Page 31 of Ford
When he turned back to her, RJ was watching him. Smiled.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
She frowned.
“Don’t smile. You look like an American.”
She nodded and looked away, and he felt like a jerk.
They got out three stops later, and he pulled her onto a semi-crowded platform in the center of the city. They took the escalator up, then crossed tunnels and descended again, getting on the orange line.
She kept her head down, not even glancing at a couple of militia officers standing guard near one of the elaborate pillars. But she wove her fingers through his, hanging on, the barest evidence of her fear.
They rode the orange line to the ring around the city, changed trains, took that west, got off, and took the red line north, back to the center.
That’s when he noticed them. A couple of guys in black jackets, close-clipped haircuts, and the look of thugs, who got on at Octoberskaya, rode to Park Culturi with them, then followed them through the station.
“We have a tail,” he whispered, leaning close as if they might be a couple. “We’re going to wait until the last moment, then get off at the next stop.”
She nodded. And when the car stopped, acted like she might be staying put.
A business man got on. York glanced at the men standing at the end of the car. Watched the timer click down.
The doors started to close, and he tugged her hand.
She was already on his heels, barely darting through before the doors slammed shut.
He didn’t stop, but turned and headed through the station. Arbotskaya. White arches, red marble wainscoting, and beautiful chandeliers from the 1930s. One of Tasha’s favorite stations.
He ascended the escalator, walking instead of riding, stopping, nearly out of breath, when he reached a woman toting a wire grocery basket.
RJ stepped up next to him, curling her hand over his shoulder, leaning in to share a space meant for one.
“Kto?” she whispered, asking who the tail might have been.
“I don’t know,” he answered in Russian.
She stayed quiet then until they reached the surface and he popped them out into the street.
The streetlights of the Arbat shopping district cast a beauty upon the ancient cobblestones that he once loved to stroll. By day, the street became a tourist haven, with mime artists, watercolorists, caricaturists, troubadours, and dancers performing for rubles. Souvenir vendors sold everything from matryoshka dolls to prints of the Kremlin. What he wouldn’t do for a fresh chebureki, but the food vendors had closed for the night.
Now, York quick walked them down the street, finally ducking into a side road, then back the opposite direction.
“Where are we going?”
He wasn’t exactly sure, his gut guiding him. They emerged out to a park, and he recognized a monument to one of Russia’s literary figures, Nikolai Gogol.
He stopped at the fence cordoning off the marble statue. In the distance, St. Basil’s Cathedral rose in its onion-domed glory, lit up by the lights from Red Square.
“Is that the Kremlin?” RJ asked, nodding to the also brightly lit red-walled fortress near the cathedral.
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard stories, but never…well, it’s different to be here.”
He turned and sat down on the fence. “Stories from where? School?”
“No, actually. My foster sister, Coco. She’s half Russian and lived the first ten years of her life in Moscow. Her mother was a friend of my mother’s, and when she left her husband—a Russian—she moved to Montana. She died when Coco was fourteen, so she moved in with us for a few years. We all consider her a sister. She moved back to Russia a few years ago and we’ve sorta lost touch. I think she lives here, in Moscow, but I’m not sure.”