Page 78 of The Other Woman

They had no money to speak of, but they didn’t need much. They were in Paris, and the glorious city was theirs. They used to play a silly game together, counting the steps between their favorite landmarks. How many steps from the Louvre to Notre-Dame? How many steps from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde? From the Tour Eiffel to Les Invalides?

There were eighty-seven steps between their garret apartment and the courtyard of the building, Charlotte explained, and another thirty-eight to the door leading to the rue Saint-Jacques. Which was where, on a warm summer’s day in 1974, when most Parisians had wisely fled the city, a man was waiting.

“What was the date?” asked Gabriel.

“August,” Charlotte answered. “It was the day after Nixon resigned.”

“That would make it the tenth.”

“If you say so.”

“And the man’s name?”

“On that occasion, he introduced himself as Comrade Lavrov.”

“And on others?”

Sasha, she answered. He called himself Sasha.

50

Seville

He was thin—gulag thin, said Charlotte—and pale as candle wax. A few strands of lank unwashed hair lay plastered to his skull, which was wide at the forehead, conferring upon him the appearance of superior intelligence. The eyes were small and rimmed with red, the teeth were gray and jagged. He wore a tweed jacket, too heavy for the broiling heat, and a formerly white shirt that looked as though it had been rinsed out too many times in a kitchen basin. His beard was in need of a trimming.

“Beard?”

“He wore a small one.” She moved her thumb and forefinger from her upper lip to her chin.

“Like Lenin?” asked Gabriel.

“A younger Lenin. Lenin in exile. Lenin in London.”

“And what brought him to Paris?”

“He said he had a letter.”

“From Philby?”

“He never uttered the name. He said the letter was from a man I had known in Beirut. A famous English journalist.” She dropped the register of her voice to a masculine pitch and added a thick Russian accent. “‘Would it be possible for us to speak somewhere private? The matter I wish to discuss is quite sensitive in nature.’ I suggested the brasserie across the street”—her normal voice again—“but he said my apartment would be better. I explained it was modest. He said he already knew this.”

“The implication being that he had been watching you for some time.”

“He comes from your world, not mine.”

“And the letter?”

It was typewritten, which was not like Kim, and unsigned. Even so, she knew the words were his. He apologized for having deceived her in Beirut and said he wished to renew their relationship. As part of that renewal, he wished to see his child. For obvious reasons, he wrote, the meeting could not take place in France.

“He wanted you to come to Moscow?”

“Not me. The child only.”

“And you agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”