Palace of Treason (40 page)

“Of course the tsar is far away,” said Nate. “Is there a situation Russians don’t have a proverb for?” He pulled her closer, crushing her body against his. She smiled, relaxing a little, and put her arms around his neck, but really there was no remedy for the accumulated ice in the soul, the fatigue that only the best agents can live with year after year. She looked into Nate’s eyes and saw the swirl of purple behind his head that never changed. She knew he was concerned about her. And he could read her moods as well as she could read his colors.

She wanted him, she needed him, and they had all night in an anonymous apartment, insulated from danger. She walked with him into the penthouse and sat on the couch, which held the lingering scent of Gable. Goddamn Gable. His odorant molecules swirled around them, and even as they kissed, Gable wouldn’t leave them alone.

“I don’t care,” said Dominika, intuition telling her Nate was struggling. “Whatever happens, we have each other. Nothing else is important. Not what I do, not what you do. Not what we will do.” They each had their own blinky thoughts: Yevgeny-Hannah, Hannah-Yevgeny.

Udranka and Marta, sitting in two chairs, applauded. Go away you sluts, Dominika told them.
But her Rusalki mermaids lingered, watching and smoking.

They sat close, seeing each other for the first time. It was always like
that with them, a heady discovery, more the start of something primal than the resumption of it. Dominika drank him in: She registered that her loose-limbed boy had changed in the last two years. He was thicker in the shoulders, wiser in the eyes. His purple aura still blazed steadily; it never changed. She took his hands and kissed the tops of them. These hands had changed too—they were less delicate, somehow rougher. She kissed his palms and leaned in to mash her mouth on his, breathing through her nose when he put his hands on her breasts. She pulled away when he started fiddling with the zipper on her dress and stood up in front of him.
“Terpeniye yest’ dobrodetel’,
patience is a virtue,” she whispered.

Dominika unzipped her dress and let it fall off her body. In the glancing moonlight, Nate noticed the curves and contours of her thin body as if he had never seen her before, the swell of her breasts in her brassiere, the slow expansion of her rib cage as she breathed, the silver-shiny diagonal scar on her thigh from a battle long ago. Her face was sharper, more elegant than ever, with a hint of stress around the eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She looked at him appraising her and held his eyes as she knelt between his legs, running her hands along his thighs and pushing him back as he made to sit up.

“You do not have permission to move,” said Dominika, her eyes never leaving his face, even as she snaked the belt from around his hips and tugged down first his zipper and then his khaki pants and showed him, slowly, a little of
No. 17,
“Stamens and pistils,”
blue eyes locked on his, one strand of hair in front of her face.

She was a glutton for the smell and taste of him, and with one hand she lifted his shirt and raked her nails along the two similar, tallow-wax shiny scars that crisscrossed his stomach from that same once-upon-a-time battle. What she was doing to him was in fact warping her own mind—never mind that Nate was flexed with head back and eyes closed—and Dominika trailed her free hand unseen between her own legs. She flashed to
No. 51, “Battre les blancs en neige, beat egg whites until stiff,”
and soon her eyes fluttered and closed and she groaned and stopped moving, her face partially covered by more of her hair that had fallen into her eyes.

When she got her brain back she blinked at him, wiped her upper lip, and giggled. “Am I
nekulturny,
not waiting for you?” said Dominika.

“Worse than uncultured,” said Nate. “I give up trying to keep up with
you. No man could hope to.” Dominika started touching him again, her hands together as if holding an ax handle, insidious, persistent.

“Do not try to keep up,” she said conversationally. “That is my advice to you.” She kept moving and his legs started trembling. Nate felt those familiar leather straps tightening inside him. Dominika was staring at him, watching the havoc she was creating, as if she were a bystander. The now-vibrating straps in Nate’s groin were getting tighter.
“Dushka,”
whispered Dominika, coaxing him.
“Dushka, dushka, dushka.”
Then the couch started spinning, and the walls collapsed, and the picture windows exploded, and the roof caved in. Dominika blinked at him, watching him regain consciousness.

“Les rubyat, schepki letyat,”
she whispered,
when you chop wood, woodchips will fly.

Groaning, Nate sat up and they kissed. He brushed a strand of hair out of the corner of her mouth, and she wiped her face with her hand. The old line came to mind. “Why didn’t you tell me I was in love with you?” said Nate. Dominika started laughing.

Udranka and Marta, sitting across from them, looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

Wearing his shirt, Dominika boosted herself onto the kitchen counter and watched as Nate, radiating purple and wearing only his boxer shorts, sliced an onion and garlic and sautéed them in fragrant green olive oil. He sliced roasted peppers into thin strips and added them to the pan. He opened a can of peeled tomatoes and squeezed them beneath the surface of their juice to avoid squirts. The hand-smashed tomatoes went into the pan—with a pinch of sugar—to start bubbling with the rest. Nate held a bushy branch of dried oregano over the pot and gently crushed some leaves into the stew. He reached for a square tin of paprika.

“Paprika,” said Nate, holding up the tin. “Have you ever tasted it?”

“What a strange word, ‘paprika,’ ” said Dominika, deadpan. “No, we did not have such things in my village, living alongside our pigs in the living room.” Nate smiled and added a dash. “Another strange word is ‘
tupitsa,
’ ” said Dominika. “Do you know it?” Nate knew it meant “dunce”; he shook his head that he didn’t understand, but Dominika knew he did.

The pan was simmering, and Nate turned on the little oven and put slices of country bread on the upper rack. When they were golden he rubbed each slice with a clove of garlic.

“All this garlic probably reminds you of the village,” said Nate, not looking at her. Dominika tried not to smile.

Nate made three indentations in the simmering stew and cracked three eggs into the spaces. He slid the pan into the still-hot oven until the eggs were set, then carried the pan out to the terrace. Dominika followed with the toasted bread and two bottles of cold beer. They sat on the terrace floor—the marble was still slightly warm from the afternoon sun—the steaming pan on a low table between them, and dipped the toasted garlic bread and ate forkfuls of peppers, tomatoes, and runny egg yolk. At the first taste, Dominika looked up at Nate, a question on her face.

“Pipérade,”
said Nate, “from the Basque part of France.”

“And where did you learn this?”

“College summer in Europe,” said Nate. He dipped more bread.

“Very romantic,” said Dominika.

“Yes. Yes, I am,” said Nate.

“You are your biggest devotee,” said Dominika, leaning over toward him. She kissed him lightly on the mouth. “May I ask about the officer Benford wants to send to meet me? Do you know her?”

Nate nodded, determined not to feel, act, or look guilty.

“She’s young, but one of the best street operators I’ve ever seen. Benford thinks so too.”

Dominika noticed his purple halo was pulsing.

“I observed most of her training. She’s unbelievable,” said Nate. More purple pulsing. He was conscious only of delivering his good-natured endorsement of Hannah Archer.

“Did you tell her about me?” said Dominika idly, dipping a piece of bread. Nate recognized that when a woman casually asks a man whether he has described her to another woman, there is considerable, imminent danger: the first puffs of oven-hot wind before the squall descends; the twenty pricked-up ears of the lion pride pointed at the stalled Land Rover; the rustle of monkey’s wings in the trees on the road to Oz. Considerable danger.

“She has read your file,” said Nate noncommittally. “She knows about the work you do. She admires you.” Knowing this woman had read her file
and “admired her” nettled Dominika.
Control yourself,
she thought.
You’re not a jealous schoolgirl.
But Nate’s halo was still pulsing.

“What is her name?” said Dominika, picking up empty bottles and leftover bread. Nate carried the pan of
pipérade
into the kitchen.

“Hannah,” said Nate, hearing the shadow in Dominika’s voice.

“Khanna,”
said Dominika, with a guttural
h.
“It is a good name, an ancient one. We know it in Russia.” She was standing at the sink, running water and making a mound of suds. She scraped the pan, immersed it in the sink, and began scrubbing, head down, shoulders hunched. Nate stood behind her and put his arms around her waist.

“Domi, she’s your contact on the street,” he whispered. “She put down all your SRAC sensors. She’s twenty-seven years old. She’s an officer of our agency.”

“Do you like her, as a person?” Dominika asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, she’s great. More important, you’ll like her,” said Nate. He felt Dominika’s shoulders come down an inch, relaxing.
Jesus,
he thought.
She’s so damn perceptive, though, like a mind reader.

“Besides, you should be worrying about washing this pan,” he said. “You’re splashing water everywhere.” Dominika turned and splashed a handful of water on Nate’s chest. He reached around her, dipped his hands in the suds, and wet her shirt. They splashed some more water until her front was a clinging, transparent mess, her breasts visible through the sopping fabric. His boxers were in no better condition.

She turned her back to him, reached into the sink, and started scrubbing again. “I’m not finished with this pan,” she said.

“Keep scrubbing,” said Nate, lifting her shirttail and rhumba-stepping out of his shorts. Nate’s initial movement from behind pushed Dominika forward and she had to catch herself, arms in suds up to the elbows. Subsequent movements caused a slopping wave action, which apart from creating a syncopation of slapping sounds, resulted in an ample amount of water splashing on their legs and feet.

Sometime later, they looked like the last guests at Caligula’s house party, sitting on the kitchen floor in a pool of water, backs against the cabinets, waiting for their hearts to slow down. Nate’s shirt was a sodden knot in the center of the floor and his shorts were under the small table across the kitchen. An occasional errant drop of water from the counter around the
sink would drip onto one of their shoulders. Dominika’s chest was white with dried dish-soap bubbles, and a tendril of her hair hung in her face.

“Thanks for helping with the dishes,” said Nate.

Nate drove Dominika home through empty, predawn Athens, ghosting through intersections colored by flashing traffic signals. The car hissed through water on the streets from the crews who hosed down the sidewalks at night. Nate would drop her off a few blocks from her hotel and she would walk in.

“You’ll send your report to the Center soon?” said Nate. His voice sounded funny to his ears, as if another person were speaking. He was tired.

“I’ll recommend General Solovyov be summoned to Moscow for investigation,” said Dominika. “That’s how it’s done. They will write that they want him at the Aquarium for something nonalerting—consultations, promotion panel, to sit on an advisory board.”

“How fast will it come after you send your recommendation?” said Nate.

“Very fast,” said Dominika. “You must be sure to get him out of Greece immediately. Zyuganov will want to reel him in right away, to embarrass GRU and to earn credit with the Kremlin. I will report to Hannah through SRAC on what the reaction is to his defection.” She smiled. “And how many medals they will give me.” The casual mention of Hannah, suddenly now a fixture in their professional lives, jangled in the air. Nate was sure Dominika mentioned her on purpose. “I’m looking forward to meeting her,” said Dominika.