Moscow X: A Novel

He brought her to another room, this one longer, with even larger windows shoving out against the sea, parquet floors, a ceiling covered in golden friezes and plasterwork, shimmering golden curtains, and an interior wall flanked by a row of white stucco pillars inlaid with gold leaf. The gold shag carpet swallowed her shoes.

And as she slowed to accept a thumb drive, tucking it smoothly into her jacket pocket, she counted past three and felt something right then, for the first time since joining CIA, a tug back to a few halcyon nights of her youth, when she’d walked to the edge of herself and found that was where she was most alive.

atavistic

They looked happy, like people without secrets. She liked to think they weren’t secrets if he didn’t want to know.

putsch

Sia’s life was a rotation between her office, client dinners, airplanes, and her flat, and she realized she’d lately forgotten how much she missed country where the sky had no ceiling and the land unrolled in all directions. It made you feel wild or free or vulnerable or all of it at once. A sky this open conjured many emotions.

“You fear that I’ve stolen, or am stealing, your kill. But I can assure you, Sia, I am not hungry. I have no interest in the meal, only the hunt. And I do not mind hunting with you. We might even enjoy it.”

THE THEATER HAD BEEN A PRIVATE CHAPEL UNTIL 1949. THE SMELL WAS musty and stale and an iron chandelier hung on a chain from the cupola above. The walls still bore faded frescoes, but the pews had been turned to credenzas running along the sides of the room and during races usually groaned with food and drink.