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it?”
    â€œMaybe I’ll tell you—when we trust each other more than we do now.”
    â€œWhat a sad thing to say.” She squinted in the curling smoke. “We used to trust each other with everything.”
    â€œYes.”
    She sat back; it was a gesture of regretful withdrawal. They had been on the point of intimacy but it was gone. She said, “You’d be under Vassily’s command but you wouldn’t be working closely with him. You’d be continents apart. Does that make a difference?”
    â€œNot particularly. It would still be his orders.”
    â€œYou hate him that much.”
    â€œNo. But I think they’ve picked the wrong commander.”
    â€œNo matter what the scheme is?”
    â€œHe’ll make a mistake—the kind you can’t patch up.”
    â€œThe others don’t feel that way, Alex. Are you that much wiser than the rest of them?”
    â€œThe rest of them weren’t in Finland.”
    â€œIt must have been something extraordinary for you to find it so unforgivable.” Then abruptly she said, “If you have that much reason to distrust Vassily don’t you owe it to Prince Leon and the others to warn them? At least give them the facts and let them decide.”
    â€œYou can’t destroy their heroes without injuring their self-respect—and God knows they’ve got damn little left as it is.”
    â€œThis is too important for that, Alex. You can’t be decided by those considerations when their lives may be at stake.”
    â€œTheir lives?”
    â€œAll of them. Prince Leon, Oleg, my father, Felix—the whole lot. They’re putting everything on the line. Everything they’ve got—everything.”
    â€œYou didn’t say that before.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œI’m not sure you are. It was your heaviest shot. You saved it for last.”
    â€œNeatly trapped. Am I so transparent? I surrender, dear. You always were a match for me.” Irina stubbed her cigarette out. “Then it’s settled. Good.” She rose from her seat. “Help me push this ghastly mess out in the hall, would you dear?”
    He rolled the tray out through the foyer and when he turned away from it she was in the doorway looking at him in a way he could not mistake.
    â€œThank you, darling.” It wasn’t clear whether she meant the tray or his capitulation. “There’s a fair Courvoisier.”
    â€œAll right.” He had his hand on the room key in his pocket; but her face drew him back into the suite.
    She brought the cognac to the couch. The two hotel glasses looked strange in her hand: it was made for crystal goblets. “I feel nervous with you. Isn’t it absurd? But you’re like a caged predator tonight.”
    The cognac spread warmth down his throat. He wanted to gather her against him but too many demons stood between them.
    Then Irina said, “Felix is racing his motorcar at Estoril this week.”
    â€œHe’s still doing that, is he?”
    â€œCars and airplanes. It’s all he thinks of.” She had another Du Maurier. “It must be wonderful to have life so simply arranged.”
    â€œHe’s never grown up.”
    â€œI wish none of us had.” She went suddenly from that to what was really on her mind: “I was infatuated with Vassily—it was his raw power. But even then I began to think of you—I began to wish it was you. But I’d made the mistake and I suppose I was too proud to try to change back—perhaps I didn’t want to face the chance that you’d hate me.”
    She bent her shoulders and brooded into the cognac. “Do you see what I’m doing now? It isn’t like me—I’m asking your forgiveness.”
    Then she looked up: the light fell across her face in harsh shadows. “Perhaps I am dropping a handkerchief. But it’s not tangled up in this other thing. We had to