“Hello, Dr. McVeigh! It’s good to have you back! You have a vis—”
“Later!” Ruth said brusquely, almost savagely, and moved with purpose toward her private office. The first thing to do was to get someone from the legal staff working on the matter. She pushed through the door and then stopped dead, her heart seemingly in her throat. There was a man standing looking from the window and the shoulders and back looked achingly familiar. He turned. It was Gregor Kovpak.
He smiled, his pleasure at seeing her evident in his eyes. “Hello, Ruth.”
“Gregor!” She sat down abruptly, unable to believe it. “What — what are you doing here?”
He shrugged, as if his presence was the most natural thing in the world. “I’m in love with you. You are in love with me — or you were a while ago. I thought we would get married. I’ve defected from my country — with the help, I might mention, of a good but slightly battered friend, a retired colonel, now — and I’ve requested asylum in this country.”
“But... but, Copenhagen—?”
“Ah, yes? You mean my sudden departure from Copenhagen with that suitcase?” Gregor grinned and then straightened his face. “Ruth, suppose I told you that when I got to Leningrad, that suitcase was empty?”
Her anger returned. “I wouldn’t believe you!”
Gregor persisted. “But, suppose, even if there had been something of value in that suitcase — which I am not in a position to verify — that I honestly believed it belonged in Russia, as I once explained. And suppose I thought, considering that fact, that you might be willing to take me, instead...”
She stared at him a moment and then smiled, at first a bit ruefully and then with happiness. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“I’m afraid not.” Gregor frowned slightly. “Incidentally, where have you been? I’ve been in New York over a week, until they told me you would be here this morning.”
“I was in Paris. Trying to forget you, as a matter of fact, but without much success.” She looked at him archly, but feeling as good as she had felt miserable just minutes before. “And you waited over a week before you tried to find me?”
“I was in Copenhagen,” Gregor said. “You had already left when I got there, but there was something I had to do there.”
“And that was?”
“To arrange for a large granite monument,” Gregor said simply. “Knud Christensen will be allowed to visit it rather frequently once it is completed.”
“Oh, Gregor!” She came to her feet and into his arms, but even as they kissed, Dr. Ruth McVeigh, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was trying to figure how she could get her hands on the Schliemann collection to exhibit, if only on loan. But for a decent period of time, not just for a few miserable weeks or months...
The announcement of the coming marriage of the two famous archaeologists, Drs. Ruth McVeigh, of the Metropolitan, and Dr. Gregor Kovpak, late of the Hermitage, was written up in the New York Times by their new cultural reporter, Mr. James Newkirk...