Sashenka

“Our Special Section knows everything about your Party. It’s riddled with our informers. So back to ‘Comrade Snowfox.’ Not many women in the Party could carry it off. Alexandra Kollontai perhaps, but we know her revolutionary code name. Anyway she’s in exile and you’re here. By the way, have you read her Love of the Worker Bees?”

“Of course I have,” Sashenka replied, sitting up straight. “Who hasn’t?”

“But I imagine all that free love is more your mother’s style?”

“What my mother does is her own business, and as to my private life, I don’t have one. I don’t want one. All that disgusts me. I despise such trivia.”

The ash-grey eyes looked through him again. There is no one as sanctimonious as a teenage idealist (especially one who is a rich banker’s precious daughter), reflected Sagan. He was impressed with her game, yet was not quite sure what to do: should he release her or keep working on her? She might just be the minnow to hook some bigger fish.

“You know your parents and uncle Gideon Zeitlin all tried to get you released last night.”

“Mama? I’m surprised she’d bother…”

“Sergeant Ivanov! Have you got last night’s report from Rasputin’s place?” Ivanov clomped into the room with the file. Sagan leafed quickly through handwritten papers. “Here we are. Report of Agent Petrovsky: Dark One—that’s our code name for Rasputin in case you hadn’t guessed—talked to Ariadna Zeitlin, Jewess, wife of the industrialist, and acknowledged she had a special subject to discuss. But after a private session with the Dark One on the subject of sin and an unruly scene on the arrival of Madame Lupkina, Zeitlin, accompanied by the American Countess Loris, left the Dark One’s apartment at 3:33 a.m. and was driven to the Aquarium nightclub and then the Astoria Hotel, Mariinsky Square, in the same Russo-Balt landaulet motorcar. Both appeared intoxicated. They visited the suite of Guards Captain Dvinsky, cardsharp and speculator, where…champagne ordered… blah, blah …they left at 5:30 a.m. The Jewess Zeitlin’s stockings were torn and her clothes were in a disordered state. She was driven back to the Zeitlin residence in Greater Maritime Street and the car then conveyed the American to her husband’s apartment on Millionaya, Millionaires’ Row…”

“But… she never mentioned me?”

Sagan shook his head. “No—although her American friend did. Your father was more effective. But,” he raised a finger as her face lit up in expectation, “you’re staying right here. Only as a favor to you, of course. It would ruin your credibility with your comrade revolutionaries if I released you too soon.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“If I do release you now, they may think you’ve become one of my double agents—and then they’d have to rub you out. Don’t think they’d be kinder because you’re a schoolgirl. They’re ice cold. Or they’d assume your rich parents scurried to Rasputin or Andronnikov and bought you out. They’d think—quite rightly in my view—that you’re just a frivolous dilettante. So I’ll be doing you a favor when I make sure you get those five years in the Arctic.”

He watched the flush creep up her neck, flood her cheeks and burn her temples. She’s frightened, he thought, pleased with himself.

“That would be an honor. I’m brave and fear neither knife nor fire,” she said, quoting Zemfira in Pushkin’s “Gypsies.” “Besides, I’ll escape. Everyone does.”

“Not from there you won’t…Zemfira. It’s more likely you’ll die up there. You’ll be buried by strangers in a shallow unmarked grave on the taiga. You’ll never lead any revolutions, never marry, never have children—your very presence on this earth a waste of the time, money and care your family have expended on it.”

He saw a shudder pass right through her from shoulder to shoulder. He allowed the silence to develop.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice shrill with nerves.