by Kiera Zane
Jon has stopped pacing, and sat in a chair. His gaze is still intense, but his look is less fury than confusion. I know that you can’t understand how you can just be taken, but you have never been a citizen in Russia. “We were sent to a KGB training facility, where we were beaten, tortured and taught to be Americans for the purposes of serving Mother Russia. Our training lasted two and a half years.”
I feel the wetness on my cheeks; I sob involuntarily and I see Jon’s hand reached towards me. He is listening, and his sympathy allows me to continue. “I was beaten; women who failed were disappeared into re-education chambers and worse. The KomDiv was a pedophile who loved little boys and young girls.” Jon’s hand tightens around mine, but he remains silent.
“We dared not speak aloud; we couldn’t run away. We couldn’t rebel or rise up in protest the way I see Americans do. In Russia, you will die an agonizing death immediately if you disobey your superiors.” I can’t breathe. I’m gasping; I want to vomit. This is so hard; reliving that time when I went from innocence to hardened spy. “It was supposed to make you hard, cold and efficient. But, my papa raised me to wear a mask, and my mamma told me to keep my empathy and visions guarded against the outside world. I didn’t become a hardcore spy; I was just deployed to America, scared and miserable. It is why I drank and partied before I met you. I figured I was going to die anyway, so why not have some fun beforehand.”
I see a slight smile cross his lips. You are remembering the first time you picked me up. “I was raped by Dmitry the night you brought me home as punishment for deviating from the plan.” Jon’s smile disappears replaced by rage I see – eyes slightly squinting, frown lines and tightening of the lips. I will never get away from my KGB training. Even as I tell you the truth, I gauge your reaction. Will I ever just love you?
“If I see that son-of-a-bitch again, I will beat him to a pulp.” I am buoyed by the fact that he still has feelings for me. Maybe there’s still a chance for us.
“The marks on you . . . “
“Punishments for making mistakes. They tried very hard not to mark or scar us; it lowered our value. But sometimes my handlers would go too far.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “And you let me spank you. I am sorry.”
“No,” I take his hands gently. “That was so different than anything I experienced in the KGB school. My papa spanked me on occasion when I scared him or misbehaved and put myself in danger. Yours was like that.”
I smile at him. “And I didn’t exactly “let you” spank me. I couldn’t get away from you.”
He laughed softly, and I giggle softly. “Do you know how much more I care for you now? Please, tell me the rest of this, and then we won’t have to talk about it again.”
I take a deep breath. “My family will be killed. I will be killed. You will be killed, too if they find you. I fed the KGB a series of lies, half-truths and things that add up to nothing. I did all of this because I love you so much. At first, it was because I hated Russia so much for what they put me through. Not only that, but when they took me, they broke my family’s heart. I will never see them or my home again. Do you know what they are going to do to me? Drawn and quartered would be easy by comparison.”
“They aren’t going to find you, and we must rescue your family.” The Jon I love is returning. He is beginning to see things as I have seen them for such a long time. “You are not going to die. I won’t let that happen. I can’t let that happen.”
Rescue my family? I know you love me. I think you may love me enough to forgive me for lying to you. “I gave the KGB a bunch of stuff from the public library – obscure texts that I figured they wouldn’t know about. I retyped it on your official stationery, and delivered Dmitry copies. That whole mafia mess-up and all that killing was him, too.”
“You gave him copies of information you found in the public library?” Jon seemed incredulous. “That’s pretty bold. You think they’re that stupid?”
Not stupid. You have to understand the Russian people; they run on tracks. It doesn’t occur to them that a subjugated spy would think outside the box. They would never think I would type of information from the library, so they wouldn’t be looking for. “Russians are not stupid; quite the contrary, but they are blind to all things beyond what they expect.”
Jon looks confused.
Wild West America. American’s are individualists. “In your country, people are rewarded for thinking up new ways to do things. In Russia, you are punished. Everyone acts like everyone else, and unless you are a recognized and certified genius, you are expected to follow the path laid out before you.”
“I see.”
“For instance, rescuing my parents would be off the road laid out, so it would not be expected and therefore, not anticipated. That is the hope my family has to survive.” Even as I say it, I know that agents of the KGB are probably being dispatched to Siberia. I run the litany from Emily Dickenson in my mind:
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
I know I shouldn’t, but I have hope in my soul – faith in him without words. Things will be alright for me, a vision that I will come out of this alive. I also have another vision, one I don’t share with Jon. I know before he goes to rescue my family that they are dead. I know in my soul that they died knowing I was the reason; my brothers die hating me for betraying Mother Russia. My mother is sobbing, silenced suddenly by one shot – a look of shock and confusion on her face. She drops to the ground without a word.
My father stands tall. I hear him say, “I am Boris Zolotov. Sandra, I love you, and I am proud of you, my daughter. Always know that.” I can hear him across time and space, looking directly into my eyes, the last picture of him branded on my soul. I see him shot once in the back of the head dropping in slow motion, the life draining out of his eyes, a smile on his face. He is free at last, and he is proud of me.
“It’s going to be okay.” Jon is talking to me; I drag my gaze away from my vision and look at him. His hand is soft on my face, wiping away my tears.
“So many people have died,” My throat is tight. Pain and constriction in my chest – it is hard to breath. The Chief of Staff, the legislative director and press secretary. Poor Tige Abrahmson, who was so charming and kind to me. Nobody knows the truth but Jon and me, and that is the elephant in the room we must ignore if we are to survive. It has changed our love for each other; in ways I feel it is deeper and in other ways it has shattered us.
Jon appears before the news cameras as soon as he can manage, eulogizing those lost members of his staff and dedicating himself to finding their killers, alluding to the mafia gunman who’d taken the rap for Dragunov’s earlier handiwork at that doomed, clandestine meeting.
“I vow to do everything I can to fight this scourge of our society,” he says, nobody doubting his commitment or his ability. So, he isn’t going to be leaving the senate for me or for anyone.
What he does surprises me. “You will be held in protective custody for the next month until I can arrange for you to get new identification and a new place to live.” I’m not going to be jailed, interrogated or killed. At least not by the United States government. I am also going to lose you my love in the bargain.
“Will I ever see you again?” I have to ask. If I’m going to lose the man of my dreams, I might as well face it now. I have already lost my family, now the man I love. Yes, I have my life, but I am alone.
Jon sighs running his hands through his hair. He is beautiful, and I love him. Please don’t leave me. Please. I have been through so much before you, with you and now sitting here in this holding cell with the dregs of American humanity under the name of Mary Smith, shoplifter and recovering drug addict. “Baby, I am high profile. I have to be careful. Your life is at stake.”
He is saying no; I can feel it. He will disappear like everyone else in my life. The only thing
that stays with me is death. It haunts my dreams, walks like a specter at the periphery of my miserable life. Love is beyond me now, but I do love you so. “Okay. I understand.”
“But I love you, and that makes life impossibly sad without you. I’m thinking we’re going to relocate you to the somewhere in the Midwest, Kansas, maybe. You just need to stay here for a little while, just long enough for me to arrange transport. Can you do that, Lexy?” Surprise, it’s Christmas again. He smiling down at me in that way that me feel so good inside, so alive and real. Since I left Siberia, I have had to play this role at having a certain kind of life. I am alive, a person – I am Aleksandra Todd, made up personal assistant to Senator Caine. I am Mary Smith, drug addict and shoplifter. What difference does it make -- the name or the circumstance, it’s not me. I only feel real with you, Jon. Please don’t leave me here.
I nod yes, but I say nothing. I can’t. My voice is stilled by the pain and joy I feel inside. Everyone that I loved except Jon is dead. He loves me enough to protect me, to come and see me, to help me put my KGB life behind me. I can stand the American jail which is a paradise compared to the Russian gulag.
***
The days are long in the county jail, and the other prisoners look at me with increasing frequency and blood-chilling interest. They’re deciding which one of them will get to take a crack at me. I know I’m new and hold a relatively high place in government, unlike many of the others; whores and drug dealers, child abusers and violent criminals. I know I’m worth a lot of bragging rights to somebody. I’m so valuable, in fact that I’m being handed over to the highest bidder like a slave on some auction block.
They’re proven as good as my skills the next day, in the cafeteria. I sit in the corner, wicked glances shooting in my direction, conversations muttered from snarling lips behind cupped hands.
I know one of them, a grinning brunette with pale skin, distracting me when she comes up and says, “I hear you ain’t gonna be stayin’ too long.” I’ve already clocked the assassin, strolling up behind me with a shiv, a handmade blade; this one fashioned out of a sharpened shank of plastic food tray, with a rag wrapped around the bottom for a handle.
I know what they’re thinking; I know how they perceive me; some frail, frightened girl in this terrible place, a quivering fawn in a forest of fiery human hatred.
I know you, but you don’t know me, sooka. You haven’t been through the KGB training school I’ve attended. Many weaknesses and few strengths, those are your assets. I can take you down in my sleep. Think me frail until I snap your neck. Watch me, attack me, please. I have but to think about my father shot down like a dog, and my rage will flow over onto you. I have wanted to tear something limb from limb since he died. It might as well be these wastes of humanities, these sookas of society.
I whisper to the one in front of me so that she needs to lean in to hear me. I grab her by the neck squeezing, “You don’t mind your own business and leave me alone, bitch, there’s gonna be two early check-outs in this jail; but you’ll go out on a stretcher or in the morgue.” She gags as the shadow of her partner falls behind my back.
“What’s a little thing like you gonna do, Barbie? You gonna scream, cry, run... or all three?” Obviously you have not fully realized your partner’s predicament.
I spin slightly away from her and kick the other woman just below and up into the kneecap. It is not so much how much strength you have; it is the knowledge of where to apply it. She crumbles to the floor screaming in pain.
I turn back to my main target, squeezing her throat harder. She takes a swing at me which I easily deflect. I feel cold, hard inside. I remember this feeling from training school when I would take down people twice my size. It was usually men; KGB men who had volunteered to spar with us. This was no different. “Strangulation is a form of asphyxia which is a lack of oxygen in which blood vessels and air passages are closed as a result of external pressure on the neck.”
The other prisoners around us chuckle, even as they slide down the bench to avoid looking like they’re part of the fight. Clearly, these are my only two opponents, and now there’s only the one. Soon, there will be none, because I will kill her. I stand up in my seat, my hand still on her windpipe crushing it slowly.
“Strangulation can induce the loss of consciousness within about 10 seconds and death within 4-5 minutes.” I watch her eyes dim; shortly she will pass out. I figure in about 10 more seconds. ”Should I kill you, sooka? Should I? My parents were shot dead in front of me. Everyone I loved are dead. You think you are hard?” She falls forward onto the table unconsciousness. “You don’t know what it means to be hard.”
I look around to see if any of the other inmates want to pick a fight with me, but they back away, looking down and away. We are all animals in a cage, and I have established myself as queen of the pack. I have no more trouble with the other female prisoners.
***
“The senator couldn’t come personally, as much as he wanted to.”
“Nathan, I’m just glad to be out. But, where am I going now?”
“Can’t say.”
“Nathan, it’s my future, my life we’re talking about. I think I have the right to know.”
Nathan opens the passenger door of his little Toyota and I climb in, uncertain if yet another bomb isn’t waiting to take me to a premature reunion with the rest of senator’s staff, my fellow KGB trainees, and all my ancestors.
Nathan climbs in and hits the engine, my heart beating faster until the reassuring purr of the motor sets my mind and body at ease.
They don’t remain that way.
Nathan says, “Thing is, Lexy, I don’t know where you’re going. That’s the FBI’s department, that’s where I’m taking you now.”
I don’t have to think about it for very long. I know what fate awaits me. I say, “Why you? Why not come get me personally?”
“I arranged it. Wanted to say goodbye, Lexy. Always liked you, wanted you to know that. Wanted to wish you luck.”
I can’t help but smile. I reach out, my hand resting against his chunky right arm.
My smile doesn’t last. “Guess I’ll need all the luck I can get.”
“You should be all right. Even with the mafia on your tail and the KGB on their heels, those Feds are pretty good about making people disappear.”
“I’ll bet.”
Nathan chuckles ironically. “I don’t mean that way. They’ll tuck you away somewhere; new name, new house. I hear they’ve already got your family set up, they’re ready and waiting.”
“My family?” My mind returns to the scattered images of them being overtaken in our house, arrested and carried off.
“Senator pulled a few strings,” Nathan says. “They are dead, Lexy.” He waits to watch me crumble. I feel myself shaking slightly with the confirmation, but I had known, always known that they were dead. I look up at him and nod. Again, my voice is silenced by that pain I have come to know intimately.
I love you, Aleksandra. Know this always. I hear my father’s final words.
My body is flushed with warmth, a slick grace that floods my senses and calms my flickering nerves.
But one pain lingers, one I fear will never recede.
I ask Nathan, “Will I ever see him again?” He promised me that he would come to that nameless, faceless place in Kansas where I am headed to blend into middle America.
Nathan looks at me, the silence of his consideration and the bittersweet turn of crooked half-smile underscoring the shake of his head. “Senator Caine has a lot of important work to do; the poor, organized crime, there’s too much to be done.”
I want to ask Nathan about Jon’s true interest in the mafia, in any connection between Caine, Kennedy and Castro, and what part the mob is playing in that deadly chain.
But I don’t dare. He probably doesn’t know and alerting him to it could only result in his own death and perhaps my own. The endgame of that conflict hasn’t played out yet, and there is still time to
effect it to a disastrous conclusion.
So I let the matter lay.
For now.
“But I have to say,” Nathan adds, “I’ve never seen him so melancholy since you’ve been gone, not even after all that heartache with his wife. You really touched him, down deep.”
But this is something I already know.
The rest will be for me to imagine; longingly, helplessly, to spend the rest of my life loving a man I may never see again, dreaming of a kiss I’ll never feel, love I will never be able to express or satisfy.
This sorrow is tempered by my swift processing and arrival at that nameless, little town buried somewhere in the American heartland. Two men in black suits, white shirts, thin ties, wearing wingtip shoes and black Fedoras drive me in a brown-and-green station wagon, keen to keep my arrival as inconspicuous as possible.
When I get out of the car, I look down the driveway at the front door and down the pathway that splits their grassy front yard. His lips break wide across his tired face, the wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes as he stretches his arms out to me. I throw myself into Jon’s arms, wrapped strong around me, his face pressing against the top of my head.
“Lexy,” he says with a low, loving rumble. “The sun of my day, the star of my night.”
He kisses my cheek, and then my lips, his hands wrapping around the back of my head as if unwilling or unable to ever let go again. “I can stay the weekend, then I must return to Washington, baby. You will be alright here. You have a job and a new life. And, I will come and see you whenever I can.”
The glow of his love surrounds me, wrapping around me like a blanket and pulling me closer, even tighter than before. It’d been unthinkable that I’d never see him again. But I beat the odds. And his love for me has surpassed his need for caution.
For now, I have Jon, and looking back, that is all I ever really wanted.
We fall asleep and vow to sleep in and make love when we wake. He is exhausted from all of the speeches, flying and clandestine movements to get to me. I am exhausted from getting to the heartland, the stress of the jail and the fact that I still mourn the death of my family.