Chapter Text
i.
They are waylaid to Moscow for three days before they are expected to leave by train to Novosibirsk. It is, satisfyingly, snowing when they arrive. Gaby does not know what she expects to find in the city during her first visit, the home base of her enemy, capital of her childhood oppression, home of her illicit lover. But, she did expect snow.
She is less prepared for everything that follows this initial impression. The people she sees in the airport and from the car that is waiting for them look well-fed and well-dressed. They chat casually as they walk down the streets. They wear fur and jewelry. They laugh. They are not as fashionable as the peacocks in Italy, not as blase as the parisiennes in France, not as energized as New Yorkers. The city does not hold the glittering sights Gaby has experienced in the West over the past couple of years, but it is not as far off as she would like.
Gaby’s trained eye spots the officers on the street, both in uniform and in plainclothes, but they are not the domineering statues that she remembers. Most of the buildings they pass are unremarkable, but there are palatial figures dripping bold colors, spires that pierce the sky. Red banners proudly protrude from the tops of high towers. Gaby does not find the fear, despair and ugliness of her past.
This is not the Soviet stronghold of East Berlin. This is Illya’s Russia.
(That point was already argued on the plane—“Is not how it is pronounced, Cowboy. There are no cows in the capitol.”)
The car takes them to a hotel where Illya ushers them to the dining room. Crystal chandeliers hang from the vaulted ceilings. Marble: in the lobby, on the floors, built into the tables, in the columns. Politicians and other high-ranking officials litter the room, laughing and speaking rapid-fire Russian.
Gaby assumes the high-ranking official sitting flush to her elbow is the reason that they are allowed here today.
Napoleon is Napoleon. He flirts, badly, with the waitress.
“The most beautiful women are from Russia,” he says, winking in Gaby’s direction.
She scoffs, but notices Illya tense, notices the way the waitresses eyes linger on him, notices how her spidery legs defy physics.
Illya, for his part, ignores the woman except to order tins of caviar, dishes of borscht, plates of pickled sides and round upon round of vodka. So much vodka. Which they drink out of chilled shot glasses. Gaby raises her eyebrows as Napoleon when Illya orders the tenth round. He only hiccups back.
Unlike usual, Illya matches them drink for drink—but never appears to lose any of his composure. Gaby starts to wonder if he is pouring it into a glass under the table when they aren’t looking. The atmosphere in the low-lit room is jovial.
“You’ve been here before?” Gaby accuses after her shot. Illya nods but looks at the room instead of her.
“A few times,” is all he says.
“Hmm,” she hums. She licks cream from a blini from her finger. Illya tracks the movement with his eyes. “So how are the accommodations? Up to snuff I suppose.”
He shrugs. “I suppose.”
She huffs at his brusqueness.
She is letting the liquor fuel her anger. She is uncomfortable in a room full of KGB. She is stricken by how beautiful Moscow seems to be. She is annoyed that Illya is ignoring her.
She orders the 11th round.
***
The room is not only up to snuff, it is quite luxurious. Gaby muses that she’ll be able to appreciate that more in the morning, when she isn’t drunk out of her skull.
She and Napoleon collapse on the settee in a fit of laughter.
Napoleon goes on, “The KGB come out two hours later with a bear beat to hell. So the bear is yelling, ‘Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit!’”
Gaby dissolves in a fit laughter and fears tears might spring from her eyes. Illya walks restlessly around the room, checking the lamps and electrical sockets, throwing them dirty looks all the while.
“You should stop that. Can be problem here.”
“No, wait, I’ve got a great one about a parrot,” Napoleon rebuts.
“Is not funny.”
“Oh yes it is,” Gaby sighs. “And even if they have bugged us, let them listen. I don’t care.”
To that he says nothing, but his dark silence burns through the room right at her.
“They are all Russian-born jokes anyways,” Napoleon says as he lights a cigarette. “Okay how about this? Comrade, is it true that you collect political jokes? – Yes – And how many have you collected so far? –Three and a half labor camps.”
Their laughter rolls on.
“Yes, we had that one back in Berlin about the Stasi,” Gaby hiccups.
Illya sighs, aggravated, “You should go to bed now, Cowboy.”
“He can stay on the couch,” Gaby says, grabbing the vodka bottle they’d brought with them to the room. She splashes more in both of their glasses.
“I do not think that is appropriate,” Illya says lowly.
“Why? It’s not like there will be anything going on this room tonight he can’t be privy to,” Gaby says brazenly—mean.
Illya balks at her before quickly recovering and stalking off into the bedroom. The door slams with a thud of finality.
Napoleon whistles. “Way to emasculate your man, Gabs.”
Gaby shrugs it off with a sip.
“I think I will turn in. Give you the couch, since it looks like you’ll be bedding down here tonight,” he says eyeing the closed door.
“Oh please,” Gaby argues. “Like he would ever make me sleep on the couch. I should try it just to make him feel bad.”
“Ease up on him a bit, huh?” Napoleon says as he heads toward the door of the suite. “He doesn’t like being here anymore than we do.”
“Doesn’t seem like it,” she whispers to the closed door after he leaves.