“About us. I have asked my own people if they would help you to come out, and they have agreed. There is a plan. Do you know the port of Constanza on the Rumanian coast?”
She shook her head.
“I have heard of it, but never been there. I always holiday on the Soviet coast of the Black Sea.”
“Could you arrange to holiday there with Sasha?”
“I suppose so,” she said. “I can take my holidays virtually where I like. Rumania is within the Socialist bloc. It should not raise eyebrows.”
“When does Sasha leave school for the spring holidays?”
“The last few days of March, I think. Is that important?”
“It has to be in mid-April,” he told her. “My people think you could be brought off the beach to a freighter offshore. By speedboat. Can you make sure to arrange a spring holiday with Sasha at Constanza or the nearby Mamaia Beach in April?”
“I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try. April. Oh, Adam, it seems so close.”
“It is close, my love. Less than ninety days. Be patient a little longer, as I have been, and we will make it. We’ll start a whole new life.”
Five minutes later she had given him the transcription of the early January Politburo meeting and driven off into the night. He stuffed the sheaf of papers inside his waistband beneath his shirt and jacket, and returned to the warmth of the Arkhangelskoye Restaurant.
This time, he vowed, as he made polite conversation with the secretary, there would be no mistakes, no drawing back, no letting her go, as there had been in 1961. This time it would be forever.
Edwin Campbell leaned back from the Georgian table in the Long Gallery at Castletown House and looked across at Professor Sokolov. The last point on the agenda had been covered, the last concession wrung. From the dining room below, a courier had reported that the secondary conference had matched the concessions of the upper floor with trade bargains from the United States to the Soviet Union.
“I think that’s it, Ivan, my friend,” said Campbell. “I don’t think we can do any more at this stage.”
The Russian raised his eyes from the pages of Cyrillic handwriting in front of him, his own notes. For over a hundred days he had fought tooth and claw to secure for his country the grain tonnages that could save her from disaster and yet retain the maximum in weapons levels from inner space to Eastern Europe. He knew he had had to make concessions that would have been unheard of four years earlier at Geneva, but he had done the best he could in the time scale allowed.
“I think you are right, Edwin,” he replied. “Let us have the arms-reduction treaty prepared in draft form for our respective governments.”
“And the trade protocol,” said Campbell. “I imagine they will want that also.”
Sokolov permitted himself a wry smile.
“I am sure they will want it very much,” he said.
For the next week the twin teams of interpreters and stenographers prepared both the treaty and the trade protocol. Occasionally the two principal negotiators were needed to clarify a point at issue, but for the most part, the transcription and translation work was left to the aides. When the two bulky documents, each in duplicate, were finally ready, the two chief negotiators departed to their separate capitals to present them to their masters.
Andrew Drake threw down his magazine and leaned back.
“I wonder,” he said.
“What?” asked Krim as he entered the small sitting room with three mugs of coffee. Drake tossed the magazine to the Tatar.
“Read the first article,” he said. Krim read in silence while Drake sipped his coffee. Kaminsky eyed them both.
“You’re crazy,” said Krim with finality.
“No,” said Drake. “Without some audacity we’ll be sitting here for the next ten years. It could work. Look, Mishkin and Lazareff come up for trial in a fortnight The outcome is a foregone conclusion. We might as well start planning now. We know we’re going to have to do it, anyway, if they are ever to come out of that jail. So let’s start planning. Azamat, you were in the paratroops in Canada?”
“Sure,” said Krim. “Five years.”
“Did you ever do an explosives course?”
“Yep. Demolition and sabotage. I was assigned for training to the Engineers for three months.”