Read Online Chains of Ice by Christina Dodd - Free Book Online Page B

woods . . . ?
    Okay. Enough of that.
    She slid the photo back into the pocket and zipped it shut.
    Night was over. The dreams were gone. Sunlight was turning the sky a thin, clear blue, and she let loose her slow rise of exultation.
    Lubochka was taking her out to show her the ropes, and she would soon see a Ural lynx. In the wild!
    She would seize every day of this trip—and would make such memories that when she sat in an office or a boardroom, she could pull them out, polish them off, and remember each gleaming moment.
    She hurried down another flight of stairs to the taproom.
    Lubochka and Mariana were already there, sitting at the end of the long table in front of Lubochka’s computer, speaking in low voices about . . . about Genny, if the way they broke off meant anything.
    She pretended not to notice.
    Lubochka looked her over and nodded. “Good.”
    Genny felt as if she’d passed a test. Lubochka’s instructions had been to wear military-style clothes—heavy cloth khakis, camouflage patterns, and boots over the ankle.
    Mariana rose. “Feeling better this morning? Ready for breakfast?”
    “I’m starving.” Because she’d spent half the night fleeing John Powell with the glowing red eyes, and the other half the night having the best orgasms in the world. She smiled. And blushed.
    Mariana’s eyes narrowed as if she knew, but she said nothing more than, “Have a seat.” She went into the other room and came back with a mug of black coffee and a bowl of oatmeal topped with two eggs and a thin slice of bread.
    Genny pulled up the bench, looked at the food, then at Mariana. “That’s a lot more than I usually eat.”
    “Eat it all,” she advised. “Every observation point is straight up the mountain and Lubochka will work you relentlessly until someone sees the first sign of the big cats.”
    Lubochka grunted and typed on the keyboard in front of her. “That’s what they’re here for. To work.”
    Genny dipped her spoon into the oatmeal and found it wasn’t oatmeal, but buckwheat porridge—very different, very distinctive. The eggs added a familiar flavor; the toast was rough and yeasty.
    “You like it?” Mariana asked.
    “It’s good.”
    “Some . . . They complain because it’s not American.” Mariana indicated her opinion with a wrinkled nose.
    “I’ve been waiting my whole life to eat different foods in a different place,” Genny assured her. “This looks remarkably like my favorite English pub in SoHo.”
    “No. Not a pub. A traktir, ” Lubochka corrected her.
    “Right.” With the morning, the faded brocade curtains were pulled back from the long narrow windows to let in the light. The view looked out at street level, and now and then a pair of leather-laced boots tromped past.
    With a well-honed knife, Mariana cut a loaf of the dark bread into hearty slabs. “In Rasputye, we are still mostly farmers. We found it was not good to depend on the state for support. We are very far from Moscow. We are not ethnic Russians. And in times of trouble, we are easy to forget.”
    “Is that why . . . ?” Genny waved at the corner where Orthodox icons—traditional paintings of saints done on wood and canvas—hung on the wall over a table draped in a red cloth where white candles burned.
    Genny knew the krasnyi ugol , the beautiful corner, held the place of honor in every Russian home. There families kept all that was holy to them, placed on a table covered with a red cloth or on walls painted with red paint. Genny’s studies had told her that the Soviets had replaced those gilded icons with newspapers and portraits of war heroes, yet in Rasputye the krasnyi ugol looked as it had for a millennium.
    Mariana followed Genny’s gaze. “Here, we have kept to the old beliefs. No one from the government has ever had the strength to live through our winters long enough to enforce the party’s orders.”
    “Saints. Icons. Superstitious nonsense,” Lubochka grumbled.
    “It is not superstition to