You will aid us, I thought. You will aid us in this fight, or I will die trying.
I still stumbled in places. I still faltered. But it was better than the speech I’d given in Sevastopol, better than the statements I’d given for the Washington press conferences, and the scream of the crowd when I finished nearly blew my shell-damaged ears in.
Maybe they didn’t think I was a murdering Red slut after all . . .
I stood on the stage with applause raining down on me like mortars, hearing thousands of Americans call my name, and I wondered for the first time if Alexei had been right. If this flash of fame I’d somehow accrued was something more than a matchstick’s brief transitory flare.
Chapter 27
The headline: MAYOR FIORELLO LA GUARDIA OF NEW YORK CITY PRESENTED THE SOVIET DELEGATION WITH A MEDALLION STRUCK IN HONOR OF ALL WHO STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM, AND “BROAD IS MY NATIVE LAND” WAS SUNG BY PAUL ROBESON, WHOSE BASS IS AS DARK AND SHINING AS HIS VISAGE. BOTH TRIBUTES WERE ACCEPTED BY CHARMING GIRL SNIPER LYUDMILA PAVLICHENKO, WHOSE SPEECH WAS RECEIVED WITH ENTHUSIASM BY THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK CITY. MRS. PAVLICHENKO PROCEEDS ON TO BALTIMORE . . .
The truth: When women become famous, it brings strange men out of the woodwork.
“YOUR ADDRESS WAS brilliant, Mrs. Pavlichenko, utterly brilliant!”
“Thank you, Mr. Jonson.” I tried to remove my fingers from the man in front of me, but he seemed determined to wring them off my hand, eyes glowing with fervor over his starched collar and pin-striped suit.
“Quite as brilliant as the speech you gave in New York.”
“Mr. Jonson, it was the same speech—”
“I first heard you in New York, and I followed to Baltimore just to hear you speak again!”
“How . . . dedicated!” My welcoming smile was slipping; I hitched it back in place as Kostia translated. Usually I tried to speak English when conversing at these receptions and parties, disliking the embassy’s instructions about using the interpreter for all questions, but Mr. William Patrick Jonson—American millionaire, dedicated eccentric, owner of a metallurgical company, and apparently smitten with the girl sniper—had me diving to take refuge behind the dual shields of my native language and Kostia. Not that Kostia was much help; he was so entertained by my new suitor he was actually almost smiling. “I will hand you your molars on a wreath if you keep smirking,” I warned him in Russian, still beaming at Mr. Jonson.
“Mr. Jonson wishes to know if you will visit his home on the outskirts of New York,” Kostia said, straight-faced. “He has a fine collection of artwork by Russian avant-garde artists from the beginning of the twentieth century.”
“Tell him he can jump into Baltimore Harbor.”
“Mrs. Pavlichenko prefers the work of the Peredvizhniki artists,” Kostia translated, “particularly Vasily Vereshchagin.”
“I will acquire some Vereshchagin, Miss Pavlichenko, if only you will agree to visit.” The American millionaire was still chafing my hand as though trying to warm it back to life from frostbite. “And then you can meet my mother—”
For the love of Lenin. “Mr. Jonson, I’m afraid I am leaving very soon. The Soviet delegation has been invited to spend a week at the President’s family estate.”
“She would love to meet your mother when she returns,” Kostia translated. He was quivering with laughter by the time I managed to scrape free.
“Number 310 on my tally is going to be you,” I promised Kostia in a whisper as we moved off through the thronged Baltimore reception room. “Because I’m going to shoot you in the back as soon as we are sent to Stalingrad after coming home from this circus.”
“Lady Midnight, I’m always the one at your back.”