Lyudmila gives him a hard stare. “HAMPTON,” she says, with emphasis, “has been a model citizen. He and his family are now living in Moscow. He serves us as an academic and adviser on matters of international affairs.”
“Given up the booze, has he? That’s what I hear.”
“Where do you hear this?”
He shrugs as he lights another cigarette. “Here and there. Well, that’s fine news. He and I were chums for a moment or two, back in London. Good chap, for an American. Wife’s a trifle uptight for my taste, but the children were charming.”
“Yes.” Lyudmila checks her watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Comrade Burgess, I’m afraid I have other demands on my time this afternoon. My colleagues will arrive shortly to continue the debriefing.”
Burgess props the cigarette in the ashtray and stands to shake hands. He is, after all, an English gentleman.
Lyudmila makes her way to her afternoon appointment, which is of such long standing that she doesn’t have to think about her route as she navigates the Moscow streets. She thinks instead about Burgess—so pleased with himself, so delighted to have created such an international ruckus. The world’s press is in the middle of an apoplexy right now over the missing English diplomats, and Burgess is enjoying every moment.
Still, for all his faults, Burgess has always been loyal. More mercenary than the others, to be sure, but only because he has expensive tastes and a Foreign Office salary. He’s provided a wealth of priceless information over the years. Not once has any of that information proved false. Nor did he display so much as a hint of the classic signs of deception, throughout the course of the interview.
Lyudmila has to conclude—provisionally, at least—that he doesn’t know anything about the ASCOT operation, including its existence.
Which only goes to support her hypothesis. This operation, after all, seems to have as its objective the systematic exposure of Soviet moles burrowed within the most secret inner corridors of Western intelligence—all those Burgesses and Macleans and Philbys and Hisses, so carefully recruited and managed over years and even decades.
It stands to reason, therefore, that it’s being conducted from outside the formal intelligence service, by some renegade officer or officers who—like her—have finally learned to trust nobody.
A man code-named ASCOT.
And the agent whom ASCOT has boldly sent into Moscow, into the heart of the Soviet state, to uncover the traitors, one by one.
Ruth
June 1952
New York City
From the perspective of my desk, parked outside the deluxe private office of our president and chief executive officer, Mr. Herbert Henry Hudson, you can see just about everything that goes on within the premises of the world-famous Hudson Modeling Agency.
This is no coincidence, believe me. I like to keep an eye on everything, always have.
On the day Sumner Fox walks past the glass double doors—an ordinary hot afternoon in late June, a steady stream of fresh new-mint high school graduates eager to commence their modeling careers, God bless them—I’ve been running the agency for about four years, depending on your definition of the term, and I have no intention of going anywhere. I like my job. I like my way of life, more or less. I wear my usual uniform of white button-down shirt and black gabardine slacks, hair pulled back in a neat gold knot, red lipstick and nothing else. I prop my feet on my desk and drink my seventh cup of strong black coffee while I flip through the portfolio of some vampy fifteen-year-old from Elizabeth, New Jersey—claims eighteen, the pretty liar, but I’m a better judge of age than a horse trader—and God knows I have no time at all for the bull-shouldered fellow who stands at the reception desk like a heavyweight boxer who’s taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
My telephone rings. Reception.
I direct an eyebrow of disapproval toward Miss Simmons from above the frame of my reading glasses. She shrugs and tilts her head toward the beef standing in front of her desk.
I lift the receiver. “Macallister.”
“Miss Macallister, Mr. Sumner Fox from the FBI is here to see you.” She says FBI in a hushed, secret voice, enunciating each letter separately.
I open my mouth to tell Miss Simmons to tell the so-called FBI to get lost, but she tacks on another sentence before I get the words out.
“He says it’s about your sister.”
As I said, I like to keep everything at the agency within view—with one exception, to which Mr. Fox and I repair now.
He’s impressed, I believe, as most people are when they step inside the boardroom of the Hudson Modeling Agency. The room itself is nothing—just a big old committee table, the usual chairs of dubious comfort—but the view, my word. There’s this particular corner of the twenty-sixth floor that opens out unobstructed across the East River and all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge, if you don’t mind a kink in your neck, and that wall is made of nothing but glass, glass, glass, cleaned regularly by a well-trained team of daredevils. Now, Sumner Fox isn’t the kind of man who betrays anything so vulnerable as an emotion. (In this, we are equals.) But he does walk across the width of the room and smash his fists into the pockets of his trousers and sort of roll up and down on his big flipper feet as he stares upon that stupefying expanse of metropolis.
I take the opportunity to stare him up and down. As I said, he’s a large fellow, not exceptionally tall but built like an Angus steer, all shoulders, square rawboned head on which a bare half inch of extremely pale hair bristles up like a field of mowed hay. No residual tail, thank God, but the position of his fists in his pockets strains the back flap of his jacket upward just enough to reveal a fine muscular bottom, which pleases me. You don’t go into my line of business without some appreciation for the aesthetics of the human form. Now that I consider the matter, I wonder if he allows me to inspect him on purpose.
Whether he means to impress me or to warn me, I don’t pretend to guess.
I know enough about these sorts of encounters to allow the other person to introduce the conversation. After I’ve looked my fill, I fold my arms across my chest and wait for him to address me. Which he does, after a minute. Pivots in a military manner and says—gravelly midsouthern baritone—“Miss Macallister. I do appreciate your taking the time to meet me like this, without a prior appointment.”
“I’m just a secretary, Mr. Fox. You don’t need an appointment to meet with me.”
“Just a secretary?” He actually smiles, displaying a set of neat white teeth. “That’s not the word on the street.”
“Oh? Which street is that?”
“Why, the street that says you run the whole show. That poor old Mr. Hudson is what you might call a puppet, and you’re what might be called a puppeteer.”
“Now, that’s just slander,” I reply. “But as it happens, I am a busy woman, and I like a man who gets right to the point. You were saying something about my sister? Has she perhaps made her whereabouts known to the world at last?”
“That’s an excellent question, Miss Macallister. Maybe you could answer it for me.”
“Me? I don’t think you know the facts of the case. Do you smoke, Mr. Fox?”
He blinks his pale eyes. “No, thank you.”
“Then I hope I don’t offend you.” I stalk around the other side of the table to the console, where the agency keeps a selection of cigarettes for the refreshment of the august members of the board of directors. I light one with a match, old-fashioned damsel that I am. By the time I turn back to face Mr. Fox, I feel I have the situation in hand.
“I must confess, I’m mystified. Why come to me now, after all these years? I mean, I haven’t heard a word from the FBI, not since that first week after they disappeared.”
“And yet most families would be beating down our door, demanding an explanation, when a diplomat goes missing on a foreign posting with his wife and children.”
“Well, we aren’t most families.” I blow out a stream of smoke. “To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t seen or heard from my sister in years. Long before the State Department lost track of her.”