Paco looked after her appreciatively, back at Hank and said, "Ah, ha. You are quite a dog after all, eh?"
Char Moore's face was blank. She mumbled something to the effect of, "See you later," directed seemingly to both of them, and went on to her room.
Hank said, "Damn!"
Paco closed the door behind him. "What's the matter, my friend?" he grinned. "Are you attempting to play two games at once?"
The morning tour was devoted to Red Square and the Kremlin. Immediately after breakfast they formed a column with two or three other tourist parties and were marched briskly to where Gorky Street debouched into Red Square. First destination was the mausoleum, backed against the Kremlin wall, which centered that square and served as a combined Vatican, Lhasa and Mecca of the Soviet complex. Built of dark red porphyry, it was the nearest thing to a really ultramodern building Hank had seen in Moscow.
As foreign tourists they were taken to the head of the line which already stretched around the Kremlin back into Mokhovaya Street along the western wall. A line of thousands.
Once the doors opened the line moved quickly. They filed in, two by two, down some steps, along a corridor which was suddenly cool as though refrigerated. Paco, standing next to Hank, said from the side of his mouth, "Now we know the secret of the embalming. I wonder if they're hanging on meathooks."
The line emerged suddenly into a room in the center of which were three glass chambers. The three bodies, the prophet and his two leading disciples flanking him. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev. On their faces, Hank decided, you could read much of their character. Lenin, the idealist and scholar. Stalin, utterly ruthless organization man. Khrushchev, energetic manager of what the first two had built.
They were in the burial room no more than two minutes, filed out by an opposite door. In the light of the square again, Paco grinned at him. "Nick and Joe didn't look so good, but Nikita is standing up pretty well."