“Fine, fine, ladies, please excuse us for a moment.” Oliver led him down the hall and into the main bedroom. Will could not help but notice the top sheet and blankets were all off the bed. He saw Zoya’s shoes and blouse on the floor on one side, the skirt lay in a bundle on the other, signs of a night and maybe a morning’s passion that caused some emotion, envy, or jealousy perhaps, to well up inside Will. He tried not to think about it. “What’s up?” Oliver asked.
“Okay, well now, we have some trouble,” said Will, focusing on the issues at hand. “In fact, we have some very serious trouble.” He then told Oliver about the photographed Hoffmann-La Roche file and the Soviet embassy. As Will sketched out the details, Oliver sat down, stunned, on the corner of the bed and stared at the floor, quietly taking it all in. He looked as close to being serious as Will had ever seen him.
“How did Brandon know the file came from your office?” Oliver asked. “There was no letterhead on any of it.”
“The agency knows what our files look like,” Will said, feeling as though he was confessing. “They’ve seen a lot of them before.”
“Yes, I see.” Oliver gave Will a funny look. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Will.”
“Here’s the deal,” Will said, ignoring the accusation. “I’m supposed to hand our personnel files over to the two guys Brandon has working on this—”
“What are their names?”
“I don’t remember their names, Mitchell and something.”
“Odd that Brandon wouldn’t take care of it himself—you’re his boy, right?”
“No, I’m not his boy. He says he’s working on something more important, he says he doesn’t have time for this.”
“More important than espionage at the Soviet embassy? Very interesting. The man does stay busy.”
“The point is, I’m not going to hand over personnel files to his guys so that they can go digging around in a bunch of innocent people’s lives. Who knows what they’ll uncover? Maybe they’ll find our janitor’s a member of the Communist Party, and then what?”
“Well, I doubt they’d be surprised at that. All the janitors in Paris are Communists,” said Oliver.
“You know what I mean. It’s serious, very serious.”
“Yes … Christ, of course it is … it’s the Soviets.” Oliver didn’t say any more as he drifted into thought, and then he nodded, as if reaching a decisive conclusion. “The wisest plan is to do as you say, confess the whole truth. Make a clean breast of it.”
Will exhaled with relief. He had not expected such a straightforward and simple solution from Oliver. “Yes, okay, that sounds right.”
“But of course,” said Oliver, “the only way you’ll come out of this completely unscathed is if you actually hand over the double-crosser. If you don’t, they’ll make you the fall guy. You see, a leak like this, it’s too important, they’ll need someone to go down for it. Lucky for us, we know who the culprit is.”
“That big guy Boris?”
“Absolutely not Boris.”
“He’s a Russian, isn’t he?”
“Boris hates the Russians because he hates Reds, and the Russians hate Boris because they hate queers.”
“Boris is a homosexual?”
“My god, you’re not very intuitive about these things, are you? They’re both queers. Boris and Ned. That’s what makes them such a good fit, they’re like an inverted husband and wife. But Ned’s the one we need to find, she was in charge of handling the drop-off, told me she was going down to the embassy personally. Foolishly, I forgot to ask exactly which embassy. I was never very good at details. Anyway, we’ll have to track her down.” He rose from the bed and began dressing. “Why don’t we leave the girls here for a bit and pop over to the Monaco Bar, it’s nearly lunchtime so she’s probably already there, or if she’s not, we’ll find Boris and he’ll tell us where she is. Either way we’ll talk to her, that’s probably our best shot at mopping this mess up.”
“What, we’re just going to ask her to turn herself in?”
“No, I sincerely doubt she’d do that, but I’d wager we can get some information out of her, she won’t know that anyone at the Russian embassy has been talking to the Americans. Who knows who’s playing whom here, this whole thing might be straight up or it could be as sideways and dirty as the damned Dreyfus affair. So let’s get Ned’s side of the story first. I wouldn’t want to hand her over to Brandon’s boys without giving her at least a chance to explain. Rather like your concern for those janitors,
“Okay,” Will said, though he didn’t like it. He would have preferred if Oliver had simply picked up the phone and called the U.S. embassy to sort the whole thing out. But that did not look like it was going to happen.
Oliver smiled. “Excellent, let’s go.”
Back in the kitchen they found the two women sitting in awkward silence over coffee. Oliver clapped his hands together. “Pardon us, ladies, Will and I are going to pop over to the Monaco, see if we can’t find a friend. Don’t think there’s much fun for you two, so…”
“Fine with me, I’ve got loads of work waiting at the office,” said Gwen, getting up quickly.
“Yes, of course. I will see you later,” said Zoya. As she said it, she gazed steadily at Will, giving him a broad, warm smile. He felt caught in the focus of her attention. Normally it would have been flattering, but with her sitting there in Oliver’s kitchen, wearing Oliver’s shirt, with Oliver standing only inches away, it was, at best, confusing. But she wouldn’t look away. Gwen was busy putting on her coat, and Oliver was clearing the coffee cups to the sink, so nobody else seemed to notice.
It was then that she started moving her lips, as if speaking but with no sound; not even a whisper emerged. He knew the old trick of mouthing out a silent phrase, but this was different, she was making no effort to slow or overenunciate the shape of her words to help him comprehend whatever she was saying.
Finally she stopped and broke her gaze, quickly rising to kiss Oliver on the cheek as he put on his hat and started toward the door. Will didn’t know what to say, so with a confused blush and somewhat flustered, he mumbled his goodbyes to both women and followed Oliver into the outer hallway and down the stairs.
Out on the street, waiting as Oliver tried to find a cab, Will experienced a curious feeling. The words Zoya had been saying moments earlier seemed to catch up with him, coming clearly to life in his mind, as if she were there beside him saying them out loud. Perhaps she had said them in the kitchen after all and he had for some reason been deaf in their presence then, but apparently nobody else had heard them either. It was strange but it did not matter, for he heard the words now, quite clearly.
IX
When the priest walked into his farmhouse he found the young girl sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of hot stew. He went to the sink and poured himself a glass of water.
“So, you’ve escaped?”
The girl looked up at him. “Elga says you are not a real priest.”
“Oh, I am real. Maybe not as much as most, but far more than some.” He looked at the girl. Her hair was brushed out and she wore an aquamarine blouse that made her clear blue eyes shine. He could tell she would have grown up to be a beautiful woman someday. Perhaps she would still if she could stay alive. It was possible; Zoya and Elga had both survived against long odds and countless years. But even if she did, she would not be a woman until centuries had passed. Time had become different for her now.
“Elga says you are an old friend,” the girl said.
“Well, I am old. That’s true. I’ve known her since I was only a few years older than you.” He finished the water and rinsed out the glass. “How is your stew?”
“It’s delicious! She cooked it this morning while I was still asleep. She said I should leave it on the stove for you in case you were hungry.”
“What kind is it?”
“She said it was a meat stew.”
