Page 431 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

The room expressed her personality. Her favorite color was bright pink, and that was the shade of the bedcovers and the tablecloth and the cushions. The closet held few clothes, but they all flattered her: short skirts, V-necked dresses, pretty costume jewelry, prints with small flowers and bows and butterflies. Her bookshelf held all of Jane Austen in English and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in Polish. In a box under the bed, like a secret stash of pornography, she had a collection of American magazines about home decoration, full of photographs of sunlit kitchens painted in bright colors.

Today Lidka had begun the tedious process of being vetted by the CIA as a potential wife. This was much more thorough than the investigation of a mere girlfriend. She had to write her life story, undergo days of interrogation, and take an extended lie-detector test. All this had been going on somewhere else in the embassy while Cam did his normal day's work. He was not allowed to see her until she came home.

It was going to be difficult for Keith Dorset to fire Cam now. The information Staz was producing was solid gold.

Cam had given Staz a compact thirty-five-millimeter camera, a Zorki, which was a Soviet-made copy of a Leica, so that he could photograph documents in his office with the door shut instead of feeding them through the photocopying machine in the secretaries' bullpen. He could pass Cam hundreds of pages of documents in a handful of rolls of film.

The latest question the Warsaw CIA station had asked Staz was: What would trigger a westward attack by the Red Army's Second Strategic Echelon? The files he had provided in answer had been so comprehensive that Keith Dorset had received a rare written compliment from Langley.

And still Mario and Ollie had never seen Staz.

So Cam was confident that he would not be fired, and his marriage would not be forbidden, unless Lidka turned out to be an actual agent of the KGB.

Meanwhile, Poland was lurching toward freedom. Ten million people had joined the first free trade union, called Solidarity. That was one in every three Polish workers. Poland's biggest problem now was not the Soviet Union but money. The strikes, and the consequent paralysis of Communist Party leadership, had crippled an already weak economy. The result was a shortage of everything. The government rationed meat, butter, and flour. Workers who had won generous pay rises found they could not buy anything with their money. The black market exchange rate for the dollar more than doubled, from one hundred twenty zlotys to two hundred fifty. First Secretary Gierek was succeeded by Kania, who was then replaced by General Jaruzelski, which made no difference.

Tantalizingly, Lech Walesa and Solidarity hesitated on the brink of overthrowing Communism. A general strike was prepared, then called off at the last minute, on the advice of the Pope and the new American president, Ronald Reagan, both of whom feared bloodshed. Cam was disappointed by Reagan's timidity.

He got off the bed and laid the table with cutlery and plates. He had brought home two steaks. Naturally diplomats were not subject to the shortages that afflicted the Poles. They were paying in desperately needed dollars: they could have anything they wanted. Lidka was probably eating better than even the Communist Party elite.

Cam wondered whether to make love to her before or after eating the steaks. Sometimes it was good to savor the anticipation. Other times he was in too much of a hurry. Lidka never minded either way.

At last she arrived home. She kissed his cheek, put down her bag, took off her coat, and went along the hall to the bathroom.

When she came back he showed her the steaks. "Very nice," she said. Still she did not look at him.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" Cam said. He had never known her to be ill-tempered. This was unique.

"I don't think I can be a CIA wife," she said.

Cam fought down panic. "Tell me what's happened."

"I'm not going back tomorrow. I won't put up with it."

"What's the problem?"

"I feel like a criminal."

"Why, what did they do?"

At last she looked directly at him. "Do you believe I'm just using you to get to America?"

"No, I don't!"

"Then why did they ask me that?"

"I don't know."

"Does the question have anything to do with national security?"

"Nothing at all."

"They accused me of lying."

"Did you lie?"

She shrugged. "I didn't tell them everything. I'm not a nun, I've had lovers. I left one or two out--but your horrible CIA knew! They must have gone to my old school!"

"I know you've had lovers, I have too." Though not many, Cam thought, but he did not say it. "I don't mind."

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