Chapter 13
Carter
Yaroslavsky Station, Moscow
Eighteen months earlier
Carter’s head pounded in time with the trumpet in the brass band on the train platform.
The station was noisy enough without a goddamn fanfare, but he suspected the musicians were hired to conceal the hubbub of the peasants boarding regular trains elsewhere.
No conductors’ whistles and teetering piles of suitcases here beside the Imperial Princess, just softly spoken attendants in blue and gold uniforms and white gloves handing out welcome champagne.
He sidestepped a provodnitsa carrying white flowers to the restaurant carriage—a bunch so enormous it looked like a walking bouquet with liveried legs.
The last of Carter’s group had been escorted off the platform’s red carpet and into their Royal Carriages, where their luggage had already been unpacked, pressed, and stowed in gleaming walnut dressers.
The concierge team at the hotel had, of course, laundered and pressed everything before they’d packed it, but no one dared risk an unsanctioned crease.
The logistics of getting his tourists from the hotel to the train sometimes felt like those of a minor European royal moving palaces.
Though their bulkier souvenirs and artworks were airfreighted to the U.S.
, there were always towers of designer luggage to stow aboard.
Not that the One Percent saw any of that.
As far as they knew, they swept through life with just a Louis Vuitton carry-on.
Carter rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. The day had felt three times as long as usual, and he’d had to make five times the effort to act as the professional, efficient tour guide when really his thoughts had been consumed by Nika.
Welcome to the rest of his life. Would he ever find out what happened to her? He stepped onto the train through a non-red-carpeted regular door and headed for the staff carriage. That was it. He’d taken his last step on Moscow soil.
Outside his berth, he leaned back on the internal wall of the corridor, staring out the velvet-draped window to the platform, where the band was blasting its last, triumphant notes.
The train whistle sounded, breathy and hollow.
The second he left Moscow, he abandoned any hope of helping Nika.
He let his head fall back onto the polished wood wall.
She could well have already gone underground, but his contacts might at least be able to reassure him she hadn’t been picked up by the FSB upon leaving the hotel.
He could count on Randolph to be no help—his coded requests for a meeting today had been ignored.
“Are you okay?”
The train’s resident pianist approached, carrying a satchel. Carter nodded as she passed.
No, he was not fucking okay. He already had one missing woman in his life.
He could quite possibly go insane with two: their last words rolling around in his head, the what-ifs invading his thoughts for hours at a time—days, sometimes.
And sure, he wasn’t in love with Nika, so it wouldn’t be the same as with Vanessa, but he was responsible.
And like with Vanessa, would he always wonder if he could have done more?
Screw it. He grabbed his carry-on bag from his berth, strode down the passage and let himself out as the second whistle blew. First stop: Nika’s apartment, though he’d have to be careful. A provodnik called to him in Russian, the words muffled by the train’s engine, but he got the gist.
And then another voice. “Zdravstvuy, moyo solnyshko.”
Carter swiveled so fast he almost fell. “Nika?”
She was hurrying along the platform, clutching a blue overnight bag, wearing a cream coat and scarf.
Her normally tamed hair was messed up, her face was drawn and she wore no lipstick, though the customary heels—the red stilettos—tapped along the concrete.
The provodnik wasn’t shouting at Carter—he was shouting at Nika.
“Darling,” she said as she reached him. She placed her cold, bare hands on each side of his face and kissed him briefly on the lips.
“We are married,” she whispered. “I hope you don’t mind?
” She held up an envelope. “I have a marriage certificate, recognized by both our countries. Spousal visa for the USA. Tickets through to Beijing and then America. I did not get a ring for you—I figure you are okay with the one you have. Don’t look so worried—it is genuine, all of it. We will have no troubles.”
“How—? What—?”
“I am not as helpless as you might think.”
“I’ve never thought that of you.”
“Ah, but I was dispensable. So, I made myself indispensable, sorted out a few things standing in my way.”
The guard shouted again.
“Come on, husband. Don’t just stand there. Time to go to America.”
“Nika, what did you do?”