February 27, 1973
"Do you have plans this evening?" Irina asked her sister as they hurried through the Metro station, two darting figures among the many struggling to get to work on time. "A date with Boris?"
Katya rolled her eyes. "I haven't seen him for weeks. I told you this. How can they have trained you to spy without ever teaching you to listen? Doesn't listening come into it, somewhere?"
Irina shot her sister a dark look, one that would have silenced most people. Katya, unruffled, simply wound her midnight-blue scarf around her neck, never breaking her stride. Above them, a mural showed the workers dancing in Lenin's honor, crimson flags flying.
"Then you'll be going out with your friends," Irina suggested.
"I hadn't thought ahead that far," Katya replied, as blithe as ever. Then her eyes narrowed. "You want me out of the bedroom again, so you can invite Jack to stay."
"I had thought ahead that far, yes."
"Can't you go to his dormitory, for once? College boys should be out all the time, studying or drinking."
"Not Gary. That gorgul'ya never budges. He might as well be frozen to his bunk."
They'd made such arrangements in the past, for their various boyfriends; Irina had been bargaining for private time in one form or another her entire life. So she knew well how Katya would respond: more rolling of the eyes, a few obscene jokes, and then the down-and-dirty bartering. Irina hadn't taken Jack to bed in almost two weeks, and so was willing to loan her best coat, the fur hat, and maybe -- just maybe -- the earrings, but only if Katya wouldn't budge any other way.
Instead, Katya's footsteps slowed, until she stopped in the middle of the station. Irina matched her paces to her sister's, despite her own impatience to get to work; she suspected the negotiations were about to take a turn, and she did not mean to let her sister see her surprise.
Katya said, "Of all the men who've pursued you -- why Jack Leary? I don't understand it."
"Why not Jack?" Irina asked simply.
"Oh, an affair I guess I could understand. He's not as handsome as most of your boyfriends -"
Irina tried not to bristle. "Jack's very handsome."
"I didn't say he wasn't. You were the one who said he had a bland face." Had she really ever thought of Jack's face as bland? He was so distinct to her now, so memorable, like a famous painting or statue seen in pictures throughout a lifetime, universal and unique at once. "I've always rather admired his looks -- except for the ears, of course."
"I like his ears," Irina insisted.
Katya took Irina's wrist in her hand and pressed her fingertips against the pulse. After a moment, she shook her head. "Doctor, the patient will not recover."
Irina pulled her hand back and glared. Only Katya could irritate her so thoroughly and completely, and yet she remained the closest Irina had to a best friend. "I thought you liked Jack."
"I do like Jack, very much. He's quiet --" This, Irina knew, was a major handicap in the eyes of lively Katya. "-- but he's smart, and he treats you well."
"And he puts up with you. What about last month, when you pestered him for hours about what American girls were wearing?"
"He knew!" Katya protested. "Jack could tell me every detail -- hemlines and colors and everything else. You don't usually find that in a man, when he's not, you know." She waved her hand back and forth airily. "He notices a lot. Really, I think Jack's a good man."
"Then I don't see the problem."
Frustrated, Katya stomped one boot-clad foot on the floor. A few businessmen glanced in their direction, but otherwise the crowds kept swarming around them, the same hundred black coats with changing faces. "I said, an affair I could understand. What I don't understand is why you're so serious about him."
Irina began walking toward the train again, forcing Katya to hurry to keep up. "Who says I'm serious about him?"
"Maybe you can fool yourself that you aren't, but I know better. And so does everyone else who's watched you over the past six months. I still don't know why, but you're crazy for Jack Leary."
They went to their gate and boarded the train in silence; Katya was either brooding on her imagined ill-treatment or daydreaming about another subject altogether -- with her, there was no telling. Irina was left to consider her sister's question at length. She had not answered, not because she didn't know why she cared for Jack, but because it was unthinkable to imagine sharing something so private with Katya. Certainly not before she had even shared that with Jack himself.
From the beginning of their romance, she had tried to control her emotions for Jack -- tried, and failed. Irina's innate caution and reserve had only been enhanced by her KGB training. After years of deep-cover preparation and an adolescence spent in the full expectation of leading a series of double lives, Irina knew what of herself to give away -- very little -- and what to keep private.
Then she met Jack, and all her defenses fell.
On their third date, they'd played chess; she was a good player -- out of practice, but it wasn't as though she'd ever found it a difficult game -- and yet Jack had decimated her in 14 moves. She could still see his black bishop tipping over the white queen, could hear the clatter of the wooden piece against the chessboard. Never before had she enjoyed losing.
In the game, he had treated her as an equal, given no quarter, which she liked; he made her fight harder, think smarter, be better. She couldn't take him for granted, and the challenge was intoxicating.
In their relationship, he was the same -- always just as controlled as she was, just as precise, just as careful in what he gave away. Irina was used to men who tried to baby her and sweet-talk her, who thought that they could push her over to win a place in her bed or her heart. Jack took what she gave, asked for no more, and understood her more truly, more deeply, in that way than any other man she'd ever known. He destroyed her defenses from the inside out. And in bed --
Irina leaned her head against the train window and smiled out at the tunnel wall rushing by. She would never have thought that such a quiet, careful man would be her best lover. But the bed was their battlefield, each of them trying to force the other to be the one who would break and lose control. Losing the battle was as glorious as winning it -- and, best of all, sometimes they both broke down, let go, surrendered to each other completely.
He'd almost made her beg to be taken to bed in the first place. She'd had the pleasure of making him beg a time or two since. That wasn't the only reason she had fallen for him, or even the most important one -- but it was very pleasant to remember.
"If I am serious about him," she said, "why is that a problem?"
Without missing a beat despite their long silence, Katya answered, "He's American. There are people who'll ask questions about that. People at - at your work." Her sister's face was a pale white circle, nestled in her midnight-blue muffler, naked with a concern she rarely let show.
"Since when do you worry about my work?" Irina snapped, more from surprise than genuine irritation.
"Since always." Katya put one black-gloved hand on Irina's arm, the way she used to when they were children. "I used to think about following in your footsteps, you know."
Irina laughed, but not unkindly. "I can't see it."
"I could've surprised you. But after they changed your assignment and screwed you over - well, that was the end of that. I know things aren't going the way you hoped, and I just don't want the situation to get any worse."
Irina smiled at her sister and sighed. "Trust me, Katya. My career was ruined a long time ago. So it can't get any worse."
**
Professor Valerian Kovalenko - Irina's immediate superior ever since her reassignment - tapped the page of the ancient book open in front of them. A faint puff of dust rose from the paper with every tap. "Genius. We use that word so easily - genius - to mean anyone intelligent, more clever than average. But genius is more than that. It has a life of its own - it is a mad thing that takes possession of those minds that can endure it."
He talked like that all the time. Sometimes Irina longed to shoot him.
"Mozart was a genius. Leonardo. Pushkin. And this man, Milo Rambaldi. I began these studies thinking that greater knowledge would shatter the illusion. But Rambaldi - he is illusion within illusion. Truth within lies."
Irina stifled a sigh as she looked down at the etchings upon the page. All Kovalenko's heady words were inspired by a diagram that filled only one corner of a crowded page. In the margins were stripes of smeared paint and notations in a dozen languages, upon at least two dozen topics; upside down was a drawing, perhaps a draft for a mural, that showed a man in a robe holding aloft a wand. Another few objects were drawn here and there; the one that had inspired the professor's rhapsodies showed a C-shaped clamp levitating a sphere of water. "This device - Comrade Kovalenko, what is its purpose?"
"What do you think is its purpose?" He always asked questions like that, instead of telling her anything concrete. Maddening.
"At the very least, it's a means of defying gravity. But it's specific to this use only. If we cannot understand this power, adapt it for other purposes, then - forgive me, Comrade, but all we have is a ball of water in the air. I can make that for you with a balloon and a ladder."
Kovalenko stared at her, and Irina wondered if her perceptions of his academic softness were accurate; if not, speaking so sarcastically about her official KGB assignment could prove dangerous. But she trusted her judgment. Sure enough, Kovalenko just sighed and pushed his heavy-rimmed glasses up his nose. "Your skepticism is getting in the way of your judgment, Comrade Derevko."
"Isn't my skepticism the most important part of my judgment?"
"In most things, perhaps. But not here, not now." Kovalenko ran his fingers beneath Rambaldi's fluid handwriting, moving them right to left, the way Rambaldi sometimes wrote. "Rambaldi inspires belief. He deserves belief."
"But what is it that he is asking us to believe?"
After a pause, Kovalenko said, "So many things that it is hard to know where to begin. But the reason I chose to study him is that he asks us to believe in a future that can be foretold, and yet still be changed."
Irina considered asking how Kovalenko had managed to cram predestination and free will into one cosmology, but she was fairly sure that, if she asked, she'd get an answer, and she was in no mood to hear it.
"You need to begin looking for meanings within meanings, Comrade Derevko." Kovalenko hesitated, so visibly that it caught Irina's attention more than anything he had actually spoken aloud.
He wants to tell me something, she realized. Something he cannot come out and say. Something important. But what about all this hocus-pocus can be important? She just kept watching him, impassive on the surface, waiting to see what clue she might receive. By force of will, she concentrated on nothing but the moment: the musty air in the reading room, the groaning of the radiator pipes, the way Kovalenko's spotted old scalp showed through his thin, snowy hair.
At last, Kovalenko spoke, his voice more forceful than she had ever before known it to be: "You are a woman who likes to keep her own secrets, I think. Forgive me for speaking this way, but -- you must not let your own secrecy stop you from seeing through the secrets of others."
Inwardly she bristled, but Irina said only, "I'm trained to discover the secrets of others."
"But not for looking through your own resentment and anger. You are blinded by them, and you are not someone who can afford such blindness." Kovalenko leaned back in his chair, small and old yet again. "You must take this assignment for what it is -- an opportunity. You'll make no progress until you do. And your progress is important, not only for our work, our nation, but for you. Once you have demonstrated your commitment to this field of study, the beginning of your understanding, then you can learn more. And - Irina - there is so much more to learn." He then made quite a show of turning back to his texts
Still no explanation. Still no reason why they'd done this to her. Just another carrot dangled upon a stick. Irina resisted the urge to sigh, stared down at the C-clamp and the levitating ball of water, and tried very hard to look intrigued.
**
"Have you ever been given an assignment you've absolutely despised?"
Jack lifted his head from her shoulder, an odd expression on his face. But then he smiled. "I've never had anything but summer jobs," he reminded her. "In school, certainly, I've had assignments that gave me hell."
Irina stroked her fingers down his back and breathed in, slow and deep. Only a few minutes ago, she had been beyond worrying about her work, her stupid assignment, or anything else in the world more remote than the touch of his hands on her skin. But now, passion spent, she found her thoughts going back to the same annoying place. "I suppose it's not the same thing at all."
"Your work," Jack said, slowly. Irina tensed, but she didn't stop him. Although she had never explicitly told Jack that she worked for the KGB, she had dropped hints -- which he had, she thought, interpreted immediately and correctly. He responded in just the right way: rarely asking questions, never prying. Her clever Jack. "They're not -- sending you anywhere, are they?"
"No, dorogoy, they're not sending me away." She turned her head to smile at him. His face was just inches from hers on the pillow, their legs still intertwined; she cupped his face in her hand, relishing the scrub of his unshaved cheek. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Good" He kissed her lightly. "I want you right here."
They lay together in silence for a few moments. The bed was almost too thin for both of them, but Irina didn't mind the tight fit. This way she could feel Jack's skin touching hers, from foot to thigh to belly. But sometimes she wished they could be together someplace more opulent, more private -- one of the wide, four-poster beds she had seen in Western catalogues she'd studied, in a room that had a window with a view. Jack might have been in beautiful places like that with other girls; she did not ask, and he did not offer, but then again, he'd never complained. He accepted the limitations they had to work with and did his part to be creative, as did she; Irina smiled as she remembered the theater.
On the other side of the wall, her grandparents slept, or at least Irina hoped they did. She and Jack tried very, very hard to be quiet when he came to her apartment, but tonight her enthusiasm had gotten the better of her discretion once or twice.
Kovalenko had said her resentment was getting the better of her perception. What had he meant by that? What was it he wanted her to see?
"Do you believe in -- prophets? Fortune-tellers? That kind of thing?" she asked.
"Not usually. But strange things happen."
"Like Nostradamus."
"Like people who read Nostradamus." One corner of Jack's mouth twitched, but he kept talking. "If someone claimed to be able to predict the future, I'd put the prediction to the test."
Irina considered. "To try and disprove it."
"Or to prove it. I'd keep an open mind, however -- incredible -- it might seem at first. It may be unlikely, but if it were true, then -- foreknowledge is power."
Power. She'd never thought of her assignment in those terms before -- as an attempt to discover power. The attempt was on behalf of her government, of course, but if she was one of the ones who helped uncover it --
"You're an intelligent man," she said.
Jack raised an eyebrow. "I didn't come here tonight to impress you with my intelligence."
She grinned and rolled over to straddle him on the bed. "And I didn't lend Katya my earrings so I could have anything less than an entire night with you."
He framed her face in his hands, then pulled her down for a kiss. "I'll make it worth your while."
**
Nobody expected her in the library on a Saturday afternoon, but Irina went anyway. Jack's words echoed within her, on levels she didn't fully analyze; for once, she was willing to go on instinct.
Maybe that's what I've needed to do for a long time, she thought. Maybe this Rambaldi can't be dissected, taken apart image by image, cell by cell.
So she brought out the books once more and stared at the page with the C-clamp and the sphere of water. Determinedly, Irina studied each set of notes, translating each of the languages that she could read. The precise script on the left-hand side talked about electricity, at least so far as they understood Rambaldi's phrases. The water-blurred lines on the lower right talked about synthetic skin. Thick swabs of red paint lined the center of the book. This all fits together, Irina thought. All of it. It all looks random, but pretend that it's not. Pretend that it all makes sense.
It didn't make sense.
After several minutes, she banged her hands against the table and stood up to pace around the table. Irina knew she needed to give it more time, but she'd been so sure she was on the verge of a breakthrough, on the verge of understanding some kind of greater unifying principle.
The book was now upside down. Irina glanced down at it in irritation, then stopped walking and looked down again. The draft for the painting - it wasn't a draft. It was a tarot card.
"The Magician, reversed," she whispered. That card in that position could mean many different things - but it could also be a sign of power, immense power, not yet known, but available to the one who asked the right question.
Irina knew, in that instant, that she was the woman who would ask the question. Not Kovalenko. Not anyone else in the KGB. It would be Irina, and Irina alone.
**
Go back to the last chapter.