April is Moscow’s ugliest month. Snow retreats to reveal four months of uncollected garbage, carcasses of animals, excrement and a layer of grime that clings to everything like paint. Trees, mostly bony poplars, are still a month from their first bud. The only birds are Soviet ravens, large gray-black scavengers that screech like crows and present a threat to small cats. The world is devoid of color; all is either the featureless gray of the overcast sky or the chocolate brown of mud. City morgues bustle from suicides.
Katherine Sears’s plane touched down at Sheremetyevo-2 Airport on a cloudy afternoon in mid-April. She came through the gate past an official in an olive-green uniform. Their eyes met, and she looked away.
Oh, that was slick. You’re already acting suspicious.
A voice called out from a corner. “Katherine!”
She turned. It was Olga, her tour guide.
Olga had met Katherine and the other eleven Americans in her tour group while in London’s Heathrow Airport. Olga had taken command at once, ordering them about like privates in her little platoon. Already some members of the tour group were calling her Sergeant Olga. Katherine was depressed to see how vigilant her guide was. Perhaps posing as a tourist had been a bad strategy. But what choice did she have? It was the only way to get a visa. Katherine supposed that if she were a real spy, then the American embassy could have given her a cover as a diplomat or an academic. But as it was she had only a few Dutch radicals to help her. It was Intourist — or nothing.
“Over here!” Olga cried.
Katherine joined the others in the corner, where Olga was assembling the group.
“Did you enjoy your flight, Dr. Sears?” Olga asked. Olga spoke in a nasal falsetto that Katherine found grating. Olga had gone to pains to make herself stylish, but her stumpy frame, poorly bleached hair and heavy makeup undermined the effort. Katherine would have been afraid of her even without Titus Waal’s assertion that all Intourist guides worked for the KGB. Thinking of Titus gave Katherine resolve. Of all the men in Amsterdam, only Titus had believed in her. Katherine feared he would have been disappointed with her performance so far.
Katherine smiled at Olga and said, “The flight was nice, thank you.”
“Splendid!”
Olga collected their passports and visas, counted heads and then herded her wide-eyed Americans to the security gate.
The passport control officer, a bony-faced boy in an olive-green uniform, scowled at Katherine a long time, comparing her passport photo to her face. Finally, he handed back her passport and visa minus the entry portion. The little gate in front of her clicked, and she pushed through. In front of her, over the baggage claim conveyer, a sign said “Welcome to Moscow.” Her stomach tightened again.
After passport control, Olga counted heads again and then moved the group to baggage claim. Once everyone had their bags, Olga counted heads again and took them to customs cheek-in. Everywhere, special lines opened up before the group, and then vanished when the last of them passed through. Olga worked the airport like an army general, barking orders in Russian at anyone who strayed onto her battlefield. At least Katherineassumed Olga was shouting in Russian. Katherine understood little that was said. Growing up, her father’s insistence that his daughter learn Russian was one of the few edicts in the Sears household that wasn’t taken seriously. But Jack Sears had his revenge. Whenever one of “Dad’s Russians” was at the house, her father quizzed her language skills with the guest. Inevitably, it ended in embarrassment. Now, with Katherine’s new interest in Russia, she had been pleased to discover that at least some of what she had learned as a girl lingered in her mind.
Notenough.
That accusation had been leveled at her the previous day in London. Koos, Titus’s boss, had flown in from Amsterdam to give her the contact codes for her mission to Moscow. It was the first time they had met, and his displeasure had gone even further than her poor Russian. “Look at her!” he had exclaimed. “She’s a fucking princess. Moscow will eat her alive. She’ll wash up like driftwood on the steps of the American embassy begging for a Big Mac and fries.”
Katherine had listened mortified.
Titus was unmoved. He had brought her in, trained her and now he seemed prepared to stand behind her. “This is no time for anti-Americanism, Koos.”
“Fuck America, and fuck her,” said Koos. “This has nothing to do with that. She’ll blow the whole network. She’ll get . . .” he lowered his voice, “. . . you-know-who killed.”
In the end, Titus had prevailed and Katherine had been given the contacts she needed for the trip. Now she wondered if Koos hadn’t been right after all.
At the customs desk Katherine’s canvas carry-on bag came up for inspection. A uniformed official unzipped the side pocket and poked around. He took out a Pushkin anthology given to her by Titus. Katherine tensed. But the official didn’t flip through the pages, so he didn’t find the envelopes tucked there. He nodded, and Katherine picked up her book, closed the bag and moved on.
At length, eleven Americans found themselves standing on the central promenade of Sheremetyevo-2 Airport, surrounded by their bags, waiting like foot soldiers for their next command from Sergeant Olga, who counted heads and then guided them out the front door and onto an idling bus with the word “Intourist” on the side. Olga counted heads again, gave an order to the driver and they were off. It occurred to Katherine, as the bus pulled away from the curb, that in all the hectic business of getting through the airport, she hadn’t spoken a word to anyone but Olga.
Is this how Moscow would be?
Katherine rode with her face pressed against the window. She saw featureless housing blocks and, occasionally, store fronts with signs like “Bread,” “Sausage,” “Tailor,” and “Watch Repair.” At least she could read the signs. Theydid , after all, speak Russian in Russia.
Her first glimpse of the Worker’s Paradise was everything she had expected — gloomy, oppressive and sinister. She had grown up hearing nightmarish stories of the evil empire from her father, one of the staunchest anti-Soviet warriors of the Cold War. Jack Sears had made this trip dozens of times — under the protection of the U.S. Embassy, of course. Katherine had never thought she would see the U.S.S.R. with her own eyes. Now she wished she had paid closer attention to his “sermons,” as her mother called them. One thing was certain: If Jack Sears had known where his daughter was and what she was planning to do, he would have dragged her home, and then checked her into a psychiatric clinic. Before she left the States, Katherine had told him only that she would be attending an astronomy symposium in London. If all went well, she would be back in London for the last day of the meeting, and then she would return home on schedule to her teaching post at Cornell University. No one — least of all her father — would ever know about her detour to Moscow.
An hour later, the bus reached the hotel, which was located directly across from Red Square. Katherine got off the bus and, like everyone, gawked at the sight of the mad, swirling onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral.
“Come on,” Olga said impatiently. “We’ll see all that tomorrow.” She counted heads again and led them into the hotel lobby. On the way, they passed two security guards.
After check-in, Katherine passed another security guard — this one seated at the elevators. The guard got on the elevator and rode with her to the eleventh floor. There Katherine faced an old woman behind a small table. Katherine got out and the elevator guard went back down to the lobby. Everywhere, eyes were upon her, and Katherine began to appreciate Titus’s warning that slipping away undetected would be difficult.
Katherine gave the woman a slip of paper she had received downstairs. The woman handed Katherine a key. Katherine went along the dim corridor over a threadbare runner to her room. She unlocked the door and went inside. She put her back against the door and closed her eyes.
She had made it. She was in Moscow. The impatience, the sleepless nights, the endless preparations — they were over at last.
<
br /> It was time to act.
Olga gave the group an hour to freshen up for dinner. There were plenty of groans at that, but Olga insisted that the antidote to jet lag was motion.
“You must stay up as late as possible the first night and then sleep no later than nine o’clock the following morning,” said Olga. “I’ll see to it.”
No one doubted she would.
“Time is so little,” Olga had said.
Katherine agreed with that. Three short days. She needed to get to work immediately.
In her room, she threw her suitcase on the bed and went downstairs, past the old woman and the security guard, to the reception desk. She had seen pay phones outside the hotel so now she asked what kind of money was needed.
“Oh no, no,” said the clerk. “You don’t need money. No. You may call from your room.”
Titus had warned her against using phones inside the hotel.
“Yes, I realize that. I was just wondering — ”
“So. Good day, then.” He turned his back on her.
Katherine sighed and looked around the lobby. The hotel offered five-star services like an atrium café, concierge and service desk, but the atrium café was closed, the concierge was absent, and the woman behind the service desk was reading a novel. There was a garden with a broken fountain, and even from twenty feet away Katherine could see that the plants were plastic. Katherine spied three courtesy phones on the wall. It was tempting to use them, but too risky. She would make her call later, she decided. She went back to her room and slept like the dead.
An hour later, Katherine and the rest of the hollow-eyed group were assembled in the lobby. Olga counted heads and told them they would walk to a nearby Georgian restaurant called the Aragvi.
“It was Stalin’s favorite,” Olga whispered as though she were sharing a state secret. Katherine had read it in her guidebook.
They walked past the security guards onto Gorky Street. It was dusk and long shadows fell over the famous street. The puddles were frozen, and snow clung to the sidewalks around the light poles. Muscovites hurried past them, much like dwellers of any bustling city. The group passed many shops, but Katherine saw none of the infamous, block-spanning queues her father talked about. They might have been there, concealed within, but Katherine really wasn’t interested in that. She was busy making a study of the pay phones. The phones were bolted to the walls under signs that readtaksifon. They had squashed-funnel slots at the top, but no indication of the nature of the coin that would satisfy them. She counted them as she passed. After ten minutes, they passed the eleventhtaksifon. It hung on a brick wall, around the corner from the entrance to the Aragvi.
The group descended to a basement dining room colorfully painted with mountain scenes of Caucasian peasant life. They were seated at a table choked with little plates of vegetables, potato salads, sausage, tomatoes, lavash, red caviar, black caviar, champagne, wine, cognac and vodka. There was scarcely room to set a glass.
A waiter in a tuxedo opened several bottles of champagne and filled everyone’s glass. One of the Americans, a man of about forty, got to his feet and made a toast in Russian, which struck Katherine as ridiculous since Olga was the only other person at the table who could understand him. His name was Vladimir, after his Cossack grandfather. He finished his toast, and Olga clapped her hands together and squealed with delight.
“Such Russian I have not heard since my grandfather died,” she said.
Vladimir didn’t seem to know what to say to that.
The party went on. Soon the heavy eyelids of the group seemed to lighten. Eyes sparkled under the effects of alcohol. Perhaps Olga had indeed discovered the cure for jet lag.
After an hour, the plates were whisked away and then shish kebab, which was presented as a Georgian dish calledshashlyk , was set before them along with several spicy sauces. There was a cheese-filled bread calledkhachapura and tiny ravioli,pelmeni , which Olga explained were Siberian, not Georgian.
“We’re all members of the Soviet family, though,” she said happily. Olga was on her fourth glass of champagne and showing the effects.
Katherine was still sipping her first glass of wine when she excused herself to go to the bathroom. Olga flashed a look of concern at one of her flock wandering off, but then she shrugged and returned to her food and drink.
Katherine climbed the stairs to the entrance and told the guard at the door, in her best Russian, that she wanted some fresh air. “Pyani,” she said,drunk. The man grinned as though they now shared a secret. She walked toward Gorky Street. She wasn’t wearing her coat — just a turtleneck and a sweater — and the cold soaked into her skin like water through a sponge. At the corner, she turned and contemplated the mysterious taksifon. A woman walked toward her.
“Excuse me,” Katherine said in Russian. The woman passed without slowing. A man approached. “Izvinite,” said Katherine. He stopped.
“Taksifon? Money?” she said in Russian and held out her hand like a street beggar. “Please.”
He gave her a two-kopeck coin.
“Spasibo.”
Katherine put the coin in the slot and dialed the number she had memorized back in Ithaca. She stamped her feet on the cold pavement. The phone rang. At the other end of the line came aclick , and then the coin fell into the slot.
“Allo?”
“Maxim Izmailov?”
“Da-da.”
“Zdravstvuyte,” said Katherine. “Hello. May I speak English?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know me. I’m a friend of Titus Waal. He said I could — ”
“Titus!” he cried. He pronounced it like “Tea-toos.” “God, how is he?”
“He’s fine.”
“Still slogging through nineteenth-century poets, is he?”
“He published an anthology of Pushkin last year.”
“Pushkin! Good heavens. I certainly hope he didn’t do the translation himself. Where are you calling from?”
The man’s English was superb, just as Titus had promised. Maxim and Titus had met on an exchange program ten years earlier when they were both language students.
“I’m in Moscow,” said Katherine. “I’m calling from a pay phone. I have some books for you from Titus.”
“Marvelous. Where are you?”
“I’m with an Intourist group, so I’ll have to sneak away.”
“Excellent.”
Katherine looked across the street. A man under an eave seemed to be watching her. Their eyes met, and he stepped back into the darkness. Katherine turned her back to him.
“There’s a favor I’d like to ask of you,” said Katherine.
“I’m listening.”
“It could be dangerous. I really don’t think so, but — ”
“If Titus Waal felt it was important enough to give out my phone number then that’s good enough for me.”
“I need to deliver some letters to someone.”
“So drop them in a mailbox.”
“These letters must be delivered in person.” Katherine took an envelope from her pants pocket. She read off the name — Lena Ryzhkova — and then the Moscow address written on the front.
“I need you to contact this person,” she said. “She doesn’t know me, but tell her I knew her father. I have some letters from him, written before he died. Then set up a meeting for tomorrow night.”
“What time?”
Katherine squeezed the receiver. “I can get away about ten o’clock.”
“This address is Strogino,” said Maxim. “A new suburb on the extreme west side. It will take an hour to get there by metro.”
“Eleven-thirty, then, at her apartment. I will need you to accompany me, as a guide and interpreter.”
“Naturally. And where shall we meet?”
“I was hoping you would have a suggestion.”
“I do. Listen carefully.”
He finished and said, “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“If it’s not too much to ask, what is your name?”
The surveillance report on the American tourist Katherine Sears was filed by telephone and recorded on two separate devices — the second one was unknown to either of the parties.
“. . . Subject went to the Aragvi restaurant with the tour group, as scheduled. Subject left the restaurant, once, alone, at 10:45 and made a three-minute phone call from a taksifon.”
“Did you pick it up on the directional microphone?”
“We only have two, comrade-major. They’re both broken.”
“Detsky sad,” he groaned.Kindergarten.
“We had an agent in the area, but he doesn’t speak English so there was no point — ”
“Take him off surveillance.”
“Of course.”
“What about the search of her room?”
“Nothing there.”
“Anything else?”
“She speaks some Russian. Not much, but enough to borrow two kopecks from one of our agents.”
“Wepaid for the call?”
“I’m afraid so, comrade-major.”
The voice snorted. “Detsky sad.”
3
Katherine spent the day as an American tourist in Moscow.
She strolled over the cobblestones of Red Square and even took clandestine pictures with an instamatic camera held at her hip. She waited in line an hour to file past the glass coffin that held a waxen Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. She shook her head in bewilderment. By contrast, she was genuinely moved by the solemn eternal flame of Russia’s tomb of the unknown soldier in Alexandrovsky Gardens. After lunch, Olga took them on a tour of the Kremlin grounds.
Moscow architecture was big and powerful and not much else. Katherine saw gargoyles and Greek nudes side-by-side on a single facade. The builders certainly weren’t concerned about the vagaries of form as they set out to inspire awe in peasants. To make matters worse, there were no outdoor cafés, no quaint coffee shops, no intriguing gift shops. Moscow was the ugliest city Katherine had ever seen.
She returned to her room at five o’clock and changed for dinner and an evening at the Bolshoi Theater. The meal was subdued by the previous day’s standards; the seven o’clock showing forSwan Lake preempted another eating orgy. The group had third-row seats, and it should have been a memorable night for Katherine, but she barely acknowledged the performance. Her thoughts were on her coming meeting.
The Forbidden Zone Page 3
