Leninsky Prospekt. Katherine Bucknell

the State Department and gone to work in New York, for a big philanthropic foundation – Ford or Mellon or Rockefeller – handing out money instead of books, somebody else’s money, to the arts, culture, education. He had set up some programme to bring foreign students into the US, graduates, on the theory that they would take American ideals back abroad with them – if they ever went back.

      It wasn’t entirely clear to John how Wentz had gotten himself picked to return to Moscow for the ballet tour. Nor how he’d snagged his apartment above the consular section in the embassy, an apartment which had stood empty all summer before he arrived, while longer-serving embassy staff who deserved to be comfortable there had been billeted in the bachelor quarters in America House on Kropotkinskaya Embankment. How could Wentz be CIA if he’d been sent home once already for showing poor judgement? Surely that would have blown any chance of advancement on the intelligence side? Maybe he traded on connections, Harvard, his southern pedigree. Kirstein was Harvard, too; maybe Kirstein had asked for Wentz. But resentment aside, John could see that Wentz had certain gifts – wit, urbanity, lightness of touch. He didn’t seem to be much of a typical southerner, his name, for instance, and the fact that he had settled in Manhattan. The flamboyance, the extravagant manners, the farmboy’s grinning awe hardly concealed Wentz’s intellect; but they made it gracious, bearable. Wentz clearly wasn’t surprised by much, and his Russian was still damn good.

      ‘I’m after an informal introduction to one of those pairs of legs.’ Wentz’s confession was accompanied by a disarming flush. ‘The greetings at the airport weren’t exactly intimate. Will Mrs Davenport do that for me, do you think? Even though I’m only an American?’