“I told you you were good luck!”
“My God, are all American hockey fans like this?” Misha asked, disengaging himself. Her hand had touched his for a half-imaginary fraction of a second, and the three film cassettes were inside the glove. He felt them there and was amazed that it had been done so skillfully. Was she a professional magician?
“Why are you Russians so grim all the time—don’t you know how to have a good time?”
“Maybe we should have more Americans around,” Yazov conceded. Hell, I wish my wife were as lively as this one! “You have a fine son, and if he plays against us in the Olympics, I will forgive him,” He was rewarded with a beaming smile.
“That’s such a nice thing to say.” I hope he kicks your commie asses all the way back to Moskva. If there was anything she couldn’t stand, it was being patronized. “Eddie got two more points tonight, and that Ivan Somebody didn’t get any!”
“Are you really that competitive, even with children’s games?” Yazov asked.
Mary Pat slipped, just a little, so fast that her brain couldn’t keep up with the automatic reply; “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” She paused, then covered the mistake. “Vince Lombardi, a famous American coach, said that. Excuse me, you must think me nekulturny. You’re right, this is just a game for children.” She smiled broadly. In your face!
“Did you see anything?”
“A foolish woman who gets overly excited,” the photographer replied.
“How quickly will you have the film developed?”
“Two hours.”
“Get moving,” the senior man said.
“Did you see anything?” the remaining officer asked his boss.
“No, I don’t think so. We’ve watched her for nearly two hours, and she acts like a typical American parent who gets too worked up at an athletic match, but just happens to attract the attention of the Defense Minister and the main suspect of a treason case. I think that’s enough, Comrade, don’t you?” What a grand game this is . . .
Two hours later, over a thousand black-and-white photographs were laid on the officer’s desk. The camera was a Japanese one that put a time reference on the lower edge, and the KGB photographer was as good as any newspaper professional. He’d shot almost continuously, stopping only long enough to replace the oversized film magazines on the autodriven camera. At first he’d wished to use a portable TV camera, but the photographer had talked him out of it. The resolution wasn’t as good, nor was the speed. A still camera was still the best for catching something quick and small, though you couldn’t read lips from its record as you could with a videotape.
Each frame required a few seconds as the officer used a magnifying glass to examine the subjects of his interest. When Mrs. Foley entered the sequence of photos, he needed a few more seconds. He examined her clothing and jewelry at some length, and her face. Her smile was particularly mindless, like something in a Western television commercial, and he remembered hearing her screams over the crowd. Why were Americans so damned noisy?
Good dresser, though, he admitted to himself. Like most American women in a Moscow scene, she stood out like a pheasant in a barnyard—he snorted annoyance at the thought. So what that the Americans spend more money on clothing? What did clothing matter to anyone? Through my binoculars, she looked like she had the brains of a bird . . . but not in these photos—why?
It was the eyes, he thought. In the still photos her eyes sparkled with something different from what he’d watched in person. Why was that?
In the photographs, her eyes—they were blue, he remembered—were always focused on something. The face, he noticed, had vaguely Slavic cheekbones. He knew that Foley was an Irish name, and assumed that her ancestry was Irish, too. That America was a country of immigrants, and that immigrants cross ethnic lines in marriage, were foreign concepts to the Russians. Add a few kilograms, change her hair and clothing, and she could be any face encountered on a street in Moscow . . . or Leningrad. The latter more likely, he thought. She looked more line a Leningrader. Her face proclaimed the slight arrogance affected by people from that city. I wonder what her ancestry really is.
He kept flipping through the photos, and remembered that the Foleys had never been given this sort of scrutiny. The file on both was a relatively thin one. They were regarded by “Two” as nonentities. Something told him that this was a mistake, but the voice in the back of his head wasn’t yet loud enough. He approached the last of the photographs, checking his watch. Three in the damned morning! he grumbled to himself and reached for another cup of tea.
Well, that must have been the second score. She was jumping like a gazelle. Nice legs, he saw for the first time. As his colleagues had noted up in the rafters, she was probably very entertaining in bed. Only a few more frames till the end of the game and . . . yes, there she was, embracing Yazov— that randy old goat!—then hugging Colonel Filitov—
He stopped dead. The photograph caught something that he hadn’t seen through the binoculars. While giving Filitov a hug, her eyes were locked on one of the four security guards, the only one not watching the game. Her hand, her left hand, was not wrapped around Filitov at all, but rather down by his right one, hidden from view. He flipped back a few frames. Right before the embraces her hand had been in her coat pocket. Around the Defense Minister, it was balled into a fist. After Filitov, it was open again, and still her eyes were on the security guard, a smile on her face that was very Russian indeed, one that stopped at the lips—but in the next frame, she was back to her normal, flighty self. In that moment he was sure.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered to himself.
How long have the Foleys been here? He searched his weary memory but couldn’t dredge it up. Over two years at least—and we didn’t know, we didn’t even suspect. . . what if it’s only her? That was a thought—what if she were a spy and her husband were not? He rejected the idea out of hand, and was correct, but for the wrong reason. He reached for the phone and called Vatutin’s home.
“Yes,” the voice answered after only half a ring.
“I have something of interest,” the officer said simply.
“Send a car.”
Vatutin was there twenty-five minutes later, unshaven and irritable. The Major merely set out the crucial series of photographs.
“We never suspected her,” he said while the Colonel examined the pictures through a magnifying glass.
“A fine disguise,” Vatutin observed sourly. He’d been asleep only for an hour when the phone rang. He was still learning how to sleep without a few stiff drinks beforehand—trying to learn, he corrected himself. The Colonel looked up.
“Can you believe it? Right in front of the Defense Minister and four security guards! The balls of this woman! Who’s her regular shadow?”
The Major merely handed over the file. Vatutin leafed through it and found the proper sheet.
“That old fart! He couldn’t follow a child to school without being arrested as a pervert. Look at this—a lieutenant for twenty-three years!”
“There are seven hundred Americans attached to the embassy, Comrade Colonel,” the Major observed. “We have only so many really good officers—”
“All watching the wrong people.” Vatutin walked to the window, “No more! Her husband, too,” he added.
“That will be my recommendation, Comrade Colonel. It would seem likely that they both work for CIA.
“She passed something to him.”
“Probably―a message, perhaps something else.”
Vatutin sat down and rubbed his eyes. “Good work, Comrade Major.”
It was already dawn at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Archer was preparing to return to his war. His men had packed their new weapons while their leader―now that was a new thought, the Archer told himself―reviewed his plans for the coming weeks. Among the things he’d received from Ortiz was a complete set of tactical maps. These were made from satellite photographs, and were updated to show current Soviet strongpoints and areas of heavy patrol activity. He had a long-range radio now on which he could tune weather forecasts―including Russian ones. Their journey wouldn’t start until nightfall.
He looked around. Some of his men had sent their families to this place of safety. The refugee camp was crowded and noisy, but a far happier place than the deserted villages and towns bombed flat by the Russians. There were children here, the Archer saw, and children were happy anywhere they had their parents, and food, and friends. The boys were already playing with toy guns―and with the older ones, they were not toys. He accepted that with a degree of regret that diminished on every trip. The losses among the mudjaheddin demanded replacements, and the youngest were the bravest. If freedom required their deaths―well, their deaths came in a holy cause and Allah was beneficent to those who died for Him. The world was indeed a sad place, but at least here a man could find a time for amusement and rest. He watched one of his riflemen helping his firstborn to walk. The baby could not do it alone, but with each tottering step he looked up at the smiling, breaded face of a father he’d seen only twice since birth. The new chief of the band remembered doing the same for his son . . . now being taught to walk a very different path . . .