Free Counterspy by Matthew Dunn Page B

Russian held the glass in front of his chest, with no intention of drinking from it, moved past a bored-looking string quartet, and walked into the party. All around him was the sound of laughter, manifold languages, and women brushing against men who were not their partners.
    Radimir made sure he didn’t glide with the confidence and precision of a predator. He wasn’t supposed to have the skills to do that. Instead, he meandered his way across the room, smiling to show off his dimples. He stood in the corner, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, sometimes smoothing a hand against his suit, as if he were fidgeting because he was ill at ease and had sweaty palms.
    For a while, people noticed him. Beautiful people get that kind of attention. But as with gorgeous art, there’s a limited period of time one can stare at a good-looking person before it becomes boring. After thirty minutes, he was sure he was invisible.
    He moved to another part of the room, not too far, just a few yards to the next table, where he could pick at some canapés and fiddle with part of the flower display. He kept his gaze low, as if to avoid the embarrassment of having to talk to someone cleverer than him. Thankfully, the demigods around him knew that Radimir was aware of his limitations, so they left him alone. It was the only good thing they did for him.
    Holding his champagne glass with two hands so that he looked like an amateur at this type of event, he walked to another table, then another, then several more. Forty minutes later he returned to his starting point in the corner of the room. Poor Radimir, he imagined the pros would think if any of them had seen his awkward and pointless amble around the room, though he doubted any of them had noticed. The predators were moving up a gear, pouncing on late and desirable new arrivals, placing firm arms around them and guiding them to people they didn’t know but just had to meet, cracking jokes, whispering in ears, kissing cheeks, flattering, nodding with sage expressions, and all the time acting to hide their agenda: pure lust for information.
    The Russian placed his full glass on a table, leaned back against the wall, folded his arms, and smiled his very best pretty and dumb smile. He’d practiced the expression many times in front of mirrors and he was convinced he’d perfected the look. It was an expression that he hoped said, I’m resigned to the fact that my looks are all I have.
    It kept people away. Even the ones who were as dim-witted as he was, because no one wants to stand next to a man who’s as stupid as they are but four times more attractive.
    Radimir momentarily closed his eyes.
    When he opened them, he was the cleverest person in the room.
    A man who was not called Radimir.
    Instead, someone who was known to a limited number of people as Gregori Shonin, an SVR intelligence officer. And a predator with skills that were way beyond those of the other predators around him.
    There was a third side to the Russian, one that did not carry the false names of Radimir or Gregori, one that was the truth, but right now that was buried so deep inside him that he gave it little thought. This evening, being Gregori undercover as Radimir was sufficient for what he hoped to achieve.
    Gregori’s huge intellect was processing a vast amount of data, all gleaned from his forty-minute walk through the room. Hundreds of voices and sentences, many of them in English, some in other languages he understood fluently, only a few in tongues he didn’t understand or care about. He spent several minutes doing nothing more than deliberately forgetting most of what he’d heard. Ejecting the crap, was how he like to term the cognitive process. It was an arduous task, but necessary, because at the end of it he would picture himself standing in this huge room, not with hundreds of diplomats from all around the world, but instead with one or two officials who worked for countries he loathed and