Spies, trust -- and irony

Inexplicably, Oleg Kulakov’s life has gone to pieces. His wife has left him for another man. His daughter has been committed to a mental hospital to “cure” her of lesbianism. His son has been caught using drugs and expelled from college. A Soviet diplomatic courier about to lose his security clearance, Kulakov decides to defect to the West. As he leaves his Moscow office for the last time, en route to Cairo with a pouch full of secrets handcuffed to his wrist, he passes an old janitor on a ladder changing light bulbs. He reaches up and squeezes the janitor’s ankle in a gesture of farewell. Inexplicably.

Robert Littell, one of America’s finest spy novelists (“The Company,” “Walking Back the Cat”), will explain it all in time. In “The Debriefing,” originally published in 1979 and now reissued in hardcover, his structure is so tight and his means are so economical that even the fugitive ankle squeeze, a detail we’re apt to skim right by on first reading, turns out to be of major importance. Only 202 pages long, this story gives us a plot of dizzying complexity -- actually two plots mirroring each other, on either side of the Iron Curtain -- and, what’s better, characters who haven’t had the humanity squeezed out of them.

Kulakov flees his handlers during a stopover in Athens. The task of debriefing him in Washington falls to Stone, who seemingly has no first name and works for a crusty, brilliant Navy admiral who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Stone at first glance seems more or less than human: witty and super-competent in the James Bond tradition. But cracks soon show in his life too. A custody fight with his ex-wife is going badly. His romance with a Scandinavian beauty, now a co-worker, is cooling. His bright young second-in-command -- not a dedicated anti-Communist like Stone, but somebody who enjoys espionage as the ultimate chess game -- lusts for his job.

It doesn’t take long for Stone to conclude that Kulakov is telling the truth. In other words, the Russian believes he is a genuine defector. A nagging possibility remains: Could Kulakov have been driven to defect? If so, the secrets in the pouch were planted to lead the United States astray on the eve of critical nuclear arms-control talks.

The only way to be sure is for someone -- Stone volunteers himself, and the admiral approves -- to penetrate the Soviet Union in a black op. Speaking fluent Russian, Stone poses as a KGB agent and interviews everyone who had anything to do with Kulakov, trying to stay ahead of his Soviet counterparts, who are soon on his trail.

As fast as the action moves, there are several semi-comic set pieces. In Paris, Stone sticks a Soviet diplomat with the bill at a very expensive restaurant. In Moscow, he takes refuge in an apartment shared by an elderly transvestite, a Stalin look-alike who substituted for the dictator at official functions and a lovely prostitute, Katushka, who sees through Stone’s disguise with unsettling ease and offers him something he doesn’t want: a chance to trust her.

Trust, Stone has begun to conclude, is for suckers. He has always believed that there is a “basic difference between our systems.... On my side, there are limits.” He has reassured Kulakov that the United States is fundamentally decent. This belief is the basis of his life’s work, of the Cold War itself. But suppose their bosses on either side are interested only in keeping international tensions high enough to ensure that defense appropriations won’t drop?

The passage of 25 years has given “The Debriefing” an extra layer of irony. Littell’s chess players, noses pressed close to their board, seem less brilliant than myopic. The Soviets are unaware that their system is falling apart as surely as Kulakov’s life. The admiral, who blusters, “What I care about are all the civilian know-it-alls who are trying to take from us the weapons we need to guarantee victory in the next war,” has no clue that in only a decade his adversary will disappear and peace will break out. Inexplicably. *