Yuri planned for it to be dark by the time he reached 53rd Street, which had the benefit of concealment but the disadvantage of enveloping the interior lobby in complete blackness. He groped out, locating the time switch, and was actually inserting the first of the apartment keys into its separate lock when the voice said: ‘Hi!’
The surprise grunted from Yuri as he jerked around, seeing the girl.
‘I made you jump,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sorry.’
She had, and it irritated Yuri. Not because it was so immediately obvious that he’d been startled but that he had been unaware of her, so close: his training was supposed to make that impossible. Automatically he looked down, seeing the rubber-soled training shoes visible beneath the cuffs of some sort of baggy trousers. Still no excuse. He said: ‘You certainly did.’
‘So you’re one of our mysterious writers, coming and going like ships in the night!’
‘I’m moving around on assignment, yes,’ agreed Yuri. Who the hell was she! And how did she know the cover by which he was using the apartment? She had not been behind him in the street: he was sure she hadn’t. But then he’d not been conscious of her when she was directly behind him. Writers, she’d said: more than one. How did she know more than one person used it? He said: ‘You live here?’
She thrust her hand out and said: ‘Caroline Dixon. I’ve got the apartment directly above yours…’
His door open and he clicked on the light. She looked beyond him, into the room and said: ‘… and it’s identical.’
Yuri remained in the doorway, his uncertainty a comparison to her smiling self-assurance. Becoming involved with anyone in the apartment block was positively precluded, for every obvious reason. But to shut the door in her face risked her becoming curious as well as affronted. Mysterious, she’d said. So she was already curious. Yuri took the offered hand and said: ‘Bell, William Bell.’
‘Bill? Or William?’
Before he could reply the time switch went off, plunging the hallway into darkness. Positively forbidden, he thought. Despite which he said: ‘Why not come in for a drink?’
‘It’s really too late to jog anyway,’ she accepted, at once. ‘So what is it?’
‘William,’ said Yuri, donning the false persona as he would put on a familiar jacket. ‘I guess it sticks from having the name on the articles in the magazines.’ He gestured to the table, realizing as he did so that uppermost were the hard and soft porn publications he’d carefully arranged as a warning if the apartment were entered in his absence.
‘You write for skin mags!’
‘No,’ he said quickly, hot with discomfort. He collected up Hustler and Penthouse and Playboy and said: ‘It’s a company apartment. These were left over by someone else. Not mine.’
‘It’s not a crime to read them,’ she grinned, aware of his embarrassment.
Yuri was aware of it too. He was surprised, because it was strange that he should be, but not unhappy, because it might be the sort of reaction she would expect. Forbidden though such encounters might be, Yuri realized that the soft-walking Caroline Dixon, whose jog-suit top bulged most interestingly, would be a useful and necessary test, like all the others he had set himself. At the United Nations he was identifiably Russian, at the Washington lecture he had been identifiably Russian, and during the flight to and from the Soviet Union William Bell had been nothing more than a false name to which he responded. Which made this the first time he had been in any sort of situation where he really had to be William Belclass="underline" to act out a passing social encounter without for one second it appearing to be an act, to avoid the silly, small mistakes that he’d been taught were invariably those which lead to discovery. He picked up the Dutch magazine and said: ‘I work for this. Travel. Nature stuff. That sort of thing.’
Politely she took them and Yuri studied her more closely as she flicked through. Sufficiently confident to confront a stranger without any make-up, her face actually shiny, the blonde hair he guessed to be about shoulder length caught up under some wrap-around band. She looked as if she really had been setting out to jog. She smiled up and said: ‘I can only just detect it.’
‘Detect it?’
‘The accent,’ said the girl.
Definitely a useful test, Yuri decided, feeling the apprehension rise. He said: ‘I didn’t think I had one.’
‘It’s hardly discernible,’ she said. ‘You’re not offended?’
‘Of course not,’ he said. The training schools would be, though. Quickly he added: ‘I’m not getting you that drink, am I?’
‘You got anything else?’
The query seemed a pointed one and he didn’t know how to respond: he felt the perspiration forming along his back, glueing his shirt, and hoped it was not showing on his face. He said: ‘I’ve been on the road for quite a while. I need to get things in.’
She said: ‘I thought you might carry but then I guess it could be difficult, in and out of airports.’
Yuri was baffled by the conversation, the apprehension lumping in his stomach. What did carry mean? Floundering, he said: ‘I will try to be more prepared next time,’ and she picked him up at once and said, coquettish and enjoying his discomfort, ‘Next time so soon!’ and Yuri recognized he was floundering more than he realized. This had been a ridiculous experiment, contravening every rule and instruction, and he had a stomach-wrenching awareness that the ice beneath his feet was thin and melting. Melting fast. He decided to utilize the embarrassment she was enjoying, adopting the pose of the hapless and ingenuous innocent. He said: ‘So what can I get you?’
‘I’ve got some,’ said the woman. ‘It’ll take me a minute.’
She was gone without any further explanation, leaving the door ajar, and almost at once Yuri thought he heard her go into her own apartment. Only a minute, she’d said. He wanted more than a minute: he wanted… what did he want? Yuri realized the ice was sagging, about to give way: and there was a very real danger of his disappearing over his head into the cold water of suspicion. So what about all the lectures from the supposed experts, the precautions against just such a thing happening? Apart from the slight accent not their fault, he answered himself rationally. The training had been to infiltrate and assimilate gradually. But in his conceit – the conceit he had imagined he’d lost – he had not thought he needed any infiltration or assimilation to be graduaclass="underline" that he knew it all. Not just a spoiled brat but an over-sure, conceited one as well. But with a separation. There had not been any personal danger in being spoiled, as a kid. But he was no longer a kid and no longer under his father’s protection in Moscow and he feared there was a very real danger of his being caught out in his encounter with this discomforting woman.
When she re-entered the apartment Yuri saw that Caroline had taken down her hair, which did reach to her shoulders, and only bothered with the minimal amount of make-up, just a suggestion of lipstick. She held out her hand and he saw the kit and Yuri felt the pop of relief at his belated understanding. It still should not have taken him so long, so maybe the training school were to blame.
‘I don’t,’ he said.
‘You tried it?’
‘Sure,’ he lied.
‘Why not, then?’
‘Just doesn’t do enough for me.’
‘It does enough for everybody.’
‘Not me.’
‘Mind if I do?’
‘Go ahead.’
Yuri appeared to concentrate upon preparing his drink, busying himself with getting ice into a bucket and then making his choice of liquor, all the time intent as the woman chopped the lumps out of the tiny pile and from it made ready her line with the razor’s edge. Balancing his most recent thought, Yuri supposed there were some things never to be learned at a spy college. He hoped the accent would flatten out with his constant exposure and use of English.