Even from a distance, while the language is still indistinguishable from any other, the sound of Russian official parties has a unique intonation, a rolling somber cadence quite unlike a gathering of French or Germans or Dutchmen. As they mounted the wide gray carpeted staircase, Carole Yates grimaced at her husband.
“Just for once,” she said, “I’d love to be going to a party where I could say what I liked, to whomever I liked, and if I felt like it get stoned out of my mind — on something other than vodka and Russian champagne. How about you?”
He frowned. “What for?”
“For the hell of it, Tom,” she said as they reached the balustraded landing and the great open doors, “just for the hell of it.”
“It may be as well to remember this is not a celebration,” he said shortly, handing his invitation to the doorman in KGB business suit. “It’s a State occasion.”
They passed through the doors.
There were about 300 people in the long blue and white hall. Huge crystal chandeliers hung from the painted wooden beams, the light sparkling on the portraits of past Czars and present Politburo members unselfconsciously ranged together along the walls.
The usual enormous buffet had been placed at the far end of the hall, an arrangement of white-clothed tables loaded with caviar, smoked sturgeon, vodka and Georgian champagne. White-coated waiters circulated filling glasses.
The guests included a reasonable sprinkling of foreigners among Soviet citizens from the Writers’ Union, the ballet, the press and, of course, the bureaucracy. A more important ministry, Foreign Affairs for example, would have more foreigners at a somewhat higher level. Today, when the foreign contingent was stretched thin by the sheer number of invitations, an unglamorous ministry, like Mines or Electric Power, might be able to claim none at all. In these Soviet gatherings Westerners were used like starlets at a Hollywood pool party, to reflect glamour and status on the hosts.
The Minister, short and squat as a Russian stove, stepped forward from among the group at the door. His interpreter unceremoniously pushed his way to the Minister’s side. Tom Yates was one of the most senior foreigners the Nationalities Ministry had been able to attract and his welcome reflected his status.
“On this sad day and historic occasion in the history of the Soviet people…” Carole listened to the Minister drone out his platitudes and then heard them repeated as the interpreter produced an English version for her husband’s benefit.
She found herself, as usual, nodding mechanical agreement, her eyes searching the crowd for a familiar face. Twenty feet or so away she saw David Butler from the British Embassy. Barely thirty yet, Butler’s gold watch-chain was already stretched across his massive stomach. In sympathy, he gave her a quick Groucho Marx double-lift of his eyebrows.
To hell with it, she thought. She leaned forward, interrupting her husband’s return of platitudes. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said in Russian, “I think I should leave you two gentlemen to talk together.”
Tom Yates looked down at her open-mouthed. The Minister nodded perfunctorily and turned back to his guest.
Carole reached David Butler’s side, having collected a glass of champagne on the way.
“Darling,” Butler’s round face beamed. “I wouldn’t have thought you and Tom would be on the second team.” He reached to kiss her cheek.
She grinned. “Don’t be a bitch, David.”
“Not here, darling,” he said. “It’s five years for the golden boys in the Soviet Union. Anyway,” he squeezed her hand, “I’m delighted you’re with us. I’ve already spent twenty minutes with a most unlovely tractor mechanic from Uzbekistan and I feel I’m due for a reward. Come and tell me all the scandal while we refill our glasses. They’ve got a few bottles of an excellent Tsinadali Georgian white here. It’s the waiters’ own supply and it’s far better than this sugary champagne.”
They moved through the crowd toward the tables at the far end.
“You know, of course, that Madame…” he nodded toward an elegant Frenchwoman across the room, “is being besieged by a handsome young KGB man who poses as a mechanic at the Embassy.”
She laughed. “Corinne de Verday? No!”
“My dear,” Butler said conspiratorially. “Not only besieged. Word has it that on a test run yesterday afternoon, the citadel fell.”
She laughed. “You’re a gossiping old woman.”
“I assure you,” he said. “Le tout Moscou is talking about it.”
“I’ll ask her then.”
Butler nodded. “Just what I’d hoped you’d say. But promise to tell me the answer.”
They reached the table and Butler, in his superlative Russian, began to negotiate for a bottle of Georgian wine. She turned idly away and let her eyes roam from one group of dark-suited backs to another.
Across the room she saw Harriet Bennerman, her husband’s embassy secretary, and waved perfunctorily. Scattered among the groups of Russians there were a dozen or so diplomats and their wives whom she knew well but she felt no strong wish to join them. Too often, she told herself, she felt like this now, a sort of tense, nervous boredom that prompted after a few drinks a terrible desire to kick over the traces. At times like this she enjoyed David Butler’s company. With him she felt she could be safely outrageous.
She looked toward the door. Tom was still involved with the Minister and she saw probably would be for much of the reception. By the enormous colored-glass window, Jack Bennerman was surrounded by three middle-aged Russian women. In the middle of the room Corinne de Verday, she of the KGB mechanic-lover, was elegantly entertaining at least six men, Dutch and German diplomats. Closer to the banquet table, mostly Russians…
Then she saw him. The impact of that moment of recognition passed like a shock wave through her. He was standing slightly apart from a group of Russians, his eyes on her. It was almost a year since she had last been with him in that Paris bedroom.
She knew she was trembling. She put her glass down and lit a cigarette, her eyes still on him. As if in some gesture of response he lifted his glass and sipped the champagne. Somebody in his group spoke to him and he nodded, said a few words, then turned his attention back to her.
She inhaled the cigarette. Clearly he was not going to cross the room toward her. Yet she was determined to speak to him. Why, she could not possibly have said. Certainly not some romantic leftover of that one night of sex in Paris. Perhaps more the question that had stirred her many times since — had a man really left her bed to go immediately to kill another? Whenever the thought had arisen since, she had suppressed it and its churning mixture of distaste and excitement.
He was not going to move though his eyes never left her.
She quickly turned back to David Butler, who had secured two brimming glasses of wine. “David, you’re a diplomat, aren’t you?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Directly behind me can you see a tall, fair-haired man, a Russian?”
“Standing by himself, or almost?”
“That’s him. Do you know him?”
He gave her a glass. “His name’s Letsukov. Alexei Alexeivich Letsukov. He is rather beautiful.”
“Tell me about him. You’ve met him?”
“Two or three times. He’s like me, darling, second team. You wouldn’t have come across him on your normal circuit.”