Sure, Lena thought. She forgot.
“So there are no papers left?” she asked.
“None. I gave her everything I had. Not that there was much. A notebook, Igor’s diary, and some statements he wanted to write. There were drafts of those statements, all scribbled over and illegible.”
“Who did he intend to write to? Do you remember?”
“To the General Prosecutor’s Office.”
“Did he ever actually write and send them?”
“No.” Nadezhda Ivanovna shook her head. “He didn’t. He wanted to clarify something else before sending anything. And he never got the chance.”
Lena didn’t spend long with Nadezhda Zakharova. She’d promised Michael she’d be back by six. He was excited about visiting the old librarian.
“Someone who’s worked so many years in a book depository has to know a lot,” he’d said. “Not only that, she can tell us about the 1920s and 1930s, about dekulakization, about how the Bolsheviks hunted down pagan shamans. She’s a living witness. I can’t let this opportunity slip by.”
Lena planned to find the building where Volkov once lived tomorrow. She didn’t know the address, but she hoped to find it from memory. Doubtless there were still people there who remembered him. She’d say she was writing an article about the great producer’s youth. But that was tomorrow. Right now she had to catch her breath. She was running on fumes.
She was ten minutes late. Michael and Sasha were sitting in the hotel lobby, and Michael was chatting in English with a beautiful stranger.
The young woman was stunning. Fiery red hair to her waist, slanting green eyes, high cheekbones, and a large, sensual mouth. She was dressed simply and expensively in light gray woolen trousers and a black cashmere sweater.
Approaching, Lena was hesitant.
“Here you are at last!” Michael exclaimed joyously. “I’d like you to meet Natasha.”
The young woman cast an appraising glance at Lena, nodded coldly, and continued telling Michael her recipe for preparing authentic Siberian pelmeni. But Michael interrupted her.
“I’m sorry, Natasha.” He smiled as he rose from his armchair. “It’s time for us to go. We have another meeting planned for today.”
“You have such a full program,” Natasha crooned, and she rose as well. “So we’re agreed, Michael?”
She was a head taller than Lena and looked down at her with an arrogant, incinerating gaze.
“Natasha has antique cookbooks from the last century, with recipes for the local cuisine,” Michael explained guiltily when they’d started for the car with Sasha, who’d been silent the whole time.
“And she invited you to her place? Michael, you were the one who gave me a talking to about morals.” Lena shook her head.
“Child, I’m old enough that I can allow myself certain liberties, especially in a foreign country, especially at the edge of the world. She’s such a beauty, this Siberian Natasha, and the poor thing doesn’t have anyone to speak English to. She’s forgetting the language and is very upset over that.”
“Does she live here?”
“No, she’s from Omsk. She’s visiting her aunt, who lives in a private house from the last century. A real wooden cottage!”
“What was she doing in the hotel?”
“Drinking coffee in the bar.”
“Michael, she’s not a…”
“No,” Michael said firmly. “She’s not a prostitute. Prostitutes look completely different. I should know.”
“You have a lot of experience with them?”
“More than you, at any rate.” Michael chuckled sarcastically.
Right then Sasha chimed in. Not talking, but singing. He started humming a famous song under his breath: “She’s just a working girl…”
“Sasha, what can we do?” Lena asked quietly. “He’s going to go see her.”
“Jealous, are you?” Sasha laughed.
“Don’t mock me. We have to think of something.”
“Serves you right if they kidnap your old American! I warned you.”
“Sasha, cut it out.” Lena was nearly crying. “She clearly is a prostitute and they obviously sent her.”
“What are you saying!” A grimace of comic fright was reflected in the small mirror. “Imagine! I never would have guessed! I’m so naive I thought the beautiful Natasha had sincerely fallen for your old friend. She introduced herself very professionally. I saw it all. High class. Enviably so. The only thing I don’t get is whether your professor really thinks she’s interested in him. He seemed to take it all at face value.”
“He’s just sociable. And he’d love an adventure. And here’s this beauty. Some men, the older they get, the more gullible they let themselves be about the selfless romantic intentions of beautiful young women.”
“I don’t think she’ll disappoint him or take his money,” Sasha noted thoughtfully.
“And you’re going to drive Michael right to them?” Lena grinned nervously.
“Of course! I, Sasha, the evil pimp, am going to drive your friend straight into their clutches.” Sasha pressed his lips resentfully. “Why this mistrust? If you’re so smart, use your brains a little!”
“You want to use her to figure out—”
“We already are.”
“You’re talking about me being an old playboy, aren’t you?” Michael chimed in.
“What else?” Lena chuckled.
Along the way, they stopped at a small market and bought a bouquet of white roses.
The Veterans Home was on the outskirts of Tobolsk. It was a five-story brick building that looked like a hospital. An armed guard met them at the front door.
“Who are you here to see?”
“Valentina Yurievna Gradskaya, room 130.”
“Do you have any identification?”
Lena held out her journalist credentials and Michael’s navy passport.
“What’s this, a foreigner?” The guard raised his eyebrows.
“A professor. From America.”
“Go on in.” The guard nodded and handed back the documents. “Second floor, down the hall on the left.”
There was a thick runner on the hall floor. And pots of flowers on the windowsills. It was clean and oddly quiet. They didn’t meet a soul on their way to room 130.
“Yes yes, come in!” a cheerful old lady’s voice answered their knock.
It was amazing to see a perfectly homey, very cozy room in such a bureaucratic institution: a round table in the middle, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a small antique writing desk with a nice new Unis typewriter and a neat stack of manuscripts, a low ottoman covered with a large knit afghan, an elegant étagère from the turn of the century, and on it, a 1960s-model record player and two rows of records.
Valentina Yurievna had scarcely changed. She had the same snow-white, neatly cut and coifed hair and wore the same silk blouse with the round collar, a small brooch at her neck. She was even thinner, and there was something touchingly childlike about her face. Lena had long noted that the faces of very old people who have lived a long life without growing bitter become almost childlike.
“Looking at you, I’m not at all afraid of growing old,” Michael said in English, and he smiled and held out his hand. “Professor Michael Barron, Columbia University, New York.”
“Very nice to meet you. As I understand it, my colleagues at the library recommended you pay me a visit. You must be a historian?” She had classical English, without the clipped American vowels and deep snarl. “And you must be his interpreter.” She addressed Lena in Russian. “I think you’ll be glad at the chance to rest a little. I know what a hard job simultaneous interpreting is. What’s your name, child?”