Summit (50 page)

She races up the stairs.

* * *

They posed for photos outside the UN, and then proceeded to the room where they had met the previous afternoon. Winn felt tired and a little under the weather, but it was nothing serious, he was sure. Perhaps too much champagne at the state dinner last night. He looked at the abstract painting on the wall.
Peace.
Well, it wasn't such a bad painting. And the sentiment was certainly appropriate.

Roderick Williams had brought him the formula. It was in the briefcase that he placed next to his chair as he went to pour himself a cup of coffee. Grigoriev looked tense. Winn noted his quick glance at the briefcase. Perhaps he would relax when he got the formula.

"You had some trouble at your Mission last night," Winn murmured as he stirred his coffee.

"Yes. Difficult to say what it was all about. I hope it will not interfere with our discussions today."

"Oh, I'm sure it won't." Winn sat down. "We have to get past all this spying and counterspying and the like, don't you agree?"

"I certainly do." Grigoriev cleared his throat. "Well," he said finally, "I wonder if you brought that... item we talked about yesterday."

Winn stared down at his briefcase.

* * *

He stares up through the fog. The woman is shaking him, shouting at him. He tenses, ready to fight again. But she doesn't want to fight. "You must leave," she says. "It is dangerous. You cannot stay."

He gazes at her through the fog. She looks frightened and exhausted and very young. His head hurts; there is a fog inside as well as outside. What is he doing here? Why did she attack him before? Why is she helping him now?

"There is no way out," he says, remembering vaguely. "I looked."

"You have to leave the dream," she says.

This makes no sense to him. His head hurts too much for him to be dreaming. "I'm not—" he starts to say.

She shakes her head violently. "No—it is my dream. And you must hurry."

This makes no sense either. But she seems so sure of herself. "How do I leave it?" he demands.

"Jump," she whispers.

"You're crazy. We must be ten stories up."

"I don't think it matters. Reality is different here."

He thinks this may be true, but still he is not about to jump. "Maybe there's another way," he suggests.

"There isn't time!" she shouts. "Come," she says, more calmly. "I'll jump first."

She disappears into the fog. He considers, then struggles to his feet and limps after her. He does feel a sense of urgency, although he has no idea where it comes from. He gropes his way forward and catches up to her at the edge of the roof. "You'll die if you jump," he says.

"Perhaps, but
you
won't die if you jump. You must trust me."

"Why?"

"Because it is my dream," she says. She stares at him for a moment, and then she turns and steps off the edge.

* * *

Falling—perhaps forever. She sees nothing except fog, feels nothing except air rushing by her, the terrifying lack of solidity beneath her. Has she succeeded? Perhaps she will never know. Perhaps that is her punishment.

"I tried, Daniel," she says, but the air swallows her words, and she realizes there is nothing to do but close her eyes—and fall.

* * *

Seconds passed. Grigoriev glanced at his watch: ten minutes past nine. "Is anything the matter, Ted?" he asked.

"What? Oh—oh no. Just... thinking." Winn reached into the briefcase and took out a manila envelope.

* * *

He looks down into the fog. There is no sound of body striking pavement, but what does that mean? He is terrified. Something is happening, but he doesn't know what. Something must be done, but he can't jump. He just can't.

And then he feels something—it takes a moment to realize what. The roof is disappearing beneath his feet. It is slowly losing its firmness, turning into the consistency of sand, then jelly. He looks down: it is shimmering, going out of focus, like a movie where the projectionist has fallen asleep. He senses that the whole building is about to disappear.

It is her dream, he recalls, and now she is gone.

He cannot think any longer. He must forget about his terror and do something. He closes his eyes and says a prayer.

Then he follows her off the edge.

* * *

Winn stared at the manila envelope for a moment, then slowly put it back. What could he have been thinking of? He laughed softly to himself, as if to cover his embarrassment. Was he all right? He felt a little dizzy, but otherwise fine. But to consider simply giving the formula away... Poole had opposed even telling the American public about it. You can't just rush into these things for the sake of getting a treaty.

"Aren't you going to give me the formula, Ted?" Grigoriev asked.

And why did Grigoriev want the formula
now?
It just didn't make any sense. "Changed my mind, Pavel," he replied. He shut the briefcase. Then he took a breath. "I think that if we're going to consider a comprehensive arms-reduction treaty," he began, "we should first look at the Soviet Union's record of compliance with past treaties it has signed. And we should also consider its outrageous interference in America's internal affairs with respect to the murder of Colonel Thomas Poole...."

As he started in on his speech, he realized that he was in a very bad mood—probably because he had narrowly avoided making a colossal blunder.

Well, Grigoriev was just going to have to suffer for it.

* * *

Grigoriev listened to Winn's harangue with the patient blankness of someone who has heard such things many times before. That was that, then. No treaty, no progress, but the worst outcome had been averted: Grigoriev was not going to resign. He had done his job, but for some reason the plan had failed utterly. Winn was as anti-Soviet as ever. And Volnikov was ruined.

Eventually Grigoriev stopped listening altogether, and instead started planning exactly how he was going to tell Volnikov about his new assignment.
The work is difficult, comrade, but you'll love the climate.
Ah, well.

Thou art my grave, wherein I cast

Forever all my sorrow past.

—Friedrich Ruckert

~

Widmung

Strips of shredded programs streamed from the balcony. An endless parade of people laid bouquets at his feet. The hall seemed to shake with the applause. He smiled. He bowed his head in gratitude and humility. He held out his arms to the audience, as if embracing it. And then he sat back down at the piano for a final encore. The audience sighed with pleasure, seated itself also, and rustled its way into silence.

The piece began softly—just a rhythmic figure in the left hand. That was enough to make people sigh again, however. It was
Widmung
—Dedication—a Liszt transcription of a Schumann song; one of his specialties now. Strange to have a dedication at the end of the performance, perhaps, but no one was complaining.

Like most Liszt, it soon became overwrought—the left hand declaiming the melody while the right hand cascaded over the keyboard—before finally subsiding at the end to a repetition of its rhythmic beginning. Near the end there was also a quotation from Schubert's
Ave Maria,
to let you know the object of Liszt's own dedication.

The audience knew to whom
he
was dedicating the piece. They knew everything about him. He was more romantic than Liszt, more heroic than Beethoven. And he could also play the piano. When the last chord had died away to silence, they stood and cheered again, pleading for one more encore, but it was not to be. He waved and was gone, the spell ended, and thoughts of cabs and weather reports and where did I put my gloves slowly replaced the magic he had wrought.

"Wonderful," Hershohn exclaimed backstage. "You were never better."

"Not bad, except for the
Waldstein,"
he murmured. And then he went into his dressing room to throw up.

* * *

The limousine pulled up to the high gates. The driver pressed a code in a device on the dashboard, and the gates opened. He drove through, and the gates swung shut behind him. The limousine continued up the winding drive, coming to a stop in front of the brightly lit house.

"Good night, sir," the driver said.

"Good night," Daniel Fulton replied from the backseat, and he got out.

It was snowing. The world was white and soft and silent. Fulton closed his eyes for a moment and felt the flakes on his face, felt the silence. Then he walked up to the front door of the house. Above it, a camera was blinking red, red, red. He inserted a card in a slot by the door, punched a code, and the door opened for him. He stepped inside.

It was warm. In the front-hall mirror, he could see the reflection of a fire burning. He could hear the flames sizzle and crackle in the silence. "I'm here," he whispered, and he walked into the living room.

Valentina came toward him out of the darkness beside the fireplace. Instead of a rose, she was holding a glass of milk. "Welcome home," she said. They embraced, and she gave him the milk. "Hungry?" she asked.

"Starving."

His spinach salad was waiting for him on a table in front of the fire. He sat down on the sofa next to the table and began to eat.

Valentina sat next to him. "How did it go?" she asked.

"I muffed the octave glissandos in the
Waldstein,"
he said. "Other than that, it was okay."

"Hershohn called. He said the crowd wanted to carry you off on its shoulders."

"Yeah. Well."

They smiled. Fulton drank his milk. When he was finished, he sat back on the sofa and silently watched the fire. Valentina put her head on his shoulder. Fulton could still feel the applause coursing like an electric charge through his body. Not so different from that first recital in Moscow—when he had astounded even himself. When Valentina had first come to him out of the darkness.

Not so different, and yet everything had changed.

He closed his eyes.

* * *

He had played moderately well at the White House command performance. Of course President Winn came up to him afterwards and gushed. Winn complimented more than his piano playing. "You're a brave man, Mr. Fulton, and you have my personal thanks in addition to the thanks of the American people."

"You're welcome." Fulton, too, had more on his mind than piano playing. "But if you really wanted to show your gratitude, you might work harder to improve relations with the Soviet Union."

Winn smiled. "Won't happen for a while, I'm afraid. What you had to say at that press conference frightened the entire nation. That fear isn't going to disappear quickly. There are still people out there who think I'm a commie spy, like Colonel Poole. I've got to keep proving them wrong. And Grigoriev has to be just as mean as I am to keep from losing face in his country. So it's back to the Cold War!"

"Except that now you've got new weapons to work on. Human weapons."

Winn shrugged. "We have to protect ourselves. I understand your concern, of course. You're afraid we'll still want to use Valentina."

"Is that such a foolish worry?"

"Not at all. Would it help if I gave you my word that we'll never do such a thing? And we'll keep the Soviets from doing it too." Winn stared at him. "You don't believe me, do you?"

He shook his head.

"You have a right to be skeptical, of course. But what more can I say?"

He didn't know.

* * *

"I want to make a lot of money."

This didn't seem to faze Hershohn. In fact, he seemed thrilled by the idea. "Happy to oblige, Daniel."

"And I want you to help me set up security systems—guard dogs, electric fences, bodyguards, the works."