“Well, they’re not watching here. Nobody’s even looked at the table,” Jo said.
“And you call yourself a Service wife,” Burgess said, dipping his head, courtly.
“You mean they are? Where?” She looked around the room.
“They’re not supposed to be obvious,” Gareth said.
“Well, one,” Burgess said. “Then you don’t notice the other. Check the sight lines to the table, bound to be somebody taking an interest. Didn’t they teach you that? But you’d get him soon enough. You’re supposed to. It’s the one you’re not supposed to see you have to watch out for.”
“And where might he be?”
Burgess smiled. “I’m much too drunk to know that. Anyway, he’s not watching me. I booked at the Praga. Probably some lonely comrade there still waiting. Fuming. One of the nice things about getting drunk—you don’t see them anymore. They’re in some blur on the margins.”
Gareth, who’d been looking out at the room, suddenly stood up.
“Back in a sec. Have to use the Gents. Right back.”
“Which way is he going?” Burgess said, not turning in his chair.
“Toward the bar.”
Burgess sighed. “It’s a wonder he didn’t get caught sooner. The Gents. Don’t they train them anymore?” he said to Frank. “We’re agents, we’re supposed to know how to do these things. Be discreet. But that’s Gareth, isn’t it? Anything for a leg up. He wants to be part of it all. Not tossed in the bin. Let me guess. He’s talking to someone at the bar now?”
“Yes.”
“And if I were still in the game, I wouldn’t look. Too obvious. But what the hell.” He turned. “Ah yes.”
“You know him?”
“I’ve seen him. Gareth’s always running over to him, eager to help. Share some tidbit. Much good it will do him. He can’t accept that it’s over. A field agent without a field. What could be more de trop?”
“Man at the bar seems happy enough to listen to him,” Simon said.
Burgess looked over, slightly surprised, as if he’d just noticed Simon was there.
“To all his very important state secrets. What could they be, do you think? Whisper, whisper. About who?” He paused. “About whom. Not me, that’s one mercy. Washed-up old snoop. Maybe you,” he said to Frank, then looked at Simon. “Who’s this, anyway?”
“His publisher,” Simon said, formal.
“Oh, the memoir. My Deceitful Life. What a lot of mischief you must be up to,” he said to Frank. “All those skeletons in the closet. But I suppose they have to stay there, don’t they? The Service wouldn’t like it. You ought to do his other book,” he said to Simon. “All the bits he’s left out of this one. Quite a read.”
“So is this.”
“Really? Well, quite a career. I guess there’s enough there to pick and choose. You know he got the Order of Lenin? The rest of us got—well, Gareth got little Sergei, but the rest of us got fuck all.” He made a soft burp. “And the honor of helping the cause, of course. Maybe I should write my memoirs. Would you be interested? You could start a series. Trouble is, it all seems so long ago now. God, the Foreign Office. I remember people in cutaway coats, actually in cutaways.” He was quiet for a second. “But to tell you the truth, I doubt I’d have the energy. I quite like being washed up. It’s a soft life. I enjoy the leisure. Not Gareth. Look at him. The game’s still afoot. Still hoping to get back in. It must be about you,” he said to Simon. “New girl in town. Mind what you say to him. It all goes right back.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Well, that’s always best, isn’t it? Make him work for it. But imagine, right out in the open. In my day that wouldn’t have been allowed. We were trained.”
Simon looked out at the room, Burgess’s voice like a radio narrator’s. Who was anybody? Maybe there were watchers everywhere, people glancing away, then back. Gareth at the bar now, eager to report in, like one of Winchell’s runners, and suddenly, absurdly, the room seemed like the Stork, everyone people spotting, feeding items to the columnists, the room dotted with them, KGB Winchells and Sullivans. He sipped the brandy. But no one knew the real story. How much was Jo drinking? Would Burgess make a scene? Was the American publisher just what he seemed? No one knew. A cable sent, a man already betrayed, just the beginning. He looked over at Frank, still listening politely to Burgess. No one knew. In this room of gossip and lapdog agents, only Frank seemed to sit in a calm center. Back where he’d spent most of his life, above suspicion.
They left Burgess with the rest of the bottle and made their way to the door, Jo leaning on Simon’s arm, Gareth still at the bar, his face slightly alarmed as he saw them leaving, as if something had slipped out of his hands. A car was waiting at the curb.
“We’ll drop you,” Frank said.
“That’s all right. I’ll walk.”
“No, we’ll drop you,” Frank said, an order.
Jo, still holding on to Simon’s arm, swayed a little, unsteady.
“Here, let me help,” Frank said, maneuvering her into the car.
“I’m fine.”
They all sat in the back, Jo patting Simon’s hand.
“Like old times. But we never talked. There’s so much I want to know.” She stopped, looking down, slipping into a private conversation. “But maybe not. What, really? What happened to everybody? Well, what did? The usual. Except me. Imagine the class reunion. Everybody coming up to say hi and looking—” Her voice drifted off.
Frank glanced over at him, a signal to let it play itself out.
The driver swung into Gorky Street, heading down toward Red Square. One or two cars, the sidewalks deserted, even on a late spring evening, the doorways pools of dark now, everything in shadow. They were at the National in minutes.
“Get some sleep,” Simon said to Jo, kissing her cheek.
“Oh, sleep,” she said, her head already nodding.
Frank got out with him.
“Same time tomorrow?” Simon said.
“You never change. I can still read your face,” Frank said, a fond smile, the intimacy of drink.
“Yes? What’s it saying?”
“You’re worried. You don’t want to take your hand off the checker, until you’re sure. Remember how you used to do that? No move until you thought it was safe.”
“This isn’t checkers.”
“No.” He paused. “It’s safe for you. The board. I promise.”
“Well, it’s done now. The message.”
Frank nodded. “Which means from now on I’m a dead man here. You realize that, don’t you?” He put his hand on Simon’s arm. “I need you to stay with me on this. Keep your head. It’s going to work.”
“This is why you wanted me to come, isn’t it? Your plan. What if I hadn’t?”
“Jimbo, it’s us. Of course you’d come. So would I. I never thought I’d have to ask, involve you, but—” He looked up. “I didn’t think it would end like this.”
Simon was quiet for a minute. “How did you think it would end?”
“I didn’t. I didn’t think it would end.” He looked around, toward the darkened Kremlin. “Oh, in the triumph of socialism, I suppose. And it did. It just didn’t end that way for me. Sometimes you get—taken by surprise.”
Simon looked at him. Move the piece. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Get some sleep.”
He was halfway across the lobby when Novikov, evidently waiting, came out of the bar.
“Nightcap?” he said, the American voice somehow at odds with his Russian bulk and features.
“No, thanks. I’ve had enough.”
“Have one anyway,” he said. “Just one.” He guided him toward the bar and signaled the bartender, who brought two small brandy snifters. “Armenian,” he said. “The vodka will make you blind.”