Mary was seated on her place staring into space. She waved her hand at the armchair near her.
"Did you see Pavel?" said Mary.
"Not yet. What's up?"
"He was attacked by unknown persons and beaten up. The briefcase was taken away. I think the one mister Sidorov brought here today is the same."
"And what about Pavel's son?"
"They freed him and brought him near Pavel's house, he saw him, he's safe."
"It's good news, really", I said with a sigh of relief. "How do you know all that?"
"Pavel called me on my cell-phone, because yours was off. His English is good enough to tell me all that."
'Oh, God!" I took out my cell phone and saw that Mary was right.
I looked straight at Mary and said:
"Can you tell me now who brought the briefcase to Pavel in the morning? Were it you?"
"No", she said, dropping her eyes. I wondered whether she was capable of lying.
"Neither did I," I said with a puzzled smile. "Then who did it?"
"I don't know," said Mary without raising her eyes. She wasn't good at lying.
"Do you know who killed Hewlett's women?"
"I suppose someone who was interested in it."
"You wanted to discuss something with me?" I dropped any attempt of getting to the truth. And, frankly speaking, what would the truth change?
"No, I wanted to tell you something that might interest you. It concerns our today's talks at the British embassy."
"Yes, what's that?"
"This man Sidorov is a weird person, he seems an intermediary and a businessman, as I thought, but in reality he's a desperate scientist in search of financing for the crazy ideas, his and of his colleagues. 'Crazy' is not a negative word, crazy ideas have changed the world, mostly for the better. He wanted to interest Robert by the military aspect of their invention or discovery, because they know that for the moment that's their only chance to get financing."
"But," I interrupted her, "the million dollars?..."
"They tried to interest the local racketeers, but didn't succeed, that million is the mob's advance for something impossible they had promised the mob and now have to work to do something. I dug through my memory and found something about their laboratory. You know, I do a lot of reading every day, that's become my second nature, I keep enormous archives in my brain. Did you know that the brain of an average human has memory capacities comparable with the number of atoms present in the Universe? The difficulty is to be able to manage this store room. So, I remember running into a small article about their laboratory. It was in mocking tone, like about inventors of another perpetuum mobile. In fact, they have discovered a source for a perpetuum mobile, that wasn't a circus trick, you saw it with your own eyes."
"You were rather sceptical about it", I mumbled.
"Now I'm not anymore, because I know this is science, not business."
"Will you try to convince Hewlett of it?"
"I will, but I'm not sure I'll succeed."
"Then, you wanted to tell me something about the other man at the embassy."
"Yes, I'm sorry, I strayed from the topic. The other man is very businesslike, and he's practically a traitor to his country. Was this fact that interested you?"
"The fact is," I said with a sigh, "patriotism is now obsolete. Everybody wants only to get rich, at any cost. I don't know if he will be formally charged if found out."
"He reveals military secrets of his country and gets paid for it. What other is betrayal if not this? He is aware of it, otherwise he wouldn't hide so carefully his identity."
She paused and said:
"And there's another thing. He thinks that you might recognize him, and he might take measures to neutralize you, do you realize what it means?"
"What? How possibly can he know that about me? And how did you learn about that?"
Mary kept silent for a few seconds, then said:
"I have a very close contact with Robert. He knows I'm the only person he can fully trust. He's told me this morning what he had learned during last night. That's all. Now judge for yourself."
"You want to say that..."I started and stopped, struck by a sudden guess.
Mary shook her head:
"I wouldn't like to be a scandalmonger. Think and make your conclusions."
She rose to her feet, giving me to understand that our interview was over.
"Do you still want to be a patriot, at any cost?" she said with a faint smile on her lips. She was good-humored now.
I shrugged and said nothing, though a thought was buzzing around in my head like a pesky fly:
"Patriotism is a commodity like any other thing." I had heard it many times in those wild years of the rebirth of capitalism. Whenever I was tempted by it, a rhetorical question always came up, God knows why, that I had heard a couple of times from different people: "Can be good and just a society based upon greed and callousness protected by law?"
"What are you going to do, Mary?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. With your life."
She didn't feign puzzlement, she perfectly understood me.
She kept silent a little, then shook her head and said:
"I'm going to stay with Robert. He needs me, as a true friend, not interested in money or social standing. He sees that, he has always lacked it in his previous life. Ah, by the way, you know, that striking beauty, the journalist who interviewed him, he seems to have fallen for her, she's coming with him in Great Britain. He was so happy in the morning after spending a night with her that the news about his former women went almost unnoticed. Curious, right?"
"Is he going to marry her?" I said, looking at Mary with a stunned look on my face.
"Probably. He has asked me for my opinion and advice."
"And what was your advice?"
"I told him not to hurry, it's obvious. But now it's useless, he's mad about her."
"And how do you judge her? Is she as much in love with him?"
Mary shrugged:
"I don't know. Frankly, she seems to me more pragmatic, than in love. Of course, I may be mistaken, he's a charming man and all that, but..."
For a few seconds Mary was a pitiful sight, her eyes turned misty, her voice got broken. But she pulled herself together quickly. She forced herself to smile and said:
"I already told you so and can repeat it. Somehow I saw you very fit for that journalist, you would make such a striking couple. Just intuition."
I said with a forced smile:
"I barely know her" (that was almost true ). "She's surely lovely, but from here to staying together for the whole life..., I don't know."
Mary extended her hand:
"Have a nice day. I don't know if we're going to meet again, we'll go straight to the airport from the embassy. It was a pleasure, more than a pleasure, take this not only as a polite phrase."
I shook her small hand and said:
"The pleasure was mine. Mary, could I ask you for a favour?"
"Sure, what's that?"
"That man you're going to see at the embassy, would you tell him on my part that I don't know him and have never met him in my life?"
She gave me a long look and faintly smiled:
"Sure, you can rely on me for that."
I pecked her on the chubby cheek and left.