justlikewedo: Okay, no more cliffhangers. Oh wait, maybe this chapter has a tiny cliffhanger, but I hope you forgive me (folds hands in anticipation). Enjoy this next chapter, and thanks for the review.
shariena: Yes yes, I updated, see? Thanks for the review.
meadow567: I didn't even notice that error in Chapter 4. Thanks for pointing that out. Truth be told, at that point I just wanted Jim to get a point across, so he mixed up his facts a little. We're all human, right? Enjoy this new chapter, thanks for the review.
Okay, this time, as I was writing, the muse decided to pump me full of more ideas than I could sleep on, so this is now a double update. Please enjoy :)
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Let it go, let it go
This is smaller than you know
It's no bigger than a pebble lying on a gravel road
Let it go, let it go
Got to leave it all behind you
Give the sun a chance to find you
Let it go
Let It Go- Great Big Sea
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The plane ride back to Moscow was the longest ride Tanya had ever taken. Getting off the plane, she stepped into the airport, grabbed her bags, and took a cab to the arena.
This arena had the feel of a morgue. It was dark, even colder than the university's, and Tikhonov's office was cold and empty. He looked like Herb on the ice, but he was shouting worse than Herb ever had.
Bold as she was, she still shivered as she climbed the bench and waited until Tikhonov skated over to the boards and glared at her.
"Who the hell are you? This is a closed practice!"
Her Russian certainly came in handy now.
"I'm Tanya Kovalevna," she answered, using her father's last name from thirty years before.
"Ah, so you are the one I was told about."
"Told about?"
"You have been sent by the Americans to spy!"
"No, I am here by my own account," she answered. "I came to find someone, and to ask for a position with this team."
"What could you possibly do for us?"
"Press."
"We do not speak with the media!"
"You may not, but that is my job," she told him. "I am skilled in both English and Russian, and I am more than capable of dealing with any unpleasantries that may be hurled toward the team."
Tikhonov still did not look convinced.
"If you like I can act as a translator."
"We speak English just fine."
"Alright," she breathed, exhausted. "Look, I understand that you think I'm a threat, but I swear I am not here for the Americans. I am not trying to find your weak point."
Again, he glared at her.
"All I'm asking is that you give me a chance."
"Chance to what?"
"At least let me stay for this practice. If any reporter comes to the door, just let me deal with them. If you don't like how I go about things, then you can tell me to go home."
Tikhonov cocked his chin toward her. A woman asking to be part of the team? How dare she?
"Fine," he hissed. "What else did you want?"
"I want to speak to Tretiak."
"Why?"
"Because I have something important to tell him."
"What could be so important that you cannot tell me first? My players talk to no one during a practice."
"I have a letter from my father that was addressed to him that he never received. I think it is appropriate that he knows what happened."
Begrudingly, Tikhonov called Vladislav out of the net, replacing him with Vladimir Myshkin (Tanya had done her research on the team). Tretiak skated to the boards, lifting his helmet off so that he could look her in the eye.
"Good God, what do you want?" he whispered, clearly not happy that she was standing behind the boards.
His words died on his tongue as she held up a photograph. "Who is this?" she asked.
"Myself..."
She nodded, then holding out a letter. "You remember that. Good, memories are tricky things," she reached into her pocket. "This... I found this as I was going through a box in a cupboard earlier this month."
"Why should it matter to me?" Tretiak asked her, taking off his gloves.
"It is addressed to you," she told him, the Russian she spoke at home clearly working in her favour. "Your name is Vladislav Tretiak, yes?"
"Yes..."
"So this is yours. It is a letter from my father."
Tretiak's face contorted in confusion. He reached out and gingerly took it from her hands.
"Go ahead, read it," Tanya insisted. "It won't bite you."
If this was the only way to get closure for what her father had done, and a way to secure a position with this team, she was going to do it.
Realizing that this girl was serious, the normally calm goaltender's hands shook as he unfolded the letter. His eyes went wide as he read its contents.
"This is true?" he asked her as he looked up.
"If it were not, I would not be giving it to you!" Tanya nodded again. "Vladislav Kovalev was as much your father as he was mine."
Tretiak shook his head. "I refuse to believe it!"
"For God's sake, you're 28 years old! Stop acting like a child!" she scolded. "I suppose you want more proof?" she reached into her purse and produced a small envelope. "I thought you might act like this upon finding out, so I did some more digging in that box I found." Opening the envelope, she grabbed:
"Look here, your mother sent a copy of your birth certificate, there are pictures of you at ages 1, 2, 3, all the way to the age of 5! Oh, and let's see here! Could it be? Check the date on that letter!"
He did, but still he did not wish to believe that this girl he had never met before could indeed be his sister!
"This could be a copy! I want to speak to him!"
"Not a chance, Vladislav!" she stopped him. "Two days after that letter was written I was born, and that night, July 24, my mother had just put me to sleep in bed. I was only a few hours old, there was no room at the hospital. Anyway, my mother came back into their bedroom and found him face down on the dressing table, his gun fallen from his hand!"
"You still have had a richer life than my own!" Tretiak argued. "At eighteen I was chosen to play for the government, Soviet Union, and if I do not play I die!"
"Oh you believe so, hmm?" the rage boiling over. "You believe your life has been difficult? Vladislav Kovalev left us, referring to you and your mother, and my mother and I nothing. Because of his misdeeds my family looks upon me as dirt! Because I look exactly as he did! I was the child he never wanted, he even expressed that to you in that letter!" She paused to catch her breath, and still she was not finished. "My mother blames me for my father's suicide, because he never really loved her! He loved your mother! He wished an abortion upon Natalia, that is my mother's name, saying it would have been better if I had never been conceived!"
His mouth dropped open, though there was no empathy in his eyes.
"She kept me close to her all my life, thinking that I would somehow find out about what he had done! And now I can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror. That's why I came here, Vladislav, to tell you the truth! Do you need me to go into more detail? Because I will gladly do so, see how you like it then!"
Upon hearing the racket cease, Tikhonov skated over to the boards, sent Tretiak back on to the ice, and stared Tanya in the face.
"If any of that was true..."
"Every word," she insisted.
He nodded. "I can see that you certainly have the attitude that I am looking for," he waited, sizing her up and down. "Yes, I believe I will keep you..."
Her eyes lit up.
"But not as a press representative."
Her eyes narrowed.
"I want you as a doctor's assistant."
"But... I have no training in medicine!"
"No need, in name only, you are a doctor's assistant. If you wish any other position, then you may walk out the way you came. These are my terms, I will not yield. And yet this way, you are behind the bench. This is what you wanted, yes?"
She nodded, unable to speak.
"Good. Now, I certainly hope you have a dress shirt and pants, as you must make yourself presentable as part of the staff."
"Yes, I figured as such."
"Okay," Tikhonov told her. "In three days we are playing the United States team in New York, and you must be present. You understand, yes?"
She nodded, only able to watch as the coach skated back on to the ice. Walking out, bags in hand, it was only then that the reality of what she had done set it.
She was part of the Soviet Union hockey team now. She was no longer Tanya Burnaby, but Tanya Kovalevna, leaving all she knew behind.
A needle in a haystack for sure. Jim Craig would never find her now, but it was best it stay that way.
If only for three more days.