exile abroad. The guests hardly had time to finish their meal; still clutching their cups, they were escorted into Kropotkin’s study, which had been preserved in its original condition. Group leader Popov expressed his thanks in the name of the delegation, and everyone walked out past the guard of freezing children and climbed back aboard the bus.
The travel time to Dubna had been given out as an hour and a half, but Popov called for a second halt along the way. In a thick fog, they had to get off the bus and clamber up an unreal hill. “We are now on the outskirts of the industrial city of Yakhroma,” he declaimed. “Do you see that railroad bridge? It marks the farthest point that Hitler’s soldiers reached. The Germans were less than seventy miles from Moscow, but they underestimated the striking force of the Red Army, and in their plans of conquest, they had made no allowances for the pitiless Soviet winter!” The place Popov pointed to could have been anything at all; except for swaths of fog, nothing was identifiable. Nevertheless, the little gathering lingered there, gazing in silence, and nobody spoke on the way back to the bus. They drove along slowly; the bus was now traveling through a thick, milky fog its headlights could barely penetrate.
The blacktop road ran alongside the railroad line, bridges of various types crossed rivers and marshy areas, and, as scheduled, the group reached the city shortly before noon. At the city line, a banner greeted them: THE ATOM IS A WORKER, NOT A SOLDIER! The flags of the nations that were members of the Institute were flying above the hotel entrance; Anna could identify most of the flags, but the orphanage director had to help her with Albania and Vietnam. The bus turned ponderously around the circular flower bed in front of the hotel. A man in a fur coat was waiting for them; he greeted Popov but didn’t offer him his hand.
“Czestmir Adamek,” Popov said, presenting him. “Our scientific guide. When you have questions, you will address them only to him, and he will relay them to the Institute worker. In this way, we can prevent unqualified questions from stealing the researchers’ time.”
“Comrade—Comrade—Comrade—” The fur-clad man nodded to each of them as they stepped out of the bus; he took a moment longer to assess the women.
In the entrance hall, there were two stairways and an elevator with paint flaking off its metal doors. The reception desk was raised, offering an overview of the lobby, and the front desk manager was waiting at his post with the room keys lined up on the counter in front of him. List in hand, Popov stepped up to the desk and organized the distribution of rooms. He began in alphabetical order: “Armiryev, Butyrskaya—”
The front desk manager interrupted him: “Is there a Comrade Tsazukhina among you?”
Anna needed a moment to react to her father’s surname, even though Anna Tsazukhina was what she’d been called when she was a Pioneer Girl. Her first thought was of Petya. Were his test results so bad as to necessitate a telephone call to Dubna? She pushed her way through the group.
“You’re Comrade Anna Tsazukhina?” the uniformed manager asked, holding out an envelope. “This was left at the desk for you.” Having turned over the envelope, he began to compare Popov’s list with his own and to hand out the keys.
Avoiding the eyes of those around her, Anna retreated to a chair near a window. She opened the sealed envelope, which bore her name, and unfolded the sheet of paper inside. “Welcome, Pioneer Girl,” she read. The words were written in the Deputy Minister’s sloping hand. “Your program ends today at nine. Anton will be parked at the rear entrance.”
She turned around. Couldn’t everyone see how the hot flush spread over her face?
Nadezhda approached her. “Something unpleasant?” she asked.
“On the contrary.” Anna quickly shoved the note back into the envelope, picked up her bag, and returned to the waiting line. At that moment, though she could not have said why, Alexey’s lines made her unspeakably happy, so much so that her eyes became moist. She forgot the delegation, her new surroundings, even Kamarovsky’s assignment. She was going to see him again, Alexey, her big, clumsy wolf; somewhere in this settlement in the woods, he was waiting for her with cooled wine and some delicacy to eat. His simple message proved to Anna that it had really been his idea to