The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [40]
Stevie’s flat was near the woods and she still ran the same vita parcours every morning that she was home. Some mornings, if she was feeling feeble, she even took the spoonful of yeast syrup.
She lay her head back gingerly on the enormous pillow. The headache had transformed itself into a full body ache. This was no hangover, alas. It was definitely the opening sally of some horrid Slavic flu. There was nothing for it but to swallow aspirin and eat a lemon, rind and all.
She would make her bath extra hot this morning.
The Metropole hotel was a stone’s throw from Red Square. The roads had been salted earlier that morning and the ice was fast turning into filthy sludge. Passing cars, their windows tinted even though the sun never seemed to shine, sprayed muck, the grime conveniently obscuring their number plates.
Muscovites in matching fur hats and coats strode the boulevards, on some immutable course. In the pale blue mist they looked like bears out for their morning feed. A patrol of four militzia—police—crossed at the lights, so padded in their grey jackets and fur-trimmed hats, submachine guns slung casually over one shoulder, like teddy bears playing at war.
Stevie watched them home in on a shabbily bundled couple. He had a thick black beard. That was suspicion enough. They would have to be stopped, papers scrutinised.
Friday was the day to avoid being stopped if you were a foreigner because the militzia patrols went out looking for vodka money. Although it wasn’t Friday, Stevie avoided crossing just there. She set off to meet Vadim at a tea house, just outside the great red walls of the square.
Stevie passed through the guarded gatehouse, up a small slope, and into Krasnaya Ploshyad. She caught her breath. Every time she came here, she felt she was standing on the top of a beautiful, malevolent mountain. Today, it was covered in snow and people were crisscrossing it on their way to work.
St Basil’s church, with its wildly coloured onion domes and its golden exploding stars, sat like a Faberge jewel at the far side. On Stevie’s left was GUM, the famous shopping arcade, a delicate stone building the colour of vanilla, intricately carved and tipped with pointed copper roofs, now a weathered green. On her right was part of the wall that surrounded the Kremlin, the palace of government itself. The walls were fortress height and the colour of dried blood. Red Square. A massive wrought-iron gate sealed the entrance.
Lenin’s tomb was dug in at the foot of the wall, marked with a heavy slab of dark stone and the simple letters: . Tourists from Central Asia, in from the steppes to see the famous capital from where their lives had once been ruled, milled about the gates in their furs, tiny dark eyes and pink cheeks, before joining the eternal funeral procession around Lenin’s embalmed body.
It is impossible to pass casually through Red Square. It has a weight that crushes you, a gingerbread beauty that makes the history born from its ugly heart all the more menacing.
A crocodile of schoolgirls in dark coats and white scarves and furry bonnets—like gumnut babies—wove its way past Stevie, towards St Basil’s. GUM was still closed.
Stevie stopped to look at the huge glass windows, the restaurant, luxury goods. Only party members had been allowed to shop there under communism. They had even managed to justify segregated shopping in the name of the revolution. Now it was open to anyone. Anya had been shopping there when she disappeared.
When it was open, guards patrolled the marble galleries and watched the crowds stroll by eating ice-creams. Very little passed unnoticed. It would have been difficult to force Anya out of there. There were guards at every entrance.
Could Anya have gone willingly then? Stevie shook her head. From what she knew of her, it seemed very unlikely. Anya didn’t seem like the type.
The tea house was ugly, but Stevie had expected it would be. There was no tradition of cafés, no café society