“Your planes and you threw them,” reminded the child. “Mine crashed.”
“All your home schoolwork done?”
“Everything I had to do.”
She’d made pictures of a dog and a horse and chosen their initial letters without his help. “How about a story?”
“We could watch television,” Sasha suggested instead. “American cartoons. It helps me to learn the words.”
Charlie and Natalia wanted Sasha to be bilingual and spent half an hour each evening talking only English. He wasn’t sure of the benefit of the satellite programs and words like POW and WHAM and BLAM, but he didn’t want to lose Sasha’s enthusiasm. “Only while I get supper.”
“Baked beans!” she said, in English.
They were a novelty-unavailable in Moscow-and Sasha’s latest favorite, which Charlie got through the embassy commissary. He turned on the wide-screen set in the smaller room and insisted she sit properly in a chair several feet away, vaguely remembering a warning about X ray or some sort of ray that could harm children sitting too close.
“Can I have it on a tray, on my lap?”
“No.”
“Please!”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not a proper way to eat.”
“Ley used to let me!” said Sasha.
Ley was the closest Sasha had ever been able to get to the given name of Alexei Popov, Natalia’s deputy, whom she’d planned to marry until Charlie’s exposure of the man as a Mafia-linked member of the nuclear-smuggling organization manipulating her and the rank he held within the ministry. By unspoken-although in Charlie’s opinion, unnecessary-agreement he and Natalia never referred betweenthemselves to the man who had contributed to another layer of Natalia’s too-miserable life. But very occasionally, like now when she wasn’t getting her own way, Sasha followed her child’s instinct and experimented. Charlie said, “He might have done. I’m not.”
“Where is Ley?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
Wherever someone goes who gets shot point-blank and full in the face with a 9mm bullet, thought Charlie, remembering the final moments of the ambush in which Popov had tried to kill him. He said, “Away.”
“Is he coming back?”
“No.”
“Never, ever?”
“Never, ever. So you’ll eat properly, at the table in the kitchen.” He set her place, complete with a proper napkin, and timed the beans and toast to be ready when the cartoon program finished. He sat opposite while she ate. Beyond the child the nearly full bottle of Islay malt stood out on the drinks tray like a beacon, but Charlie ignored it, even though technically it was happy hour. There were a lot of unimagined changes in being a father.
“Shall we try to speak English?”
“If you’d like,” said Charlie, pleased it was her suggestion, which was how he and Natalia always tried to make it.
“How long will Mummy be?”
She inverted the verb, but for a child of Sasha’s age it was conversationally very good. “She didn’t know. She’s going to phone to tell us.”
“Are you going to bathe me?”
Another first, by himself, accepted Charlie. “Yes.”
“All right,” said Sasha, gravely, as if giving permission, which Charlie supposed she was.
The downstairs buzzer sounded, making them both jump by its unexpectedness. Not Natalia, thought Charlie at once. She’d promised to phone, and in any case she had her own key. The grandiose apartment had been an effective part of his cover as a crooked entrepreneur and all the nuclear ringleaders had been either arrested or killed. But a lot of the minnow men, the gofers and the fetchers,would have gotten through the net and there had always been at the back of Charlie’s mind the awareness that some might know this address. Might know, too, that he was the person who’d destroyed everything. But they wouldn’t come at him like this: not ring the bell. Easier-better-just to wait outside, hit him when he arrived or left.
“Mummy?” asked Sasha, when the bell went again.
“I don’t think so,” said Charlie. He could legally carry a gun in Moscow, but didn’t. He’d have liked the comfort of a weapon now, even though he wasn’t very good: never able to keep his eyes open at the moment of firing. Or keep the kick from hurting his wrist, even though he adopted the correct, hand-supporting shooting crouch. He hadn’t been the person to shoot Popov as Popov was preparing to shoot him.
“I’ll go,” said Sasha, brightly.
“No!” said Charlie, too sharply. “Stay and wipe your mouth. I’ll see who it is.” The downstairs door could be forced, even if he didn’t operate the admission button, but it was very thick and heavy and wouldn’t be easy. And there were two bolts and a crossbar as well as a chain, from the previous protection, on the apartment door which was practically as strong as that five floors below. He wasn’t reassured. It had been downright fucking stupid to have let himself be trapped like this-like this with Sasha, of all things! — without any means of protection or escape. The bell sounded a third time as he reached the microphone.
“Yes?”
“I was about to give up on you.” It was a woman’s voice.
“Who is this?”
“Irena, Natalia’s sister.”
“Hello,” he said to the woman who’d called immediately after Natalia, earlier. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“You said it would be all right to call ’round, so I decided to at once.”
Charlie pressed the release button and opened the apartment door in readiness. Sasha came to the door and, when he told her who was coming up the stairs, said, “I like Aunt Irena. She brings me presents.”
Irena was in Western clothes: loafers, Levi’s jeans and a designerversion of a fleecy-lined pilot’s jacket. She picked Sasha up, kissed her and carried her laughing into the apartment. Immediately inside, she gave Sasha a Donald Duck that climbed quacking up a cord by some mechanism triggered by it being pulled sharply downward. The child began to retreat, giggling delightedly, then stopped and said, “Thank you,” and kissed the woman again. She looked to Charlie for approval. Charlie nodded.
Irena turned at last to Charlie. “So you’re my sister’s new partner !”
Charlie accepted that he was, as far as Irena was concerned, but didn’t like the question: it inferred there’d been a lot. He didn’t know, in fact, whether there had been or not. It wasn’t something he and Natalia had felt the need to discuss. “Yes,” he said, simply.
“And English!” said Irena, in the same language, which she spoke well. “The embassy? Or business here?”
“Something in between,” avoided Charlie.
“Daddy was just going to bath me,” announced Sasha. “Now you can help.”
Daddy, Charlie seized at once. Until that moment she hadn’t made any attempt at a name, not even a guess at Charlie, which they’d decided to allow if she’d tried.
Irena seized it, too. “Daddy?”
“If I can be,” said Charlie. He wasn’t enjoying the encounter.
“Why don’t I bathe you myself-and read you a story-while Daddy gets me a drink?” suggested the woman.
Charlie decided he liked the way the title sounded. He was glad, too, that Irena had taken over bathtime duties: he was learning how to be a father at roughly the same pace as Sasha was mastering basic spoken English. “There’s most things,” he invited.
“Scotch. Water back.”
Very American vernacular, thought Charlie, amused. He took Islay scotch as well, pouring both straight, setting out her water glass separately and putting ice in a bucket for her to add herself, to avoid it melting to dilute the drink. For someone who until that moment had been a total stranger, Irena-Irena Seminova Modin, Charlie remembered, from the McDonald’s conversation-seemed very adept at appearing an old friend. It probably had something to do with being a stewardess. Long-haul, he recalled: Australia as well America.