Black Wolf, page 14
He arched one eyebrow as he talked, giving her a playful smile.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked.
“Close to where we are going today.” A truck had pulled up behind them, and he waved for it to pass. The driver tapped his horn in exuberant appreciation as it pulled ahead. “I was raised in a village called Dubrova. Very small. Very old-fashioned. Farming and fishing and fighting and not much else.”
“Does your family still live there?”
“I was raised by my grandparents. My mother died when I was very young.”
“And your father?”
There was a slight tensing of his jaw. “My father was…my father was out of my picture.” He turned to her. “Is that how you say it?”
The earnestness of his question made her smile. “Out of the picture.”
He nodded and quietly repeated the correction. “But I have an uncle who looks after me, so I am not without family. And you,” he asked, “where in America did you grow up?”
“Summers with my mother in Texas, the rest of the year with my father in Wisconsin.”
He gave her a sympathetic look. “It sounds…complicated.”
They were just then passing open fields thick with ripening summer grain and dense groves of pine trees. The shining plots smelled of rich earth, malt, and molasses. Mel was instantly flooded with memories of the fall harvests around her father’s farm. She filled her lungs with air and smiled. “We made it work. I was happy to spend most of my time with my father.”
“He is also quiet, like you?” Alexi teased.
It had been months since she’d spoken to her father, and she missed his calm and reserved manner. “Very much so.”
Soon, groupings of small houses—summer dachas and year-round dwellings built some distance away from the road—began to appear less frequently. Every five miles or so brightly painted bus stops sheltered lone travelers, most elderly.
They had been driving for almost an hour when he turned off onto a wide dirt path. A few minutes later, he parked in front of a small wooden house painted bright yellow with green trim. A small table and two chairs stood under a rustic awning out front. Alexi quickly got out and opened the door for her. He pointed for Mel to be seated in one of the chairs as an ancient woman came out of the house, her arms outstretched toward Alexi. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, wearing a worn housedress, a colorful head scarf, and woolen slippers.
She screeched happily at him in Russian, her lips rubbery over her prominent, toothless gums, and pulled him down so she could kiss him three times noisily on both cheeks. They spoke for a few minutes and she disappeared back inside the house.
Alexi took a seat in the other chair, rubbing his cheeks.
“Is that your grandmother?” Mel asked, charmed by the rustic setting. Alexi was right; this felt like the true Byelorussia.
“She is everyone’s babushka,” he answered. “Dubrova is close by. But my own grandparents are now gone.”
They sat in the shade, quietly watching bees hover over a small garden patch of flowers, and the graceful, halting movements of downy white hens pecking in the dirt of the yard. Soon the woman returned, carrying two glass canning jars filled with a foamy brown liquid. She set the jars on the table and hovered nearby, smiling and murmuring softly in Russian.
To Mel, the beverage looked like a dark ale. But when she tasted it, it was bitter with a musky aftertaste. “Is it beer?” she asked.
“It’s kvass,” he said. “Made from rye. It’s a Byelorussian specialty. Everyone drinks it in the summertime. Even the children.”
The woman stroked Mel’s cheek with one arthritic hand and said something to Alexi that made him color slightly and shake his head. She soon shuffled back inside, waving and throwing them kisses.
Mel took a few more courtesy sips of her drink while mapping her surroundings. The house had no indoor plumbing, as evidenced by the decorative outhouse and a stone well where water would be drawn up by a bucket. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a watercolor scene painted a hundred years ago. Or even two hundred. She could hear the old woman singing a folk song inside the house, her voice thin and reedy.
She began to feel drowsy from the summer heat and the cooing of pigeons in the eaves. A small, cautionary voice suggested that perhaps the setting was a bit too pastoral. That maybe the house and the old lady were part of a set, designed to put her off her guard. Mel realized that her expectation had been a park, or a national monument, more of a tourist destination. Her training had insisted that she not take anything, or anyone, in the Soviet Union at face value. William seemed to trust Alexi, but Mel wasn’t sure she completely trusted William yet.
She took another drink, observing Alexi under her lashes, curious about his role for the State. “How long have you been a policeman?” she asked.
“Six years,” Alexi answered.
“And how do you know William?”
He smiled. “Everyone in Minsk knows Dr. Cutler. He knows my uncle and through him I met William.”
She didn’t want to press too hard, too soon. A flash of bright colors caught her eye, a green-and-red scarf hanging on a clothesline. The vibrant green made her think of Katya again.
“What do the police think of the murdered and missing women in Minsk?” she asked.
His smile faded and he looked away. “I have, of course, heard of this. But it’s not in my…” He struggled for a moment to find the right word.
“Jurisdiction,” she suggested.
“Yes, jurisdiction.” He leaned forward, clasping his hands together over the table. “I have lost sleep over these women. For several years now.”
He held her gaze as though willing her to see how important these crimes were to him. She was relieved to know that the murdered women hadn’t gone unnoticed after all.
“Do you know how many Russian jokes begin with ‘I was beating my wife the other day…’?” Alexi continued, growing angry. “A husband, according to Soviet law, cannot rape his wife. Any abuse that does not include broken bones falls under the legal category of ‘light injury.’ Mother Russia is not a gentle place for women.”
He sounded both bitter and exasperated, and she was surprised, and moved, by the passion in his voice. Aware of the gravity in his expression, he sat back and ran a hand across his forehead. Alexi was treading on dangerous territory for a Soviet militsiya. Officially, there was no violent crime in the Workers’ Paradise. But it was as though he needed to unburden himself of these rebellious thoughts.
“A woman told me about the Svisloch Strangler,” she prompted.
He looked at her steadily, his expression serious. “For many women, it’s less frightening to think that only one man is responsible. Not as frightening as the truth: that there are many men in Minsk capable of such violence.”
He was quiet for a moment, staring out at the garden, his face in profile. His shirt was open at the neck, and she watched the pulse at the base of his throat beating strongly. When he turned to her again, he was smiling. Mel felt the breath catch in her throat, thrilled at the effect his direct gaze triggered in her. But he’d also seemingly turned off his anger like an electric switch. “I should not sour the day by such talk. Time to leave.”
Alexi stood and called out a goodbye. He walked with Mel back to the car, humming the folk song under his breath.
He drove back to the main road and headed east again, farther away from Minsk. And for the next fifteen minutes they sat without speaking, Mel still pondering Alexi’s unpredictable emotions.
She noticed that the pine trees had begun to grow more closely together and were very tall. At an unmarked dirt road, Alexi turned and drove north for a few miles until the road ended at a large, flat meadow. Surrounding the meadow, like a dense curtain, was forest. Alexi killed the engine. There had not been another house, or human being, for several miles. Mel sat with her heart beginning to race, wondering why he had driven her to such a remote location.
Alexi got out and opened the trunk. After lifting something out of the back, he closed it and began walking to her side of the car. A bright spasm of panic gripped Mel’s chest.
But when he opened her door, he merely smiled and held out his hand. In his other he held a loosely woven picnic basket.
“Our friend William has provided lunch,” he said.
She looked at him, confused. First the rustic Russian peasant house, and now a picnic? “William did all this? Why?”
“Because William’s greatest pleasure is feeding people.”
Mel barked a laugh. “That certainly seems to be true.”
He helped her out of the car, and she followed him the short distance to the grassy field carpeted with tiny white flowers that looked, to Mel, like baby’s breath. It was a setting that would have delighted her, if not for her nagging doubts about why William had sent her out of Minsk. Alexi led her to the middle of the clearing and pulled from the basket a thin blanket, which he spread on the ground. He motioned for her to sit and began to unpack the basket, taking out a loaf of dark bread, sausage wrapped in wax paper, and a brick of cheese. China plates, glasses, and utensils were unwrapped from linen napkins. And finally, he withdrew a bottle of French champagne.
“I think the champagne is not much cold now,” he apologized, pouring her a glass and saluting her once he’d filled his own.
Luckily, the champagne was still cool and felt like frothy gold on her tongue. Much better than whatever had been served last night. She’d have to be careful not to drink too much again. Nothing like alcohol to blunt the senses and inhibit healthy caution. After preparing plates for the two of them, Alexi sat back on the opposite corner of the quilt and stared off into the forest.
“I used to go fishing not far from here. Just beyond those trees,” he said, pointing to a narrow path.
Mel could imagine him as a serious-minded boy, precisely threading a worm on a hook. “I went fishing with my dad a lot,” she said. “When I was little.”
Alexi began removing his shoes and socks and rolling up his pant legs. “Tell me more about your family.”
So, between bites, she told him about her split life. “I have no siblings,” she said, “and so all of my parents’ best, and worst, efforts were expended on me.”
“I have no brothers or sisters either,” he said, plucking a few long blades of grass and weaving them together. “I think maybe you were a lonely child?” He expressed it as a question and then added, “Like me.”
His insight surprised her. She had been a shy child and socially awkward. But she’d always tried to paint a picture of a reasonably happy, safe, and predictable childhood. She set the champagne aside, deciding she should stick with water.
“Perhaps I am too personal,” he said apologetically.
Normally she would have agreed with him, distancing herself from conversation that revealed too much. But it had been a while since she’d felt so at ease.
He stood and beckoned her to come with him. “I want to show you something.”
“Shouldn’t we be heading back?” she asked.
“It will only take a few minutes.”
She let him help her to her feet, and he led her down the narrow path, a few hundred yards between the pine trees, to a narrow, shallow stream. Following behind him, she watched his bare feet rising and falling, pale like flags of surrender, the bones and tendons flexing strongly beneath his skin.
“Take off your shoes,” he said when they came to the bank of the stream. Mel thought about resisting, but the water looked cool and inviting. It had been years since she’d gone wading in a river, carefree like a child. Alexi held her hand for balance as she removed her flats and rolled up her own pant legs. He continued to hold her hand as he led her down a gentle slope.
The water was clear and, when they waded into it, bone-achingly cold. Mel gasped and laughed with the shock of it.
“In the springtime it is much bigger,” he said. “And full of small river fish. Pike, I think you call them. I spent many hours here when my grandparents were working.”
“What did your grandparents do?”
“They were collective farmworkers. Maybe half of all Byelorussians work in this way.”
“And the other half?”
He grinned. “Mostly for the military complex, or the politburo, which is sometimes the same thing.”
She thought of how formal and stiff he had looked in his uniform, and how relaxed he now appeared in civilian dress. “Does that include policemen?”
“Yes.” He composed his face as though commencing a stern lecture. “The half that oils the workings of the State must be fueled by the other half. The sickle cuts the grain, which feeds the hammer.”
She gave him a playful scowl. “Sounds like propaganda.”
“This is first-year academy knowledge, Comrade,” he said, shaking his finger at her.
“Your English is very good.”
“In school there were three choices of compulsory languages—English, Spanish, and German.”
“Spanish?”
He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. “Cuba.”
“Oh, of course.” The Soviet spy base within ninety miles of the Florida Keys. A missile base at one time as well. “But you chose English.”
“More like English chose me. In primary school our abilities were assessed, and we were…encouraged. I excelled in mathematics. So my teachers decided that, as English is the most difficult—” He made a gesture as if to say, And here I am.
They stepped out of the stream when their feet went numb, and climbed onto the bank to rub feeling back into their toes. He held her hand again while she put her shoes back on. When she stood upright, he moved in close, close enough for her to feel his breath against her skin, and gently plucked a few leaves from her hair.
“Otherwise,” he said, with a sly grin, “people will wonder what kind of picnic is this.”
Mel, in that moment, was wondering the same thing. She had an unwise impulse to lean in closer, to give in to the moment and pretend it was just a lovely day spent with a handsome man. Moscow Rule number three: Everyone is potentially under opposition control. Instead, she quickly turned away before he could sense the storm of emotions insider her.
Returning to the blanket, Mel purposely sat on the opposite corner, a safe distance from Alexi. She allowed herself one more sip of the champagne, as well as a few furtive glances at Alexi. She’d never been on such an elaborate picnic with a man before. A very attractive, engaging man. The closest she’d ever come to it was in Wisconsin in high school—sitting in the open bed of a pickup truck with a boy her age, sharing a soda and a few pieces of elk jerky. The elk shot and smoked by the boy’s dad.
She’d never have imagined that the first time she’d have such a romantic interlude would be in the Soviet Union with a military policeman. She allowed herself the briefest fantasy: sitting with Alexi anywhere else, drinking the entire bottle of champagne, letting her guard down.
Except for the calls of a few birds, the silence was almost absolute. Mel hadn’t experienced such quiet since she last visited her father’s farm outside of Madison over a year and a half ago. No traffic, no airplanes, no human voices. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back for the sun, now at its zenith, to shine fully on her face. When she opened her eyes again, Alexi was studying her with an almost unsettling intensity.
Flustered, she ducked and said the first thing that came to mind. “Did the old woman in the village ask if I was your girlfriend?”
She had asked it teasingly, but he stared into his glass for a moment, and just when she thought she’d made a mistake, that he’d somehow taken offense, he raised his eyes and looked at her. The moment stretched on, but he didn’t look away. Of this she was certain: she’d never experienced such a signaling of desire. There was no nervousness from him, no apparent fear of rejection, or uncertainty of purpose. If he had stripped her naked in that moment, she wouldn’t have felt more exposed.
Her breath came faster, and she began to feel light-headed. If he tried to kiss her, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to stop him. The truth was she wanted him to touch her.
Instead, he stood abruptly and said, “We should go.”
The sudden change in mood startled her. Had he rallied to save her further discomfort—or was it something more manipulative?
They gathered up the picnic items—carefully moving around each other as in an awkward dance—and returned to the car. There was no more conversation as Alexi returned to the highway and headed back toward Minsk.
Mel stared out the passenger window, feeling shaken by the depth of her emotions. Perhaps her powerful response to him was only the result of being unexpectedly freed from the constraints of the Soviet machinery. Big Brother was always watching.
And maybe that could also explain her elevated senses. The longer she probed her feelings, though, the more she realized it was more than just a release from the constant scrutiny. It was as though the air immediately surrounding Alexi Yurov were richer in oxygen. She imagined burying her face in his chest and inhaling deeply, like a patient on life support.
But the one remaining troubling thought was that this had all been orchestrated by William Cutler.
Within an hour the forest gave way again to fields, and the fields gave way to the boxy, gray warehouses and apartments of Minsk. The denser the mammoth buildings grew—vestiges of a still-formidable Soviet Union—the greater Mel’s doubts about William’s motivations. And Alexi’s as well. The bucolic glow of the Byelorussian countryside was dimming, the memory sliding away like a sidewalk chalk painting in the rain.
What was William’s hidden agenda? And why use Alexi, a handsome Soviet militsiya, as a tour guide?
A thought, like the flash of a camera bulb, startled her. As far as she could tell, no one from Minsk had been following them while on the road. It appeared there had been no surveillance at all. If they had been followed or observed, their watcher would have had to be almost invisible.
