“No,” Larissa agrees. Far more readily than I’d expected. “But there’s got to be a better way than that.” She smiles. “That’s a puzzle for another day. Today, let’s see about keeping these wildlings from that fate.”
After a few hours poring over records and maps, we’ve compiled a list of possible wildling locations for Major Kruzenko to compare to neighborhood KGB post reports. I catch myself smiling at Larissa, laughing at her jokes, even discussing our upcoming operation at the Revolutionary Banquet. How easy it could be, for me to surrender to this life and accept my place in the machine.
If only I could forget the way the wind felt on my face in the Metro tunnels; the taste of possibility in the air.
CHAPTER 21
THAT NIGHT, I DREAM OF my old life again, a strange lens skewing it like a memory I’d forgotten until now. Papa sits in a sterile room I’d never seen before—white, smelling of bleach and menthol, with an undercoat of stale cigarette smoke. He hunches over a soapstone countertop, jiggling one foot as he lets ashes tumble from his unsmoked cigarette. They land to the left of the ashtray, flecking the stack of charts before him marked SEKRET.
He swivels on his stool to face the two dark-haired children tussling over a ragged bunny doll on the floor. The scene isn’t familiar, but the bunny sparks my memory instantly—I’d had it from birth, but it vanished when I was nine. Papa told me I’d probably left it somewhere, but I never bought his excuse. Most likely, Mama had decided it had endured enough trauma for one lifetime and threw it out. In the dream, it looks on death’s doorstep.
“Sorry, Antonina,” Papa says to himself, watching us. The cigarette dangles precariously off his lower lip, held in place only by spit. “It stops here.”
He plucks the cigarette free and lowers it to the corner of the charts. It crackles at first, resistant; but soon the flames blossom across the paper’s edge. As orange laps at the page, I can see a name at the top of the charts:
CHERNINA, YULIA ANDREEVNA
CHAPTER 22
IT IS THE SEVENTH OF NOVEMBER, the forty-sixth anniversary of the October Revolution when Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace, shot up the royal family in a basement, declared all land to be state property, and promptly let millions of peasants starve to death when the new centralized government was unable to distribute food. (So the history Papa taught me goes—my schoolbooks tended to skip over the dying parts.) They also pushed the Russian calendar forward by twelve days, so we could emulate the Europeans we one day hoped to convert to communism, which is why we celebrate the October Revolution in November.
Secretary Khruschev has been shouting angrily on Red Square all day, punctuating his statements not with the thwack of his shoe on the podium (as he often does), but with artillery fire, which sounds as if it’s exploding directly over our mansion. Red Army Sukhoi fighter jets burst forth from the Moskva River on the hour, tearing through the sound barrier, and circle overhead before strafing Red Square to our north.
Masha and Misha are watching the live broadcast on television, but I grow bored with it once Ivan starts fighting with them for control of the dial. Larissa helps me lug the big electric samovar next to the door of the back deck, and we pour ourselves mug after mug of hot tea so we can watch the aerial show in person under the threat of fresh snow.
Finally, the time comes to prepare for the Communist Party celebration at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. There are actually seven official Revolutionary Banquets, and we are attending the third most prestigious gala, posing as honored Komsomol guests. Of course, we are actually on a mission. If Gruzova wasn’t working alone, we must dig through the thoughts of her colleagues and acquaintances, searching for signs of treasons.
Dresses and suits were dropped off for us this morning. Mine is a warm shade of blue, with a sash in the back that won’t stay tied. Larissa and I curl each other’s hair, and I can’t resist a little twirl in the mirror, to great applause from Larissa. After years of baggy clothes belted onto me as I root around in the streets, the glide of satin against my skin does feel nice. I look like a dark-haired doll in the mirror, like the child of lavish Party members I once was. But the more I look at it, the more it churns my stomach, and I smear off most of the lipstick Larissa has applied to me, so the rosy stain is only a ghost on my lips.