Anna looked into Lieutenant Emil Basayev’s face and smiled at him as they sat in front of the house where her parents now lived. “No. Thank you for everything you have done. You have been a prince. But I’m sure the general will want you back at your post.”
Emil sighed dramatically. “This is true. I am glad we got this time to spend together. We both lead such busy lives these days. It is very hard to find time to be with friends.”
“When I get a spare moment, I will give you a call. Perhaps for lunch?”
“I would love lunch.” Emil smiled at her.
At another time, she might have enjoyed his attentions. He was a handsome man, and he looked splendid in his uniform. She had seldom seen him in it except in pictures. When they met at functions with friends, he was always in street wear.
Anna opened the door and let herself out. He waited at the curb, and she knew he wouldn’t leave until she was inside. She turned and trudged up the walk toward the tall, turreted alabaster house her parents had bought and moved into during her pre-teen years from the flat where she’d grown up.
On a lot of days, she missed that old flat. She’d had friends there, and stories had loomed on every corner.
The new house was nice, bigger than anything Anna had been able to imagine at the time, but it still didn’t feel like home. This house was where her parents lived, despite the fact that she had finished growing up there.
Across the pond, she saw the hulking structure that had been built back near the end of World War II at Stalin’s order to house the army generals. In the nearby park, statues from Ivan Krylov’s fables alternately entertained and frightened children. The gold-handed monkey was always amusing, but for a long time, Anna hadn’t cared for the large bear.
The neighborhood was often referred to as the soul of Old Moscow. When Anna had heard that, she had thought of how well her father had fit into the neighborhood. If the soul of Old Moscow could be said to be embodied in any person, it was the general.
At the door, she used her key to let herself in. She’d just gotten off the phone with her mother, who was at the market buying food to cook for Anna’s welcome-home dinner. Her mother thought she was returning home to get some support after everything that Anna had been through.
Instead, she had come to burgle her father’s office.
As she waved to Emil and watched him drive away, Anna wondered if a general’s daughter would still be shot as a spy if she were caught doing what she was about to do. She turned and faced the door, knowing the answer was yes and knowing, too, that she would not be stopped.
She walked into the house, closing the door behind her, the thump it made sounding loud inside the empty house. She lifted her voice, trying to remember if her mother had changed domestics since she had last been at the house three months ago.
“Varvara?”
There was no answer. Anna felt certain she was alone. She hung her hat and coat on the rack beside the door, then went to her father’s study.
The house was Old World, the hallways narrow, the floors hardwood, and the rooms smaller than were found in new homes. As she’d gotten older, Anna had wondered why her father had purchased this place instead of getting one of the more modern ones. Then she had found out the choice had been her mother’s.
Her father’s study was in the back of the house. As always, it was locked. But Anna had come prepared for that. Before allowing Emil to drive her home, she had insisted that he first take her by the offices of The Moscow Times.
Kirill had wanted her to stay, of course. There was work to be done, and keeping track of everything going on in Russia and the Ukraine—and keeping up with international reactions to the “reunification”—was daunting.
She hadn’t told him what she was going to do. She had merely taken the things she needed from her locker, accepted a mild rebuke from Kirill for leaving them in their time of need, and left with Emil.
Among the things she’d gotten was a lockpick kit. One of the other reporters for the paper had learned many things during a “misspent youth.” Lockpicking was just one of those things.