Bombshell Max Collins (best ereader for textbooks .txt) 📖

a tropical river (when the park was open, that is); and Frontierland, with stagecoaches and paddle-wheel steamers. Straight ahead was Fantasyland, the home of Sleeping Beauty and Never Never Land.

“Let us rest,” Nikita suggested.

On the midway, next to a carousel, was the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party attraction, which had caught Khrushchev’s attention—he smiled as he surveyed the surrealistically oversize cups, decorated with modern-art squiggles. And it was there they now rested, sitting in a teacup, whose center was a circular wheel for children to hold onto, when the party was going strong.

Finally, Marilyn broached the subject they had both avoided, the elephant in the living room no one was mentioning (a Dumbo attraction nearby may have sparked this comparison in her mind). And they began to openly discuss … to confront … the assassination attempt that had brought them to the slumbering Magic Kingdom.

“It just couldn’t have been America that did this terrible thing to you,” Marilyn said.

“No?” Nikita grunted a humorless laugh. “America hates me.”

She shook her head. “That’s not true—some people fear you, maybe … but that’s how you want it, isn’t it?”

That made him smile a little; he shrugged a partial admission of guilt.

“Anyway,” she continued, “it’s not our way—assassinations just don’t happen here.”

“Oh? Tell that to your President Lincoln.”

“That was a long time ago, Premier Khrushchev.”

He touched her hand. “Not so formal, please. Call me Nikita. We are friends.”

She placed her other hand over his. “Then you must call me Marilyn.”

“Marilyn. Is lovely name.”

“Nikita has a certain … poetry, too.”

He chuckled. “That is first time I have heard such.”

Somewhere crickets chirped … real ones, not Jiminy.

Tentatively, Marilyn said, “Those men tonight … they weren’t Americans. They were your people …”

“Working perhaps for you.”

Her forehead tensed. “I … I wish you wouldn’t say it that way. It sounds like you think I sent them, personally.”

The sublimely ugly face melted into an apologetic smile. “Sweet child, I did not mean this.”

“I know … I know.” Marilyn shook her head. “And you’re right—someone must have hired those two … the ones I heard talking. But someone else double-crossed them.”

He frowned in confusion; his eyes almost disappeared into his face. “What is this … ‘double-crossed’?”

Marilyn looked up at the sky, and the moon and a million stars stared back; she felt very small, but surprisingly—considering their situation—safe. Their discussion of death and double-dealing seemed oddly abstract.

She told him, “Double-cross is when someone you trust puts a knife in your back.”

Nikita let go of her hand and turned his massive body away from her. Muttering to himself, though still speaking English, he said, “Who could this someone be?”

“In your case?”

He looked at her, mildly surprised she had responded to his rhetorical question as if he’d posed it to her. The premier of Russia normally did not, after all, turn to actresses for political insights.

“Well, let me think for a second…” She placed one platinum-painted fingertip to her lips, and furrowed her brow, a child in class racking her brain for just the right answer.

He patted her hand. “Dear friend, I only meant—”

“My best guess would be Red China.”

The eyes of the fat man sitting in the oversize teacup were large as saucers. Then he threw back his bucket head, and laughed heartily.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“This answer—I am … impressed you would offer your … opinion. But this is not good opinion. Meaning no offense.”

“Not a good opinion, huh?”

“Surely you know that the Chinese, they are fellow communists, our comrades.”

“And here I thought you got it when I explained what a double-cross was.”

The premier’s smile faded, and his eyes narrowed again. “What do you mean by this?” he asked, something sharp in the previously friendly voice.

Marilyn shrugged, folding her arms over her bosom. “It’s just that I’ve found in my life that it’s the people I trust most who end up hurting me.”

Nikita grunted and folded his own arms and lapsed into a brooding silence. Was he displeased with her remark? She decided to change the subject.

“You know,” she said, “I read the speech you gave in Moscow to the Twentieth Congress … after you took over from Stalin?”

He frowned, skeptically. “This is not possible.”

“Oh but it is possible. I read every word of it.”

His mouth dropped open. “Even I,” he said, astonishment widening his eyes, “do not have a complete transcript of this speech. I did not write—I speak for six hours, from my mind.” He tapped his skull with a thick finger. Then he leaned close to her, the eyes in his face like ball bearings. “Where did you get this?”

Another shrug. “From the State Department.”

Nikita just stared at her.

“If you want a copy,” she said, “I could probably get you one.”

His smile was wry but his eyes were admiring, and not just of her beauty. He spoke in hushed tones. “We are first in space, yes. But in spying …” He shook his head. “… you Americans always win.”

Matter-of-factly, Marilyn explained: “I told Agent Harrigan that I just had to read that speech, before I’d agree to meet you… I just had to know.”

He squinted at her, curiously. “Know? Know what?”

She touched his chest, the silk of the pajama top smooth as a baby’s bottom. “What was in your heart, silly.” To this day she wished she’d insisted on such research on the President of Indonesia.

Nikita said nothing, his face empty … and yet filled, for the first time, with a humanity that revealed the man behind the world-leader façade.

Marilyn reached out and took his hand and squeezed it. “Your anguish … it was genuine.” Her voice was hushed, reverent. “I’m not embarrassed to say it made me cry.”

Nikita turned his face away from her. And when he looked back his eyes seemed moist, or was that only the reflection of moonlight?

For several long moments, neither said a word.

Finally, Nikita Khrushchev spoke.

“When I was younger, Stalin was like a father to me.” Another humorless laugh rumbled his chest. “But at end, he was sick … sick in his