None of it matches the profile of a cold-blooded traitor.
Kira bursts through the door as the last student leaves, her backpack bouncing against her shoulders and her cheeks pink from the cold.
“Mama! Masha said I could come to her birthday party next week! Can I go? Please, please, please?”
Daria catches her daughter in a hug and smooths her windblown hair. “We’ll talk about it later, malyshka. Did you have a good day?”
“We learned about volcanos. Did you know that some volcanos are under the water? Like, way down at the bottom of the ocean where it’s super dark? And they can make new islands sometimes.”
“That’s fascinating.”
“And Mrs. Petrova said my drawing of a T. Rex was the best in the class.” Kira sees me lurking in the hallway, and her face lights up. “Pyotr! Do you want to see my dinosaur collection?”
I glance at Daria, who looks like she’d rather I declined. But Kira is already grabbing my hand and tugging me toward her bedroom with surprising strength for such a small person.
“Come on, come on! I have seventeen dinosaurs, and I know all their names and what they eat and everything.”
The dinosaur collection in question is arranged on a low shelf in her bedroom, plastic figures in various poses and sizes.
“This is Rex.” Kira holds up a green T. Rex with tiny arms. “He’s my favorite because he has feathers, see? The movie people got it all wrong ’cause they didn’t know yet, but the bone scientists figured out T. Rexes were actually fluffy. Well, notfluffyfluffy. But they had feathers and stuff.”
“I remember reading something about that.”
“And this is Cera. She’s a Triceratops. She and Rex are best friends, even though in real life, they probably would have fought.” Kira sets them on the floor and reaches for another figure. “This is Dippy. He’s a diplodocus. He’s really tall, but he only eats plants.”
She continues through the entire collection, sharing detailed biographies of each dinosaur and its fictional relationships with the others. I crouch beside her and listen, watching her small hands arrange and rearrange the figures like a field general planning a battle.
“Why do you have scars on your hands?” she asks out of nowhere, interrupting her monologue about a stegosaurus named Sport.
I look down at my hands. The knife scar across my left forearm. The burn marks on my right knuckles. The dozen smaller marks from fights and accidents and one particularly bad encounter with a broken bottle in a Chechen bar.
“I told you. From working.”
“But what kind of work makes scars like that?” She reaches out and rubs one of the marks with a tiny finger. “Mama has scars, too. She doesn’t like to talk about them.” Kira’s eyes meet mine with uncomfortable directness. “Did someone hurt you like someone hurt Mama?”
My stomach lurches, and a lump lodges in my throat. “What do you mean, someone hurt your mama?”
But Daria’s voice cuts in from the doorway before Kira can answer. “Kira, that’s enough bothering our guest. Time to wash up for dinner.”
“But Mama?—”
“Now, please.”
Kira sighs dramatically but obeys, scooping up Rex and Cera before trotting out of the room. Daria lingers in the doorway, and I can see the question in her eyes. How much did her daughter reveal? How much did I understand?
“She’s a good kid,” I offer.
“She asks too many questions.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Daria doesn’t respond, just turns and follows her daughter down the hall.
I retreat to the spare room to make an evening report to Dmitri. The phone rings twice before he picks up.
“What have you found?”
“Nothing definitive,” I admit. “The apartment shows no signs of hidden wealth. It’s filled with secondhand furniture, minimal food, and clothing that’s been mended multiple times. She teaches piano lessons that barely cover her expenses.”
