They had their breakfast and coffee pretty much in silence, high over the Atlantic. As Julie took away their trays and coffee cups, Stone said to her, “Please bring Mr. Grant another cup of coffee. We don’t want him dozing off when there’s so much to talk about.”
Dino, as if on cue, unbuckled his seat belt and moved across the aisle, next to Peter, then rebuckled.
“What is this?” Peter asked, looking at Dino, then back at Stone.
“It’s get-acquainted time,” Stone said. “Where were you born, Peter?”
“In Cambridge, Massachusetts, fifty-nine years ago.”
“At what hospital?”
“At home. There was a miscalculation.”
“Who and what were your parents?”
“My father was a stockbroker with what was then Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, and my mother was a painter.”
“Pictures or houses?”
“Pictures. She was very good.”
“So was my mother.”
“Matilda Stone?”
“You have the advantage of me. What are your parents’ names?”
“Richard and Marion, maiden name Wright, both deceased.”
“And where were you schooled?”
“Groton and Harvard.”
“Your major at Harvard?”
“Journalism.”
“And did you work on the Crimson?”
“Yes, I was assistant editor.”
“How about the Lampoon?”
“No, I wasn’t funny enough.”
“What was your first job out of Harvard?”
“Copy boy at the Boston Globe.”
“What sort of career did you have in journalism?”
“A brief one,” Peter replied. “I became a reporter on the city desk, and then I met someone who convinced me that my talents were being wasted.”
“Who was that?”
“A girl, one who knew a lot of people I didn’t know.”
“Name?”
“Ashley Dunham.”
Stone’s eyes narrowed. “Any relation to Howard Dunham?” The man had been a State Department official and had been accused of communist ties. Shortly after that, he had left the country and had lived in France for many years.
“She was his granddaughter,” Peter said.
“Did she introduce you to him?”
“Yes, we went to Paris together. She went home after the summer, and I stayed.”
“Mr. Dunham must have introduced you to a lot of interesting people.”
“He did. Howard knew everybody, and he was frequently visited by American left-wing intellectuals.”
“And Russians?”
“Naturally, he had contacts there.”
“Did he visit Russia often?”
“Yes, he was a lover of theater and dance. When the Bolshoi came to Paris, he always hosted a big party for the company. It’s a little-known fact that he was instrumental in the defection of the dancer Rudolf Nureyev.”
“How so?”
“He arranged to get him away from the company minders at the airport, where he turned himself in to the police and asked for asylum. Howard supported him in many ways after that.”
“Did he support you?”
“He was kind enough to help now and then. He introduced me to George Plimpton, who gave me a job at the Paris Review, not that it paid very much.”
“Then?”
“A friend got me a job with the Guide Michelin, and I traveled France, rating restaurants and gaining weight steadily. I finally had to quit because I couldn’t afford the alterations to my wardrobe, such as it was.”
“When did you first travel to Russia?” Stone asked.
Peter looked out the window and seemed to be deciding whether to answer. Finally, he did. “Almost thirty years ago. Howard bought me a ticket on an Intourist tour and gave me a letter to a friend of his, Georgi Arbatov, who was head of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, or ISKRAN, at the Russian Academy of Sciences. I left my tour and stayed in the country for several weeks. Arbatov knew absolutely everyone in the government and academia, and he made many introductions for me.”
“Anyone among them KGB?”
“One never knew,” Peter said, “though one could suspect.”
“And whom did you suspect?”
“Everyone. When in Leningrad, I actually met a young officer named Vladimir Putin. Of course, I had no idea of what his future would be.”
“What did you think of him?”
“He could be charming, in a cold sort of way. I had the impression he was a comer, and I wondered what happened to him after Gorbachev came into power.”
“Yes, whatever became of him?”
Peter reached into the watch pocket of his trousers and came up with a small, silver pillbox. He opened it and picked out an orange pill and washed it down with his coffee.
“Aren’t you feeling well?”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’d like to make up for it now,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me.” He reclined his seat and seemed to fall almost immediately to sleep.
Stone and Dino moved to another seating group and left him to it.
“He was surprisingly talkative,” Dino said.
“Yes. It will be interesting to see how much of it is true.” Stone thought about calling Lance now, but the aircraft’s satphone was not a secure form of communication. He read the Times for a while, then reclined his seat and succumbed to a nap.
He did not awake until Julie came and brought his seat upright. “Landing at Teterboro in five minutes,” she said. “Please remain on the aircraft, until customs and immigration come aboard and clear us.” They touched down softly and taxied to Jet Aviation.
Clearing in was quick, and Dino’s big SUV awaited them on the ramp. They offered Peter a lift into the city, but he said he had a car waiting.
“Where are you staying?” Stone called after him as he walked away, but an airplane nearby was starting its engines, and he appeared not to have heard.
Dino and Viv dropped Stone off at his house, and Fred was there to handle his luggage. Stone went straight upstairs to bed and resumed his nap.