Chapter 4
4
DARYA
A t 5 a.m. the terminal begins to fill again. I stretch and yawn as if I haven’t had my eyes open and heart thudding for the past few hours. I exchange pleasantries in Arabic with the women beside me, who beam and chatter away.
I can’t help but wonder how long their smiles would last if they knew I was an unwed mother-to-be. Not to mention one who has a river of blood on her hands.
I feel a sudden, visceral longing for Roman, so savage it takes my breath away. The feeling isn’t logical. It’s just there. Like driving along a highway that hasn’t yet been completed and discovering halfway across a bridge that there is no road ahead. Over the past months, Roman has become the road I travel. My direction, my destination, and my traveling companion. His body has been my lodestone, his soul a beacon for my own. Without him I am profoundly, devastatingly lost.
I shiver despite the mild morning.
I buy two tickets to Tangiers, one on the six a.m. ferry and one on the nine a.m. Out front of the terminal, I buy an overpriced knockoff Gucci bag, more pairs of sunglasses, and several designer headscarves from one of the African hawkers. I speak in broken French, using the Moroccan accent I became accustomed to during the months Papa and I spent there, waiting for a boat to Spain.
It seems like a lifetime ago.
The hawker has a friend who exchanges currency. He wakes the man up from napping on the floor, and I change a thousand euros into dirham, the Moroccan currency, explaining that I’m just about to travel home to my family. Then I join the crowd milling around on the docks, eyeing every face carefully, but again finding nothing to cause alarm.
I board the six a.m. ferry and go straight to the bathroom, where I change clothes yet again, this time into shorts and a T-shirt with sneakers. I go back through the crowd and down the gangway, waving my nine a.m. ticket at the bored crewman, explaining in badly accented Spanish that I’m a backpacker who boarded the wrong ferry by mistake. The ticket itself I give to a backpacker, who is delighted to score a free ride.
Another taxi, this time to the bus terminal. I shop in the cheap bulk stores nearby, buying the long embroidered shirts, loose trousers, and sequined sandals favored by Moroccan women visiting Spain. Another five tickets, each to different Spanish cities. A clothing change for each purchase.
I go into the disabled toilet, lock the door, and get changed for the final time, at least for today. When I’m done, the woman looking back at me is almost entirely unrecognizable as the one who fled a ballroom last night.
My hair is in a thick bun behind my head, covered by a neatly pinned headscarf with a discreet Yves Saint Laurent logo. Bright gold earrings in a delicate Arabic pattern hang from my ears. I’m wearing one of the loose, stylish pantsuits over sandals I bought, carrying the large Gucci handbag and a single candy-striped plastic carry bag. I look exactly like every middle-class Moroccan woman straight off the ferry.
There’s only one thing missing.
I grip the edges of the metal hand dryer and take a deep breath.
Come on, Darya. You’ve had worse.
Bracing myself, I slam my right eye into the corner of the dryer.
Giving myself a black eye isn’t difficult. All I have to do is remember Roman’s white-faced contempt when he believed I had betrayed him.
The pain feels justified.
It feels like less than I deserve.
The ferries both leave for Morocco without me.
By the time I board an afternoon bus to the Spanish city of Almeria, I look exactly like what I intended to become: a battered wife, escaping her abusive Moroccan husband.
I curl into the window seat, pulling the headscarf self-consciously over my eye, avoiding the sympathetic glances from other travelers. Nobody talks to me. Nobody wants to be part of whatever mess I’m running from.
Lucky them.
I close my eyes, readying myself for the nightmares I’ve barely managed to hold at bay since I ran from Roman’s accusing eyes.
Twenty-four hours later, I’m sitting on the terrace of a small villa in Granada, a city eighty miles northeast of Malaga. Despite the short distance, I took countless buses, trains, and taxis to get here. I’ve left a labyrinthine trail behind me, one I doubt even Roman’s investigators can follow.
I can’t be found by anyone, and that includes both Roman and Alexei.
It was my father who taught me how to run, and Sergei Petrovsky is a master in the art of subterfuge. If the Orlovs didn’t catch us in all the years we ran together, I’d like to see anyone try now that I’m on my own.
The woman who eventually paid cash for a run-down one-room apartment in the gypsy district of Granada looks nothing like either Darya Petrovsky or Lucia Lopez. The woman sitting on this terrace now wears a hijab and dark sunglasses to hide her bruises. She speaks fluent Arabic but only broken Spanish, and she paid for the villa in dirham instead of euros.
My black eye has swollen impressively. Every time I press my fingers against it I remember Roman’s white-faced contempt as he told me to run. At least the shame I feel fits with my new identity.
The woman from whom I rented the villa took my money with gratitude, sympathy for the bruises, and no questions. I paid double the asking price, and she guaranteed discretion. I’ve paid for a week, but I’ll only stay a day or two.
Keep moving.
I’m holding my two passports. Neither of them are of any use to me, not anymore.
I need to disappear.
For now, that means staying in Spain. After this, in Europe. Crossing borders on foot. Staying in private rooms that don’t require a passport to register.
I open a pack of firelighters and crumble them into a bowl on the table in front of me. I wait until the flames have taken hold before I slowly feed first one, then both of the passports to the flames.
The fire takes them remarkably quickly.
I watch my face shrivel and melt, my two false names disappearing in a plume of foul-smelling black smoke.
I’ve read the letters from Roman and Alexei so often on the interminable bus ride here that the creases are worn smooth. Now I read each of them one last time, savoring each word, committing the contents to memory.
Then, when the passports are no more than ashes, I add the letters to the fire.
Part of me wants to keep them both. Despite what Alexei has done, he is my family. My blood.
And as for Roman . . .
There is no world in which I could ever not love him.
But I’m not sure that I can trust him again either. Roman lied to me about who he was. All this time that I thought I was safe in his care, he was biding his time.
Was our entire relationship a lie? Did he know who I was from the beginning and seduce me on purpose?
It’s hard to believe he could have been so deliberately manipulative, not to mention such a convincing liar. But I’m not naive enough to not see the holes in his letter to me. What he didn’t say shouts volumes. I don’t know how much he understands about the vault, or whether he is planning to try to open it. I’d certainly understand if he felt entitled to whatever is inside it. But his letter says nothing about what his plans are. He says that the Orlovs hunted him for years, but he never mentions if he has what they are searching for. It’s hard not to think that he is still keeping secrets, and that hurts almost more than everything else.
I clasp my hands over my belly and say a silent prayer for our unborn child.
Our Borovsky.
My choked laugh dies in my throat. I chose that name as a private joke. Not so funny, as it turns out. My baby really is a Borovsky.
And now he, or she, is the reason I have to stay alive.
Perhaps the only reason.
For years, all I’ve cared about is finding a way to open my family’s vault. To use the reported treasure inside to reclaim the legacy that we lost the day Vilnus Orlov launched his coup.
But tonight, for the first time in my life, I wish that damned vault had never been built.
All I can see is that it’s torn three families apart.
Mine.
Roman’s.
And the family we might have built together. The family our unborn child will never get to experience.
The flames flicker in the growing night as the letters turn to ash. I’m no longer someone’s sister, daughter, lover, or even surrogate parent figure, if that’s what I was to Roman’s three children only days ago.
I feel as empty as a burned-out husk. As if I, too, could disappear into ash on the wind with barely a touch.
A night bird caws overhead, a lonely, heart-wrenching sound. I sit in the darkness for a long time after the fire has died, silent tears running down my cheeks.