Munn raises his eyebrows at this.
“Volkov is expecting you to go knock around the city, then return to him desperate for shelter and food. But Volkov is clever. He will know that with every passing day there is more of a chance that someone like me will tap you on the shoulder. He won’t trust you. Oh, he’ll say he will. He’ll put an arm around you and announce to a roomful of people, This is Kira, I trust her with everything important to my heart!”
His impression is actually quite good.
“But don’t believe it,” Munn says.
“I don’t know what to believe. You still haven’t told me why your laboratory glassware is in Volkov’s display cabinet,” I say.
“Oh, that.” He acts as though it’s an afterthought. “Mikhail and I studied together decades before you were born. Things were different then. We were just two young men interested in the truth, which is what we thought science was. The glassware was a parting gift when we went our separate ways.”
“You published together in 1982. You must have been good friends.”
“All that was a long time ago,” he says. He looks sad for a moment. “But know this: when Volkov found out about post-death recovery, it wasn’t post-death recovery he was after.”
“Then what?”
He takes a sip from his drink, folds his arms across the table, and says, “It was you.”
The sky is darkening; the tables glow with candlelight. Before us is a bottle of sauvignon blanc. Anyone looking would think we are father and daughter out celebrating. A birthday, maybe. Or graduation.
“Why me?” I say.
“Because you came up with a revolutionary procedure. And because you work for me. He couldn’t stand that.”
“That’s crazy,” I say.
“Not if you understand the history. He married young to a very beautiful woman. That woman left him to live in America. With me, for a time.”
“I see.”
“And there’s something else. Dmitry believes he was meant to be killed along with the rest of his family that day at MIT. That is not the case. The death of his father and sister was deliberate, but almost certainly Volkov was there to kidnap Dmitry and bring him here to Russia to work for him. Instead, I stepped in. I saw what happened and I understood immediately—”
“You were there?”
“Of course. Dmitry was doing work for us even while he was at MIT. I was at the graduation. When the incident took place—” He pauses for a moment and blows a sigh through his lips. “I knew exactly what was happening. Because I know Volkov, you see.”
“But the Polish student who was killed? The one that was mistaken for Dmitry?”
“Volkov’s people made no mistake. The young man was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They didn’t get ahold of Dmitry because I got to him first. I shoved him into a car so fast he didn’t have time to resist,” Munn says.
I take this in. Dmitry’s life was destroyed because of two men with a bone to pick.
“And Arturo?”
Munn shrugs. “That was payback for me having scooped Dmitry out from under him.”
I am stunned. I don’t know what to say. We sit in silence for a moment while I take in this new information. I feel a pang from somewhere deep inside me. It may be my heart.
“Dmitry will be the only person inside Mellin who will know of your new role,” Munn says finally.
Dmitry. Oh, how I miss him. “Tell Dmitry to think of me whenever he eats chocolate cake,” I say.
Munn smiles. “He thinks of you more often than that, I can assure you. Nothing cheers him.” He sits back, crosses his arms over his chest, and says, “Are you with us?”
So simply put, but not a simple question.
“Perhaps,” I say.
“You must be certain.”
“Can we help Arturo?”
Munn shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Who will look after my mother?”
He considers this. “If money starts transferring to your mother’s bank account it will be obvious you’re working for us. However, we could hire her at Mellin. Say she was a cleaner. But she won’t have to clean, of course. She won’t have to do anything at all but she’ll get full medical benefits and a salary.”
All my life I’ve wanted to make things easier for my mother. Munn knows this.
“I don’t want to develop weapons to use against my own country,” I say. “I don’t want to become the person that the media thinks I already am.”
Munn leans toward me. “But that’s exactly what we need you to do. And then you will share the information with us so we can neutralize the threat. Just like the Cold War, but colder.”
He tells me I have to return to Volkov, the sooner the better. “Tell him you thought about it and have changed your mind. That America is no longer your home.”
I take a long breath. I’ll do as Munn says. I’ve already decided that much. But I won’t do it in order to please him or to avoid facing the media or awkward questions from the Justice Department. I’m not going along with this simply to help my mother and our dire financial situation either. I’m doing it in order to satisfy my own conscience. I haven’t forgotten the boy my age who stood shaking in the corridor and pointed to the tracker in my thigh. I’ve known what it is like to be under the control of Volkov. Of Vasiliev. And I’ve felt that big needle in my back.
“I think there are more kids like Arturo in Volkov’s . . . custody,” I say.
Munn nods. “This is what we fear,” he says. “Would you like to help find them?”
The question sounds so casual, as though he’s asking if I’d like a cup of tea. Unpack it and it sounds more like this: Would I like to help find kids who’ve been kidnapped? Would I like to take my chances on being caught, tortured, killed?
Perhaps he knows me well enough to guess my answer. I nod once, then am still.
“So you’ll do it,” he says, a flat statement.
We sit for some time as the night grows around us. The lights brighten against the Kremlin. It’s all very beautiful, and it bothers me that this is the case. I’m so desperately unhappy, but in some ways I shouldn’t be. For the first time, the things I want are within my grasp. My mother will have no money problems, no medical bills that go unpaid or treatment that goes undone. I can put to use the gifts I’ve been told that I possess. And who knows? I might even do something great in the end.
“Do I get a code name?” I say.
“They are usually designated. What would you like to be called?”
I think about that. Everything started because I wrote a paper about the dragonfly, a creature with skills that exceed expectation, a creature science doesn’t really understand.
“Dragonfly,” I say.
Munn nods. Then he says, “I would tell you to be careful, but you don’t know how to be careful yet. Dear girl . . .” But he doesn’t finish the sentence. It’s almost as though he regrets that I’ve agreed to his offer. He takes my hand, then lets it go as I stand, glancing one last time over the city.
“Volkov says he’ll provide an excellent education,” I say. “Tell that to Will. He was always so worried about me going to college.”
“Oh, you’ll be educated all right,” says Munn. “You’ll have every piece of equipment you need and every opportunity to shine. But no matter how valuable you are to Volkov, never forget that he’ll dispense with you at once if he finds out about our . . . arrangement. Oh, another thing. Until this moment we’ve been hidden beneath this umbrella.” He glances at the table umbrella above him. “But now you’re standing. I don’t know for sure, but consider the possibility that you are exposed. We don’t want anyone seeing us together.”
I look around and see, indeed, on the other side of the bar, a black box that could be a camera.
I say, “They’re everywhere.”
“This is a very difficult undertaking, Kira. Think hard, be thorough. You’re one of the few people in the world who has the brai
ns to succeed.”
For some reason, this makes me laugh. It’s funny, this idea that I could succeed under such unlikely circumstances. I may as well play poker to see if I’ll live to tomorrow, toss dice and bet on my own life. I pick up my tote bag. In it is everything I possess: a few articles of clothing, a lipstick, some cash. I lean over and kiss Munn goodbye. One kiss on the right cheek, then on the left, then back to the right. Because if someone is watching us, I’d like them to imagine I’m not American.
“Where are you going now?” he asks.
“Volkov’s,” I say.
He nods. “You’re so young,” he says, as though noticing for the first time.
I smile. “Fortunately, science works no matter what your age.”
And then I leave, back down the elevator and onto the street. I’m on my way to Volkov’s, but I have one other place I want to visit first. Somewhere just outside of Red Square is what is called Kilometer Zero, the center of Russia and the place from which all its roads are measured. I will go to Kilometer Zero and make a wish, then toss a coin over my shoulder in accordance with the tradition. Some say that if the coin lands on the bronze, the wish will come true. Some say the wish isn’t important but that the coin landing on the bronze means good luck.
Either way, it seems like a good starting point.
Acknowledgments
Dragonfly Girl is a work of fiction but is informed by the very real work of doctors and scientists who have lent me their expertise, either through papers they’ve published or their own personal accounts.
I am indebted to Mr. Andrew Ready, Consultant Renal Transplant Surgeon at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and Medical Director of TLC, a charitable organisation dedicated to supporting renal transplantation in the developing world. Andrew generously read an early draft of the novel and helped me understand a little more about organ transplants and the potential of technology to improve the condition of donor organs before transplantation. Anything that is true regarding Kira’s observations about organ transplant research is down to Andrew’s guidance, while I am entirely responsible for all fanciful notions.
Also, many thanks to John Gregg, CEO of Balinbac Therapeutics, for his primer on drug development and helpful remarks on an early draft of the novel.
Many science writers have written about the dragonfly’s phenomenal hunting abilities though none have connected it to uni-hemispheric sleep with supporting mathematical models as Kira does. This is for the very good reason that there is no established connection—I made that up. But I never would have known the first thing about dragonflies had I not come across Matteo Mischiati, Herel H. Lin et al.’s article published in Nature in 2014, Internal Models Direct Dragonfly Interception Steering. I’m so glad that the authors took the time to explain the dragonfly in terms that even a layman like myself could understand.
Helmi’s talk was inspired by the real-life TED talk, “You can grow new brain cells. Here’s how,” by neural stem researcher, Dr. Sandrine Thuret. Any incorrect exaggerated information would be my own invention.
Carlos’s talk about how changes in gene expression can help specify exactly the time of death isn’t just make-believe. I read an article in The Scientist (www.the-scientist.com) about the work of Roderic Guígo and his colleagues at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, and extrapolated from there. As for Carlos’s game, there are a number of internet articles about scientists who died as a result of their own experiments, including Alistair Field’s article “Scientists Who Died In Pursuit of Great Discoveries,” on www.knowscience.org. However, no such game exists (yet!).
Experiments with zebrafish really have led to the discovery that our genes stay active after death, at least for a time. I learned this from reading Discovery Magazine’s article on Peter Noble and his colleagues at the University of Washington.
The basis for the research described in Will Drummond’s talk about genes following a predictable time schedule is the work of Seth Grant, Professor of Molecular Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, about what he calls a “genetic lifespan calendar.” For the real-life, true version of this phenomenon, I recommend Dr. Grant’s own explanation on Brain Science’s September 2017 podcast in which Dr. Ginger Cambell talks to Dr. Grant about his work. Ginger’s podcast is accessible to anyone with an interest in neurobiology. I write her fan mail.
Conan the Bacterium is a real thing. Dmitry wouldn’t be the first to try to find uses for Deinococcus radiodurans. I read about it first in an article by Sarah DeWeerdt in Genome News Network.
Chandri’s work on growing kidneys from stems cells from pigs is the sort of thing being done by DNA researchers around the globe in response to the shortage of donor organs available for people who need them.
Peter Dockrill was the first to alert me to the unsettling truth that Australian fires have been started by at least three different birds, including the black kite, the whistling kite, and the brown falcon.
Kungsträdgården station on the blue line in Stockholm is, indeed, the only place you can find the Lessertia dentichelis spider in northern Europe. I read this fact on the website www.visitstockholm.com and found it so interesting I had to include it!
And finally, it was writer and scholar H. L. Mencken who called the martini “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.”
—Marti Leimbach
About the Author
Courtesy Marti Leimbach
MARTI LEIMBACH is a fiction writer and a core tutor at Oxford University’s creative writing program. Marti is best known for her international bestseller, Dying Young, made into a major motion picture, and is also the author of The Man from Saigon and Daniel Isn’t Talking, among other novels. When Marti isn’t writing or teaching, she is shearing sheep, trimming horse hooves, or looking after the rats she breeds as part of the National Fancy Rat Society, UK. She blogs about writing and publishing at www.martileimbach.com.
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Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
DRAGONFLY GIRL. Copyright © 2021 by Marti Leimbach. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover images © 2021 by Shutterstock
Cover design by Lisa Vega and Andrea Vandergrift
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Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-299588-9
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-299586-5
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