ASAlex lay warm and secure in his own thoughts, the memory of Irkutsk station began to intrude. He had been trying to contact someone, the American ambassador, anyone. He thought of Dimitrov as he had first seen him, his first words.
“This indisposition is an absurd joke.”
“Believe me, it is no joke,” Alex said.
“We will attack and destroy it. I will do exactly as you ask,” Dimitrov had said.
“It is between us. Live or die.”
“Of course.”
“You must pledge me.”
“How does one do that?”
“By your word. There is nothing more important than one’s word.”
Alex opened his eyes. Faces were watching him. Anna Petrovna was dressed in a blue skirt and white turtleneck sweater, her blonde hair hanging loose to the shoulders. The light was failing, but the color of her eyes shone clearly—a royal blue with flashes of yellow. She was sitting on the chair and Zeldovich was sitting at the foot of the bunk. She must have seen Alex’s eyes flutter open. She leaned over and squeezed his hand.
“Alex,” she said.
“How do you feel, Dr. Cousins?” Zeldovich asked.
He lifted his head, felt the pain where the blow had struck, and rubbed his palm on the bump.
“Was this really necessary?”
“I can only offer my apologies. They were overeager.” He stood up. “But then, so were you.”
Alex could feel Anna Petrovna’s eyes on him, but even though he still clutched her hand, he didn’t turn toward her.
“Why am I being detained?” he asked stupidly.
“You know why.”
“Are you planning to keep me bottled up here forever, riding back and forth on the Trans-Siberian Railroad?”
Alex let go of Anna Petrovna’s hand and stood up, feeling dizzy and weak in the knees. Slight concussion, he told himself. Walking shakily, leaning on the walls for support, he went into the washroom and slapped icy water on his face. Dipping a towel in the water, he pressed it against the back of his head. It did not show any blood.
With the towel against his head, he walked back into the compartment.
“Would you like some tea?” Anna Petrovna asked gently.
“The Russian panacea,” he answered, nodding, watching her press the button for the attendant.
In a moment the younger attendant came in. Anna Petrovna ordered three glasses of tea.
When the attendant had gone, Zeldovich said, “Mrs. Valentinov told me that she had explained to you the importance of the information you possess.”
Alex looked quickly at Anna Petrovna, who lowered her eyes in embarrassment. He imagined her suffering, the conflicting emotions churning inside of her. Yet he could sense the bond of alliance between her and Zeldovich. Be cautious, Kuznetsov, he told himself.
“She also has that information,” Alex said, watching Anna Petrovna twist and untwist her fingers. “The General Secretary’s health is stable. The leukemia is in a state of apparent remission. Beyond that, there is no predicting how long he will stay that way.”
He recited the facts mechanically. Hadn’t he given this summary a hundred times?
“Could this condition change suddenly?” Zeldovich asked.
“Yes.”
“Or could the change be gradual?”
“That, too.”
“It is unpredictable?”
“I have been trying to explain that to anybody who would listen. Including Dimitrov.” He had blurted out Dimitrov’s name without thinking.
“Then he also knows?”
“Yes.”
“That he could topple over quickly?”
“Or go gradually.”
“It is positively exasperating,” Zeldovich cried.
“I have tried to explain that to you,” Anna Petrovna pleaded. “You cannot find specifics where there are no specifics.”
Alex looked at Zeldovich, could feel the man’s cruelty.
“You, Zeldovich,” he began, feeling his voice faltering. “A man obviously without the conscience of an ant.”
“Alex, please—” Anna Petrovna said.
“You think his motives are the same as yours?” He was furious with her for unwittingly sharing a moral position with Zeldovich.
“Does it matter?” she asked softly.
“You needn’t be so self-righteous, Dr. Cousins,” Zeldovich sneered. He stuck a thumb in her direction. “She saw me kill a man who would have carried out Dimitrov’s orders without blinking an eye. On the other hand, you preserved a life that will soon be responsible for the death of millions. We should compare acts, not motives, Dr. Cousins.”
So they were putting him on the defensive now, he thought, feeling the guilt begin again.
There was a knock at the door. Tania set down the tea and departed. Zeldovich looked at his watch.
“It is midnight at the dacha,” he said, lifting the tea and blowing on it.
“There is bread and sausages,” Anna Petrovna said, opening a newspaper and spreading it on the table.
Their actions seemed so banal. The sausages tasted delicious, but Alex felt uncomfortable, as if he had no right to this enjoyment. It was not the simple act of eating that disturbed him, but rather the camaraderie that it implied, as if he and Zeldovich were old friends. Did Zeldovich think they had captured him now, that he was part of their joint action?
Wiping his fingers on his pants, Zeldovich pulled out a piece of paper from his coat pocket and handed it over to Alex.
“What does this mean?” he asked.
Alex read Dimitrov’s message, then looked back at Zeldovich. He could not deny his doctor’s instincts. What Zeldovich had only suspected, he felt with certainty. Something was wrong with Dimitrov, or going wrong, despite the casual tone of the request.
“When did this arrive?”
“I picked it up in Irkutsk hours ago.”
“You waited this long to tell me?”
“You were not conscious, remember?” Zeldovich burped and patted his stomach. “Besides, we will not be near communications until we reach Ulan-Ude.” He looked at his watch. “At nearly four in the morning. We will decide what to do later,” he said, standing up and looking toward Anna Petrovna.
Had they communicated something in that exchange of glances? Alex wondered.
“There will be a guard posted at the door,” Zeldovich said, letting himself out.
When he had gone, Anna Petrovna busied herself rewrapping the leftovers in the newspaper. Alex watched her movements, graceful yet efficient. He knew she was acting out of nervousness. The window was a black mirror in which her white sweater and blonde hair appeared almost translucent.
“Ulan-Ude,” he said stupidly. “What an odd name.”
“It is the point where the Trans-Mongolian Railroad intersects. It is the road to Peking.”
She sat down on the chair and faced him. He loved her. He was sure of that, no matter how many doubts about her assailed him.
“It was heralded twenty years ago as the great railway to friendship. The Chinese built a connecting link direct to Peking in the same gauge as ours. Then they tore it up again and rebuilt it in the standard narrower gauge. That is what happened to friendship.”
They were silent for a long time.
“So you have complied with their request that you stay,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“You had no choice.”
“I am aware of that.”
“You would not have stayed if you hadn’t been forced?”
“No.” She looked away. “I saw my sons at the Irkutsk station, and my husband. It was a cruel moment.”
“I’m sure it was.” He waited a moment. “If you had gone, would you have given me a moment’s thought?”
“Of course.”
“With longing?”
She looked uncomfortable. Her eyes would not meet his eyes.
“This sentimentality disturbs you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “It is—” She could not find words.
“Incongruous.”
“Certainly that.” She found her poise again. “Alex, with the world on the brink of destruction, it seems so pointless.”
“And selfish.”
“That, too.”
“I’m sorry, Anna Petrovna,” he said, reaching out, taking both her hands in his. “I love you more than my own life, more than the dead millions. Beside what I feel for you, everything else is trivial.”
“This is absurd,” she said.
He drew her up from the chair, his arms enveloping her, feeling the heat of her skin, the perfume of her body. A shiver ran through her. He felt his loneliness vanish, felt a sense of purpose that had never seemed to exist before.
“I would never have breathed without a thought of you,” he whispered, feeling the joy of her response as she pressed closer to him. He put his hands under her sweater and ran his fingers down her back to her hips. Then he drew her downward to the lower bunk and pressed his lips onto hers, feeling her breath in his mouth.
Is there more than this? he wondered.
“You are everything,” he said.
They sat up. Silently, they removed their clothing and he held her. She began to shiver again and he drew the blankets over them.
“I’m frightened,” she whispered.
He was full to bursting with the joy of her nearness. It was the sweetness of reunion, which he had never experienced before. His emotions were like fireworks in a dark sky.
“Yes,” she said suddenly, a dam within her breaking, the fury of her yearning seeking an escape as she reached out for his hard manhood and plunged it into herself, her body sinking under his. She cried out, and he heard that cry as a confession, her admission that she understood life’s meaning now, beyond the fear of death and nothingness. For an endless moment they were together in their understanding. Then the tidal wave seized them and crashed them to the ocean floor, and they lay in each other’s arms, time suspended. He had been outside of himself, he was certain, for the first time in his life. And not alone. He lay in a haze, hardly knowing whether he was asleep or awake.
The train began to slow down. Artificial light poured through the windows. Then the train halted. He turned his head, saw a tiny building and against it a dark figure huddling in a coat, holding a red railroad flag stiffly in the air. Then the train began to move, the metal shivering forward, beginning again the interminable invasion of the Siberian wasteland.
“Misavaya,” she whispered. “The other side of Lake Baikal. I was here once with my mother, one summertime.”
“It is a lonely place,” he said. “It is hard to believe that people live here.”
“I have never been lonely,” she said.
It was the answer he had expected, but not wished for. She was revealing the essential difference between them, the cultural anomaly. It made his romanticizing seem pathetic.
“Never?” He was immediately sorry he had pressed the point. He half-expected her to say: It was not allowed.
“It is an indulgence,” she said.
“You have never felt cut off from other people?” He slid his hand between her legs, fingers probing gently.
“Only as an individual,” she said, her words precisely spoken. “I never feel cut off from the group.”
“Why must everything be objective?” He removed his hand.
She raised herself on her elbow. “Poor Alex,” she said, rubbing the hairs on his chest.
Her pragmatism was maddening.
“You think I’m a child,” he said.
“In a way. Mostly ignorant.”
“Ignorant of what?”
“Of social values, of the practical considerations necessary in providing for people’s needs. Sooner or later all society must be structured along those lines.”
My God, she is propagandizing me! he thought.
“And Dimitrov’s intentions,” he said, moving his head away. “How do you explain that?”
“An aberration.”
“And Stalin?”
“Another aberration. We self-corrected that.”
“Only after millions died.”
“He was impatient, indulgent of his own sense of power.”
“He was a paranoid, like the bunch of you.”
He was trying to insult her. He found her glibness offensive. Why should I love her? he asked himself. He was certain she felt the same dichotomy.
“Dimitrov is impatient, too,” she said, ignoring his remark. “He is impatient with the historical process. He is trying to force evolution. If he were twenty years younger and healthy, he would be reacting quite differently.”
“Are you really against his intentions?” Alex asked.
She looked up at him. He could see her confusion.
“Not in the abstract,” she answered.
He was coming to the nub of her anxiety now, and knew it.
“A nuclear strike is not an abstraction. Ask the Japanese.”
He understood now how her naiveté had been manipulated, her convictions played upon. At that moment he forgave her the part she played for the KGB. Who is the child here? he asked himself.
“What you fear is the destruction of Siberia,” he said. “Your Siberia. You know it will mean nothing for him to sacrifice it.”
“Siberia must be protected.” Her body began to shiver again.
“It is all that matters to you,” he said. “Beyond everything. Beyond me? Beyond yourself?”
He lowered his body onto hers again, feeling her drawing him into her again.
“We must destroy Dimitrov,” she whispered between short gasping breaths.
“We?”
“I will do anything you ask of me, Alex. I will go wherever you wish me to go. I will never leave your side.”
He felt her body compelling him, pleading with every nerve end. When he looked up again, the train was still moving through the darkness and he could see his reflection in the window.