We traded quick smiles. We weren’t uncomfortable with each other, but we were aware; we were making conversation rather than slipping in and out of comfortable silence, and I heard myself saying brightly, “Are you coming to Hyde Park? If Alexei inveigled his way along, surely you can.”
“Alexei’s coming?” Hyde Park was where the Roosevelt country estate was located on the Hudson River; the First Lady had invited the Soviet delegation, the students from Britain, several from Holland and China . . . “I thought Krasavchenko agreed to leave him behind.”
“He claims he needs to tend Pchelintsev’s recent illness.”
“Pchelintsev has hay fever.”
“That’s what I said, but did anyone listen to me?”
Alexei was right there with the rest of the delegation, squeezing himself up between Kostia and me when we all arrived at Hyde Park. I saw his eyes go narrow and acquisitive at the sight of the gracious colonial house with its pillars and porticoes, its surrounding acres of green lawn and waving trees. “Never mind having a dacha someday,” he breathed, putting a caressing hand at the small of my back as the party crowded toward the entrance hall. “We’ll have something like this. Spacious, well-appointed, near the woods for a little hunting . . . what do you think, kroshka?”
I moved away from his hand without saying anything, because words did no good. Clearly his plan was to wear me down with sheer persistence until I got so tired of refusing that I gave in. Insults didn’t put him off; silence didn’t put him off—and maybe he’d gotten a warning from the delegation not to make any embarrassing public fuss around me, but that left plenty of time away from cameras and American eyes to continue his campaign. That’s my wife, he was always saying casually to the other delegation members. We’ve been separated, but she was very young . . . you know how fickle young girls can be, eh? We get on so well now . . .
Avoid him, I thought, looking around the vast green spread of the Roosevelt estate, the guest quarters where Yuri and the other minders were already tramping with the luggage. At least there’s plenty of room here to do it.
The fresh country air should have been a restorative after the choking noise and smoke of New York and Baltimore, but somehow my dreams that first night were full of cobwebs and nightmares. Lyonya died in my arms, over and over, and when I twisted out of that dream, I fell into another where a shadowy figure stalked me through Washington’s empty streets, snarling Commie slut . . . Red bitch . . . I woke up gasping, on the whisper of You’ll die here.
“I am not going to die here,” I said aloud into my shadowed bedroom. No crackpot could get his scribbled notes or his murderous intentions anywhere near this remote presidential hideaway surrounded by Secret Service and forest. But I knew I wouldn’t sleep another wink, so as soon as the dawn broke, I tugged a flowered day dress over my head and slipped out of the house for a walk—only to run right into the cement pillar of Yuri.
“Really?” I exploded. “We’re on the presidential retreat. Everything is entirely locked down—there is no way I could meet any undesirables on these grounds, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Can’t you just sleep in for once and let me go on a walk alone?”
“That would countermand my directive, Comrade Pavlichenko.”
Well, it had been worth a try. “Would you mind staying a bit back, then?” I sighed, and headed toward the gardens, away from the bustle of breakfast preparation I could already see at the main house as servants streamed in and out.
The surrounding park was laced with paths, beds of autumn flowers, gazebos for dallying, all standing sunlit and peaceful in the morning light against the surrounding darkness of the woods. I took a deep lungful of air, not realizing until now how badly I’d missed quiet—silence—space to breathe. Snipers are loners, after all, and between Yuri, the ever-present journalists, and my speaking schedule, I hadn’t had much time to myself. My night terrors were melting away fast as I wandered toward the water; one bank was choked with reeds, while the other sported a bathing shed, a row of small boats, a small dock. At the end of the dock, looking out at the water—