Whirlwind by Joseph Garber Read Free Book Online

she would never see Russia again.
    Escaping so thorough a search would take more than doubling back.
    Irina thought she knew what that “more” might be. It would be riskier than hijacking a suburbanite’s minivan from a parking lot. Risky enough that she should be armed when she did it.
    Her pistol was in her shoulder bag. Driving one-handed, she fingered open the bag’s brass snaps, wrapping her hand around the familiar checkered grips of a sixty-year-old Tokarev 7.62 mm automatic.
    As she touched it, the blood drained from her cheeks. And she remembered, and she remembered…
    She is fresh from graduation, fresh in a newly commissioned officer’s crisp uniform. Lieutenant’s pips glow on her collar, her cap is squared on her head, and her well-rehearsed words are ready for the speaking.
    A shock: when she enters the apartment, he too is in uniform. The sight makes her falter. As she grew up, you see… she was only a little girl… in her earliest memories, he was always in navy blue, always in a jacket fastened by bright buttons emblazoned with the hammer and sickle.
    There is no more hammer and sickle. It disappeared years ago, the embarrassing emblem of a fallen empire. But that insignia, embossed on polished brass, is always with her. It is his badge, and every time she sees him without it, she is, in some sense of the word, shaken. The two always went hand in hand. He and the hammer and sickle were twin incarnations of all that oppressed her.
    The state. Her father. No difference between them, none at all.
    Seeing him in uniform, yet without his hated insignia, renders her momentarily mute.
    As does his seldom-seen smile. Now he is beaming, mouthing preposterous false endearments. He pulls her close, wraps his arms around her, hugs her tight, and kisses her on both cheeks. He will not stop babbling of the honor she has done him.
    No honor to him, she did it solely for herself.
    Her mouth will not form words rehearsed from the moment she first heard of his treachery, of his contempt, of the humiliation he thought befitted her. But he, filling glasses brimful of vodka, rattles on; and she cannot speak her rage, but only watch disgusted as he hands one glass to each of her brothers, one to a submissive mother standing, as ever, mute in the background.
    One for her, and one for him.
    A toast! A toast to a warrior’s child who has proven the steel of which she is forged!
    She drinks. There is nothing else she can do.
    He rambles on: a military family, through and through. First there were the opolchenie serfs pressed into uniform by the czars; then there were the sergeants, promoted on the field of battle; next the revolution that elevated a sergeant to an officer’s estate. Every member of the bloodline has served the motherland with valor and with honor!
    Vodka flows. There is no end to it, nor to the obligatory cocktail pickles accompanying every glass. She wants to vomit. She will not give her tormentor the satisfaction.
    He is lecturing now, lecturing her as always: There’s a tradition, you know, in this family there is a tradition. Every father gives every son his first sidearm. Here, this is for you. Your grandfather carried it in the Great Patriotic War. Many fascists met death when they faced this pistol; at Stalingrad alone it reduced their ranks by no fewer than seven. Take it, Irina, take it a proud father’s gift to his third brave boy.
    He knew what he had done. Just as he knew she knew, and took pleasure in the knowledge.
    Irina felt a tear burn down her cheek. She swiped it away. The other tears, the ones of fury and chagrin, had been less easily dealt with. She was thankful that she had been drunk, more thankful that she could get drunker because in that way only could she escape, ever so briefly, that maliciously calculated disgrace laid upon her by her father…. Something caught her eye.
    Her head snapped right. She whispered a curse. She was at, and was passing, the exit she wanted. She