Was she? This was our second meeting, and the first had not exactly ended well . . . but her smile was just as welcoming as it had been on our introduction this morning. If she was angry with me, she wasn’t showing it.
“You are all invited to supper at the home of Mrs. Haabe, daughter of the former U.S. ambassador to the USSR,” the First Lady continued, encompassing us all in her smile. “I thought perhaps you would like to proceed straight there.”
A bustle of bilingual chatter erupted as details were discussed, and eventually I ducked out onto the nearest balcony for a cigarette, dying for a moment alone as much as the nicotine. Another party full of curious strangers, when the morning had begun with that awkward breakfast and then proceeded through an afternoon blur of meetings, photographs, speeches . . . I fumbled for matches and saw a silhouette of someone else on the balcony, already smoking—not holding a cigarette loosely between fingertips, but cupped in a reversed hand the way snipers smoked, to keep the spark from giving away your position. I lit up, took my first drag, and went to stand with my partner. Kostia was as still as a pillar, eyes going over the city. So many electric lights! Washington looked like a scatter of jewels in the dark. It should have been beautiful, but all I could think was that it ruined my night vision.
“Three,” Kostia said at last.
“I make four,” I answered. “Where are yours?”
He pointed to a rooftop across the way; to an upper window at a diagonal; to a street-corner phone box—all the best vantage points with direct lines of fire to where we stood. “Your fourth?”
I pointed almost directly up, at a sixth-floor window above us. “A good shot could make that, straight down between the window ledges.”
“Crosswinds would make that tricky.”
“I could make that shot. So could you.”
There was so much I wanted to say. There should have been ample chance for us to talk—the hours of preparation in Moscow, the endless plane flights, those few days in Cairo where we’d all been trotted out for the British and American ambassadors and had our first whirlwind introduction to cocktail parties and cameras. But there had been no chance at all for Kostia and me to exchange more than a few hurried words. The first time I saw him, a mere two days after I’d proposed his name as delegation interpreter, the moment had taken me completely by surprise—he’d appeared at the secretariat’s office, sun-darkened and gaunt, an Order of the Red Banner glinting on his chest. If we’d had a chance to fall on each other with a comradely hug and a few quiet moments to reflect on that last day in Sevastopol, all would have been well.
But we’d stood staring at each other, awkwardly—he barely seemed to recognize me in my new medals and skirted uniform; my eye was glued to the cane in his hand, the lines of pain whitening around his mouth—and the moment had passed. And ever since, there always seemed to be someone in the room, keeping us from talking: Krasavchenko rabbiting on about a Party memorandum, the British ambassador in Cairo wondering audibly if Pchelintsev and I were actually soldiers, Alexei glued to my side . . .
And now we finally had a moment alone, and we were pointing out lines of fire to each other for imaginary duels. Snipers, I imagined Lyonya hooting, you’re all just a bucket of laughs! A bolt of agonized longing went through me like a bullet. Without Lyonya, how would I ever remember how to laugh?
“You still have Vartanov’s pipe?” Kostia asked unexpectedly, looking at the cigarette in my hand.
I drew the pipe out of my pocket; a good-luck talisman I still carried everywhere. “I never learned to smoke it properly, no matter how often he tried to show me.” I stroked the amber mouthpiece, feeling my chest tighten. “You didn’t say what happened to him.”
“Shot in the thigh, the day before I was hit and evacuated. Femoral artery. He bled out before we could get an orderly.”
I bowed my head for the old ranger, the way he could move through trees like a ghost. “The others? Burov, Volkonsky—” I listened as Kostia went down the list. I’d hoped maybe some would have been evacuated with him, but my heart sank as Kostia listed name after name. “Of the whole platoon, you’re saying the only ones who lived . . .”