AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There were policemen in here too, a number of them-it was hard to know how many, for each of the tall pillars that stood up from the floor was as wide as a car viewed head-on; but there were at least six of the uniformed figures standing at various points across the dim nave. Hale didn't glance squarely at any of them, but he imagined that the intrusion of his ragged self must have drawn the unfriendly attention of every one of them.
He couldn't just stand in the doorway.
A tiny constellation of candle flames lit the low reaches of the gold walls in a far corner, and when he began slowly walking across the floor toward the glow, he saw three or four black-hooded women kneeling in front of an iron table with the candles arranged on it in ranks. The candles were tall thin tapers, not the short votive candles in jars he remembered from his youth. The place should have smelled of incense and frail missal-pages, but the only scents he was aware of were damp stone and a diesel taint on the cold air that he had let in from outside. At least he could detect none of the rancid oil reek.
Two of the policemen were standing immediately to the left of the kneeling women, almost leaning against the frescoed wall; Hale pretended to be indifferent to them.
He hesitated and stopped when he was still a dozen feet away from the candles, and he stared at the backs of the women; and his heart began thudding even before he was sure that he recognized the figure and posture of the woman closest to the wall.
She was here, she had arrived safely this far, at least, after all the perilous years and betrayed loyalties. Was she about to be arrested now, and taken back to the Lubyanka?
For more than twenty years she had occupied Hale's thoughts and brightened or tormented his dreams, but the only period in which the two of them had known each other, lived and worked and eaten and joked together, had been the three months in Nazi-occupied Paris, at the end of 1941, more than twenty-two years ago.>He held the remainder of the deck out toward Hale. "Now find yours."
Hale's scalp seemed to have stopped bleeding, and he shoved the handkerchief into his overcoat. He took the cards and stared at Philby's exposed cards as he slowly shuffled through the deck. Philby could have selected a two, three, and five for his hole cards, giving him the perfect low hand, if he wanted to go that way. Hale couldn't even construct a hand that would beat it. Or Philby could have chosen three Aces for his hole cards, which would give him four of them-a high hand Hale couldn't possibly beat.
But Philby could not have assembled a hand that would assuredly win both ways. The best he could do for that would be the Ace-to-five straight, and Hale could have three more nines hidden, and the four-of-a-kind would beat the straight.
Hale began laying out the cards he had had showing in 1948: the three, the seven, the ten, the nine.
The declaration alone would be the verdict-if they both chose in the same direction, Philby would win.
Hale coughed to conceal an involuntary sigh. All delusions aside, he knew which way he had to declare.
Hale chose three cards at random for his hole cards and wedged them under his knee. Beyond Philby he saw that several of the old drunks had got up and were shambling away, doubtless troubled by the itchy resonance of the supernatural attention that Philby had summoned by speaking the name of Solomon.
Philby was digging in a pocket of his trousers. "I'll fetch us six kopeks, for the declare," he said breathlessly. When he had pulled out a handful of coins and begun fingering them, he squinted up at Hale. "Don't you wish it were our birthday, today, instead of Elena's, and we could read each other's minds?"
"I think we can anyway," said Hale.
Philby frowned, and suddenly Hale guessed that Philby had assembled the Ace-to-five straight, and arrogantly meant to declare both ways-confident that Hale would declare for low, that Hale would choose the good chance of immortality over the uncertainty of Elena's dubious reception.
"She hates you, you know," Philby said quickly. "In Beirut she learned that you had supposedly killed that Frenchman, that Cassagnac fellow. She told me-word of honor!-that she meant to kill you."
"I don't doubt it," Hale said, reaching across to select three coins from Philby's palm. He shook them inside his cupped hands like dice. "I'm willing to put it to the test."
Philby forced a hearty laugh. "There spoke bluff! She's forty-she hates you-and there is an infinity of other women in the world." His gaze focused past Hale then, and he drew in a sharp breath. "Ach, and now the groundlings have arrived."
Hale made himself look around slowly, and he was afraid he would see the peculiar hats of the KGB-but the figures that had shambled into the park were thin, pale-faced men and women in shabby overcoats. Hale saw tweeds, and tartans, and even an unmistakable Old Etonian tie. These were the Gray People, the ring-road birds. I could be a king among that sad population, Philby had said. They made no sounds, and almost seemed to ripple with the breeze.
For Philby to declare low here would be the equivalent, in the context of this crowd, of Arthur pulling the sword from the stone. It would be declaring, To hell with love, and eventual payment of the death I owe to God. I willingly choose this existence of bitterness, envy, and cherished lies, on the condition that I can be assured of it for eternity.
Hale was certain that it was what Philby would choose, would have to choose, now that Hale's own decision had been made to seem problematical. If Philby were forced to choose between love and grubby security, the course of his life would have left him no alternative but to choose grubby security.
"I'm willing to put it to the test," Hale said again. He slid two coins into his right fist and held it out.
Philby rubbed his hands together for nearly a full minute, baring his teeth in a grimace of indecision-and then at last he made a fist and struck it hard against his chest. "Mea culpa!" he whispered.
"Declare," said Hale, opening his hand to show the two coins.
Philby lowered his hand pronated, and he opened his fingers and let the single kopek drop into the grass.
The air seemed to twang, a released tension felt in the abdomen rather than heard.
All Hale had won, after all this, had been the right to go meet Elena, as he had planned to do all along.
"The r-roots," Philby was gabbling, "wh-wh-where are the roots?"
Hale stood up and looked at his watch-he had twenty minutes to get to St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, a bit more than a mile away to the east. "Two are in a high cupboard in the kitchen at the journalists' hotel on the Sadovaya Samotechnaya, behind an old wooden tray; the other is in the bookstore next door to the Ararat Restaurant, behind the red-leather collected works of Marx. You can unleash Machikha Nash on me if you don't find them. Oh, and-" he held out his hand. "Here are your two kopeks back."
