Before she left, she checked on Sasha, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully. She put on her hat and gloves and took her pocketbook from the hall table. She made sure to lock the door when she left—she would remember that later. She took the stairs instead of the lift.
The lobby was cool and empty, except for the porter, who nodded at her with an expression she couldn’t make out. When she stepped outside, she paused to adjust her gloves and hat, and as she did so, she looked carefully around—the other blocks, the sidewalk, the street, the garden in the center of the drive. The few people about were all in motion, hurrying in some direction, except for the man in the dark suit on the bench in the garden, reading a newspaper. He looked up just as she looked away. For an instant their eyes met, and Iris knew she’d seen him before.
If only she could remember where.
Ruth
July 1952
Moscow
The children shout and squeal with delight at the sight of their new brother. Gregory starts to bawl. Fox takes me gently by the arm and leads me to the small, dirty window overlooking the street below.
I speak softly, because I expect the room is probably bugged. “How was your walk?”
“Exactly what I needed.”
I put my arms around his waist and lean against his shoulder, like a wife who’s had a difficult day. I glance at the children, busy creating a convenient cacophony a couple of yards away, and turn my face to speak near his ear.
“Listen, I took a taxi to Digby’s place.”
“You did what?”
“I was worried. Something was off. Sure enough, when I got there, he was dead drunk in his own piss. Kip was taking care of everybody. Said there’d been a break-in.”
“Anything taken?”
“Kip said no, but he was only talking about valuables. Digby wouldn’t say. But he was a mess, Fox. An awful mess.”
“But they didn’t arrest him.”
“No. They broke in while he was at the hospital and the kids were at school. Fox, I’m not taking them back there to that apartment. I wouldn’t trust Digby with a dog right now, for one thing, and for another—what if the KGB comes back? I mean, God knows what they’re capable of.”
“No, you’re right.”
I wait for him to say something more, but he stares out the window and holds me gingerly in his arms, as if I’m a mannequin. He’s warm and taut, and I haven’t slept more than four hours in the past forty-eight, and for a moment there I nearly doze off, even though my brain hums like a live wire. I start to step back but he draws me close again.
“How soon can she be ready to go, do you think?”
“I don’t know. She’s just had surgery. Probably lost a lot of blood. I don’t know if they gave her a transfusion or anything or how much pain she’s in.”
“Find out, all right? I have everything we need. Whenever you give the signal, we can start.”
My heart thuds against my ribs—so hard, I imagine Fox feels it, too. He holds me snug, so our words stay within the glow of our mutual warmth. I turn my head a few inches, so I can see my sister and her children, who are still making a terrible ruckus, though she tries to shush them. But it’s a merry ruckus. It’s the family kind of ruckus that seems loud and contentious when you’re in the middle of it, but when it’s gone, you miss it like you miss the sun when it slips down the other side of the world.
Fox somehow maneuvers Jack and Claire to the window to take in the glorious sights of Moscow through a dirt-streaked pane of glass. Iris gives the baby to Kip. I lean over her to adjust a blanket. “Fox wants to leave as soon as possible.”
“Damn,” she says.
I sit back down and look at her, and she looks at me, and it seems she understands exactly what’s happened without my having to say a word. Like she’s been expecting this—their cover blown. She nods at me, a soundless Yes.
“Are you sure?” I murmur.
“I don’t think we have a choice.”
I stand up. “All right. Act One, the bossy American woman.”
Poor Kedrov. He has the soul of a diplomat, not a KGB man. I lay into him with my best hue and cry.
“I want my sister out of this hospital immediately. It’s barbaric. She needs a natural setting, where she can rest and recover in peace.”
He answers me soothingly. “With respect, Mrs. Fox, best place for new mother is hospital.”
“Oh? And by what authority do you—a man—presume to tell me—a woman—what’s best for a new mother? Are you a doctor? Are you a mother?”
“Mrs. Fox, is impossible. She is too delicate to be moved.”
“But not too delicate to give birth to a ten-pound baby, which is something I doubt you could have accomplished, Mr. Kedrov, let alone survived.”
“Mrs. Fox, please—”
“Don’t Mrs. Fox please me! I will not calm down and stay quiet. I will not back down when it comes to the health and happiness of my sister. I will cause such a stink as you’ve never seen before in your life.”
“Mrs. Fox, doctors agree that—”
“I don’t give a damn what your doctors say! Do you know that nurse tried to tell my sister that some kind of milk mixed together in a factory—molecule by molecule—God only knows what’s in it—is better for a brand-new baby than the milk from his mother’s own breasts?”
The word breasts stings him.
“I-I—”
“Do you want my sister to have a nervous collapse? Do you?”
“Of course n—”
“I mean, I can just see the headlines now, can’t you? ‘Communist doctors kill American mother and her new baby—’”
“You’re being unreasonable, Mrs. Fox—”
“Unreasonable? Oh, believe me, you haven’t seen unreasonable, Kedrov.”
All the while, Fox stands to the side, arms folded, the way you might watch a boxing match. I don’t spare an instant to glance over and see his expression. I don’t need to do that—I know what he must be thinking. Nobody likes a shrew, do they? A woman who insists on having her way. Oh, a man in my position would be hailed a great leader! Firm, decisive, independent, uncompromising. But a woman who stands up for herself and those she loves—well, that’s plain mean and selfish, isn’t it?
No doubt Fox watches my display of shrewishness with natural distaste. He understands I’m not just acting, after all. I am mad. I don’t like being eavesdropped on, and followed, and told what I should do or say or think, or what’s best for me. To wait my turn and obey, because it’s all for the common good. To have my every infraction reported on—oh, the delicious thrill of reporting on someone!—like we’re children in a kindergarten class, and the damned Politburo is the teacher. My God, it’s cathartic to take it all out on poor Kedrov, who is—after all—merely the representative of that sprawling Soviet state.
And what does Kedrov do? He turns and calls in reinforcements—namely, the cobweb-haired doctor who speaks English. They hold a rapid, hush-voiced conference in Russian. Now I glance to Fox, who’s trying to catch their words. We stand in an unoccupied room—this is not, remember, a maternity ward available to the general public—because my angry noise might disturb the peace, while the doctor and Kedrov stand in the hallway, just outside the door. The walls are the same hopeless gray as elsewhere. The bed’s been stripped, the window’s streaked with metropolitan grime. The air smells faintly of antiseptic. I shrug my shoulders to Fox, as if to say Well?
He shrugs back.
The doctor turns to stare at me through the doorway. His ferocity barrels through the air to land in the middle of my forehead. His body follows in short, quick strides.
“There is excellent clinic near Riga, on Baltic Sea. You leave tomorrow by special train.”
I shoot an astonished glance to Fox, who smiles back.
The doctor frowns down at me. From the look of him, I can’t tell if he’s onto us. Whether this is an act of subversion or plain coincidence. Does it matter? I throw my arms around his neck and kiss his bristly cheek.
“Thank you,” I say in Russian.
And I pray to God to protect him when the truth comes out.