Hotel Moscow by Talia Carner Read Free Book Online Page B

certainly put in a request. And also ask for protection.”
    “We need a small army.”
    “The escort from EuroTours is assigned by the Economic Authority. Security is a different story. Obviously, I can’t just hire people off the street.” Amanda sighed. “As soon as we get to the hotel, I will contact the American Embassy, see what they suggest.”
    “May I help? I can make phone calls.”
    “You’ve been through a lot. Let me take care of things. But we could both use a good cup of tea. Will you please ask the dezhurnayia to fill our thermos with hot water from her samovar?”
    The driver turned on the radio again, and Gloria Estefan sang “Coming Out of the Dark.” Brooke looked out the window, her body tuned to the rhythm of the wheels, their syncopated sound broken by the untuned clanking of rusty parts. The streets seemed cold even when filled with people, the pedestrians’ gaits lethargic. Other than an occasional aluminum and glass kiosk, there was no sign of commerce on the boulevards. The buildings, even the magnificent ones, had no store-front windows, cafés, or restaurants. How long would a change take—if democracy won?
    Springs jutted out of Brooke’s seat cushion. She shifted her body to ease her contact points, but could still feel their jabbing. The month before, she had helped Prince Jamal of Morocco buy a Rolls-Royce at an auction. What was she doing on this clanking bus—and in this dammed country?
    Words from Svetlana’s welcome speech crossed her head. “Women have the special compassion to put old grievances aside and find the common denominator of the many things we share, to be friends.” Tears sprouted into Brooke’s eyes as she recalled hugging Svetlana. There had been more hugs today—the well-wishers at the airport, the cafeteria workers, the seamstresses at the factory—than she had received from her own mother over a lifetime. She had connected with these women whose language she didn’t speak and whose wretched lives she barely comprehended. She had been inspired by their valiant hope. If the past of her parents’ generation had come and gone before she was born, now she was staring at an alternate future for these Russian women, a future beyond the current obstacles they faced. Their desperate present shook her, but she had in abundance what they needed to change it: knowledge.
    The dusty, mildewed air in the bus mingled with the aroma of discarded carnations. Brooke struggled with the window’s latch until the glass panel slid down a notch. She sank back in her seat and sipped water. She must remember that she had come here to gather information, to exploit the trip in order to boost her prospects of keeping her job—not to get herself raped, beaten, or burned to death. How could she risk her life for the people who had persecuted her family? She touched her Star of David, hidden under her buttoned blouse. Helping people in despairwas a Jewish value, the rabbi had said just last week. That was what defined her Judaism, not the Holocaust.
    The bus rumbled through a densely inhabited area with wide streets that were strangely almost devoid of people, as if this were a deserted Hollywood set. No patch of grass brightened the exposed dirt, no benches welcomed pedestrians to rest along the boulevards, no stores beckoned shoppers. Brooke wanted to pierce through the massive buildings, right into people’s kitchens, to understand this strange, complicated city whose fierce cruelty still contained a genuine vein of warmth.
     

Chapter Seven
    B ACK AT HER hotel room, Brooke changed into an oversize T-shirt. All her joints ached from the earlier surge of adrenalin. After retrieving hot water from the floor matron, she made tea for Amanda and herself, sat at the desk, and pulled out her yellow pad to write a fax to her parents. As much as she hated telling them where she was, worse would be her vanishing in this vast country without a word. Her father, at least, should know