fired and that my relationship with her had been suspect, which I denied convincingly enough for Anderson to say he believed me. They were the ones who had taught me to become someone else, after all, to lie about who I was. And turning my new power back onto them felt good.
It was all too much to think about. And yet there in Brussels, looking at myself in a mirror halfway across the world, I still couldn’t put it out of my mind. But I needed to. There was no turning back. The mission had begun.
* * *
I wrapped my hair under a scarf and set out for the rendezvous point. Brussels was buzzing, the moon a half disc above the city. The streets were packed with fairgoers from around the world. Passing a crowded café, I overheard people speaking French, English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch. As I cut through La Grand-Place, a group of Chinese men and women stood in the square’s center, gazing at the top of Hôtel de Ville while passing around a box of chocolates. Two Russian men passed so close that one brushed my shoulder. Did the one in the fur cap look at me a moment too long? I didn’t turn around or quicken my pace. I just kept my gaze straight ahead and kept walking.
I arrived at the address my handler had given me on rue Lanfray, just off Ixelles Ponds. Standing in front of the grand Art Nouveau building, I was awed by its five stories of intricate inlaid wood and the swirling mint-green iron that climbed its façade like ivy. The entire house belonged inside an art museum. Ascending the curved cement staircase to the double front doors, I told myself I belonged there; or rather, the person I had become did. I pressed the gold buzzer once, counted to sixteen, then pressed again. I felt a light flush of perspiration at the nape of my neck. A man dressed as a priest opened the door. “Father Pierre?” I asked, in Russian.
“Sister Alyona. Welcome.” The sound of my new name caused my chest to loosen.
I shook his hand firmly, as Sally had taught me. “Pleasure.”
“We started without you.” I didn’t know his real name, nor did I know if Father Pierre was even Catholic. He wore the collar but had an ivory cashmere sweater draped over his shoulders as though he’d just returned from playing golf. In his early thirties, Father Pierre was blandly handsome with thinning blond hair, cerulean blue eyes, and a reddish beard. He ushered me in, and I followed him upstairs.
The flat was furnished with the luxurious but eclectic décor of someone who was new to money and had hired someone to give him taste. The mix of modern Danish furniture, seventeenth-century tapestries, and folk pottery gave the effect of wandering into a museum that had been shaken up inside a snow globe.
I was on time to the minute but the last member of our team to arrive. A man and a woman were already seated on a kidney-shaped couch, sipping cognac in front of a barely lit fireplace. The man known as Father David was the agent in charge of our mission. The woman, Ivanna—her real name—was the daughter of an exiled Russian Orthodox theologian and the owner of a Belgian publishing house that printed religious material. She was also the founder of Life with God, an underground organization that smuggled banned religious material behind the Iron Curtain. Her group had been working in conjunction with the Vatican since the fair had opened, and we were to follow her lead in how to most effectively distribute Zhivago.
Ivanna and Father David looked up when we entered but did not smile or stand. There was no need for introductions: they already knew who I was, just as I already knew who they were. I sat on the edge of a white linen lounge chair and they continued.
On the sleek black coffee table in front of them was an exact model of Expo 58, complete with blue-tinted mirrors representing fountains and pools of water, miniature trees, sculptures, flags of every nation, and the Holy See’s ski-sloped, white-roofed City of God pavilion—the location where the mission would take place.
It had been Ivanna’s idea to use the fair as a means of proselytizing, but it was Father David who took the idea and made it the Agency’s own. He believed Expo 58 would be the perfect location to get the