The Tristan Betrayal - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,179
cried. "I thought I'd never see you again!"
"You can't get rid of me that easily," Metcalfe replied, then kissed her on the mouth, long and ardently.
When he pulled away, he saw that she was crying. "How did you get in here? How did you get to Berlin?" She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Why are you here?"
"I heard you were dancing tonight. You know I never miss your performances when I'm in town."
"No," she said, shaking her head, dismissing his attempt at levity. "It's about the... the documents. It's serious I can see it in your eyes, Stiva." Her voice became urgent, frightened. "What is it? Is there a problem?"
Metcalfe would no longer lie to her; he had lied to her far too much. "Dai ruchenku," he said, taking hold of one of her soft, scented hands in both of his. He sat down on the bed beside her and began to speak quietly. "It's not safe for you to stay in Moscow. I want you to come out."
"To defect." Her eyes were wide, glistening.
"This is probably your last chance. They're not likely to let you out of the country again."
"Stiva, golubchik, I've told you: Russia is my rodina. My motherland. It's who I am."
"It'll always be your rodina. It'll always be part of who you are. Lanushka, it'll always be there, a part of you. That won't change. But at least you'll be alive, and free!"
"Freedom," she began bitterly.
Metcalfe cut her off. "No, Lana. Listen to me. You don't know freedom. No one who was born and brought up in a prison can understand freedom."
" "Stone walls do not a prison make," " she quoted, " "Nor iron bars a cage ... If I have freedom in my love." "
"But you don't have freedom in your love, Lana. Not even that!"
"My father "
"That's a lie, too, Lana."
"What are you talking about?"
"There was no plot. That was all manufactured 'evidence," planted by the Nazis to gut the Soviet military. The SS knew how paranoid Stalin is about traitors, so they forged correspondence that implicated the Red Army's top leaders."
"That's impossible!"
"Nothing's impossible, Lana; nothing's beyond the paranoid imagination. Your father may secretly detest Stalin, like any sane man does, but he never plotted against him."
"You know this?"
"I know it."
She gave a sad smile. "It would be nice to think that he was safe now."
"No," Metcalfe agreed. "He's living on borrowed time."
"Do you remember my father's dueling pistols?"
"The ones that once belonged to Pushkin."
"Yes. Well, he once told me that during the time when people fought duels, there were probably a hundred thousand people who owned dueling pistols. Yet how many duels were actually fought in all those years? Maybe a thousand. The point of owning a pair of dueling pistols and displaying them prominently, he said, was to warn your potential enemies not to challenge you because you were prepared to fight."
"Your father is prepared to fight?"
"He's prepared, yes but to die," she whispered.
Metcalfe nodded. "Innocence has never been a defense in the workers' paradise," he said fiercely. "The terror machine sets one innocent man against another, doesn't it? It puts an informer in every apartment building; no one knows who's 'informing," who's reporting 'disloyalty," so no one trusts anyone. No one trusts their neighbor, their friend, even their lover."
"But I trust you," she whispered. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
Metcalfe didn't know how to answer that. He, who had lied to her, manipulated her, didn't deserve her trust, and it sickened him. Her trust sickened him now, her goodness. Now tears came to his eyes: hot, burning tears of frustration, anger, compassion. "You shouldn't trust me, either," he said, his eyes closed.
"Is that what you've come to believe? Is that what your world has done to you? Your world of freedom it has made you trust no one, either? Then what makes your 'free' world any better than my prison, with its gold bars?"
"Lana, milaya, listen to me. Listen to me carefully. What I'm about to tell you I want you to know the truth. I don't care what you'll think of me after no, that's not true; I do care what you think of me! But you should know the truth, and if it ruins everything, so be it. If it ruins the operation, if it makes you never want to see me ever again, so be it. I can't have this lie on my conscience anymore. You deserve more, far more."