Dead Men Living

“Are you going to bathe me?”

Another first, by himself, accepted Charlie. “Yes.”

“All right,” said Sasha, gravely, as if giving permission, which Charlie supposed she was.

The downstairs buzzer sounded, making them both jump by its unexpectedness. Not Natalia, thought Charlie at once. She’d promised to phone, and in any case she had her own key. The grandiose apartment had been an effective part of his cover as a crooked entrepreneur and all the nuclear ringleaders had been either arrested or killed. But a lot of the minnow men, the gofers and the fetchers,would have gotten through the net and there had always been at the back of Charlie’s mind the awareness that some might know this address. Might know, too, that he was the person who’d destroyed everything. But they wouldn’t come at him like this: not ring the bell. Easier-better-just to wait outside, hit him when he arrived or left.

“Mummy?” asked Sasha, when the bell went again.

“I don’t think so,” said Charlie. He could legally carry a gun in Moscow, but didn’t. He’d have liked the comfort of a weapon now, even though he wasn’t very good: never able to keep his eyes open at the moment of firing. Or keep the kick from hurting his wrist, even though he adopted the correct, hand-supporting shooting crouch. He hadn’t been the person to shoot Popov as Popov was preparing to shoot him.

“I’ll go,” said Sasha, brightly.

“No!” said Charlie, too sharply. “Stay and wipe your mouth. I’ll see who it is.” The downstairs door could be forced, even if he didn’t operate the admission button, but it was very thick and heavy and wouldn’t be easy. And there were two bolts and a crossbar as well as a chain, from the previous protection, on the apartment door which was practically as strong as that five floors below. He wasn’t reassured. It had been downright fucking stupid to have let himself be trapped like this-like this with Sasha, of all things! — without any means of protection or escape. The bell sounded a third time as he reached the microphone.

“Yes?”

“I was about to give up on you.” It was a woman’s voice.

“Who is this?”

“Irena, Natalia’s sister.”

“Hello,” he said to the woman who’d called immediately after Natalia, earlier. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“You said it would be all right to call ’round, so I decided to at once.”

Charlie pressed the release button and opened the apartment door in readiness. Sasha came to the door and, when he told her who was coming up the stairs, said, “I like Aunt Irena. She brings me presents.”

Irena was in Western clothes: loafers, Levi’s jeans and a designerversion of a fleecy-lined pilot’s jacket. She picked Sasha up, kissed her and carried her laughing into the apartment. Immediately inside, she gave Sasha a Donald Duck that climbed quacking up a cord by some mechanism triggered by it being pulled sharply downward. The child began to retreat, giggling delightedly, then stopped and said, “Thank you,” and kissed the woman again. She looked to Charlie for approval. Charlie nodded.

Irena turned at last to Charlie. “So you’re my sister’s new partner ^!”

Charlie accepted that he was, as far as Irena was concerned, but didn’t like the question: it inferred there’d been a lot. He didn’t know, in fact, whether there had been or not. It wasn’t something he and Natalia had felt the need to discuss. “Yes,” he said, simply.

“And English!” said Irena, in the same language, which she spoke well. “The embassy? Or business here?”

“Something in between,” avoided Charlie.

“Daddy was just going to bath me,” announced Sasha. “Now you can help.”

Daddy, Charlie seized at once. Until that moment she hadn’t made any attempt at a name, not even a guess at Charlie, which they’d decided to allow if she’d tried.

Irena seized it, too. “Daddy?”

“If I can be,” said Charlie. He wasn’t enjoying the encounter.

“Why don’t I bathe you myself-and read you a story-while Daddy gets me a drink?” suggested the woman.

Charlie decided he liked the way the title sounded. He was glad, too, that Irena had taken over bathtime duties: he was learning how to be a father at roughly the same pace as Sasha was mastering basic spoken English. “There’s most things,” he invited.

“Scotch. Water back.”

Very American vernacular, thought Charlie, amused. He took Islay scotch as well, pouring both straight, setting out her water glass separately and putting ice in a bucket for her to add herself, to avoid it melting to dilute the drink. For someone who until that moment had been a total stranger, Irena-Irena Seminova Modin, Charlie remembered, from the McDonald’s conversation-seemed very adept at appearing an old friend. It probably had something to do with being a stewardess. Long-haul, he recalled: Australia as well America.

There was a lot of splashing and laughing from the bathroom. Sasha was in her nightdress, warm and fresh- smelling, when she ran in to kiss him good night. She announced, “Aunt Irena is going to tell me a story. Girls only, but you can come in to say good night later,” and ran out again, giggling.

Irena emerged ten minutes later pulling her sweater down about her and said, “I got splashed.”

Charlie wondered what had happened to the flying jacket. Irena was far bigger-busted than her sister and seemed proud of it, from the tightness of the sweater. He said, “What’s this girls-only all about?”

Irena smiled, taking the large, enveloping chair beside the couch on which Charlie sat. “She said she wanted to have a secret, so I told her to make one up.”

Charlie indicated the drink, pouring a second for himself. Irena added just one ice cube, properly sipping the water separately, and Charlie decided there was nothing wrong with a pretension if it was carried out confidently enough. Irena was doing fairly well.

“How long have you and Natalia been together?”

“A while,” said Charlie, evasively.

The woman was looking around the apartment. “And isn’t she the lucky one. Sasha said princesses lived here once and I believe her. You must be either very important or very rich or both.”

“There’s a lot of opportunities in Moscow now.” Charlie decided that apart from an obvious facial resemblance Irena was different in every way from Natalia. He preferred Natalia’s natural darkness to Irena’s blond-highlighted hair and if he was making a direct comparison-which he was-he thought Natalia’s figure was better, too. Irena verged upon the voluptuous and seemed to want to, from the tightness of the second-skin jeans as well as the sweater.

“I know someone from the American embassy trade division,” Irena declared. “Saul Freeman. You know him?”

“Of him,” said Charlie, cautiously. Saul Freeman headed the FBI’s station at the U.S. embassy. It had been the Bureau’s success in getting a man based in Moscow-and the dominance and Western crime links of the Russian mafia-that had been instrumental in Charlie’s appointment. Freeman was a balding New York bachelor who shared with the British embassy’s matchingly single MI6 resident,Richard Cartright, the apparent ambition to screw every woman in Moscow. Natalia wouldn’t be happy at Irena finding them together and most certainly not at Irena knowing someone with a Bureau function from another Western embassy. “How’d you meet Saul?”

“He was on my flight, about six months ago.” She grinned. “Not by choice. It was the only plane available.” She looked around the apartment again. “But his place doesn’t come within a million miles of this.”

Cautiously Charlie said, “You seeing each other?”

Irena grimaced again, pulling down the corners of her mouth. “We went out to dinner once or twice.”

“But?”

“He didn’t make me laugh. And he counts.”

“Counts?”

“In a notebook. Writes down what he spends, when he spends it.”

“You’re joking!”

“I told you, there was nothing to laugh about. I think you’d make me laugh, though. What do you think?”

“I think I know someone who’d think he was terrific making a note of his expenditure,” said Charlie, refusing the flagrant invitation.