Beautiful Assassin

8

America, I thought, as I stared out at the grand lady in the middle of the harbor. At first glance, her sharp features and aloof bearing made me think of some heartless Aryan valkyrie, cold and unapproachable. But the more I watched her, the more I realized it wasn’t coldness at all that the artist wanted to convey but fortitude, an iron will. That arm of hers holding the torch had to be strong. She reminded me of the women I’d fought with, tough, determined, fierce. Exactly the sort of a woman this terrible age would need if the world were to survive. Gazing out at this strange new land, with its gigantic female symbol, with New York’s massive skyscrapers in the hazy distance, I had an equally strange premonition that my life would never be the same.
Before we docked, Vasilyev called us to his cabin and gave us a last-minute lecture on how we were to conduct ourselves in America. We were to make sure we spit-shined our boots and that our uniforms were clean and well pressed, our medals polished and gleaming. We needed to pay close attention to our personal hygiene, as the Americans, he explained, were a people who did not like the smell of their own bodies. We should avoid any sort of profanity or coarse language, and especially when speaking to the press, to be certain that we smiled and were polite and courteous (as he said this, he stared at Viktor). He spoke to us as if he were the father of children he fully expected would embarrass him publicly. Instead of using the word retreat in reference to any battle in which we’d been forced to pull back, we were to call it strategic redeployment. Instead of defeat, we were to use the word setback. Instead of saying capitalists, we were to say our American friends.
As we were leaving the cabin, Vasilyev said to me, “A word, Lieutenant.”
When we were alone, he approached and stood right in front of me. He inspected my uniform closely—adjusting the medals on my jacket, straightening my dress cap, checking to make sure my hair was in place, that I’d put on sufficient makeup and lipstick but not too much.
“You look nice, Lieutenant,” he offered. It was only mid-morning, but he smelled heavily of alcohol, and he was sweating profusely. Lines of sweat ran down his neck, wetting his collar. “Don’t forget to smile,” he said, smiling exaggeratedly as if to show me what he meant. “At least pretend you’re having a good time. Let’s show these Amerikosy that our women are not all dour-faced babushkas driving tractors. And here,” he said, slipping me a small bottle—it was something called Chanel No. 5.
I turned to leave.
“Oh, one more thing, Lieutenant,” he said. “I’d like you to take off your wedding band.”
“What?”
“I’d prefer that they not know you’re married.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why?” I demanded.
“I would prefer them to think you are…” He paused, then said, “Unattached.”
“Unattached!” I cried. “Whatever for, Comrade?”
“I’m only talking about the image you project.”
“What image is that? I’m still a married woman, remember.”
He reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Lieutenant, I don’t have to tell you of all people, exactly what missing in action means in this war. Especially in Leningrad.”
“Until I hear differently, I am still married. Besides, I don’t quite get your point.”
“We need to find a way to get these reluctant Americans to fight with us. Not in two or three years, but right now. Each day they delay, we lose tens of thousands to the German meat grinder. Their focus now is completely on their war with Japan. They could care less about what happens to us on the Eastern Front. Many in this country hate and fear us almost as much as they do the fascists. In fact, they would love nothing more than for the Communists and the fascists to slug it out for years.”
“I still don’t understand what all this has to do with my being ‘unattached.’”
Vasilyev smiled that smile which explained so little, hid so much. What he said next momentarily left me speechless.
“I want every American man who lays eyes on you to fall in love with you.”
When I’d recovered, I let a laugh slip from my throat. At first I thought he must be kidding, but then I could see that his gray eyes had that hard-edged gleam to them. “You what?”
“I want them to fall in love with you.”
“You’re serious?”
“Quite. What man would let his own beloved fight in his stead? I want every red-blooded American male to want to protect you from those terrible Huns. I want you, Tat’yana Levchenko, to put a face to the war, one they want to embrace.”
“I’m a soldier. If they want to fight alongside me, let them. If not, to hell with them.”
“But we can’t afford to take such a cavalier attitude, Comrade. You better than I know what’s happening at the front. It’s our job to ensure that these spoiled Americans get off their asses and fight now. I want them to look at you and follow you into battle. Remember when I told you you can kill many more Germans by getting a million soldiers to fight with us? Now is your chance. Think of your comrades fighting back home. Think of your country.” He paused a moment for effect, then added, “Think of your little girl.”
I felt like slapping him for daring to use my daughter’s name like this.
“Don’t you dare bring her name into this,” I said.
“But you fight for her, no? You kill the Germans so expertly in her memory?”
I shook my head.
“And what if they ask whether I’m married or not?”
“Tell them the truth.”
“What is that?”
“I think we both know what that is, Lieutenant. I will see you topside.”
Back in my own cabin, I sat on my bunk, staring at my ring, pondering what Vasilyev had asked me to do. I knew that he was probably right, that the chances of Kolya being found alive were extremely slim. Still, I felt uneasy about removing it, sensing a superstitious foreboding that if I did, it would somehow doom Kolya. Nonetheless, I slipped the ring off my finger and dropped it into my pocket. From time to time after this I would catch myself rubbing its warm smoothness with my fingers, a kind of prayer for him.


As we docked, I could see a small crowd of people gathered below on the wharf. One man held a sign which said in Russian, WELCOME ALLIES, and emblazoned with the hammer and sickle. The August day was sweltering, and my legs, unused as they were to being covered by stockings, itched terribly.
Once ashore, we were met by a number of officials and police officers; a contingent of reporters; civilians who’d somehow heard of our arrival; even a military band, which played “L’Internationale.” As it turned out, the mayor of New York, a Mr. La Guardia, had had an emergency, and in his place he had sent a representative to greet us. He welcomed us to America and then gave the three of us students bouquets of flowers. After which, the reporters flocked around us, snapping pictures. Through Radimov, Vasilyev introduced us, first Gavrilov, then Viktor, and finally me, dubbing me, as he’d already done back in Moscow, the “Beautiful Assassin.” Then they called out a few questions, which Radimov translated for us.
“Are the Germans as tough opponents as they’ve been cracked up to be?” asked one reporter.
Gavrilov jumped in with “They are formidable but hardly invincible.”
At this, Viktor nudged me with his elbow. “If the weasel saw a German he’d shit his pants.”
Vasilyev must have caught this, because he gave Viktor a stern look.
When it was my turn to speak, I said in stumbling, rote English something I had been practicing with Radimov’s help for a while: “On behalf of the Soviet people, I wish to express deepest gratitude to the American people.”
One reporter called out a question for me, which Radimov translated.
“Is it true you killed three hundred krauts?”
“Actually,” I said, glancing over at Vasilyev, “it was three hundred and fifteen.”
The reporter then whistled and exaggeratedly waved his hand in front of him, as if he were very hot.
Glancing above the heads of those surrounding us, I peered at the vast city stretching out in the hazy afternoon sunlight. Wavering miragelike, it struck me as something not altogether real, like some gigantic mural painted by a government artist hired to make it appear like a real city. Like those pictures I’d seen of the Palace of the Soviets.
After this short exchange, the seven of us from the Soviet contingent—Vasilyev, Radimov, and the city officials in one limousine, the three of us students and the two secret police in another—were driven across the city to Penn Station, where we were to catch a train for Washington. I sat between Viktor and Gavrilov. Outside in the street, there was a maddening rush of cars and trucks and buses flying every which way, a deafening cacophony of noises, of pedestrians rushing here and there. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to any of it, almost as if a thousand lunatic asylums had suddenly thrown open their doors and commanded all of their inmates simply to go.
We were stopped at a light when a blond woman crossed in front of us. She wore a sleeveless white dress that barely reached her well-toned calves and black high-heeled shoes, the sort of impractical footwear you never saw on a woman back home. She strutted along, her hips sashaying back and forth.
“Look at her,” offered Viktor, craning his neck to watch the woman. He rolled the window down and let out a long, drawn-out whistle.
“Don’t act like a fool,” Gavrilov said across me.
“Who’s the fool? Are you blind, man? Look at those legs.”
Viktor was about to whistle again when the Corpse reached over and rolled the window up. “That will be enough.”
As we passed into the station, I saw an advertisement hanging on the wall. It showed a woman in an American naval uniform, smiling coyly, the top buttons of her blouse suggestively undone. It surprised me. Were Americans finally allowing their women to fight? Beside her were some words in English.
“What does it say?” I asked Radimov.
“‘I wish I were a man,’” he translated for me. “‘I’d join the navy. Be a man and do it.’”
I suppose it was the same sort of ploy Vasilyev was using with me, to taunt the American men into fighting out of some chivalric code of masculinity.
When we finally reached the train platform, we learned that there had been a mix-up and we’d missed our train to Washington. The mayor’s representative, a balding man who smiled too much, apologized profusely, and then he and Vasilyev went over to the ticket booth to try and straighten things out. The rest of us headed into the high, cavernous lobby to sit on benches. The station was noisy with the whistles and hisses of trains arriving and leaving, and crowded with people rushing to and fro, many of them American servicemen.
While Vasilyev was gone, Gavrilov occupied himself by reading a small pamphlet entitled Of Three Characteristics of the Red Army. Viktor, on the other hand, spent the time studying the women who passed by, occasionally elbowing me and offering some comment about them. “They say redheads are very passionate,” he observed about a buxom red-haired woman crossing in front of us.
The station lobby was an imposing room, with massive stone pillars and steel arches, a high-vaulted ceiling filled with windows from which the ponderous afternoon sunlight seemed to drift down like sifted flour. In several spots a large clock hung with a sign below it in English. As I was watching people rushing this way and that, I happened to spot a young woman seated a few benches away. She was petite, with dark hair and a plain, somewhat doughy face. Beside her sat a small child, a girl of perhaps seven, her brown hair fashioned in a single braid down her back. She wore a bright, summery dress with shiny patent leather shoes that didn’t look very comfortable. Clearly bored, the girl kept fidgeting, shifting on the hard bench and squirming around, which obviously annoyed the mother. Every once in a while, the mother would lean toward the child and quietly reprimand her or pull down the hem of her dress. The little girl made me recall Raisa, the child we’d rescued in the sewers of Sevastopol. I wondered where she was. If she’d reached Canada safely. After a while, a young American soldier appeared, and the little girl rushed up and threw her arms around him.
I saw many American servicemen hurrying to catch their trains, duffel bags slung over their shoulders, their uniforms pressed and sparkling, as if they’d never gotten dirty. Some were dressed in brilliant white sailor’s uniforms, others in the drab khaki of the army. There were enlisted men and NCOs, and a number of officers, even a pair of Negroes wearing corporal’s stripes. The American soldiers walked with the confident strides of athletes who’d not yet entertained even the possibility of defeat. By the summer of ’42, the Americans had just entered the war the previous December, and save for Pearl Harbor, they hadn’t really tasted what war was like. And the horror of the Russian front was, I thought then, something unimaginable to them. Some turned to stare at me, perhaps because they weren’t used to seeing a woman in uniform, especially one in a Soviet uniform and with so many medals attached to her chest. A few even stopped and made attempts at conversation, mostly through gestures, pointing to my medals and giving me the universal thumbs-up sign. They seemed friendly, gregarious, carefree.
After a while, Vasilyev returned with the mayor’s representative.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be a while,” Vasilyev explained.
“How long?” I asked.
“A couple of hours.”
“Can we at least get some grub?” Viktor asked. “I’m starving.”
With surprising affability Vasilyev offered, “A very good idea, Comrade.” He took out his billfold and removed some American currency and handed it to Dmitri, instructing him to go off in search of some food. “Radimov, you accompany him.”
“I want an American cheeseburger, with lots of onions,” Viktor said. “And a chocolate…what do they call it, Radimov? With ice cream.”
“A milk shake,” the interpreter replied.
“Yes, a chocolate milk shake.”
After they left, Vasilyev said he had to make a phone call to the Soviet embassy in Washington. For some reason, he took Gavrilov with him. Viktor and I waited there with the Corpse, who sat opposite us, smoking a cigarette.
Finally Viktor nudged me with his elbow. “I have an idea,” he whispered.
“What?” I said.
“Ssh. Just follow my lead,” was all he said, giving me a conspiratorial wink.
“I have to use the can,” Viktor said to the chekist officer.
“You’ll have to wait until Comrade Vasilyev returns,” replied the Corpse.
“I can’t wait.”
“Are you a child?”
“Something I had for breakfast didn’t agree with me,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “I have to go. Now. The bathroom is just over there.” He stood and pointed off toward a doorway at one end of the huge lobby.
The Corpse glanced in that direction, then gathered his lips in annoyance.
“Or you can come along and hold my hand,” Viktor joked.
“All right, go! But make it snappy.”
Viktor glanced at me.
“I have to go too,” I said.
“You’ll have to wait until he comes back.”
“She should come with me,” Viktor said. “You don’t want her going unescorted to the bathroom. This is New York, after all. Vasilyev wouldn’t want anything to happen to our national treasure,” he added, with a mischievous glance toward me.
The Corpse mulled this over. Finally he conceded. “Well, all right. But get your asses right back. And don’t let her out of your sight.”
I knew Viktor was up to something, and while I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of it, I went along anyway. We passed through an arched doorway, and then, instead of heading toward what were obviously a pair of lavatories—we saw men and women streaming into them—Viktor started for a staircase that led up toward street level.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“We’re in New York. I just want to see a little of the city.”
“Are you mad?”
“You heard them. We’re stuck here for a couple of hours. Besides, we’ll be back before they even suspect anything. I’ll say I had the runs.”
“You know what Vasilyev told us.”
“Big deal,” he scoffed.
“I don’t think you want to get on his bad side, Viktor.”
“What’s he going to do? He needs us. We’re the war heroes.”
“He could ship you home. He could…”
“What?”
“He could make serious trouble for you.”
“Trouble?” he said with a laugh. “You and I just came from the front. We know what trouble is. I thought you had guts, Lieutenant.”
“It’s not a matter of courage, Sergeant. It’s a matter of common sense.”
“Stay then. I’ll be back in a little while. Tell them I had the runs.”
With this, he turned and started up the stairs.
I hesitated for a moment. I thought how Vasilyev had asked me to talk to Viktor, to make sure he stayed in line. Then I figured there would be less of a chance of his getting into trouble if I went with him. And Viktor was right, Vasilyev couldn’t send us both back. He needed us.
“Wait,” I called to him.
Halfway up he turned and reached out his hand toward me. “Hurry up then.”
I rushed up the steps, my heart beating fast. I felt a little frightened, but more than that, I felt a giddy sense of exhilaration, of freedom.
“Five minutes,” I said. “No more.”
“Relax.”
Out on the street, I was nearly overwhelmed by the city’s teeming chaos, by its assault on the senses. Its sights and sounds and smells. Its noise and frenetic pace. By the crush of people surging along the sidewalks. The dizzying skyscrapers whose tops were lost in the afternoon haze. The gaudy colors of the clothing and signs and lights. The tempting fragrances that floated in the air like a stew. The babble of a million voices all seeming to talk at once. The dazzle and glitter of shop window after shop window offering any item imaginable, and some that were, quite frankly, unimaginable. Automobiles and buses zooming in and out, weaving lanes, as if it were all an intricately choreographed dance. In some ways, the pandemonium was like being in the midst of a battle—only the smoke and dead bodies were missing. I was reminded of what Madame Rudneva had told me about New York. But it was many times worse than I could’ve imagined.
“This beats the hell out of a muddy trench, eh, Lieutenant?” Viktor said, grinning.
We started walking, trying to negotiate the surging currents of humanity that flowed past. Viktor and I stumbled along, bumping into people who had gathered at stoplights or paused to gaze in a store window. Those New Yorkers, however, seemed to have mastered the technique for moving through the crowds. They darted nimbly like minnows in a stream, cutting this way, slashing that, speeding up or slowing down. We approached one building whose doorman was holding open the door of a long black limousine that had pulled up at the curb. I watched a couple emerge from the backseat. The young woman, tall and sinewy and lovely, was dressed elegantly, a diamond necklace about her swanlike neck. In her arms she cradled a small dog, no bigger than a rat in one of the sewers of Sevastopol. She was followed by a stout, gray-haired man in his fifties.
We continued on. I was amazed by the Americans’ keen awareness of their own vaunted freedom. They moved about with such complete certainty, with an absolute assurance that the world had been fashioned exclusively for them and their desires. They walked and drove their autos and behaved without the least sense of restraint, or of order or propriety; they pushed and jostled and elbowed others in their way; they cut in front of people, even old babushkas shuffling along with canes; they yelled and called things out, from the tone both in anger and in jest. I was struck by how they lacked all manner of civility and politeness. How they spat on the sidewalks or tossed their chewing gum or cigarette butts, without the least concern for others or for the fact that a policeman might catch them. How loudly they conversed or laughed, without the slightest regard for someone eavesdropping on them. Back home, no one wanted his conversation overheard, so in public we spoke in cautious whispers or not at all. We who lived under communism kept things to ourselves. Something that Vasilyev had said occurred to me then. How the Americans were not good at keeping secrets. Perhaps he was right.
A few blocks away, in an alley, we came upon a disheveled man in a tattered military coat. He sat on a kind of mechanical creeper, in one grubby paw a tin can with a few coins sprinkled in the bottom, which he shook at passersby like a newborn’s rattle. Both of his pant legs were rolled back, exposing the outlines of stumps.
“Do you think he’s a real veteran?” Viktor asked me.
I shrugged. His uniform looked old, perhaps from the Great War. Viktor reached into his pocket and withdrew a couple of kopeks, and dropped them into the can.
“What’s he going to do with kopeks?”
“Buy some vodka,” he joked.
As we walked along, we saw similar examples of terrible poverty side by side with grand displays of unbelievable wealth. The poverty I well understood. It was the wealth I found hard to comprehend. I saw hungry-looking men gathered in alleys right beside fancy restaurants. The homeless sleeping on the sidewalk near elegant apartment buildings. No one seemed to notice, however, or if they did, to care. America, I was quickly realizing, was a land of glaring extremes, a vast spectrum of humanity.
Passing a fruit stand in front of a store, Viktor reached out and casually snatched an apple, slipping it into his coat pocket.
“Are you trying to get us arrested?” I whispered to him.
“They call it the Big Apple,” he explained.
“Did you make that up?”
“No, it’s true. A sailor aboard ship told me.” When we were a ways away, he removed the stolen fruit from his pocket, rubbed the apple against his sleeve, then tore a bite from it. “Look around, Lieutenant. I think they can spare one stinking apple for one of their allies.”
I had to admit, the sheer abundance of the city was astonishing. Everywhere there was food and more food, food beyond one’s wildest imaginings—on street vendors’ carts, in store windows, in displays before markets, on the plates of people eating in restaurants, hanging in butchers’ and greengrocers’ stalls, displayed on signs, in the hands of people passing by. Nowhere did I see long lines waiting for a loaf a bread, a piece of meat. In the garbage cans on the street I saw enough food to feed entire families back in Kiev. I recalled suddenly how hungry I had been at the front. Yet here there was such a dizzying profusion of food, more even than on the tables of the Party big shots back home. Where did it come from? I wondered. Who had the money to buy it all?
And everywhere, I saw people going about their business with such seeming nonchalance. No, it was more than that. Contempt. An utter contempt for the rest of the world, for the past or the future, for anything but right here and now. All else didn’t matter in the least to these people. As I walked along I saw two well-dressed women my own age conversing in a small patisserie, someone waiting for a bus reading the newspaper, a man whistling as he made deliveries, a couple strolling happily arm in arm, a teenage boy bobbing his head to loud music that wafted out of a store. These Americans didn’t seem to have a care in the world. It was as if for them there were no Kharkov and Kiev, no Smolensk and Sevastopol, no Babi Yar or Nikolaev. It was as if they hadn’t heard about the millions already dead or starving in German POW camps. They were at war themselves, but it was as if it were just a distant rumor, something that didn’t really affect them in any tangible way. Suddenly I felt such a righteous wave of anger rise up in me like bile. They are fools, I thought. Someone must tell them the truth. Someone must make them aware.
“Look at them,” I said to Viktor as we walked along.
“What?”
“It’s as if they don’t know there was a war going on.”
“What do you expect?” he replied, taking a final bite of his apple and tossing the half-eaten core into a garbage can. “They’re spoiled capitalists.”
“Then what the hell are we doing here?”
“Having a little fun.”
“No, Viktor. I’m serious.”
We had stopped at a busy street corner. A rush of traffic surged past us like an attack of Panzers, tires screeching, motors roaring.
Turning toward me, Viktor said, “That’s your problem, Lieutenant. You take everything too seriously. Why not try to enjoy yourself a little?”
“It’s hard to forget the war.”
“No one’s asking you to forget it. Just let yourself live a bit.”
“But doesn’t it anger you?”
“What?”
“That these people are so ignorant of what’s going on in the rest of the world. The suffering. The danger we are all in.”
“You think too much.”
“That’s what my mother told me.”
“She was right.”
At that moment, the light changed and the crowd surged forward. Viktor grabbed my hand and pulled me along.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“A little,” I replied. “Perhaps we should be getting back though.”
But we continued walking and soon found ourselves ensnared by the tantalizing smells of a bakery. We stopped and peered in the window at breads and pastries, frosted cakes and torts, strudel and puddings, something flat that looked like blini but was rolled and filled with some sort of cream. I felt my mouth water.
“Those look delicious,” I said, pointing at the cream-filled dessert.
“Do you want one?” Viktor asked me.
“We don’t have any American money, remember.”
Viktor slipped by me and entered the store.
“Viktor,” I said, following him. “Don’t.”
He ignored me.
“That’s an order, Sergeant,” I told him.
He looked back over his shoulder and said, “We’re no longer on the battlefield, Lieutenant. I don’t take orders from you anymore.”
The store was crowded with people. Viktor got in line and slowly worked his way toward the front, a glass case behind which were more baked goods. A wide-hipped young woman in a filthy apron waited on him, saying in English something like “Can I help you?”
Viktor pointed at one of the cream-filled pastries behind the glass. When the woman reached to pick up something else, he shook his head and pointed again at the item he wanted. Once more she reached for a pastry, and once more Viktor had to shake his head. This went on several times. Finally, her hands on her hips, the woman straightened and said something harshly in English, which I didn’t understand.
“Zdes’,” Viktor said, meaning “here.” He pointed again at the one he wanted.
The woman shrugged in annoyance.
“Zdes’, zdes’,” Viktor insisted, pointing into the case. Then he held up two fingers.
At last the woman picked up the right one and put two in a bag. She thrust the bag brusquely at Viktor and said something in English.
Viktor removed a fifty-kopek coin from his pocket and placed it on the counter. “Keep the change,” he said in Russian, then turned to leave, grabbing me by the elbow and leading me quickly toward the door.
The woman called after us.
“Keep going,” Viktor told me. I hesitated, so he gently shoved me ahead of him.
Outside, we hurried down the street. I turned back once and saw the woman standing in front of the store, shouting, waving a hand at us. At this we broke into a run and continued down the street for a ways before turning onto a side street. We ran down it for a while, and then Viktor pulled me into an alleyway. I felt suddenly winded from the exertion, the wound in my stomach aching dully. I didn’t realize how out of shape I’d become since being hospitalized. And I couldn’t believe what Viktor had just pulled.
“You’re mad!” I growled at him.
“We’re just having a little fun.”
“Our first day in America, we end up in prison. Vasilyev would love that.”
But Viktor had that disarming, lopsided grin on his face, like a mischievous boy who’d played a trick on his teacher.
I couldn’t help smiling back at him. Here we were, standing in some alley in a foreign land, having already broken the law. More than that, I worried about Vasilyev’s reaction to our going AWOL. Still, I had to admit that I felt an odd and exhilarating sense of…what? Limitless possibility? Of unbridled hope? The irresponsibility of hope. It was what I’d witnessed in the crowds of Americans that day. It was as if the feeling had somehow rubbed off on me.
“Here,” Viktor told me, handing me the bag. “Enjoy.”
I removed one of the pastries and took a bite. The outside shell was brittle and cracked as I bit into it. The cream inside was delicious, such sweetness as I had never tasted. My first meal in America.
“Delicious,” I said.
We devoured our treats, laughing as we stuffed our mouths full of the sweet delight. After a while, I said, “Now we need to get back to the station.”
We got lost and had to stop and ask a police officer in a blue uniform the directions. “Train station,” was all I was able to tell him. Through gestures and pointing, he was able to show us where to go.
We finally made it back and hurried down into the station lobby. Vasilyev spotted me and came rushing over. He was followed by the others. Vasilyev’s face was red, his mouth tightly pinched in annoyance. “Where the hell were you?” he cried suddenly. “We were looking all over for the two of you.”
Viktor started to mumble something about being sick, but Vasilyev turned on him and struck him with the side of his hand. The gesture startled even me.
“I warned you, you idiot.”
Then Victor did a foolish thing. He smiled at Vasilyev.
Vasilyev grabbed him roughly by the collar and shoved a finger under his nose. “Wipe that smile off your face, Sergeant,” he hissed at Viktor. “Or you’ll be sorry.” Though Vasilyev’s face was flushed and sweaty from the heat, his dark eyes held a strange glow to them, a razor-edged coldness, something as deadly as a bayonet sharpened on a whetstone. I recalled that time in the automobile returning from the American embassy, that sudden change that had come over Vasilyev. Yet I had never seen anything from him quite like this before, and frankly, this darker side disturbed me a great deal. Then again, I wondered if this side wasn’t the real Vasilyev, and the other, the one who smiled and was jovial and charming, who enjoyed his food and drink—if that side wasn’t just part of the fa?ade he put on, part of his carefully constructed image.
“Don’t blame Viktor,” I interjected. “It was all my fault.”
“What happened?” he asked me.
“You see, when I came out of the lavatory, I mistakenly went the wrong way and I got lost. It was Viktor who found me.”
“We could have missed our train because of you two idiots.”
Over his shoulder I could see Gavrilov enjoying this. He had a smug expression on his narrow face. “Comrades,” he offered prissily, “you should behave yourselves.”
“I am sorry,” I said to Vasilyev, who glanced from Viktor to me.
“We will continue this conversation later,” Vasilyev said. “Now we must hurry.”