“You go. Tell him you saw me and I said he owes you the interview. Ask him why he defected. Ask him why that woman jumped out the window. I’d buy a copy of that story myself.”
She looked up. “Why she-?”
“Forget it. Come on, we’d better go.” He shook his head. “It’s been a strange day.” He looked at her. “I thought-well, never mind what I thought.”
“I didn’t do this right.”
“No, you were perfect. How else? It’s like telling someone he’s got cancer-it’s hard to warm up to it. Anyway, I got the message.”
“But you’re not going to see him.”
“Look, it isn’t just me. You’ve met my family. How do you think they’d feel about this little weekend reunion? I can’t do that to them. It’s impossible.”
“Don’t tell them. They don’t have to know. Nobody has to know.”
“Just me and every photographer in Moscow.”
“You’re not listening. That’s the last thing he wants. Nobody would know it’s you. Anyway, he’s in Prague. It’s different.”
“What makes you think he’s still there? Maybe he’s gone back.”
“No, he lives there now. His wife is Czech.”
He had been about to stand up to leave but now he stopped, amazed. “His wife?” It had the full shock of the unexpected. He had imagined his father as he was that night, back in the snow, literally stopped in time. Now suddenly he too had become someone else. Nick sat back in his chair, as if he’d been winded. “Christ. His wife.”
“Didn’t you know?”
“I don’t know anything about him,” he said, and for the first time he saw that it was true. What had his life been all these years? It hadn’t stopped at the press conference. There’d been jobs and apartments and wives, a whole unknown life.
But Molly took his surprise for disapproval. “Your mother remarried,” she said gently. “After the divorce.”
“They weren’t divorced,” he said offhandedly. “It was annulled.”
“Annulled? But how-”
“You mean because of me? Oh, that wouldn’t stop the Church. It just-never happened. They’re pros at that. My mother had connections,” he said, thinking of Father Tim and his puppet strings. “Not that there was any problem. A Communist? They don’t think there’s anything worse than that. Let’s go,” he said, standing up.
“I never met her,” she said, trying to hold him. “The wife. I saw her at the party, but I didn’t meet her.”
“I don’t want to know,” he said, holding up his hand. “Really.” He stopped. “Are there children?”
“Not that I know of.” She put the cape over her wonderful dress. “Just you.”
“Not me,” he said, and led her out of the bar.
It was late, but there was a taxi outside, unexpected luck.
“Will you drop me?” she said, an invitation.
“No. I’ll walk.”
She looked at him. “Well, at least I got to meet the ambassador.” She hesitated at the taxi’s door, listening to the motor turn over like a rickety machine, “For what it’s worth, I think you’re crazy. He’s worth ten of them, those people at dinner. I don’t care what he did.”
Nick smiled slightly. “I know. They’ve probably done worse. They just didn’t do it to me.”
“Neither did he.”
“I don’t want to see him, Molly. I can’t.”
“You don’t want to see me now either, do you?”
He leaned against the open door, waiting for her to get in. “I wish I did. No one ever wanted to meet me before.”
“No?” She smiled, then shrugged. “Well, don’t let it throw you. I just turned up at the wrong door again, that’s all.” She got into the cab, then almost immediately pulled down the window. “I hate to ask, but do you have a fiver? I’m flat. I’ll pay you back.”
He took out the note and handed it to her. “That’s okay. I’m feeling rich today,” he said, thinking of Larry.
“Thanks. You know where to find me if you change your mind.” She tilted her head slightly. “By the way, did anyone ever tell you? You look like him.”
He stared at her through the window. “Who?” She rolled her eyes, giving up, and sat back in the seat as the taxi pulled away.
He walked all the way back to his flat, cutting through Soho and its halfhearted dingy lights, then the quiet squares north of Oxford Street.
In the months after his father left, when he knew he would hear, he would listen for the phone, check the mail even after they had moved, always ready. It was only a question of when the message would come. If there were people in the room, he was prepared to cover, the way his mother had in front of the police. Code. But the message didn’t come, and after a while he forgot what he’d been waiting for. No, he always knew. Come with me. Join me. And now that it had come, delivered by this unlikely girl, he felt ambushed, standing at the phone too startled to reply. Why now? This way? A summons like an old long-distance connection, scratchy and unclear, barely audible over the thin wires. What did his father want?
