Whiteout - Ken Follett [44]
They watched footage of Russian earthquake victims and rescue teams for a couple of minutes. Toni felt foolish for having told Stanley about Osborne, but pleased by his reaction.
The Michael Ross story followed, and once again the tone was coolly factual. Stanley turned off the set. “Well, we escaped crucifixion by TV.”
“No newspapers tomorrow, as it’s Christmas Day,” Toni observed. “By Thursday the story will be old. I think we’re in the clear—barring unexpected developments.”
“Yes. If we lost another rabbit, we’d be right back in trouble.”
“There will be no more security incidents at the lab,” Toni said firmly. “I’ll make sure of that.”
Stanley nodded. “I have to say, you’ve handled this whole thing extraordinarily well. I’m very grateful to you.”
Toni glowed. “We told the truth, and they believed us,” she said.
They smiled at each other. It was a moment of happy intimacy. Then the phone rang.
Stanley reached across his desk and picked it up. “Oxenford,” he said. “Yes, patch him through here, please, I’m keen to speak to him.” He looked up at Toni and mouthed, “Mahoney.”
Toni stood up nervously. She and Stanley were convinced they had controlled the publicity well—but would the U.S. government agree? She watched Stanley’s face.
He spoke into the phone. “Hello again, Larry, did you watch the news? . . . I’m glad you think so . . . We’ve avoided the kind of hysterical reaction that you feared . . . You know my facilities director, Antonia Gallo—she handled the press . . . A great job, I agree . . . Absolutely right, we must keep a very tight grip on security from now on . . . yes. Good of you to call. Bye.”
Stanley hung up and grinned at Toni. “We’re in the clear.” Exuberantly, he put his arms around her and hugged her.
She pressed her face into his shoulder. The tweed of his waistcoat was surprisingly soft. She breathed in the warm, faint smell of him, and realized it was a long time since she had been this close to a man. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back, feeling her breasts press against his chest.
She would have stayed like that forever, but after a few seconds he gently disengaged, looking bashful. As if to restore propriety, he shook her hand. “All credit to you,” he said.
The brief moment of physical contact had aroused her. Oh, God, she thought, I’m wet, how could it happen so quickly?
He said, “Would you like to see the house?”
“I’d love to.” Toni was pleased. A man rarely offered to show guests around the house. It was another kind of intimacy.
The two rooms she had already seen, kitchen and study, were at the back, looking onto a yard surrounded by outbuildings. Stanley led Toni to the front of the house and into a dining room with a view of the sea. This part looked like a new extension to the old farmhouse. In a corner was a cabinet of silver cups. “Marta’s tennis trophies,” Stanley said proudly. “She had a backhand like a rocket launcher.”
“How far did she get with her tennis?”
“She qualified for Wimbledon, but never competed because she got pregnant with Olga.”
Across the hall, also overlooking the sea, was a drawing room with a Christmas tree. The gifts under the tree spilled across the floor. There was another picture of Marta, a full-length painting of her as a woman of forty, with a fuller figure and a softness around her jawline. It was a warm, pleasant room, but nobody was in it, and Toni guessed the real heart of the house was the kitchen.
The layout was simple: drawing room and dining room at the front, kitchen and study at the back. “There’s not much to see upstairs,” Stanley said, but he went up anyway, and Toni followed. Was she being shown around her future home? she asked herself. It was a stupid fantasy, and she pushed it aside quickly. He was just being nice.
But he had hugged her.
In the older part of the house, over the study