“What do you mean?”
She turned to look at his strong profile, feeling a sort of perverse satisfaction in what she was about to say, a shriving, hoping it would hasten the cure. “I’ve fallen in love with you.”
His hand jerked wildly on the wheel. He turned to stare incredulously across the car. They bumped over the curb of the hotel entrance nearly taking down a pillar of the overhang. He brought the car under control in time, bringing it to a stop before the hotel doors. He felt completely confused. “You—what?”
There was a touch of quiet, almost resigned amusement in her voice. “I said, I’ve fallen in love with you. Madly, if that makes the slightest difference.”
He shook his head as if to clear it, running his hand through his thick hair. “But—that’s impossible—!”
“Improbable, maybe, but unfortunately not impossible.” She opened the car door and got down, bending a bit to look at him a trifle unsteadily, trying to engrave his face in her memory, although she knew she would be struggling to forget it for a long time to come, willing herself not to cry. “Thanks for the ride, and for going along with my idiocy as far as the treasure is concerned. It was a pleasure meeting you. I’ll be gone in the morning. I can get an early plane from here to Berlin and fly home from there. I’ll say good-bye now.”
He reached across the car, taking her hand and pulling her back into the car. She came reluctantly, but there was no resisting that steady pressure, nor did she really want to resist it. It would mean a few more minutes with him, at least; a few more words with which to recall his deep voice and hurt herself with the recollection in the months ahead. Gregor reached past her to close the door and then sat back, a frown on his forehead, but a gleam of pure happiness in his eyes.
“My darling Ruth,” he said quietly. “I never dreamed of such a thing—me, at my age! And you, the most lovely thing in the world! Wait—” She had begun to tug her arm free. He let her go but spoke quickly. “Listen, please! What do you think I was doing in the map room of the British Museum? I really didn’t care where the Schliemann gold actually was, or how it got there. I was looking for a problem to take my mind off the fact that I was falling in love with you. Why do you think I’m here, on what is certainly a silly—in the absurd sense—attempt to chase after something we probably couldn’t find if we knew where it was. We aren’t trained investigators, not in something like this. I’m here because I wanted to spend as much time with you as I could before I knew we had to each go our separate ways; to just look at you, or to just know you were near me.”
He smiled a bit wryly and touched the lapel of his suit.
“And why do you think I’m wearing these clothes? I’m rather an oaf where clothes are concerned. I’m wearing them because I didn’t want to look like a peasant in your eyes. I’m wearing them because the salesman told me they made me look younger, which is ridiculous, but I wanted to look younger for you. Why do you think I look like an idiot when I’m with you? And talk like an idiot when I’m with you? And almost drove like an idiot a few minutes ago? I’m in love with you, Ruth. I have been almost from the minute I met you.”
Ruth was staring down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She thought she had never felt as happy in her life, but when she looked up, rather than the radiance Gregor had expected, had hoped for, she looked almost sad.
“And now?” she asked softly.
“Now,” Gregor said with a rare insight into the words the occasion seemed to call for, “I shall put the car away in the garage until morning, after which we shall have dinner, with a good wine to offset what I suspect will be a terrible meal—”
“I’m not hungry,” Ruth said in a small voice, and suddenly smiled her gamine smile.
“Then we shall merely have the wine—or possibly not even that—after which”—he reached over and took her hand—“we shall go to my room and discuss many things. Including the future …”
They made love with a fierceness, a passion, that Gregor had thought a thing long of the past, and that Ruth had never known. Often she had tried to imagine total commitment to a person, but nothing had ever prepared her for the height of ecstacy, the sweeping fulfillment of just giving and wanting to give more, the sweet absolutes of total receiving. She clung to Gregor hungrily, part of him as he was part of her, knowing that whatever followed in their lives, nothing would or could take this moment from her. Afterward they lay quietly, holding hands like children, reveling in their feeling for each other, content to touch and to love. Ruth turned on her side, stroking his cheek.
“And now?”
He said it, attempting lightness, although he did not really believe it. It would have been more than he could ever have hoped for. “Now, as they say in the novels, we get married and live happily ever after.” It could be, he said to himself fiercely. Why couldn’t it be? He turned to Ruth, trying to sound convincing. “You will love Leningrad. It’s truly a beautiful city. We shall work together at the Hermitage, and make trips together, and excavate in strange places together, and in the evenings”—he reached over with his free hand to touch one of her full breasts almost wonderingly—“we shall make love together. But it will always be—”
“No.”
“—together.” He frowned slightly, as if in non-understanding. “Did you say no?”
Ruth pulled herself up to kiss him on the lips, a long tender kiss, and then laid her head on his chest.
“Darling, you’re dreaming. I couldn’t possibly live in Russia. You must know that as well as I do.”
“Why not?” Gregor was trying to convince himself as much as Ruth, but he could not help but sound a bit irked. “My Lord, Ruth, you don’t believe those stories that we’re all ignorant peasants living in caves, wearing long beards, and carrying bombs, do you? Or tossing children from the backs of troikas to satisfy the wolves? Darling, Leningrad is a beautiful, modern city. We’ve got traffic lights, and paved streets, and indoor toilets,” he finished a bit tartly.
She laid a finger across his lips, smiling at him lovingly but sadly. “My darling, I’ve been to Leningrad and I know it’s a beautiful, modern city—although the less said about your indoor toilets the better.” Her smile disappeared; she became serious. “But you know my living there is impossible. I’m the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve worked all my life to reach that point, and I couldn’t possibly leave it or give it up. The museum is my home. It’s my life.” A thought came, another dream as she knew, but she had to voice it. “Why don’t you come to New York? I know people in Washington and I’m sure we could arrange it. And the Metropolitan could always use a fine curator—”
He grinned, but it was a tight grin. “My darling Ruth! Haven’t you heard that it’s bad policy to work for a relative? Unless, of course, you were planning on our living in sin.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t leave the Hermitage. The antiquities section is largely my work. And my plans for it mean many years of things I want to do. It’s the greatest museum in the world and I’m part of it, I helped make it what it is. Besides, I have a baby dinosaur—” He stopped abruptly, feeling somehow a bit guilty. He realized he hadn’t even thought of his baby dinosaur for days.
Ruth leaned over to kiss him again. Oddly enough she felt relaxed, and not at all as miserable as she would have imagined she might have felt. “My darling,” she said, “neither of us can leave what we have, but we both now have something extra, something we never had before. I will always love you, I’m sure of that, and I hope you will always love me. We will meet at conferences, and archaeological congresses, and we will greet each other very formally, and discuss our respective papers in deeply scientific and dull terms, and then when we’re alone”—she ran her hand lightly down his stomach to his crotch, gathering him into her hand, amazed at herself for her action but feeling completely natural and good about it—“we shall go to my room—”
“Or mine—”
“Or both, in turn, and make love all night.” S
he kissed him again and sat up in bed, her gamine smile on her face. “And now, for reasons I cannot imagine, I’m hungry.”
Gregor sighed and swung his feet from the side of the bed, shaking his head. “Maybe it’s better we’re not getting married,” he said thoughtfully. “On my salary I probably couldn’t feed you.”
Their meal had been consumed with little idea of what they were eating, which was probably just as well. The only other person in the dining room with them at that late hour was a military-looking gentleman drinking schnapps with beer. The waiters in their unaccustomed stiff formal clothing would have liked nothing better than that the three would go about their business and allow them to clean up and go home, but the military-looking gentleman did not appear the type to rush without possibly undesirable consequences, so Ruth and Gregor were able to stare at each other in their increasingly growing wonder at their love, and finish their coffee and brandy without snide hints from the staff.
Ruth suddenly frowned. “It wasn’t always like that.”
Gregor stared. Ruth, he realized, would have been fascinating to live with. Her mind went off at odd angles without warning, like a firecracker controlled by an infant. “What wasn’t always like that?”
“Warnemünde. It wasn’t always like the Manhattan docks and the Boston docks and the Baltimore docks all rolled into one.” She thought about it a moment and then nodded in positive conviction. “Thirty-five years ago it may have been like those Portuguese fishing villages!”
“Except, of course, for the war, which Portugal was smart enough to avoid.”
Ruth refused to be distracted. “I mean, there were probably fishing docks like that thirty-five years ago. For all we know there might still be some out on the coast, past all that steel and concrete.” She stared at Gregor thoughtfully, her eyes narrowing. “And the sea was pretty choppy today, wasn’t it?”
Gregor pushed his empty coffee cup away and reached for his brandy. There was a glint of humor in his eyes. “Is there a connection?”
“Well, it was choppy, wasn’t it? It’s usually probably a lot worse, isn’t it?”
“Actually,” Gregor said, “not that I know what you’re talking about, but the Baltic isn’t a particularly rough sea. Why?”
“Well, it gets rough at times, I’ll bet!” Ruth leaned toward him, conviction in every aspect of her expression. “Darling, do you want to know what happened to that fishing boat with the treasure on it?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“I will, indeed. It sank!” Ruth leaned back triumphantly.
“What?”
“Of course! That’s it!” Ruth could see it all. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before? It was so obvious! “That’s why the treasure hasn’t been seen or heard of all these years! Or Petterssen and the man with him! They’ve all been at the bottom of the sea!”
“And exactly who discovered the treasure in order to have this auction?” Gregor asked with gentle sarcasm. “After all, the Baltic is a pretty big sea. Was it brought up in the nets of some fisherman who happened to be an archaeology student on the side, or was some archaeologist in swimming and happened to stub his toes on it? And say to himself, ‘My, my! Look what I found! This ought to be worth fifteen million dollars if it’s worth a kopeck.’”
“Well,” Ruth said stubbornly, “it’s possible. At least it’s a theory, which is more than you’re offering. Maybe there was a big storm that night and the boat sank. That’s happened before, hasn’t it?”
“I’m sure it has.”
“Well, then! Or little boats get run down in storms by big ships sometimes, don’t they? And the big ship doesn’t even know about it half the time. They just go on. Nobody would be on deck in a bad storm, so nobody would see it happen.” She bolstered her argument. “It happened in Captains Courageous, and in a London book, the Sea Wolf.”
“And the screams of the poor sinking fishermen would be lost in the howling of the wind and the fury of the storm, and they would all go to the bottom carrying the Schliemann treasure in their arms.” Gregor grinned. “Ruth, you should be the one writing books, with that imagination.”
“Well, it could have happened,” Ruth said obstinately. “It would certainly explain where the treasure has been all these years, and I don’t hear anything from you that sounds any better.” She frowned. “Where could we find out about weather conditions and storms at sea and things like that, thirty-five years ago?”
Gregor smiled and shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Probably not here in Germany,” Ruth said, and frowned at her coffee. “Things must have been a mess here at the time with records destroyed and God knows what. Do you think they might have records of storms and wrecks and things like that anywhere else? In the States? Maybe Lloyds, in London! Or maybe even closer, in Denmark, possibly?”
“Possibly,” Gregor conceded. A trip to Denmark, while wasting further time as far as any information regarding the treasure was concerned, would be a great excuse to spend a few more days with Ruth, and he did not wish to think beyond that point. Day by day was the only way he could handle it, and Copenhagen was a lovely city, the perfect city for lovers. Possibly that was also in Ruth’s mind when she made the suggestion, although he was the first to admit he was never quite sure of what ideas were being generated in the active mind behind that lovely face. “There’s one thing, though,” he added in the interests of honesty. “I imagine it isn’t easy to get access to their records. Have you thought of that?”
Ruth smiled at him triumphantly, and he knew that she had, indeed, thought of that. She raised her brandy glass in a gesture of a toast, touched her glass to Gregor’s. They both drank. Ruth put her glass down.
“I know a man in Denmark,” she said, pleased with the way everything was working out, feeling that everything would always work out as long as she and Gregor were in love. “I knew him when I was at the Smithsonian in Washington and he was in the diplomatic corps. We’d run into each other at parties. He has all the influence anyone needs to get anything we want. He’s a count—Axel Lindgren.”
Major Serge Ulanov rolled over in bed and stared blankly at the drawn window shade a moment, trying to orient himself. Ah, yes. Rostock and the Warnow Hotel. And what on earth was he doing here, wet-nursing a pair of starry-eyed love birds? He yawned and sat up, swinging his feet to the floor, padding over to raise the shade and peer up at the sky, blinking at the brightness. Another nice day. At least the weather had made sense on this job if nothing else did. And he had noticed posters across the street when they had pulled into the hotel entrance the night before—or, rather, early that morning—that indicated there was a circus in town. Well, if the love birds would sit still for a day or so, maybe he could discover what they were up to—what was so comical about the Warnemünde docks—and get to see the circus as well.
He lit his usual morning cigarette, walked to the dresser, yawning, and consulted his watch there. Almost noon. Well, he had had a decent night’s rest for a change, and apparently the love birds did as well, since there had been no indication from Sergeant Wolper or the colonel that their car had been taken from the garage. He washed his face in cold water to waken himself a bit more quickly, and then began to dress. He was just putting on his shoes when the telephone rang; he reached over to it and raised it.
“Yes?”
“Major? Colonel Müeller here. Did you have a good night’s rest?”
“Fine, thank you. What about Kovpak and the girl?”
“They’re still here. We’ve kept an eye on their car.” Colonel Müeller hesitated a moment. As far as he had been able to tell, the case seemed to involve nothing more important than an errant husband, or an errant wife, or both. Still, of course, important state secrets were often involved in these sex cases. “Is there anything more you’d like to tell me about the nature of this affair, Major?”
“If you wish,” Ulanov said pleasantly, and looked at his watch again. “I’ll come down and meet y
ou in the lobby. We’ll have something to eat and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
Colonel Müeller frowned. “But what if Kovpak walks into the restaurant and recognizes you?”
“Then I’ll simply ask him what he thinks he’s up to,” Ulanov said cheerfully. He had been coming to the conclusion for a long time that he had been playing it a bit more cozily than the case warranted, although there was still the fact that the CIA man, Newkirk, had considered the matter important enough to follow them all to Germany. For a moment Ulanov wondered how many days or weeks it would take Newkirk to get out of the mess in Berlin. Then with a smile he returned his attention to the colonel. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He put out his cigarette and finished dressing.
An odd security case, Colonel Müeller thought as he hung up, asking a suspect what he thinks he’s up to. He shrugged and left his room, taking the elevator to the ground floor, waiting for Ulanov. As he did so he glanced into the ground-floor restaurant. Neither Kovpak nor the girl were there, although his driver could be seen wolfing down food, indicating that Sergeant Wolper was now doing duty in the garage. At least that part was being handled properly, the colonel thought with satisfaction, and looked up as Ulanov came from the elevator. The colonel began to lead the way to the restaurant, but Ulanov stopped him.
“One minute. They haven’t come down yet?”
“Not yet.”
Ulanov frowned and consulted his watch again. He looked up. “What rooms do they have?”
“Four-ten and four-twelve. Why?”
The stocky major did not bother to answer but walked to the house telephone and spoke into one of them. He waited as the operator rang the number he had given her, a strange sense of unease beginning to grip him. The telephone rang and rang. Ulanov depressed the lever and raised it again, asking to be connected with the other room. Again the telephone rang without being answered. His suspicions solidifying, the major hung up and strode to the desk, a frown on his face. Of course the two might have simply gone for a walk, but he had a feeling they had not.
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