Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“You’re in the theater?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Well, I’m in the theater myself, so to speak. I know about stage names. My name as it appears in the credits is Red Ravisher. Agrafina Bogdanovich is my real, off-camera name.”

“A beautiful name for a beautiful lady,” Murov said. “It sounds Russian.”

“I am of Russian heritage.”

“So here we are, two Russians far from the motherland—”

“Actually, I’m from Cleveland, Ohio.”

“How about ‘two Russians in a strange land’?”

“It’s a strange land, all right, but I just told you, Grigori, that I’m an American.”

“The sound of my name coming from your lips is like heavenly music.”

“Thank you. I did study elocution, of course.”

“That’s obvious.”

“And you’re in the theater, too, I gather, Grigori?”

“There it is again! You don’t perhaps hear softly playing violins, my dear Agrafina?”

“What I hear actually sounds like a mariachi band. I asked if you, too, are a thespian.”

“Well, let’s say I’m playing a role.”

“All the world’s a stage, as they say.”

“Indeed it is. May I make a somewhat intimate suggestion, my dear Agrafina?”

“I sort of like the way Agrafina rolls off your lips, too, Grigori. Yes, you may, with the understanding that if I were to take offense at your somewhat intimate suggestion, I will break your legs.”

“What I was going to suggest is since you have that absolutely marvelous borscht, the kind my mother, may she rest in peace, used to make, and I have two liters of Stolichnaya and a pound of caviar, we merge our assets.”

Agrafina turned to the general manager of the Royal Aztec and the bellmen.

“After you put my roses in water,” she said, “our caviar on the table on the balcony, and hand me our Stolichnaya, you may leave me alone with this silver-tongued devil.”

XI

[ONE]

The Old Ebbitt Grill

675 Fifteenth Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1245 21 June 2007

When he had time, later, to reconstruct the disaster at the Old Ebbitt, Edgar Delchamps was forced to conclude that he was at least partially responsible for it.

There had been no question in his mind when he met Roscoe J. Danton at Dulles International that the journalist needed a little—more than a little—liquid courage before going to the White House to explain what he was doing in Las Vegas when he was supposed to be in Budapest.