lever. Get Dieter to take him off the lot, wherever he was going to stage a disappearance. There were still people outside. He wouldn’t want to be seen dragging a body to a car.

“No one knew,” he continued. “Just his piece. Daniel wasn’t at Livermore. Or Cal Tech. Not out in New Mexico with the Project. He was here, making these foolish reports. Making them look where there was nothing to see.”

“Away from you.”

“I was a messenger, that’s all. But nothing could come to me. I had my security clearance, but you couldn’t risk the mail. They still look. It had to go somewhere else.”

“What did he think it was? All the mail.”

“Party matters. A convenience, for me. I was always secret, you see. He understood that. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to work.”

“But why help Minot?”

“Another opportunity, to make them look somewhere else. He had credibility. Do you know how valuable that is? The Bureau could vouch for him. Anything he said—”

“But Minot was after Communists.”

“But which ones? Hollywood,” he said, his voice brushing it off. “Circuses. Of no importance. But think what it means. Minot asks the Bureau to help him. Investigate. Verify. They’re not supposed to do it, but of course they do. Time and men, all for this distraction. They catch one, they want more. You see? They were right. More time, more men. So give them another. But always the same kind. Of no importance to us.”

“Party members?” Howard Stein. Milton Schaeffer. Written off. Distractions.

“The Party here is never going to amount to anything. It’s not a political force in this country. A cover, sometimes, but now that’s difficult. So, another use. A small sacrifice. Old members. People who left in ’forty. Some actives. These people are of no consequence. So Daniel cooperates. It’s useful to us.”

“And what about the people he gives them?”

“What about them?” He looked at Ben. “Another sentimentalist. So you’re alike that way. ‘Why are we doing this to—?’ Well, whoever. To ask such a thing. No discipline. Not like before. Something changed for him here.”

“That’s why you killed him? You asked him to throw them somebody and he refused?”

Dieter smiled, the idea itself unlikely. “No, he started reading the mail.”

“And realized—”

“Not immediately. But then, yes. What we were doing. What he was doing, too, don’t forget.”

Ben saw him in the screening room, running the newsreel over and over, each time worse, smothering.

“So he decided to stop,” Ben said. The crucial point, the one redemption.

Dieter nodded. “And told me. Imagine the foolishness. I should stop, too. Not just stop. Give the Bureau names in exchange—for what? Clean hands? There are no clean hands. Foolish. But dangerous—all our work. What else could I do?”

“How, exactly?”

“How? What is the point of this? You know how.”

“Was he unconscious? When he went over?”

“It matters to you, to know this? Yes, on the head,” he said, hitting his own. “I thought the fall would kill him. A very strong head.”

“So you went to the hospital. To make sure.” Don’t leave me. A pillow. A minute.

“A long wait,” Dieter said, annoyed, as if the inconvenience of it still rankled. “Are you finished now?”

“How did you get out? The Cherokee. You locked the door—you had your own key, you must have—so everybody would think he’d been alone. And then what?”

“I left,” Dieter said simply, the question not worth raising. “Everyone was in the alley. So I went out the front. I had a story, if anyone asked. I was family, and I’d been worried about him and now, my god, too late— But nobody asked. So.”

“One more. How did you know I had the list? Did you miss a pickup?”

Dieter shook his head. “It was not so regular. It was late, in fact. But you had to telephone. First at the faculty lounge, then even on the mountain. What’s so important, I thought, to call from the mountain? And you’re living there, you said—Liesl never mentioned that. A worry. So I listened.”