Mirror Image

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

It was easy for Peggy to get out of the Hermitage.

When the shots were fired on the staircase, rumors erupted among the striking workers that the Army was coming and the gathering was going to be broken up. The crowd quickly began to disperse, then rejoined almost as fast, like mercury, when police began to rush inside and leaders realized that the gunplay had nothing to do with them. The mass of workers then sloshed toward the Hermitage, clogging the main entrance where there were no longer any guards, walking and tripping inside, causing panic among tourists trying to get out, and drawing the guards back again. They used nightsticks and rigid forearms, hands pressed knuckle-to-knuckle, to protect the art and drive the strikers back.

Peggy left as a panicked tourist.

The day was growing dark, and once outside Peggy made her way to the Nevsky Metro stop. It was crowded with rush-hour commuters, but the trains came every two minutes and, paying her five kopeks, she was able to leave shortly after arriving. From there, it was a short run across the Neva to the Finland Station, which made stops in Razliv, Repino, Vyborg, and Finland.

Private George was already there, sitting on a wooden bench in the waiting room, reading an English-language newspaper, a plastic bag of souvenirs at his side. She watched him after showing her visa and passport at the ticket window and purchasing passage to Helsinki. He would read for a minute, look up and around for a few seconds, then read again.

Once, he looked up for several seconds longer than usual. Not at her, but she was certainly in his range of vision. Afterwards, he got up and walked away with his newspaper and postcards and Hermitage snow globe and other mementoes. That was to let her know he had seen her and wouldn't be watching anymore. Once he was gone, Peggy walked over to the central kiosk and bought English and Russian newspapers of her own, several magazines, and sat down to await the midnight departure of the train.

Security was no tighter than usual at the train station, events in Moscow and Ukraine obviously consuming the resources and attention of the rank-and-file militia. Peggy boarded the train without incident after presenting her credentials and leave papers at the gate.

The train was a modern one, brightly lit with faux-plush seats in the coach which were narrow but soft, to make unsophisticated travelers think they're riding in high style. Though Peggy couldn't stand the ambience here or among the crushed red and yellow velvets of the lounge car, neither her aesthetic disapproval nor the pressure of the last few hours showed on her relaxed features. Only when she was in the airplane-style rest room, checking her clothes and flesh for spots of the dead woman's blood, did she allow herself a moment of release.

She leaned on her hands on the stainless-steel sink, shut her eyes, and said in a voice below a whisper, "I did not go to seek vengeance, but it's mine and I'm comforted by it." She smiled. "If there's parole in the afterlife, sweet love, I promise to be on my best behavior to get from where I'm going to where you've surely ended up. And thank Volko. What he did for us should put him at the feet of God himself"

Several times during the journey, Peggy bumped into Private George, though the two of them didn't speak other than to say "Excuse me" when they passed in a snug corridor. Though they had been able to get out of Russia, that was not to say there weren't spies on the train who might not have a good description of them and would be looking at couples or watching men and women traveling separately. For that reason, Peggy spent as much time as possible hovering around a group of Russian soldiers in the lounge car, contributing comments now and then to suggest that she was one of them and even allowing one of them to come on to her to give her a guardian angel if she needed one. Upon reaching Finland shortly before dawn, she gave the soldier a false phone number and address as the two passed through customs. A verbal declaration was sufficient to get Peggy through, though the Russians were treated to a thorough hand-luggage search.

Peggy and Private George fell in side by side as they walked briskly into the street. The Englishwoman squinted into the sun as it poked its orange crown into the new day.

"What the hell happened back at the museum?" George asked.

Peggy smiled. "I forgot, you didn't know."

"No, I didn't. I kept imagining that scene in The Guns of Navarone where the woman spy bought it."

"I pretended to trip down the stairs," Peggy said,

"When the woman showed her hand by running after me, I had to cancel her. I used her gun on a spetsnaz officer who seemed to feel that he could take a few bullets and still wring my little neck. He couldn't. There was a lot of confusion after that, and I just slipped out."

"They'll never make a movie out of your life," George said. "No one'd believe this."

"Life is always more interesting than the movies," Peggy said. "That's why they have to make the damn things forty feet high."

The two chatted about possible departure plans, George deciding that he'd take the next flight he could get on, Peggy saying that she wasn't sure how or when she was going to leave Helsinki— that all she wanted to do right now was to walk and feel the sun bake her face and avoid any closed space that reminded her of a midget submarine, the backseat of a car, or a cramped train.

The two stopped walking in front of the Finnish National Theater. They looked at one another with warm smiles and soft eyes.

"I confess I was wrong," Peggy said. "I didn't think you'd be up to this."

"Thanks," George replied. "That's encouraging, coming from someone with so much more experience, someone so much older."

Peggy was tempted to throw him on his back the way she had when they first met. Instead, she offered him her hand.

"The face of an angel and the soul of an imp," she said. "It's a good combination, and you carry them well. I hope to see you again."

"Ditto," he said.

She half turned, stopped. "When you see him," she said, "the chap who grudgingly allowed me to join you, thank him."

"The team leader?" George asked.

"No," said Peggy. "Mike. He gave me a chance to take back some of what I lost."

"I'll tell him," George promised.

And turning to the sun like a moth to flame, Peggy walked down the empty street.