As Mary walked down the corridor of the embassy past Mike Slade’s office, she stopped in surprise. He was at his desk, working. He was unshaven. She wondered if he had been out all night.
“You’re in early,” Mary said.
He looked up. “Morning. I’d like to have a word with you.”
“All right.” She started to walk in.
“Not here. Your office.”
He followed Mary through the connecting door to her office, and she watched as he walked over to an instrument in the corner of the room. “This is a shredder,” Mike informed her.
“I know that.”
“Really? When you went out last night, you left some papers on top of your desk. By now they’ve been photographed and sent to Moscow.”
“Oh, my God! I must have forgotten. Which papers were they?”
“A list of cosmetics, toilet paper, and other personal feminine things you wanted to order. But that’s beside the point. The cleaning women work for the Securitate. The Romanians are grateful for every scrap of information they can get, and they’re great at putting things together. Lesson number one: At night everything must be locked in your safe or shredded.”
“What’s lesson number two?” Mary asked coldly.
Mike grinned. “The ambassador always starts the day by having coffee with her deputy chief of mission. How do you take yours?”
She had no desire to have coffee with this arrogant bastard. “I—black.”
“Good. You have to watch your figure around here. The food is fattening.” He rose and started toward the door that led to his office. “I make my own brew. You’ll like it.”
She sat there, furious with him. I have to be careful how I handle him, Mary decided. I want him out of here as quickly as possible.
He returned with two steaming mugs of coffee and set them down on her desk.
“How do I arrange for Beth and Tim to start at the American school here?” Mary asked.
“I’ve already arranged it. Florian will deliver them mornings and pick them up afternoons.”
She was taken aback. “I—thank you.”
“You should take a look at the school when you get a chance. It’s small, about a hundred pupils. Each class has eight or nine students. They come from all over—Canadians, Israelis, Nigerians—you name it. The teachers are excellent.”
“I’ll stop by there.”
Mike took a sip of his coffee. “I understand that you had a nice chat with our fearless leader last night.”
“President Ionescu? Yes. He seemed very pleasant.”
“Oh, he is. He’s a lovely fellow. Until he gets annoyed with somebody. Then he chops your head off.”
Mary said nervously, “Shouldn’t we talk about this in the Bubble Room?”
“Not necessary. I had your office swept for bugs this morning. It’s clean. After the janitors and cleaning people come in, then watch out. By the way, don’t let Ionescu’s charm fool you. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool son of a bitch. His people despise him, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The secret police are everywhere. It’s the KGB and police force wrapped into one. The general rule of thumb here is that one out of every three persons works for Securitate or the KGB. Romanians have orders not to have any contact with foreigners. If a foreigner wants to have dinner at a Romanian’s apartment, it has to be approved first by the state.”
Mary felt a shiver go through her.
“A Romanian can be arrested for signing a petition, criticizing the government, writing graffiti…”
Mary had read newspaper and magazine articles about repression in Communist countries, but living in the midst of it gave her a feeling of unreality.
“They do have trials here,” Mary said.
“Oh, occasionally they’ll have show trials, where reporters from the West are allowed to watch. But most of the people arrested manage to have fatal accidents while they’re in police custody. There are gulags in Romania that we’re not allowed to see. They’re in the Delta area, and in the Danube near the Black Sea. I’ve talked to people who have seen them. The conditions there are horrifying.”
“And there’s no place they can escape to,” Mary said, thinking aloud. “They have the Black Sea to the east, Bulgaria to the south, and Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia on their other borders. They’re right in the middle of the iron curtain.”