City of Shadows Read Free Page B

because they then obliged him in their embarrass ment for having been caught staring at it. Their initial reaction always amused him. “Like introducing Medusa,” he would say.
    The matron didn’t spend much time on it; in a hospital like this, there were other horrors. “What can I do for Your Highness?”
    “Madam, here you have unidentified lady patient. With your permis sion, we see her, yes? Maybe she is compatriot of mine.”
    “Frau Unbekkant?” The woman’s lips compressed. “I am sorry. This business is attracting too much attention for her own good. We’re not permitting visitors.”
    Esther watched Nick slide a hand under the matron’s arm and lead her to one side. It was merely a matter of waiting. The woman would do what he wanted; women always did.
    Three minutes later they were on their way through bare, disin fected corridors tiled to waist height in pastel green. Some doors were open, showing people sitting at tables, weaving baskets, or doing jig saw puzzles.
    All very tidy, very decent, very German, she thought. In Old Russia a place like this would have been a snake pit.
    They stopped at double doors with windows that were netted with wire as if against a bomb blast. In the anteroom beyond, a nurse sat at a desk, writing.
    They went in. “These people want to see Frau Unbekkant, Klaus-nick,” the matron said. “How is she today?”
    “No different, Matron.”
    The matron nodded with satisfaction. “She won’t talk to you,” she told Nick. “She’s not said a word to outsiders since she’s been here.”
    “How long?”
    “Two years. Very well, Nurse Klausnick will look after you. I have things to do.” She bustled off.
    Klausnick unlocked the door to the ward, and the noise came at them in a roar—the screechings, screamings, moanings of anxious ani mals in a zoo.
    It was a long, clean room, hot from the sun coming in through barred windows. Antiseptic mixed with the smell of urine. It was full of women. Iron beds ran along each side, and two of the patients were jumping from one to the other, yelling like high-spirited children and being shouted at. Two more were rolling on the floor, pulling each other’s hair.
    Klausnick drew in a breath and roared, “QUIET!” from not inconsid erable lungs.
    Everything stopped—the jumping, fighting, the moaning. Heads were turned to where they stood in the doorway and then, after a while, turned away.
    Klausnick separated the two women on the floor and began pursuing the ones who had resumed jumping. She flicked a thumb toward the bottom of the ward. “Last bed,” she said.
    But they’d already seen Mrs. Unknown. She was the only still person in the room and the only one who hadn’t looked up at their entrance. Her bed was a reservoir of quiet. She’d built a barricade of pillows around it, and they could just see the profile of her face upturned to the ceiling.
    She was aware of them, though; as they approached, she pulled the gray hospital blanket over her mouth and hugged it there with tiny, nail-bitten hands. Huge and very blue eyes continued looking at the ceiling from a little skull like a marmoset’s.
    Nick spoke to her in Russian. “Madam, we have come to talk to you. I am Prince Nicolai Potrovskov, here is my secretary.”
    The woman’s eyes didn’t move.
    He repeated what he’d said in German. There was a flicker, but no response.
    “How old do you reckon, Esther?” Nick said. “Your age, maybe?”
    “Maybe.” The forehead skin was unlined, like her own, but youth had gone out of both of them.
    “Recognize her?” Gently, he disengaged the blanket from the woman’s grip and pulled it down. Immediately, her hand came up to cover her mouth again.
    “Should I?”
    He shrugged.
    A woman had come up, adjusting the band that held back her long, gray hair—she’d been one of those fighting—and stood at the end of the bed. She was tall, bony, and aggressive. “You want to talk to her, you talk to me. She don’t talk