The MVD man looked at her, blinked, sighed and looked away. “This color discussion,” he said, “it is very silly. Look at the Blue Ridge Mountains, in your country. Are they blue?”
“Well—” Malone said.
“What color, for example, is the Golden Gate Bridge?” the MVD man continued, with heavy sarcasm. “Is not even a gate. Is a bridge. Is not golden. But you say we disappoint. No. You disappoint.”
There seemed to be no immediate answer to that, so Malone didn’t try for one. Instead, he went back to looking at the Square, and beyond it to where the inverted turnips of the Kremlin gleamed in the moonlight. The turnips were very pretty, if a little odd for building-tops. But Red Square, in spite of all its historic associations, seemed to be a little dull. The buildings were just buildings, and the streets were filled with Russians. They were not bomb-throwing Russians, bearded Russians or even “Volga Boatman”-singing Russians. They were just ordinary, dull Russians of every sort, shade, race, color and previous condition of servitude.
It was just about what he’d expected after the trip. That hadn’t been exciting either, he told himself. There had been no incident of any kind. None of the three spies seemed to be exactly overjoyed about being sent back to good old Mother Russia, but none seemed inclined to make much fuss about the matter, either. Malone had blandly told them that they were being deported, instead of tried, because there was no evidence that was worth the expense of a trial. And, besides that, he had particularly emphasized that the FBI did not believe any of the stories the three men had told.
“They just don’t match up,” he said. “You all told different stories, and there’s too much disagreement between them. Frankly, we don’t believe any of them—not yet, we don’t. But mark my words. We’ll find out the truth some day.”
He’d thought it was a good speech, and Her Majesty had agreed with him. It had its desired effect, since the plane was the first place the three had had a chance to meet since their arrest. “Each one knows that he told the truth,” Her Majesty said, “but nobody knows what the other two said.”
“That’s what I figured,” Malone said. “They didn’t have a chance to talk to each other.”
“And so each one is lying his head off to the others,” Her Majesty said, “and telling them all about how he, too, lied gloriously and bravely in defense of the Motherland. It’s really very funny.”
“Well,” Malone said, “it makes them happy. And why not?”