Chapter 7 - 6
Kirill’s Rassolnik
1 pound lean beef, cut into bite-size pieces 1 / 4 cup barley, rinsed
1 / 2 tablespoon salt, plus more to taste
1 1 / 2 cups diced pickles (about 6baby pickles or 3large pickles)
4 tablespoons olive oil 3 medium potatoes, diced 2 carrots, 1thinly sliced and 1grated 1 onion, finely diced 2 celery sticks, finely sliced 1 tablespoon tomato paste or ketchup 2 bay leaves 1 / 2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons dill, plus more for serving (optional) Sour cream
In a large pot, bring 12cups water and the beef, barley, and salt to a light boil and cook, partially covered, for 30minutes. Skim off any impurities that rise to the top to keep the soup clear.
In a medium skillet, sauté the pickles with 1tablespoon of the oil for a few minutes on medium-high heat. Add the pickles, potatoes, and carrot slices to the soup pot and cook for an additional 10minutes while making the mirepoix, aka zazharka.
To make the zazharka, place the remaining 3 tablespoons oil and the onion in a large skillet and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the grated carrot and the celery and continue to sauté until the carrots are soft, about 5 minutes. Stir the tomato paste or ketchup into the skillet and add this mixture to the soup pot. Add the bay leaves, pepper, and dill, if using, to the soup pot. Season with additional salt. Continue to simmer for another 2minutes, or until the potatoes are fully cooked and can be easily pieced with a fork.
Serve with sour cream and extra dill, if desired, and eat when hungover or when life is in danger of spectacularly imploding in all directions, while listening to “Wanted”
by Perry Como.
The first knock came as Grace was talking to a shaky-looking Pete by the stairs. “—don’t have to get your father’s side of the story,”
she was saying. “But I thought you might want to, without your mother, while the rest of us are around if you need us.”
“Uh-huh.”
His eyes kept drifting over her shoulder to where stocky, square-faced Mr.Nilsson was twisting his hat between his hands and making awkward conversation with Lina, who had retreated behind her pies as if for moral support.
“I can tell you one thing: your mother is lying when she says your father never sent money for your upkeep. I did a little rifling through her desk—”
Grace waited for Pete to bristle at this invasion of maternal privacy, but he looked too comprehensively shocked to do more than blink. “I found her bankbook—he’s sent checks every single month, and believe me, she’s cashed them, so—”
Knock knock. Grace broke off at the rap on the front door, giving Pete a gentle push toward where his family hovered around the pies. You hurt those two, I’ll kill you , she thought benignly toward John Nilsson, but she had a good feeling. It was Thanksgiving, the holiday that meant good things for family. She threw the door open just as the man on the other side was raising his fist to knock again.
“Mrs.March,”
Xavier Byrne greeted her, expensive overcoat stirring around his knees, his eyes as watchful as she’d ever seen them over a poker table at the Amber Club. “I’m here to see Nora.”
Grace blinked. Did gangsters celebrate Thanksgiving? Cultural indoctrination hadn’t covered that. “Nora?”
And Nora was there, looking wary in her slim green dress but drinking him in, and he was drinking her right back. “Cold drink?”
Grace suggested, just to bring down the temperature before things ignited right here in the doorway.
“Ten minutes, Nora,”
Xavier Byrne said. “If you can hear me out for ten minutes, I’m gone for good. Okay?”
But he only got three, Nora mutely leading him back toward the parlor where the two of them vanished into a whispered conversation, before another knock came at the door.
“Claire,”
Sydney Sutherland gasped, beautiful and bareheaded in a raspberry linen sheath, looking like she’d run all the way here from her old Georgetown address, and in those high black heels too. “Is Claire here?”
And Claire was already shoving past Grace, pulling Sydney inside and into a violent hug.
“I don’t have long,”
Grace heard Sydney whisper into Claire’s red curls. “He’s playing touch football with some friends from Yale, and he took Bear along—I’ve got maybe an hour. I just had to see you, it’s been so long—”
Goodness, all kinds of drama and most of it not even because of meddling , Grace thought, discreetly herding Bea and an avid-eyed Arlene back toward the kitchen to leave the lovebirds some peace in the hallway. “Is that turkey burning?”
Grace said, and she heard another knock, this one at the back door. “What is this, a clown car?”
Grace joked to Reka, reversing into the dining room past the table set with all the good china. “Is someone trying to find out how many people can be stuffed into one house for one holiday?”
She went through the autumn leaf–wreathed dining room toward the house’s back entrance, but Fliss had beaten her there, throwing open the door.
“Happy Thanksgiving!”
Grace heard the Englishwoman sing out in her cheerful voice. “May I help you, Mr.—?”
“McDowell,”
a folksy Iowa voice said. “Bob McDowell, ma’am. Looking for Mrs.Grace March.”
The hallway telescoped in front of Grace’s eyes, darkening and lengthening, suddenly as long as a football field. She began to run, she began to scream, “NO, DON’T LET HIM IN—”
but the corridor just lengthened before her like in a nightmare, and Fliss was already swinging the door wide.
Then the welcoming smile on her face turned to a startled cry, and she stepped back with her hands flying to her throat as blood slipped through her fingers like rubies, and the man on the other side struck the door all the way open with the blade in his hand. A curved blade, curved like a sickle—it was a sickle, Grace saw with crystal clarity, the short-handled sickle that hung on the shed wall in the backyard, the one Pete used to cut down overgrown weeds in summertime. Only now it was in Kirill’s hand. A sickle for a Soviet, dripping red off its edge, as Fliss crumpled against the wall.
A gasp sounded behind Grace and someone—Nora? Arlene?—gave a shrill scream. Kirill ignored them, taking a step into the hall toward Grace. She had forgotten how big he was. Kirill Lensky/Bob McDowell, looking like a retired football player with his big shoulders, his blue eyes and square, all-American jaw, his red Udmurtian hair buzzed in an all-American crew cut. Until you heard the growl in his voice, the growl of a thug from the banks of the Volga.
“Galina,”
he said, stepping forward.
And she bolted.
She bolted toward him, not away, and the false lipstick tube she always kept in her pocket was already in her hand. Hurt him , the thought drove through her, hurt him first and fast . She flicked the cover off to bare the little steel spike, flipping the needle-sharp length of it around in her palm between first finger and second even as her fist clenched, and then she drove the spike into Kirill’s throat, cheek, face, one-two-three. He howled, doubling over, but he didn’t collapse and she hadn’t really thought he would—he was much bigger than she was and they’d had the same training; she’d never take him down by brute force. All she could do was try to knock him off guard.
She yanked him away from the door by the shirt collar and hit him with the spike again, raking his eyes. This time he screamed, lashing out and getting hold of her other wrist. One brutal yank and agony shot up her arm. Grace caught her own shriek of pain before it escaped her teeth and turned into the motion instead of against it, getting a strangely vivid memory of hand-to-hand instruction during her training days: Go with, never against, Comrade Stepanova! She’d never been the best at hand-to-hand fighting; she’d never been the best shooter, either. She’d been the silver-tongued one, charm her weapon rather than killer’s instincts. And charm wasn’t going to save her here, not against Kirill, who had murder in his eyes.
Grace leveraged the twist of his arm, managing to yank her wrist free and slide out of his grip. He was already lunging, but this time she didn’t fly at him; she reversed and sprinted hell for leather toward the stairs, leaving her pumps behind on the floor in the first two hurtling steps. Three thoughts were pounding.
Draw him away from the rest of Briarwood House before he could hurt anyone else.
Make him chase her to the top of the house, up three flights of stairs on his two-packs-per-day habit.
Get far enough ahead so she could free the neat little pistol she kept oiled, loaded, and taped on the underside of her third dresser drawer.
She took the stairs three at a time, mind bulleting ahead of her. Kirill crashed behind, bowling over Reka, whose cane went flying. Grace heard a man shout—Xavier Byrne, Dr.Dan, who knew—and then she was up to the second-floor landing and rounding the post. She’d trudged these flights three times a day for four years and she was only flying faster; behind her, she could hear Kirill wheezing and slowing. Shouting below, screaming from the Briar Club, but she couldn’t spare even a second’s thought for them now.
How did he find me?
She couldn’t spare a thought for that, either, bursting onto the top-floor landing and through the door of her tiny apartment. She slammed the door behind her and dropped the bolt, not that it would hold—two steps across the room and she wrenched the third drawer all the way out and onto the floor. Flipped it over, clawing for the pistol—
Her door splintered, half stove in.
She raked the pistol off the drawer’s underside, thumbed the hammer back. Her hands felt clumsy; how long had it been since she’d done this in earnest? The shattered door crashed open and Kirill bulled through. Grace whipped her pistol up and fired all in one motion.
Dry click. Misfire. She wanted to howl, but instead she talked. “Don’t rush me.”
Talking fast, before he could lunge. “I’ve got you dead to rights, and my next shot kills you. Don’t you move, Kirill. Think about what comes next.”
She didn’t think it would work, but he stopped at once, the sickle swinging in his big hand. In the hall downstairs he’d gone for her in unthinking rage—now he was trapped on the top floor of a house full of people, which certainly hadn’t been his plan, and Kirill had never been good at improvising when plans went south. Most Soviets weren’t. Their training stressed conformity, obedience, not ingenuity. He hadn’t meant to get caught up here, and now all he knew was that he didn’t want her to pull the trigger again and he didn’t want anyone calling the police, either. He stood there visibly thinking, his face and throat bleeding—Grace could see that her little steel spike had punctured the corner of his eye. He looked like he was weeping blood. “You bitch, Galina,”
he said at last. “Why did you run?”
She wasn’t sure she could risk pulling the trigger again—another dry fire, he’d pounce on her. Keep talking, keep talking. “How did you find me?”
“A photograph, some stupid baking contest. I saw it by chance.”
His Russian was clumsy, almost stilted, like Grace’s. Neither of them had spoken it in years; that had been the first thing drummed into the recruits: Never assume you’re somewhere safe and can let down your guard. From this moment on you use nothing but English, until it’s all you’re able to speak and think and dream in. “‘Grace March, Washington, D.C.’—once I had the city and the name, I had you.”
Grace found herself remembering the moment she’d picked that name out. March after the March sisters in Little Women —part of her training had been a reading list crammed with American classics. Grace because... Well, her war-haunted, spy-trained soul had been howling for it by then: a little grace.
“Is Fliss alive?”
The words burst out. “If you killed my friend, Kirill—”
“ They aren’t your friends ,”
he roared, moving toward her. “They’re dirty capitalist whores, moneygrubbing American bitches who—”
Grace fired. Another misfire; this time she felt the round stop in the barrel, dammit all to hell. If she tried again, it might explode in her face, and he was nearly on her, that curved blade in his hand rising. But there was someone standing in the shattered doorway behind him, tall and resolute—Bea, it was Bea, those long baserunning legs carrying her up the stairs ahead of anyone else in Briarwood House. Bea with a terrified face, blazing into the room with hands white-knuckled around her Fort Wayne Daisies baseball bat. Her swing carved a short, vicious arc downward, as a howl tore out of her throat.
The bat crashed into his ribs with a home run crack. Kirill went down as though he’d been scythed, the curved blade flying from his hand. But even as he screamed he was turning, lashing out at Bea, and Grace never hesitated. She scooped the sickle from the floor, whipped it around her former partner’s throat, and slashed with all her weight behind it.
The spray of blood painted her hands, the front of her dress, Bea. It caught Claire and Nora and Reka and Harland, who had just reached the doorway behind Bea. So much blood. The creeping tide of it reached for Grace’s stocking feet as Kirill bled out there on the floor of her green-walled room, his blood so much redder than his hair. She moved back from the liquid crimson edge at her toes, feeling like her head was made of glass. She couldn’t drop the sickle. She knew he was dead—she’d opened his throat nearly to the bone—but her fingers wouldn’t release the handle. She just stood there, gasping a little, looking at Kirill’s empty blue gaze. Better to look there than at the horrified eyes of the Briar Club, of her friends as they realized what she was. For four years she’d welcomed them all to this room, fed them from her mismatched plates, heard their secrets. Now they knew hers.
She looked up at them, blood painted across her face, across the wall vine behind her. A woman in a red dress, a sickle dripping in her hand. McCarthy would have dropped dead of a heart attack at the sight: his much-vaunted Red Menace in the flesh. Grace just felt a rush of weary, dulled shock.
“Well,”
she said, dropping the blade. It clattered loudly in the thickened silence. “Now you know.”
“—calling the police—”
“—not until we know what we’re dealing with—”
“—what are we dealing with? Who do we even call? You think Sergeant Laker from down the block is equipped to handle this, him and his potbelly—”
Harland, Joe, and Xavier Byrne were arguing at the parlor door in low, fierce tones, none of them sure what to do with her. It was, Grace supposed, a real dilemma. She sat on a footstool before the fireplace, watching the blood dry on her hands, wrist throbbing where Kirill had wrenched it, so utterly exhausted she could barely move.
“You’re a Soviet spy ?”
Claire burst out. “What— I don’t even know what to...”
No one did, Grace thought. The Briar Club stood around her at a wary half-room’s distance, in a semicircle like a traumatized book club. Claire and Sydney were welded together at the hands and Bea was pacing back and forth, unable to keep still, limping badly—her sprint up the stairs had torqued her bad knee all over again. Mr.Nilsson had vanished into the kitchen the moment he saw Grace, pulling Lina with him before she could get a glimpse of the blood, saying with surprising authority, “She doesn’t need to see this.”
Pete had gone with them briefly but come back into the parlor, crossing and recrossing his arms, his father’s return officially no longer the most unsettling event of his evening. Reka had slumped down on the nearest couch, looking small and shaky, cursing a bruised hip from where Kirill had bowled her over in the hallway. Nora was cradling a crying, hiccupping Angela so that Dr.Dan could press a compress against the slash on Fliss’s neck.
Grace indicated it with a red-brown hand. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Bubble and Squeak.”
The first thing she’d seen as everyone flooded back down the stairs, unable to stay in that blood-soaked room with a dead Russian spy: Fliss in the parlor, her frantic husband wadding clean towels against her neck. Grace’s legs had given out in relief, sinking her down on the footstool. All the harm Kirill could have wrought—at least he hadn’t murdered one of her friends.
Fliss stared at her, wondering. “The nicknames,”
she said. “The friendship. The suppers, the years . Was it all an act?”
“None of it,”
Grace said, but what reason on earth did they have to believe her?
“Your English is so—”
Claire shook her head.
“My mother was an interpreter in Leningrad,”
Grace said wearily. “She had a well-to-do uncle who sent her to a private school before she married; she had a gift for languages. She was teaching me English before I could walk.”
“Where is she now?”
Bea’s right hand flexed around the bat she couldn’t seem to put down.
“Dead,”
said Grace. “Murdered during the Leningrad siege. She went out to get our daily ration, which was one hundred twenty-five grams of bread per citizen per day, and someone smashed her head in with a brick. All for a few slices of bread that was half sawdust.”
The muttering among the men halted, and Harland came back into the room toward her with quick, angry strides. “What are you here for?”
he demanded, color flaring high in his cheeks. “State secrets? Are you trying to infiltrate Congress or the FBI or—”
Grace laughed. She couldn’t help it. “If I was, I’d have gotten a lot more out of you, wouldn’t I?”
He flushed. Yes, you slept with a Red spy, G-man , Grace nearly said. Get over it. But she didn’t say it, because she still hoped Harland and Bea might work things out someday, and what a thing to think about at a time like this, but she couldn’t switch off caring about her friends just because she had blood drying in her hair. Shocked and angry or not, they were her family, the only family she had left.
Not that they’d believe it now.
“Were you here to assassinate someone?”
Harland went on, voice rising. “Get a shot off at the president? At Hoover, or McCarthy, or—”