“I still don’t imagine you teaching children, luchik,” Nina observed, curling her legs under her catlike. She was never there for Ruth’s lessons; evenings were always her shift following Kolb. “Is very—word? Tame? Domestic?”
“Ruth’s a nice child. Children like her make me think about the future.” Nina tilted her head, inquiring. Ian tried to elaborate, steering the Ford through a dilapidated suburb. “She was born during this last war, and thank God she had far better luck than those poor children Lorelei Vogt shot by the lake. She’s alive to play music, grow up whole and healthy. Other children born when Ruth was will grow up to start more wars; that’s the way of the human race, but Ruth won’t be one of them. She’ll bring music into the world instead. She’s at least one thing that’s right, going forward. Building a generation is like building a wall—one good well-made brick at a time, one good well-made child at a time. Enough good bricks, you have a good wall. Enough good children, you have a generation that won’t start a world-enveloping war.”
“A lot to think about a child who can play a few scales.” Nina slanted him a look. “Is something you want? Children?”
“Good God, no. I find most children bloody annoying.” A thought struck him. “You aren’t trying to tell me something, are you?”
“Der’mo, no.” Nina waved a hand, and Ian exhaled. They’d been careful, but accidents happened. “I don’t want babies,” Nina went on, matter-of-fact. “I never did. Is strange? It seemed every sestra in my regiment wanted babies.”
“I think people like us do not make for good fathers and mothers. Always on the hunt—”
“And we prefer hunt to babies.”
His wife had said we. Ian grinned.
A long exhausting drive, no answer at the house where they knocked, several more hours loitering around a Pennsylvania suburb waiting for the occupants to return . . . and then the shake of Nina’s head as a stout balding man and his gray-haired wife returned to the house, hatted and respectable and probably bad customers, but not the bad customer Ian was looking for. They went through their little act anyway, so Nina could get her Kodak shot, but this was officially another useless road trip. Ian didn’t punch the steering wheel this time when they got back into the car, but he did lean back and press his eyes closed in weariness. “Florida next,” he said flatly. “I can’t say it’s ever been on my list of places to see before I die.”
“Tvoyu mat.” Nina sighed.
“Indeed,” Ian said, turning back for Boston. It would be pitch-dark by the time they returned, even with these long summer days. A day to sleep off the drive and then make a decision whether it would be cheaper to drive to Florida, or take the train. “Or we fly,” Nina wheedled. “I borrow a plane from Garrett Byrne’s little field, is easy flight.”
“You can’t just borrow a plane like borrowing a cup of sugar!”
“We lock him in closet,” Nina said reasonably. “So he can’t say no.”
“Fuck your mother,” Ian said, laughing despite himself. “No.”
The trouble didn’t come until they stopped to eat. Twilight was falling in long purple shadows, and as they slid through the outskirts of a derelict mill town several hours outside Boston, Nina insisted on stopping. “I eat something or I eat steering wheel.”
Ian parked at the nearest restaurant, an establishment named Bill’s, which made the diner where they spent so much time watching Kolb’s apartment look like a palace of haute cuisine. “Let’s not linger,” Ian murmured, eyeing the crowd of diners. There were a good many men with beers in front of them, shooting not terribly friendly looks at the newcomers.
The waitress gave a flat stare as she took the order, eyebrows rising at Nina’s accent. “Where you from, ma’am?”
“Boston,” Ian said at the same time Nina said, “Poland.” The waitress stared some more. Ian stared back coolly. “Two hamburgers, extra ketchup,” he repeated, and she took it down with another sidelong glance. Nina seemed more amused than anything, leaning past Ian to direct a long look at a beefy fellow giving her the eye.
“I wash up,” she announced and rose to stroll unhurriedly between the grimy booths. Two men in steel-mill boots said something to her Ian couldn’t hear, though he could well imagine. Nina laughed and said something long and staccato, accompanied by a hand gesture. The two men bristled, and she sauntered on into the washroom. One of them rose and lumbered over toward the seat Nina had vacated. Ian sat back, unfolding his arms across the back of the booth.
“Your wife talks funny,” the man said without preamble.
“She’s Polish,” Ian said.
“I met plenty of Polacks during the war,” he persisted. “They don’t talk like that.”
“You’ve traveled all over Poland, have you? Personally experienced the rich variety of regional dialects from Poznań to Warsaw?” Ian employed his most contemptuous drawl. “Do piss off.”
The man’s brows lowered. “Don’t tell me to piss off.”
Ian stared at him through half-lidded eyes. “Bugger off, then.”
Nina’s voice came behind him. “Is problem, luchik?”
“No,” Ian said without shifting his gaze. “No problem at all, darling.”
She slid past the beefy fellow into her seat, looking utterly relaxed. Ian supposed that when one had looked Joseph Stalin in the eye, belligerent drunks from western Massachusetts failed to impress. “We make Boston by midnight?” she asked as though their visitor were invisible. “Is very slow, driving these trips. I still say we borrow a plane.”
“She don’t sound like no Polack,” the beefy man muttered, returning to his table with a dark look. Ian released his breath as their hamburgers arrived, staying on guard even as Mr. Beefy and his two friends rose and left. Nina was still getting odd looks—even in a prim blouse and skirt, she didn’t quite look like the average tourist. Maybe it was the unblinking stare with which she returned those furtive looks, or maybe it was the way she ate hamburgers, which put Ian in mind of film reels about the eating habits of cannibal tribes in Fiji.
The waitress stiffed them on the bill when she made change, but Ian didn’t quibble, grabbing his fedora and taking Nina’s arm. They stepped outside into the street, now fully dark, and Ian wasn’t surprised to see three figures step out of the shadows.
He tensed, shifting onto the balls of his feet. At his side he could feel his wife relax completely, body flowing into stillness. Ian saw she was smiling.
“Can I help you?” he asked the three men coldly.
“I met Russkies in the war too,” the beefy man said, exhaling beer fumes. “She talks like them, not like a goddamn Polack. Is your wife there a Commie?”
“Da, tovarische,” Nina said, and everything happened at once. The beefy man moved toward her; Ian stepped into his path and threw a right hook against his jaw. The man yelled, his friend behind him yelled too, and lunged at Ian, taking him around the ribs in a bull’s rush. Ian heard the unmistakable snick of Nina’s straight razor unfolding.
“Don’t kill anyone—” he managed to shout, before a fist smashed against his side and took his breath in a huff, and the beefy man threw a wild punch that glanced off his ear. Ian could see flashes of Nina struggling with the third man, who had got her in a bear hug and lifted her off her feet. Ice-cold fear and white-hot fury swamped Ian, even as he saw Nina’s blond head snap forward and catch her attacker in the nose. An answering bellow split the night. Ian drove a boot into the beefy man’s shin before he could wind up another punch, then slammed an elbow into the kidney of the man who had Ian around the ribs. Finally wrenching free, he saw Nina’s razor hand whip round viciously fast, opening a slash through shirt and skin on the arm holding her off the ground. The man’s bellow scaled upward into a shriek, and he dropped Nina in the gravel. She caught herself, pushing off the ground, and caught the man’s backhand across the face.