He had yet to join her in the bed. He had yet to touch her. And she couldn’t help but wonder why.
Had he turned against her? Or was he just so damaged from his ordeal? And could time and patience heal either problem?
When the hour was up, she closed the window, hoping her contacts had seen it. Now she needed to wait an hour. At eleven, they would call with information about when and where to meet.
“Are you going to the store?” Mendel asked. “We’re out of kasha and milk.”
She wished he would go out job hunting. She hadn’t pushed. He hadn’t even been home a week, and he was entitled to some peace and quiet. Perhaps he even wanted her out of the apartment to enjoy a little solitude, the same as she wanted him out.
But he was going to need to find a job and soon. Not so much because they needed the money, but because otherwise the government would have a ready excuse to round him up and pack him off to the gulag again, this time on charges of parasitism.
“I’ll go later,” she said. “I have some things I want to do first.”
“What things?” he asked, and he sounded suspicious.
“Cleaning,” she said. She needed to keep busy, if only to satisfy his curiosity. She changed the sheets on Kolya’s bed and spent extra time tucking the corners tight. Then she hauled the ancient vacuum out of the closet and pushed it slowly through their three rooms, doubling the time it took to accomplish these simple chores.
A few minutes before the hour, she positioned herself in the kitchen near the wall-mounted phone. It rang at eleven on the dot. She snatched the receiver from the cradle before Mendel could lever himself off the sofa, where he was reading a book on Jewish history.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is Marat home?” The name signaled the time and place to meet her contact, later this evening in a quiet residential neighborhood near the university. An easy stop for her to make on her way home without rousing suspicion due to lost time.
“I’m sorry. There’s no one here with that name,” she said, agreeing to the proposed time and place.
When she hung up, Mendel leaned in the doorway, his hand braced under the mezuzah. “Who was it?”
“No one. Wrong number,” she said. She spared a moment to think about the hours of nothing that would be recorded from her apartment, the monotony of laundry, vacuuming, a seemingly random wrong number.
Inside she burbled with mirth. It overflowed into a smile she couldn’t supress.
“What? What is it?” Mendel asked, searching her face with what seemed a frisson of alarm.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just look at you, and I think how happy I am that you’re home at last.”
What she really felt was optimism. That things could change. That there was a chance for a better life. That she could best the Soviets, stealing secrets out from under them without their ever suspecting, even when they violated the sanctity of her very own home. Possibly of her marriage.
Mendel blinked at her, obviously caught off guard, and he didn’t return her smile. She still wasn’t sure what to blame for the distance between them, but she knew better than to follow her instinct and reach for him.
He would only pull away.
He retreated anyway, seemingly chased off by her pleased smile and pretty words about his homecoming. He ducked his head as if he felt guilty and returned to the corner of the sofa and the book he’d been reading, making her wonder why he’d even bothered to get up and come over to her in the first place.
The rest of the day passed quickly. She didn’t have to work tonight. She stayed home to give Kolya his dinner. They did a puzzle together, while Mendel watched them, his expression unreadable.
In the evening, she claimed she was headed to the library for her book club. She did indeed have a book club meeting, and she did indeed go.
But afterward, she took a small detour on her way home.
Chapter TEN
VERA
AS SOON AS Vera got outside, it started to rain, but even the big fat water droplets couldn’t dampen her mood.
“Hey!” someone called after her, and she turned around to see Gennady jogging toward her. He carried a large black umbrella. When he caught up to her, he pulled her close to him to share the umbrella and shield her from the rain. “You left without saying good-bye,” he scolded.
She had no words. She could only look up into his eyes and wonder that they were standing so close together and that he’d cared enough to chase her down to say good-bye.
“Let me walk you home,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of your being out here all alone.”
“All right,” she agreed. He put his arm around her shoulder to keep her under the umbrella with him. She knew the touch meant nothing, but she liked the feel of him next to her all the same. She had never stood so close to him, close enough to feel his heat and to smell the good, clean scent of him.
“How do you like university?” she ventured.
“It’s good,” he said. “I’ll be finished with my courses next year and heading off to my officer’s training,” he said. “Following in my old man’s footsteps.”
She was sorry she had asked. Her emotions rolled and knocked around, like a bag of marbles spilled to the ground.
He was so confident and self-assured, easy in the knowledge of what his future held. She was graduating this year and had no plans for the future, no prospects.
No university would take a Refusenik like her.
Their paths couldn’t be more divergent. He would go on to become the kind of man her father hated, following in the footsteps of one he would never respect. Why did her father have to be such a rebel? And why did Gennady have to be seeking a military career?
Meanwhile, she would languish in Moscow, maybe cleaning toilets for a living like her sister, letting life pass her by while she waited for permission to leave that was never, never, never going to come.
They walked along in an easy silence. What did it matter what his future held or how far it would take him from her, she thought. Realistically, there could never be anything between them. Just her silly crush and a rainy night when they shared an umbrella.
He had never even spoken to her before. Likely he wouldn’t again.
But could he maybe hold her a little tighter? The scent of him tickled her nose and her tongue, a familiar flavor she couldn’t quite place, and she wanted a deep inhale, a taste.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Gennady observed as they approached her building.
Her father’s KGB escort sat on the bench across the street under big umbrellas of their own. She glanced up at the window to her family’s apartment. The lights shone brightly, and she guessed they had guests. Her parents always seemed to be entertaining friends.
They would still be sitting on the sofa next to the partition where she made her bed, and she would have to wait for who knew how long before she could lie alone in the dark and imprint all of the sweet details of the evening into her memory.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you like me?” Gennady prodded.
She couldn’t tell him that she had too many words to share a single one. She couldn’t tell him that she was halfway in love with him and that only the sheer impossibility of it all held her back.
“Everyone likes you,” she deflected.
“But, Vera, I didn’t ask about everyone.” He stopped walking and turned to her. “I asked about you. Do you like me?”
Desperately.
Her heart began to pound so hard she could barely catch her breath. She couldn’t look him in the eye. She managed a quick nod in answer to his question.
“So shy,” he whispered and kissed her on the cheek. She raised her hand to the spot, as if she could hold the kiss there. He cupped the back of her neck gently and pressed his mouth softly to hers. “So sweet,” he murmured against her
mouth.
Someone whistled at them, one of the KGB agents, she realized, mortified.
Gennady pulled away and laughed.
Laughed at her.
The kiss, her first kiss, wasn’t real.
Only this time, the KGB rather than her classmates, bore witness to her humiliation.
She turned on her heel and dashed into the building.
Behind her, she thought she heard the laughter growing louder. She couldn’t bear to look back and see Gennady mocking her.
She had misjudged him. Wasted sentiment on him.
She rushed up the stairs to her own apartment. The familiar buzz of the television coupled with snatches of conversation grated on her already jangled nerves. She retreated to the kitchen, where she wouldn’t be expected to smile and perform for the latest in a constant stream of intruders, who dominated her parents’ focus and attention.
She put on water to make tea and busied herself tidying the kitchen, forcing herself to keep moving, to focus on her tasks so that she didn’t replay the kiss and the laughter over and over again.
The sugar bowl on the table was empty, and she searched in the cabinet for one of the large canisters where her mother stored the rest. She spied it on the top shelf and reached up on tiptoe to retrieve it.
The container was heavy. She screwed off the top and then carefully poured the granules into the bowl. There was a sudden large avalanche of sugar, and a large chunk of something fell onto the bowl and toppled it. Sugar spilled onto the counter.
When she put down the cannister and inspected, she found a large wad of rubles wrapped in plastic. She didn’t know how much was there, but she immediately recognized it was a significant amount.
What was it for? Where had it come from? Why didn’t she know about it?
She tossed it back into the cannister and hastily put the container back where she’d found it, recognizing that she’d discovered a secret she wasn’t supposed to know. As she cleaned up the mess from the sugar, the tears flowed freely.
Her parents had their own life, their own secrets. She was the outsider, even in her own home. They had each other, but she had no one.
Chapter ELEVEN
GENNADY
GENNADY HAD NEVER kissed a girl, only to have her turn and run. Vera’s mewl of distress haunted him as he walked home. The rain tapped on his umbrella, like restless fingers drumming on a table.
He had noticed Vera before tonight. She had a distinct look, large dark eyes, sun-kissed skin, and a bounty of wavy dark hair. Up until this year, she’d had a girl’s figure, but her curves had filled out, and now with her dark beauty, she stood out from the other women he knew, earthy and exotic among a sea of pasty faces.
He had tried to catch her attention on the bus, but she never sustained eye contact with him, always looking immediately away, and she always had her nephew in tow. He’d told himself she was shy. But now he was humbled to think maybe she’d never had any interest in him at all.
His long legs carried him quickly back home, making the trek in half the time he’d taken up escorting Vera. His thoughts were consumed with memories of the warmth of her skin and lips on this cold rainy night, with the feeling of exhilaration he’d had when she’d admitted to liking him, with his sense, before everything had gone wrong, that this was meant to be, that somehow they’d been waiting for one another.
None of it was real. He’d merely been chasing down a little comfort to ease the stress of all of his responsibilities, and he’d followed the wrong scent.
When he arrived, he caught Petya asleep at the table, his face buried in his recently finished homework. The past month with Petya repeatedly falling ill had been hell on both of them. Their father was off on assignment, and no one would say where or for how long.
Their mother had long ago abandoned them. She hadn’t loved them enough—not his father, not his brother, not him—to weather any adversity. She had left the men in his family to fend for themselves.
So maybe he’d scared Vera off. Better to have that happen now rather than later when she was truly under his skin. He shouldn’t be interested in such a skittish girl, likely to bolt at any moment. He didn’t need a woman like his mother, who would abandon him when life got hard, as inevitably it would.
“Petya, wake up and take yourself to bed,” he said more harshly than he intended. He had grown tired of playing nursemaid. Over the past month, his brother hadn’t been well for more than a few days at a time.
This last bout of flu had so weakened Petya that he couldn’t cook his own kasha or keep up with his studies. That left Gennady to fill the roll of mother, father, and teacher, while he faced his own pressures and deadlines. His future rested heavily on his performance this year. He needed to score highly enough on his exams if he hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps and have an officer’s career in military intelligence.
He pushed open the window behind Petya’s chair. The room smelled of stale sweat and sickness.
Surely Vera had noticed the unpleasant odors. She must have longed for fresh air during the hours she’d coddled his brother through his homework. Yet she had sat here for hours and endured the unpleasantness without complaint.
But she had darted away faster than a frightened rabbit when Gennady had tried to kiss her.
Petya startled when the window groaned. Upon waking, he peppered Gennady with uncomfortable questions. “Did you get her to promise? Will she come back tomorrow?”
“What difference does it make?” Gennady asked grumpily.
“I need her!” Petya complained.
“You don’t need her.” Such weakness simply didn’t happen to Morozov men. Petya merely needed to rest up and refocus. “Admit that you just wanted to spend time with a pretty girl.”
When Gennady had caught his first glimpse of Vera through the spyhole, he had been certain the tutor request had been a flimsy pretense to garner sympathy and attention from a very pretty girl.
A girl his brother fancied.
A girl Gennady had tried to kiss.
A girl who maybe hadn’t welcomed his kiss, despite the hunger he thought he’d glimpsed in her exotic, tilted eyes.
“She’s not pretty,” Petya protested.
Gennady raised his brow at the bald-faced lie.
“Fine, she’s pretty,” Petya conceded. “More than pretty.” Petya rubbed his hands over his face and released a long, exhausted sigh.
An uncomfortable, cold feeling chased over Gennady’s skin. Guilt settled like ice in his gut. How sick was Petya? And how much did he like Vera?
His brother had failed tonight to break out the flirtation and compliments. Petya hadn’t shown Vera the small courtesy of walking her to the door, let alone home. At the time, Gennady had thought Petya had blown his chance or wasn’t interested, leaving the field open to him. In retrospect, he wondered if his brother had been too sick to exert himself.
Had Gennady tried to steal Vera from his sick brother?
“That’s not why I asked her to come. I need her. She’s the only one with the smarts and the patience to explain this stuff to me,” Petya complained. “And she was my last resort. Everyone else was too busy. Including you.”
“You asked other people?” The revelation gave him a frisson of alarm. His brother really did need help, more than Gennady was able to give him. Petya needed Vera, much to Gennady’s chagrin.
“I asked all the top people in the class. They’re all tied up with university interviews. No one else was willing to risk catching my plague.”
“If no one else was willing, then how did you get her to agree?” Gennady asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Petya said. “I’m guessing she has a crush on me.” Did Petya like her, too?
Petya had offered Vera nothing in return for her help, and she hadn’t seemed to mind. Perhaps Vera had f
eelings for her classmate. Would she have preferred Petya’s interest, Petya’s kiss?
“I’ll fix this,” Gennady said.
“Fix what? What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Gennady lied. “But I’ll make sure she comes back.”
Chapter TWELVE
SOFIA
SOFIA CIRCLED THE tree-lined block in the residential Moscow neighborhood a second time. The faces had all changed in the few minutes since she’d circled the block and come back, but the KGB had networks of spies working together.
Someone could be watching her even now, no matter how much she planned or checked. Her heart beat as if she were running hard, and her body yearned to take flight, but she maintained a sedate pace.
Even if she could run far and fast enough to save herself from danger, the Soviet system held everyone she loved captive.
The only choice was to fight, secret and dirty, for as long as she could.
As she rounded the corner, she spotted her contact standing near a parked car on the quiet, residential street. He dressed in the ubiquitous wool coat and fur hat that Muscovites favored in this cold weather, but his gleaming smile betrayed him as an American.
His big, white teeth glinted in the moonlight, inviting her to smile back.
Ever aware they might have an audience, she made eye contact but showed no other sign of greeting, not even a sly smile or tilt of her head. She kept walking, and Paul fell into step beside her.
They walked side by side on the empty sidewalk for a minute or so without speaking. It was late in the evening, after the book club had ended and the library closed, after she had gone out with the friends she’d met there for tea and pastry, after they’d parted ways and she’d headed in the direction of the subway station.
Theoretically, this was a perfect time to meet. Very few people were out on the street, just the drunks and people walking their dogs. But it wasn’t so late that someone would think it odd to see people out like herself, heading home after a late evening.
To Catch a Traitor Page 6