insisting he lean forward for a better view of the skyscraper when they went by the United Nations, which he did in apparent straight-faced interest.
‘Costs millions and is complete crap,’ judged the woman. ‘Just a lot of supposed diplomats living tax free of the fat of the land telling countries to stop fighting each other and being given the straight middle finger in reply.’
What did ‘supposed’ mean? Thinking of his own country’s use of the organization, Yuri said: ‘It must serve some purpose.’
‘Yet to be discovered,’ Caroline insisted.
When the car started to cross the bridge, Yuri said: ‘We’re going to eat in Brooklyn?’
‘Wait,’ she insisted.
The driver was unsure so she leaned forward to give directions before they left the bridge, gesturing for the immediate right turn, which again enabled Yuri to look back. There was still no indication of any following vehicle but the packed road made it as difficult as before to be sure.
‘The River Cafe,’ she announced when the car stopped. ‘Recognize anything?’
‘Not at once,’ said Yuri doubtfully.
‘Better inside,’ she said.
Yuri followed her into the restaurant, intent on everything around him, straining for the recognition she apparently expected but unable to find it.
‘There!’ she announced, when they reached the bar.
Yuri looked across the river to the illuminated skyline of Manhattan, at once relieved and then thankful at last for the training-school videos and the television. ‘The famous view,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it great!’
‘Terrific,’ agreed Yuri. Caroline had to be too ingenuous to be any sort of counter-intelligence plant!
‘Just the beginning,’ she said.
He imagined they were going to eat there but she said they’d only come to drink, matching him martini for martini and then guiding the new cab driver back across the bridge and downtown to a Mexican cafe in Greenwich Village, which was an area of the city he had not explored. Ordering nearly became a problem because Caroline announced she would defer to an experienced travel writer: he recognized tacos and chilli on the menu and chose for both of them and was lucky, too, with Margueritas, which she declared to be a drink she liked. Yuri was confident she had not detected his hesitation. Caroline continued to lead the conversation and Yuri was happy to let her: it gave him the opportunity to study her, seeking the slightest hint to warn him that she was part of some entrapment operation. She talked of a San Francisco upbringing and of a Berkeley education and a marriage that lasted two years (‘we woke up one day and couldn’t understand why we’d done it in the first place; we send each other Christmas cards’) and of coming to New York to make a clean break and of loving advertising (‘you sure you haven’t seen the advert with the walking plants!’) and slowly Yuri began to relax. He offered scraps of his carefully prepared legend, improvising a Dutch father for his English mother to account for the newly discovered accent and of never having had time to get married, aware as he talked of Belov’s wisdom in choosing a European background to account easily for any further slight mistakes he might make.
Yuri thought the Margueritas were bland and suspected the tacos would give him heartburn; Caroline said wasn’t everything wonderful and Yuri agreed that it was. After the meal they walked aimlessly through the village and Caroline took him to a bar called the Lion’s Head because it sounded English. She went to the toilet while he ordered and as he did so Yuri realized Soviet security would already have alerted Granov of his failure to return at the expected time. After Levin’s defection they’d be very nervous of unaccountable absences but regulations forbade his making any contact from an insecure telephone. They’d just have to sweat. It would mean an inquiry and an official report the following day but Yuri was not really concerned, sure of a satisfactory explanation. Besides which, he was enjoying himself.
They left after only one drink, and in the uptown cab to their apartments Yuri wondered if Caroline were as curious as he was at what might happen when they got there. She did not appear to be. She went into the block ahead of him, pumped the courtesy light automatically and said: ‘You won’t have any coffee, having just got back. So it looks like my place.’
As he entered her apartment Yuri saw that it really was exactly like his, but without the strident colour of the Mexican rugs and bed covering. Instead the focal point of her decoration was a series of blown-up photographs and prints of what he presumed to be advertising promotions with which Caroline had been associated. He couldn’t see any illustration involving walking plants.
The coffee was excellent and she had French brandy and insisted he take the enveloping easy chair while she settled herself upon the bed, legs screwed up beneath her. She said: ‘I’ve had a great evening.’
‘So have I,’ said Yuri. Had it been the test he’d set it out to be? He thought so. Successful, too. Nothing positive, producing guidelines. What then? An attitude, he decided: a feeling of becoming comfortable – at ease and apparently accustomed – in what could have been an uncomfortable situation. And he had been uncomfortable, beyond the nervousness that Caroline’s pick-up had not been as casually accidental as it initially appeared. He was at least quite sure now about that: she was an adoptive New Yorker, nothing more.
‘Where are you off to tomorrow?’
He’d already told her he was leaving the following day so it was an innocent enough question. Prepared, he said: ‘Canada. Life-in-the-Rockies type of article.’
‘How long do you expect to be away?’
Yuri hesitated: innocent enough again. He said: ‘It’s never possible to be sure: as long as it takes.’
‘Oh.’ She seemed disappointed.
‘Weeks rather than months.’ Why had he said that, making some sort of promise? Tonight had been a test, an experiment, and valuable even though it was officially forbidden. He should not – could not – consider anything more.
‘So there’ll be other times?’
‘Yes,’ he said. No! he thought.
‘You think I’m a pushy broad?’
Broad had certainly been a word taught him by the disillusioned American defector. He said: ‘No, I don’t think you are a pushy broad.’
‘Want to know something?’
‘What?’
‘I was trying to impress you, with the coke and the tour of New York. All that stuff.’
Yuri supposed she had succeeded. He was unsure how to respond. He said: ‘Why?’
She shrugged, seeming embarrassed at the blurted confession. ‘Don’t know. Nervous I guess.’
‘And the coke helped?’
‘Didn’t do a lot for me, actually. It was a gift, from a client: sort of thing they do in Madison Avenue and Wall Street. I’ve had it a long time. I wasn’t really sure how to do it.’
Yuri said: ‘It’s not really important, is it?’
‘It’s just…’ She stopped, shrugging once more. ‘There seems to be a way of behaving here,’ she started again. ‘Everything’s brittle and finger-snapping; this minute is the last in my life, to hell with the sixty seconds coming next. I guess I behaved instinctively, imagining you’d be the same…’
The anxiety flooded back. Needing movement, Yuri put the half-finished coffee on a side table but retained the brandy snifter. Forcing the casualness, he said: ‘And?’
‘You’re not,’ she said, simply.
‘Really so different?’ Yuri realized, gratefully, that there was no shake in the hand holding the brandy glass.
‘Pleasantly so different,’ she said. ‘You’re…’ She halted again, smiling hesitantly up at him. i don’t know how this conversation got started: it’s embarrassing.’
‘I want you to go on,’ said Yuri, with more sincerity than she would ever know.
‘You’re straight,’ she said. ‘Straight and nice. Not acting at all.’
The snorted laugh, of apparent modesty, fitted her compliment but it was really a sigh of relief, the amusement that of irony. He had passed the test. Completely. He said: ‘Straight and nice sounds boring.’
‘I didn’t find it so…’ She sniggered to what was becoming one of her familiar hesitations. She said: ‘I’m
