Soon after we cross the border into Latvia, the train staggers to a stop and the border guards come aboard to check our passports. Kedrov rises and speaks with them, shows them some papers from his briefcase. There are two guards—both raise their eyebrows and regard us curiously. Iris is awake, holding the baby. She has that wan, innocent, maternal look about her. Her eyes are huge and wet. Her bones are tiny and delicate. The guards nod and duck out of the compartment—Kedrov straightens his jacket and sits down again, pleased with himself. A half hour later, the train lurches back into motion.
I glance at Iris; she makes a slight nod.
I stretch my arms luxuriously. “What time is it? I wouldn’t mind a little tea.”
Kedrov looks up from his newspaper. “Tea? Of course.”
Fox showed me how to do it. He made me practice with sugar, over and over, until I had the timing worked out exactly right—the misdirection, the infinitesimal flick of the wrist, the expressionless face, the bright chatter that continues without a break.
Kedrov never suspects a thing. He drinks his tea and falls asleep right on schedule, as we pull into the station at Ogre, the train’s last stop before Riga.
We leave our suitcases on the luggage racks above our heads. I sling my pocketbook over my elbow and carry my nephew and the soft valise with Gregory’s things inside it; Iris takes my arm and leans on it heavily as we descend the steps to the platform. I make the signal for a cigarette to the conductor, who nods and promptly forgets us.
The sun still shines high and white above the horizon, even though it’s well past seven o’clock. Iris and I walk down the platform steps so nobody can see us from the station house, which is on the other side of the tracks. When the train moves off, we cross the tracks and sit in the waiting room for an hour or two.
The building is small but not unpleasant. By the look of the red bricks and creamy masonry, it was built around the turn of the century with some aspirations to grandeur. High ceilings and pretty plasterwork, that kind of thing. I smoke a couple of cigarettes and try not to check my watch. Iris feeds the baby. She had a couple of biscuits with her tea but nothing else since her meager lunch, and her movements seem sluggish, her eyes unfocused. I take Gregory and tell her to lie on the bench and rest.
I pace the width of the waiting room, over and over, because every time I stop his eyes fly open. What do I know about babies? At one point I realize he needs a change of diaper. I rummage in the valise until I find the clean cloth and the safety pins and whatnot. I guess I manage all right. I didn’t know what to do with the dirty diaper—I can’t just put it back in the valise like that—so I head for the bin to throw it away.
Iris’s eyes fly open. “What are you doing?” she calls out.
“Throwing away the diaper.”
“No, bring it back.”
She sits up and wads the soiled cloth carefully into a ball, which she puts in a separate pocket. I walk with her over to the ladies’ room so we can wash our hands. The journey nearly finishes her entirely. We return to the benches. She curls up and closes her eyes. I pace the floor with Gregory and smell the brown hay smell of the fields outside, the reek of coal smoke and of steam. The station’s empty, except for a ticket clerk who reads some book behind his glass window. Above his head, the station clock ticks and tocks.
At a quarter past nine, I hear the distant rumble of a car engine, more like a vibration in the air than an actual noise. I pause in my pacing, but miraculously Gregory’s little eyes stay shut. The rumble becomes louder until it’s a recognizable sound. I return to Iris and shake her gently. She looks up at me, uncomprehending. “Ruth? Are we late for the party?”
She seems flushed. I touch her forehead, but I can’t tell if it’s warm or not. My own fingers are so chilly, because the weather in Latvia—in midsummer—isn’t what you’d call tropical. Already a cool, dry evening breeze whisks through the open window, even though the sun still burns bright in the western sky.
“Not yet, pumpkin,” I tell her. “Come with me.”
I help her up with one arm, while my other arm holds Gregory. She leans heavily on me as we walk to the door. The ticket clerk glances up, watches us for a second or two, then returns to his book. We pass through the doorway and pause on the steps. The station seems to be on the outskirts of town, and the nearby streets are quiet, except for a large black car creeping down the road that fronts the station. I stand where I am, supporting Iris with my arm. The sunlight glints off the car’s windows. It looks just like the vehicles we saw speeding through the Moscow streets, big sleek black machines that Fox told me—under his breath—belonged to the KGB.
The car slows and stops. My heart might pound right out of my chest. Iris’s hand grips my wrist. Every instinct screams at me to duck back inside, into the shadows of the waiting room, but I force myself to remain just outside the entrance, under the shallow portico—visible if you’re looking for me.
An eternity passes before the driver’s door opens and a man steps out. He wears a dark suit and a fedora atop his dark hair. He closes the door and turns to face us. His big shoulders strain the jacket of his suit, the sleeves of which stop a couple of inches above each wrist.
My knees start to buckle. I have to lock them to stay upright, and even then I wobble. But the man’s already started forward from the car. He climbs the steps two at a time. I catch the flash of his pale eyes before I hand Iris off to him. He guides her carefully down the steps to the waiting car. I follow them, cradling Gregory in both arms.
“It’s going to be all right,” I tell my nephew. “We’re going to be just fine.”
Lyudmila
July 1952
Moscow
When the secure telephone rings in Lyudmila’s basement operations room, the caller is not the person Lyudmila expects.
“It’s your daughter, Comrade Ivanova,” says Anna Dubrovskaya, a little warily.
“My daughter! She’s supposed to be in school!” The astonished words pop out before Lyudmila can stop them, and this failure of self-control shocks her further. She takes a deep breath and says, more calmly, “Connect her, please.”
“Mama?” comes Marina’s voice.
“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, Marina. Where are you?”
“I’m at Kip Dubinin’s apartment,” she says.
Lyudmila’s so stunned, she thinks at first that she didn’t hear Marina correctly. She thinks maybe she’s heard certain words echoing from her own head, because she’s so deeply immersed in this operation that she can’t tell the difference between what’s outside her head and what’s inside. “What did you say?” she gasps.
“Kip Dubinin. Mama, you have to help me. He and his brother never came to school today, and somebody said he saw them drive by in some kind of KGB car early this morning—”
“Who said that?”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Yes, it does!” Lyudmila thunders.
“Well, I won’t tell you!” Marina says, in her calm, defiant voice that reminds Lyudmila of Dmitri.
Lyudmila grinds her teeth together. It’s a bad habit and she’ll reprimand herself later, when she’s finished with this daughter of hers—when she’s cooled her mind and encircled these strange, impossible pieces of information and brought them under control. “Why,” she says coldly, “are you at the Dubinins’ apartment when you are supposed to be at school?”
“I told you. Something’s happened to them. I just had a feeling in my gut, Mama, when Nik—when the person told me that he was sure he saw them in the back seat of a KGB car this morning, on the way to school. And then Kip never came to class, and he never came to lunch, and Oleg in second form said that Jack never came to class either. So after lunch I left—”