Sir Martin and his wife were working their way down the receiving line. Bushell took a strategic position near the end of it. He saw Sir David Clarke appear in the doorway, drawn as he had been by the charge in the musicians’ tunes.
A waiter carrying a tray laden with flutes full of nasty Russian sparkling wine came by. “You, there!” Bushell said. The waiter paused but looked blank. Bushell thought fast. “Parlez-vous francais?” he asked.
Intelligence and comprehension filled the Russian’s face. “Certainement, monsieur.”
“Bon.” Bushell explained what he wanted, pointed discreetly toward Clarke, and pressed a folded red twenty-pound banknote into the fellow’s free hand. The way the waiter made it disappear was marvelous to behold. He made his way toward Sir David, who was beginning to approach the receiving line himself. At precisely the right moment, the waiter tripped over some prominent man’s foot - or so it seemed, at any rate. He stumbled. Crystal flutes flew off the tray. They made sweet, tinkling music as they shattered on the floor. The wine a good many of them had held drenched Sir David Clarke.
“Merde!” he exclaimed into sudden horrified silence: even under the most trying of circumstances, he didn’t quite lose his aplomb.
Servants converged on him as if drawn by a lodestone. Some dealt with the broken crystal; others dabbed at him with thick, thirsty cotton towels and, apologizing profusely, led him away for more comprehensive repairs. Conversation picked up again; someone close to Bushell said in English, “Pity we can’t send our help to Siberia when they blunder so spectacularly, what?” A woman laughed. Bushell sighed. Here and there, you could probably still find people who thought emancipating Negro slaves had been a bad idea, too.
Taking advantage of his stratagem, he approached Sir Martin as the governor-general finally succeeded in emancipating himself from Duke Orlov. King took a glass of sparkling wine from a servitor who hadn’t spilled his. He drank it all down, which bespoke either remarkable diplomacy or a lamentable palate.
“What is the latest word, Colonel Bushell?” the governor-general asked, perhaps seeking to forestall him.
It was a good ploy. “I regret I know little more than I did this morning, Your Excellency,” Bushell admitted, thinking unkind thoughts about Chalky Stimpson and the inordinate amount of time the RAM tailor had fussed over him.
“No?” Sir Martin’s narrow, almost Oriental eyes hooded over. “A pity. We have little time in which to learn. And now, Colonel, if you will excuse me -“ His wife on his arm, he swept away. Bushell had won the battle but lost the war. He consoled himself by remembering how Sir David Clarke had looked with Russian champagne dripping from him. That had been worth twenty quid, even if it hadn’t let him have the talk he’d wanted with Sir Martin Luther King. His shoulders moved in a tiny shrug. Sir Martin was prejudiced against him anyway.
He headed back toward the bar. One more drink wouldn’t hurt anything. Kathleen might not approve, but Kathleen, he saw, had gone someplace else. Sam Stanley wasn’t anywhere close by, either. Having watchdogs around wouldn’t have stopped him from doing anything he intended to do, but he was slightly miffed to find them falling down on the job.
He got himself another Jameson and then, as if to prove something to people who weren’t watching him as they should have, carried it away with him without sipping from it. He headed farther into the embassy, intent on seeing whatever the Russians were willing to let him see and whatever else he could get away with.
They’d set up a buffet, with delicacies ranging from mushrooms to caviar to pickled herring displayed on glittering ice. Sir Horace Bragg and Sir Martin Luther King both contemplated it. They stood only a few feet from each other, but each man resolutely pretended the other did not exist. Had it not been likely to hamper the investigation that might have been funny. Contemplating it, Bushell decided a knock of Jameson wouldn’t hurt him after all.
He held himself to that one sip, though. Holding his nearly full glass as if it were a talisman, he pressed on. One room down a hallway was fitted out as an Orthodox chapel. The icons there were displayed not as objets d’art bit as objects of reverence. Some of them, nonetheless, were very fine art indeed. He stepped into the chapel to admire an image of the Virgin and Child. The Virgin’s eyes did not meet his or the Christ child’s; they stared off to one side, as if at a holiness and certitude only she could perceive. With a tiny part of his mind, he heard someone - a woman, he thought - come down the hall and pause in the doorway. Absorbed in contemplation of the icon, he did not turn around.
“Tom?” she said. “It is you, isn’t it?”
With a quick, almost convulsive gesture, he raised the glass of Jameson to his mouth and gulped it down. By the time he’d finished swallowing, he had himself back under control. He turned, slowly and deliberately, “Hullo, Irene,” he said. “How are you tonight?”
XIV
Irene Clarke - formerly Irene Bushell - stood poised in the doorway, as if uncertain whether to go up to him or to flee. “I’m fine,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, and then, “You’re looking very dashing in your dress uniform.”
He laughed harshly. “Score one for Chalky Stimpson,” he said.
“My God,” Irene exclaimed. “They haven’t retired old Chalky yet?”
She wouldn’t have heard much about the RAMs since her marriage to Bushell . . ended. He tried another laugh on for size. “Age cannot stale nor custom wither his infinite embroidery,” he paraphrased. The allusion went past Irene. As she often did when momentarily confused, she reached up and patted at her hair with the palm of her hand. Bushell remembered the gesture as if he’d last seen it the day before. But it hadn’t been yesterday; it had been years. Reminded of that, he looked at her as she was now, not with the eyes of memory. She was a little heavier than she had been, he decided. Gray frosted her dark brown hair. She wore more powder and paint than she had, the better to hold Father Time at bay. Still - “You look lovely tonight,” Bushell said, not lying too much.
“Thank you.” She started to smile, but then her red-painted mouth drew into a thin, hard line. “I would have liked hearing that sort of thing more often when we were married.”
“Too late to worry about it now, wouldn’t you say?” Bushell answered. “You made bloody sure it’s too late. Besides, I expect Sir David pays you compliments all the time . . . whether he means them or not.”
“Don’t you start that,” Irene said, her gray eyes snapping. She’d started it herself, but noting such things was not her long suit. She went on, “David has taken good care of me over the years - better than you ever did, that’s certain.”
“Sir David takes care of all sorts of things. It’s what he’s good for.” A little too late - as he’d been too late in everything about their marriage, including realizing anything was wrong with it - he tried to be conciliatory. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
“Happy? I should say so.” She tossed her head, another habit he remembered achingly well. “I’ve seen the world, Tom. I’ve been to London and Paris and St. Petersburg and Vienna. I’ve seen Rome and Athens and Constantinople and Delhi and Honolulu. And David’s a knight, of course, and he’s bound to get a higher title later.” She stared at Bushell with a mixture of scorn and pity. “No knighthood for you yet? No, I’d have heard. None likely, either, I’d say.”