Galina headed to Sochi. So many tourists went there, even now, thanks to the Olympics, that she believed she could get lost in all the fresh faces. But she would have to spend the night in Voronezh. She found photos on Airbnb of a seventeenth-century monastery that provided a few rooms for “sincere guests.”
She was plenty sincere in wanting to stay there, thinking that nobody would ever look for her in a monastery.
Galina and Alexandra arrived just before dawn. The monastery appeared to have been carved out of solid rock.
She led her daughter, bleary from sleep and sickness, to the entrance, and knocked on a thick wooden door. No one answered.
“It’s early,” she explained to Alexandra.
She leaned her shoulder against the heavy door and pushed it open. They started down a wide walkway. Statues of religious figures, saints, Galina presumed, perched on stone shelves built into the walls. A reliquary with bones and scraps of clothing appeared behind a small square window.
They heard the murmur of chants as a woman in a nun’s habit walked toward them. She asked if they needed help.
“I wonder if we could take a room for the morning. We are weary travelers,” Galina said, falling into a strange speech pattern for reasons she could not explain, except for the stone walls and floor and ceiling. They seemed to demand obeisance to another era. She was too tired to resist.
The nun studied her, then looked at Alexandra. “You are both troubled in your own ways, aren’t you?” she said. Galina had to choke down tears. Again, she didn’t know why. She nodded.
“Will two small beds suffice?” the nun asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
The nun asked for a modest sum, slipping the rubles into a compact leather pouch that hung next to a rosary with a large silver cross. The transaction completed, she led them to the cloister.
Their room was at the end of a narrow hallway. The nun lit a candle on a corner table. It was the only light but for the sun slowly graying the sky.
The sister bid them adieu, backing out of the room with a genial smile.
“Mommy, are we going to eat?” Alexandra asked. “I’m hungry.”
Galina thought her daughter would want to sleep, but it had been a long night with no stops.
“I’ll go ask them for food,” Galina said.
Alexandra tugged her sleeve and pointed to a Bakelite phone, black as the blankets that covered the two small beds.
The woman who answered said she would bring them bread and cheese and butter.
In fewer than five minutes the humble provisions arrived, along with hard-boiled eggs and cold water in a gray ceramic pitcher that might have been as old as the monastery.
Galina thanked the initiate who had brought them the platter.
“How much do we owe you?” she asked the young woman, who shook her head and left quickly.
The chanting increased in volume. Galina realized they must be close to the chapel.
Alexandra picked up a crust of bread. She dropped it on the table. It was so stale it bounced. But she snatched it up at once and broke off the end, chewing it with difficulty. She had lost most of her baby teeth and had the whitest niblets coming in. But perhaps they weren’t quite up to the task of tackling stale chunks of bread.
“The cheese might be easier,” Galina advised. “Or you could dip the bread in water.”
“That’s okay, Mom. It’s really good bread.”
It was good. They ate slowly, deliberately, with no distractions, only the mesmerizing chanting. Amid such peace, Galina found it difficult to comprehend that the world had been plunged into such extreme turmoil. It was even harder for her to believe that Oleg had masterminded the devastation.
When she’d met him at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology seven years ago, she’d taken him for just another handsome, bright young man. And when he’d recruited her to track down the AAC technology—“For the betterment of all humankind,” he’d claimed — she’d been thrilled to take such a daring step to help clean up the atmosphere. She’d hacked scores of emails and articles by scientists before she’d found the startling revelations in a math professor’s computer files at MIT.
Now, she felt her own soul needed saving for the role she’d played. Turning over the math professor’s data to Oleg had led him to Professor Ahearn, and that had resulted in his murder, along with the shooting death of his tortured wife. Their children were now orphans. She looked at Alexandra and could have wept. The notion of penance came to her at almost the same moment she thought of the brief conversation she’d had with a woman who also said she had a daughter. They’d both been circumspect on the phone.
And look at where you’ve ended up, Galina said to herself. She had a strong suspicion the woman was an operative, and almost certainly American. They had great pediatric hospitals there. But that step could get Galina killed or imprisoned for life.
Still, she had the woman’s number. And they had agreed to talk again.
When they finished eating, Alexandra took her mother’s hand. “Come with me. We should go and see them.”
They walked down a stone corridor toward the sound of the chanting. It grew louder, but never harsh.
Entering the rear of the chapel, they saw two dozen nuns seated in hand-carved pews that probably hadn’t been moved in centuries. The women’s voices affected Galina. She filled with emotion as she and Alexandra sat in the last pew, kneeling moments later when the nuns shifted forward.
Galina prayed for her daughter. A new chant insinuated itself into her consciousness, and she joined in. So did Alexandra.
Morning light began to filter through stained glass windows above a rudimentary altar.
Galina saw that Alexandra’s eyes were fixed on a crude wooden cross that was catching the reds and blues and yellows from the windows. The crossbeams were bound with thick rope.
The girl’s eyes soon pooled but she didn’t sob. Tears spilled down her cheeks soundlessly. Galina wiped them away. Alexandra still had her gaze fixed on the cross.
Galina bent close to her. “What is it, my dearest?”
“Mommy, I’m going to die and go to heaven.”
“No, you’re not going to die. I promise.”
“And you are, too,” Alexandra said. “That’s what’s so sad. You’re not even sick.”
PP turned from the video of Dmitri and Galina in the museum. “What do you make of that, Oleg? Second-born son crumples up your picture like it was your head and puts it in the skull crusher. Tell me, what does that mean?”
Oleg looked around. He hadn’t seen Dmitri tonight. The scaredy-cat kid the size of an NHL enforcer was hiding somewhere. Dmitri could make the cruelest charges — with Galina’s help, of course. She probably encouraged him to put the photo in the crusher — and Oleg couldn’t even face his accuser. It was like American Gitmo justice. Disgraceful.
“I think she put him up to it, PP. She has taken off. She’s running away. She’s guilty. The guilty always run like rats.”
“You say that about Galina?”
PP looked ready to shoot Oleg, firstborn son, maybe. Oleg was outraged that he had to fear his own father. Oleg had a gun, but it was in the Maserati. What was I thinking? He’d been in too much of a rush arriving. Special people in Russia got to carry concealed weapons. Oleg was special. But so was PP.
“Tell me where she went,” he shouted at PP, unwilling to back down from the plutocrat. A man had to maintain his dignity, his self-possession.
“She didn’t tell me. She just left.”
“Did you help her? Did you give her—”
“What if I did?”
“That would be a mistake, giving money to someone like her. She needs my help, not your money.”