“Not accusing, just telling you what has happened.”
“Who says that this has happened? Who?” When Marko didn’t respond, Katerina said, “The American with the money?”
“Yes.”
“He tells you this? He tells you I tell him your secrets?”
“No. He says you told others.”
“He lies.”
Marko had considered the possibility. He’d known Katerina longer than he’d known Larry.
“Does he?” asked Marko.
“He has to be lying.” Katerina lifted her head again. This time, when Marko tried to guide her back down to his chest, she straddled him, cradled his head in her palms and brought her face down next to his. Her bare sex was pressed against his own. He could barely see her face in the dim flickering candlelight. “He has to be,” she whispered.
“Get up,” said Marko.
“You don’t believe me.”
He put his index finger to his lips. Quiet.
Katerina didn’t resist when he gently pushed her off him. Naked, Marko stood to his full height, walked to beyond the edge of the blanket, and picked up Katerina’s bra. Before giving it to her, he felt every inch of the fabric.
“What are you—”
Marko put his finger to his lips again and flashed her a threatening look. When he was convinced the bra wasn’t wired with a listening device, he handed it to her. He did the same for all the rest of her clothing. She didn’t put any of it back on. It lay in a pile in front of her. Her head was lowered. Marko thought maybe she was crying.
When he finished with her clothes, he started inspecting every single item in her satchel — her art tools, her paints, a few pens, a little makeup kit, lip gloss, a spare sanitary napkin, loose change, a key that he’d given her to his apartment, a nail file, a schedule of her classes at Tbilisi State, a small pink leather wallet that contained thirty-six rubles, a few receipts, her driver’s license, and her internal Soviet passport.
She faced him, shaking her head, bottom lip quivering, definitely crying now.
It was in the satchel itself that he found it, sewn into one of the side seams, between the outer fabric and inner lining. It was unnoticeable except for a tiny bump. Marko used his teeth to rip the seam open, then fished out the device with his index finger. He held it up for a moment, examining it as best he could in the weak light. It was identical to the bug he’d found in his apartment.
He faced Katerina and held it up. She was looking at him now, but instead of crying, she appeared confused. In front of the blanket lay a fire pit ringed by small boulders. Holding the listening device gently in place with his lips, he picked up two rocks, and sat down in front of Katerina. He showed it to her, then placed it in her hands and stared into her eyes. She shook her head — whether to deny she knew anything about it, or because she was so stricken that she’d been found out, Marko couldn’t tell.
He took the bug back, placed it on top of one rock, and then smashed it with the other.
“How do you explain that?” he demanded. After such a long silence, the sound of the rocks smacking together, followed by his own voice — no longer a whisper — was jarring.
A long silence, then, “What was it?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Marko stared into her eyes, searching. “Guess.”
Her eyes began to well up with tears again. “A way for them to listen to us, but I don’t know about any of this, Marko! Why are you doing this to me? What have I done to you?”
“Does there need to be a why? Does there? Life is not a walk across a meadow, Katerina.” It was a common Russian saying that Katerina had told him her mother was fond of. “Shit happens.”
“Stop it.”
They faced one another for a long moment. Maybe it was her eyes, maybe it was the tone of her voice, or maybe he was just a sucker for tears. Whatever the reason, in that moment, Marko decided he believed her. He picked up the smashed bug.
“This is a listening device. Someone planted it in your bag.”
Katerina took it from him and examined the wires that came off of it.
“That’s the antenna,” said Marko, as if he really knew what he was talking about. He was pretty sure it was, though.
“I didn’t know, Marko. I swear it.”
He studied her expression as best he could in the flickering candlelight. “Do you have any idea who could have planted this?”
Katerina was silent for a moment. Her head dipped. “No. I take that bag with me everywhere.”
“It was sewn in. They would have needed to take it away from you. For at least a few minutes.”
“Maybe at school. Maybe someone took it when I was in class, or eating, and I just didn’t notice it. What happens now, Marko? What do we do?”
Marko had to think about that one. “We lay low. We live in your dorm, finish out the spring semester, and I stay away from the Press Club and the American.”
“And then you leave.”
It was true. Marko would go back to the States. While Katerina would stay here trapped in Georgia. He hated the thought of that. It would be one thing if she wanted to be a part of the revolution, to see it, to help drive it forward, but she didn’t. She just wanted to live, and paint.
“Would you ever want to come with me?”
She cocked her head, incredulous. “To the United States?”
“Yes.”
She was thinking hard, her brow furrowed, her eyes wide. “But I don’t know that they’d let me leave.”
Marko hesitated, and put some thought into what he said next. Worst comes to worst, he thought, even if it didn’t work out in the end between the two of them, at least she’d be safe. “If we were married they would.”
16
They’d just been kids, Mark thought, as he finished the last of his vodka and eyed a guy he was pretty sure had been assigned to watch him.
He hadn’t realized that at the time. He’d thought that he and Katerina had both crossed that bridge from childhood to adulthood years before. But he’d been wrong, he’d still been crossing it, and so had she. They’d been impulsive, and had confused stupidity with bravery, and hadn’t understood real-world consequences, and…
Mark ran a hand through his hair, thinking of that painting again, and of Katerina, and Daria, and Lila, and Larry, and Decker, and all the years he’d spent working for the CIA, and how different his life might have been had he never gone to Georgia in the first place.
The KGB had abducted him later that evening. In front of Katerina. Jack-booted thugs had broken down the door to her dorm room at four in the morning, when they’d both been asleep. He’d been dragged out onto the street, naked. Thrown into the trunk of a car. He could still hear Katerina’s screams and the sound of someone slapping her face.