Jack had no answer. In fact, he hadn’t thought about it. At that moment, all he cared about was Natasha. “We’ll figure something out,” he said, starting the car again.
With Yuri giving directions, they reached Natasha’s neighborhood without being intercepted. On the way, they had agreed that Jack would wait in the vehicle while Yuri tried to find out where she was. The Russian was convinced that if Natasha was still free, she would have hidden in a nearby house. She knew almost every neighbor, and if she asked, they wouldn’t hesitate to help her.
Jack watched Yuri set off into the darkness. When the Russian was out of sight, he kept low while he tried to gather his thoughts, his mind exhausted from so many revelations.
He still didn’t know exactly what role both Sergei and Hewitt had played in all that had happened, but that the true criminal was Viktor Smirnov was an irrefutable truth. His false evidence implicating Hewitt in McMillan’s murder was just one element in an intricate plot in which Walter had been a pawn.
He thought of Natasha and Smirnov. He struggled to imagine what connection there was between them and why Viktor kept a photograph of the two of them in his study. But the fact was that Natasha had warned him against Viktor, and he hadn’t listened.
He wanted to believe that she still had the same feelings for him as he did for her, feelings that tormented him; he wanted to believe that he’d be able to enjoy her skin and her kisses again. He couldn’t understand what kind of spell it was that had made him feel so captivated by a woman who was so different from those he’d always dreamed of. Natasha wasn’t conventionally beautiful; she didn’t enjoy luxury or care about status; she didn’t give a damn about mansions, or appearances, or money. She lived her life with no ambition to climb in society; she seemed happy to do her job with honesty, and the gratitude of her patients was, to her, more important than any fee. And yet, when he was close to her, her smile bewitched him, her conversation drew him in, her sighs touched him, and her jokes disarmed him. He knew that he loved her because her mere presence made him a better person, someone different. And because in her absence, the old Jack Beilis, with all his ambitions and frustrations, always returned.
He prayed that Yuri would find her. However, when the Russian’s solitary silhouette appeared at the end of the street, he felt his stomach turn. Yuri was still climbing into the car when Jack, fearing the worst, asked him what he had found out.
“She’s safe in a neighbor’s apartment.”
Jack sighed with relief.
In the first light of dawn, the two men made their way through some newly built and still unpainted apartment blocks, and up a dark staircase with chipped walls. As they climbed, they crossed paths with a couple abandoning their home, loaded down with bundles. Yuri urged Jack to keep climbing. On the fifth floor, Yuri approached a door on which the lock had been forced, and he knocked. They could hear whispering. Yuri identified himself, and the groan of a heavy piece of furniture told them that the entrance had been cleared. The door squeaked on its hinges and opened very slowly, revealing Natasha’s bloodied face. Jack didn’t wait for an invitation. Anguished, he kissed her, and she responded. When they separated, it became clear that the blood that covered her face and hands wasn’t hers. Going into the house, he saw several families huddled together at the back of the room. Natasha, without a word, quickly guided him to a little kitchen, where Jack was appalled by the scene he encountered. On the wooden table a young girl with a terrible wound in her stomach was in the throes of death, while a woman who might have been her mother was trying to stop the bleeding with some dirty bandages.
“What is this? What’s happening?”
Natasha barely looked at him. She moved the woman aside and tried again to stop the bleeding. The girl, her eyes wide with horror, was shaking and gasping. The floor was a pool of blood. Natasha worked with determination.
“There was an explosion, and these people came to find me. It’s madness, Jack,” she cried. “Everything we’ve fought for seems to be crumbling. For pity’s sake, help me!”
Jack held the girl to keep her still, while Natasha’s hands disappeared into the rush of red liquid coming from the child’s belly. Suddenly, the girl called to her mother and gripped her hand. A second later she stopped moving. For a moment there was absolute silence, until it was interrupted by her mother’s heartrending scream. Natasha kept bandaging the child, who lay pale and motionless. Jack understood that, though aware of the truth of the situation, Natasha was refusing to accept the girl’s death.
“Leave her. She’s gone,” Jack whispered, and gently tried to move her away.
Natasha sobbed. Jack held her in his arms until she slowly separated herself from him. “Let’s go outside,” she suggested.
Jack followed her. They left the apartment and headed into the corridor. Natasha, her eyes red, looked through a little window at the columns of smoke rising up from the Avtozavod.
“My father . . .”
“I know. Yuri told me he’s been arrested. I’m sorry. I . . .”
“He’s dead, Jack. My father’s dead.” She burst into tears, heartbroken.
Jack felt the blood freeze in his veins. Yuri had only mentioned that he’d been imprisoned. He thought she must be mistaken. However, when Natasha gazed up at him, looking more helpless than he’d ever seen her, he understood the truth of her words. “What . . . what happened?”
“A colleague from the hospital told me. He showed up at my house to tell me that he’d killed himself. That my father admitted his involvement and shot himself at the ispravdom. The bastards! They killed him, Jack! They murdered him . . .” The tears stopped her from continuing.
Jack held her again. When her sobbing subsided, he squeezed her hands between his.
“Come with me to America.”
She looked at him, as if unable to comprehend his words. “With you?”
“We’ll escape this place and start a new life. I’ve ordered you a passport. I just need a photo of you, and—”
“And abandon them?” She gestured at the room where she’d tended to the girl. “Leave behind everything that my father fought for?”
“It’s not safe for you here. Yuri thinks they’ll come after you.”
“No, Jack. I’m not going to allow those people to sully my father’s name. I’ll find out what happened. I’ll find the evidence and make the culprits pay for their crimes.”
“But don’t you see? Nothing you do will stop them.”
“I don’t care!” She freed herself from Jack. “Damn them, Jack! Damn them!”