A Shadow in Moscow, page 7
His English and intonation are perfect. Dzerzhinsky Higher School perfect. Moscow State Institute of International Relations perfect. KGB perfect.
He carries the bulk of my luggage, and once settled within the car, I speak. “Are you new? Where’s Sasha?”
I can’t decide if I’m relieved or hurt Sasha hasn’t come to drive me. On one hand, if he still felt I was a risk or a threat, he’d personally fasten my seat belt here and on the plane. On the other hand, I’m a little sad because, for two years, we got along well. On some level I thought we became friends—and I did buy him bourbon.
“I arrived in April. Sasha is busy tonight.” Sergei peers at me. “You are sad to leave? It is very different here.”
“It is.” I answer the last comment, not his question. There’s no way I’m going to let anyone, especially some newly-sworn-in agent, report how I feel about anything. I was reminded of that lesson yesterday.
I turn toward the window as the car winds through campus toward the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Dulles International Airport. I cast back to my beginnings in the US.
The agent who picked me up from the airport that first morning had been a woman, already two years in the United States, and “Watch out for the money” was her first bit of advice.
“What’s wrong with the money?” Panic seized me as I’d been given an exorbitant amount to get settled. Having “hard currency” at home is a serious offense and a valued commodity. It’s dangerous either way.
“Nothing, but you won’t know how to spend it. I blew my first paychecks like a kid at the Gorky Park fairground. Everything here is yours for the asking, and you get sick. I can’t explain it any better. At home, you take the required coupon, stand in line, and buy shoes when yours grow holes or food when your pantry is bare. We have no concept of buying. Not like here. Here you have wants, and those can get warped in your head.”
“What do I do?”
She gestured to the bag I sat clutching in my lap. “How much did they give you? One hundred dollars now and twenty each month?”
I nodded.
“Okay then. Don’t spend more than fifteen dollars your first month. Take your time. And keep your mouth shut. Listen and learn. Once you open your mouth, you’re on everyone’s radar. Don’t stand out . . . You’ll be okay.”
She was right. Getting on “everyone’s radar” proved disastrous immediately. One awkward hello to a blonde girl from the south and I learned fast that Americans feared and hated us as much as we feared them. I have a hard time even thinking I could “hate” them anymore.
I shift toward the man next to me. “What’d you spend your first paycheck on?”
Sergei’s eyes grow wide in wonder. He hasn’t learned. “I bought a motorbike. A Honda Hawk. It is black with red markings, five gears, and it travels from a full stop to sixty miles per hour in nine seconds. I drove it down the state of Virginia and into the state of North Carolina last weekend. You can do that here. You can go anywhere. And there is plenty of petrol.”
“Yes. I’ve learned that.” Clearly he missed the recent gas crisis.
“Next I will buy leather pants and a jacket. Boots too. All black. I found a store that sells the high-quality leather.” Sergei prattles on, helps me check in, then gallantly offers to accompany me to my gate.
Once we’re settled in two attached seats, I shift to face him. “You don’t need to wait with me.”
“I do.”
So we sit side by side in blue not-high-quality-leather chairs waiting for my flight to board. Mr. Olivers’s words, almost an indictment, cycle through my mind on an endless repeat warring against my fears over yesterday’s meeting with Sasha.
“You cling to the belief that you can find what you need in the Soviet Union. I want to talk when you finally realize you can’t.”
Will he reach out again? Do I want him to? After all, what I said was true; the KGB guards Moscow well.
Yet I’ve been asking myself these questions since the moment I scurried from Jamison’s office, growing increasingly terrified with my imaginary answers. And each time, I find myself rubbing the scar across my palm without even directing my fingers to its ridges. Deep down, I am still curious enough to want to meet Mr. Olivers again and frustrated enough with Sasha to creep closer to that flame.
Nyet. I’d back away. I’ll aways back away. I’m the child my parents raised me to be. And for all that’s wrong at home, there is much that is right too.
My mother’s listening ear and firm hugs. She may not understand me sometimes, but she loves me unconditionally. I feel it in the way she gives me her full attention whenever we talk and the way she strokes my hair when I can’t sleep.
My father’s smile on the rare evenings he pulls out a pipe rather than his ubiquitous Primas. A pipe signals a good mood, and our conversations sometimes turn philosophical and, if I’m lucky, I get to hear how he feels about things rather than how he thinks about them.
My friends Sonya, Ulyana, Kaden, and Lev. I trust them with my life and, more importantly, with my true thoughts. Then there’s Dmitri, more brother than best friend. I miss him so much I ache. I need to unpack my years away with him. I need him to confirm every truth and help me parse through every lie like he’s done since we were six years old.
Scott. My mind drifts back to this side of the world, and the reality of him threatens to break me. I never told him I loved him. I couldn’t risk it. But I couldn’t stuff it down any longer either. It burst out. It had to. Dmitri once told me that’s what love does. He was right—so I told the truth, to Dmitri alone. And look what happened. But what if I’d chosen another path? What if saying yes to Mr. Olivers meant I could stay here? Someday return here? I might have agreed or done any number of crazy things for Scott alone.
“Anya.”
My head spins as I search, certain my musings have conjured his voice. But there he is, racing down the concourse.
Sergei stiffens and makes to rise with me. I stay him with a hand, now thankful it’s not Sasha by my side. “He’s a friend from school. I’m only saying goodbye.” I’m careful not to say Scott’s name and hope Sergei has never seen a picture.
I cross the gate area and meet Scott at the edge of the terminal’s main thoroughfare. I position myself to block Sergei’s line of sight.
Scott nods past me. “Is he KGB? Is that Sasha?” His voice holds that bit of wonder every American’s does when mentioning the KGB. Awe, terror, and fascination grip them in equal measures.
The intense young man bores holes in us with grey eyes. “That’s Sergei. He said Sasha is too busy for goodbyes.”
Scott pulls me a few feet farther away into an alcove. Sergei starts to stand again. I hold out a palm. He calms and drops back into his seat.
Scott steps close. He takes both my hands within his own. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did the other night. I shouldn’t have pushed.”
“It was me. I’m sorry. It got hard so I fought. I didn’t mean to, but . . . I shouldn’t have walked away.”
“Can I write to you?”
“No.” A panic seizes me. I can’t live divided like that. Letters will only keep some false hope blinking through the shadows. But Scott’s expression clouds with pain and I can’t hurt him. “Yes . . . Of course you can. They’ll read your letters, but yes.”
The clouds clear with his laughter. “Nothing too steamy then?”
“Steamy is fine.” I laugh with him. It’s wimpy and flat, but it feels better than the alternative. “Nothing political. Nothing real. Don’t share true facts with them. And never make assumptions that I’d agree with you on any aspect of American life. And no quoting me. No ‘remember when you said’ kinda stuff.”
“That’s pretty specific, Anya.”
“No, it’s that broad. It covers everything because this isn’t a joke. I told you. They have no rules. Maybe it’s best if you—”
“Don’t tell me not to write. Please.” Scott steps closer. “I can do this. Good sterile letters full of nothing. Just as if we’re married.”
“I said not to joke.” I try to pull my hands away.
“I’m sorry.” Scott holds them tight. “I have to or I’ll go mad.”
“Don’t go mad. Move on.” I step into him, so close I can almost taste his lips. I force myself to keep eye contact. To waver now will only hurt us both. Me, I don’t care about. But Scott, I desperately want to keep safe, remember always, and envision him with a family all his own. Six kids. A loving wife. A house outside DC or in Georgia with a white picket fence. 1.81 kids is never going to satisfy Scott.
“I can’t.” Scott drops a light kiss on my lips. “You’re my Rose Beuret. I’ll always wait for you.”
“Who?”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “Look her up.”
“Scott,” I moan. “We don’t have libraries like here.”
For three years, he’s given me these little teasing clues. When we first met, he called me “Juliet.” It took another quarter and a Shakespeare class before I figured out that our countries represented the Montagues and Capulets, and though I didn’t like the play’s ending, my heart definitely quickened at the passion his moniker implied.
Then sophomore year he called me “Terry McKay.” Tracy translated that one for me.
“He’s been watching movies with his mom . . . She’s the woman Cary Grant loves in An Affair to Remember. She pushes him away, trying to save him pain, but he doesn’t give up and finds her in the end. It’s all very old-folks romantic, but it’ll still leave you sobbing.”
Now this.
“Scott, don’t—”
“Let’s write.” He cuts me off with a flash of a kiss. “Let’s just write with no expectations for the future.” He lets go of my hands and holds my head close to his own, his hands cupping my cheeks. “If you meet someone else, fine, I’ll understand, but I’m not ready to let you go.”
I concede, kissing him again. “Neither am I.”
“Good.” He searches for Sergei over my shoulder. I glance back as well. Sergei is standing and pointing to the line forming. My flight is boarding.
“I need to go.”
“I love you, Anya Kadinova.” Scott keeps my gaze locked within his, and I wonder if I’ve truly appreciated just how blue and intense his eyes are. They are bluer than Lake Baikal and just as deep.
What does it matter now? I take a breath and fall. “I love you too. I always have. Since that first pen.”
He kisses me again. It’s no flashing light peck. It’s desperate, firm, and conveys every ounce of his love. “Don’t give up on me. Promise?”
“It’s no good.” Tears fill my eyes.
“Give me time. Give us time. Just promise, okay?”
I nod, I promise, and I kiss him one last time. It’s my goodbye, but there’s no point telling him that.
He still carries hope.
Seven
Ingrid
Vienna
July 11, 1954
“Ingrid . . . Open your eyes.”
“No, Comrade Second Lieutenant Leonid Igorevich. I will not.” Ingrid smiled. The fact that she always used his full first name and patronymic bothered Leonid Igorevich. “It’s too formal for us,” he’d said. “You are formal,” she’d replied. In her heart, however, Ingrid had started calling him “Leo” months ago.
She tilted her head back farther, letting the sun warm her face. Leo was back. She sensed him drop onto the bench beside her and partially opened one eye to peek over. She expected to see her own excitement mirrored in his dark eyes, to see them crinkled in laughter and his mustache tipped up, hiding a grin of his own. After all, he’d been gone for over a month.
Instead the light caught the side of his face and the tiny lines around his eyes, along with the vertical creases in his brow. Always formal, always concerned, and always careful, Ingrid thought. She longed to reach up and smooth those lines. They had no place on such a gentle man. He should laugh more.
Leo wasn’t paying attention to her. His focus had shifted over her head to the building behind her, Austria’s Parliament Building. That was long ago, she mused. It wasn’t even that when she began working there in 1941 at the age of eighteen. It was the Third Reich’s Economic and Administrative Office back then. Now it had transformed once again and housed a bevy of offices for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, including the one in which she worked: the People’s Civil and Administrative Bureau.
Ingrid closed her one eye again.
A firm kiss landed on her lips.
Startled, she shot upright and twisted toward the building, then back to the tall, lanky, dark-haired man next to her—who now sat fully focused on her.
“There’s no one around.” Leo widened his eyes. Although his Russian still carried a formal lilt, his expression was filled with that little-boy mirth she’d only witnessed a few times in their year-long relationship.
“I should think not,” she teased. “Shocking behavior.”
Leo shifted on the wrought iron bench to face her. “I am back.”
“I noticed.”
“I got a promotion. A very good one. Excellent, in fact. Third lieutenant with a promise for captain soon.”
“I sensed good news.” Ingrid reached for his hand and squeezed. His fingers were long and his nails clipped blunt and short. “You were so anxious, but no one works harder or is more dedicated than you. You deserve it.”
Although they didn’t work in the same office, Ingrid had long heard of Leo’s reputation. No one was more prompt, exact, or punctilious, and he was ever vigilant to uphold every rule, regulation, expectation, and propriety. If Leo hadn’t also coupled those qualities with a mild manner, gentleness, and consideration, his colleagues rightfully would have hated him. Instead they treated his fastidiousness with good-natured ribbing and left it at that.
Nevertheless, his summons to Moscow a month earlier had unnerved him. And in the three days postsummons and predeparture, his hair, usually pomaded to sleek perfection, curled at the tips; his uniform, never wrinkled and with straight-line creases down each trouser leg, sagged at the knees; and his shoes, perpetually polished to a black-mirrored shine, showed scuff marks across one toe. He missed calls, misdictated memos, and even skipped a meeting with his superior, Chief Administrative Officer Anatoli Lebedev. He had also chewed three fingernails to the quick.
Wrinkled and wrung out, Leo delivered a final dictum to Ingrid the night before his train north. “Don’t waste energy missing me. A summons is either good or bad. It’s never neutral and I may not return. I . . .” Whatever he was going to say next never came. His words simply drifted away.
Now all was well.
“Welcome home.” Ingrid sighed as a cozy blanket of peace drifted over her. She had quit worrying months ago as to how this man had crept past her defenses and simply accepted he had. “We should celebrate with dinner and dancing. Café Dommayer has live music tonight.”
The light in Leo’s eyes dimmed rather than brightened, and the air sharpened around Ingrid. “What is it?”
“We must talk.” He fidgeted, drawing his fingers in and out through her own. “This promotion means a transfer. Home to Moscow.”
“I see . . .” She shifted her gaze out into the Rathauspark, taking in her home. Once the grand seat of an empire, Ingrid’s beloved Vienna now resembled a doll torn between quarreling sisters. Over 30 percent had been bombed in the last year of the war, and rather than receiving the funds and attention she needed, the city remained beleaguered, wounded, and wanting, divided between four Allies whose turf war was more important than her care.
Ten years, Ingrid thought, suddenly feeling as old and worn as the doll herself. Ten years since that first Soviet bombing. Almost ten years of a living death and a half existence, until this gentle man—surprisingly a Soviet himself—joined her on this very bench one day last spring.
He had simply asked, “Can you smell them?”
Not understanding, Ingrid tilted her face up to follow his gaze across the park’s canopy. “The trees?” He nodded and she pulled in a deep breath, expecting nothing, and struck upon something she believed lost forever. Life.
Spring carried a smell, she discovered that day, borne on a delicate breeze and magnified by sunlight. It was fresh, green, alive, and warm. She marveled at how she had missed it for so long—pine, maple, fir, and ash, all growing bright new shoots with leaves turning to catch the light. The crab apple trees were in full bloom, sending pink flowers dancing as they dropped. Birds flitted between branches. And the trees in her corner of the park had somehow escaped the bombs and spread their branches, dappling the light over the walkways, the grasses, and even her own bench.
Ingrid felt her breath catch in wonder. “I hadn’t noticed.”
Leo began a story. “My papa was a carpenter in Krasnoarmeysk, a village outside Moscow, before the October Revolution. He could create anything from wood, beautiful things, and our house smelled of it all year long.” Leo gestured into the park. “Trees carry different smells. Some woods are sharp, hard, and green, while others are sweet, soft, and floral.” He peeked at her with a glint in his eye. “My babushka’s tongue compared to your sweet smile.”
Before Ingrid could reply, either to accept or dismiss his compliment, he continued. “I could always tell what he was building even before I entered his work shed. He used maple for tables, pine for shelves . . .” Leo quieted and a silence drifted over them.
Filled with a curiosity she hadn’t felt in years, Ingrid asked, “What happened to him?”
Leo stared at her, and with the straight-lined expression of one who understood loss and pain, he exhaled one word. “War.”
In that moment Ingrid was no longer alone.
Now he was leaving.
She drew her eyes from the park and back to Comrade Second Lieutenant Leonid Igorevich. She corrected herself, Comrade “Third Lieutenant with an eye to Captain” Leonid Igorevich, and tried not to begrudge him the honor bestowed and the clear joy he felt. He was dedicated to his country and its cause, and this was good for him. It was what he wanted, what he’d worked so diligently each day to achieve—satisfaction in a job well done and a chance to bask in the attendant recognition.
