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He was one of those men who cannot rest until he is the center of all notice, even if it is hostile.
The upshot was that none of them spoke to her, which struck her as altogether sensible.
John Pace had money but had to weigh their needs against the fact that he had a couple of thousand starving Communists to feed. So it was just the kind of mess that Communists loved to argue about in eight-hour meetings. Those deliberations generally ended in deadlocks broken by assertive leaders who used raw power to do whatever they wanted.
Alas, all went perfectly.
The drama surrounding the preparation of each meal was like a Moscow show trial: not actually what it claimed to be, but a stage on which actors could adopt stances, declaim lines, and collect from onlookers political specie. Had she really depended on that kitchen for her daily bread, Dawn might have been persuaded to take at least a bit part.
In theory she was still part of the Wobblies, but they had been split open by factional strife and then scooped empty by government action, and finally supplanted by the much more vigorous and better-financed Communist Party. She knew that working as a capitalist shoe strumpet at the Century of Progress would raise eyebrows among the same.
From time to time, reviewing the events of that summer, she would shake her head in dismay at the sheer amount of time and mental effort that those Communists had poured into the framing of plans. They had even planned their planning, setting up schedules of meetings at which planning was to take place.
Had anyone ever got the giggles in Beria’s office? It seemed unlikely.
But Aurora had already seen enough of death and funerals to understand that it was always thus. You didn’t go to a funeral to break new ground in a friendship. You just showed up, made small talk, nibbled on things, and went home. It was really just a way of taking a census, a head count of who was still alive.
Separate tents and sanitary facilities had been set up for them. Like so much else in the Soviet Union these looked to have been thrown together in a day by men with guns to their heads.
