The First Billion

Passing St. Basil's, the Novodevichy Monastery, the Kremlin, even the most mundane of office buildings, she'd found her throat choked with emotion. These were the landmarks not only of the city but of a childhood she'd willed dead and buried, and each in turn provoked a cascade of memories. Cate and her mother pausing for a tea in one of the unsmiling cafes that dotted the upper levels of the GUM department store. Cate skating for the first time on an impromptu ice rink in the courtyard of their apartment building, the result of a broken main that had spewed water into the air for two weeks running. A reverent Cate, barely thirteen, passing through Lenin's tomb for the first time, frightened for the life of her to stare down at the great man's embalmed face, her teacher stopping her and forcing her to look, berating her in the sacrosanct hall to open her eyes and gaze upon the motherland's savior. She'd obeyed and fainted straightaway.

But the stirring went deeper than nostalgia. It went to her heart. To her blood. It was her history awakening inside her. The past beckoning her to return. She was no longer Catherine Elizabeth Magnus, but Ekaterina Konstantinovna Elisabeth Kirova, a Russian woman born in Leningrad to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father almost thirty years ago. There was nothing her devotion to the West could do about it. Nothing her love for Ayn Rand or her addiction to Bruce Springsteen could do to rectify the error of her birth. All were accessories she'd acquired to paper over her true colors. Garments designed to deceive, to camouflage, to lie. The intended victim, of course, being none other than Katya Kirov herself.

Too wound up to sit, she dropped the curtain and made a tour of the room. The walls were covered with photographs, cartoons, framed articles, and here and there a diploma or honorary citation. Their common link was Konstantin Kirov. There was her father with Boris Yeltsin. Her father with Gorbachev. A photo with Bush the Elder. Oh, how he loved mingling with the big names, if only so he might position himself as champion of the free media. If, that is, one's definition of "free media" meant using your television stations, your newspapers, your radio networks, to trumpet your own pet causes. If "free media" meant decrying taxes on aluminum production in order to favor your smelters in Krasnoyarsk. Or savaging the academic who had issued a report claiming that oligarchs exerted a drag on the economy equal to two percentage points of GNP. If so, then Kirov was your man.

Cate stared at her nails and stupidly wished she'd had a manicure before coming. She felt dirtied by her time in a jail cell. Catching a glimpse of her reflection, she flicked a strand of hair from her face, then rushed to her purse to apply some lipstick, only to throw the makeup back inside before she'd finished. Why did she give a damn about pleasing her father? She hated him and everything he stood for. He was a thief, a plunderer, a murderer. The epithets grew stale on her tongue, and pausing for breath, she was left with her original question: Why did she give a damn?

Unhappy sitting, she returned to the window and looked outside. A stream of headlights rolled up and down Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, hero of Borodino, who had defeated Napoleon not on the battlefield but off it, by withdrawing his troops from Moscow and burning the city in his wake. There was something about his methods, something about sacrificing one's children for personal glory, be it a nation's or a businessman's, that rang a bell with her.

And taking a breath, she found the answer to her question. It had been lying in front of her for days, months, years even. She gave a damn simply because he was her father. Her blood. And she would never be free of her ties to him.

Worse still, he had defeated her once again. For all her actions to halt Mercury, her promises to avenge Alexei's death, her desire to help Jett, she'd come up short. She still had no way to punish her father for his sins. She was ever the little girl powerless in her father's presence. And she hated herself because of it.

***

Hello, Father. It's been a long ti-"

Konstantin Kirov crossed the study in three quick steps, slapping her hard across the face before she could finish her words. "Shut up, whore."

Cate fell back onto the couch. Her hand dabbed at her mouth and came away red with blood. She struggled for something to say, but the onrush of emotions, hot and angry and prideful, cluttered her throat, leaving her defenseless and speechless.

Kirov gazed down at her, shaking his head. He looked older, smaller, ascetic even, but he had the same energy, the same conviction.