were. That dealing was where the money was.’
‘ Paul decided.’
Ruth nodded, at the demand for qualification. ‘He was the leader, Eddie. Actually set it up: checked out the pharmacy for the busy and slack times…’ Ruth stopped, lower lip trapped between her teeth, trying to stop herself crying. Of all the resolutions, this was the strongest, the one she’d repeated and repeated to herself, not wanting him to know how lost she felt. The threat passed, although her voice was still unsteady. She said, ‘He’d even planned the getaway, checked the times of the trains on the Metro and worked it out that they could make a connection and be halfway across Washington before the police had time to get there.’
‘Holy shit!’ said Blair, disgusted. ‘What’s happened, since?’
‘There was the initial juvenile court appearance and the remand, for tests and reports. There’s a court- appointed counsellor who wants to see you also, a man called Kemp. And Erickson, from the school, like I told you.’
‘What’s Paul say about it all?’
‘Nothing,’ said the woman. ‘Everything I’ve told you I got from the police.’
‘Didn’t you ask him?’ shouted Blair, immediately regretting it, holding up his hands as if he were physically trying to pull back the anger in his voice. ‘Sorry,’ he said hurriedly, ‘I’m really very sorry.’
Ruth’s face had tightened, at the eruption, but now it relaxed. There was another resolution, almost as important as not crying, which involved not losing her temper or making any accusations. Maybe it was a fantasy but it was a nice fantasy to hope that Eddie’s return might involve more than the immediate problem. ‘Of course I asked him,’ she said. ‘Not at first, not that first night. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him. But when I did he wouldn’t talk about it. Just said it was something that had happened.’
‘Not even sorry!’
‘Not even sorry,’ she said.
‘Christ, what a mess,’ said Blair. He smiled sadly at her. ‘I’m sorry, Ruth. That you had to handle it by yourself, I mean.’ Apologies after apologies after apologies, he thought.
‘Now I haven’t, not any longer, have I?’ she said, the gratitude obvious. ‘Now you’re back. Thanks for coming.’
‘Was it likely I wouldn’t?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It might have been difficult. There might have been something important happening.’
There was something important happening in Moscow, thought Blair. It pleased him to realise that the leadership uncertainty and the part he was supposed to have analysing it had never occurred to him as a greater priority than returning here. ‘At the moment I don’t think there’s anything more important than this,’ said Blair. Aware of her quick, hopeful smile, he said, ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going to work out OK.’
‘I hope so,’ she said. In so many ways, she thought, allowing herself the continued fantasy.
Blair rubbed his hand over his unshaven face, making a scratching sound. ‘I need to get cleaned up,’ he said. ‘I came straight here, from the airport.’
‘You know where the bathroom is,’ she said.
‘You sure that’s OK?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I didn’t want to make any awkward situations. I was thinking of the Marriott down by the bridge.’ Blair was trying to be considerate but didn’t think he was succeeding very well.
Don’t lose your temper, thought Ruth; whatever you do don’t lose your temper and let him see how upset you are. She said, ‘Wouldn’t that be kind of unneccessary?’
‘You sure it won’t be awkward?’
‘I would have thought it was rather essential, considering why you came all the way back,’ she said, coming as near as she intended to criticism. ‘There’s plenty of room: you know that.’
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘You’ve hardly got to thank me, Eddie.’
‘Thanks anyway,’ he insisted.
‘How’s Ann?’ asked the woman, this part rehearsed.
‘Fine,’ said Blair. ‘You still friendly with…’ His voice trailed, at his inability to remember the name.
‘Charlie,’ supplied Ruth. ‘Charlie Rogers.’ She paused, wondering whether to make the point. Deciding to, she said, ‘That’s what it is. Friendship.’
‘Oh,’ said Blair. Conscious of the difficulty between them he said, ‘You’re looking good, Ruth.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You too.’
‘Apart from this – if there can be anything apart from this – how have you been keeping?’ he said.
‘OK.’
‘How was Thanksgiving, with your folks?’
‘Paul played up,’ she said. ‘Now I probably know why: we stayed over a few days and he wouldn’t have been able to get anything.’
‘Jesus!’ said Blair again, exasperated: there was only going to be one conversation between them, however hard they tried. ‘Everything is going to work out OK,’ he said, another repetition. ‘You’ll see.’
‘I wish I could be sure,’ said Ruth. For a moment her control slipped and before she could stop herself she said, ‘I wish I could be sure of so many things.’
Ann decided that the problem was a personal one. She considered that she was only peripherally involved and it was certainly none of Brinkman’s business, friendly though they were, and so she said simply that Blair had returned to Washington for a sudden family reason.
‘Hope everything’s all right,’ he said. It was feasible but unlikely, Brinkman decided. It was obviously a recall to Langley, for something involving the leadership changes. But what? It would have to be something pretty dramatic, to take him all the way back to America. He was surprised, in passing, that they hadn’t evolved a better excuse, abrupt though the departure had obviously been.
‘I’m sure it will be,’ she said. ‘But it’s meant an upset.’
‘What?’
Ann smiled, pleased with her secret. ‘I know it’s your birthday and I got tickets for the new Bolshoi production and I planned it as a surprise, for the three of us to go.’
‘What a nice thought,’ said Brinkman.
‘Now Eddie won’t be able to make it, of course,’ she said. ‘But there’s no point in wasting all the tickets, is there?’
‘None at all,’ agreed Brinkman. ‘We’ll make a party out of it.’
Ann wondered what Betty Harrison’s reaction would be, when she found out. It would be better if she didn’t.
The rioting that occurred in Emba and in Poltava and Donetsk – which by bitter irony had been quickly stopped by rushing the first arrival of the Canadian and American wheat to both provinces – was published in one of the widest circulating zamizdat in Moscow. Sokol flooded the city, rounding up the known dissidents and seizing as many copies as he could but from his informants he knew he didn’t get them all and that the stories were around the capital. The summons was very quick, coming from Panov.
‘Precisely what we didn’t want,’ declared the KGB chairman, without any preliminaries. ‘Speculation abroad is irrelevant. And inevitable. But the Politburo declared against the stories circulating internally. You knew that.’
Sokol knew many things. He knew that the conversation was being recorded, for Panov’s defence if any purge began. But worst of all Sokol knew that if it had reached Politburo level then he was failing in the very objective towards which he had set out, bringing himself to the notice of the rulers in a favourable light. Conscious of the recording, he said, ‘We’ve quelled the unrest in Kazakhstan. And Ukraine.’
‘I’m not interested for the moment in two of the republics. I’m interested in the famine being known and talked about here, in Moscow. And the fact that it is in two separate republics being known as well. That was another assurance you gave me: that you’d contained the spread, from one to another.’
‘All the best-known dissidents are under detention.’
‘Which the Western press, which feeds off them, will report and because they already know thanks to the American announcement of the famine will interpret correctly as the connection. This is emerging into a full scale
