"The Kitchen Boy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Alexander Robert)

PROLOGUE

Saint Petersburg, Russia

Summer 2001

Peering through the peephole of her apartment door, the old woman didn’t know what to do. Finally, she cleared her throat and called out in a voice as frail as an October leaf.

“Kto tam?” Who’s there?

On the other side of the thick, padded door, the young stranger, tall and striking, her hair brown and thick, replied not in Russian, but English, saying, “A friend from America.”

Instantly, the babushka’s weary eyes blossomed with tears. It could be no one else. It had to be the girl from Chicago. And realizing it was the moment she had both feared and prayed for, the aged Russian beat her chest in a frantic cross. Next, almost without thinking, her hands worked the crude Soviet lock and she heaved back the door. Fully aware of their miraculous collision of fate, the two women stood in quiet awe.

The American, her eyes shimmering with tears of relief and grief, broke the awkward silence. “Perhaps you don’t realize who I am, but-”

In a language she had barely spoken since before the times of Stalin, the woman strained for the English words, and in a hushed, careful voice said, “I know who you are, dear Katya. Of course I do, and not just from what they write of you in these newspaper stories, either. Konechno, nyet.” Of course not. “No, you should not have come… but I prayed with all my heart that you would, which of course, was so very selfish of me.” She reached out, touching Kate first on the shoulder, then her soft cheek. “Yes, it’s really you, and yet… yet how did you even think to come looking for me?”

Hiding her pain behind a pathetic smile, the young woman pulled a cassette tape from her black leather purse. “My grandfather left this for me.”

“I see,” muttered the babushka with a wise cluck of her tongue. “Now come in, my child. Come in quickly. We have much to discuss and you can’t be seen standing out here.”