Page 261 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"Your wife is fucking Pushnoy."

Dimka stared at him, speechless.

"Better you should know," Khrushchev said. "Good-bye." He got into his car and it pulled away.

Dimka sat in the back of the Moskvitch, dazed. He might never see the impish Nikita Khrushchev again. And Nina was sleeping with a stout middle-aged general with a gray mustache. It was all too much to take in.

After a minute, the driver said: "Home or office?"

Dimka was surprised he had a choice. That meant he was not being taken to the basement prison of the Lubyanka; at least not today. He was reprieved.

He considered his options. He could hardly work. There was no point in making appointments and preparing briefings for a leader who was about to fall. "Home," he said.

When he got there, he found himself surprisingly reluctant to accuse Nina. He was embarrassed, as if he were the wrongdoer.

And he was guilty. One night of oral sex with Natalya was not the same as the ongoing affair that Khrushchev's words implied, but it was bad enough.

Dimka said nothing while Nina fed Grigor. Then Dimka bathed him and put him to bed, and Nina made supper. While they ate, he told her that Khrushchev would resign tonight or tomorrow. It would be in the newspapers in a couple of days, he guessed.

Nina was alarmed. "What about your job?"

"I don't know what will happen," he said anxiously. "Right now no one is worrying about aides. They're probably deciding whether or not to kill Khrushchev. They'll deal with the small fry later."

"You'll be all right," she said after a moment's reflection. "Your family is influential."

Dimka was not so sure.

They cleared away. She noticed he had not eaten much. "Don't you like the stew?"

"I'm on edge," he said. Then he blurted it out. "Are you Marshal Pushnoy's mistress?"

"Don't be stupid," she said.

"No, I'm serious," Dimka said. "Are you?"

She put the plates in the sink with a bang. "What gave you that stupid idea?"

"Comrade Khrushchev told me. I assume he got the information from the KGB."

"How would they know?"

Dimka noticed that she was answering questions with questions, usually a sign of deceit. "They watch the movements of all senior government figures, looking for nonconformist behavior."

"Don't be ridiculous," she said again. She sat down and took out her cigarettes.

"You flirted with Pushnoy at my grandmother's funeral."

"Flirting is one thing--"

"And then we got a dach

a right next to his."

She put a cigarette in her mouth and struck a match, but it went out. "That did seem a coincidence--"

"You're a cool one, Nina, but your hands are shaking."

She threw the dead match on the floor. "Well, how do you think I feel?" she said angrily. "I'm in this apartment all day with nobody to talk to but a baby and your mother. I wanted a dacha and you weren't going to get us one!"

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