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“And yet you asked me if I was going to be in the theater that night.”
Vlad looked at him sharply, his pale eyes cutting from a distant gaze to Davy’s face with such
speed that Davy jumped. “You flatter yourself, comrade. We would not take you on so fast, not even
on the recommendation of Professor Cooper. You think it is this simple? You are introduced and
within days become the inside man with all our plans?”
“That isn’t what I thought at all,” Davy said with complete honestly. Even in his most anxious
moments, he had never entertained the thought of what he’d say if the Volya tried to recruit him. “I
assumed that you were warning me away from the theater as a friend.”
Vlad shrugged with a suspiciously high level of nonchalance, and put down his glass. “There is
nothing to warn you away from. Just another night of champagne and waltzing and jewels and idiocy.
The incessant feeding of the imperial family and their friends upon the very flesh of Mother Russia.
You do well to shun such a place. Absence from their corruption will save your soul, if not your
flesh.”
Davy sensed that this was far from the total truth, but he was not sure what to do about it. Vlad
now he looked at his pocketwatch and winced. Time for the meeting of the Volya, evidently. A
meeting to which Davy was not invited and there was no telling when the two of them would meet
again.
But the Russians liked toasts, didn’t they? They always seemed to be toasting someone or
something. There was but a swallow of vodka left in his glass. Davy raised it. “Peace to your
country.”
Vlad left his own glass on the table. “You insult me, my friend,” he said. “True Russians do
not want peace. We want justice.”