The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(38)

“You are worried . . . about your wife and your son?”

Jenkins nodded. “And about this weather.”

“You’re lucky,” the woman said. “To have someone to love so much.”

Jenkins hadn’t thought of it that way. He corrected the steering wheel when the car shuddered from another blast of wind. “Let’s hope the wind dies down,” he said. “I’m not sure we can drive much farther if it doesn’t.”

“We have no choice. If we stop, we will freeze to death. I didn’t come this far to freeze to death in my car, and I suspect you did not as well.”

“How far are we going?”

She looked at him from the passenger seat and shrugged.

“Another need-to-know basis?” Jenkins said. “Really? If we get caught now, they’ll catch us both.”

“The Black Sea.” She flipped down the visor and checked her eye in the illuminated mirror. Her skin had started to discolor, yellow and dark purple around the edges, but the swelling had been curtailed by the bag of frozen vegetables. “There is small town where friends keep a safe house in times of need.” She flipped up the visor.

“Are these American friends?”

“They are friends to anyone who opposes this regime. Once we are there I can make arrangements to have you taken out of country.”

“What do you mean, me? You’re not coming?”

“Russia is my home, Mr. Jenkins. I have lived here all my life. I have no intention of leaving now.”

“If they figure out who you are, they’ll torture you for information about me and the seven sisters.”

“You don’t know anything more about the seven sisters than they already know,” she said. “Neither do I.”

“They’ll torture and kill those you love.”

“I love few, Mr. Jenkins. My parents are dead. My only brother is dead. My marriage ended many years ago.”

“Do you have children?”

“No.”

Jenkins had not seen any photographs in the woman’s apartment. “Why did you do this? Why are you working for the CIA?”

“It is long story, Mr. Jenkins.”

“And we have a long drive,” he said.

After a silence she said, “My brother is the reason I do what I do.”

“Did someone kill him?”

“The state killed him. They killed what he loved, what he lived for. My brother took his own life.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was many years ago.”

He let a moment pass. Then he asked, “What was his love?”

“The ballet,” she said softly. “The Bolshoi.”

“That’s how you knew the building so well. He danced for the Bolshoi.”

“No. He never did. That was his dream. That was his love. You see, Mr. Jenkins, for many years, after my parents divorced, my mother would take my brother and me to the Bolshoi on nights that she performed. She was not one of the stars, but she worked regularly in the cast. She did not make enough money to have someone watch us. I used to explore backstage, to imagine that I was living other places, other countries. I had to use my imagination, because Ivan would watch almost every performance. I used to get mad at him. I would say, ‘Ivan, it is the same show tonight as last night and the night before and the night before. Come. Let us play.’ But Ivan loved the Bolshoi more than anything in the world, and he wanted only to someday perform as my mother did. He worked very hard for that opportunity. When he surpassed what my mother could teach him, she saved every ruble and begged and pleaded to get him into the prestigious Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow. The academy is almost as old as your country, and it has produced some of the finest dancers the world has ever known.” She paused. Jenkins heard the wind howling outside the car. Then in a whisper she said, “My brother would have been one of those dancers. He had the drive, the ambition, and he had the talent.”

“What happened?” Jenkins asked.

“My brother fell in love,” she said. “He fell deeply and hopelessly in love with one of his instructors, a married man many years his senior, and this man led Ivan to believe that he also loved him. He told Ivan he could be instrumental in Ivan’s career, that he could get Ivan leading roles in some of the most prestigious shows in all of Russia.”

Jenkins sensed what was coming.

“But he was using him,” the woman said, “along with several other students. When he’d had his fill, he discarded Ivan as if he was trash. In his anger, Ivan made the mistake of threatening to expose this man as a homosexual. You see, Mr. Jenkins, Russia is not so accepting as in your country, not even today. Back then, it was worse. The man went to Ivan’s instructors and told them Ivan did not have what it takes to dance for the Bolshoi. He said he had told Ivan this, and that Ivan had threatened him and made spurious allegations that this man was a homosexual. Ivan was expelled from the academy.”

“What about the other boys? What about the others this man was abusing?”

She smiled but it had a sad quality to it. “They saw the handwriting on the wall, as you say in your country. They saw what happened to Ivan. They weren’t about to make the same mistake. Ivan was alone with his allegations and with his failure. He was alone with the knowledge that he would never dance for the Bolshoi, or any other company. Devastated, he climbed to the roof of the Bolshoi and jumped to his death.”