“And all for what?” Alexandre asked. “It didn’t change a thing. They died believing they were defending a legitimate government from an illegitimate one.”
“But they revolted against Yeltsin?”
“Yes, but he had illegally abolished parliament, taking power for himself under the guise of democracy at a time when no one understood what democracy really meant. He didn’t have the authority to do what he did, but he eventually received the support of key generals, which in this country ultimately determines if you win or lose. The sad truth is that we all lost.”
Jonathan saw pain in Alexandre’s eyes. “And which side were you on?” he asked, his tone deliberately non-judgmental.
Alexandre leaned forward and swung his arm at the corner of the closest billboard. “Dmitri, my nephew,” he said, tapping a small black and white photo of a short-haired boy who looked not a day over eighteen. “I was both on his side and on Yeltsin’s.”
“Torn loyalties?”
“Yes,” Alexandre said, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette. “Torn by pragmatism, pessimism and the faintest of hope for the future. You see, we’re all Russians. One thing we have done so well, for so long, was to kill our own people, to create irreparable tragedy to our own identity. We don’t seem to learn from the past.”
“Now,” Alexandre began. “I must prepare you for your Kremlin visit.” They drove a few blocks until he pointed at a building. “There, we’ll quickly go in, and then we’ll head to the library.”
The two men faced a nondescript concrete block, which had what looked like a small store at street level. As the men strolled into the store, Jonathan realized it was something of a cross between a liquor store and a bar. He observed the dozen men lining up at the counter, not a single person speaking.
Alexandre leaned into Jonathan and whispered, “Watch this.” He walked a few steps further to the edge of the counter, glanced at the patrons to his right and then brought his middle finger to his neck. He tapped the side of his neck twice and then raised two fingers in the air. Another man, standing a few feet from Jonathan, then raised his index finger high above his head and then looked at Alexandre.
The man working the counter approached with a bottle in hand. Alexandre paid him and the stranger next to Jonathan paid Alexandre for the portion of the bottle he wanted to drink, their only communication being eye contact and money changing hands.
Alexandre pressed his thumb against the bottle. “There, one-third,” he whispered to Jonathan before bringing the bottle close to his face. He then chugged the drink until the liquid had emptied to the level marked by his thumb. “Now, your turn,” Alexandre said, handing the bottle to his American colleague. “It’s okay; it’s only vodka.”
Jonathan gazed at the bottle. It was early afternoon and the last thing on his mind was to risk losing his faculties. Especially knowing that he was about to sneak into the Kremlin in a matter of hours.
Alexandre grabbed Jonathan’s hand and made him hold the bottle just as he had seconds ago. “Mark the spot and drink. This man next to you is thirsty. He gets the last third of the bottle. Now, drink.”
Jonathan did as he was told. The alcohol left a burning trail down his esophagus, and his stomach began to warm. “I’m not used to drinking like this,” Jonathan said.
Alexandre chuckled. “I wanted you to see a typical way that older Russians get their drinks.”
Jonathan exhaled as if he were a dragon, the smell of alcohol permeating his immediate surroundings. He looked around and saw everyone else doing the same thing: chugging but not conversing.
“Drinking is a serious thing here, my friend.”
Jonathan shook his head and followed Alexandre out to his car.
* * *
“Everything will be fine,” Alexandre said, putting some change into the parking meter.
As much as Jonathan distrusted Alexandre’s blind optimism, he was willing to accept it today, just this once, to tame his anxiety about the risky plan they had concocted.
Jonathan had slept barely three hours, his sleep interrupted by nightmares about Linda. He had paced about his room to wear off the tension. He remained perplexed. Fearful. He’d spent the early morning piecing together what he’d collected so far. Perhaps he’s still alive, Jonathan thought, before feeling skepticism retake the helm of his confused, tired mind.
To paint an even rosier picture, Alexandre pulled out a letter from his jacket, waved it proudly at Jonathan, and said, “This is all we need to get into the right part of the library. Trust me.” But Alexandre then told Jonathan it was a forgery. The letterhead was a cut-and-paste work by a part-time graphic artist and the text was drafted from memory based on an original Alexandre had used a year earlier.
“And if they find out it’s fake?” Jonathan inquired.
Alexandre smiled. “I’ll bet you the person working the front desk is either an old woman who can barely see her hands or an incredibly horny biksa who is damn tired of her man, if she has one, and will overlook anything in return for attention.”
“Biksa?” Jonathan asked.
Alexandre scratched his chin and thought for a moment. “A woman who, you know, goes around.”
“A slut,” Jonathan said, happy to add to Alexandre’s English lexicon.
They walked one block, turned the corner, and headed to the end of the next block.
The Russian State Library was at the intersection of Vozdvizhenka and Mokhovaya streets, a heavily-trafficked area facing the Alexandrovski Gardens adjacent to the Kremlin’s northwest wall.
Jonathan had a good picture of the layout etched in his mind. Alexandre had also made it a point to drive twice around the block to further familiarize Jonathan.
“The underground passageway runs under there,” he’d said, pointing over the car’s dash while on Mokhovaya Street. “About twenty to thirty meters below. The area is full of passageways—sewer systems, drainage tunnels and bomb shelters, in addition to the Metro tunnels. Some of them are makeshift homes for gypsies, refugees, drug addicts and other squatters.”
He’d also passed onto Jonathan the rumor that buried somewhere under the Kremlin was a medieval library built by Tsar Ivan the Terrible for his wife, a princess from the last Byzantine emperor, after which Jonathan reminded Alexandre that he was claustrophobic and didn’t care to know how deep, secluded or small the labyrinth of tunnels were.
Alexandre and Jonathan walked briskly over the snow-covered sidewalk. The air was chilly, but the wind had died down from earlier in the day.
Alexandre led the way up the steps to the library as Jonathan gazed up, observing the deeply austere, hard lines of the 1930s-era edifice. The concrete facade was lined with tall, narrow columns, some clad with black marble. Perhaps the dreariness of the architecture had a purpose at one time, he mused. Most likely to suppress the Proletariat’s urge to read, which might have helped them educate themselves out of communism.
“It says Biblioteka Imeni Lenina—the Lenin Library,” Jonathan heard Alexandre say as he fixed his eyes on the gold-leafed lettering above the columns. Below it, intricately carved stone figurines depicted male and female laborers.
As they reached the heavy entrance door, Alexandre turned to Jonathan. “Don’t say a word,” he reminded his American cohort. “I will do all the talking.” He had already explained the rules twice. How to act, when to speak, where to go and what not to do.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jonathan whispered. He understood that he was to keep his mouth shut, walk in Alexandre’s shadow the entire way, avoid eye contact, stay serious, and wait until their butts were planted in a chair in Reading Room B before uttering another word. The room was reserved for authorized guests only, Alexandre had said, and it was the perfect spot from which to enter the adjacent restricted gallery, an area off limits to civilians—no exceptions. It was the only room that led to the underground tunnel.
The library’s atrium was immense but dreary—even more so than the building’s f
acade. The concrete floor sealed in the coldness, giving the feel of a mausoleum.
“Now watch me,” Alexandre whispered.
Jonathan watched him discreetly undo the top two buttons of his shirt and snake his way across the atrium to the reception desk, apparently on a charm offensive. He honed in on the two female attendants, one in her late thirties, the other not a day over sixteen.
Jonathan wasn’t a woman, or a Russian, or an expert in international cultures, or even an aficionado of courtship. But he considered himself qualified enough to assume that the way Alexandre swaggered forward with his artificial smile, his gold chain and chest hair crawling into daylight like a marsupial, that no woman on earth would fall for his charade.
Jonathan gazed at the Russian gigolo in action, which made him even more nervous. He waited, fully expecting a rebuff of humbling proportions, so severe it might send Alexandre to a monastery.
To his astonishment, the wooing progressed with amazing speed. The echoes of flirtatious giggles ricocheted off the stone walls. The women were hooked. Alexandre had proven himself a player. I’m not jealous, Jonathan told himself, perhaps not so convincingly. He waited. The older woman joked, and Alexandre responded exuberantly, his gestures energetic and his smile so wide it nearly encircled his head.
The younger attendant, her own smile competing with Alexandre’s, took his forged letter and, amazingly, nodded affirmatively without even reading it. The elder woman playfully pinched Alexandre’s cheek and headed back to her files. That’s when Alexandre turned to Jonathan and winked.
The young attendant walked out of sight, and Alexandre strolled back to Jonathan’s side.
“She’s getting the key to the reading room,” said Alexandre.
It pained Jonathan to see Alexandre prevail so flagrantly. He shook his head. He must have known her, he thought, but didn’t care to ask.
“Sometimes it can be tricky,” Alexandre said, barely above a whisper. “The staff is still not accustomed to unofficial visitors, particularly civilians. Prior to the fall of the Communists, this library was off limits to most Muscovites, and those allowed in could not freely roam the floors. You had to order your book at the counter. Things have changed now, but some departments still offer only limited access. Keep in mind, this is an important place. Since the 1920s, the building was the country’s main repository of military books—now some 114,000 items in all. And as of last year, it officially became the Central Library of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.” Alexandre raked his hand through his short, brown hair, and shifted his gaze at the counter. “Ah, here she comes. Her name is Nadia.”
“Biksa,” Jonathan whispered back mockingly and grinned.
Nadia was just plain hot, a descendent of Scandinavian nobility, one would have guessed. Fair skinned with long, red hair, rosy cheeks and slender arms. And now that she had walked around the counter toward the center of the atrium, the rest of her real estate came into view: her long legs, and a rear end that not only tested the endurance of her tight skirt’s fabric but also mesmerized both men sufficiently to shut them up momentarily.
“Let’s go,” Alexandre whispered, falling in behind her.
Her stiletto-heeled shoes stabbed their way along the worn faux-Persian rugs that lined the trek to the stairs at the back of the building. Alexandre and Jonathan followed her like puppies.
They headed one floor up, to the Department of Military Literature, where the prized reading room was situated. Unlike the lobby, the second floor had all the attributes of a distinguished library: bookcases made of ornately crafted wood, decorated ceilings and elegant furniture. Jonathan stared in awe at the endless amassment of crammed shelves and display cabinets that made the room feel like a cocoon. The place was filled with myriad books, binders and journals, but Jonathan couldn’t spot one that was titled with Western alphabet.
One of the largest libraries in the world, he thought, and I can’t read a damn thing!
Nadia and her two admirers headed down a long corridor until she stopped at a set of double doors. She unlocked them and waved the men in with a come-hither pose, her flirty gaze locked on Alexandre. She pointed to the bookstalls in the center of the large room, said a few words to him and then politely moved her steamy silhouette to an oversized metal desk by the windows.
Alexandre took Jonathan by the arm and casually walked to a nearby table. “Behind you is the restricted area, where you’ll go when I tell you.”
There was a doorway all right, but no door. It looked like another reading room, but with fewer tables and many more stacks. Jonathan turned and glanced at Nadia. She was reading a magazine, her long scarlet hair draped over her shoulders. Though she sat only twenty feet away, the restricted room wasn’t in her line of sight.
“Let’s sit here and wait for the right moment.” Alexandre pulled a chair back and waved for Jonathan to take a seat. “I’ll be right back.”
The air was stale, saturated with the smell of old paper. Walls of unreadable books surrounded Jonathan, who in the back of his mind wondered if this excursion would be worth the trouble.
Alexandre returned with three large books under this arm. “I told Nadia you are a renowned professor, so you must look studious,” he whispered, sliding the smallest book to Jonathan, and adding, “Pretend to read this one. It’s a manual about constipation on the battlefield.”
In keeping with Alexandre’s instructions, Jonathan didn’t respond or even crack a smile, though he wanted to. He stared at the book’s engraved title, trying to decipher the Cyrillic letters to see if Alexandre was pulling his leg. He then scanned the pages, thinking that drawings of intestinal tracts or photos of soldiers shitting in bomb craters might confirm Alexandre’s assertion. There were none, only more Cyrillic.
Constipation, my ass.
Alexandre took a seat across the table from him and began reading one of the other books, and seemed awestruck by its contents. To Jonathan’s consternation, Alexandre sat there for almost fifteen minutes without looking up. By then, Nadia had walked away, perhaps returning downstairs.
“Psst,” Jonathan said, wanting to get the ball rolling. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was just shy of three-ten.
Alexandre casually put his book down, his demeanor not unlike someone on holiday. As if that’s what you’re supposed to act when you’re about to help someone illegally infiltrate the Kremlin, a place guarded by a thousand armed Russians.
He’s fucking with me, Jonathan’s mind declared before he whispered, “For cryin’ out loud, can’t I go now?”
“Shh!” Alexandre snapped. “It’s not time.”
Jonathan returned an indignant snivel, his patience reaching an end.
Another nerve-wracking nine minutes passed before Alexandre finally unglued his butt from the chair and headed to the reading room doorway, his head peeking into the hall. He then turned and nodded at Jonathan.
“Okay, go!” Alexandre whispered loudly from the corner of his mouth. “Be back here no later than five.”
As planned, Jonathan walked out of the other end of the reading room to the adjoining area, past the fifth row of bookstalls. He glanced left, at a door on the far wall. He headed briskly toward it, making his way around a display case containing several leather-bound books.
The door wasn’t locked and no alarm rang as Jonathan stepped across the threshold into the confined space that led to the concrete stairwell. Parroting in his mind was his own voice, repeating the sequence of steps and directions he was to follow to reach the tunnel. He spotted the stairs, as Alexandre had described. The air was stuffy and cool, and by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs, some three flights down, it had dipped twenty degrees. He stopped to put on his coat and continued through a dark basement of some kind. As the path ahead of him darkened further, he pulled out the flashlight Alexandre had given him.
“First right,” he whispered to himself, the beam of his flashlight illuminating a large room filled with generators—l
arge industrial generators the size of tractors. A quarter-inch-thick coat of dust covered the equipment. Alexandre had told him the room had been used as a backup source of power for the Kremlin and the two closest Metro stations but was now abandoned. Jonathan kept his sights on the third generator. It was behind there that Alexandre had promised he’d find a manhole, though he warned of the possibility that it might have been sealed over the past year.
Jonathan directed the light at the metal cover. He dropped to his knees for a closer inspection, praying he would still be able to open it. He slid his hand into a slit in the cover and pulled it with all his strength. The cover slowly lifted at one end, but his arms began to tire quickly from the strain. It must have weighed sixty or seventy pounds. He slid it to one side and let it fall ajar.
He made his way down the shaft, some fifty feet deep, as a rancid smell became stronger. At the bottom, he reached the beginning of a tunnel, no wider than three feet and only a couple of inches higher than his head and about an inch deep in water. He pointed the flashlight ahead of him. The tunnel seemed to go on forever into the pitch-black distance. The air was thick and the walls so close, so confining. Stay calm, he told himself, knowing that his claustrophobia could easily get the best of him in such a horrible place. His chest began to sweat, his hands too, despite the near-freezing air.
He quickly walked across the slushy surface of the tunnel, breathing out of his mouth to avoid smelling the stench. He kept going, until some thirty yards ahead, he saw a dim light. As he drew nearer, he noticed it came from the floor of the tunnel. He stopped at the edge of the concrete and looked down through the metal cage floor and saw two sets of tracks some twenty feet below. The Metro, he thought. He looked ahead and realized this part of the tunnel was a walkway of sorts. Alexandre had told him the tunnel passed over the secretive D-6 Metro, a system of subway lines built by the military in the ’50s to evacuate Kremlin officials to bunkers and airports in the city’s outskirts, in case of an attack. Part of the line was supposedly constructed adjacent to the civilian Metro to help hide its development and expansion.
Tranquility Denied Page 21
