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Hale opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said, "Yes." The abrupt question, coming from her, had caught him off-guard. We will speak of worldly things only. He knew that Theodora would have expected him to live his cover-deny any SIS connection and talk about his work in fertilizer manufacture-but this was Elena! And France was an ally. Nevertheless he could feel himself blushing at having so instantly broken his cover, and he bolted the rest of his second glass of brandy and glanced around for the waiter.
"Duplication," she said, "parallel sections, secrets within secrets. That arrogant man, Kim-we know he is an SIS section head, but he didn't know you had been sent here. It is informative to know that the SIS was aware of the action tonight, and had two men independently observing. They have not held it against you, the work you did for the GRU in Paris?"
Again Hale opened his mouth without speaking, and he felt his face getting hotter. "-No," he said. The waiter had walked up to the table, and Hale hastily ordered four more brandies. The old man nodded and walked away without picking up the four emptied glasses.
Elena's frown had deepened. "Ah, you were working for the British secret service even then. You were-a double."
Hale was stung by the tone of accusation. "You work for the French now," he protested. "Against the...the Party." Which you once described to me as your husband, he thought sourly. He wanted to ask her what had happened when she obeyed the summons to Moscow in January of 1942, but while he was trying to phrase the question, she spoke again.
"I work for them honestly," she said, "as I worked then for the Party-honestly."
Hale remembered her leaving the Philippe St.-Simon passport in a dubok for him, but that had been too gallant an act, and too beneficial to himself, for him to raise it now as an objection. "You would not now do undercover work for the DGSS?" he asked instead.
"I would. My loyalties have changed."
"Mine have not."
She leaned forward and gripped his hand in her cold fist. "But it was-you and me, do you understand? I was sincere."
The four fresh brandies arrived then, and with his free hand Hale dug out two packs of cigarettes to pay for them. When the waiter had again retreated, Hale said, "I was sincere too, where it was you and me. Hell, I was sincere in the work, that must have been obvious. Russia and England were allies against Germany."
"But you went home and reported it all." She was still holding his hand, loosely, but she was staring down at the table.
"I'm being honest here," Hale told her, "and I promise you I did not report...you and me."
"Thank you." She shrugged, still looking down. "But there was a core of deceit. I would not have-gone to bed with you, if I had known who you were really working for."
"I-well, no, I suppose not," conceded Hale.
She sighed, and met his eyes. "I really was an atheist, you know; then, in Paris."
"I know." He had noted her exclamation Bozhe moy! tonight on the boat, and he knew that the phrase was Russian for My God!-and he had heard her reciting the Hail Mary in Spanish, and twice she had made the sign of the cross. Avoiding any mention of the events of the evening, he simply said, "And I know you are not anymore."
She squeezed his hand, and he returned the pressure. "Actually," she said, "I think I was never an atheist. But I realized it in the Lubyanka basements. They had not called me back from Paris to kill me, as it turned out, but to initiate me into the transcendent order of Soviet espionage. It involved imprisoning me in the Lubyanka, and at one point there they-seemed to kill me. Outside of the prison I had by then learned the truth about my-cherished communism; and when I seemed to die, there in the Lubyanka, I prayed to the Virgin Mary. I made a vow to her-I swore that, if she would intercede to free me, I would come back to Moscow on my fortieth birthday, and light a candle in St. Basil's Cathedral right there in Red Square, at high noon; and I promised her that I would..."
After a few seconds Hale said, "That you would-?"
Her answering smile seemed sad. "I won't tell you."
"When were you born?"
"Never mind." Then she shrugged. "Oh, but you could find it out, I'm sure-April 22, Andrew, in 1924!" She went on hastily: "But do you-imagine that you are an atheist-still?"
It wasn't God that we saw tonight, he thought. And the thing we saw-it bowed, when I waved the ankh, and it came to me when I called it.
He had been terrified, and had tried, without success, to recite the Pater Noster-but there had been immense fascination, too, and immense approachable power. And he had shot at two men, had perhaps killed them, and now he was disturbed but relieved to find that, for the moment at least, that action was in some concussed part of his memory, numb.
He knew that if he were to go to a Catholic priest in a confessional, all of this would look very ugly indeed.
Which perspective is true? he thought. Which do I want to be true?
He looked at her and shook his head. "I don't know."
She laughed fondly. "You are frank, but not honest. And I think you are a fool. But you have again blithely put yourself in mortal peril to save my life, and tomorrow morning Claude and I must fly back to Algiers to report our failure, and God knows when or if you and I may see each other again. I do love you, Andrew-d'un tumulte!-and-if you have no scruples!-I would very much like us to find a room together, on-on this fearful night." She was blushing, and Hale realized almost incredulously that she was hardly more than twenty years old. "Perhaps it will not be a sin," she said, pushing her bench back and reaching for her coat. "Cassagnac did marry us, tonight."
"Yes," Hale said unsteadily. "God, yes." His heart was thumping under his wet shirt. "Cassagnac formalized it," he added as he stood up, "but in my heart we have been married ever since our last night in Paris."
He touched one of the remaining full glasses of brandy, but then just deliberately knocked it over on the table, and with trembling hands helped Elena put on her wet coat instead.
