The Sisters by Robert Littell Read Free Book Online Page B

to absorb the condensation, and moss had been placed on the cotton-a touch that indicated that the regular resident of the apartment had peasant roots. "Your potential clients already knew the identities of the people in question," the Potter continued tonelessly. "They were not buying."
    "So: I assume you have come up with another proposition," Oskar remarked casually, "or you wouldn't be here, yes?"
    The Potter wondered if Oskar was as sure of himself as he sounded.
    "Another proposition, yes."
    Svetochka had been right, of course, about Piotr Borisovich. On several occasions the Potter and his pupil had visited the Sandunovsky Bathhouse together. There, stark naked amid the smoke screen of steam and the stale smell of sweat and birch bark, they had nibbled on sticks of salted fish and talked in undertones about the idealism that somehow had gotten lost in the shuffle in Russia. Glancing down, the Potter had noticed that Piotr Borisovich was circumcised. "It is a rare thing in Russia," Piotr Borisovich had commented, his eyes following the Potter's gaze. Indeed it was! Since the revolution, even Jews hesitated when it came to having their children circumcised. The Potter had been born before the revolution, but his parents had seen the handwriting on the wall. His father had decided that with all the anti-Semitism in Russia, the day might come when the boy's safety would depend on his not being circumcised. Piotr Borisovich's father, curiously, hadn't even been Jewish. But he once came across a pamphlet describing the medical advantages of circumcision. Practicing what the author-doctor preached, he had himself circumcised though he was already a grown man, and his son circumcised at birth. The circumcision had almost been the undoing of the father. Trapped behind German lines at one point during the war, he had been taken for a Jew. He had been awaiting execution in a cell when the Red Army counterattacked and liberated the town.
    It struck the Potter, who had an inner ear permanently tuned to pick up such details, how ironic it would be if the circumcision turned out to be the undoing of the son.
    The Potter turned to confront Oskar. "The last sleeper to pass through my school while I was the novator," he briskly informed him, "was named Piotr Borisovich Revkin." He could see interest burning, like a pilot light, in Oskar's normally masked eyes. "He was inserted into America two years ago. He lives in a section of New York under deep cover, waiting for the signal indicating his controllers have decided to give him a mission."
    Oskar couldn't suppress the note of excitement that crept into his voice. "You know the name under which he operates, yes? You know where he is?"
    The Potter nodded.
    Oskar took a step in the Potter's direction. "You are familiar with the signal that can awaken this sleeper of yours, yes?"
    "Yes."
    "So: my clients will want to know how you came into possession of this information," Oskar said.
    "His cover name is part of the legend we worked out together at the sleeper school," the Potter explained. "The location I know because, for personal reasons that had to do with an affinity we shared for a certain poet, he sent me, in violation of standing rules, a picture postcard of the house he lives in."
    "And the awakening signal?"
    "When we selected an awakening signal, I always made it a point to choose a phrase that was already embedded in a sleeper's memory-a familiar motto, a line of a song or a poem he had known since childhood.
    There was a line of poetry that we both knew . . ." The Potter's voice choked for an instant. Did one betrayal inevitably lead to another? What level of Dante's hell was he sentencing himself to? He drew a deep breath. ". . . knew and appreciated. I wrote out the awakening signal in my own hand in his dossier."
    "If my potential clients accept and you don't have the information you claim to have..." Oskar left the sentence hanging.
    The Potter said softly, "I am not an