“Ah! Have you a favor to ask me, I hope?”
“I do, I’m afraid. This cottage of yours. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let us move in earlier than planned?”
“I’d be delighted. How early did you have in mind?”
A muffled crash reached Iris, as of books tumbling from a shelf. “Just a moment,” she said to Philip and put the receiver to her chest. “Mrs. Betts! Everything all right?”
A few seconds passed. Mrs. Betts called back, “Quite all right, Mrs. D!”
Iris lifted the receiver back to her ear.
“I’m so sorry, Philip. Would tomorrow be too soon?”
Ruth
June 1952
Rome, Italy
For a moment, I don’t understand why Sumner Fox should be standing there in Orlovsky’s studio, when he’s supposed to be back in New York.
Then I whip around and stab Orlovsky in the chest with my finger. “You bastard! I thought I could trust you!”
“You can trust him,” says Fox. “I paid him a visit last night and explained the scope of the situation.”
“The scope? The scope?”
“Miss Macallister, may I remind you that the operation to extract your sister from Moscow originated with me? That I may be privy to information I haven’t yet had the opportunity or inclination to discuss with you?”
“Bambina, let me pour some wine,” says Orlovsky.
“I don’t want your damned wine. I asked you to find somebody who could help me get into Moscow—”
“But I did! I found best man for job.”
“He found you, you mean.”
“What difference, so long as you have best chance of success? Just because he is big, strong man—man you can’t boss around so easily—”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Orlovsky looks away swiftly, but not before I notice the little smile at the corner of his mouth. I turn back to Fox.
“For all I know, you’re here to sabotage me.”
Fox swings around the side of the drafting table and props his big body against it. One leg crosses over the other. His hands curl around the thick wooden edge. He speaks slowly, as he always does, in that comforting tone of voice. “Miss Macallister, I have a confession to make, though I suspect you already know it. I’ve been handling the Digby case for some years. Before they defected, even. I happen to admire your sister a great deal. There is nothing I want more than to help her out of her present difficulty. So it seems to me that our purposes are not in the least opposed to each other.”
“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”
“I say it because it’s true. I haven’t told you everything I know, because I can’t. That’s the nature of this job. But I have always conducted my affairs in as honorable a fashion as I can. To lay as many cards as possible upon the table, depending on how well I can trust the person sitting across from me. I would like to trust you, Miss Macallister, and I hope you can trust me. I don’t believe I overstate the case when I say that your sister’s life depends on it.”
He’s not a handsome man, Sumner Fox, as I’ve already explained. His wide, blunt face bears no more resemblance to the exquisite men I’ve signed to the Hudson Agency than an army boot resembles a custom Italian shoe. The ruff of hair on his head is an afterthought, so pale it’s nearly white. His nose looks as if someone’s nudged it gently to one side. The most you can say of his looks is that they’re arresting—no pun intended—and yet I can’t seem to look away from him. I stare into his colorless eyes the way you stare into a mirror. I badly want a cigarette.
“What makes you think you can trust me, Mr. Fox?”
He stares at me as if this isn’t what he was expecting me to say. Then he reaches behind his back and lifts a manila envelope. His arm is remarkably long, like a gorilla’s. He offers me the envelope.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“What I was busy obtaining for you last weekend. You see, Miss Macallister, I already know a great deal about you. I hope that doesn’t disturb you. I know that your father took his life in 1929, when you were eleven years old, and your mother died of cancer when you were twenty. You attended the Chapin School in Manhattan from 1923 until 1935, when you graduated and enrolled at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, along with your twin sister, and earned a bachelor’s degree in geology, of all things—”
“I like rocks,” I say.
“—and then traveled with your sister to Rome, where your brother worked in the consular services department of the US embassy.”
“Congratulations on your fine detective work, Mr. Fox. Those are all nice facts.”
“Signore Orlovsky,” says Fox, in perfect Italian, and without looking away, “may I beg you for a moment of privacy with Miss Macallister?”
“Yes, of course.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Orlovsky bow—briefly—and walk out of the studio.
“Your Italian’s a lot better than mine,” I tell Fox.
“Language is a hobby of mine. May I continue?”
I don’t especially want him to continue. I have a bad feeling about his continuing. Still, I shrug back as if I don’t care. As if I’m curious to discover what he knows about me.
“During the course of your winter in Rome, you began a relationship with a Russian émigré and fashion designer by the name of Valeri Valierovich Orlovsky. The affair broke off around the third week of March, just before your sister’s accident brought you both into contact with Mr. Digby.”
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Fox. I don’t know where the hell you’ve been getting your facts, but I don’t see that my private life is any of your business—”
He shakes his head. “I’m not interested in prurient details, and I don’t care how you conduct your personal affairs. We are all different. We are all locked in struggle with our own demons. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t make some effort to understand the psychology of everyone connected to this case, Miss Macallister. You asked me how I knew I could trust you, and I’m telling you.”
“Jesus Christ.”
He sends me a hard look. I presume that whatever tolerance he extends to my sexual history, he doesn’t enjoy hearing the name of his Lord taken in vain. “At the beginning of May, you made plans to leave Rome. You booked a second-class cabin in the steamship Antigone for you and Mrs. Digby—then, of course, still Miss Macallister—but at the last minute, she elected to stay in Rome with Mr. Digby. You traveled home to New York, sharing your cabin with a Mrs. Slocombe, who recalled that you were subdued and—I quote her—under the weight of some great sorrow.”
“That’s only because Mrs. Slocombe wouldn’t stop talking.”
“Two years after your return, you found a job as Mr. Hudson’s secretary, taking over more of his duties following his stroke in the summer of 1944. The agency enjoyed great success under your administration. During the war, you organized your more celebrated clients to sell government bonds, and for propaganda efforts under the direction of the War Department. Just about everyone who’s worked with you—clients, government officials, advertising executives, magazine editors, even business rivals—describes you as fiercely intelligent, honorable, tough but fair, and not above using your personal charisma to achieve advantage on behalf of the models you represent.”
Sometime during the course of this disquisition, I find a seat on the wide, deep couch. I cross my legs and light a cigarette from my pocketbook, and my God, I have never needed one more badly.