Her smile was warm, sympathetic. “Do you mean to say my uncle actually regrets a decision enough to deny it?”
He studied the fire for moments before he replied. “My country, or my best friend: regret is designed into decisions like that, Petra. I imagined that I could opt for my country with a clear conscience. Wrong; that decision haunted me for years.” And I will pay for it forever now, it seems. “I only knew that Kyle became curious about something; someone. Something as silly as imitation shrubs, actually. Someone learned what was not to be learned, and Kyle was one of the people due to be interrogated about it. He would have answered honestly. And that would have been a disaster. He never underwent that interrogation.”
“What’s wrong with just answering honest,” she began, but stopped when she saw his expression, a look that combat troops call the thousand-yard stare.
“It would have taken a crucial player out of action. It would have certainly disturbed that balance I was talking about, a balance that two hundred and forty million Americans depend on whether they know it or not.” And I still believe that Sasha kept the balance! I must believe it, Kyle…
“If that was your reason, I should think you could live with it. Nobody’s right every time,” she said gently. “Except God. Were you playing God?”
“Somebody has to do it,” he said, “but not forever.”
“Well, the guy survived it. Ironic, huh?”
He tried to smile without showing the pain. “Ironies beyond measure. Pets, mine was an error you must never discuss, not even with me after this. Promise?”
“Cross my heart,” she said, gesturing to seal the oath. She took a dollop of marshmallow foam on a finger; offered it to the cat. “Better than mice, hm?”
The cat licked her finger, and Dar Weston’s smile broadened. “It won’t keep him from hunting them, though. Birds, too. I probably should get him fixed.”
“No-o,” said Petra, nuzzling the tiger-striped torn. “Then he’d just be plain Ivan, and not your Ivan the Terrible.”