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He saw bubbles wobble up through the clear liquor, and heard them gurgling, but no liquid reached his mouth. Then his arm was pulled back down, and the whispering voice in his ear said, "Ahh," and Hale could smell vodka fumes over the metallic oil reek. "Straight ahead, across the street," the voice went on, "there's a park where drunks sun themselves, two blocks away, just alleys to get there."
Hale stumbled out through the arch and swayed and shuffled across the street like a man with a concussion. When he had stumbled up onto the far sidewalk his left leg flexed again, and he wobbled away in that direction. If the KGB men had observed him at all, they must have dismissed him as an unsignifying drunk.
Within a few steps Hale had turned right, off the Spiridonovka; and when he had walked one block down an alley that led away to the north, past windowsill flower boxes and the back doors of old wooden houses, he regained his balance. Out of the corner of his left eye he could see Philby walking along beside him now, and he could hear Philby's boots crunching on the pavement; but Hale didn't look directly at him for fear of overlapping him again. Hale did notice with relief that his own shadow stretched ahead properly from his own feet now, and that Philby's was moving normally beside it, not alarmingly close to it.
As if this ordinary sight were a signal, Hale's heartbeat was suddenly very fast in his chest, and he was panting. "What-" he said hoarsely, "-happened?"
"I often duck in there, or into any cemetery," said Philby quietly, his own voice sounding a little strained, "when I want to lose my escorts. The guardian angel is present in such places, and when she is focusing on me, other people seem to have difficulty doing it." He took a deep breath and sighed gustily. "I guess you're my other half, right enough, my ten-years-delayed twin-today she obviously mistook you and I, authoritatively, for one person." Hale saw the shadow of Philby's head lift and turn in profile toward him. "Not very flattering to me, I must say," Philby added. "What is that garment?"
"Overcoat," said Hale shortly. "Inside-out."
Neither of them said anything more until they had reached the park Philby had mentioned, a narrow grassy square with wooden benches around the periphery. And several of the old men on the benches were holding bottles.
Hale and Philby found an unoccupied bench in the far corner, and sat down heavily enough to creak the boards.
Philby was staring at Hale. "'What brings thee in to me,'" he said, "'seeing that thou art not of my kind and canst not therefore be assured of safety from violence or ill-usage?'"
"The way in which I am of your kind outweighs all the rest," Hale told him, his voice still shaky. "I've come to propose a trade." His heartbeat was slowing down, and at least he was able to speak without gasping. "Do you still have Theo Maly's instructions for preparation of the amomon root? Specifically a copy of those instructions?"
Philby stared at him blankly. "Yes."
"Well, I want a copy. In exchange for that, and for one other thing, I will give you directions to a dead-letter box, a dubok, that I've found here in the city. In the dubok is an inhabited amomon root, wrapped up in waxed paper and rubber bands. It's my suspicion that the Soviet authorities will not have seen fit to provide you with one."
Philby shifted on the bench, then held out his hand for the bottle, which Hale passed to him. "Where," Philby whispered after he had taken a swallow, "did you get a live amomon root?"
"In the Zagros mountains, last spring. The djinn-kill on Ararat was massive-there were whole hillsides of blooming amomon thistles."
"Ah," Philby said. "Yes, there would have been."
Hale took the bottle back and lifted it for another sip. He had to keep reminding himself that Philby had cold-bloodedly betrayed Hale's men in the Ahora Gorge in 1948, for what Hale was proposing here was a cruel fraud: even if Philby should correctly ingest an inhabited amomon root, his bloodstream would spin the primitive djinn past the Shihab shot pellets that were probably still imbedded in his back, and the amomon djinn would be killed instantly, uselessly. There could be no amomon immortality for Philby, though Hale needed him to believe that it was possible.
"What is the 'one other thing' you want, in exchange?" asked Philby.
"The diamond that Prince Feisal gave you in 1919," said Hale, making himself speak without emphasis. "The rafiq stone."
Philby was laughing softly, his puffy face gray in the cold sunlight. "Oh, Andrew! And here you are, devoted boy, in Moscow, on her fortieth birthday! Like Gershwin's Porgy, looking for Bess! I daresay you've got airline tickets, and so you need the rafiq diamond in order to fly out of the Soviet Union with her, unmolested by the angry angels at cruising altitudes! To where, boy? Back to your Bedouins?"
Hale's whole body had gone cold. "She-t-told you?" he said-and remotely it occurred to him that Philby had lost his own stammer. "You?"
"I've always been good about remembering birthdays," Philby said placidly. "Yes, in Dogubayezit she told me about her vow, on the day after nobody succeeded in the Ahora Gorge. 1948, you must remember it. She made a prayer to the Blessed Virgin, right?-when she was imprisoned in the Lubyanka here, during the war: 'I vow that on my fortieth birthday at high noon I will light a candle for you right here in Moscow '-O Mother of God!-'at St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square.' Very devout young lady, I gathered, though she and I-" He chuckled and shook his head, then said, clearly reciting, "'Blue the sky from east to west arches, and the world is wide, though the girl he loves the best rouses from another's side.'" He glanced at Hale. "That's-"
"Housman, I know." Hale ignored the implication. He hadn't allowed for Philby knowing that Elena was supposed to be at the cathedral on this day, and he reconsidered the lines-of-compulsion in his proposed deal with him. "I will give you directions to the dubok that contains the inhabited thistle root-it should be testably genuine, able to animate cigarette ashes placed near it, or to wiggle the legs of freshly killed flies, for example, small agitations-and as soon as I have Maly's directions and the rafiq diamond-"
"My wife Eleanor is living with me here in Moscow," Philby interrupted. "I don't think you met her, back in Beirut, did you? Lovely woman, but her passport expires in July, three months from now, and she's determined to be back in the United States by then. She's got a daughter there, by a previous marriage. She loves me, you understand, but she doesn't want to become just one more of the ring-road birds."
Hale decided to let Philby ramble-it was dangerous to let him control the conversation this way, but Hale might learn something that could be useful as leverage. "Ring-road birds?" he said.
"'Dust is their food and clay is their meat, and they are clothed like birds in garments of feathers,'" Philby said. "Have you met them, the expatriates who've defected, given up their old citizenships-in the service, as they come unhappily to learn, of her? I swear their breath doesn't steam, on winter days!-as if they have no more body heat than trees, or lichens. When it was clear that Eleanor couldn't be dissuaded from catching an Aeroflot flight here to join me, my old pal Nicholas bloody Elliott took her to a London cinema and made her watch The Birds, that new Alfred Hitchcock movie. Have you seen it? Attractive, independent-minded young lady undertakes troublesome travel to be with the fascinating man, but brings down on herself the injurious wrath of the ordinarily timid fowls, and ends up in shock, mute and infirm. I could be a, a king, among that sad population...if I was willing to let go of what shreds of humanity I still possess."
"I met one of them yesterday," Hale said. "He-pitched over dead of fright, while I was talking to him."
Philby laughed and shook his head. "They're frail," he agreed, "individually. In a group, though, they have a certain spiteful power. And their eyes just glitter with sick envy when they learn that Eleanor still has a valid passport! Even Donald Maclean simply shivers when she speaks of flying back to- New York, London. And she is resolved to fly out, in June. And so"-he shrugged and smiled-"I will be without a wife, my boy! I think it was Hemingway who said that the state of being married is unimaginable until you've entered it, and then once you've been married you can't ever imagine not being. I've had three wives, and I'm vigorous enough for at least one more."
"What if," said Hale unsteadily, "Elena doesn't...want you?"
"Do you think that will matter? Here? Droit de komissar, my boy!" Philby reached out one blunt-fingered hand to tousle Hale's hair affectionately, but Hale flinched back when he felt a blade cut his scalp. Philby was unfolding a handkerchief now and scraping onto the monogrammed silk the shred of bloody hair he had cut off with a tiny folding knife.
"There," Philby said with satisfaction as he refolded the handkerchief and tucked it away. "Cheat me now, and I'll have the Mother of Catastrophes on you like a bloodhound, long before you can walk to the nearest border crossing. I don't relish the idea of summoning her and conversing, but I would make a point of it, in this case."
