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?"

Luba, too, had chatted with her father quite a lot of the time. Her
Majesty reported that none of this conversation could possibly be
understood as dangerous or harmful. It was just simple conversation.

Of course, Luba and her father hadn't talked all the time, and Malone
did have a chance to get a few words in edgewise. Her Majesty made no
report on those conversations, but Malone was comfortably aware that
they did not belong in the harmless class. His relationship with the
girl seemed, he told himself happily, to be improving slightly. Now
and again, he even won a round from her.

As the American plane crossed the border, it was picked up by an
escort of Russian fighter craft, which stuck with them all the way
into Moscow. The fighters didn't do anything; they were just there,
Malone figured, for insurance. But they made him nervous when he
looked out the window. The trip from the border to Moscow seemed to
take a long time.

Then, at the airfield, a group of MVD men had almost elbowed the
American Embassy delegation out of the way in greeting the
disembarking little band. There was a lot of palaver, in Russian,
English and various scrambled mixtures which nobody understood. The
American delegation greeted Malone, Luba and Her Majesty formally, and
the MVD concentrated on Brubitsch, Borbitsch and Garbitsch. The three
spies were hustled away, apparently to MVD Headquarters, without much
fuss. Luba said goodbye to her father calmly enough, and Vasili
Garbitsch seemed almost entirely unaffected by his surroundings. As
the plane touched ground, he had said: "Ah, the soil of Mother
Russia," but, outside of a goodbye or two, those were his last words
before leaving.

One MVD man stayed behind, even after the American delegation had
left. His name, he explained, was Vladimir Josefovitch Petkoff. "It
will be my pleasure to show your group the many historic and
interesting sights of Moskva," he announced to Malone.

"Pleasure?" Malone said. Petkoff was tall and heavy, and wore a row of
medals that strung out across his chest like a newspaper headline.

"My duty,"