PROLOGUE
September 1947

The hunter stopped and stared at the thing in front of him, so familiar, but so out of place. Puzzled, he looked toward the whispering forest and at the meadow, just visible under a golden blanket of sun on the other side of a shadowed gully. He could hear the creek below him. He strained his ears, alert now. His best buddy had operated one of these in Sicily. Why was it here? He scanned the forest in front of him again as if it might yield an answer and then reached for his rifle and dismounted, letting the reins drop. He propped the rifle against the rock and knelt down to see better. He only looked up when his horse whinnied and skittered sideways.

“Don’t turn around.”

The voice, sudden, surprising, utterly unlikely, made him want to laugh.

He felt only shock, not pain, as his head was yanked backwards by his hair. He could hear the slide of the gun along the rock as it toppled. In an eternity of time, he wondered at how his hat had come off, at why it didn’t hurt to have your hair pulled this way. His eyes wide, head held back at an impossible angle, he saw the sudden glimpse of heaven and then pitched forward, surprised by the warm, draining finality of death.

CHAPTER ONE
July 1945

The dacha garden, slightly unkempt, was a lush emerald green of grass bordered by the wildflowers that the deputy director liked to grow: yellow buttercups, blue cornflower, nodding chamomile. The air was the very scent of summer, Stanimir Aptekar thought. He was so strongly assailed by a memory of his childhood in his garden at home near Saint Petersburg that he was momentarily in its complete possession. He was running joyfully through the trees to the river, his brother Stepan in full pursuit. He pulled himself back to the present with some effort, drinking the vodka remaining in his glass to anchor himself.

The four men sat in white wicker chairs around a small table under the shade of an ancient and spreading apple tree. Its living branches were filled with tiny green apples; its dead branches untrimmed, provided a suggestion of decay. The men leaned back, all of them smoking. The vodka bottle was depleted to below the halfway mark, the plate of sausage and loaf of bread nearly spent. Despite the languid comforts suggested by this scene, there was a sense of urgency about the meeting.

“It has been going well,” Ivanov said. “We have people in place in Britain and, as you know, some important defections. It is excellent that we had the foresight to begin this process before the end of the war. We are in a consolidating phase, yes? Koba is pleased that we are finally getting some traction. But the next moves are critical. Our ability to build a nuclear capacity depends on what happens now. If we are exposed, it will mean critical delays. And he will not stomach delays.”

There was a dark obviousness to the implications of Stalin’s impatience. Ivanov, the assistant deputy director of the MGB, the Ministry of State Security, leaned back in his chair, looking at his comrades as if challenging them for their potential failures.

“We could have been saved some of this extra work if we’d been fast enough when the Americans and British were scooping up physicists from Germany.”

Ivanov reached forward to put his cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and then thought better of it and flicked it into the bushes instead. It was his dacha after all.

“Stanimir?”

He had a high-pitched, snivelling voice that irritated Stanimir Aptekar.

Aptekar leaned back. The other three seemed to move imperceptibly forward. He was aware of the deep blue of the sky against the green of the tree that shaded them. So much beauty, he thought.

“In Canada, we are operating out of the embassy in Ottawa. We have people in the very centre. I have their names in my dossier. I have also put in place a failsafe plan. Should something go wrong, it will take little time to assemble a back-up group. This I keep in my head.” Aptekar tapped the side of his head with his long index finger.

“Is that wise? If something should, God forbid, happen to you?”

“With any luck, God is forbidding. Comrades, these are new and delicate times. Here, among ourselves, in this trusted circle, I recommend caution to everyone.”

He thought with a deep well of sadness of Stepan, a hero of the war, picked up one afternoon from his apartment where he celebrated the birthday of his wife with his daughter and her two small children. No one had seen him again, not until the state presented a red box with a hero’s award from the People to his grieving widow. She had shown it to him, wordlessly, her expression devoid forevermore of the humour and intelligence that had once animated it. What had his brother done? Whom had he offended? There would never be an answer. Aptekar had gazed at the silver medal, a momentary fantasy that his brother and all his life had been physically compressed into this metal disk, the image of Stalin stamped forever on his remains.

He looked at the smiling faces of his comrades. Masha Ivanova came out of the house with sushki and tea. No circle could be trusted. Certainly not this one.

August 1947

“So, Comrade Aptekar.” Ivanov, now Deputy Director, interrupted his walk back and forth across the room, his brown boots gleaming in the sunlight that poured in the east window of the Kremlin office Aptekar had been called to. “Tea?”

“Thank you.” Such sinister courtesy, Stanimir Aptekar thought. “Congratulations, Deputy Director Comrade Ivanov, on your promotion.”

That meeting in the Ivanov’s sunny garden two years before seemed a lifetime ago.

A samovar stood on a long table pushed against the wall. The commander acknowledged this compliment with a nod and then lifted his hand; a soldier at attention by the door clicked his heels quietly and began to pour tea into two glasses waiting on a tray.

Dismissed, the soldier saluted and withdrew, closing the door quietly. He will be right outside, Aptekar thought wearily.

“You have done great service over a long career, comrade.”

“You are kind to say so,” Aptekar said.

“Your dossier reads like an adventure book for schoolboys. Such exploits! They don’t make spies like you anymore.”

The Deputy Director lifted a manila folder, which Aptekar did not doubt was a prop, like everything else in the room. He knew this strategy well. He had employed it many times over the past fifty years—goodness, was it fifty years he had worked for intelligence, first for Mother Russia, and now for the Soviet Empire? He inclined his head, his hand partially on his glass of tea. He would drink when Ivanov did.

“Berlin recently, I think?” Ivanov sat down and was smiling benignly at his guest. “Such a messy arrangement! We are delaying the inevitable, I think. The West is delaying the inevitable.”

“It is indeed. East Germany will be the envy of the West, Deputy Director Comrade Ivanov.”

“We should never have conceded any part of Berlin. You agree, I think?”

“Yes, comrade. Certainly.”

Ivanov dropped a lump of sugar into his glass. “I’m glad you agree. Westerners are pouring in and out of there with ever-increasing zeal, as if they suspected that Berlin might become a problem. As if their increased presence in the city was a precaution of some sort. And we are letting them traipse across our sectors unhindered!” Ivanov momentarily lost his composed demeanour.

A cool head was required in this moment. Aptekar focused all his attention on appearing interested, while his mind sorted through two piles: what might be coming next, and what he might be able to do about it. His escape to the West was planned, everything in place. No one knew except the British director, who had arranged to have him met at the border. This ceremony, or whatever it was, here with Ivanov, represented his last feigned look of earnest committed to the aspirations of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

“What we are wondering, Comrade Aptekar, is why so suddenly? We are hoping, because you had your ear to the ground in Berlin as recently as June 20, you might be able to provide insight.”

June 20. The day he met with Lane Winslow. He had been assigned to bring her across, but he had seen immediately that she had no appetite for double agency, or indeed, any sort of espionage. The outcome of the fateful evening had been very different from what he had intended, and yet . . . he had made that sudden decision. Now it seemed that history, so out of his or anyone’s control, shone a light on that moment at dinner when he had said, surprising even himself, that he might like to retire in the West. Why had he done it? Was it a sentimental attachment to the past, to the years he had worked with her father when Russia and Britain were on the same side of things?

He reasoned that they had not discovered what he had said specifically, but the increased activity in Berlin made them question why he had failed to bring the British agent over and what he might have said to her about their plans for Berlin. There was something in this man’s voice that made his heart sink. He knew that his autonomy was at an end. Even this handsome talk of his heroism would not protect him now, any more than it had his brother, Stepan.

“I do not believe the West is any more zealous than it was before. When I was there, the traffic on the corridor into Berlin, both by road and rail, was extremely heavy. I can assure you, the West has been suspicious and anxious to keep its presence sturdy from the beginning. They bargained for half of Berlin, and they intend to keep it, no matter what happens.”

Ivanov shrugged in agreement. “I expect you are right. There are those, however, who take a more sinister view. I do not say I do, but others. They have concluded that there has been a leak, that our intentions with regard to Berlin, and even our plans to build networks in the West were passed on to a British agent. Of course, the world is full of paranoia. Everyone makes much too much of the smallest things. I expect a careless word, a stolen dossier, something for which our agent would not have been culpable.” Ivanov smiled at Aptekar. “But comrade, I am forgetting myself! This is not why you were invited here! The People, in recognition of your long and storied service to the country, are at last going to allow you to retire! What are you now, nearly seventy? You are legendary, inspirational! You have a home in the countryside near Leningrad, do you not?”

Aptekar smiled as well. “I do, Deputy Director. A nice little place with a small garden.” Why had he talked about plans to build a new network in the West? Aptekar searched his mind to remember who should know about these plans. Ivanov had not been included in the final plans made after that summer meeting, but here he was talking about it as if he were talking about the expansion of the Kremlin parking lot. Perhaps, since his promotion, he’d been brought into the need-to-know circle. Whom had Ivanov knocked out for that promotion? Almost with resignation, Aptekar, listening to that high-pitched voice he disliked so much, and knew he would be next.

“Ah! Then you shall garden! How enviable. How little time one has to be close to the earth, and yet such a life is quintessentially Russian, do you not agree?”

“Very much so,” said Aptekar. “I expect it is the reason that we call her our ‘motherland,’ unlike our recent enemies with their ‘fatherland.’ I shall look forward to returning to her bosom.”

“And so, Comrade Aptekar, today has a special significance.” Ivanov stood and went to the sideboard where a red, satin-covered box waited. The door to the room opened, and a man in a dark serge suit and holding a camera came in, as did the soldier who had been waiting outside the room. “Comrade, please.” Ivanov signalled with a little flick of his hand that Aptekar was to stand and approach him.

“Comrade Stanimir Aptekar, it gives me great pleasure to present you with the Red Banner medal for service to the Motherland and the defence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Ivanov opened the box, turning it slightly toward the soldier and cameraman, as if they were a large audience, and then removed the medal and pinned it on the lapel of Aptekar’s jacket. He reached for Aptekar’s hand and shook it vigorously, turning them both toward the camera and smiling broadly. The flash emitted only a soft “pfft,” as though downplaying the occasion taking place.

When Aptekar had been escorted out into the hall, Ivanov waited to hear the footsteps recede and then went to the telephone on his desk. He tapped his fingers impatiently on the desk. The man on the other end had been told to pick up on the first ring, but it rang three times before Ivanov heard “Da?”

“Now. Have him followed. He has the name of every potential agent in our outpost in Ottawa in his head. Do not kill him, and do not let him disappear. We will pick him up soon. Do you understand?”

Aptekar stood on the embankment of the Moscow River, watching a barge move slowly south. He had removed his medal and slipped it into his pocket. On the whole, he thought, I am alive. My brother had to be executed before he got his hero’s medal. There would be no cottage in Sussex, that was certain. It had been something he’d begun to envision for himself, almost as if it had been a real possibility. Someone had found out and was going to make sure it never happened. Lane Winslow would have told her people that she was bringing him over, but how would someone here in Moscow have found it out? He doubted there would even be his own little house outside Leningrad. He heard the car pull up and stop on the street behind him, but he did not turn. It would not be taking him to the western border in Yugoslavia, where he was supposed to be by the end of the week.

—From A Deceptive Devotion

CHAPTER ONE
November 1947

Lane’s first impression was of the whiteness. The mid-afternoon sun, which she had always thought of as golden, bleached everything here to the purity of bones. The endless desert had given way to adobe and wood houses that seemed to lie low away from the sun, and then to the white of the station they were approaching.

Her honeymoon. It was ridiculous and wonderful. A year and a half before, she had arrived at King’s Cove, a tiny hamlet an hour outside of the city of Nelson, in the middle of British Columbia, and moved into her beautiful house among her eccentric neighbours with no other object than to lose herself, and her memories, and put the war behind her. The danger of dropping out of airplanes into occupied France carrying weapons and encrypted messages began to seem more and more like a life that had happened to someone else. The misery of her first love affair had been swept away, almost against her own better judgement, by Frederick Darling, inspector of the Nelson Police.

She looked at him now, his dark hair slightly tousled from leaning against the window, and her heart skipped. They’d had a bad start, she had to admit; he had arrested her over the death of a man on her property. He was extraordinarily reserved, not to say impenetrable, but he had come, very slowly and most reluctantly, to accept that she had some skills that were invaluable in some of his other cases. And she in turn had come to appreciate his profound sense of justice, and his philosophical turn of mind, perhaps a product of his surprisingly academic background. She had not expected a degree in literature from a policeman. She wondered if either of them had realized how completely they were falling in love. She smiled. She was pretty sure his sidekick, Sergeant Ames, had. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn it was he who had pointed it out to Darling.

“Not terribly punctual. It’s gone two forty-five,” she said, consulting her watch. The train screeched, as if protesting at having to slow down, and then stopped and hissed. People began to stand up, stretch, and reach for their bags. It had been a long day’s ride from Los Angeles.

“You want precision on a honeymoon. How delightful!” Darling said. “It’s hotter than blazes. I’m overdressed.” He took his hat off the seat and fanned himself. “Well, shall we?”

A porter appeared as they stepped off the train. Lane paused and took a deep breath. She loved arriving in a place she’d never been. Warmth emanated from the tiles of the platform and off the white walls of the station, but a breeze made the movement of air almost sensual on her face.

“Can I get your bags, sir, ma’am?”

“That would be lovely, thank you,” Lane said. “What is the temperature today?”

“A balmy seventy-eight, ma’am.” The porter touched his cap briefly and led the way to baggage car, pushing a trolley.

“You see, darling, a perfect summer day at home. My husband thinks it is too hot,” she continued to the porter, following him, her handbag over her arm.

“Oh, no, ma’am. This is just how we like it. Summertime? Now that’s a punishing time in Arizona. It can get up over a hundred. You just wanna crawl under a rock like a lizard. Vacation?”

“Honeymoon,” Lane said, and was slightly embarrassed to feel her cheeks flushing.

“Well now, that’s something! Congratulations and welcome to Tucson. Will you be needing a taxi?”

“Yes,” said Darling, “thank you.” He reached into his jacket for some coins.

The station platform felt almost ghostly in the white afternoon despite chattering travellers getting on and off the train. Lane and Darling followed the porter into the station, where it took her a moment to adjust to the darkness. Inside, the shade contrasted sharply with the blinding light of the street visible through the windows. Sharp, she decided was the operative word. Sharp shadows, sharp light, sharp lines.

“Where shall I tell the driver y’all are headed?”

“The Santa Cruz Inn,” Darling said. He produced the coins and the porter tipped his hat, turning a beaming smile on Lane.

“You have a wonderful honeymoon, you hear?”

“You made a conquest there,” Darling remarked, settling in the back seat of the cab after asking to be conveyed to the Santa Cruz Inn. “I wonder how Ames is getting on?”

“Don’t be silly. We’ve only been gone four days. This is a complete vacation from mayhem. We’re going to get along like a house on fire because I won’t be interfering in anything. I plan to lie by the pool with an edifying book during the day and make up for it by swilling cocktails in the evening. I hope they have cocktails.”

“They got cocktails, ma’am,” the driver said suddenly from the front seat. “You got the best there. All the actors go there. Very swanky. Pretty new, too. My sister Consuela works there, cleaning.”

“Oh, is it far?” she asked—the driver looked Mexican, and Lane had expected him to speak with an accent. She gave herself a stern mental correction.

The driver took a moment to honk at someone, slowed down to wait for a tram to go by, and then turned onto Sixth Avenue. “It’s a few miles out of town, just east, but I could drive you just a couple of blocks near here to see the old part of town.”

“Why not?” Darling asked, when Lane gave him a nod.

Lane looked at the town outside the car windows. They passed a massive pink building with a red-tiled roof and a huge mosaic green and yellow dome. A row of columns connected by arches provided a long, shaded walkway. She could just see the courtyard beyond the arches.

“What is that wonderful looking place?” Lane asked.

“That’s the county courthouse. This here is the old part of the city, called the Presidio. The Spanish came here first, and you’ve got some very fine houses in here. I’ll just drive you along Fourth Avenue so you can see. It won’t take a minute.”

Lane threw herself on the bed of their suite. “This is heavenly! We were right to pick this. All this lovely adobe. It could almost be Mexico. I feel like I have been transported to a completely foreign place. And this weather! It is hard to imagine that somewhere in the world it is this warm on the ninth of November. We’d be in our wool shirts at home.”

Lane had seen the travel brochures for Tucson at the travel agency on Baker Street and had been attracted to the sunny desert landscape, perfect for a honeymoon as November ushered in the damp cold of a British Columbia winter. “We could go to a dude ranch,” she’d said, spreading the brochures across the table one evening.

“Are we dudes, do you think? I have decidedly negative views on dressing up in chaps,” Darling had said. “You know, I have an ex colleague who moved there in ’37. He might have an idea for a less energetic holiday. I’ll write to him.” And indeed, his ex-colleague, now the assistant chief of police in Tucson, Paul Galloway, had recommended the Santa Cruz Inn, adding that it was a favourite of Hollywood movie stars.

“You have been transported to a foreign place,” Darling pointed out. While not of a demonstrative turn, he was quietly relishing the sunny warmth, not to mention a completely new sensation to him; the feeling of truly being on holiday, with no responsibilities and nothing to do but enjoy the company of his new and beautiful wife. He hung his jacket in the closet and rolled up his shirtsleeves. His tie was already discarded on the dresser. He looked at the suitcases.

Lane smiled. “Let’s not unpack now. Let’s just get out the things we need for tea. I’m astonished they have a good old English tea here, and,” she glanced at her watch, “it’s on in fifteen minutes, and I don’t want to miss it. We can see who our neighbours are.”

Darling kicked off his brogues and lay down on the bed, scooping her into his arms. “I don’t care who the neighbours are.” He kissed her in a way that suggested they stay put awhile, which Lane found almost irresistible.

“We should see if we can find Consuela, the cabbie’s sister,” she said through his kiss.

“I’ve never met a woman with less sense of occasion. You are not easy to love.”

“I’m sure you knew that when you married me. Come, up you get! We didn’t come here to while away our time in bed.”

“I should have thought that was exactly why we came,” Darling protested, swinging his legs onto the floor.

They walked along the brick path past neat rows of flowers and green lawns, to where a fountain splashed in the centre of a large lawn surrounded by palms and other trees Lane couldn’t identify.

She clutched Darling’s arm. “Oh, listen!” she exclaimed, holding up a finger.

He duly tilted his head. “To what, in particular?”

“That cooing . . . mourning doves! One of my favourite birds . . . we had them in England.” They stood together in companionable silence and became aware of several types of birdsong, the soft cooing predominating. Lane sighed happily. “They always sound so peaceful. I feel as if nothing bad could happen in a place where they are.”

The library, modelled, Lane decided, on some fantasy European manorial room with dark ceiling beams and a long wall of books, was abuzz with quiet chatter and the clinking of cups. The women were in bright summer dresses, some sporting wide-brimmed straw hats and others pert little numbers with wisps of veil set at becoming angles. A couple of younger men in pale linen trousers stood by the massive unlit hearth with their elbows on the mantel, smoking pipes. The place had the confident, quiet feel of money.

“Those two by the fireplace look just like the brochure,” Lane whispered. “Do you think they stay there permanently on the off-chance they’ll be photographed? Oh. What have you got? I missed those.” She pointed at a pair of tiny scones on his plate.

“They’re over there. You’re not having mine.”

Lane left the little round table they had managed to get and went to where the scones were laid out, wondering if it would be greedy to take two.

“This is gorgeous, sweetie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen nothing . . . anything like this. You’re spoiling me, you know that?”

Lane turned with her scones and saw a woman, possibly in her mid-thirties with frizzy, nearly white bleached-blond hair in a pre-war Bette Davis style. She was wearing a deep ruby shade of lipstick that Lane wasn’t sure about for the time of day. The man she giggled at, the man she held up her china cup to toast, was considerably older. Lane would have said he was into his seventies. He was slight and perfectly dressed in white slacks and a blue blazer, and his full head of white hair was brushed and Brilliantined into a side part. She could see a heavy embossed gold ring on his right hand and a simple wedding band on his left.

“A bit spring–winter, that couple, wouldn’t you say?” she whispered to Darling, pointing surreptitiously with her buttered scone a few moments later.

“I would. But would it be any of my business?”

“Perhaps not, but we were interested in finding out who our fellow denizens are. I think it’s rather sweet, really.”

“I believe it was you who was interested in our neighbours,” he said. “I bet he’s being taken for everything he’s worth.”

“Or he’s taking her for everything she’s worth,” Lane said.

“She doesn’t look like she’s the one with the money,” Darling countered.

“Are you telling me the only thing women value is money?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Darling said, selecting a petit four. They chewed contentedly for a few moments, and then a young couple came up to them smiling. The woman was lovely, Lane thought. Tall and slender with golden hair twisted into an elaborate knot. She was wearing a simple, graceful, cap-sleeved linen dress with pale blue stripes.

“I think you folks are our neighbours. I saw you come in earlier. We were just leaving to go have a dip. Isn’t this grand?”

Darling and Lane stood up. “I’m Lane, and this is my husband, Frederick Darling. How do you do?”

“I’m Ivy Renwick, and this is Jack. We’re from Wisconsin. We don’t get anything like this back home! We just came yesterday.”

Darling nodded and shook hands with them. “We don’t much either. We’re from a little town in British Columbia.”

“Oh, my! Canadians. You’re a long way from home. What brings you out this way?”

Jack Renwick had pale, straw-coloured hair and very genuine blue eyes. Darling liked him at once.

“Honeymoon,” he said with a slight touch of apology.

“Hey! Us too. We got hitched just before I shipped out in ’44, and we never got a chance to have a honeymoon, so we’re having it now,” Jack Renwick said.

“We should meet for cocktails and then have dinner one night. I saw Clark Gable just checking out as we were arriving. He was staying in one of the villas!” Ivy Renwick said. “What about tomorrow?”

Ambling through the garden later, Darling said, “I can’t think when I’ve met a more perfect couple. I suppose we will have to follow through and have dinner with them tomorrow?”

They stopped by a little planting of cactus. “You say ‘perfect’ as if they were boring.”

“I’m not saying that, but they do seem almost too good to be true and are probably regretting the impulse to socialize already. I know I am,” Darling said. “Apparently the Native people in this part of the world could peel and eat these things.” He was pointing at a cactus helpfully labelled nopal. “Which reminds me, should we go and have a swim before we have to get ready to go to Galloway’s for dinner? I have a feeling the temperature starts to go down smartly when it gets dark.”

—From A Match Made for Murder