In the foyer of the restaurant, she checked her coat. She had assumed that Fomin would take a shadowed table at the back, but when she walked into the dining room he was sitting alone in the first booth on the right. His expression as he stared was amiable, and he even stood politely as she sat down across from him.
“I feel conspicuous,” Margo muttered.
“Good.” He was seated again. “Sometimes the most visible secret agent is the one who tries too hard to be surreptitious.” He summoned the waiter with an imperious gesture that would have done a capitalist proud. “Will you drink? Are you hungry?”
“Just water,” she said. Fomin, she noticed, had a half-finished plate in front of him: remnants of egg rolls and chow mein. Her older brother, who had spent time studying in Asia, heaped scorn on what he called American-style Chinese food.
“Was it difficult getting here? Have you spoken to Kennedy?”
Straight to the point. Bundy had instructed her to withhold nothing—except what he told her to. “I met his national security adviser. I’m supposed to meet the President only if you have a substantive offer to place on the table. Otherwise, I go back to the apartment and wait for you to contact me again.”
“How will they know?” asked Fomin, as if this were the usual way of doing business.
“I have a number to call.”
“Will you tell me the number?”
“No.”
The waiter was back. He had brought more egg rolls without being asked. Fomin grabbed a pair with his hands, but for Margo, family lessons held. She used her fork to put one on her plate, then cut into it delicately.
“I am pleased that you managed to make contact with your President,” the Russian said. “I was confident that you would.”
“I didn’t think things would move this fast.”
“The times demand haste. Did you listen to Kennedy’s speech last night?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think of it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Mr. Fomin.”
Another nod, but his gaze became less sympathetic. Perhaps he was at last regretting his chosen conduit. “Bundy briefed you personally?”
“Yes.”
“You will contact him later also?”
She remembered Bundy’s language. “I shouldn’t share operational details.”
“Who else knows about your mission?” he asked between bites. “You didn’t arrange all of this yourself. You had to talk to people in order to make your way to the White House. So—who else knows?”
“Only two people. One in Ithaca, one here.”
“Who in Washington?”
“I’d rather not say.”
That frown again. There were men who took defiance in women as a challenge to their charm, and there were men who took it as an affront to their dignity. Fomin was in the second category.
“I mean no harm, Miss Jensen. I would simply like to know the extent of our risk.” Back to the food. “I say ‘our risk’ advisedly. I have told you that there are hotheads on my side, but perhaps there are hotheads on your side, too. If they become aware of your mission, they will try to disrupt it. Violently, if necessary.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they want war. They believe your country would prevail in a general nuclear exchange. Perhaps they are wrong.” A very Slavic shrug. “Certainly your technology is more advanced than ours, but our country is much larger. Less of the Soviet Union would be contaminated.” Again he was windmilling food into his mouth. “Of course, we are here because we do not wish to test this theory. You understand the need for haste.”
“I do, Mr. Fomin.”
“Good. Because I have a message for your President. But first, let us discuss the matter of operational security.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Please tell me by what means your side is concealing your meetings with the President.”
Margo hesitated. As the blush rose in her cheeks, Fomin read the truth on her face. His frozen demeanor softened into humor. “Ah. I see. Well. You are to be congratulated, my dear. Such a sacrifice for the peace of the world. To place your reputation at risk.”
Margo dropped her eyes, for he was speaking into the fears of her heart; she imagined Nana’s shocked fury, were she ever to learn the fictional version of her granddaughter’s reasons for going to Washington.
Fomin wasn’t finished. His wolfish expression told her that he was enjoying himself. “Then, one day, long after the events of the moment are done, when you are married and have grandchildren, an ambitious historian will discover your liaisons with President Kennedy. He will knock on your door and demand the details. He will want to know whether you seduced the President or the President seduced you, and what Kennedy was like as a lover. And even then, you will be expected to lie, to pretend that the affair was real. Because your reporters are like the birds who eat carrion. They produce little of value, and feed off the remains of what others have left. They will destroy the reputation of your President for profit. The First Amendment is the tragedy of your system. In my country, we protect the reputations of our leaders, because in that way we protect the reputation and integrity of the Party, and therefore of the country and the people. We would know how to take care of such a fool.”
Margo could not meet his gaze. She had no way of knowing that she would shortly see his words as prescient.
Ten minutes later, she was back on Connecticut Avenue. She walked south along the wet pavement, low heels clopping loudly in the empty darkness. The rain had stopped during her meeting with Fomin. Traffic was thin. At the public library, she turned right and proceeded uphill on Macomb, a tree-lined street of quiet homes. On her left was Tregaron, the fabled estate of Marjorie Merriwether Post. Behind a high fence, trees rose in darkly beautiful ranks. No cars passed. No other pedestrians climbed the twisted cobbles. She was back in high school, sneaking up the driveway after Nana’s curfew. She was back in Varna, tromping toward the restaurant where Colonel Ignatiev would arrest her. She was in the Yenching Palace, squirming at Fomin’s snide insinuations about how future historians would view her. She wasn’t sure why the Soviet’s words had so disturbed her. He had told her nothing she didn’t know. She understood that she would never be able to tell what had really happened. She saw the possibility that someone would find out, and word would travel back to Garrison, and Nana would keel over from a stroke.
“Stop it,” she chided herself, and focused her attention on the street. Just below Thirty-third Place, a car flashed its lights twice, and the double flash was the signal. Margo climbed into the front seat. Behind the wheel sat Warren, the Secret Service agent who had driven her from Harrington’s townhouse.
“All set?” he asked, but Margo had barely closed her door before the car was barreling up the empty street. At Thirty-fourth they turned left. A few minutes later, they passed the floodlit Gothic splendor of the unfinished National Cathedral, then turned left again onto Massachusetts Avenue, cruising southeast past the embassies.
“Where are we going?” Margo finally asked.
“Not the White House, if that’s what you mean.”
She supposed that she might well have meant exactly that. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. As far as the agent knew, she was a young woman on her way to an assignation with the President of the United States.
Margo shut her eyes. She tried to rehearse Fomin’s message, but somehow what she kept hearing was his studious inquiry into the cover story for her meetings with President Kennedy.
“Almost there,” said Warren after a moment.
Margo sat up and blinked. They were cruising east along Constitution Avenue. To their right was the Mall. She must have dozed.
“Sorry,” she said, a bit stupidly.
“Don’t worry about it.”
She watched the museums pass. She decided not to let Fomin’s bad jokes upset her. The man was a clever psychologist. He had said so. Fomin had tested her in Bulgaria, he had tested her at Stewart Park, he had probably tested her half a dozen other times without showing his hand. He was testing her now.
A subject who’s angry makes mistakes, Harrington had counseled her, back when Margo had imagined that going off to Varna would be a lark. You have to stay calm or you’ll lose your way.
Thanks, Dr. H. Thanks a lot. That’s helpful.
Fear is different. Fear you can’t avoid. In the field, you’ll be afraid all the time. Fear will become so constant a companion that if it ever goes away, you’ll crave the adrenaline. That’s the moment to start worrying, my dear. Not when you’re afraid. When you stop being afraid.
She smiled ruefully. “I haven’t stopped yet, Doctor.”
Warren’s head turned slightly. “I’m sorry, miss. Did you need something?”
“No, no. I’m fine.”
They circled the Capitol, then headed along East Capitol Street. After five or six blocks, the driver began to slow. A limousine sat outside a small townhouse. A dark sedan much like the one she was in stood just behind, with another across the street.
Warren glided to a stop beside the limousine. He helped her from the car.
“Just walk in,” he said, pointing along the bluestone path. “It’s not locked.”
“Thank you,” she said, embarrassment creeping up again.
Longest walk of her life.
An agent stood in the yard, watching her approach, and another opened the door from the inside.
“Go on up,” he said, averting his eyes in disapproval. “Second door on the right.”
“Thank you,” she said, but he had already turned away.