When Sasha returned, an hour later, Iris sat on the garden wall and stared into the fallen sun. The sketchbook lay open on the bricks beside her, along with a bottle of wine. Sasha had done most of the drinking since they arrived, as usual—a bottle of wine at lunch and another at dinner, gin and tonic to quench the thirst in between—but this time Iris retrieved the bottle from the cellar, a red wine from Tuscany, easy on the palate, and drank it solemnly atop the garden wall.
Iris’s first thought, when he walked through the doorway onto the grass, was how beautiful he looked. Did she think he was plain when she first saw him, at the Villa Borghese? You could argue that his features were not beautiful, sure, that his big ears and long nose and bony cheeks and especially that sharp brow were maybe coarse and not in perfect balance, as in a work of art. But the overall effect just dazzled her. His height, and his hair, and the ultramarine eyes. He walked straight up to her and put his hands on either side of her hips and kissed her. He smelled of sweet liquor, limoncello maybe, the kind that Italians drink as digestivo.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Suit yourself.”
He pulled his cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Something wrong?”
“No, not at all. Did you get hold of Harry?”
“He bought it. Swallowed it whole actually. Swore at me a little.”
“And your errands?”
“What about them?”
“Did you get them all done?”
He was having trouble lighting his cigarette, which was odd because there was no breeze at all. At last the end flared orange. He closed his eyes as he inhaled.
“Because I was wondering, you know. Isn’t everything closed on a Sunday?”
“Oh, yes. Of course it was.”
“But you were gone so long.”
“I had trouble finding a working telephone.”
Sasha squinted at some point past Iris’s ear, the hillside or something, while the smoke curled in extravagant ribbons around his face and hair. There was some difference to him, but she couldn’t pin it down. Was he paler? Maybe. His face was so rigid. His mouth and his cheeks made small adjustments as he smoked the cigarette, but his eyes, his forehead, his brow were cast in wax. He lifted the cigarette back to his lips, and Iris noticed that his hand was trembling.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t the photographs please her?”
“What’s that?”
“The photographs in the envelope. In your suitcase. I assume you were passing those along to that woman? The one I saw you with in the Borghese gardens?”
What was surprising was that he wasn’t surprised. If his eyebrows rose a millimeter or two, they only expressed amazement at her tone, which—she’d freely admit—smacked more of jealousy than outrage. If he channeled all the pyrotechnics of his blue eyes into hers, he was only trying to figure out whether she really cared. Sitting high on the brick wall, Iris exactly matched his height. She didn’t realize how unequal they were until now—older, taller, stronger, better educated, worldly-wise—why, Sasha had had every advantage, until this moment when she knew his secret.
“So you looked through my suitcase, did you?” he said, without rancor, and revelation arrived on Iris’s head like the dawn.
“You wanted me to see it, didn’t you? You left it there yesterday for me to find. Right there in plain sight, an open suitcase. That’s why you told me to stay behind today. You wanted me to see it was gone.”
He put his hand over her mouth.
“Before you say another word, I want you to know that I’ve never done a single thing—never passed along a single iota of information that would harm the United States.”
Iris nodded. He dropped his hand and pulled on the cigarette.
“The Soviets are being left in the cold, that’s all, because of ideological prejudice. Because the success of the Soviet system threatens the way we’ve always done things. The way that killed your father, Iris, the same way that corrupted mine. You know I’m right. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.”
Iris slung her arms around his neck. “I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care about politics. I care about you. I want you to trust me. I don’t want you to keep any secrets from me. Whatever you’re doing, I know you’re doing it because you believe in it, and you’re trying to make the world a better place, and I love you for it. But I can’t stand it if you don’t trust me.”
“That’s why I left my suitcase open.”
“And that woman. She’s your—your—”
“Don’t worry about her.”
“But she’s Russian, isn’t she? She’s the one who—”
“I said, don’t worry about her. Anything personal between us—her and me—that’s finished. It’s just business now.”
“But you won’t tell me anything else about it.”
“I’ve told you all you need to know, all right? Because I thought I should be square with you, what I’m doing.”
She leaned her forehead against his. “Why?”
“It’s only fair. I could get into trouble or something. It’s only fair you know you’re jumping into hot water.”
“I already knew that.”
He breathed into her mouth and she breathed back into his.
“So we’re all right?” he said. “You’re still with me?”
The sun was dropping into the sea. Iris’s heart pounded so hard, her chest might explode—not because she was scared but because she understood that everything depended upon this moment, this conversation, this decision. The entire course of her life pivoted around this point of vital contact, his forehead against hers.
When Iris nodded, Sasha’s head moved too.
He let out a noise of exultation and crushed out his cigarette on the bricks and kissed her—unbuttoned her dress—kissed her neck and breasts—all the familiar rituals. He untucked his shirt and Iris fumbled with the fastening on his trousers. On this wall nobody could see them or hear them—the ancient Sabine Hills rose up behind them—the sun set in unspeakable splendor behind Sasha’s head. The bricks left angry marks on the backs of her thighs. She discovered them the next day, when Sasha bathed her in the stream at the corner of the garden, before they returned to Rome.
By then she’d forgotten how his hands shook when he returned from meeting his Soviet contact in Tivoli, how full of nerves he was.
Early in the morning of Friday, the tenth of May, a ringing telephone woke Iris. Sasha stirred next to her and stumbled out of bed. The air was warm and dusky; she couldn’t see any sunlight through the cracks of the blinds. She flopped on her back and listened to Sasha’s low voice in the other room. Once he left for the embassy, she was supposed to return home to the apartment she shared with Ruth, cheerful and rested from her sketching holiday, and she didn’t know how she was going to do that. She wasn’t that Iris anymore. Her life was here, next to Sasha.
Sasha said clearly, All right, I’ll be there in half an hour, and the receiver rattled into its cradle. His footsteps treaded the floorboards back toward her. She stretched her hands above her head in hopes of enticing him, but he just sat on the edge of the bed, naked and somber, and said, Well, it’s begun.
She didn’t need to ask what had begun. Nor did she need to ask why he wasn’t surprised.
Ruth
June 1952
New York City
Remarkably enough, the house telephone rings precisely eleven minutes after I hang up the line from the Empire Hotel—remarkably, because I can’t think of a method other than rocket propulsion that could have made the journey in so little time. Like many of Sumner Fox’s feats, it remains an unexplained miracle.
“Gentleman to see you, Miss Macallister,” says the doorman, perfectly neutral because I tip well at Christmas. “A Mr. Fox?”
“Send him right up, please, Mike.” I smooth my hair and tighten the sash on my dressing gown, because regardless of the gentleman’s beauty—let’s admit it, he has none—I’ve always believed in presenting an orderly face to the world, particularly when my nerves are as shredded as they are in this moment. Then I light a cigarette, pace across the room, stub out the cigarette, think better of it, and light another. You see what I mean.
At last, the doorbell. I fly from living room to foyer and fling the door open. Sumner Fox stands in his dark suit and dark tie; the hallway lighting makes his bony face look jaundiced.
“You should have checked the peephole first.”