Jack took a long, deep breath. He saw Yuri’s silhouette waiting impatiently on the landing and gestured to him to wait. “They might not be of any use, but I found some documents,” he finally said. “Some reports that show the transactions that the supposed traitor made to Hewitt.”
“The transactions they’re accusing my father of making? That was the lie they used to arrest him. They said he was the one who transferred the funds to Hewitt so they could split the profits later. But it’s not true, Jack! I knew my father. As a girl, I saw him go hungry to share his rations with his men. I saw his scars, the ones caused by the explosion when he shielded a teenage soldier. He sweated blood for the revolution. He dreamed of a fair society. A better world. He instilled it in me. My father was . . .” She cried again. “He was a great man, Jack . . . a great man.”
Jack remained silent. He looked at Yuri again, who shook his head in disapproval. “The reports I’m talking about, the documents I had access to, they were official records. From the Vesenkha. But with one important detail: the account number didn’t match the one they gave in the trial.”
“What do you mean?”
“They proved that the issuer wasn’t your father. I don’t know who it was, but the money definitely came from another account.”
“And where are these reports?” Her eyes lit up with hope.
Jack shook his head. “They snatched them from me and burned them.” He didn’t tell her about the copies he’d made. Giving them to her would only make her put herself at risk.
“God!” She let herself fall, despondent.
“Natasha, now that you know that your father’s innocent, there’s nothing to keep you here. I can get you out. Let’s escape while we can!”
“Don’t you understand, Jack? Before I only suspected it, but now there’s proof. We can show them that—”
“We can’t show them anything! I’m telling you they burned those reports! Who do you think is going to believe you?”
“But you could give a statement saying what you’ve just told me.”
“If I did, all I’d do is get us both killed.”
“How can you be such a coward? You can’t hide now!”
He knew that Natasha wasn’t thinking straight, but Jack couldn’t help feeling like he’d been stabbed in the stomach. “Hide? Me? And what’ve you done all this time? Hide because you’re ashamed of me. And hidden me from everyone: your friends, your own father. And you ask me to come out and sacrifice myself to defend the honor of the man to whom you never even admitted we were together? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why?”
Natasha looked at Jack as if she didn’t know him. “I . . . I was never ashamed of you, Jack.”
“That’s what you say now.” His expression was bitter. “Do you know what? There’ve been times when I’ve dreamed I could be happy by your side. All you had to do was trust me, instead of hiding how you felt.”
“It wasn’t like that, Jack . . . You don’t know—”
“Yeah, there’re a lot of things I don’t know.” He remembered the photograph of her and Viktor Smirnov, an engagement ring on her finger.
“Jack!” Yuri broke in. “We have to get out of here! Soldiers are coming!”
“Look. This has all been a big mistake.” Natasha was trembling. “I thought I knew you, but really you were always a stranger.”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been.” Jack’s eyes filled with tears.
“We have to go!” Yuri urged him.
Jack nodded. He was about to go with Yuri, when suddenly he remembered something and stopped. “Hold on. There’s one thing I forgot.” He looked at her. “There was a Soviet engineer who traveled to the United States for training; he was the one who I believe carried out the sabotage. I never managed to find him, but if it helps, his name was Mamayev.”
“Mamayev? Vladimir Mamayev?”
“Yes. You know him?”
Natasha’s head dropped, and it remained there while a gut-wrenching sob shook her body. When she looked up again, her face was twisted with pain. “I had a relationship with that man, and God knows I regret it.” She looked at Jack, seeking his understanding. “Vladimir Mamayev was the name that Viktor Smirnov used so my father wouldn’t recognize him when he called for me. If I didn’t make our relationship—yours and mine—public, it was to protect you.”
“Jack! They’re coming up the stairs!”
“Shit! I’m coming!” Jack yelled, and he turned to Natasha again. “For God’s sake, come with me. There’s a new life waiting for us.”
“I’m sorry, Jack. I can’t.”
“Can’t you see that if you stay here, you’re sealing your fate?”
“No, Jack. It’s you who’s forgetting that, even if fate leads us into the abyss, there’s always hope.”
A gunshot rang out on the landing below them.
“Natasha!”
“Use the roof. Go. Go and save yourself. You may not understand it now, but when you’re far away and can no longer hear my voice, close your eyes and listen to your heart.”
40
Jack drove at full speed. Yuri had gotten out of the car near his uncle Ivan’s house to see if more false passports could be supplied, and they’d agreed to meet again at nightfall at the cabin where the Americans were hiding.
When Jack arrived at the cabin, he parked the vehicle in the granary and knocked as agreed. They were all inside waiting, afraid: Elizabeth, the four members of the Daniels family, Miquel Agramunt, and Joe Brown. Eight in all, including Jack. If Natasha came, there would be nine of them. It was a lot of people. Too many.
He updated them on the situation. They would have to stay hidden in the cabin until Yuri returned with news, and they’d remain there until he could provide passports. They didn’t ask, so Jack didn’t mention how difficult it would be to obtain the documents or what they would cost. They counted their provisions and shared some stale cookies. Four cookies each. They ate with no appetite and sat down to wait, huddled together. Outside, the morning wind roared.
Their Soviet adventure was coming to an end. Jack smiled bitterly. He remembered the old headlines in the New York Times that extolled the virtues of a revolution on the other side of the ocean. The headlines that had captivated Walter and thousands of desperate people like him. The headlines that had ended his life and that of so many others.
He wanted to believe that the hell they were in would end. For a moment, he imagined himself back in America, driving through New York in his new car, wearing a hundred-dollar suit on his way to the latest show. Dancing and smiling again. At least that was something he could aspire to with all the money he had acquired. He felt the rolls of bills that he’d distributed around his coat, some near his heart. As he did so, he felt a void right under it, in the place that Natasha Lobanova was meant to occupy. Natasha, the woman he was in love with.