The Kremlin Games(129)

“We could run, you know,” Anya said. “I’ve done it before. We could go east to the wild lands. Russia doesn’t really control Siberia. No one does.”

“You ran away to Siberia?” Natasha blinked her eyes in astonishment.

“No. I ran away to Moscow,” Anya said. “I wasn’t even a serf. I was a slave. I ran and got lost in Moscow, found any work I could, anywhere I could. My point is we’re a lot better situated now. We have money and can get or forge travel papers. On the other hand, you’re an important person. I just had one slave owner looking for me. We’d have the whole government looking for us. We’d have to go farther.”

“What about everyone else? What about Bernie and Filip?”

“We could take Filip and Bernie!”

“And everyone else? We could run. We could even take Bernie and Filip, perhaps a few others. But what about the staff of the Dacha? We can’t all run. Not everyone would even want to.”

“I know.” Anya looked down at the bed they were sitting on. “But we may not have a choice. I don’t think Cass Lowry will change and I don’t think Boyar Sheremetev will back away from supporting him, certainly not for me and probably not for you. It may be run or submit to Cass. And I’m not sure I could do that, not anymore.”

* * *

Natasha knew that Anya was preparing to run, but took no action either to aid her or prevent her. Natasha couldn’t make up her mind. In a way the Dacha was a very effective cage. Its bars were of duty stronger than high carbon steel. She couldn’t abandon her scientists to Cass Lowry and Sheremetev. They had come here to work for Russia and all its people, to do good with their minds. Natasha knew that view was a bit simplistic, but it was true enough when it came down to it. So she stayed and worked and tried to protect the eggheads and the cooks. The philosophers and the gardeners. And died a bit as the dream she hadn’t even known she was dreaming died around her.

As punishments for idle comments, “wasting time on unprofitable hobbies,” or lack of progress on one of Cass or Sheremetev’s pet projects came down, she tried to act as a buffer between her people and their new masters. But it wasn’t working. Four years can be long enough to learn freedom, but it’s not always long enough for the lesson to stick. More and more the Dacha was reverting to the dog-eat-dog informer culture of the bureaus.

More and more Cass Lowry felt empowered and Natasha had to restrain Bernie and her armsmen several times. Even so, the only thing that kept Bernie alive was that Sheremetev wanted two up-timers at the Dacha. He had told Cass in no uncertain terms that Bernie was off limits. Cass had also been told that Natasha was off limits and that protection was effectively extended to Anya as long as she stayed with Natasha. The only way she had kept her armsmen alive was by ordering more and more of them out of the Dacha.





Chapter 74



June 1635



Cass Lowry was drunk again, Father Kiril noted with concern. So the Dacha, even the guards placed by Sheremetev, walked carefully. Lowry had poor control over his impulses even when sober. He had virtually none once he got drunk—and, unfortunately, he was a mean rather than cheerful drunk.

With someone else Father Kiril might have tried to restrain the drinking, but Cass Lowry had made his contempt for the Russian Orthodox Church quite plain. Lowry seemed to consider himself above any church. All of which meant that when the American went on a drunken rampage, all Father Kiril could do was watch. So he watched and became even more concerned as Cass headed for the apartments of Princess Natalia.

* * *

There was no warning at all. The door burst open and Cass came in, a bottle in one hand and a leer on his face. “Get out of here.” Natasha ordered. “You’re drunk.”

“I sure as hell am. I’m also the boss and you’ve been forgetting the new order. Interfering with my administration of the Moscow Institute of Technology. That’s a better name than just calling it the country house.”

Not a bad translation of the Dacha’s up-time usage, skittered through the back of Natasha’s mind, while the part of her mind that was supposed to be figuring out how to head off the disaster that was Cass Lowry was blank as a new sheet of paper.

Her rooms were being guarded by Sheremetev’s troops tonight. She’d had to send too many of her own away from the Dacha to maintain a loyal guard all the time. They might restrain Cass if she called on them but the fact that he was here at all argued against it. She moved in front of Anya and Cass smiled. That was the moment she realized that Cass wasn’t here for Anya. He was here for her.