Satori - Don Winslow [55]
“And where will I go?” she asked.
“That is not my concern.”
Alone and helpless, the only power she retained was the only power a woman had in those days. She looked at him for several moments and then said, “It could be. Your concern, that is.”
“Whatever would make you think that?”
“The way you look at me,” she answered. “But am I wrong? Perhaps I am mistaken.”
“No, you are not wrong.”
Releasing her hand from his grip, she walked over to the huge bed.
She kept her apartments.
He joined her there many afternoons and most nights, his position in the Cheka protecting him, at least for the time being, against the “social contamination” of an affair with a member of the “possessing classes.”
One night he told her that he loved her. She laughed. “Certainly a good Bolshevik such as yourself doesn’t believe in romantic love.”
“Perhaps I do.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t,” she said. “Romance is dead in this world, my dear. You should know, you helped to kill it. We have an arrangement, Voroshenin, nothing more.”
An arrangement indeed, he thought. She gave him herself, he protected her from himself. The symmetry was mind-boggling.
The next afternoon he walked into her apartment, his face white with concern. “Alexandra, you have to go. Now.”
She looked startled. “I thought that —”
“The Cheka knows about Rizhsky Prospect.”
Since the Revolution she had carefully, secretly, bit by bit hidden the Ivanov family fortune — millions of rubles — away in the safekeeping of an old accounting firm on Rizhsky Prospect. For a fee, the men there were slowly smuggling it out of the country, little by little, into banks in France and Switzerland. It was an act of incredible daring — Whites had been tortured to death for hoarding a watch, a ring, some loaves of bread, and she conspired to hide millions. And the discipline — feigning poverty, going hungry, starving herself, allowing herself only the odd little square of chocolate.
“It’s only a matter of time before they come for you,” he said. “Me too. You have to go. Get out. Leave the country.”
“But my things, my furniture —”
“A train east out of Finland Station tomorrow morning at seven,” Voroshenin said. “I’ve arranged space for you and all your things. A heavy bribe, but apparently you have money, no? I’ve drawn up travel papers that will take you safely to Vladivostok. After that …”
Thousands of Whites had taken this route — to Vladivostok, then across the porous border into China, where most had sought the relatively cosmopolitan refuge of Shanghai. It was not a pleasant choice, but the only choice she had.
“Where is your money?” he asked. “I’ll need some of it for bribes. The rest, carry with you in cash.”
“I’ll go get it.”
He shook his head. “Too dangerous. You would be arrested and then … I could no longer protect you. And you would tell them everything, Alexandra. Trust me on this, you would tell them everything they want to know and more.”
She told him where the money was. “But most of it is still there?” he asked.
She nodded.
They made plans.
Cheka agents would storm her house that night, “confiscate” and cart off all her furniture and belongings, and take them to a waiting rail agent at the station, where they would be loaded onto a special Cheka car.
“No one will have the nerve to inspect it,” Voroshenin assured her.
She would be “arrested” before dawn and taken to the station for removal to some hellhole in Siberia. Instead, she would ride in relative comfort to Vladivostok with the papers asserting her new identity.
“And my money?” she asked.
“I will deliver it to the train myself,” he said.
“And what about you?” she asked. “Aren’t you in danger?”
“I will be on the next train,” he said, “with my new papers. In Vladivostok, we can decide what to do next about our arrangement. But we have to act quickly,” he urged. “There is much to do and little time to do it, and the Cheka is on the hunt.”
Ivanovna gave him the address of the accountants in Rizhsky and then started to gather her personal belongings — jewelry, china,