Summer leaned over to Faith and whispered, “Do we really have to have a tea party? Can’t we get on with this? We have to plan how to get out of here. I don’t want to stay in one place too long.”
“You’re from the Ozarks. Act like it. We have to do some small talk before we ask for help. We’re asking for big favors here, so play along. We’re safe for now.”
Svetlana set the cups in front of Faith. She recognized the tea set as Central Asian. She had seen countless Uzbek ones painted with the repeating white and indigo blue abstract in the shape of ripe cotton, but this set was extraordinary. Faith picked up a cup. A wreath of cotton blooms framed a painting of Lenin, but the Soviet hero’s skin was darker than usual and his eyes were small slits. His facial hair was more reminiscent of Genghis Khan’s Fu Manchu mustache than Lenin’s pointy Vandyke. Arabic script was scrawled above the portrait. “Exquisite. Where’s it from?”
“You tell me.” Svetlana started to place her hand on Faith’s lard-smudged shoulder, but leaned on the back of her chair instead. She turned toward Summer. “Of everyone I know, Faith has the most discriminating appreciation of these treasures.”
“I can see how it takes someone very special to get into this stuff,” Summer said. Reagan licked his pant leg.
“Reagan, where are your manners? Go to your rug. Now move along.” She pointed to the corner.
Reagan held his tail low as he climbed onto a Muslim prayer rug woven with a portrait of Stalin. Summer raised an eyebrow.
Svetlana noticed his reaction to Stalin’s image and said, “Don’t get me wrong. I hate the communists like everyone else-after all, I am a Soviet citizen-but it was such an exciting time in the household arts.”
Faith turned the cup in her hand. Dust coated the white interior. “Clearly Central Asia, most likely Uzbekistan. The Arab script dates it before the mid-twenties-Lenin after 1917. It could even be from one of the city-states after the communists took over, but before the USSR swallowed them. Bukhara? Samarkand?”
“Khiva is my educated guess. Most assuredly from the independent Khorezm Soviet People’s Republic, circa 1923, before Lenin annexed it to the Motherland. I have the entire set, including the serving platter.”
“I might be able to arrange for some chef’s-quality All-Clad pans in exchange for these.” Faith walked over to the sink and rinsed the cups. “You did get the Williams-Sonoma catalog I sent with Ian last month?”
“I loved it. I’ll never understand why, as one of the world’s most advanced countries, we can’t produce decent cookware.” Svetlana poured brewed tea into the antique teapot. “I’ve always wanted a set of the French Le Creuset pots-you know, the bright enameled ones.”
“Hey, I don’t mean to be rude here, but is this really the time to play Let’s Make a Deal? As it stands right now, we can’t get ourselves out of the country, let alone take some fancy cups out of it.”
“There’s always layaway.” Faith smiled and turned toward Svetlana. “Three-piece Le Creuset pot set for the complete tea ensemble. Deal?”
“Five-piece. Plus the five-quart stockpot.”
“Three pieces including the stockpot.”
“That will fetch you the set sans serving platter,” Svetlana said.
“You can’t break up a set like that and you know it. Okay, but only because I owe you for all of this. The five-piece set, including the stockpot.”
“Agreed.” Svetlana carried the silver teakettle to the table. She poured cold tea with her left hand and the hot water with her right, serving Summer first. She scooped red marmalade with a silver dessert spoon. Summer slid his hand over the cup to stop her, but was too late. Marmalade plopped onto his fingers.
Faith offered no resistance to the marmalade. She started to take a sip, but the cup burned her fingers, so she picked it up again by the rim. “We’re in trouble, Sveta. Bad trouble.”
“As bad as the time when you were detained in Omsk?”
“It was Tomsk, and that was nothing compared to this.” Faith fished the sterile needles from the pot with a hemostat. She gave Svetlana a brief overview of their predicament while Svetlana threaded the needle.
Svetlana turned to Summer. “Do you require something for the pain? I don’t have much, so I reserve it for those who really need it.”
“Your dog might need it someday. I’ll be fine.”
“Would you like a shot of vodka to take the edge off?”
“Thank you, but, all things considered, I need to stay alert.”
“Come on, tough guy. You’re allowed.” Faith found a bottle of vodka in the freezer and splashed some into his empty teacup. “Drink.”
Summer downed it. “Okay, now’s as good a time as any.”
Sveta cut away jagged dead skin, then grasped one of the needles with a needle driver and plunged it deep into the gash.
“Dammit, girl!” Summer gritted his teeth. “From the looks of this place, I thought you were an antique dealer. I wouldn’t have guessed you’re a doctor.”
“I’m chief of medical staff at the Moscow Zoo. Don’t worry. I stitch up big animals all the time.” Svetlana smiled, revealing a mouthful of tarnished silver crowns. She pierced a fat globule and Faith turned away.
“I was hoping you could pull off another one of your miracles and help us get out of here,” Faith said.
“On such short notice, I can probably get you as far as East Germany,” Svetlana said. “By the way, the ice cream was heavenly-better than the Mövenpick you brought two years ago. Now, I’m assuming you’ve got passports hidden somewhere in that container of frightening dinnerware Ian brought me.”
“No, we need papers. And the GDR’s no good. They know me.”
Summer’s voice was strained. “I thought you could get anyone and anything out of there. East Berlin’s at least Berlin. Let’s go there. I like your home-field advantage. There are even permanent American military missions there. American troop convoys pass through East Germany on their way to Berlin all the time.”
“Getting out’s not the problem. It’s getting in.” Faith swirled the tea in her glass, the fruit fragments circling in a tiny whirlpool. “We don’t have time to get Hakan to make papers for us, and I’ve never found a reliable local source for documents here that wasn’t hooked into the KGB.”
“He’s in Berlin. How would you ever get something from there?” Summer said.
“Clipper Class. I could have you a Big Mac here tomorrow afternoon from Rhein-Main if you wanted it, but that doesn’t help us get out.”
Svetlana tied off the first layer of sutures with a single hand.
“Given the circumstances,” Faith continued, “the only option I see is to cross weak points in the border. I know one along the Turkish frontier, but it’s grueling.”
“That’s NATO. I like it.” Summer bit his lip from the pain.
“I’ve done it and I didn’t like it. The mountain passes might still be closed by snow,” Faith said.
Svetlana batted her eyes, flashing the heavy orange eye shadow that matched her bright lipstick. “I could get you into Iran through a sturgeon boat on the Caspian Sea.”
“Caviar’s tempting,” Faith said. “But I can’t handle the chador. Head-to-toe black is definitely not my thing. I couldn’t bring myself to do it in Berlin where it’s at least chic. Iran would also mean a high-mountain crossing of the Turkish border to get away from the Ayatollah. I don’t like multiple borders.”
“Agreed we go direct into a friendly.”
“Too bad Gorbachev’s trashed the economy and they can’t afford to have the Finns do construction for them above the Arctic Circle anymore. When they were building projects like Kostamuksha and the Svetogorsk pulp plant, Mama loved to use commuting Finnish workers to smuggle us and her religious propaganda into the Soyuz. I’m sure we were the only females of the non-working girl variety who ever got through that way.”