The Bookworm

by Mitch Silver

  The group moved toward the lifts that would take them to the observation deck for a view of Moscow at twilight. They left behind an elderly man gripping his walker tightly with both hands. The guide looked back to see if he needed assistance but the man waved her off. He was engrossed in something on the BBC’s feed, and began to roll his walker toward the bank of monitors.

  The British network’s News at Noon had led with a one-line tease superimposed on the screen: “Worker clearing footings for new Family Court building unearths human remains.” It was the image from the worksite that followed that had caught the viewer’s attention: two figures were standing somewhat uneasily in front of a giant earthmover, the operator of the machine and a policeman beside him, stolidly holding a human forearm up to the camera.

  The ulna, intact from the elbow to the hand, was yellowed and cracked in more than one place. But what made the picture so striking was the rusty metal handcuff still locked onto the wrist.

  The old man extended an arthritic finger and pressed a button on the BBC’s monitor, un-muting it again: “Good afternoon. In Parliament today, despite the austerity budget, the prime minister will ask thirty-two million pounds extra be allocated for emergency bridge and tunnel repairs in Scotland and Wales. But first … this morning, construction worker Davidson Gordon of Brixton made the grisly discovery of a handcuffed arm bone at a site near Gray’s Inn that is destined to house the Principal Registry of the Family Division.”

  They cut to a one-shot of the worker, dark-skinned with a receding hairline, for his sound bite. “It was wartime work. Just pave over the bomb damage fast as you can and rebuild on top. You see it all around here and in the East End.”

  The newsreader returned to the screen. “Was this a long-forgotten gaol, uncharted on any map? Or something even more sinister? The BBC have learned City officials will suspend work until the Antiquities Division of the Home Office announce their findings. The police are also taking an interest in the case, and will sift through the site tomorrow for more human remains. Next, the PM’s shock budget proposal in Westminster …”

  The nonagenarian in the rotunda took out a mobile phone and laboriously dialed a local number, muttering in Russian before it went through: “Fools! You’ve no idea what you’ve got.”

  Chapter 5

  Aboard Air Force One

  The big man seated himself on the arm of a chair in front of the bulkhead and faced the reporters, who were crammed together in the aisle. He decided to break the ice.

  “Kind of crowded in here. I’m thinking I should have shelled out the four billion dollars and sprung for a new Air Force One, whaddya say?”

  Not a smile, not a titter. Maybe he should just open the bomb bay doors.

  “Mr. President, Russia’s leader has characterized this meeting of the G20 as Europe’s bankrupt countries coming to ‘beg the Kremlin to throw them a lifeline.’ Your tweets and your off-the-cuff comments agreeing with him were described in the European press as ‘incendiary’. How do you answer your critics?”

  The President, looking particularly upbeat after his recent exertions, grinned. “The Euro is in big trouble. If the shoe pinches, Howard, it pinches.”

  The Times reporter wanted to know if he was worried about security, given the ongoing protests in the Moscow streets against the government. The commander-in-chief went with his best, most dismissive smile. “We saw worse on the streets outside my rallies. No biggie.”

  “Mr. President!!” A forest of raised hands tried to get his attention.

  He pointed to one of the pool reporters for the networks, a particularly short woman who was standing on a seat and holding her little digital recorder in front of her. “Barbara.”

  “Mr. President, the continuing question of hacking: Four months ago you rescinded the expulsions of thirty-five Russian nationals the Obama administration had banished in retaliation for the Kremlin’s attempts to interfere with the election. Your election. Many people believe your willingness, your eagerness, to make this trip is proof of an unhealthy relationship with the president of the Russian Federation. And a way to get your own falling popularity in the polls off the front pages.”

  He sighed. “Unhealthy? Do I look unhealthy?”

  The press corps gave up a few chuckles.

  He continued, breezily: “Barbara, there’s a word for the people who want to relitigate the election. They’re called … losers.”

  Now to get all wonky on her. “And yes, Barbara, I’m the first to admit we have problems at home. It cost a Fortune 500 company six percent more last year to provide health insurance for an employee’s family of four. Six percent in one year alone! Self-insured mom-and-pop places saw a seven percent hike. What’s that tell you? It tells me it isn’t the insurer gouging the public; it’s the underlying medical costs themselves that are causing the inflation, medical costs inflated by the so-called Affordable Care Act.

  “Am I surprised my numbers are temporarily down? Not a bit. We inherited a lot of problems from the last administration. Even worse, we inherited a lot of myths. Like the one that says the rising healthcare cost curve has been bent down. It hasn’t. If we hadn’t trimmed Medicare and Medicaid, the cupboard wouldn’t just be bare. There wouldn’t be a cupboard.

  “As for this trip, eighteen other leaders are flying in right now for this business meeting of the G20. It’s not a summit, but let’s face it: thanks to the resurgence in the price of oil, the Russian economy is doing better than ours. Maybe we can learn a few tricks from them. Simple as that.”

  The questioning went on in that vein for another twenty-five minutes. The president looked out at the press corps, the doubting Thomases who, less than a year ago, were unanimous in their belief he could never be nominated, let alone elected. Now here he was, not just the first businessman to make it to the White House since Hoover, but the first ever with a billion bucks, and they were already writing off his reelection. It was all he could do not to purse his lips and blow them all a raspberry.

  In a few more days they’d get the news, a mackerel right across their collective kissers. It was going to be fun, watching them all change their tune, when the biggest oil strike in the history of the United States was announced right where the Democrats said they’d never drill—in the middle of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And all he had to do to make it happen was look a Russian guy in the eye and shake his hand.

  Piece of cake.

  Chapter 6

  Valdez, Alaska

  Half a world behind the tail of Air Force One, Lara’s twin brother Lev drove his Jeep onto the Valdez test station lot. In late summer this close to the Arctic Circle, day didn’t break so much as bend—Lev could barely make out the difference between the two horizons, east and west.

  His American colleague Craig always waited till the last second to begin his work week, so Lev would have the cinderblock facility to himself for a few minutes, which was how he liked it. He backed into the space reserved for “Len” Klimt, his adopted American moniker, and lit up a Winston. There was no smoking inside the enclosure, so this would be his last chance for a while.

  Funny, the no-smoking thing, because standing outside the open-air test hut was no different from standing inside it, just on the other side of the fence. Overhead, the enormous pipeline blocked out the sky and most of the light as it traveled its final quarter-mile through the Custody Transfer Meters and into the field of holding tanks by the sea, the “tank farm.”

  He stubbed out his butt and headed over to the padlocked gate, key in hand. Once inside, Lev walked beneath the mammoth “proving loop” conduit and, using the wrench that hung from a chain, he tapped on the elbow pipe that ran down from it to break up any air pockets. Placing a clean Pyrex beaker on the flat cement pedestal in front of him, he used both hands to turn the wheel that opened the giant gate-valve, but left the stopcock closed.

  The oil contracts stipulated that automated meters would measure the crude in bulk, but the transfer would
n’t be legal unless both the seller’s representative—Craig for the consortium of producers—and the purchasing agent—Lev, acting on behalf of the refiners, both international and domestic—were present. Since the buyer and seller were always the same, it was always only Craig and Lev doing the 9:00 A.M. manual test.

  All of this was a formality, of course. The North Slope Crude that made its way into the Valdez Marine Terminal always had the same specific gravity on the American Petroleum Institute’s scale, a fact they would ascertain once again this morning.

  The Ford Bronco drove onto the lot a solid two minutes ahead of the church bell that would ring matins on the other side of Valdez. Craig was way early.

  Lev held the gate open for him, and the American did what he always did, high-fiving him with his huge football player’s paw. “Hey, thanks, ‘Lenny.’ Good weekend?”

  The patter never changed. “You know it’s ‘Lev’ to you. And yes, I had a good weekend. You?”

  “Totally awesome.” Craig, a bachelor with an apartment in the big, bad town of Anchorage, made the most of his weekends in ‘Sin City.’ At least he said he did.

  Lev let the bear of a man do the honors, so Craig turned the small iron stopcock counterclockwise and they watched the crude begin to flow. After traveling the length of Alaska at less than four miles an hour, the oil that poured down into the glass beaker had lost much of the original 120ºF heat it had a week and a half ago.

  They stood there side by side, watching it slowly climb up the millimeter markings incised in the beaker. But then Craig went off script. “You smell something?”

  Lev’s nose wasn’t his strong suit. “No. You?”

  “Yeah.” He walked toward the pipe that was disgorging the last of the oil and bent down, sniffing, before taking a hurried step back. “Damn, can’t you smell it?”

  Lev leaned over the liter of crude oil and inhaled mightily, overcompensating for his poor sense of smell. He nearly gagged at the odor.

  Despite his concern, Craig was bent over, laughing. “What, you don’t like rotten eggs?”

  Ignoring the American, Lev stated the obvious. “It’s sour.”

  “Tell me about it.” Craig was carrying the beaker inside to the lab, so he was getting it full force. “Way sour. Wish I brought nose clips.”

  The seller’s rep put the crude oil down on the test bench and fired up the spectrometer. He was thinking out loud. “Okay, a little sulfur I could understand, maybe they hit a pocket down there. But not enough so you could smell the stink a yard away at this end.” He looked over at Lev and grinned. “… so I could smell it a yard away. You’re getting off easy.”

  Lev was already dropping his dual thermometer/hydrometer into the petroleum. He and Craig had had them made at the same time from the same supplier so no one could fudge the figures, not that either of them would. They were state-of-the-art instruments: beyond having the perfectly predictable 31.9 specific gravity of North Slope Crude incised in bold, the thing had Wi-Fi built in to send the results to any nearby computer.

  Craig leaned in. “Temp looks good.”

  “Agreed. But … crap, API’s falling short.” Lev squinted. “I make it two points under.”

  “Me too. You got your laptop?”

  “It’s in the truck.”

  “Never mind.” Craig kept his iPad locked to the shelf that was right behind them. Lev had given one to Lara for their mutual birthday, and it had gone over so well he had bought one for Craig for his birthday, but the guy was old school and always carried around just a phone. He never turned the iPad off either, but left it charging all week between their tests, some random bit of folk wisdom about extending battery life he’d gleaned online from Popular Mechanics.

  The American unlocked it now and was already scrolling down the long list of world oilfield assays. No two fields in the world were exactly alike and, since it cost less to refine oil that was light and sweet, and more for crude that was heavy and sour, each field’s “signature” was kept on file to assist buyers and sellers with current pricing on the New York spot market. If the instruments sitting in the suspect oil transmitted a match among the signatures in either density or sulfur content, it would be highlighted in red on the computer screen.

  The domestic fields were listed on top. “There.” Craig saw it first. “West Texas Sour is 31.7. Shit! This morning it’s at $2.40 off Slope.”

  Lev shook his head. “See? The sulfur doesn’t match.”

  They walked over to the twin pen-shaped instruments in the beaker of petroleum, just to be sure. Alaska North Slope usually flowed at 0.93% sulfur. This morning it was at 1.35%. Totally sour, beyond even West Texas Sour. Affecting his version of a cowboy’s bowed legs, Lev walked a few steps and drawled, “Well, son, I reckon it ain’t my Texas tea.”

  The two men knew the quality of the oil made little real difference to the buyer: what he saved on the purchase price of sour was lost on the added expense of refining it. If the refinery’s feedstock of crude was off in any way, the seller was the big loser.

  Glumly, Craig scrolled down the table of foreign fields, looking for a highlighted one. He was almost down to Yemen, the last of the fifty-six producers on the list. “Bingo!” In his own faux–Texas twang, the big man said, “Levitsky my boy, it is your’n. Says right here Russian Urals is 31.7 and 1.35.”

  “Urals? Let me see that.” They crowded in together, looking across at that morning’s trades. Russian Urals Crude was going for a $2.61 discount off the North Slope price.

  Lev dropped into one of the plastic chairs lining the cinderblock wall. “I don’t get it, man. Since when does Alaskan crude start acting Russian? And how could it come as news to you? It must have been this sour days ago when your guys piped it in at the other end.”

  Craig slumped into the chair next to him. “Not a word. I can’t figure it.” If the American knew more than he was saying, there was no sign of it in his face.

  The big man asked, “What you want to do?”

  Lev sat there, thinking. Finally he said, “Let’s come back tomorrow and test it again. Give you a chance in the meantime to make some calls to your people in Prudhoe, find out what’s going on. If it’s still running sour tomorrow at five, I’ll file my report. Fair?” He held out his hand.

  Craig shook it. “More than fair, you Russky creep. To seal the deal, I’ll take you to Denny’s … they got non-rotten eggs. Breakfast’s on me, one-time offer.”

  Lev looked at his watch and got up. “No can do. Gotta go home and Skype my sister before she hits the hay.”

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Craig was still sitting in the plastic chair, staring at his hydrometer. “They’ll pump that oil out of the tank farm onto the ships, pump it again into some refinery somewhere, and pump it out one more time, light and sweet. The only two people who’ll ever know how bad that stuff smelled will be you and me.”

  Lev pulled out of the lot first. He looked back and waved at Craig getting into his own truck, the last time he saw the American alive.

  Chapter 7

  Moscow

  Back at her flat, Lara stood in front of her open closet, peeled off her blouse and dropped it in the wicker hamper. Then she reached into the closet for her terry wrapper. She’d make herself a cup of tea, sit in a cozy robe and wait for Lev’s call.

  The teacher found herself casting a critical eye at her closet. She owned only three kinds of outfits: stiff, slightly uncomfortable clothes to lecture in; loose-fitting pants and sweaters for working in the archives, shopping for groceries, and everything else; and a single cocktail dress, no longer in style, for those once-in-a-blue-moon occasions when Major Viktor Maltsev would come home with something left of his paycheck and insist he and the Mrs. “go out on the town.” Oh, and her wedding dress, wrapped in yellowed tissue paper, in a box on the top shelf of the closet. The New Russian Woman—the one who’d kept her own name to use professionally and now had the use of it full-time—whose closet held only Old Russian Clothes.


  Meanwhile, she had a husband working his way through every shopgirl and waitress in the former Soviet Union; a few friends and colleagues, like Vera, busy with their own lives; and a brother on the other side of the world. Lara could feel one of her black moods coming on. She had some pills in the bathroom; should she take one?

  And with the moods came the waterworks. Sure enough, an unbidden tear was starting to form in the duct of her left eye. That was another thing—who’s born only able to cry with one eye?

  She kept the bedroom door closed in case her roommate, Katrina, came home early from the bars with a guy and found her in her robe. Technically, this was Viktor’s flat. Now that he’d moved out, Katrina was the tenant, helping with the rent by taking the smaller of the two bedrooms that shared the single bath. In reality, between the parade of men who came and went at all hours and the jumble of Katrina’s makeup and cosmetics that wound up all over the bathroom, Lara was a virtual prisoner in her own room.

  No, she wouldn’t take the pill. She’d dry her eyes and freshen her lipstick a little. She had to look good when Lev called.

  Lara was waiting in front of her computer, the clock on her Mac reading 2200 hours exactly. She had the bedroom dimmer turned all the way up so he could see her on his laptop half a world away to the east, beyond the Urals, Siberia, the Sea of Japan, and the northern Pacific. Ah, the power of Skype.

  Looking down at her old-fashioned wristwatch, she studied the second hand as it took its time navigating the face. Luckily for them, Alaska was exactly twelve time zones from Moscow, so the twins simply needed to negotiate A.M. and P.M. to synchronize their calls. Should she be worried? The only time her brother, younger by eight minutes, had been late was when he was born.

  The call came in at 22:02. “Hello, Larashka! Wonderful to see you, sis. You’re looking fine, as usual.”