Conspiracy by Dana Black Page A

had won at the Moscow Olympics because of her skill, daring, and strength. Even the men had watched in astonishment when she had first gone to the high bar and uncorked the Romanova Dismount, a high arc featuring a triple-and-a-half somersault in midair before the triumphant knees-and-ankles-together landing on the mat. 
    More than a year later, a sixteen-year-old Katya had gone back to the high bar for her final event at the World Championships in Ottawa; her own gold medal was assured, but she needed a 9.75 or better to preserve victory for the Soviet women’s team. Knowing that she had cracked open a stress fracture in her ankle with her last leap from the pommel horse, knowing that after she soared high in the air and “came down from the rafters,” as the columnists liked to write about her dismount, the ankle would crumple under the instant she landed, she still went with the triple-and-a-half again to end her routine. She soared high and landed cleanly, and then faltered at the impact as the pain hit. She raised herself up, balancing on her one good leg to stand, back arched and arms outstretched, as nerve endings blazed white-hot in the flesh that the broken ends had severed. She could not move.
    When her teammate and best friend, Nelli Kim, saw the agony in Katya’s dark and brooding eyes and came running out to the mat to help her to the Soviet bench, Katya collapsed into her friend’s arms. The Canadian crowd realized something had happened. Those closest to the high bar saw the trickle of blood that had started down Katya’s heel. The steady cheering suddenly hushed. Then, when Katya reached her team, the judges put up her score on the electronic board: a 9.80. The crowd came to its feet. Supported by teammates on either side, Katya turned and waved, and the applause became a vast, swelling roar that thundered around them, on and on as if it would never end.
    But for more than a month now, Katya had been planning to leave it all behind.
    Her earlier refusal to be interviewed by Rachel Quinn, and her subsequent talk with Sharon Foster, had been calculated steps. At seventeen, she knew a little of the West. She had missed the tour of America that was to follow the Ottawa championships because she had been sent home for treatment of her fractured ankle, but she had traveled to other countries and had picked up American gossip from her teammates and from articles and ads in the few American magazines they had been allowed to bring home. 
    And she knew one thing with utter certainty: she could not stay in Russia. If she was ever to escape the tight security web that held her now, she would need to be unshakably convincing when she talked with Tamara. If Tamara picked up any suspicion, any hint of her intentions, Katya was finished.
    She had seen it happen once before, in Ottawa. She remembered the breakfast where Elena Matrova did not appear; the perfunctory explanation of a sudden intestinal illness from Pyotr, their coach; the stone-faced, secretive smugness of the guards, who had seen during the night when others had taken Elena away. And she remembered, later that evening, Tamara’s casual questions after they had gone to bed. What were Katya’s plans for the future? Was she looking forward to seeing New York next week? Did she want to take their free afternoon tomorrow for practice, or possibly to do a little shopping in the Ottawa stores? Katya’s answers had been straightforward and innocent. Although she had been afraid, she knew she had nothing to hide.
    Now she knew otherwise.
    She stared at the lighted streets below her, waiting for the moment when she would see the decadence in the colorful movie billboards, the cynicism behind the glitter that lured the masses and fleeced them of their meager wages. When she saw that, she would be ready.
    The moment did not come. Instead, Tamara’s robust knock sounded on the bathroom door, and Tamara’s thin, reedy voice, more than usually solicitous: