by Taylor Smith
“Yuri, are you all right?” Mariah asked, her concern real. His dark hair, usually lush and flowing, was plastered to his forehead by tiny beads of perspiration. His skin was the color of parchment, and even his lips, normally plummy and full, looked bleached out.
He straightened and brushed his pin-striped suit in a halfhearted effort to spiff himself up a little, always maintaining appearances. “Mariah, good, you made it! They said you were coming.” He took her hand as always and put it to his lips, but the gesture lacked his usual panache. His pseudo rep tie was loosened and slightly askew, and when she looked closer, Mariah noticed that the top button of his sleek dress shirt had been unfastened.
“You don’t look long for this world,” she said. “Are you ill?” Or hung over? she wondered. It was late in the day to still be suffering the effects of a hangover. In any case, he hadn’t drunk all that much in the time she’d been with him the night before, and his capacity for alcohol was prodigious. At a dinner in Paris that past spring, she’d seen him put away the better part of two bottles of wine all on his own, having already downed several predinner cocktails, and he’d shown no ill effects at all, then or the next day. She had no idea how much he’d drunk at the Arlen Hunter reception, but afterward, when they’d gone for dinner, he’d done no more than match her sedate pace.
“Death would be welcome compared to living through another night and morning like I’ve just gone through,” Belenko said miserably. He gave up trying to be gallant and slumped against the zinc bar once more.
The restaurant was the kind of clubby, wood-paneled place where Mariah would have expected a conservative establishment figure like Shelby Kidd to host a function. It was reputed to be a favorite hangout for that part of Los Angeles society that liked to fancy itself the old-money crowd—although the concept was entirely relative in a place that had counted more cows than people only a century earlier. The Ziggurat smelled of well-roasted beef, stiffly starched linen and fine Napoleon brandy. The winered carpets were plush, lending a sedate hush to the atmosphere, but the place was crawling with Secret Service agents. As she’d run the gamut of guards and metal detectors at the entryway, she’d noticed several well-dressed matrons grumbling about the tight security.
Poor old Yuri Belenko, however, looked as if he would have welcomed a bomb right about now to put him out of his misery. “What’s the problem?” she asked, resisting the impulse to reach out and feel his forehead. Maternal instinct dies hard. “Is it the flu, do you think?”
“No,” he said wearily. “It seems I have no—what do they call it? No sea legs.”
“Sea legs? We’re on dry land, Yuri.”
“I am only just, and my stomach has not yet caught up with me. I don’t dare get too close to the ministers right now.” He waved at the opposite side of the room where Zakharov and Kidd were having preluncheon drinks.
“I don’t understand. Have you been out sailing this morning?”
He sighed the martyred sigh of the much-put-upon. “My minister,” he said, “insists we be on board the Aleksandr Pushkin at all times while we are here, except during official functions. We slept there—although ‘slept’ is a very loose use of the term—and then spent the morning on board, briefing him in preparation for his meetings. I tell you, dear lady, I have never been so happy to attend a tedious luncheon. Oh, forgive me,” he added quickly. “No offense intended. But I think you will agree that they are tedious, these affairs.”
She nodded. “They are at that. Why does he want to stay aboard the Pushkin?” It was a rusting hulk of a Russian oceanographic research vessel, commissioned decades ago and presently berthed off the Port of Los Angeles. Frank Tucker had once told her that the Pushkin’s silhouette was one of the first ships U.S. sailors were trained to recognize on sight, since its “research” tended to be of the covert variety as often as not. “I thought your delegation was being put up at the Russian consul’s residence. Didn’t anyone tell him it’s a beautiful place?”
“Oh, he knows. I would much rather have stayed there, and believe me, I tried very hard indeed to convince him. Unfortunately, my minister is a product of the cold war. He trusts no one.” Belenko dropped his voice and folded his face into a dark glower, a bang-on imitation of his boss’s peevish demeanor. “Those people at the consulate, bah! How long have they been in this den of corruption? How do we know they haven’t been perverted and compromised?” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “I think he expected his room to be gassed, his bodyguards overpowered and a naked woman…no, wait…a naked man to slip into his bed and start doing terrible things to him before the flashing cameras of CIA blackmailers.”
“Oh, Yuri,” she chided playfully, “would my country-men do a thing like that?”
He leaned toward her, a sparkle of humor reanimating his sultry brown eyes, half-lidded with exhaustion though they were. “Frankly, dear lady, I wouldn’t care if they did. I’d much rather share my nice, wide, comfortable feather bed at the residence with one clean, naked gigolo than spend the night as I did, on a hard iron bunk with fifteen sweaty Russian sailors snoring all around me. And then, the rocking and swaying! All night long! Oi!” he groaned. “The little sleep I did get, I kept dreaming my country was being overrun by the Mongol hordes again. Wave after wave after wave of them.” He closed his eyes and sighed.
Mariah shook her head, grinning. “So, the consulate’s people are not to be trusted, but the Pushkin’s sailors are safe?” As always, Belenko was being scandalously indiscreet—although his indiscretions, she’d noted, were carefully selected for maximum impact and minimum revelation. It was hardly a national secret that Valery Zakharov suffered from paranoia that probably bordered on the certifiably psychotic. It only made sense that he’d feel safer in an isolated environment controlled by his covert colleagues.
“The Pushkin’s sailors are never allowed off the ship, except briefly, two by two, and always in the company of, shall we say, a very careful colleague?” Belenko said. He took a sip of his soda, and waved the barman over. “But enough of my troubles. What will you have?”
“The same as you,” she said. “Looks like soda?” He nodded and the bartender produced the glass, popping a wedge of lime on the rim. Ice tinkled as she raised her glass. “Here’s to more trust between nations so you can get a better night’s sleep next time you visit.”
“Hear, hear.”
She settled in next to him, back against the bar, one foot on the brass rail, debating whether to broach the subject of what Jack Geist’s message had called “a mutually beneficial relationship.” The timing wasn’t ideal, given the state he was in, but the other members of their respective delegations were all fluttering around the ministers, and there was no telling if they’d find another opportunity to speak privately.
Before she could launch into the pitch, though, Shelby Kidd glanced in her direction. When he spotted her, he waved her over. “Hmm,” she said. “Looks like duty calls. Could you excuse me for a minute, Yuri?”
“Yes, yes, you go ahead. Just don’t forget about me, will you, Mariah? I’ll be waiting here on my deathbed, composing my last will and testament.”
“You poor thing,” she said, setting down her glass.
Kidd turned with an affable smile at her approach. “Mariah, glad you could join us!”
“Glad to be here,” she replied, as if she had any choice in the matter. But what was he so chipper about? This was the first time the secretary had ever addressed her by her given name—or any other, for that matter, as far as she could remember. Spook-averse as he was, Kidd seemed to do his best to forget she was there on these rare occasions when she found herself attached to one of his delegations. But he took her by the elbow now and turned back to his Moscow counterpart. “Minister Zakharov, I’m told you’re a connoisseur of the literary works of the American author Benjamin Bolt. It happens his daughter is a member of my delegation. Let me introduce Mariah Bolt, one of my very capable aides.”
Zakharov was lis
tening to the Russian-language explanation of who she was, examining her suspiciously as he took her outstretched hand. What did he imagine? Mariah wondered. That Kidd was offering her up for his personal pleasure? But when the interpreter relayed her parental connection, Zakharov’s beady eyes flickered. Whatever Kidd’s sources might have told him, it wasn’t quite the gushing reaction of the average Ben Bolt enthusiast she was used to. But then, powerful men were hard to impress. Given that Zakharov was still fighting a rearguard campaign to revive the cold war in the hope his side would come out on top this time around, he’d also be loath to convey the impression he was starstuck over any American.
“Ms. Bolt, a pleasure,” he said, nodding soberly.
“The pleasure is mine.” She shifted into Russian to bypass the clumsiness of simultaneous interpretation. “I had no idea you were interested in twentieth-century American authors.” Her tongue felt creaky, and her face grew warm before the suddenly curious crowd of aides and onlookers. The problem of having ridden a desk all these years was that her comprehension of the language was fluent, but she had few opportunities to let her spoken Russian out for an airing.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Shelby Kidd regarding her with newfound interest. For once in her life, she knew it wasn’t just because she was related to Ben Bolt. Her father’s name had come up, in fact, the first time she’d met Kidd, at the last U.N. General Assembly session, but from the way he’d raised, then quickly moved past the subject on that occasion, she knew he’d been briefed on her family connection but was not himself a Bolt afficionado. Not surprising, given his age. Ben’s work tended to appeal to younger, less conservative readers. Nor was it any skin off her nose. She’d never sought to play cheerleader or fan club president for her father. Whatever his personal tastes in literature, though, Kidd obviously wasn’t above exploiting any advantage in the name of diplomacy.
“Your father’s poetry is much read in my country,” Zakharov said. Neutral and noncommittal.
“So I’ve been told,” Mariah replied. “But, of course, the Russian love of poetry is well-known.”
“That is true,” he said, his lower lip jutting as he nodded. “Our culture runs deep. You must know this, since you have made the effort to study our language. It takes more than Hollywood glitter or rock and roll to excite us. We prefer the deeper complexity of the classics—Tolstoy, Turgenev.” Zakharov shifted his stocky frame and handed off his glass to one of his ever-present bodyguards so he could cross his arms across his barrel chest. It was a stretch. “But, of course, my nation is over a thousand years old. America,” he sniffed, “has yet to demonstrate whether it can produce anything of lasting value. And you, Ms. Bolt? Do you also write?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. No talent whatever in that department, I’m afraid.”
“I see. And your father? Is he well?”
Mariah hesitated. “Well…no, actually, he’s not.” What kind of connoisseur didn’t know that the object of his supposed study, if not adulation, had been dead thirty years? “He passed away some time ago,” she said as tactfully as she could.
Zakharov seemed oblivious to the blunder. “I am sorry for your loss. It is difficult to lose a parent.”
“I was a child when he died. I have very little recollection of him, actually.”
“I see.” The minister retrieved his drink. “So! A famous writer’s daughter.” He scrutinized her a moment longer. Then, apparently lacking any more astute commentary on the subject, he bowed briefly and turned his attention back to Shelby Kidd. She was dismissed. The writer’s daughter had been examined and found uninteresting.
The strange audience over, Mariah slipped tactfully away from the two ministers, but didn’t get far before Belenko appeared at her side once more. “Can I get you a refill?” he asked. He was looking a little recovered. The color was back in his cheeks, and he’d refastened his shirt and straightened his tie.
“No, thanks, Yuri,” she said, glancing back. “From the looks of things, I’d say the ministers are getting ready to sit down to lunch.”
“You and I are neighbors at the table.”
“Really? How did that happen? I expected to be in social Siberia, way down at the end.”
“Perhaps you might have, had Secretary Kidd not learned of my minister’s interest in the celebrity in our midst.”
“Hardly a celebrity,” she said. “But who, pray tell, told him your minister was a fan of Ben Bolt’s work?”
“Oh, I may have planted that little bug in his ear.” Belenko smiled coyly. “What did my minister have to say to you?”
“Not a whole lot. If you say he reads my father’s work, Yuri, I’ll take your word for it. Frankly, I got the impression he wouldn’t know Ben Bolt from Charles Dickens.”
Belenko chuckled. “You are very astute, as always, Mariah.” He bent closer and his voice dropped to a confidential level. “The minister is something of a barbarian, to be honest, but he likes to think he can fake a certain cultural je ne sais quoi. He would have you believe he is the consummate cosmopolitan Commie.”
Mariah felt her eyebrows rise involuntarily. There was a time when Belenko could have landed himself in the Gulag with a remark like that. “You sound less than fully enthusiastic about your minister,” she said.
He shrugged. “I am a realist.”
“You do have a refreshingly frank take on things.” She glanced around, but they were alone in the crowd. “You know,” she said quietly, “there are people who would be very interested in your views.”
“But not you?” he asked pitiably.
“I mean besides myself.”
The smile never left his lips, but there was calculation behind the sparkle in those brown eyes. She felt his hand on her elbow as he, too, glanced around to ensure no one was listening. “My dear Mariah,” he murmured, “are you making a little recruitment speech here?”
“I think you know your present situation gives you a unique perspective on certain matters of interest, Yuri. I also think you’re smart enough to take advantage of that.”
“My advantage?”
She shrugged. “Those who aid the greater good aid themselves. What is of advantage to others can certainly be of advantage to you, as well.”
“And these others? What do they offer in exchange for this unique perspective of mine?”
“That would be up for discussion. But there is a generally accepted principle in my country that superior talent should be well compensated. Don’t you agree?”
The pinging sound of silver on glass drew their attention toward the table, where, at center position, Shelby Kidd was tapping a fork against a goblet to announce it was time to sit down.
“Can I say you’re interested in conversation?” Mariah asked quietly. She wished she could look him levelly in the eye to try to gauge how he was taking this, but of course, looking anyone over twelve years old in the eye was always problematic for someone of her stature. Glad as she was that Belenko was feeling recovered, at the moment she would have preferred him still slumped on the bar, closer to her level.
“Can I give it some thought and get back to you? Would that be all right?” Belenko asked, glancing over at the others. “Right now, our presence is required.”
“That would be fine,” she said. As they headed for their places near the head of the table, she changed the subject. “So, tell me, that business of convincing Kidd your minister was a connoisseur of my father’s work, were you just being mischievous?”
“I confess, I was. But it worked, didn’t it? Now we get to enjoy each other’s company over lunch.”
“You’re a devious man, Yuri Belenko.”
“What about Secretary Kidd? Is he a Ben Bolt afficionado?”
“I don’t think so. I suspect he prefers literature of an older, more sedate vintage. Doesn’t earn me any Brownie points, being related to Ben.”
“Brownie points?” Belenko repeated, intrigued.
Another cliché for his c
ollection. Mariah tried to decide how to explain about Brownies. “They’re like Young Pioneers,” she ventured, “only all girls, and with brown neckerchiefs instead of red.”
Belenko’s broad forehead rose with enlightenment. “Ah, I see! Like Boy Scouts, only female. Scoutlettes.”
Mariah nodded. “There you go.”
“Brownie points,” Belenko said happily, filing it away for future reference.
The murmuring voices increased in volume as the two chief envoys sat down, the rest of their respective retinues falling dutifully behind. Mariah found herself seated next to Belenko and diagonal to his minister, and directly opposite a fellow who seemed to be the main bodyguard. And food taster? she wondered, noting with amusement how the bruiser—a Mr. Lermontov, his place card said—scrutinized every plate set down in front of his master. Lermontov was built like a brick wall, his white-blond hair cropped in a buzz, like a dense, round carpet of needles. The buttons of his suit jacket strained dangerously across his chest as he propped one trunklike forearm on the table, the other on the back of his chair. Had she not been afraid of losing a hand, Mariah might have been tempted to reach over and unbutton them, just to relieve the tension of waiting for them to pop spontaneously—which they were bound to do, sooner or later.
“Olympic wrestling team of ’84,” Belenko whispered in her ear as Lermontov’s disapproving gaze swept up and down the room in a searchlight arc of vigilance. “Undefeated then or since.”
Mariah turned to face his ever-present grin. “Why am I not surprised?” she murmured. “Remind me not to try out my half nelson on the man.”
“It would be a big mistake. Old Boris there was part of the great steroid experiments. It left him lacking in mental subtlety and totally devoid of any sense of humor.”
