A block and a half down the street, she ran up the steps of a Federal house much like her own, tapped the bell, and let herself in with her key.
“Halloo!” she called, congratulating herself on not peeking from behind the curtains to see where the man had gone.
“Kitchen!” he yelled back, and she could hear the sounds of jazz mixing with that of a carbon-steel knife striking rock maple as she walked through the living and dining rooms to the kitchen, at the back of the house.
“Mmmm, onions,” she said. walking toward him. There was an old Miles Davis album on the stereo.
“Onions, my ass,” he said, switching the knife to his left hand and snaking his right around her waist.
“Shallots.”
He kissed her.
“You get onions with hamburgers, not sweetbreads.” He kissed her again, dropping the knife and putting both arms around her.
“I like it when you don’t wear a bra,” he said.
“I know you do,” she replied, “and I thought you deserved a treat after tossing old Nixon such an easy one today.” She liked having him wrapped around her, “but if she wasn’t careful, things would get out of hand. and she knew there was a good dinner in store.
“What does a girl have to do to get a drink around here?”
“Nothing,” he said, going to the refrigerator. “You get the drink now, then you do it later.” He pulled a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and began opening it.
“How was your day?”
“Oh, it would have been all right, but Simon was on the phone the minute I got home. I think he saw me leaving the office and timed me.”
“Hazards of marrying a guy at the office. Nothing serious, I hope. Peter all right?”
“Oh, sure. His dad was just trying to unload him so that he could go away for a nice, cool couple of weeks in Bar Harbor and try to impress his new in-laws. They’re loaded, you know, and getting old. Simon was always one for looking to the future.”
“I should have thought that Peter would charm the socks off the old folks.”
“Oh, he would. Simon just isn’t smart enough to figure that out.”
“Listen, if Simon is that much of a jerk, why did you marry him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was young and stupid, I guess. He was a lot older, very smooth.” She shrugged.
“He was station head in Rome, and it was my first assignment out of the country. All very romantic, you know, two American intelligence agents, holding hands and wading in the Trevi Fountain at two in the morning. La Doice Vita Espione. It wasn’t until I got pregnant that he wanted to get married. Then he came over all traditional; his Eastern establishment blue blood began to flow. He expected me to quit work, serve on the symphony board, and give a lot of dinner parties. You wouldn’t believe the number of cookbooks I was given. For my first birthday after Peter was born, I got a course at Cordon Bleu in Paris. He actually thought I’d leave the job for that.”
“I’d leave my job for that,” Will laughed.
“You would, wouldn’t you?” It occurred to her that if she’d been cooking dinner it would have been pork chops and hearty burgundy, not sweetbreads and champagne.
Lee filled two champagne flutes with the wine.
“Cheers,” he said, clinking her glass.
“Wow,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the bubbles. “Where’d you get your hands on this?”
“The senator. I was afraid to ask where he got it; might’ve been from some defense contractor’s lobbyist.”
“It’s wonderful. I love old champagne.” She raised her glass.
“To national defense.”
“Well, it employs both of us, I guess. You sure did your part today in soaking up a few bucks for the effort.”
“Listen, we need that computer—say, that reminds me.”
She took the Majorov photographs from her purse.
“You ever run across this face in your sailing circles? Cowes Week, and that son of thing?”
Lee took the photographs and went carefully through them.
“Who is he? One of your spooks?”
“One of their spooks, name of Firsov. He’d be older by twelve or fifteen years, now, maybe graying, heavier.
Talks teddibly British; sometimes plays at being a Polish count.”
“What’s the sailing connection?”
“He sailed in Stars for the Soviets in the ‘seventy-two Olympics. He was based in London for a while, and a report says he sailed at Cowes.” , Lee shook his head.
“I don’t know him. I was only in Cowes once before ‘seventy-two, then at Cowes Week in ‘seventy-nine and ‘eighty-one—Admiral’s Cup years. The Soviets don’t do that sort of sailing; neither does any of the Eastern Bloc countries, so it’s unlikely I’d run across him at any of the regattas I hit. Bad guy?”
“He’s KGB; is there any other kind?”
“What’s he up to?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. One of the things my people do is keep track of their people, update their biographies, and for somebody who’s as important as he may be, he’s been out of sight for too long. It’s just a hunch, but I figure that whatever he’s up to is something we’d give our gold fillings to know about.”
“Interesting work,” he said.
“You love it, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“I was annoyed, at first, when I had to give up covert work and come back to Langley, but to tell you the truth, although I was one of the few women trained for field work, I discovered pretty quickly that they weren’t going to let me do very much of it. I wasn’t much more than a clerk on the Rome assignment, and then, when I married Simon and he got promoted, Langley was the only real option. It’s worked out really well, too; I have a much better overview of operations than I would have in some embassy somewhere, and I don’t have to look under my car before I start it. Besides, I like the variety—one day I’m be sting you in hearings, the next I’m hunting down guys like Majorov.”
“Who?”
“Oh… well, that’s Firsov’s real name. I really shouldn’t have mentioned that; I’m talking too much.”
“Sorry, I’m prying.”
“No, you’re not; I guess I just feel like talking about it, and I know I can trust you. It’s a rather unusual feeling, in my job, to trust somebody. I’ve missed it.”
“How’d you get into this business, anyway?”
“Well, I’d finished Barnard and Columbia Law, and I suddenly discovered I didn’t want to practice law, and I didn’t want to go into business, either. My roommate at Barnard, Brooke Kirkland, was in the Russian Studies program at Columbia, and she got me interested. Halfway through my last year, one of my professors—1 was never sure which one—put an Agency recruiter onto me, and a month after graduation I found myself at the Quantico Marine Base firing submachine guns and learning to kill with a single blow.”
“I’d better watch my step.”
“Damn right.”
“Do you think there’s somebody in Moscow keeping tabs on you, the way you’re keeping tabs on Majorov?”
She laughed.
“There probably is, since I’ve worked abroad. The two sides nearly always know who the players are in an embassy. They probably have an embarrassing photograph of me scratching myself in Rome.”
“Or of you and Simon wading in the Trevi Fountain.”
“That would be embarrassing. Boris is probably still trying to figure that one out.”
He laughed and turned back to his cooking.
“Listen, go sit out on the terrace and let me do this. Ready in half an hour.”
Rule refilled her glass and wandered through the French doors to the deck overlooking the paved garden below.
She arranged herself on a chaise so that she could watch him moving about the kitchen. She liked watching him cook; it seemed such an unlikely thing for him to be good at. He was good at his work, good in bed, and good, in general, at making her happy. He was just what she needed for this time in her life: he was bright and funny, but he could be serious; he was genuinely fond of her without being oppressive; he wasn’t divorced, thank God; she’d had enough of divorced men, whining about their property settlements and wanting, desperately, to get married again.
Will had never been married, and, while he didn’t seem terrified by the idea, neither was he looking for it. He got along with Peter if they were together, but he wasn’t always scratching at her door with a football, trying to endear himself to her through the boy. He was a big, husky man. She was five feet, ten inches tall. and he was taller, even when she wore heels; she liked that. He was thirty-eight, four years older than she, and that was about right, she thought.
He was security-safe, too, and for her, that was no small thing. They had met a couple of months before in the local supermarket; she’d thought he was just another legislative assistant, and she’d told him what she usually told people, that she was a lawyer for the Department of Agriculture (that usually stopped any further conversation about work).
Neither of them had known quite what the other did until they had both turned up in the same committee hearing.
There was a potential conflict of interest, she knew, since part of her job was getting more government funds, and part of his was making sure she didn’t get too much, but forbidden fruit was tastier. Since the divorce from Simon, she’d had a rule against going out with agency men, and she was sick of lying to outsiders about her work. Will had been the perfect answer; he had a top security clearance, and she had taken the precaution of reading his FBI file, something she felt secretly guilty about. They had rarely talked much shop, but once in a while when she was excited about something, like Majorov, it was good to let off a little steam, knowing it would go no further.
They’d been sailing a couple of times on Chesapeake Bay, where he had a boat, but they didn’t go out much-not that it mattered, since only a handful of people in Washington would be likely to know who both of them were—Will liked to cook, and she liked it here.
He had laid the table in the dining room and closed the shutters to make the most of the candlelight. It was a perfectly beautiful dinner: the sweetbreads were crunchy on the outside and creamy inside, the flavor of the wrinkled mushrooms blended perfectly with them, and the champagne was big and yeasty.
“God, this is wonderful,” she said.
“Listen, do I know you well enough to ask how you live so well on a government salary? I mean, you do own this house, don’t you?”
He smiled.
“Yes, I own it, and yes, you know me well enough.” He sipped his wine.
“I’ve got some capital, from the family, and I’m still a law partner with my father.
Lee and Lee, the firm is called.”
“Back in Georgia—what was the town, Delano?”
“You’ve got a good memory.”
“Your father was, what—lieutenant governor? Governor?”
“Both. He’s been out of politics for a while, concentrating on the law practice and the family cattle farm. He’s a good guy; he should have been president.”
“Why wasn’t he?”
“Didn’t want it badly enough to do what he had to do, I think. He wants me to run for the Senate next year, against the Republican, Abney.”
“Why don’t you? You’d make a terrific senator.”
“Oh, I’d like the work, I think; I’m not sure I’d like the campaigning. 1 don’t know if I can eat that much barbecue and live. Also, Abney is such a weak senator that half the Democrats in the state want to run against him. There’s going to be a ferocious Democratic primary.”
“Wouldn’t you have your father’s political friends on your side?”
“Some of them, I guess. I’d have all of his enemies against me, that’s for sure.”
“What about Senator Carr? Would he back you?”
“He might. I haven’t asked him, but he’s brought up the subject a couple of times. I guess I’m thinking about it.” He seemed to want to change the subject.
“Uh, Kate, do you think we know each other well enough to travel together?”
She smiled.
“Sure we do. What did you have in mind?”
“Well, a friend of mine in London has bought a new boat. He’d planned to pick it up next month at the factory, on the west coast of Finland, and sail it to England, but work has cut into his holiday. I’ve said I’d sail it as far as Copenhagen. I’ve never sailed in the Baltic, and it should be nice in June. It’s a nice boat, called a Swan; forty-two feet long, well equipped, including an autopilot. The two of us could handle it, easily; take us about a week, say ten days outside. Would you like to come?”
Rule thought for a moment. She’d enjoyed the outings on Chesapeake Bay, but she wasn’t as nuts about sailing as Will was, and she knew she’d end up as cook, which he could do better, too. It didn’t seem the most promising sort of vacation.
“Tell you what,” she said.
“I’ll pass on the sailing until I’ve had more experience; but I’ll meet you in Copenhagen. How’s that?”
He grinned.
“Okay, great. I guess I can scare up a crew somewhere.”
She felt a sudden, jealous pang. She hoped he didn’t mean a female crew.
A little after two in the morning, she eased herself out of bed without waking him, and got dressed. She loved falling asleep with him but hated waking up at his house, she wasn’t sure why. Probably some qualm from her puritanical upbringing coming back to haunt her. She closed the front door quietly and started toward her house. There was a distant noise of traffic, but in the elegant, little street there was no one but her. Or was there? Rule thought she heard a shoe scuff against the pavement across the street.