losing control, stayed with mineral water, insisting on breaking the bottle-cap seal himself. The American food order was uniformly T-bone steaks upon Probert’s insistence that they were definitely flown in from Texas. Paula-Jane wanted trout, ordering from prior knowledge of the menu without needing to consult it, and when Charlie asked for borscht Bundy said, “Staying native, Charlie?”
“When in Rome,” Charlie answered, using the cliche. He started putting people in their pigeonholes. There was very definitely a frisson between Probert and Paula-Jane, which he guessed Probert’s wife was as conscious of as he was. Probert also appeared overly deferential to Bundy, even making allowances for the Bundy legend within the CIA. Deciding to use that reputation to goad the man in return, Charlie said, “How about you, Bill? What brings the head of the CIA’s Russian desk back to Moscow?”
“Interesting times, politically, don’t you think?” said the man.
“I always thought ambassadors and diplomats assessed things politically and that people like you and me were expected to make other sorts of contributions.”
“My philosophy has always been that you can’t do one without studying the other. You here simply because of your murder?”
“Who said I was here for that?” demanded Charlie, aware of the others shifting uncomfortably at the sudden seriousness between him and the American.
Bundy looked around the table, as if aware of it, too. “Now here’s a lesson for all of us, the danger of assuming too much. Charlie’s on a mission he obviously can’t tell us about.”
“Which is another dangerously accepted assumption,” said Charlie, raising his delivered vodka in a toast to the group to cover his irritation at losing the exchange.
“Can’t say I envy you guys,” came in Probert, attempting to lessen the atmosphere. “Must be a hornet’s nest down there at Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya?”
“It’s kind of busy,” agreed Paula-Jane.
“You just won the understatement of the year award, P-J,” said Probert, leading the laughter.
“From the outside, looking in, I’d say there’s going to be a wholesale massacre,” suggested Bundy.
“I’m keeping my office door locked,” said Paula-Jane, over-emboldened by her earlier reception, although only Probert laughed again this time.
“From what I’ve read in the American papers it seems too late for that,” said Sarah, adding to her wineglass for the third time. “I thought all this spy nonsense was over: actually I never believed most of it in the first place.” She was blue eyed as well as blond, with perfectly sculpted teeth and a milk-and-vitamin-fed complexion. She looked challengingly between her husband and the two other men and said, “Okay, let us in on the secret! How many James Bond coups have any of you had that you know saved the world?”
“Sarah, stop it!” protested Probert.
The arrival of their food contributed to the interruption. Unasked, Charlie took the initiative and ordered his favorite Georgian red wine, intrigued by the total unexpectedness of the dinner party and the vague undertones he was detecting, most surprised-and curious-at facing an adversary he’d never imagined confronting ever again, socially or otherwise. His mind held by Sarah Probert’s outburst, Charlie tried to recall a start-to-finish operation of which he was proud, and couldn’t. He’d stuck a hell of a lot of wrenches into a hell of a lot of engines, though, and who could calculate their outcome if he hadn’t done it? Perversely wanting to keep the uneasy conversation on its present track to see where it might lead, Charlie said, “There’s no such thing as a one-man band in our business: it’s lots of different people offering lots of different tunes eventually to create a song to hum to. Wouldn’t you say that’s how it is, Tex?”
Before her husband could reply, Sarah said, “John says very little about anything, to me at least. That’s why I’m glad we’re moving back to Washington, D.C., where things will be much more normal and I can get my husband back.”
“That’s enough, Sarah!” said Probert.
“Moscow’s not the best foreign posting for a family,” offered Paula-Jane.
Sarah looked across the table at the English woman but deferred to her husband’s warning, pushing aside her scarcely touched meal and picking up the empty white wine bottle with her other hand to gesture for a replacement.
“Is Ann coming back this time?” Charlie asked Bundy, knowing the man’s wife hadn’t enjoyed Moscow and spent a lot of time back in America during their contemporary posting.
“Jury’s still out on that,” said Bundy. “How long are you expecting to be here?”
Charlie shrugged. “Open-ended.”
“Why don’t we make lunch sometime? Catch up on old times?”
“That would be good,” lied Charlie, who’d only ever socialized with the American at mutually attended embassy receptions and even then to the polite minimum.
It was Paula-Jane Venables who recovered the evening, using her enjoyment of Russia in general and Moscow in particular as the springboard-although not in critical comparison with Sarah Probert’s obvious disenchantment-to enthuse about the Bolshoi ballet and of a trip she intended repeating to St. Petersburg to again visit the Hermitage and the Tzars’ village of Tarskoye Selo and to see more opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, culminating with the announcement that when her tour of duty in Moscow ended she intended going east, not west, to take the trans-Siberian railway all the way to the Chinese border and complete her recall to England via Japan if she was refused a visa into China. She amusingly told stories against herself of misadventures and mistakes during her explorations, to the genuine, Tex Probert-led amusement of everyone with the initial exception of Sarah. Shirley Jenkins took up the travelogue with an account of a college-graduation rail journey the length of Latin America as far as Patagonia, and eventually Sarah-and even Bundy-relaxed sufficiently to keep the conversation away from embassy rumor and gossip, the only real subject all of them had in common.
On the way back to the embassy Paula-Jane said, “That wasn’t anything like the fun I’d hoped it would be. Bundy’s a stuffy old fart, frightening all of them with a reputation I didn’t see or hear much to justify. I think he’s stuck in a Cold War time warp, like the way he dresses and how that fucking cafe is designed.”
“He’s a very dedicated guy,” said Charlie, impressed at her analysis.
“You work a lot with him when you were both here?”
“Not at all. We both preferred to work alone.”
“Like you prefer to do now?”
“We’ve been through that.”
“You didn’t share anything with Bundy!” persisted the woman, disbelievingly.
“Nothing,” said Charlie. “Was it just your idea to invite me along tonight?”
Paula-Jane turned to him in the taxi. “How do you mean?”
“Was my name mentioned, when you were invited?”
Paula-Jane hesitated, thinking. “I don’t remember your name coming up. How could it have? No one at the American embassy could have known you were here, could they?”
“Bundy didn’t seem surprised to see me. And appeared to know what I was doing here.”
“Bundy tries to give the impression of knowing everything before it ever happens,” she dismissed. “I thought we came close to an embarrassment with Sarah.”
“You did well to save the evening,” congratulated Charlie. “You know her well?”
“Hardly at all. This isn’t her first extended trip back to the States. From what Tex has told me, she’s spent more of his Russian tour back home than here.”
As the embassy came into view Charlie leaned toward the windshield and said, “The media siege appears to have been lifted.”
“I thought you might have invited me back to the hotel for a nightcap,” said the woman.
I’d guessed you would, thought Charlie. “Maybe another time.”
“Let’s hope there is one.”
Charlie eagerly took the offered message slip from the Savoy receptionist, his expectation of it being from Natalia collapsing immediately. The only thing written on the slip was the telephone number of Colonel Sergei Pavel.
Charlie’s second arrival at Petrovka was very different from his first. On this occasion there was an instant acknowledgement from a different, attentive desk clerk, and at whose bell-pressed demand another escort officer
