"Gambling!" Vovo said indignantly. "Wagering on my victory is not gambling, Your Reverence. It is a sure thing."
Bishop Edwards shook his head. "It is not my practice to interfere with the activities of a local congregation. Reverend Matheson is on the scene. If he had condoned this, then you have my blessings. I am sure the Lord will see that you are victorious."
"Amen," Catherina said, somewhat sarcastically. "Remember what he did to that poor bull in Malaga?"
Mike could have added, "And what he did to me in La Manana?" but refrained.
Vovo said, "I must go. Another time, Your Reverence. Another time, Catherina." He looked at her.
"You are a member of the Faith?"
Catherina looked at Mike. She said, I haven't as yet taken my vows. The bishop is kind enough to be instructing me."
Vovo shot a look at his watch. "I must be off." He looked Mike squarely in the eyes. "Moderation in all things 1" he intoned.
Mike answered in the set formula. "May all enjoy the simple blessed pleasures of the home and family and not wander away from it in vain seeking of far pleasures, my son."
My son, yet, he thought inwardly. It would have taken an elephant to have fathered Vovo Chernozov.
He felt inward sympathy however, for the victim who was going to fight the Cossack, Turkoman style, in Kharkov on the morrow.
The other was off, hurriedly.
Catherina and Mike climbed into the cab and she dialed directions.
On the way to her apartment, she said quietly, "Vovo was quite inspiring, Mike. What are the requirements for joining the Old Time Religion Church?"
Oh, oh. Here we go. He didn't like this at all. This was Catherina.
Mike said, "That you be a member of the human race, Catherina Saratov, and that you abide by the gospel. Nothing more than that."
"And suppose that in my time I have slept with a good many men, drank a good deal, was seldom…
moderate. Even experimented with some of the less difficult narcotics?"
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"Catherina," he said, "the Old Time Religion Church is not interested in your past. It is interested in your present and in your future. All of us, before finding the Old Time Religion, have sinned… have been less than adequate."
Holy smokes, he thought, how hypocritical can you get? But then it came back to him all over again. She herself had said it. What the Soviet Complex needed was exactly what he was delivering. But then, all over again, his conscience hit him. The Machiavellian creed: the end justifies the means. But does it? His ends were those of the West. Were they those of Catherina, Vovo and Ana Chekova, and all the rest?
And then he had still second thoughts. Perhaps they were.
Catherina's apartment building was automated as everything seemed to be automated in Moscow. There was no doorman, no reception desk, no elevator operator, and when they approached the door of her apartment the identity screen picked her up and the door swung open.
The apartment itself was lived in . It had the feeling of a home, rather than just a sterile flat. It was well done, nothing of the garish moderninity of some of the apartments, flats and houses with which Mike was all too familiar in the States. It was Catherina .
She tossed her shoulder bag to a table and said, "As you Americans say-at least, so I've heard, you say-make yourself at home. I'll try and find my bottle of cognac. I haven't the vaguest idea of where it is."
While she was gone, he wandered over to her bookcase and inspected the writings she evidently valued.
They were almost all good books. More than half were non-fiction. Those that were fiction were good writers, and Russian novelists didn't predominate. She had catholic tastes. The French, British and Americans were well represented. His respect for Catherina Saratov grew. She was not just an ultra-shaped broad on a Spanish beach, topless.
By the time she had returned, bottle of brandy in hand, and two glasses, he had decided, all over again, that this was the woman he loved.
She set him back, after pouring the two glasses and sitting herself across from him, by leaning forward, her slight frown above her eyes, and saying, "Mike, do you believe in this religion of yours?"
Oh, oh. This was the woman he loved-hadn't he just told himself?
He set down the glass he had taken up and thought about it. He said finally, "Catherina, perhaps the more one knows about one's religion, the less one believes. And I suspect that this applied down through the ages."
She took a fairly major swallow of her own drink. Then you don't believe in what you teach?"
"No, it's not that." He worried it. "I do believe in the basic tenants of the Old Time Religion. That is, I believe in moderation, in being humble, in the more simple life. I believe in the virtues, if that is the term, of family life, of loving one's close relatives-unless they are not' loveable, of course-and one's neighbors."
"So do I," she said softly.
Mike took a deep breath. "However, I have my doubts about there being supreme powers that are guiding our destinies."
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"So do I," she said, taking another sip of her brandy. "And that's one of the reasons I've wondered about you, Mike. I love you, but I wonder about you. You are a very intelligent man. Forgive me, but I've had you checked out. You are a well known political economist with an Academician's degree, which is no easier to take in America than it is in the Soviet Complex. It sounds like a silly thing to say, but, Mike, I suspect you're one of the smartest men in the United States."
He looked at her in agony.
She took another of her mild sips of brandy and said, "Mike, are you here to hurt my people?"
He took a slug of the brandy himself.
She said urgently, "Would you hurt Vovo and Ana?"
He closed his eyes wearily. She was the woman he loved. He was able to say, finally, "No, Catherina, of course I wouldn't hurt Vovo nor Ana… nor you."
"Then what are you doing? You are not religious. You are an outstanding socioeconomist. What are you doing in the Soviet Complex?"
In all the world there were exactly four persons who knew what he was doing in the Soviet Complex; he, himself, Frank Jones, the President of the United States and Lawrence Bigelow' Director of the Bureau of International Investigations.
He said, "I am here to teach moderation, the simple life, meekness, and especially the desirability of remaining at home to enjoy one's family, relations and friends."
She looked at him keenly and it came to Mike Edwards that the woman he loved was far from a fool.
"Rather than traveling abroad and, ah, living it up, eh?" she said. "Yes."
"Why does the American government- I assume this is backed by the American government, since it is obviously an expensive matter. Why does your government object to Russians traveling abroad?"
"It's not just the Americans. It's the whole West. Soviet Complex tourism is destroying its economy. You see, to support your tourism you dump your automation produced manufactured products on the world market, stifling the trade of America and all the rest. We can't compete when you sell typewriters for ten dollars, when one of those new Mikoyan cameras goes for peanuts, when sports equipment such as that new TV fishing rod that Nick Galushko had in Torremolinos is practically given away."
"I see," she said, sipping at her cognac thoughtfully. "So there you have it," Mike told her. "If we could just cut the tide of Soviet Complex dumping for a year or so, we might get underway again. Cutting down tourism is the answer-we hope."
She looked at him. "Perhaps if the economies of the West are so weak that they fall into-depression under such pressure, they deserve to fall, to be replaced by something better. Have you considered that?"
He said wearily, "No, I have not seriously considered that, Catherina. For better or for worse, I am working for the status quo in my country."