He entered the Egyptian Embassy and took a cocktail from a tray. It was so dilute he could hardly taste the gin. He talked to an Austrian diplomat about the difficulty of buying comfortable men’s underwear in Warsaw. When the Austrian drifted away, Cam looked around and saw a blonde woman in her twenties standing alone. She caught his eye and smiled, so he went to speak to her.
He swiftly found out that she was Polish, her name was Lidka, and she worked as a secretary in the Canadian Embassy. She was wearing a tight pink sweater and a short black skirt that showed off her long legs. She spoke good English, and listened to Cam with an intensity of concentration that he found flattering.
Then a man in a pinstriped suit summoned her peremptorily, making Cam think he must be her boss, and the conversation broke up. Almost immediately Cam was approached by another attractive woman, and he began to think it was his lucky day. This one was older, about forty, but prettier, with short pale-blonde hair and bright blue eyes enhanced by blue eye-shadow. She spoke to him in Russian. ‘I’ve met you before,’ she said. ‘Your name is Cameron Dewar. I’m Tania Dvorkin.’
‘I remember,’ he said, glad of the chance to show off his fluency in Russian. ‘You’re a reporter for TASS.’
‘And you’re a CIA agent.’
He certainly would not have told her that, so she must have guessed. Routinely, he denied it. ‘Nothing so glamorous,’ he said. ‘Just a humble cultural attaché.’
‘Cultural?’ she said. ‘Then you can help me. What kind of painter is Jan Matejko?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Impressionist, I think. Why?’
‘Art really not your thing?’
‘I’m more a music person,’ he said, feeling cornered.
‘You probably love Szpilman, the Polish violinist.’
‘Absolutely. Such technique with the bow!’
‘What do you think of the poet Wislawa Szymborska?’
‘I haven’t read much of his work, sadly. Is this a test?’
‘Yes, and you failed. Szymborska is a woman. Szpilman is a pianist, not a violinist. Matejko was a conventional painter of court scenes and battles, not an impressionist. And you’re no cultural attaché.’
Cam was mortified to have been found out so easily. What a hopeless undercover agent he was! He tried to brush it off with humour. ‘I might just be a very bad cultural attaché.’
She lowered her voice. ‘If a Polish army officer wanted to talk to a representative of the US, you could arrange it, I guess.’
Suddenly the conversation had taken a serious turn. Cam felt nervous. This could be some kind of trap.
Or it could be a genuine approach – in which case, it might represent a great opportunity for him.
He answered cautiously. ‘I can arrange for anyone to talk to the American government, naturally.’
‘In secret?’
What the hell was this? ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she said, and walked away.
Cam got another drink. What had that been about? Was it real, or had she been mocking him?
The party was coming to an end. He wondered what to do with the rest of the evening. He thought of going to the bar in the Australian Embassy, where he sometimes played darts with amiable spooks from Oz. Then he saw Lidka standing nearby, again on her own. She really was very sexy. He said to her: ‘Do you have plans for dinner?’
She looked puzzled. ‘You mean recipes?’
He smiled. She had not come across the phrase ‘plans for dinner’. He said: ‘I meant, would you like to have dinner with me?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said immediately. ‘Could we go to The Duck?’
‘Of course.’ It was an expensive restaurant, though not if you were paying in American dollars. He looked at his watch. ‘Shall we leave now?’
Lidka surveyed the room. There was no sign of the man in the pinstriped suit. ‘I’m free,’ she said.
They headed for the exit. As they were passing through the door the Soviet journalist, Tania, reappeared and spoke to Lidka in bad Polish. ‘You dropped this,’ she said, holding out a red scarf.
‘It’s not mine,’ said Lidka.
‘I saw it fall from your hand.’
Someone touched Cam’s elbow. He turned away from the confused conversation and saw a tall, good-looking man of about forty dressed in the uniform of a colonel in the People’s Army of Poland. In fluent Russian the man said: ‘I want to talk to you.’
Cam replied in the same language. ‘All right.’
‘I will find a safe place.’
Cam could do nothing but say: ‘Okay.’
‘Tania will tell you where and when.’
‘Fine.’
The man turned away.
Cameron turned his attention back to Lidka. Tania was saying: ‘My mistake, how silly.’ She walked quickly away. Clearly she had wanted to distract Lidka for the few moments the soldier was talking to Cam.
Likda was puzzled. ‘That was a bit strange,’ she said as they left the building.
Cam was excited, but he pretended to be equally mystified. ‘Peculiar,’ he said.
Lidka persisted. ‘Who was that Polish officer who spoke to you?’
‘No idea,’ Cam said. ‘My car’s this way.’
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You have a car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice,’ said Lidka, looking pleased.
*
A week later, Cam woke up in bed in Lidka’s apartment.
It was more of a studio: one room with a bed, a TV, and a kitchen sink. She shared the shower and toilet down the hall with three other people.
For Cam, it was paradise.
He sat upright. She was standing at the counter making coffee – with his beans: she could not afford real coffee. She was naked. She turned and walked to the bed carrying a cup. She had wiry brown pubic hair and small pointed breasts with mulberry-dark nipples.
At first he had been embarrassed about her walking around naked, because it made him want to stare, which was rude. When he confessed this she had said: ‘Look all you want, I like it.’ He still felt bashful, but not as much as before.
He had seen Lidka every night for a week.
He had had sex with her seven times, which was more than in his entire life up to that point, not counting hand jobs in massage parlours.
One day she had asked if he wanted to do it again in the morning.
He had said: ‘What are you, a sex maniac?’
She had been offended, but they had made it up.
While she brushed her hair, he sipped his coffee and thought about the day ahead. He had not yet heard from Tania Dvorkin. He had reported the exchanges at the Egyptian Embassy to his boss, Keith Dorset, and they had agreed there was nothing to do but wait and see.
He had a bigger issue on his mind. He knew the expression ‘honey trap’. Only a fool would fail to wonder whether Lidka had an ulterior motive in going to bed with him. He had to consider the possibility that she was working under orders from the SB. He sighed and said: ‘I have to tell my boss about you.’
‘Do you?’ She did not seem alarmed. ‘Why?’
‘American diplomats are supposed to date only nationals of NATO countries. We call it the fuck NATO rule. They don’t want us falling in love with Communists.’ He had not told her that he was a spy rather than a diplomat.
She sat on the bed beside him with a sad face. ‘Are you breaking up with me?’
‘No, no!’ The idea almost panicked him. ‘But I have to tell them, and they will check you out.’
Now she looked worried. ‘What does that mean?’
‘They’ll investigate whether you could be an agent of the Polish secret police, or something.’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, well, that’s all right. They’ll soon find out I’m nothing of the kind.’
She seemed relaxed about it. ‘I’m sorry, but it has to be done,’ Cam said. ‘One-night stands don’t matter, but we’re obliged to report it if it gets to be more than that, you know, a real loving relationship.’
‘Okay.’
‘We do have that, don’t we?’ Cam said nervously. ‘A real loving relationship?’
Lidka smiled. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘We do.’