When we came out of Hewlett's room, I told Mary in a low voice as we were walking along the corridor:
"We've agreed, haven't we, that you will give me all useful information about your Russian client whom you're to meet at the British embassy, does it hold, Mary?"
She gave me a thoughtful look and muttered:
"I remember our agreement, but I can't promise you anything definite. I will do anything to protect Mr Hewlett, whatever the threats might be."
"I understand that Mr Hewlett can't wish anything harmful for himself. But you, Mary, can you tell harmful from useful for Mr Hewlett, can't you? A million dollars only to let you see that they are serious and solid people, how do you judge that? Is it good for Mr Hewlett?"
She was silent for a few seconds, then she said softly:
"I don't know. It's all so unusual. I must think."
"You don't have time to think. You have thought up to now. Now it's time for action. I tell you what: don't believe anything you will hear there. If your other partner promises you the moon, don't believe him. If he brings a briefcase like that full of money..., but I don't think he will bring one, not in the British embassy. He may offer a cheque, it may be good, but nevertheless have it checked at once, if it's good, ask him for documents of all sorts, from the personal ID card to contracts. He's afraid of the competition, like Ivanov, that is he's afraid to die, they're worth each other, you can see what bad and even worth instincts capitalism has brought about in Russia, where are gone our best moral principles, cordiality, friendship, pity, generosity, the Russians have always been the most moral people in the world. And now they're are trying to infect Mr Hewlett with this ignominious virus of the accumulation."
She gave me an incredulous look and grinned as she saw my laughing eyes.
We reached the door of her suite. She said:
"I shall see what I can do to duly inform you and thus to ensure protection for Mr Hewlett, or, at least to caution him against an unreasonable course of action", Mary said ceremoniously, giving me her hand.
Pavel, who chanced to be near, a few paces behind us, very inconspicuous in his professional way, told me swiftly in low voice:
"Ask her if she wants us to give her a bug, I'll hide it in her pants, we could follow the talks and know whom we're dealing with."
But Mary already had disappeared behind the heavy door of false mahogany.
"Couldn't you come up with your proposal a bit earlier?" I hissed vexed.
"Sorry, I thought we were short of bugs, but I found one in my breast pocket just now."
"If you'd found it in time, I would have given her a friendly hug and stick it somehow in her bosom".
"And then she would have worn another dress – you know how women are – and we could say farewell to our last bug. Think up a better use for it."
He was right about typical women. But the question was whether Mary was typical enough to change clothes at every coming out of her room. I strongly doubted it.
We decided to stay in the lobby and wait for Hewlett's departure, pretending to be reading a paper. While we were coming down I fixed a moustache under my nose, a pair of smoked glasses to cover my beautiful eyes and a soft hair on my head, turning in an idle tourist in search of strong emotions in a country at high risk. Pavel limited himself to a beard and a wig of tufty reddish hair.
"Now, what drama shall we stage?" he asked.
I laughed looking at his completely changed appearance:
"You look like a clown. I hope it will be a comedy."
"Hardly. With all those bullets around."
"They are not necessarily aimed at you."
"The trouble is, you can be hit by a stray one."
In the lobby there were few persons, so our disguise was not superfluous. Our completely strange faces which came out of nowhere from inside the hotel did not arouse curiosity on the part of the receptionist. That was one of the advantages of the recently conquered freedom which still jealously feared any slightest attempt at its tender existence. Practically all former prohibitions pertaining to security had been lifted, one could enter in any government residence or, even a military unit, without a special permit. There would be an unavoidable return to the previous measures of hard control, but not now, and there were a host of fellows who tried as hurriedly and hard as they could to exhaust this huge amount of sudden freedom for the benefit of their future life in a less free society.
We seated ourselves in a corner under a palm tree and opened newspapers, overlooking the upper edge of the page – very ridiculously looking like secret agents. But there wasn't much to watch. In the lobby there were three or four persons: an old man with a large beard, big whiskers and black hat, allegedly a Jewish clergyman, if he wasn't a disguised secret agent like us, two young men who were waiting for somebody, touching each other occasionally on the open parts of the body, and a woman who wore a large brimmed straw hat which she used aptly to hide her face.
Why should she hide her face? Or was it only an impression of my inflamed imagination? For some time I put her under strict surveillance and caught several clear images of her regular features when she looked up to every newcomer who happened to enter the hotel.
"Look", I told Pavel. "I can be mistaken, but it seems to me that the woman over there with the straw hat..."
"I know what you mean...", Pavel interrupted me, whispering. "She might be his wife. I don't think she's after him. She's after her."
"Who is her?"
Pavel looked at me with a wry face:
"The former secretary."
"Why should she need her?"
"I don't know. She might suspect that they go on seeing each other."
"And? If she finds them out?"
"In all probability she will try to kill her. Moscow now is a perfect place for a murder. Nobody will notice it."
That was right. Ten to fifteen violent deaths per day was a normal rate for Moscow in mid nineties.
"Do you suggest we should have her followed, to protect her possible victims?"
Pavel's face had a puzzled expression. He said with a slight puff:
"There could be unwelcome fallouts of her criminal intent. Do you remember Lena?"
I went cold. The woman could shoot any girl she would detect beside her husband in a love position, or which she would judge as such, to begin with an innocent kiss.
"You must warn her at least."
"Of course I'll do that. As for having her followed, I don't know. Strictly speaking, it doesn't pertain to our main task, nobody will give us a spare agent to do this."
I looked at him feigning entreaty.
"Ok", he said with a sigh. "I can do it myself, unless I'm called back to some other duties. Lena is now our top priority".
I nodded: "Lena's children will be grateful to you".
"Here they are," he said suddenly.
Out of the lift whose doors were in a heavy, ancient styled frame, in that moment appeared Hewlett and Mary. She was wearing a blue tailleur (Pavel muttered: "I can't vouch of course for a new pair of pants") with a long skirt, from under which rather thin legs clad in pale pink stockings were seen. She had a grey scarf round her heck, her hair was neatly brushed.
We raised our newspapers, I was looking at the woman in the lobby who now was staring intensely the pair from under her hat, the space in the lobby was suddenly under a tangible tension of glances which crossed each other like laser beams.
Hewlett and Mary went on slowly to the exit. At some moment Mary looked in our direction and said something to Hewlett. Then she went straight to me. I was too engrossed in an article about the wrongdoings of a French politician to notice her approaching. She went up to me and said:
"Excuse me, where did you get your newspaper?"
I looked up with an enquiring expression. She caught me unawares, I couldn't pretend that I didn't speak English, holding a copy of Daily Telegraph in my hands; on the other hand I couldn't utter a word without running the risk of being found out. I limited myself to mumbling something inarticulate, smiled and pointed to the corner where tilting heaps of newspapers called rare foreign guests for reading.
"Thanks," said Mary and moved in the direction I'd pointed. I gave a look to her pink stockings and above, and couldn't help mentally undressing her, as was my long habit. To my dismay (or relief) I felt it wasn't an unpleasant operation.
"What the hell", muttered Pavel. "I thought for a moment she recognized you."
"No way", I said. "My eyes were covered."
"What are we going to do, if they take a taxi?"
"Anyway we'll follow his wife, not them."
"Now you should change your disguise, Mary must have remembered you."
"Sure."
They really took a taxi of which there was a plenty near the main entrance. Then there was a little scuffle when Hewlett's wife tried to take the next one in line. There was a war between various groups of taxi-drivers, and between taxi-drivers and private drivers. But who wasn't in war in Russia in that moment? All cruel forces of egoism, hatred and pitilessness, for so long repressed, suddenly were reborn and raging in the warm autumn air, which flirted with the slight wind tossing playfully red leaves from the lime trees on the pavements. There were a lot of people who were wearing on their shoulders shabby coats bought ten years before, and an anxious expression on their faces. All were obviously obsessed with the same idea: how will I live next day or two, where will I find a little money to feed myself and my family? If it was freedom, the long-cherished freedom, it was at least a strange one, very unfriendly and gloomy. If a Western reporter could ask them a question: "Do you like your freedom, was it worth fighting and dying for?" he would be, in most cases, looked at with sour sneering and given a shrug, because there would be nothing to say. One in a more philosophical mood would say that being free on the bottom of a deep hole wasn't much of freedom and would ask him with a gloomy grin: "And you, do you consider yourself free in your world? Are you free from your everyday needs, from the government taxation, from bad weather, from attacks of bad mood? You take your civil liberties for real freedom, and you're so self-conceited that you consider yourself entitled to teach others how to live. We're only at the very beginning of the way that you have been going for many centuries now, we'll have to suffer much, to make suffer our children, before we get accustomed to the same way of thinking..."
"Eh, she's pulling up," interrupted Pavel my day-dreaming. I didn't remember entering Pavel's car, his long following Hewlett's wife taxi. I returned quickly to reality.
"What? Why?"
"I don't know." The taxi with Hewlett's wife stopped and she came out of it.
"What the hell," said Pavel. "Did we mistake? No, look".
Hewlett's wife came up to a blonde in a smart dress who was standing near the window-dress of a boutique and gave her a quick hug.
"I'll be damned, this is Hewlett's former secretary."
"They're quite on friendly terms, I'd say."
"But what does it mean? Hewlett's wife doesn't seem to want to kill her. Quite the contrary."
The two women now were going to the same taxi that stayed where Hewlett's wife left it, and got into it.
"This might be a trap," said Pavel.
"For whom?"
"For the secretary, of course."
"Don't you think she can kill her in the car?"
"This is not to be excluded," said Pavel. "The taxi-driver can be easily bribed. Hiding a killed passenger for a right amount of money is not a problem."
"But how did she find her here?"
"I don't know, the fact is she did find her."