I laughed despite myself. "My pleasure, Anna," I said agreeably. "I suspect you'll be the high point of my evening, as well." I waved my hand at the assembled gaggle of officers and civilians. "And just where do you fit in to this operation?"
I was already sure I knew. She was charming, and certainly beautiful, and within the space of a few seconds had managed to stroke my ego in a way that few American women did. Certainly not Sheila Kennedy, my all too capable RIO and running mate.
But how foolish did the Russians think I was? I knew who Anna worked for, even if she would never admit it. This was the very sort of thing we'd been cautioned against by Lab Rat, an approach by an attractive member of the opposite sex while we were in Russia.
"But you must know what I do," she said, her tone of voice playful and amused, as though letting me in on a big secret. "They've talked to you, yes? I am a spy, of course." She gave a gentle, lilting laugh, as though to belie the seriousness of her answer. "At least, I am employed as one.
Although there are very little opportunities for spying these days, at least in the last five years. I had hoped for a more glamorous career, but unfortunately my area of expertise is primarily agricultural. You know, finding out deep, dark secrets about Ukrainian wheat production, the Turkish soybean crop." She waved her hand in a small, dismissing motion.
"Not what I expected when I joined the KGB."
"You're very up front about it," I stammered, trying to get my balance. I knew it, she knew it ― — but to admit it just like that?
Glasnost and peristroika had gone a whole hell of a lot further than I ever imagined.
"Tonight, I am off duty," she said, her voice firm. "No spying ― and I do not know enough about aircraft or airplanes to do a very good job of it, anyway. So shall we enjoy the evening? How are you finding your time in Russia?"
"Not what I had planned so far," I admitted. There was something completely and entirely disarming about her, a spy who admitted she was one. Especially a spy that looked like she did. "I didn't do so hot today."
She nodded. "I heard." She took a step closer and laid one hand on the crook of my arm. "You must be very, very careful," she said, speaking quietly. "I'm a very good spy ― at least, in my area. I hear the others talk. When you go back to your aircraft, please check carefully this equipment called an altimeter." She stumbled slightly over the word, as though she'd never used it in conversation before. "You went too low, but I do not think it was entirely your fault." She glanced over at an assembled gaggle of Russian pilots. I could tell they were pilots from this distance, watching the arm movements as they reenacted the day's engagement for each other. "They do not like to lose ― not for any reason.
It was not your fault you were outside of the envelope." Again, her words sounded slightly awkward, as though she were unused to talking aviation or using the terminology of the trade. That, more than her self-proclaimed declaration that she was an agricultural spy, reassured me.
"What makes you say that?" I asked. I glanced over to see where Sheila was, wondering if I ought to get her in on this. But she was preoccupied with an American attache officer. The diplomatic corps had turned out en masse for this function. They'll do anything for free booze.
I tried to get some more details out of Anna, but she turned my questions away deftly but pleasantly. She'd said all she was going to.
Maybe if I'd had a chance to talk it over with Sheila, I might have figured out a way to get her to open up.
Anna's presence livened up the otherwise deadly dull proceedings of a formal dinner. She claimed the seat next to mine at one of the tables, and Sheila sat across the table from us with her tame attache in tow. I caught her shooting hostile glances at Anna several times, but ignored it. RIOs, particularly female ones, tend to have a rather proprietary attitude about their pilots.
But there was nothing going on, nothing at all between Anna and me.
There couldn't be. First off, I knew she was a spy, and getting involved personally with her to any degree would have resulted in a lot more paperwork than I even wanted to think about. Second, Admiral Magruder had already taken a look at us, shot me a warning glance that would have scorched the skin off a turtle, and was still keeping us under observation.
We talked about everything in the world except flying, ate, and I even allowed myself one shot glass of vodka. One, no more, not if I had to fly the next day.
At one point, after the dinner broke up and we were on the way out, I had a chance to introduce her to Admiral Magruder. Anna seemed quite taken with him, even stepped up close to whisper in his ear. Whatever she said to him made him go pale, but he merely nodded politely to her. Altimeters, maybe? Or something else?
Finally, the evening ended. I was tired by then, drained from the culture shock and disappointment of the day's flying, but determined that tomorrow would be different.
The BOQ was quiet and cold when I got back. I stopped in the head long enough to contemplate the probability of hot water, then gave it up as a lost cause after I'd let it run for about thirty minutes with no appreciable change in the temperature. I cleaned up the best I could and hit the rack.
Tomorrow would be another day ― and one the Russians might not like nearly as much as I liked Anna.
4
The transition from life at sea to life ashore is always a bit awkward for me. It's odd to realize that more than half of my adult life has been spent living on aircraft carriers, in accommodations ranging from the cramped rabbit warrens of junior officer berthing to the more luxurious accommodations afforded a flag officer. Ashore, before my marriage to Tomboy, I'd lived in a series of increasingly comfortable and spacious apartments and town homes, occasionally buying one for a couple of years during a shore tour, only to revert to renter status with my next deployment. Being surrounded by the gray bulkheads of a Navy ship has more the sense of home to me than the plasterboard walls and brick of an apartment or house ashore.
Thus, when I awoke the first morning on Russian soil, the sense of disorientation didn't unduly alarm me. The first few days ashore were always like that.
It set in deeper, however, as I realized where I was. My compartment in the senior officers quarters at Arkhangelsk base were almost comparable to those I would have been afforded in a U.S. Navy facility. They were spacious, consisting of two large rooms comprising a suite. Both the bedroom and the sitting room were furnished in an ornate, ponderous decor replete with gilt and heavy brocade. The entire effect was one of leftover Czarist regalia rather than bleak Communist accommodations.
At one end of the sitting room was a small, efficiency-style kitchen.
I availed myself of the coffeepot, after sniffing suspiciously at the slightly stale brown grounds that were labeled "coffee" in Russian. I don't speak much Russian, just what I remember from a year of it at the Academy, but I knew the alphabet well enough to translate most of the more common words. While the coffee was brewing, I hunted down my bathroom and then conducted a more detailed examination of my quarters.
I'd had one-bedroom apartments ashore that contained less total square footage than these two rooms and the private head. The bathroom in particular was a study in contradictions, with a heavy archaic claw-footed tub side-by-side with a modern glassed-in shower cubicle. I tried the tap experimentally, and found that there was hot water, although it was a bit rusty at the start.
I heard the burbling hiss of the coffeepot in the sitting room cease, and wandered back in for my first cup of the day. I settled into a richly tapestried chair pulled up to a heavy wooden table/work area. Then looked around for a coaster or a saucer, something to prevent making any stain on the beautifully inlaid wood.