***
The small dacha, painted a muted sage green trimmed with white, with a red door, had been built alongside a brook. Across the meadow, perhaps a hundred meters away, there was a birch grove, the mottled black and white limbs of the trees lace against the snow and the sky promising more snow.
They pulled up to the door and got out. The driver followed, carrying Olivia’s valise. “Have you any idea if there is a key about?” Zhuralev asked. “We’d rather not pick the lock or break down the door.”
After a moment, she remembered. “The key is on my ring.” Valentina had given her a copy against the day she, too, might need solitude and silence.
“You understand,” he said, “that there will be an armed detail outside all night. They will not observe or bother you while you are inside. It would be safer if you did not venture out. We will come for you at first light, about 0800.”
“I understand. Thank you for your courtesy.”
“Your pistol, Doctor, is in your valise. With an empty magazine and seven rounds of ammunition.” Olivia took the suitcase, then turned away. She did not look back as she went into the dacha. When Zhuralev got back into the car, the musk of her fur and the green, cedary scent of the violets remained.
The dacha, first built as a small summer house, then later insulated against the weather, was very cold and musty from being closed up, too cold for Olivia to remove her wolfskin coat. The first thing she did was build a fire in the peasant masonry stove, which would radiate heat for hours. Then she swept the wide wooden floorboards of the dust that had accumulated since Valentina’s last visit.
The dacha was one large room with a kitchen area, a bathroom, a huge, beautifully tiled central masonry stove with a sleeping platform on top and a loft above. Olivia guessed that the platform would have been for the parents, the loft for the children. In the kitchen area, there was a table made from a slab of tree, planed and waxed to a smooth silken sheen, the benches made from the same wood. There were many books, a stereo and a radio, but no television. Carpets, good ones from the Inner Asian Republics before they became separate countries, lay on the floor of the large room. There were cushions and pillows to recline on or pad the benches, but no chairs or couches. There was electricity, water and an indoor composting toilet, but only a nun would have been at home in the austerity. There was also food in the kitchen, not much but still reasonably fresh. Flour, butter, yeast, preserves, sugar and tea. She made herself tea.
Olivia was nervous, awaiting her lover. But she was also, she realized, alone in a haunted building. She wondered what the security detail would think if she joined them, if she found their company preferable to the memories in this place.
There were ghosts in the small building, and Olivia realized they were of Suslov’s parents. The man and the woman who might have been her father- and mother-in-law. A man who had died of cancer, a woman who had shortly thereafter suffered a massive stroke and heart attack. How many memories of his first wife, who had killed their daughters quickly before taking her own life to deprive the Germans of the pleasure of burning them to death, had Boris Suslov brought to his second marriage to the Crimean Tartar woman who had chosen the very Russian name of Inna? And what of Suslov’s brother and Suslova’s husband, both killed in Afghanistan? How many such dachas all over Russia held similar ghosts?
A haunted place. A Russian place. A haunted place in a haunted country that needed desperately to stop making ghosts, but didn’t know how to stop, wasn’t sure that it could, perhaps wasn’t even sure that it wanted to.
Olivia inventoried the kitchen, decided she had enough to make bread, then rolled up her sleeves. A few minutes later, she put the kneaded dough near the stove to rise in the warmth, then climbed the ladder to the sleeping loft. Out of the loft window, she looked across the field to the birch grove. There was something very strange about the trees; they were planted with an unnatural regularity. She did not know what that meant. She did know it bothered her. After some minutes, she put fresh sheets on the bed, and drew out an immense eiderdown comforter from the chest at the foot of the bed. Then she went down and made up the sleeping platform on the stove. She wondered which bed they would use tonight, or if they might sleep separately…or if they might kill themselves separately. She laid aside the thought, checked the rise of the bread, punched it down, then refilled her tea glass, put the bread into the oven, and sat down at the table. Then she remembered her valise. She opened it, took out her pistol, loaded it, chambered a round, put the weapon on safe, then put it down. But her hand stayed upon the lacey, silken steel as she continued, unwillingly, to stare at the grove.
“That is a mass grave,” she heard her lover say behind her.
He had not meant to startle her, and he realized how wrapped in thought she must have been for him to have done so. She looked away from the window, wondering if she had lived too long. Brilliant eyes confronted him from a skull of hard, elegant bones, covered with fine, scarred skin, and he realized that there was no one she wanted to see more and no one she wanted to see less.
She rose to him with that lovely, proud courtesy he realized was a part of her and never failed to appreciate.
“Is that loaded?”
“Yes. A round chambered. The safety is on.”
He nodded and quietly went to the kitchen, opened the bottle of wine he had brought for them, and poured for them both, realizing with some irony that she had taught him to appreciate the American custom of drinking slowly. “Please, sit,” he said gently, joining her. He had taken his time in arriving, allowing his rage to burn itself out. The ashes were still there, but they were only ashes. He hoped there were no remaining embers waiting for ignition.
“You never brought me here because it is haunted.”
“Yes. I don’t know whether I love or I hate this place. It was given to my mother after the war for what she’d done. Every holiday we could, we came here. One summer, on my way to Afghanistan, Ira and Sasha and I walked out to that grove. It had been a hard winter and I suppose the frost action… We found human bones. If they were German soldiers, I would have thought nothing of it. But they were ours. Their hands had been bound with wire and they’d been shot in the back of their heads. Some of the bones were very small and delicate. We stopped the Germans well west of here, so it was we who murdered our own.”
“There were lists, weren’t there?”
“Ira and I have talked about that. She tried to find the lists but was told to forget it. The FSB doesn’t like to release any of them. If people know who died in these places, they’ll also know how they were made to suffer before they were murdered. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong. If those were my parents, I don’t know if I’d want to know. Others feel differently and I understand them. After we found those bones, we had a long conversation here at this table with my parents although they didn’t really open up to us until Ira and I came back from Afghanistan. And then my parents came here to die. First my father, then my mother. Valentina comes here to paint, but only very specific pieces that…fit the ambience.”
He looked at the pistol where it lay before her. It was not pointing towards him. “General Trimenko has told me that you have some kind of connection to the CIA.”
Finally.
“What I tell you, you will know. If I don’t tell you, you don’t know.”
He understood what she was saying and looked at her directly. “Tell me. I want to hear it from you.”
In a flat, low voice, she reprised her meeting with Lyons in Vienna. He could feel his rage flaring up again at her stupidity and naïveté. “How could you have been such an idiot?”
“I didn’t want to be a traitor,” she said simply. “I never expected the life I have made. If I had thought this life was even remotely possible, I would not have done it because all I have done is endanger others.”
“Have you been in contact with the CIA since you have been in Russia?”
“No, nor they with me
. Not in any way. I have transmitted no information. I have received nothing. No communications, advice, money, instructions, nothing. I’ve expected none. All I wanted was to be a…”
“It is too late for that,” he said, a slow, hard anger in his voice. “Tell me, did you think that if the CIA had contacted you, you would have been able to keep from spying?”
She looked at him very straight. “Yes.”
He felt his anger gutter out. “I believe you. Does anyone else know about this?”
She nodded. “Rebecca Taylor at our first, accidental meeting. I told her because I wanted someone, somewhere to know what I hoped my work to do, and that I had not abandoned our country, that I had done all I could before giving up.”
“Does everyone but me know about this? Holy Mother of Kazan, Olivia, but a Washington Post reporter?”
“Whom you and your sister know and trust and respect. Who has published nothing about me but has done fine work trying to get Americans to understand a little of what’s going on here.”
“Anyone else?”
She shook her head. “I would never burden anyone with that. No Russian. Not you. Not my father.”
“I believe you.”
“Tell me, if I had told you, would you have told anyone?”
“Never.”
“I believe you.” Then she was silent, wondering whether she and Suslov were about to become the dacha’s newest ghosts. And Russia’s. Suslov let the simple act of sipping wine calm himself down. He stared at her silently until she could endure it no more. “You have the right to expect atonement.”
“Are you asking me to kill you?”
“No. I will not lay that burden on you. But you should not suffer for my idiocy. Neither should anyone else. If necessary to avoid that…”
“If you are going to kill yourself, kill me first,” he heard himself say, knowing that the man who owned the voice, meant it. “I cannot bear to see your body.”
“You have the right to ask that of me.” Her worn voice was very calm, despite the image his words conjured up. “My love, this is a matter of protecting people. We know what happens when people break under torture. They say anything, they make up the most awful lies. The FSB colonel who brought me here said there would be none of that. He seems to believe it. But he is only a colonel and events could take a very different course.”
He took her hands and held them, then kissed them. “We are not living in Stalin’s years or even Brezhnev’s. Once, what you had done would have been enough. But still…” he looked at her pistol, “I doubt they were afraid that I would come unarmed. They just wanted to make a suggestion.”
“I know. Are you armed?”
“Of course.”
“So we have the means to solve their problem for them.”
“Should we so choose. Trimenko has told me that there is a desire to understand what you have done, and retain your services if at all possible. That means a desire to see you set free.”
“Do you want me to take my chances in the Lubyanka?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “You will always have a final, last-ditch way out, and you will take it if you must.” She nodded. It was a simple statement of fact. “But not before. I don’t want my country or our world to lose you unnecessarily.”
“And you do not want to lose me unnecessarily?”
Suslov rose and kissed her on the top of her head, then sat again. “Honestly, Olivia. There are times when I wish I knew what part of the human brain governs common sense and if perhaps we could find a transplant for you.”
“I just wanted reassurance. It’s a JAP kind of thing.”
“Consider yourself reassured, princess. Now to another matter. Since we have chosen not to kill ourselves before we have to, the issue becomes what we do until we are taken away.”
“We?”
“You did not let me face Chechnya alone. Do you think I did not realize that? Do you think I do not know that you refused to let Russian soldiers face Chechnya alone? For their sakes and mine, do you think I will let you face the Lubyanka alone?”
“You will not, Dmitri Borisovich. Not until they come for you on their own.”
“Do you expect me just to go about my business as a student while you are alone in that terrible place?”
“Yes.”
“And do nothing?”
“There is one thing you might do for me. It is a very large thing. It may not be possible and it may also be wrong. But find a way to get word to Rebecca Taylor.”
“Approach her directly?”
“Not unless you have to. But we know someone who can.”
“And who might that be?”
“CC Cooper.”
Suslov let out his breath. Involving an American officer and an American journalist… “There are many issues here,” he said slowly. “The first is Colonel Cooper.” He paused, not knowing how to say it.
She said it for him. “In whose eyes I am almost certainly, if not a traitor, than the next closest thing. But maybe not. He understands my motivations and agrees, at least in the abstract. He doesn’t want another Cold War, he doesn’t want Russia to disintegrate, and he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t like Russia, or at least want to understand. He will do what he believes best for America.”
“Which leaves us with Miss Taylor, and the larger issue of the American press. Miss Taylor is not the problem. I met her before she was a reporter. I respected her then, and more now. I trust her. The issue is your press. Even if they could get their minds off the whereabouts of your President Clinton’s penis or which movie star is going to which fancy clinic to dry out, why would they report this at all? If they do, one of two things will happen. Both bad. Either they’ll forget all about it and leave you right where you are, sitting in the Lubyanka, or they’ll keep at it and infuriate some people who might be working quietly on your behalf.”
“The friends I haven’t even met yet,” she said with a small laugh.
“Please?”
“At my farewell encounter with Major Kristinich, I told him there was an American proverb. I have friends I haven’t even met yet.”
“Perhaps you do. You certainly have enemies you haven’t met.”
“I may meet them tomorrow. Have you ever poured some vodka into Rebecca and encouraged her to discuss the shortcomings of the American press?” Suslov shook his head. “Your sister and I have, and were stunned by some of the things she had to say.”
“Rather like CC Cooper on the Pentagon, after he’s poured some bourbon into himself.”
“Two Americans who understand America and Russia. We could do worse.”
“General Trimenko said twice that he wanted neither of us to act rashly.”
“Colonel Zhuralev, the arresting officer, told me the same thing.”
“Then I guess he’s one of your new friends.”
“If so, then there are Russians, even in the FSB, who want to help.”
“So,” Suslov said slowly, “don’t make it harder for them. If this gets into the American media, there’s no way it can be kept out of the Russian media. Have you thought of that? It will certainly anger people and it may force their hands. It may give some hideous people ammunition. There is a very small potential positive to this and a very large, real negative.”
“I know that. But if we don’t go public, we do nothing to let America know that there are good people contending with monsters here.”
“You have not renounced your citizenship and have been a loyal American. But your government will not see it that way. Our nations are between worlds right now and I doubt they will lift a finger for you.”
“I understand,” she said. “I’ve offered my idea. Something you might do for me. You are going to have to be guided by your best judgment, and if you get word to Colonel Cooper, you will tell him that he and Taylor must do the same thing.”
“There are some very large issues in play. They may not wish to involve themselves in where this could go.?
??
“I know that. But it’s their decision.”
“Then you must understand my final problem with this. To go to an American reporter, to go to Americans, violates everything I’ve ever understood about loyalty to Russia.”
“Why? I am an American. Our countries are no longer enemies.”
“It is still treachery.”
“Why?”
“Because, my love, we Russians know that, in the end, we have only ourselves, and to require the help of another is treason to that truth.”
“Dmitri Borisovich,” she said quietly, “I wish I knew what part of the brain controls common sense, so I might arrange a transplant for Russia. We Jews know that in the end we have only ourselves. America will learn that lesson about herself, soon enough. But it is not treachery that brings us together and makes us need each other. It is civilization. Unless we help each other when we can, when we must, there will be no civilization.”
“Perhaps. But as a general officer, I must respect more stringent standards. I have to assume that if this goes public, it will be traced back to me. At best, my service may be over. I may end up in front of a court martial. If that happens, I will kill myself. But to do nothing is intolerable.” He paused. “There is another treachery here. If you know that General Trimenko has asked me to find out what I can, you know I am obligated to report this conversation back to him. What do you want me to say?”
“You’re a soldier and he is your superior. You love and trust him. How can you even ask me such a thing?”
“Because the issues at stake are very large.”
“They are. And Taylor and Cooper may find them irresistible for that reason.”
Suslov was holding her hands across the table while they spoke. Now he took her head in his hands. “Very well. I will contact Colonel Cooper and ask him to have Rebecca Taylor do whatever. We Russians have never liked reading about our problems in the American press.”
“A Shande für die Goyim.”
“What?”
“A scandal in front of the Gentiles. One of the few Yiddish phrases my father ever taught me. It’s a Jewish thing.”
“Russian, too. No doubt. I will lie to General Trimenko. That alone is enough to disgrace me, at the least. After that, whatever happens, happens. However…”
“Yes?”
“If you change your mind in the morning about letting them take you, kill me first. I cannot bear to see your body,” he charged her again.
“I promise,” she said somberly. “But I do not think I will change my mind.”
Still holding her head, he kissed her so deeply that it startled her. She braced for an instant, then yielded.
Tasting her mouth, smelling the violets and cedar of her perfume, he made his decision. “We are not Romeo and Juliet.”
“The dove Juliet…” Olivia whispered. “That’s what your greatest poet called her. In a poem she wrote when the Soviet Union was allied with the Nazis, sharing the spoils, and London was being bombed.”
“Her poetry is among my parents’ books. Suslov went to the shelves, searched a bit, withdrew an old volume, scanned the contents until he found “To the Londoners.”
There by the leaden river
We would rather, today, with torches and singing,
Be bearing the dove Juliet to her grave
“We are not Romeo and Juliet,” Suslov repeated. “They cared about nothing but themselves, even if their deaths ended the war between their families. We care too much for this world to leave it to those who might be inconvenienced by our existence. If we die, it will be because those who willed it, had no choice but to do it themselves. In that case, our deaths will serve a purpose. They will be a warning that the former ways are returning. If we live, we will go on, against the day we finally do die, when we’ll know if we are leaving the world better than we found it. I will tell Cooper. He can always go back to America. But I will not tell Trimenko. He cannot leave.”
“Agreed. Thank you.”
Later that evening, he lit the lantern in the loft, then undressed her, his strong hands very gentle on her body. At first she resisted a little, seriously, not her usual provocation of their desire. He could feel her physical power and running beneath her skin not rage or refusal or rejection but utter bewilderment. “This is permissible,” he said. “This is not our final time together. It is the beginning of whatever comes next.”
“Dmitri Borisovich…the next man who touches me, in that prison…”
“Will not be kind. So let me be kind now.”
She let out her breath in a great sigh and yielded to the wisdom of his mouth and hands and body.