But there have always been rumors that bigger names—industry names, Wall Street names, names any American would know—were behind both.
“Franklin—” I begin, pulse beginning to pound, but he is already silently taking himself away.
Chapter 28
The headline: THE SOVIET DELEGATION RESUMES THEIR GOODWILL TOUR THROUGHOUT THE CITIES OF AMERICA. MR. KRASAVCHENKO AND LIEUTENANT PCHELINTSEV WILL CONTAIN THEIR TRAVELS TO THE EAST COAST, BUT FAMED GIRL SNIPER LYUDMILA PAVLICHENKO HEADS TO DETROIT, CHICAGO, MINNEAPOLIS, SAN FRANCISCO, FRESNO, AND LOS ANGELES. SHE WILL BE ACCOMPANIED ON THE FIRST LEG OF HER JOURNEY BY NONE OTHER THAN THE FIRST LADY . . .
The truth: Thank goodness the presidential limousine had a driver, because if Eleanor Roosevelt proposed to get behind the wheel herself, I’d walk to the Midwest.
“I DO NOT understand,” I complained as the limousine eased down the highway. “Why have me visit the headquarters of the Ford Motor Company if the workers would not even talk to me?”
“Of course they wouldn’t talk to you.” The First Lady chuckled. “Ford pays well, and they have a great deal to lose. They worry it will seem suspect if they show too much interest in a visitor from communist Russia, much less her notions about workers’ rights!” Mrs. Roosevelt was already taking rapid notes from our tour through the aircraft works and our meeting with Mr. Ford. I came to America assuming the President’s wife would be an idle society millionairess, but from what I could see the woman never stopped working. “Your speech went over well, I thought.”
I was less certain, but I was already starting off this tour on a sour note: another of those ominous threats had found its way under my hotel-room door this morning. IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO LEAVE WASHINGTON, YOU MURDERING CUNT. GO HOME NOW OR YOU’LL GO HOME IN A BOX.
Was my enemy stalking me across the country now? Or was it someone inside the delegation? Darkly, I thought of Alexei. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to terrify his own wife, just so she’d feel like fleeing into sheltering arms. If he thought that would work—！
“Five hours to Chicago,” Eleanor said, interrupting my brooding, and I looked through the bulletproof glass at the flaming autumn trees by the roadside. Five hours . . . I wished I’d brought a book, like Kostia. He had a leather-bound copy of some poems by a Mr. Walt Whitman, on loan from the First Lady’s library. “How is it?” I asked, slipping back into Russian.
“Perplexing.” He had my English dictionary on his other knee and kept flipping back and forth between the two. The watery autumn sun slanted through the bulletproof window over his black hair. “What’s pokeweed?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I should get a sample of it for Slavka.” I took a deep breath—no one in the car would understand us; neither the First Lady nor her secretary spoke enough Russian; the driver and guard were separated by a partition; the ever-present Yuri was riding in the security car behind us with Alexei （who had somehow talked himself onto my half of the tour）—but I was still shy to voice the question. “How was your visit to New York?” My partner had been at the Soviet embassy in Washington when we returned from the Roosevelt estate, but I hadn’t dared ask a thing about his family within embassy walls. “Did you . . .”
His smile stayed invisible as he turned a page. “Yes.”
“Lyudmila, do look out the window,” the First Lady called. “This flat land in Michigan, does it remind you of your native steppes?” Kilometer after kilometer, the limousine rolled along as Eleanor pointed out the cities she knew from her coast-to-coast traveling. She was proud of her country, I could hear it in her voice—certainly she thought it superior to anything found in Russia, which made me grin privately. The towns and cities ticked by, Ann Arbor, Albion, Kalamazoo . . . then the vast shores of Lake Michigan like a sea, and my eyes blurred as I remembered the Black Sea bordering Odessa.
“You’re homesick,” Mrs. Roosevelt said, reading my face with a glance. “You’ll be home soon enough, my dear—and if we’re lucky enough to see this war end soon, you’ll be able to return to your studies rather than your platoon.”