Nadya Plevitskaya had got up early to curl her hair. She was wearing a ruched dress with red flowers on a black background and, under her chic Wallis Simpson hat, big gold hoop earrings. It was hot enough, even by the end of breakfast, to make her rather regret the black linen jacket she’d added to the ensemble. But she’d put a big red chrysanthemum in the buttonhole, which looked festive, and the jacket did, at least, cover up the bulges at either end of her corset.
Throughout the long-drawn-out breakfast on the sunny terrasse of the rue du Colisée café, she flirted cheerfully with the proprietor and various fellow clients. After commenting that her husband was not fond of too much talk this early in the day, even on a holiday like this, when they were off to select stage outfits for her from no less a personage than Monsieur Epstein of Chez Caroline, she sent out a waiter for a newspaper for him to read while she talked and breakfasted. When the young man returned with Le Figaro, she looked at it in playful horror before saying that she couldn’t possibly let her husband read the thoughts of a perfume manufacturer – and, to gales of sycophantic laughter from the proprietor, sent the waiter breathlessly back out again for La Croix.
‘That’s women for you, eh, Jacquot!’ the proprietor chuckled, slapping his nephew on the shoulders, the second time back. She was doing a magnificent job, she thought, and holding half the street’s attention: teeth flashing, laughter pealing out – unlike her uncharismatic husband, who was barely even trying. The only time anyone could have told that he wasn’t actually dead was when he’d held out a hand for the paper.
She drank three bowls of chocolate. She dipped a tartine with strawberry jam into her first milky drink (until she caught her husband’s glance up from La Croix, at least). Then (to hell with her figure, and her husband) she ate two more croissants.
The sun rose. She was damp under her black jacket. She waved her hands around flamboyantly enough that, from time to time, without seeming to be looking, she caught a glimpse of the time. How slowly the hands on her watch seemed to be moving.
‘Bozhe,’ she cried when, eventually, they said ten o’clock. ‘Is that the time already?’ And she rose, without waiting for her husband, and sailed off down the street towards the waiting car.
The last thing she expected was for the American girl – who, as she only noticed too late, had been running in her direction – to cannon into her in the street.
Not by accident, either. The girl, who was a good six inches taller than she was, grabbed her by both shoulders. She had none of yesterday’s forlorn, crossed-in-love charm. She was panting and indignant. Good God, Plevitskaya thought, disconcerted, she’s making straight for me; and she looks as though she’s about to shake me …
She glanced quickly behind. Her husband – never there when you wanted him – was still on the terrasse, folding up the paper and waiting for his change.
‘I found the wires,’ the girl was stammering, so angry she could hardly get the words out. Plevitskaya didn’t know what she was talking about. Politely, she tried to wriggle herself free. But the girl was clutching on to her shoulder pads for grim death.
Then, practically spitting into her face, the girl went on furiously: ‘Wires down through the floor to the General’s room. Was your recording – the one you wanted me to pay for – something to do with spying on ROVS?’
‘No!’ Plevitskaya said. ‘Of course not!’
And, in the breathy silence that followed, she took advantage of the girl’s look of doubt – and weakened grip – to shake herself loose.
Well, really, she was telling herself – feeling indignant, too – recording or no recording, whoever did this girl think she was? Why, she’d never been manhandled like that in her life …
And then, just as she was puffing herself up into a fluff of hurt pride and shock, she realized what the American girl must mean. Wires – from the recording equipment.
She stopped. Blackness flooded through her: a depth of cold rage such as she’d never known.
Was that the real reason why her husband had been so helpful about persuading Constance to have the recording edited at her home? Just so he could bug Miller for the Moscow team, before the kidnapping?
When she glanced around again and saw him, newspaper folded under his arm, finally sauntering up the street towards her, smiling as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, she was appalled at the certainty she suddenly felt.
Of course it was. Moscow wouldn’t have invested all this effort and money in her husband just on trust. They’d have wanted him to lead from the front. They’d have wanted him to prove he was ready to betray Miller himself.
Which meant that the recording that she’d invested so much hope in, but he’d dreamed up, had just been a ploy – a Trojan horse, to get wires into Constance’s apartment.
He hadn’t given a hoot about her career. He’d been playing dirty tricks on her, all along, as surely as he had on that fat old fool Miller. And here she was, helping him out.
Suddenly all she wanted was to walk away, and for the whole thing to fail. Why should she care? If it all went wrong today, she’d end up in Moscow. And she’d a million times rather be there, looking for her son, than propping up her snake of a husband here.
She gazed back at the American girl, with her mouth half-open, listening to those unhurried footsteps coming up behind her, bursting with words – but too painfully full of all the contradictory things she wanted to say to be able to manage a single one.
And then she sighed, and the words all went away, because it was too late. She thought of the crab salesman, and knew she was afraid. She’d have to go through with it after all.
‘Mademoiselle,’ her husband said, with a formal bow and smile to the stunned-looking American girl (who didn’t challenge him, she noticed). She felt his arm slip through hers. With dreamlike dignity, she nodded, too.
As they moved slowly off, she heard herself saying almost apologetically to the American girl in whom she’d so nearly, for that one moment of insanity, confided, ‘You see, I have an appointment at the dressmaker’s.’