I felt his surprise through the shadows. Him behind a rocky slope somewhere to the southwest of me; me behind my tree stump: this was another waiting game, like the one I’d played not even an hour ago with the marksman in his nest and me pinned behind a boulder. Only the marksman could have waited forever. I hadn’t known his name, but I’d known he’d had a sniper’s patience. I’d had to play my trick with the matches to change the game, change the ground, change the beat.
I no longer had any tricks up my sleeve, just a pistol and a few remaining shots. But this was an enemy I knew, right down to his bones.
“You’ll never get away with killing me,” I called into the dark. “Everyone in the delegation knows how I despise you. They’ll never believe you had nothing to do with my death.”
“I’m going to be the hero of the night,” he called back. “Once I tell them where to find the man who tried to kill the president—”
“You’re still just the messenger. They’ll know I’m the one who took care of him. They’ll fete me in Red Square with a citywide parade and make me posthumous Hero of the Soviet Union. You’ll be playing second best even at my funeral.”
“You’re my wife.” His voice rose, despite himself. I was getting to him. “That famous name you’re boasting of, that’s my name.”
“Not anymore.” I flexed my right hand, shaking out the tremors. “You dreamed of making your name famous, Alexei? You dreamed it would be known from Moscow to Vladivostok? You dreamed of Lieutenant Pavlichenko, Hero of the Soviet Union? Well, it’s all coming true. But for me, not you.” I hissed the words through the dark between us like a viper, sinking each one deep. He’d never listened when I said no, never heard when I begged please, but he’d hear this. Maybe it was the only thing he was capable of hearing: that his grand dreams had blossomed for someone else. “I didn’t even want fame. All I wanted was to defend my home. I didn’t want fame, but I still got it—not you. You’re still just what you’ve always been: a dog eating scraps from someone else’s table. You don’t have a drop of real heroism in you. All you’ve ever been is a collection of pieces scavenged from someone else—mostly me.”
I heard him breathing faster, felt the pulse of his anger rising. If you were clever, Alexei, you’d abandon this madness and go back to the hotel, I thought. Leave me out here waiting; concoct a story to tell the delegation and get in front of whatever I might say. But he wasn’t going to do that. Whatever had pitched him over that final edge and made him want me dead—the sight of me in Kostia’s arms, maybe, or the sight of my name in one too many newspaper headlines—he wasn’t going to let me leave Washington alive. He’d made his choice, and he was in it till the end.
“How does it feel?” I taunted, voice rising. “Knowing that the Pavlichenko recorded in the history books won’t be you? It’ll be your child bride instead. It’ll be me.”
The marksman wouldn’t have broken at a schoolyard taunt. My husband did. I heard Alexei come out from behind the rocky slope to close the distance, saw his arm level, his teeth bared in a snarl of utter hatred—and I was erupting to my feet, bracing every exhausted muscle in my body behind the pistol as I fired once, twice, three times.
It happened in the space of a heartbeat, in the blink of a sniper’s eye, in the flash of light off a diamond. He swayed—my husband, my first fear, my last shard of an outgrown life—and then he fell.
Alexei was dead.
I SUMMONED THE invisible steel, force, and spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt as I came into the hotel court at nearly two in the morning: my feet bloody, my face bruised and filthy, my sodden lynx furs wrapped over a destroyed satin gown. As my furious minder and half the delegation staff flooded toward me in a storm of Moscow suits and questions, I drew myself up as if I were six feet tall, pulled my coat collar around me like I’d seen Eleanor settle her famous fox stole, and put my hand out with all the absolute authority of the First Lady of the United States.