The congregants, with few exceptions, were elderly, though a few held young children in their arms. She swept her gaze across the old women, bent and haggard in their fringed scarves, and the old men, many of whom resembled her father before he shaved his beard upon arriving in America.
The deep voices of a male choir rumbled, as if from the very belly of the earth, and the service began. The first to arrive were the regular priests, deacons, if her memory served correctly. All wore brocade gold silk that fell to the floor and covered their feet, and capes that rose high behind their necks, a strange display of opulence in a wretched war-strained city, but she supposed church vestments were a holdover from tsarist times. Carrying tall, narrow tapers in pairs, tied together at the top, they chanted as they entered. The patriarch followed in white brocade silk and a high, bulbous miter. All the men had full beards, though the patriarch’s was longer and whiter than the others, and gave him an unmistakable Father Christmas look. He swung his silver censer, to chase away evil spirits, she supposed, and even from a distance, she could smell the fragrant incense.
She could make no sense of what they chanted in recitation and response, then remembered it was Church Slavonic, not meant to be understood. Still, it was pleasing to hear, a deeply soothing, otherworldly sound.
But their beards, the rich bass of their choir, and the complete absence of women in the celebration reminded her how very male the orthodox church was. God was male, his earthly representatives and celebrants were male, and women were there to simply worship.
Her thoughts returned to Alexia, who stood next to her, in uniform but inconspicuous in the tightly packed crowd. What did she think? What did it mean that she’d been raised by a priest? Was that any different from being raised by the pious and fanatical Fyodor Kaminsky?
One of the priests appeared bearing a tome with an ornate jewel-encrusted cover. He held it up before the patriarch, who kissed it, then opened it to the first page. The choir stopped for a moment, allowing the patriarch to recite the text, then responded in intervals. The story of the nativity, she guessed.
Losing interest in the recitation, she studied the cathedral interior again, the holy opulence that meant to lift the spirits of the congregation into the ethereal. At the same time she felt the pressure of Alexia’s shoulder against her in the crowd and smiled inwardly. The Divine Spirit being summoned by the celebrants would surely disapprove of the forbidden animal pleasure that lifted her heart just then.
She was startled by hot breath on her ear as Alexia leaned near and whispered, “It’s time to go.” Obediently she followed Alexia’s lead as they wormed their way back through the crowd. At the entrance, which was as packed full as the rest of the church, they fastened their coats and drew on scarfs and hats.
Prying open the huge church doors, they stepped out into the icy wind.
The embassy car was not in sight, so they huddled by the church door exhaling columns of steam and clapping their upper arms for warmth.
“What did you think of our orthodox ceremony?” Alexia asked.
“Pure theater, of course, but I have to admit, the child in me loved it. I remembered Easter at the great Church of the Resurrection in St. Petersburg with my parents and my little brother.”
“You don’t believe in the Divine Father?”
“In fact, I get along just fine with no father at all, divine or earthly. Still, I’m sentimental about big holidays.”
“It’s the same for me. I don’t remember my father, and the local priest was the only male presence for me. I loved him, but I began to doubt when I went to school, and by the time I joined the Komsomol, I rejected faith completely. Only the moral part of it remained, and that’s what has held me back from fighting. At least so far.”
“You sound like you’re having doubts about that, too.”
“Yes. I think faith, even that tiny remainder, has caused me to stay a child, if not a coward, when Russia really needs me to be an adult, at the front.”
Just then, the embassy car came into view, and they waved it over. Once they were seated in the warm interior, Mia continued. “Does that mean you’re going into active service?”
“I think so. I have to apply for training. My commandant won’t like it, but he won’t refuse.”
“What do you want to train for?”
“Apparently, I’m a good shot, so I’ll go where I can do the most good. I want to be a rifleman. A sniper.”
In the late afternoon, still warmed by the memory of the morning in church, Mia crunched across the snow toward the Grand Kremlin Palace. Taciturn as always, Hopkins strode alongside her. Kiril and Alexia marched a few steps behind them, still doing their job.
“Ironic, isn’t it, that Stalin the atheist has invited us to dinner on Christmas Day? Do you suppose he harbors a tiny bit of sentimentality?”
Hopkins shook his head. “I doubt it. The communists got rid of all the church ‘fathers,’ but they replaced them with the likes of Stalin and Molotov. Same obedience, just no ceremony.”
She gazed up at the imposing façade of the Grand Palace, a vast block of a building with three ranks of windows, though she knew from reading that the upper floor had a double row of windows and that the palace had only two floors. The upper one held the vast spaces of the five great halls, named after the Russian saints: George, Vladimir, Alexander, Andrew, and Catherine.
The Dining Hall of Catherine the Great where they ended up dazzled with gold. She stared, stupefied, at the ceiling. Apparently noticing her awe, Hopkins leaned toward her and whispered, “It was Catherine the Great’s throne room.”
The hall had a vaulted ceiling, like the church she’d just been in, though this one was supported by massive pylons with bronze capitals and malachite mosaics, and the carved doors held an elaborate coat of arms. The chandelier hanging over the center of the room astonished her, given the German bombing. But there it was, in all its tsarist splendor.
Dinner was served in a semicircular reception hall adjacent to the Great Hall, but it, too, was staggeringly ornate, with floral paintings and walls upholstered in gold-green brocade, matching that of the chairs.
The table was set for eight, though the guests milled about until Stalin himself arrived and all were seated. As the only woman at the table, Mia was thoroughly intimidated and was glad that her function would largely be as Hopkins’s interpreter. Stalin’s other guests were former foreign minister Litvinov, acting as interpreter, then Molotov, Beria, Voroshilov, armaments minister Ustinov still looking splendid in his uniform, and finally Nicolai Vlasik, head of the Kremlin Guard.
The right side of the table held Harriman, Hopkins, herself, and Ustinov’s placid assistant, Leonid Nazarov.
The food offered was plentiful and varied: wild birds, fish dishes, borscht, potato dumplings, pirozhki, red and black caviar. Dinner began, as always, with a series of vodka toasts.
To her surprise, the conversation touched only very lightly, almost flippantly, on the issues addressed at Tehran and soon migrated to generalities. Stalin continued toasting and urging his guests to empty their entire glasses. Mia realized it was his way of loosening men’s tongues and getting his opponents to reveal themselves.
She was confident that such a primitive ruse could not trap Hopkins. He had nothing to hide, was at the core guileless, and had no agenda other than to keep Stalin happy without being servile to him. Moreover, alcohol appeared to make him even more amiable than sobriety.