The music started again. Daryush, taking my aunt in his arms, whirled back out onto the dance floor. I stayed where I was, frowning.
“Is this going to be a problem?” Lensky asked.
“Oh. No, I don’t think so. You never mentioned where you work to Aunt Alesia, did you?”
“Thalia, even your parents don’t know who I work for.”
“Oh. Right.” I have occasionally made fun of the Company’s passion for secrecy, but just now it struck me as a very good thing. I wouldn’t get many invitations to parties on other embassies’ turf if I were identified as a CIA field officer rather than a State Department intern.
Lensky’s waltzing style had attracted some attention among the diplomatic wives, so I found that mingling was relatively easy now. The wives wanted to dance with my husband, and offered me up to their escorts in exchange. It worked out reasonably well. The husbands didn’t want to dance and neither did I. They fetched me flutes of champagne and little plates of snacks and we chatted amicably enough; they were so grateful that I didn’t pine for the dance floor that it was easy to keep them happy. By the end of the evening I had scored invitations for cocktail parties at the Ukrainian and Polish embassies, a reception in honor of Central Asian artists at the Guimet – the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques – and a dinner party at the home of the Egyptian cultural attaché. Not to mention figs wrapped in paper-thin Parma ham, asparagus spears in puff pastry, and Sachertorte under whipped cream. Lensky hadn’t done too badly himself: two more dinner parties, a concert and a museum opening.
Aunt Alesia and her date the ambassador were nowhere to be seen. Oh, well. It wasn’t like Taklanistan, wherever that might be, was a country of burning interest to the CIA. I could safely leave that to my wayward aunt and concentrate on the Ukrainians, Poles, Egyptians, and whoever Lensky had scooped up.
We decided that we could skip the reception for Central Asian artists, as nobody at the embassy had any desire to bug the Musée Guimet – and if they did, they could walk in there any time; it was a public place. The concert and the museum opening also didn’t offer much of interest. We’d be busy enough for the next week dealing with all the other invites.
I fell into bed with a gratifying sense of duty well done. For somebody who doesn’t mingle, I thought I had filled out my dance card pretty well on this first excursion. Paris wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
I thought that right up until the Friday of the following week, when we returned from our dinner party at the Israeli political officer’s home to find Aunt Alesia pacing up and down the marble floor of our temporary apartment. “Thalia, you have to help me,” she burst out as soon as we were inside. “The most terrible thing has happened. The Shaimak Rubies are gone!”
I blinked. “What, that…” I quickly ruled out insane, extravagant and flamboyant… “that lovely necklace you were wearing at the Austrian embassy ball? How did you lose your rubies, Aunt Alesia?”
“That’s just it,” she said. “They weren’t my rubies. They were a loan from dear Daryush.”
“Okay, how did you lose his rubies?”
“And they aren’t his either. They come from the Taklanistan ruby mines that were closed over a century ago, which makes them twice as valuable because of their rarity. They are the property of the nation. And those – those canaille who took them are blackmailing me!”
When I was so ungenteel as to mutter Oh shit at the embassy ball, who knew I was prescient? Because this was a genuine oh shit moment if I’d ever seen one.
Also by Margaret Ball
Applied Topology series:
A Pocketful of Stars
An Opening in the Air
An Annoyance of Grackles
A Tapestry of Fire
Harmony series:
Insurgents
Awakening
Survivors
Earlier books:
Disappearing Act
Duchess of Aquitaine
Mathemagics
Lost in Translation
No Earthly Sunne
Changeweaver
Flameweaver
The Shadow Gate
A Creature of Smokeless Flame Page 23