SALOME Ch 30

“Yes.”

At his call, Yuri closed the book and picked up the teacup emitting warm heat. With Yuri like that, Dmitry drank his tea first and recited Yuri’s actions:

“First of all, you did well to inform the embassy. There was no need to cause a small stir during an already bad time anyway.”

“Yes.”

“By the way, did you say you heard it at the Berlin Philharmonic? I didn’t know you had a hobby of listening to music.”

“I don’t.”

Naturally, he didn’t. There was no way he would have a hobby of attending places where such crowds gathered and buying tickets of meaningless price. At Yuri’s simple reply, Dmitry felt puzzled as he drank his tea.

“If you go so far as to buy a New Year’s Eve ticket, it’s hard to see it as having no interest.”

“I was… invited by chance.”

If it hadn’t been for Cedric, he wouldn’t have gone. At Yuri’s response, Dmitry roughly accepted it and drank his tea.

“I see. Well, many of those kinds of kids attend your school, after all.”

Since Yuri also attended the embassy-affiliated school where the children of high-ranking officials went, it made sense enough. Because the kids who attended such places often went to those kinds of events—meaningless and full of superficial showiness.

However, the fact that the person who was at such an event was Yuri was something Dmitry was seeing for the first time since taking charge as the unit leader, so he was slightly—no, actually quite a bit—surprised. What kind of change of heart is this? Watching Dmitry leisurely drink his tea, Yuri spoke up first:

“Is it still… not over?”

“Mm? Ah. It’s still difficult to make an arrest right now. They’re also acting without drawing attention. Acting rashly could give the Allies a pretext. However, since we’ve immediately spread the capture net, if they’re moving as expected, it’ll be difficult for them to push through the East German region where searches have already been tightened.”

“…Is that so.”

To take a train heading south to Switzerland, one had to leave Berlin—and by extension, East Germany—and break through the American and French sectors. But if East Germany’s border guards were already set up… Yuri blinked slowly. In his sight, Dmitry’s worn black dress shoes were visible. Overlaid on them were the polished loafers of the Albanian Minister that had been visible beneath the restroom door.

They’ll get caught.

They were strangers to him. Yet he couldn’t understand why his heart felt so heavy. Even when he tried hard to look at the book, the words merely bounded off his eyes. He set the book down on the table.

“Colonel Raskolnikov said he would come after the concert ends. Since there are so many watching eyes, after all.”

With that, Dmitry took another sip of tea. Watching eyes, indeed. Yuri sat quietly on the sofa, letting his hands hang between his knees as he thought. Did anyone even imagine that someone would see them? If only he hadn’t been there, the two of them could have safely escaped unnoticed by anyone, even if only for a short moment. When he actually saw the two of them, he had rushed straight back thinking of the turmoil they would bring, but even after blurting out the secret, his mind showed no sign of calming down. It was strange.

“….”

Why? Isn’t it fortunate that it was stopped midway? Something even bigger could have happened.

Like a war.

However, if they are caught beforehand, it’s just an incident that ends with the disposal of those two. But… Yuri’s dry hands brushed drily over his aching eyes. No tears came out, but he felt as though an invisible guilt was leaking out like a broken faucet. What will happen to them once they get caught? Seeing Yuri’s complex expression shift into shadows under the yellow light, Dmitry set his teacup down.

“You seem to have a lot on your mind.”

“….”

“It’s not like you.”

His words seemed to hide an echo asking Yuri if he regretted it. Such a thing was not supposed to exist. However, as sincerity accumulated, Yuri couldn’t stop his heavy mouth from finally opening.

“If they get caught… what happens?”

“Well,” Dmitry replied, placing his clasped hands over his crossed legs.

“They’ll be repatriated to their respective countries. Since they’re high-ranking figures, there won’t be severe punishments, but… the Italian Ambassador is on the greedy side, so I suspect he might take his anger out on them.”

Whether on his wife or his subordinates… The Italian Embassy will be in chaos for a while, Dmitry added. Having met him before, Yuri nodded wordlessly. People with petty power often had a great obsession with visible things.

“As for the Albanian Minister, well… it’ll probably be hard for him to keep his position. There’s already friction with the UK, so he essentially volunteered to give the Allies a useless pretext. In the end, since we’re the ones who caught them, it’s the best scenario for us. Whether externally or internally…”

To the Italian side, they could raise their voice to demand the lifting of boundary restrictions in the Adriatic Sea where the trapped battleship—which Colonel Raskolnikov was so anxious about—was located, and to the Warsaw Pact side, it was an advantageous situation to solidify their standing. Dmitry rubbed his eyes, which were stinging from late-night fatigue, with his hand and slumped back against the sofa.

As the oldest among the agents, he was feeling exhausted that a peaceful evening spent at home with his family ultimately concluded with work. Since it was a job without days off, a rare break like today’s—the final day of the year—was infinitely precious.

Yet why of all days did they have to pull this off today? Seeing how they targeted a moment when things relaxed over two days, he figured they had used their brains in their own way, thinking it was a golden opportunity. But to get caught like this, of all things. It seemed their New Year’s luck wasn’t sufficient to reach them. He sympathized inwardly, thinking they were truly unlucky.

“Still, it’s a relief they were caught. If they had succeeded, a war might have broken out before long.”

Blowing up a trivial pretext turns it into a massive justification. Dmitry, who personally ran on the invisible front lines of intelligence warfare, couldn’t fail to know this. Yuri thought so as well. Yet somehow, as time passed, a small weight accumulated in his heart. With emotions welling up so much that he couldn’t help but care, he found himself endlessly mulling it over.

“I suppose so.”

“It might sound funny coming from me. But I think it’s better not to have unnecessary clashes. In the end, people like us end up taking the blame.”

Or my child. At Dmitry’s bitter words, Yuri also raised his head briefly, then bowed it back toward the floor. In truth, no one knows the coming future. Isn’t that why everyone creates situations for the future they desire? Just like those two who smiled anxiously yet happily. But because he believed this was a better choice than the happiness of those two, he had acted. And yet…

Did I do the right thing? Wouldn’t it have been fine to just leave them alone? It wasn’t a given that a war would break out. His assumption—or everyone’s assumption—was something that couldn’t be known without going into the future.

In a swamp of thoughts from which he couldn’t escape, Yuri once again washed his face with his dry hands over his complex expression, trying desperately to hide his face. Another thought that surfaced in hindsight kept fanning a small spark in a corner of his heart.

Does everyone turn out like that when they fall in love?

∞ ∞ ∞

January 197X, Meissen Street in the Dahlem District

Beyond the lively atmosphere of the New Year, even in the bleak winter, the houses in the Dahlem district still maintained a prosperous, bright atmosphere. The streets lit with electric lights from early evening until hazy morning were proof of that. However, because the chilly seasonal feel was still so vivid, hardly any people were visible on the streets. There were only maids occasionally walking by to go to work, or vehicles making rough engine sounds from garages as they cut through the dark winter morning.

When the wind blew through the garden, bare, frozen branches collided with one another, ringing sharply. The chill seeping through the green wallpaper of the dining room visible through the window was creating a small amount of moisture inside the window frame from the heat of the radiator turned on early.

Having passed the New Year that brought such fierce cold, the days when they had to go to work and school quickly returned. Elizabeth, who found that utterly painful, was laying out a whole host of complaints during breakfast, continuing from last night. In the middle of eating warm but slightly hard German rye bread that had just been baked, Elizabeth suddenly squeaked out loud.