by Talia Carner
The door swung open, and a young man in uniform barged in. His eyes assessed Brooke’s clothes, and he glowered at her, then shot words in Russian.
Brooke’s vision swam. She held the watering can over a plant, trying to act natural. “Do you speak English?” she asked.
Her words seemed to jolt him. “America? Handzup,” he said in a heavy Russian accent. “Chia?”
Whatever he meant, she shook her head vigorously. “No. No.”
“Russiya—K.G.B. America—Chia,” he said.
Chia? C.I.A.! Dread spread down to Brooke’s toes. “No Chia.” She shook her head again. “Nyet.”
A cannonade rattled the planters. The soldier drew a pistol from his belt with his right hand, and brought out handcuffs with his left. “Handzup,” he said, cowboy-style.
“I’m okay.” She suppressed the tremor creeping into her voice. “Okay. Look.” She pointed at her purse on the desk. “Dollars?”
His eyes narrowed. The slight movement of his pistol indicated she could lift her bag.
She didn’t count the wad of twenties in her wallet; just handed it to him and watched it disappear inside his pocket. She must catch Svetlana before she returned and walked right into this trap. Swallowing hard, Brooke moved toward the door and picked up her blue nylon bag. The files shouldn’t be found in Katerina’s office, implicating an innocent woman.
All the way down to the lobby, the soldier remained so close at Brooke’s heels she could smell his sour sweat. In the empty lobby, he gave her shoulder a rough shove toward the exit door.
Stepping out, Brooke held herself from breaking into a run. The street was devoid of traffic. The cannon blasts were deafening. Brooke turned in the direction of the subway station. Sooner or later Svetlana would have to get there.
Her senses heightened by adrenaline, she began to retrace the ten-block route. She tried not to catch the eyes of the men who milled about by the bridge. Thirty feet ahead, a half-dozen teenagers frolicked, roughhousing and laughing through the din.
Suddenly Brooke was thrown to the ground. Her brain jiggled inside her skull. A huge boom followed a split second later, her teeth slammed together, and a sharp pain pierced her tongue. Her eardrums hurt as a shower of stone and thick dust fell on her. She tasted blood.
Echoes of the blast ricocheted around the high-rise buildings along with the sound of glass falling and then what sounded like a wall collapsing. It took willpower to wiggle her fingers and toes. She took inventory of her limbs. A helicopter rotor chugged in her ears, and she registered that the sound came from inside her head. A strong hand pressed her pulse, and she forced herself to scramble to all fours as a kaleidoscope of yellows and reds pulsated behind her eyes. Her tongue throbbed and her body felt like lead. Two arms in militia fatigue snaked from behind her, closed on her chest, and pulled her up. A voice behind her commanded something in Russian.
“I’m okay,” Brooke tried to say, but it came out as a croak. The straps of the blue vinyl bag were still looped on her shoulder, and the bag’s weight bore into her flesh. She staggered to her feet, and pulled the militiaman’s arms apart, stepping away. She coughed out dust. “What the hell happened?” she asked, realizing a moment too late that she should have kept her mouth shut rather than speak English.
The soldier responded in gruff Russian.
Brooke scanned her surrounding, her brains swimming in confusion. A large hole gaped in the middle of the street in front of her. A teenager was writhing on the ground eight feet away, and it took Brooke a couple of seconds to digest that the detached leg with the sock and sneaker lying at her feet belonged to him. Horror spread through her, the street swayed, undulated, and she blinked twice, wondering whether she would faint and hit her head again.
The militiaman pushed her against a wall to steady her. Soldiers ran to the hole and hoisted out the bodies of two more boys.
“I’m okay,” Brooke said. She forced her brain to focus. She must get away fast. What if they inspected the vinyl bag? She had lost her courage; she would dump the files if she had to.
The teenagers’ bodies were hoisted on stretchers. Another boy, seemingly unhurt, stood at a distance, screaming, his hands and face raised toward the sky. Brooke clutched the vinyl bag to her chest and inched away from the wall. Her mouth was filled with soil and blood. “I’m okay,” she repeated, feeling her tongue swelling. She reached down for her purse, and nearly lost consciousness as she grasped it. The boy’s detached limb was inches away from it. Tears spurted into her eyes.
The militiaman pointed at the newly made hole in the street. “Bombe. Kill America. Stupid bitch.”
Brooke’s body shook. The trembling underscored the pain in her mouth. She turned and ran, powered by primal panic, stumbling over debris, until her feet pounded flat pavement and the wind blew in her face. She didn’t stop until she reached the subway. Inside the entrance she hesitated. Should she wait for Svetlana here, on top, or go down to the platform?
The adrenaline rush sent her down. Weak-kneed, she sank onto the first bench on the platform. She pulled a square of toilet paper from her purse and spat dust into it, then reached for a stick of cinnamon-flavored gum, her shaking hands barely able to unwrap the paper. When she slipped the gum into her mouth, the cinnamon stung her tongue, but numbed the throbbing. Chewing was too painful, so Brooke sucked on the gum to produce saliva. A minute later, the pain refocused as a sharp ice pick.
Setting the bag in her lap and her purse atop it, she waited. Now she felt her knees burning from scrapes beneath her pants, although the gabardine hadn’t torn. Her neck, clammy with sweat, itched where pebbles had left small cuts. She tore open the wrapping of a Wet-Nap and cleaned herself as best as she could. Brownish-red stains appeared on the napkin after she dabbed her neck around the chain holding her Star of David.
She touched the gold amulet. She had never given it magic powers, but right now she could believe it had saved her life. She brought it to her lips to kiss it. A few more steps and that unattached leg would have been hers. It could be her dead body being hoisted on a stretcher. Poor, poor boy. She fought back a wave of tears.
Stupid bitch indeed. Why hadn’t it occurred to her, when she was ordered to take this time off, that she should go to the Caribbean and spend them on a beach, stretching out in the sun and digging her toes in the warm sand?
Soldiers lurked on the opposite platform, and Brooke felt a momentary relief when a train slowed down and blocked them from her view. But the train did not stop. Brooke took a few deep breaths, trying to regain her faculties. Where was Svetlana? She looked around. The station was grand, with high, vaulted ceilings, the mahogany paneling punctuated by heroic bronze sculptures. From here, the shelling was barely audible.
A whiff of cigarette smoke—entirely different from gunpowder—reached her nostrils. Brooke turned her head and saw a lone soldier leaning against a column, his eyes narrowed on her. Between two farther columns framing a side corridor, a group of soldiers materialized, sending her long glances. What if they asked to see her passport?
A train pulled in and came to a stop. Brooke remained seated as passengers got off. The group of soldiers turned their attention to checking the new arrivals’ documents. But the lone soldier’s stare pierced the side of Brooke’s head. She turned and saw him detaching himself from the column and sauntering toward her.
A bell rang. The train’s doors huffed a pneumatic sound and began closing. Brooke jumped to her feet and sprinted inside just before the doors shut. Wherever this train was headed was surely preferable to staying put.
Twenty minutes later, when no passengers got on the train, she guessed that she was far enough from the city center. She exited the subway to an uncanny silence. The cannons were indeed far, replaced by a thumping headache. She hailed a passing car, and when it stopped, presented the driver with a ten-dollar bill and the Cyrillic note with Olga’s address at the Institute for Social Research.
All she wanted was to get rid of
the files and fly back home.
Chapter Thirty-five
SVETLANA CHIDED HERSELF. How had she failed to think about the eavesdropping center, a holdover from the K.G.B. reign? Since receiving Dr. Rozanova’s phone call early in the morning, she had been in a state of confusion. She had hoped the respected sociologist would release her from the dangerous scheme she had concocted with Brooke. Instead, Dr. Rozanova broke into the double-speak that had been used during Soviet days. “Today is not a good day to tackle a new project,” she said, meaning the exact opposite. “Government offices are closed. No one wants to look at documents when so much is going on. Many downtown metro stations are closed; the trains just pass through them without stopping. I don’t know why Smolenskaya station is open.”
“No one can move about—”
“Don’t you think it’s a good thing roadblocks have been erected everywhere to prevent more help from reaching the rebels?” Dr. Rozanova went on in her double-speak.
Svetlana had leaned against the wall. If she refused, her life would remain unchanged. Yes, she had hated it when all her tomorrows looked the same as her yesterdays, but right now sameness seemed comforting. Jenny’s idea “to go for it” meant little now that the riots had spread. And what would happen to Natasha if something befell her mother? She glanced through the open door at her daughter, sleeping next to Jenny’s precious new doll. It was so large that it was unclear who was cuddling whom.
In the kitchen, Svetlana rushed through the preparations of mannaya kasha, the breakfast semolina gruel for Natasha. Her thoughts continued to swirl. Could there be a worse fate than to believe in nothing and aspire to nothing? Her life, always devoid of possibilities, had been presented with a challenge, with hope. She could be submissively pathetic like she’d always been, or daring like Brooke and Jenny.
She brought the pot into the room and placed it on the table, folding an old towel over it to keep the breakfast warm. She pulled her simple floral dress over her woolen undershirt. The dress was too summery for the cold fall weather, but she had nothing else presentable that the Americans hadn’t seen. She kissed the sleeping Natasha’s forehead, grabbed her blue cardigan, and tiptoed out again.
In the street, she stopped beside the aging oak, her heart pounding. If this was how it felt to be brave, it was the same as feeling terrified. Still, there was a difference: Her center, where forlornness and dejection had resided, had turned into a fist.
Now, in the corridor of the Economic Authority, her mission not half accomplished, she faced this new obstacle. Katerina had told her the eavesdropping center still operated twenty-four hours a day to cover all phone conversations of the Economic Authority’s guests. Katerina had suggested that Svetlana could use her language skills for a job there, but the thought of losing her soul in the process of spying was more than Svetlana could stomach. At least at her factory her comrades believed in her, looked up to her with hope.
In the elevator, she jabbed the button for the top floor, the one marked “off-limits.” A minute later, fighting nausea, she struggled to assume an authoritative air. Without knocking first, she pushed open the door and gasped at the sight of the large room stretching out before her. All but three of its many cubicles were unmanned. Three men wearing headsets faced panels of wires, plugs, and flickering yellow lights. One of them, a man in his fifties with thinning blond hair and a face ruddy with broken capillaries, raised his head, and Svetlana realized how foolish she had been not to think this whole thing through. She had no clue how the operation ran. How could the Economic Authority wire itself to all of Moscow? Didn’t the phone company control the switches?
The realization hit Svetlana like a slap of wet canvas: The Economic Authority didn’t need to be wired to all of Moscow—just to places where its guests stayed. Such as Hotel Moscow. “I’m here to check on the status of Sidorov’s requests,” she blurted.
“We’re doing as instructed.” The man adjusted his earphones, as though listening to something requiring his attention.
“Well, what’s the status?”
“Who’s asking?”
Svetlana swallowed hard. Giving her name would be like sticking her head in the oven and turning on the gas. “Zoya Samoilva,” she replied. Her witch of a neighbor deserved this. She held her breath. He might ask her to identify herself with her internal passport.
“You’re working with Aleksandr Kusnetsov?” he asked.
Aleksandr? What did he have to do with anything? “Absolutely,” she exclaimed.
“Listening in on Miss Fielding’s phone has been no problem all along. We wired Dr. Rozanova’s home this morning.”
Svetlana’s heart skipped. He could have picked up the sociologist’s call to her apartment instructing her to come here! And, furthermore, if Sidorov could wire whomever he wished at such short notice, his po blatu at the phone company must be extraordinarily strong. “At what time this morning was Dr. Rozanova’s line wired?” she asked.
“Before eight. Our men had to break curfew to be out early. Tell your boss that.”
She managed to nod. “I’m sure he’ll remember the favor.” For all she knew, Sidorov had learned of her own part in the investigation. Something heaved into Svetlana’s throat, then receded back into her stomach. She clamped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled through her fingers.
“Pregnant?” He leered and pointed. “Bathroom’s on the left.”
She vomited into a filthy sink, and retched again. But there was no time to waste; she must escape now. She washed her face and rinsed her mouth in a hurry. Her terror must have coagulated her blood, because an icy calm seized her. She would get Brooke where she had left her—and run as far as Siberia, if needed.
While she waited for the elevator, the sour taste still clung to her mouth. She decided to sacrifice one of her chocolate bars. Only one small bite, and then she would save the rest for Natasha.
But the chocolate was so good. It had been so long, she had forgotten the rich, sweet taste. She broke off a second section and placed it on her tongue. She put the rest in her bag, but soon opened it to bite one more piece. The end of the world was near; one chocolate bar would do no good.
The minutes it took to get back to the eleventh floor and down the hallway to Katerina’s office were among the longest in her life. Inside Katerina’s office, dangling leaves swayed as she burst into the room. But in the silence of the greenhouse, there was not one soul. Brooke was gone.
Chapter Thirty-six
THE CAR PULLED up in front of a large office building. The bright light of the sunny day pierced Brooke’s eyes as she looked up. “Is this it?” she asked the driver, knowing he understood not a word.
The driver examined the note Svetlana had written, nodded vigorously, and handed it back to Brooke.
Apprehensive, she scanned the area. The single office building sat amid behemoth residential complexes, which stood on vast lots strewn with puddles and overgrown with dry weeds. Even the occasional poplar trees along the sidewalk were scraggly looking, dwarfed by the open space. Past the wide but desolate four-lane road, produce stands were almost bare, and there were no shoppers. In this quiet, forgotten neighborhood, the battle raging downtown seemed as improbable as a passing parade of jesters and flowered floats. Brooke scanned again the all-concrete office building and the large sign in Cyrillic on top. She recognized the four initials for the Institute of Social Research from the translated sheet announcing the symposium scheduled for the next day, Tuesday.
Her tongue throbbed, her temples pounded, her joints ached, and a muscle in her back spasmed. Glancing at her watch, she was surprised that it was only nine-thirty in the morning. She pushed herself out of the car, eager to see Olga. Hopefully Svetlana was somewhere safe.
A main entrance to the building was permanently boarded, but a single side door led into a narrow, concrete passage like a man-high foxhole. “The better to check you with, my dear,” Brooke mumbled, and realized that her swollen to
ngue moved with difficulty. She watched the brick walls on either side of her as if any moment something might jump at her. She watched them so closely that she almost tripped over a metal bar fixed across the bottom, an inch above the floor. In the United States, consumers—people—had basic rights to safety. Tort law saw to it, she thought.
A narrow door at the end opened onto a modern, spacious lobby with a brown marble floor. A mosaic mural glorifying the working proletariat stretched across the length of the vast wall: Under a canopy of clear skies, workers toiled in fields, factories, mines, and ports—robust and healthy, smiling and proud.
A diminutive man sat in a booth set high and protected by iron bars, his face as dark and grooved as a walnut. He looked at Brooke’s passport, turned it up and down and over, and leafed through the pages, mumbling with astonishment, “America, America, America,” then waved her in.
As in the Economic Authority building, the fourteenth floor was devoid of business activity. Brooke found the bathroom by the stench and splashed water on her face and neck. She didn’t trust the water to rinse her mouth even though her tongue throbbed. Outside the bathroom again, she dried her cheeks and neck with the edge of her shirt, powdered her face, and combed her hair.
One office door along the hallway was open, daylight streaming into the corridor. Cautiously, Brooke peeked inside. Olga stood facing the large window. She didn’t turn when Brooke entered, but waved her in with her hand.
Brooke came up behind her. Olga’s finger pointed at a spot in the distance where the city outline met the blue, indifferent sky. A gray feather of smoke burped upward in slow motion. With no wind to diffuse it, it curved gently into the sky and hung there for a while before melting away. Was that what neighbors of concentration camps had seen coming out of the incinerators? Had it seemed similarly unreal?
“They’re shelling our parliament.” Olga’s raspy voice was choked. When she finally turned toward Brooke, there were tears in her eyes. She dropped into the chair by the window. “Enough! The price is too high.”