In the face of her delight, I worked to keep the disappointment off my face. “How long is this visit extending, ma’am?”
“That will be decided later. The immediate plan is to send you all to New York City tomorrow morning, on the Washington–New York express.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve requested that you especially, Lyudmila, get the chance to do more speaking. I think the American people will respond to a woman—and not merely to any woman, to you.”
“I thought you were worried they would not approve of me,” I couldn’t help saying.
She smiled. “I think you have the power to change their minds.”
“What’s she saying?” Alexei asked in Russian. I ignored him, trying to match Mrs. Roosevelt’s evident pleasure as my heart sank into my knees. I wasn’t going home yet, after all.
POCKET SQUARE’S POCKET-SQUARE handkerchief was red today instead of blue, and his face was even redder. “Explain yourself,” he hissed at the marksman without so much as a greeting. They’d met overlooking the Washington Monument today, clouds racing past the tip of the great stone spire, standing well out of earshot of the crowding tourists. “The conference done and not a shot fired! Did you lose your nerve or—”
“The President didn’t attend,” the marksman said calmly, tipping his hat to a pretty young mother steering her baby carriage toward the monument. “A last-minute schedule change.” A great pity, because everything had been going like clockwork: the marksman poised to drift away from the cadre of photographers, disappear into the gardens, and begin setting up his long shot that would take Roosevelt between the eyes the moment the man appeared on the portico. That booby of a Russian doctor had been primed to lead his wife off to the Rose Garden so she would be suspiciously absent from the festivities once the shot was fired. “I’ll lurk along behind, get some real good photographs of you two there for tomorrow’s write-up,” the marksman had promised him at the hotel bar; the doctor, full of vodka by that point, was so keen to see his own face in the paper alongside his wife’s, he hadn’t even needed the incentive of a folded bill or two. No notion he was being set up: the husbandly accomplice helping his assassin wife murder the president. Theirs would have made a pretty pair of mug shots in the papers, the marksman thought wistfully.
Ah, well.
“I warned you that even the best plans can go awry,” he told Pocket Square, who was still apoplectic. “Fortunately the Soviet tour in the United States has been extended, so we’ll have plenty more chances while Pavlichenko’s still here to take the fall. She’s gone to New York; I’ll need a copy of the new itinerary.”
The marksman paused, frowning. The cover identity of a journalist had been a good one so far, but the First Lady seemed to have taken a liking to Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and if they appeared at events together on the road, then Eleanor Roosevelt would insist on women journalists. Another of the horsey bitch’s peccadilloes, something about getting more females onto newspaper staffs. Like the world needed more yattering cows. “I may need a new cover,” the marksman said, more to himself than to Pocket Square, and walked away from the stone needle of the Washington Monument without a goodbye. Lady Death was in New York City; there was plenty of time to plan.
“I WISH WE were in Stalingrad.”
I spoke into the silence of the car, but even so, I wasn’t sure Kostia could hear me over the wail of sirens, the rumble of motorbike engines from the motorcade that enclosed the Cadillac. Two vehicles had greeted our delegation at the train station in New York; Krasavchenko, Pchelintsev, and their minders had been shuttled through a tunnel of flashing cameras and shouting journalists to the first car, and I’d dived into the second with my partner as Yuri rode with the driver on the other side of the partition.
“I hear the Germans are storming for the Volga,” I continued. “Pushing into the outskirts of Stalingrad.” The Red Army soldiers would be falling back from street to street, skirmishing from rooftops and bombed-out buildings—perfect conditions for snipers. I could so clearly envision Kostia and me there, camouflaged against the rubble of shattered pipes and demolished walls, chewing dry tea and sugar, our rifle barrels twin eyes narrowed on the enemy.