“Tell me, colleague,” Petkoff said as be spooned up some more caviar, “how are things in the United States?”
Malone shot a glance at Her Majesty, but she was concentrating on something else, and her eyes seemed far away. “Oh, all right,” he said at last.
“Of course, you must say so,” Petkoff murmured. “But, as one colleague to another, tell me: how much longer do you think it will be before the proletarian uprising in your country?”
There were a lot of answers to that, Malone told himself. But he chose one without too much difficulty. “Well, that’s hard to judge,” he said. “I’d hate to make any prediction. I don’t have enough information.”
“Not enough information?” Petkoff said. “I don’t understand.”
Malone shrugged. “Since our proletariat,” he said, “have shown no sign of wanting any rebellion at all, how can I predict when they’re going to rebel?”
Petkoff gave him an unbelieving smile. “Well,” he said. “We must have patience, eh, colleague?”
“I guess so,” Malone said, watching Petkoff pour more vodka.
By the time the meal came, Malone was feeling a warm glow in his interior, but no real fogginess. The dance floor had been cleared by this time, and a group of six costumed professionals glided out and took places. The musicians broke out into a thunderous and bumpy piece, and the dancers began some sort of Slavic folk dance that looked like a combination of a _kazotska_ and a shivaree. Malone watched them with interest. They looked like good dancers, but they seemed to be plagued with clumsiness; they were always crashing into one another. On the other hand, Malone thought, maybe it was part of the dance. It was hard to tell.
The dinner was as extensive as anything Malone had ever dreamed of: _borshcht_, beef Stroganoff, smoked fish, vegetables in gigantic tureens, ices and cheeses and fruits. And always, between the courses, during the courses and at every available moment, there was vodka.
The drinking didn’t bother him too much. But the food was too much. Unbelieving, he watched Petkoff polish off a large red apple, a pear and a small wedge of white, creamy-looking cheese at the end of the towering meal. Her Majesty was staring, too, in a very polite manner. Lou simply looked glassy-eyed and overstuffed. Malone felt a good deal of sympathy for her.
Petkoff finished the wedge of cheese and ripped off a belch of incredible magnitude and splendor. Malone felt he should applaud, but managed to restrain himself. Her Majesty looked startled for a second, and then regained her composure. Only Lou seemed to take the event as a matter of course, which set Malone to wondering about her home-life. Somehow he couldn’t picture her wistful little father ever producing a sound of such awesome magnitude.
“My dear colleague,” Petkoff was saying. Malone turned to him and tried to look interested. “There is one thing I have wondered for many years.”
“Really?” Malone said politely.
“That is right,” Petkoff said. “For years, there has never been a change of name in your organization of secret police.”
“We’re not secret police,” Malone said.
Petkoff gave a massive shrug. “Naturally,” he said, “one must say this. But surely, one tires of being called FBI all the time.”
“One does?” Malone said. “I don’t know. It gives a person a sort of sense of security.”
“Ah,” Petkoff said. “But take us, for instance. We pride ourselves on our ability to camouflage ourselves. GPU, and then OGPU—which were, I understand, subject for many capitalist jokes.”
Malone tried to look as if he couldn’t imagine such a thing. “I suppose they might have been,” he said.
“Then we were NKVD,” Petkoff said, “and now MVD. And I understand, quite between us, Mr. Malone, that there is talk of further change.”
There was a sudden burst of applause. Malone wondered what for, looked at the dance floor and realized that the six Slavic dancers were taking bows. As he watched, one of them slipped and nearly fell. The musicians obliged with a final series of chords and the dancers trotted away. A waltz began, and couples from the tables began crowding the floor.
“How can you manage the proletariat,” Petkoff asked, “if you do not keep them confused?”
“We don’t, exactly,” Malone said. “They more or less manage us.”
“Ha,” Petkoff said, dismissing this with a wave of his hand. “Propaganda.” And then he, too, turned to watch the dancers. The waltz was finishing, and a fox-trot had begun. “With your permission, Mr. Malone,” he said, rising, “I should like to ask so-lovely Miss Garbitsch to dance with me.”
Malone glanced at the girl. She gave him a quick smile, with just a hint of nervousness or strain in it, and turned to Petkoff. “I’d be delighted, Major,” she said. Malone shut his own mouth. As the girl rose, he got to his feet and gave the couple a small, Victorian bow. Petkoff and Lou walked to the floor, and Malone, sitting down again, watched enviously as he took her in his arms and began to guide her expertly across the floor in time to the music.
Malone sighed. Some men, he told himself, had all the luck. But, of course, Lou had to be polite, too. She didn’t really like Petkoff, he told himself; she was just being diplomatic. And he had made some progress with her on the plane, he thought.
He looked over at Her Majesty, but the Queen was staring abstractedly at a crystal chandelier. Malone sighed again, took a little caviar and washed it down with vodka. The vodka felt nice and warm, he thought vaguely. Vodka was good. It was too bad that the people who made such good vodka had to be enemies. But that was the way things were, he told himself philosophically.
Terrible. That’s how things were.
The fox-trot went to its conclusion. Malone saw Petkoff, chatting animatedly with Lou, lead her off to a small bar at the opposite side of the room. “Some people,” he muttered, “have too much luck. Or too much diplomacy.”
Her Majesty was tugging at his arm. That, Malone thought, was going to be more bad news.
It was.
“Sir Kenneth,” she said softly, “do you realize that this place is full of MVD men? Of course you don’t; I haven’t told you yet.”
Malone opened his mouth, shut it again, and thought in a hurry. If the place were full of MVD men, that meant they probably had it bugged. And that meant several things, all of them unpleasant. Her Majesty shouldn’t have said anything—she shouldn’t have shown any nervousness or anxiety in the first place, she shouldn’t have known there were so many MVD men in the second place—because there was no way for her to know, except through her telepathy, a little secret Malone did not want the Russians to find out about. And she should definitely, most definitely, not have called him “Sir Kenneth.”
“Oh,” Her Majesty said. “I am sorry, Sir—er—Mr. Malone. You’re quite right, you know.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “Well. My goodness.” He thought of something to say, and said it at once. “Of course there are MVD men here. This is just the place for good old MVD men to come when they go off duty. A nice, relaxing place full of fun and dancing and food and vodka....” And he was thinking, at the same time: _Are they doing anything odd?_
“Russian, you know,” Her Majesty said, almost conversationally, “is an extremely difficult language. It takes a great deal of practice to learn to think in it really fluently.”
“Yes, I should think it would,” Malone said absently. _You mean you haven’t been able to pick up what these people are thinking?_
“Oh, one can get the main outlines,” Her Majesty went on, “but a really full knowledge is nearly impossible. Though, of course, it isn’t quite as bad as all that. A man who speaks both languages, like our dear Major Petkoff, for instance—so charming, so full of _joie de vivre_—could be an invaluable assistant to anyone interested in learning exactly how Russians really think.” She smiled nervously. Her face was suddenly set and strained. “I find that—”
She stopped then, very suddenly. Her eyes widened, and her right hand reached out to grasp Malone’s arm more strongly than he had thought she ever could. “Sir Kenneth!” Her voice, all restraint gone, was a hissing whisper. Malone started to say something, but Her Majesty went on, her eyes wide. “Do something quickly!” she said.
“What?” Malone said.
“They’ve put something in Lou’s drink!” Her Majesty hissed.
Malone was on his feet before she’d finished, and he took a step across the room.
“She’s already swallowed it!” the Queen said. “Do something! Quickly!”
The dancers on the floor were no concern of his, Malone told himself grimly. He didn’t decide to move; he was on his way before any thought filtered through into his mind. Officers and their ladies looked after him with shocked stupor as he plowed his way across the dance floor, using legs, elbows, shoulders and anything else that allowed him free passage. Sometimes the dancers managed to get out of his way. Sometimes they didn’t. It was all the same to Kenneth J. Malone.
Her Majesty followed in his wake, silent and stricken, scurrying after him like a small destroyer following a battleship, or like a ball-carrying grandmother following up her interference.