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"When are you going, exactly?" C asked.
"We leave tomorrow," said Fitz. "Good-bye. "
{II}
Grigori Peshkov watched his younger brother, Lev, taking money off the tall American. Lev's attractive face wore an expression of boyish eagerness, as if his main aim was to show off his skill. Grigori suffered a familiar pang of anxiety. One day, he feared, Lev's charm would not be enough to keep him out of trouble.
"This is a memory test," Lev said in English. He had learned the words by rote. "Take any card. " He had to raise his voice over the racket of the factory: heavy machinery clanking, steam hissing, people yelling instructions and questions.
The visitor's name was Gus Dewar. He wore a jacket, waistcoat, and trousers all in the same fine gray woollen cloth. Gr
igori was especially interested in him because he came from Buffalo.
Dewar was an amiable young man. With a shrug, he took a card from Lev's pack and looked at it.
Lev said: "Put it on the bench, facedown. "
Dewar put the card on the rough wooden workbench.
Lev took a ruble note from his pocket and placed it on the card. "Now you put a dollar down. " This could be done only with rich visitors.
Grigori knew that Lev had already switched the playing card. In his hand, concealed by the ruble note, there had been a different card. The skill-which Lev had practised for hours-lay in picking up the first card, and concealing it in the palm of the hand, immediately after putting down the ruble note and the new card.
"Are you sure you can afford to lose a dollar, Mr. Dewar?" said Lev.
Dewar smiled, as the marks always did at that point. "I think so," he said.
"Do you remember your card?" Lev did not really speak English. He could say these phrases in German, French, and Italian, too.
"Five of spades," said Dewar.
"Wrong. "
"I'm pretty sure. "
"Turn it over. "
Dewar turned over the card. It was the queen of clubs.
Lev scooped up the dollar bill and his original ruble.
Grigori held his breath. This was the dangerous moment. Would the American complain that he had been robbed, and accuse Lev?
Dewar grinned ruefully and said: "You got me. "
"I know another game," Lev said.
It was enough: Lev was about to push his luck. Although he was twenty years old, Grigori still had to protect him. "Don't play against my brother," Grigori said to Dewar in Russian. "He always wins. "
Dewar smiled and replied hesitantly in the same tongue. "That's good advice. "
Dewar was the first of a small group of visitors touring the Putilov Machine Works. It was the largest factory in St. Petersburg, employing thirty thousand men, women, and children. Grigori's job was to show them his own small but important section. The factory made locomotives and other large steel artifacts. Grigori was foreman of the shop that made train wheels.
Grigori was itching to speak to Dewar about Buffalo. But before he could ask a question the supervisor of the casting section, Kanin, appeared. A qualified engineer, he was tall and thin with receding hair.
With him was a second visitor. Grigori knew from his clothes that this must be the British lord. He was dressed like a Russian nobleman, in a tailcoat and a top hat. Perhaps this was the clothing worn by the ruling class all over the world.
The lord's name, Grigori had been told, was Earl Fitzherbert. He was the handsomest man Grigori had ever seen, with black hair and intense green eyes. The women in the wheel shop stared as if at a god.
