Hot Siberian (33 page)

He went back to his chair and attempted to summarize his impression of the room. There was an eclectic harmony to it, erotic while at root romantic. Or was it the other way around? He doubted that Savich usually allowed business associates in here, not unless he wanted to allow them into his self. Then why me? Nikolai wondered. He poured another inch of whiskey into his glass. The friction and clinks of the stopper of the crystal decanter seemed loud. He heard his throat's slick swallowing mechanism. He would avoid the subject of Vivian if he could, he decided. The less he talked about her the better.

Savich returned.

“My phone call took longer than I expected,” he said apologetically.

Nikolai thought Savich had probably sacrificed his engagement for that evening, disappointed someone lovely.

“And I had to make sure dinner would be right. We're having calves' liver. Does that suit you?”

“I planned to take the nine-o'clock back to Leningrad.”

“It will be all booked.”

“I bribed the seating agent.”

“Then you've wasted money,” Savich insisted wryly, ending that. He pulled a taboret closer between their chairs. An oversize book was open on it. Savich closed the book and propped it against the leg of the table. Nikolai noticed its title:
The World's Great Power Yachts
. Savich put his feet up on the taboret, and indicated that Nikolai should do the same. Having their feet so mutually supported and in such proximity was a very unexpected sharing for Nikolai. It made him feel less relaxed. He couldn't help but compare his black, mainly useful Soviet shoes with the smart brown Ferragamo loafers Savich had on. Savich's socks were cotton lisle with some silk in it, woven so a subtle embroidered dart ran up over the knub of his ankle.

“How about something to hold you until dinner?” Savich suggested.

“No, thank you.”

“Are you sure? I can have Do Kien prepare something. Would you like some sterlet?”

Nikolai loved that smallest of sturgeon, and they were almost impossible to come by. “I'll save my appetite for dinner,” Nikolai said.

“Good. Then we'll be gluttons.” Savich took three successive small gulps from his glass. He frowned just perceptibly and tugged at the hairs on the backs of his fingers. He brought the aim of his eyes around so it was directly at Nikolai. Nikolai imagined a black beam coming from Savich's pupils, locking in on him, a ray that prompted and extracted. What had Vivian seen in Savich's irises? When Nikolai had asked her, in fact asked her twice, she'd dodged the question. If she'd answered it might have been helpful now.

“When we were in London together,” Nikolai said, “you told me in your opinion I'd performed well on my job.”

“You have. You've done extremely well.”

“It's not much of a challenge. Mainly all I do is soak up Churcher's complaints and tremble on cue.”

“You're being remarkably modest. Truth is, you've got things there on the London end running so smoothly they seem routine. I hardly ever hear even a caution from our legal department, and it used to always be stirring up problems. Our transportation people are more punctual than ever with our shipments to the System, because you've kept on top of them. All in all, Nikolai, it's no strain for me to commend you.”

“Thank you.”

“You know, every feather you put into your cap also goes into mine.”

“You mentioned there was a place for me here in Moscow whenever I might want it.”

“When did I say that?”

“We were in the car coming from the System. It was a Friday.”

“I don't recall.”

Nikolai doubted Savich ever forgot anything.

“Anyway, is such an offer possible?”

“You want to be assigned to Moscow?”

“Yes.”

“Why the hell would you give up the spot you now enjoy to be in the frenzy of this bureaucratic hive?”

“It's just that I've had my fill of London, of Churcher and the System and all.”

“Seems you've given this thought.”

“Plenty.”

“You know, of course, there are countless comrades who would sell their souls to be in your London shoes.”

A nod from Nikolai, conceding that. The way he saw it, reassignment to Moscow was essential to his resolve. The protection of distance. He wouldn't even return to London to get his personal belongings if he could help it. He'd have someone from the embassy ship everything. As for the clothing and other things of his that were at Vivian's flat and down at her house in Devon, he'd just consider them lost. He pictured her throwing them in the trash bin. The middle of his chest panged as though it had caved in.

“Perhaps you're letting ambition get the best of you,” Savich said.

“Would that be so terrible?”

“No, but it would be ordinary and therefore disappointing. I had you, especially you, standing out from the pack, from all those desperate climbers.”

Nikolai assumed from that that he'd been on Savich's mind to a greater extent than he'd realized. He considered it a compliment.

“What is it you see ahead for yourself, Nikolai? A deputy ministership?”

“Possibly.”

“Or could the destination you have in mind be my job?”

Nikolai laughed tensely.

“You wouldn't care for it,” Savich said, “believe me. Discount the privileges. Eventually they get taken for granted, and then what else is there?”

Nikolai thought of Lev, how the stripping of his privileges had so shattered him. He decided upon what he would say next but he paused a long moment to give it weight. He told Savich: “I've lost my sense of place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I seem to no longer have a Russian perspective.”

“You shouldn't admit that, not even here.”

“I've been with the trade mission in London for six years. That's nearly half my adult life. The other afternoon I tabulated it and found that of my last two thousand, one hundred and ninety days I spent altogether only seventy-eight here in my own country, and thirty of those way out in forsaken Aikhal.”

“I had no idea your being in London was such a hardship. Quite the contrary—my impression was that if we ever wanted you back you might not come.”

“Defection has never entered my mind.”

“Of course it has. Anyone in your circumstances would be seriously attracted to that option.”

“So, isn't that all the more reason to bring me home?”

“Or perhaps,” Savich said, matter-of-fact, “it's good reason to have you there.”

Nikolai didn't know how to take that. Was it an oblique suggestion that he defect? Surely not. Savich meant leaving him in London would be a good test of the strength of his loyalty. That had to be it. “It's just that I have this feeling of being neither-nor.”

“It will pass.”

“I've had the symptoms, so to speak, for quite some time. A year, a year and a half.”

“Why haven't you mentioned it until now?”

“I've been putting it off. A couple of weeks ago in Pushkin Park a whore mistook me for a Western visitor.”

Savich was amused. “What an insult.”

A slight shrug from Nikolai.

“You've had a falling-out with Vivian.”

“Not really.”

“To cause such a crisis you must have quarreled over something important.”

“We
did not
quarrel.”

“And I suppose she didn't phone me four times.”

“Four times?” Nikolai had assumed Vivian had called Savich once and given up after that. Four was a much more gratifying number for him. It meant Vivian's pain was at a pitch equal to his own and, quite possibly, that she also wasn't getting any good sleep. It might mean she too lay in bed in the dark and suffered when, reaching with her legs, she touched nothing. She too was deadened from the waist down while short-circuited, incapable of interest or concentration, on the verge of exploding, from the neck up. It could even mean she wasn't having Archer around, wouldn't let him in, absolutely wouldn't let him in, had seen him once and not found him such a comfortable sanctuary, Nikolai thought.

Savich removed his feet from the taboret. He sat forward and pressed: “Tell me about it.”

As much as Nikolai had assured himself that he wanted to avoid the subject, it came pouring out. He was like a man just released from a long solitary confinement, grateful for an ear. He related the Baden-Baden episode and all that had led up to it. He didn't just hit upon the high points but got down fairly deep into some of the emotional chasms.

Savich was the perfect listener. The little nods of his head encouraged Nikolai on. He remained rapt and silent even when Nikolai paused for comment. Finally, at the half-hour mark, Nikolai began repeating himself and Savich decided he'd absorbed enough. He sat back and returned his feet to the taboret. “You abandoned her,” he said, not accusingly.

“I got out while I still could.”

“You must have been furious at her.”

Nikolai wouldn't admit to being furious.

“Your grandfather's Fabergé objects were so precious to you. Didn't she realize that?”

“Yes.”

“Then she was aware of the sacrifice you were making.”

Nikolai came close to asserting that his late grandfather had considered Vivian a worthy cause and had urged him to sell the Fabergé things.

“Don't you believe she was insensitive?”

“No.” Adamantly.

“But—”

“Vivian never vowed to change her ways,” Nikolai told him. “In fact, she warned me that she was likely to run right through the money. I guess I just didn't expect that to happen as it did, all at once.”

“You're defending her.”

“Of course I am.”

“Why should you?”

“I love her.”

Savich was pleased with Nikolai's admission. He was like a lawyer who'd just inversely proved a point. Now on to another. “Was leaving her entirely your idea? Or perhaps at one time or another she suggested it.”

“All mine.”

“She must have at least alluded to it.”

“No.”

“Maybe she did but so obliquely that it went right by you. I find it difficult to believe that she had no reservations about the relationship.”

“It's not like Vivian to look very far ahead.”

“But
you
have a telescopic view of the future.”

“Well, in this instance I could see the inevitable.”

“Which was?”

“Brawling, wounding, eventually each of us retreating to our opposite elements. I have no way of satisfying her financial needs now and certainly no such future prospects. At least none of that magnitude.”

“A Communist's fate, eh?”

“You might say. I'd have to have millions. Maybe not as many as Archer but nevertheless millions. You've no idea what a squanderer Vivian is.” Nikolai said that more fondly than he realized.

Savich asked: “Is that honestly the only reason you're not with her this moment?”

Nikolai shrugged.

“It's not merely an excuse?”

“I'm avoiding a lot of unhappiness.”

“And, I must point out, in your overly cautious, self-dispiriting Russian way, depriving both you and Vivian of all the happiness that could be enjoyed between now and your foreseen emotional Armageddon. Nikolai, you're being a damn fool.”

Nikolai brightened. “You really think so?”

“I most certainly do.” Savich looked off. His eyes covered. He was elsewhere, in another time. When he returned to the here and now he told Nikolai softly: “I envy you your Vivian.”

That, Nikolai believed, was like a man who owned a whole hothouse of flowers envying another man's single bouquet.

“She's unique. Like most women with such beauty she uses it, but she doesn't rely on it excessively. She'd be desirable even if she wasn't so beautiful, because not a moment with her would ever be dull. Think about it. Have you ever been bored with her—socially, sexually, whatever? I don't mean have you been exasperated—of course you've been exasperated with her. She'd provoke that. But bored?”

Nikolai honestly couldn't call up one moment of boredom. He'd been entertained even when Vivian and Archer were going through all their ugly-expensive-gift-you'll-have-to-take-it-back-and-get-the-money-for-it routines.

“Your Vivian is living her life more than her life is living her. Ironically, her eccentricities, the very things that make her seem inaccessible to you in the long range, are the very things that have you so taken. Do you doubt that? Well, imagine her without them and what do you have?”

Not his Vivian, Nikolai thought.

“Anyway,” Savich sighed conclusively, “no matter, it's Moscow you want.”

“If possible,” Nikolai said, not able to conceal his diminished conviction.

“It's possible enough. But for me it may not be the most advisable thing at the moment. For some time now I've been criticized for showing favoritism, particularly toward you, for allowing you to remain assigned to London all this while. Nothing to it, of course. I've left you there because you know Churcher so well and apparently he's satisfied with having you to deal with. Besides, there's no reason why you'd be my favorite, is there?” Savich evidently thought Nikolai's reply so obvious he didn't wait for it, went right on. “However, if I were to reassign you to Moscow now it would appear as though I were giving in to the pressure, admitting there was substance to the accusations. Don't you agree?”

Nikolai agreed. But he didn't believe it. Savich had the final say when it came to the
nomenklatura
for the Ministry of Foreign Trade. One had to be on that select list of candidates in order to get anywhere, and Savich could, with a mere word, shift a name from the top to the bottom or have it stricken completely. Furthermore, Nikolai reasoned, Savich was too confident of his standing to react to such petty maneuvering.