The meal was not as good as it had been the previous evening but his treatment was. The greeting stewardess appeared to be exclusively assigned to him and halfway through the journey the pilot came back to invite him on to the flight deck. Willick went, although he was not particularly interested, unable to see anything in the darkness except for an occasional straggle of lights. But the view – or lack of it – was not what mattered. What mattered was the indication of his importance: Willick liked that, very much indeed.
And it continued, when the plane landed. Willick was led off once more ahead of anyone else to a waiting limousine drawn up close to the aircraft, without any hindering formalities. The driver opened the door for him and Willick began to enter but then stopped abruptly, momentarily startled by the figure of Vladislav Andreevich Belov already waiting in the rear seat.
‘It’s good to see you in Moscow,’ greeted the director of the American division of the First Chief Directorate.
Willick got in beside the man and said: ‘I’m glad to be here.’
The vehicle moved off immediately, around an airport perimeter road to pick up a multi-laned highway along which it began to move at a speed which surprised Willick, accustomed to the rigidly enforced limits of the United States. Sixty, maybe seventy miles an hour, he guessed; the first obvious difference, between his old and new life. Good, like everything else was good.
‘You’ll be tired?’ anticipated Belov.
‘I am,’ agreed Willick. He’d dozed on the Air France flight and again on this final leg but it had to be almost forty-eight hours since he’d slept in a proper bed.
‘Accommodation is already prepared for you,’ promised Belov. ‘We won’t talk about anything tonight.’
‘Has there been any announcement from Washington?’
‘No,’ said Belov.
Willick felt oddly disappointed. ‘I thought there would have been, by now.’
‘It’s still only early afternoon, in Washington,’ reminded the Russian. ‘You’ll only have been absent from your desk for a few hours.’ The disclosure the Soviets intended was calculated to catch the main NBC, ABC and CBS TV broadcasts. There were still precisely three hours to go and Belov was anxious against the Americans revealing it first: a confirmation was going to have far less public impact than Moscow being first with the news.
‘Everything seems to have happened so fast,’ said Willick. ‘It’s still difficult to think in terms of hours, which is all it’s been. Impossible, in fact.’
‘It will seem real, soon enough.’
Willick was conscious of moving through streets which vaguely reminded him of Washington, expansive although matchingly low-rise buildings positioned either side of even more expansive but similarly matching highways. The only difference seemed to be in their lack of bustle and the corresponding absence of noise. Willick wondered what he was listening for and then realized it was a fire or police siren. Another immediate difference, between old and new: neither a cultural shock, so far. The street in which they stopped was deserted and Willick’s comparison now was not with Washington but with Paris because the entrance to the building was through huge, pavement-abutting gates into an inner courtyard off which led the main entry door. Although he was not sure, it seemed to be an apartment complex. The ground-floor area was unidentified and, obediently following Belov, Willick ascended to an upper level and went through a secondary entry door into a suite that literally made him gasp. His immediate impression, coming through the courtyard, was that it was a prerevolutionary building and everything about the apartment confirmed it. The furniture was gilded and tapesty-upholstered, the walls were covered in flocked wallpaper, there were reflecting chandeliers – two in the main room and others in the two bedrooms – and the floor-to-ceiling windows were draped in heavy, tasselled silk curtains. The flowers were not in vases but bulge-bellied bowls and on a circular, claw-footed table in the main room there was a frosted ice bucket containing yet more champagne and alongside it a silver bowl, iced again, of beluga caviar and a side dish of black and white bread.
Belov continued the conducted tour, into the chandeliered master bedroom where the curtaining design carried on with the bed canopied in matching material and off which led a marbled bathroom that Willick guessed to be roughly the size of the main living room of his never-returned-to Rosslyn apartment. The shower stall was separate from the bath and there was a bidet as well as a toilet, in an enclosed stall. White towels fountained from differently sized wall holders and everywhere there was the smell of some flower-like fragrance.
The dining area was as lavishly furnished but a comparatively small alcove, compared to the remainder of the apartment and into Willick’s mind came the question as Belov answered it.
‘There is no kitchen on this level,’ said the Russian. ‘On the ground level are the people who will look after you. The kitchens are there. Whatever you want, they can provide. Just lift the telephone and ask. Whatever.’
‘I understand,’ said Willick, overwhelmed.
‘You will be comfortable here?’
‘Oh yes,’ assured Willick hurriedly. ‘Very comfortable indeed.’ He’d hoped to be feted but never like this. If this weren’t the former home of a Grand Duke it was something pretty close. What was close to a Grand Duke? Maybe just an ordinary Duke. He wished there had been identifiable ancestral portraits on the walls from which he could have tried to work out whose home it had once been.
‘Get some rest,’ urged Belov. There’s a great deal to be done in a very short time.’
‘What?’ asked the American at once.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Belov. ‘Everything can wait until tomorrow, when you’re rested.’
Willick walked with the Russian to the exit and turned immediately inside it as the man left, staring into the apartment with his back pressed against the door, trying to recapture the emotion of his earlier entry, a junkie trying to repeat the high of his first fix. Not precisely the same, but close. Incredible. Not good enough: not expressive enough. Spectacularly incredible: that didn’t sound right, either, grammatically or in any other way. Why try to find words for it? He guessed his value was being assessed for the years he had spent upon the CIA’s Soviet analysis desk, years from which he was aware of the divide – the Grand Canyon or Mississippi Delta? – between the haves and the have-nots of the Soviet Union. Never, in his most speculative assessment, had he considered anything like this. This was
… His mind blocked, unable to cope. Wonderful was the word which danced in his head, like a child’s toy on the end of an elastic string. Inadequate, like every other superlative, but it would have to do. Absolutely wonderful.
He was sagging from fatigue but like a child again, unwilling to leave the best birthday party it’s ever known, he spooned some of the red eggs upon some black bread, although he wasn’t hungry, and tugged open the champagne, although he was not thirsty nor did he want to drink. Glass in one hand, spilling caviar in the other, Willick went to the window, gazing through the misted gauze curtains at the darkened, hushed and deserted street beyond. Who would his neighbours be, he wondered. Doubtless get to know them, in the way one got to know one’s neighbours. Hadn’t happened in Rosslyn, though. Not his fault. Eleanor’s fault. Everything was Eleanor’s fault: stand-offish, snooty bitch. Different this time. Wouldn’t rush it – no need to rush or be in a hurry – but respond properly when the invitations came, accept theirs and respond to theirs, after the proper length of time. Wouldn’t be able to say what he did, of course. Hadn’t been able to in Washington, either. I work for the government: the customary reply, so customary that everyone knew he worked for the CIA. Get guidance about that. Plenty of time and he didn’t want to offend, through ignorance. Would he be awarded a car? Certain to be, if he were allocated accommodation like this. And a driver? Almost certain again. Have to drive himself sometimes, though. Enjoy that. Especially at the speed at which the driver had come in from the airport. Seventy miles an hour at least: maybe eighty.