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Zola is back, but the Soldier is ignoring him. Usually ignoring Zola is difficult. Zola’s presence makes him feel like a lizard is crawling up and down his back, a lizard whose feet leave behind little points of pain wherever they touch.
But today Zola is very sick, visibly suffering, sweat on his forehead and hands trembling. He is so weak that even Andrushka can probably summon the strength of will to put him off.
And he’s brought an apprentice devil with him, a beautiful man with strong brows and a clean jaw and hair that gleams like wheat in the sunshine. He is slender but not skinny: supple, strong. His beautiful light gray suit is cut to emphasize his narrow waist. The Soldier could take him in a fight, but the Soldier once took on a tank and won, so that’s a foregone conclusion.
The apprentice devil shifts his feet. The Soldier lifts his gaze from his legs to his face again. The man had been watching Zola and Andrushka’s standoff with faint amusement, but now he is looking back at the Soldier. He smiles, a slight parting of surprisingly pale lips. The Soldier does not smile back.
“You were supposed to come alone, Zola,” Andrushka says. They are standing in front of the dacha, Andrushka and the Soldier side by side blocking the door, pretending they won’t let Zola in.
“My apologies, Andrei Nikolaevich, but my people insisted I bring him along,” Zola said. He sounds craven and cringing, submissive. It’s a front. He usually gets his way. The meek shall inherit the earth, Grisha used to say of Zola. After the gulag, the seminary language of Grisha’s boyhood started drifting back.
“Who is he?” Andrushka asks.
“He’s my political attaché.” Not an apprentice devil after all, then. Not a bloody-handed scientist; a mere apparatchik. “His name is – ”
“Apollo.” The golden-haired man supplies the codename smoothly.
Andrushka jumps at the unexpected crack of the Soldier’s laugh. The Soldier is surprised himself.
Apollo smiles. His teeth are bright and white and blinding.
***
“Let me kill Zola,” the Soldier says. He is sitting on the kitchen table, drinking tea with cherry preserves. He holds the cup in his metal hand so it won’t shake.
“You can’t kill Zola, Soldat,” Andrushka says. “We owe him so much.” He is drinking tea too, though he is sitting in a chair. “Get off the table.”
The Soldier stays where he is. “As you’ve gone to all the trouble of waking me up,” he says, “I ought to kill someone. And Zola’s right here. I’ve been telling you for years, he’s an American spy.”
“Andrei Nikolaevich, you shouldn’t have woken him up just because Zola asked,” Pelageya reproves. She is the housekeeper at the dacha. She has been here since 1945, when the Soldier first arrived. The Soldier never heard her speak till the second time he was thawed out, in 1956, but she has gotten over her shyness with a vengeance. “You can’t let Zola operate,” Pelageya says. “Not with that tremor in his hands.”
“I’m not going to let him operate,” says Andrushka. He sounds plaintive.
Andrushka said that last time. He ended up giving Zola permission to operate on the Soldier’s shoulder without anesthesia. Zola just asked and asked and asked, and eventually Andrushka cracked.
“They’ll blame you if he kills me on the operating table,” the Soldier says. “And if he doesn’t manage it by accident with those shaking hands, you know he’s probably planning to do it on purpose as soon as he’s gathered enough information to make his own supersoldiers for the Americans.”
“I’m not going to let him operate!”
“An army of supersoldiers marching on Moscow,” the Soldier says. He cracks a sunflower seed between his teeth and expertly spits the hull at Andrushka. “They’d blame you for that too.”
Andrushka rubs at the spot where the sunflower hull hit his neck. He doesn’t respond.
“No spitting in my kitchen,” Pelageya says. “Get off the table, Soldatchka.”
The Soldier does. He steals a tea biscuit off Andrushka’s saucer. There is an entire plate of them on the table, flaky and sweet and bursting with raspberry jam and walnuts and raisins. “He put a tracking device in my arm last time,” the Soldier reminds Andrushka. “The Americans would have been able to follow me everywhere if I hadn’t found it.”
“I know,” says Andrushka. He puts his head down on the table.
“If you won’t let me kill him, at least we ought to keep him here,” the Soldier says. He doesn’t want Zola at the dacha, but the man is dying – the Soldier can smell it on him – and he likes the idea of Zola dying alone and miserable, far from his home. Pelageya would cook Zola all the things he hates. “Why let him bear tales back to the Americans?”
“I think he’s still a Nazi,” Pelageya puts in.
“I know!” yells Andrushka, and he rattles his cup in its saucer and stalks out of the kitchen. He can’t deal with them anymore. They’ve driven him away.
“Have another biscuit,” Pelageya tells the Soldier. He does. He will regret it if there’s an operation.
She’s packing up a basket: bread, hard-boiled eggs, a sausage, fresh tomatoes (it’s tomato season. Last time the Soldier was awake – two days ago; four years ago – it was the dead of winter). A dozen more biscuits. The tea tray will be nearly empty by the time it reaches Zola and Apollo. “I want you to bring me some berries,” she says. “Grigorii Mikhailovich showed you where the berry patch is, didn’t he?”
The biscuit sticks in the Soldier’s throat. He nods.
She smiles reminiscently, like this memory has just come to her. “I remember you two coming back with baskets of berries, singing Kalinka at the top of your lungs like a couple of drunkards, and neither of you drunk at all.”
It feels very recent to the Soldier. Over twenty years have passed, but he has only been awake for a few scattered weeks in that time. He sips his tea to try to push the biscuit down his throat, but he can’t swallow that either. “I don’t want to talk about Grisha,” he mumbles.
Pelageya puts the rest of the tea biscuits in his basket. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Soldatik,” she scolds. She pushes the basket across the table to him. “Bring me some mushrooms. Now go on with you. I don’t want you back till dinner.”
The Soldier hefts the basket. Its weight is nothing to him. “Talk Andrushka into letting me kill Zola.”
Pelageya makes a rude raspberry noise with her lips. “You’ll never get a chance,” she says. “I’ll poison Zola’s soup at lunch.”
Pelageya will never poison Zola’s soup. The Soldier will never be allowed to shoot him. They smile together ruefully.
***
The Soldier used to spend a lot of time in this forest with Grisha. They always had a few days’ holiday after missions to make sure he went back into cryo in top condition.
Andrushka has not bothered the two times he’s had the Soldier out.
If Andrushka does give Zola permission to operate, the Soldier will kill Zola after all. There is nothing Andrushka can do that is worse than turning him over to that shaky-handed butcher. The Soldier is simply protecting a valuable state asset from a spy and saboteur.
With that decision made, the Soldier tries to enjoy his little half-holiday. He eats the bread and tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs, and slices up the sausage with a few fancy slashes of his knife, the way Marusya taught him in the Ukraine; she was their cook and their wetwork girl. The Soldier admired her work. Sniping is his specialty, and it’s neater and easier to hide, but getting close enough to knife someone takes guts.
The woods remind him of Grisha, the knife of Marusya. Petya always longed for hard-boiled eggs.
He picks some berries and finds some mushrooms for Pelageya. But he can’t think of anything to do after that. He finds a comfortable spot under a tree for a nap in the dappled shade and sunshine.
They had different birds in the Ukraine. The birdsong still reminds him of Agnessa.
He wishes Andrushka would let him kill Zola. He wants to go on a mission somewhere, any mission, he doesn’t care, something to fill his brain.
There is something – no, someone – crunching through the underbrush nearby. The Soldier opens one eye. Apollo is standing in the forest, a few splinters of light catching on his hair. He is looking at the Soldier, and when he sees that the Soldier is looking back, his gaze becomes more deliberate, sweeping along the length of the Soldier’s body.
He’ll do.
“Phoebus Apollo,” the Soldier calls. He props himself up on his elbows. “Where’s your lyre?”
Apollo laughs and plops down beside him on the short soft grass. He lies down, hands hooked behind his head, and smiles at the Soldier. His eyelashes hang low over his eyes. “You know English?”
The Soldier doesn’t remember where he learned it, but that’s true with a lot of things he knows. “I know French and German too,” he says. “And Polish and Czech.” Or he can stumble along in the last two, anyway. I can take a man out with a head shot at three hundred yards, he wants to brag, but even if Apollo is a mere apparatchik, he’s still an American spy. “I have a better name for you,” he says instead.
Apollo props himself up on his elbow, smiling. He’s very close. “Oh?”
The Soldier lies back on the grass. “Ganymede,” he says.
Apollo laughs. He’s so close that his breath is warm against the Soldier’s face. The Soldier doesn’t like the way it feels on his eyes, so he closes them, and is therefore taken by surprise when Apollo steals a kiss.
It’s what he’s been angling for. But he feels suddenly raw, abraded, as if Apollo had stripped away a layer of his skin; as if Apollo had stolen Agnessa’s last kiss off his lips.
Then he comes back to himself to find that he’s straddling Apollo, pinning both wrists to the ground, ready to punch his face in. Apollo looks up at him, unafraid. Interested, even. The Soldier snatches his hands off Apollo’s wrists. This is so stupid. Agnessa’s been dead for – fuck, it’s been two decades now, decades. Kisses don’t linger that long.
Apollo slides out from under him. They’re facing each other now, both on their knees. Apollo’s smiling again, that bright white smile. “Maybe I should’ve asked what you’d like,” he says.
The Soldier shakes his head. “I ought to head back to the dacha,” he says.
“C’mon,” Apollo urges. He lifts his hand, pressing it over the plane of the Soldier’s stomach, running it over the ridges of his muscles through his shirt. The Soldier swallows. The touch is gentle, pleasant. It jangles. “I know you want me,” Apollo says.
There’s a hint of laughter in his tone. The Soldier bristles. Apollo’s tone softens, turns coaxing. “C’mon,” he says, and he slides his hands up under the Soldier’s sweater, pressing his palms against the Soldier’s bare stomach. His palms are lightly calloused. He slides them up the Soldier’s chest, over his breast, and the Soldier scoots away. There are only a few inches to scoot before the trunk of a birch tree stops him. Apollo pauses, starts to pull away, and the Soldier grabs his forearms and holds him there.
They stay like that a moment, Apollo’s warm hands unmoving against the Soldier’s chest. Then, very slowly, Apollo slides his hands back down. He lays one on the Soldier’s inner thigh. The Soldier presses the heels of both hands into the soft leaf mold for balance. His head swims.
Apollo rubs the other hand over the Soldier’s crotch. He’s hard already. It doesn’t take much. “Let me get you off,” Apollo coaxes.
“Go ahead,” the Soldier says. Gasps, really, and Apollo is laughing at him again, a silent laugh that is mostly in the quirk of his smile. The Soldier doesn’t like it, shoves the side of Apollo’s head, but that just makes Apollo laugh out loud and the Soldier doesn’t know how to make him stop without making him go away, and he wants Apollo to stay.
Apollo is kneading the Soldier with both hands now, through his pants. He unbuttons the fly, and then – the Soldier accidentally whacks his own head against the tree, he’s so startled – takes the Soldier’s cock in his mouth. It’s filthy but it feels good. And it frees Apollo’s hands: they’re kneading the Soldier’s thighs now, stroking up under his shirt, around his back, the Soldier can’t keep track of them.
He wants to stroke Apollo’s golden hair, thinks perhaps he ought to stroke Apollo’s hair, to let Apollo know that he’s having a good time. But he’ll lose his balance if he lifts a hand off the ground. He’s shivering. He tightens his hands in the leaf mold, but there’s nothing to hold onto, just last autumn’s crumbling dead leaves, and he thinks he might shake into pieces.
He doesn’t, quite, although it feels like he might when he comes. Apollo keeps the Soldier in his mouth, swallowing and swallowing, and the Soldier feels empty and hollowed out when he pulls away. Apollo’s light gray suit is still clean.
The Soldier lies down on the soft old leaves. He pulls Apollo up by the collar of that beautiful light gray suit so Apollo’s head rests against his stomach and wraps his legs loosely Apollo’s torso, and holds him in place. Apollo has his hands under the Soldier’s shirt again, drifting up and down his sides. The summer sky is dark blue and cloudless through the birch leaves. The leaves are beginning to turn yellow.
The Soldier is stroking Apollo’s soft hair. He has already been doing it for a while when he notices. He stops.
Zola will be taking his apprentice devil back to Hell with him. The Soldier will never see him again.
The Soldier disentangles himself. “Go back to the dacha,” he tells Apollo.
Apollo blinks at him, sleepy-eyed.
“I have a nap to finish,” the Soldier adds irritably.
Apollo laughs. The Soldier throws a pinecone at him. Apollo does not stop laughing, but he goes.
It is still light when the Soldier wakes up from his nap, but that means nothing. Evenings last a long time this far north. Zola might still be waiting.
The Soldier gathers more berries, more mushrooms. He heads back when dusk sets in.
Zola is already gone. Apollo, too.
Pelageya hands the Soldier a dishtowel when he gets back to the dacha. “Don’t let Andrei Nikolaevich see,” she says, and only then does he notice that the skin on his face is stiff with dried tears. He does not remember crying.
***
“I would have liked to do some final measurements,” says Zola. They are driving away from the dacha. “If only they had let us wait. Of all the times for Mr. Boykov to grow a spine…” The truck bounces over a rut. Zola’s face goes gray and sweaty. “You didn’t find Sergeant Barnes in the woods?” he asks.
“Not a trace,” says Alexander Pierce. He picks a shred of dead leaf off his lapel. “Not a trace.”