Regrets Only

by Sally Quinn

  “Speaking of Hooker,” said Malcolm, “he’s meeting with the Godless Commies tomorrow before they go in to see Kimball. We’ve all tried to persuade the President that this is not a good idea, but Hooker seems to have the President in his pocket on this one. We can just hope he hasn’t started World War Three before they get to the White House. I can’t figure out what’s going on over there.”

  He was looking to Allison for information, but she didn’t want to get into a discussion of Uncle Roger’s problems with Malcolm, at least not at this dinner.

  “Who’s Des talking to?”

  “Oh, Mr. Smoothie,” said Abigail, following Allison’s gaze. “Malcolm and I met him in Moscow. He’s the spokesperson for the Central Committee. Very, very well oiled. Speaks perfect English. He’s quite Americanized. He was at the U.N. a few years ago. He’s become a big TV personality recently and writes a column for a prestigious weekly, I can’t think of the name. He’s a good source. He’s one of the few who manages to play both sides. He gets away with it somehow.”

  “I’m surprised he’s talking to Des and not you,” said Malcolm. “He has quite an eye for the ladies. Like Abigail, for instance.”

  “Oh, God, Malcolm. Malcolm got all upset because he flirted with me at the dinner they gave for our delegation in Moscow. He told me I was beautiful and that he thought he could fall in love with me. Malcolm was so annoyed that he got up to make a toast and said there were good Americans and bad Americans just like there were good Russians and bad Russians, staring right at Vasily. It was ridiculous.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, the man makes a pass at your wife, what would you do? I have a good mind to change my position on Star Wars.”

  They all laughed as the guests began to move toward the paneled banquet hall for dinner.

  Allison found Des up ahead in the crowd and moved quickly to join him, whispering in his ear as they entered the dining room, “So what did you learn from Vasily Antonin?”

  “Nothing The Daily needs to know,” he said, smiling.

  “You mean he didn’t tell you about his meeting with John T. tomorrow?” She pretended to look shocked.

  “How the hell did you know about that?” He looked genuinely surprised.

  “Just a little crack reporting. Stick with me, baby.”

  “I’m trying, I’m trying, but you’re moving too fast for a poor little Irish kid from the South Side.”

  “Save that one for the Russian translator.” She laughed.

  “I should get so lucky.”

  “Mr. Shaw, Mr. Shaw?”

  A thick Russian accent interrupted their exchange, and as they turned they were greeted by a short, stocky woman with an enormous chest, a rather heavy mustache, a mole on the end of her nose, and her mousy gray-brown hair pulled back in a bun.

  “Mr. Shaw,” she repeated, tugging at Des’s sleeve, “I am the translator for the delegation. I have the honor of being your dinner partner.”

  Des took one look at her and rolled his eyes as Allison turned away, doubled over with laughter.

  They were both seated at the same round table—unusual for a Washington dinner—but on opposite sides. On Des’s left was a minor Russian Embassy official who spoke poor English, and he glared at Allison.

  She, on the other hand, was seated next to Vasily Antonin, and as she saw him approach her she looked up at Des, saw the outraged expression on his face, and again burst out laughing. On her other side was the former head of the CIA Russian Section, now head of the Russian Studies department at Columbia University.

  Altogether, a terrific seat. She dared not look at Des again for the rest of the evening.

  “What a lucky fellow I am, to be seated next to someone as beautiful as you.”

  She and Vasily had sat down together, he perched sidewise on his chair, facing her, his cocktail glass in hand, filled, she assumed, with straight vodka.

  “Oh, no,” she insisted. “I’m the one who is lucky.”

  “Charming as well as beautiful,” he said, laughing as he leaned closer to her. “I can see we are going to have a very good time tonight.”

  He didn’t mention Kimball or The Daily, so she had no idea whether he knew who she was.

  Vasily was not conventionally handsome, but he had a Slavic elegance that appealed to Allison. High cheekbones, a faint slant to the eyes, pale hair, pale skin, pale blue eyes, a pale smile. She imagined he would be sensuous, maybe a little cruel in bed.

  They made conversation about Soviet–American relations, full of double entendres, as the first course was served. He had turned his back on the drab little woman on his other side, a silent announcement of his intentions with Allison. When the waiter came with the wine, he put his hand over his wineglass, gesturing for more vodka. His conversation was loose and easy—too much so for such a high-powered Russian, though he did not appear to be drunk. If she hadn’t heard Abigail’s story, Allison would have believed that he was genuinely smitten, but it annoyed her a bit to think that he was doing a number on her. Particularly such an effective one.

  “Is that your husband?” he asked finally, gesturing toward Des.

  “My lover.”

  There was a glint in his eye. He said nothing.

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  “Of course.” He took a swig of vodka.

  “Do you have a mistress?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Viktoriya.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “She’s the only person I have ever been able to talk to honestly in my life. I can say whatever is in my mind, my thoughts, and she will understand. And I don’t have to be afraid. She is the only person I have ever known who is not afraid to say anything.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a journalist, like you.”

  So he did know who she was.

  “Is she married?”

  “Yes, to a member of the KGB.”

  “Does he know about the affair?”

  “No.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “She came to interview me in my office. The attraction was immediate. We wanted each other. We talked of many things besides the interview.

  “When it was over,” he continued, “she asked me to walk her to her car. It was very cold, midwinter. We got in her car, very tiny. We made love. I can’t remember anything except that I had to have her.”

  He stopped, stared into his glass, took a sip, then looked up at Allison.

  “What do they call you?”

  “Sonny.”

  “Sonny. Beautiful Sonny. I would like to make love to you too.”

  He seemed so serious, she was just vain enough to believe he meant it. It didn’t matter. She was going to go in for the kill in a few minutes.

  “The other day,” said Vasily, suddenly changing moods, laughing, “she asked me to make love to her again in her car, the way we had the first time. I told her, never again. I had never been so cold, so uncomfortable in my life. She accused me of losing my passion for her.”

  The waiters had cleared the soup, then the fish course. He hadn’t touched a bite.

  “Well?”

  “It’s not true. She’s the only thing that keeps me from committing suicide. But I don’t want accusations, recriminations. I get that at home. I despise my wife. She is crazy. And our son. He has a serious neurological disease. We have had to go outside Russia for treatment. Everyone on the Central Committee does when they need first-class treatment. We just don’t let it be known.”

  Now she was getting something out of him.

  “Why don’t you leave her and marry Viktoriya?”

  “It is not possible. Viktoriya’s husband would destroy me. And my wife. We have too much. In our position we have cars, television, hi-fi, shopping privileges, country dacha. We live like capitalists. Nobody wants to give up the good life.”

  “It doesn’t sound so good to me.”

  �
��To tell you the truth, it isn’t. Every night I have to take three sleeping pills just to fall asleep.

  “I think of killing myself every day. I want to die. Do you have any idea what life is like in Russia? Nobody is ever allowed to say what they think or feel. If you did, you would be put in an institution for the mentally ill or sent to Siberia. Everyone is afraid all the time. Everyone lives in fear. I am in constant fear. Fear that my wife will report me for something. Those on the Central Committee, those high up in government are more afraid than the rest because they have more to lose. It is a horrible life. Death has to be easier.”

  He had to be drunk, Allison decided. He couldn’t be talking to her this way if he were not. He knew she was a reporter. Could this be a setup? But he didn’t appear to be drunk.

  “Well,” said Allison cheerily, “think of it this way. At least you have Viktoriya. That’s more than most of the men on the Central Committee have.”

  “Don’t be naive. They all have mistresses.”

  “So what will you do? Will you commit suicide?” She was only half-joking. It did seem like a reasonable alternative.

  “I don’t think I have the courage. I think I’m daring somebody to kill me. I’m writing messages to Viktoriya in my column each week. This week I wrote about Star Wars. ‘Let the Americans have their Star Wars,’ I said. ‘As for me, I prefer to gaze at the stars and think of love.’ ”

  “What sort of reaction did you get to that column?” asked Allison in disbelief.

  “No one took it seriously. They all laughed about it, winked and nudged me in the ribs. But it’s true. I do prefer to think of love. And I cannot think of anything else when I am sitting next to you. Will you meet me tomorrow? I have to be on television tomorrow morning at seven. Then we don’t have to be at the State Department until eleven. You could come to my hotel room.”

  There was a frantic tone to his voice and a look of desperation, not lust, on his face.

  Allison couldn’t quite make out what it was he wanted from her. He had his hand on her thigh now under the table, gazing at her, beseeching her almost. He seemed oblivious when the former Ambassador to Moscow stood up to speak and the room became hushed.

  “What would he say about us?” he said, gesturing toward Des, who had been rolling his eyes at her most of the evening, not realizing what was going on. “Would he be jealous? Would he want to kill me?”

  “I have to go to the ladies’ room,” said Allison. People had begun to stare.

  The conversation had gone too far; this man was out of control. Her reporter’s instinct told her to keep him talking, but she couldn’t allow his advances to continue, and she didn’t know how to stop him without staying away and missing the head of the delegation’s speech.

  After five minutes in the ladies’ room, she returned to the table. She sat with her back to him, pretending to concentrate on the speech. The head of the delegation, a large, muscular man with a red face and leonine mass of white hair, reminded her more than a little of John T. She regretted she wouldn’t be a witness to their scheduled confrontation the following morning.

  “You are ignoring me.”

  She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. He had his hand on her arm.

  “Why are you ignoring me? I love you. I have fallen in love and I want you. You have become cold and distant. Where is my warm, sensual Sonny of a few moments ago?”

  She turned to him, putting her finger to her lips in a shushing motion.

  “Don’t do that to me, Sonny. I have something you want to know.”

  She looked at him and he suddenly looked very sober. The speeches were over and there was applause and everyone was standing to toast Soviet–American friendship.

  “Our Premier will be dead in three months at the longest,” he whispered to her. “He has a terminal lung disease. Nobody knows this. This man, Ivanovich, our chief of delegation, will replace him.”

  Allison looked stunned, but he stopped her before she could say a word.

  He reached over and kissed her hand quickly. “We would have been lovers in another life. Do not betray me, Sonny.”

  And before she knew it, he had disappeared.

  * * *

  Des slammed on the brakes and nearly drove the car into the Tidal Basin by the Jefferson Memorial.

  “Jesus, are you serious? That son-of-a-bitch was propositioning you the whole time I was sitting at the table?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is that I got an incredible story.”

  “I don’t care what you got. That guy has some balls doing that to you. I’m going back there and beat the shit out of him.”

  Des turned the car around, nearly colliding with several cars as he did.

  “Des, for heaven’s sake, calm down. This is not a big deal. Just listen to what he told me.”

  “No big deal? Some bastard propositions my woman in the middle of dinner with me sitting right there and it’s no big deal? It’s going to be a big deal when he finds his testicles in his throat.”

  “You wouldn’t be so annoyed if you’d gotten to sit next to some gorgeous piece.”

  “Maybe.”

  “He didn’t have an ounce of sex appeal.”

  “Who?”

  “Vasily. He was a joke. You can’t take a man seriously who pulls something like that. In fact, I don’t really like men who make passes at women at all. It’s much sexier to have to make a pass at the man you want to make love to than to have him come on to you.”

  “Yeah?” There was a hint of a smile on his lips.

  She put her hand on his thigh and began rubbing it slowly, letting her hand move upward to his crotch, where she felt him swell almost immediately.

  “Get your hands off me,” he growled.

  She rubbed at him harder, then leaned across the gearshift and kissed him lightly on the ear, taking his earlobe between her teeth and gently chewing on it.

  “Cut it out,” he said, his voice huskier than before, and he halfheartedly pushed her away with his elbow. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m going to fuck you,” she whispered.

  “It won’t be the first time,” he said, putting his foot on the gas.

  “And probably not the last,” she murmured.

  * * *

  “Are you serious?”

  Allen Warburg and Walt Fineman were both standing in Allen’s glass office as Allison recounted her conversation with Vasily.

  “I’m telling you, the guy unloaded on me.”

  “I’ll say,” said Walt. Allen hadn’t said a word. He was just listening.

  “So what do you make of it?” he asked Allison, finally.

  She stopped for a moment as though she hadn’t thought that far.

  “Well, it’s a fabulous story.”

  “So how do you write it?”

  “The way it happened.”

  “No, I mean, do you write it as a news story for the A section? ‘Yesterday, Vasily What’s-his-name said that blah-blah-blah…’ ”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then it’s a Living story. ‘Sipping his third vodka, he pushed back a lock of silver-blond hair and mumbled in his husky Slavic accent…’ ”

  “Come on, Allen. You’re acting like I’ve just come back from covering the Folk Life Festival on the Mall.”

  “Were you covering this event?”

  “Not officially.”

  “So the guy didn’t know he was speaking on the record.”

  “Oh, please. He’s talking to a national reporter for The Daily and he thinks he’s off the record? This is a very experienced man. He’s a journalist himself.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “Look, let’s get Berger and Cutler in here,” said Fineman. “They’ve both lived in Moscow, they both know Vasily, they’ve covered the CIA. Let’s see what they have to say.”

  “Berger was there last night,” said Allison. “He was raising his eyebrows at me all night.
”

  Moments later the two reporters listened as Allison went over the previous evening for them.

  “Jesus,” said Cutler.

  “I knew the guy was having problems,” said Berger. “But this is something else again. I can’t believe it.”

  “The Soviets are up to something,” said Cutler, the conspiratorialist. “The guy’s a plant. They know about Allison’s relationship with the President. The question is, What’s the point? What do they want to prove?”

  “Listen. I was there. I’m telling you the guy was for real. I think he was close to a nervous breakdown.”

  “What about this stuff on the Soviet Premier’s health, Berger?”

  “We’ve had rumors but nothing definite. If he were that sick I can’t imagine we wouldn’t have heard about it.”

  “So what if he’s a CIA plant? What if the spooks are up to something?”

  “You guys have been reading too many spy novels,” said Allison. “We have an incredible story here. What are we going to do with it?”

  “I would think very carefully before I wrote it,” said Berger.

  “Why?” asked Allison.

  “Because even though he was incredibly stupid and you have no obligation to protect him from himself, you are signing the guy’s death warrant. He will either be killed, sent to Siberia, or be forced to commit suicide. They play hardball over there. I’m not kidding.”

  There was a long silence in the room.

  “But you’ve got yourself a hell of a story.”

  “Thanks,” said Allison, as she picked up her notebook and left the room.

  She didn’t sleep well that night. What disturbed her most was that normally she would have. A story to most journalists was like Mount Everest. You climb it because it’s there. You print for the same reason. Let the editors worry about the consequences. It was almost like a game of Chicken. You challenge your editor to print, then argue if he refuses, but acquiesce. Now they had thrown it back at her. And now she had to examine the consequences. And the consequences looked very different when it was her responsibility. For some reason she didn’t discuss it with Des that night. She waited until she had made her decision before calling him the next day at his office.