The Moscow Club

by Finder, Joseph

  By dint of careful study, Stefan had learned quite a bit about Borisov’s habits. Fyodorov was most helpful in this. Stefan was able to learn when Borisox’s driver arrived; when Borisov customarily emerged from his apartment; which of the many black Volgas in the parking lot at 26 Kutuzov Prospekt was Borisov’s; and when the guard changed at the parking-lot booth.

  At six-thirt- in the morning, when the night staff left and the day staff arrived, Stefan emerged with a small group of floor guards.

  For the next hour, he waited in his father’s old car, just down the block, from which he could see all the comings and goings at 26 Kutuzov Prospekt. At exactly seven-thirty, Borisov’s chauffeur arrived.

  Stefan began to have second thoughts.

  The chauffeur, a young, plain-looking Russian, looked like the sort of guy who had a wife and maybe a kid or two at home. Stefan disliked seeing him die; the chauffeur was no monster. But he’d have to go with Borisov; there was nothing to be done.

  Stefan had accepted the very difficult idea of taking innocent human life.

  At seven-forty, Borisov came out of the building with the chauffeur, five minutes later than Fyodorov had predicted. Stefan recognized him instantly from his photographs. He was a pudgy, self-contented man in an expensive suit that might have fitted him five or six years ago. He had evidently put on weight since.

  The chauffeur escorted Borisov to the Volga and then knelt down to inspect the underside of the car, in a gesture that appeared nothing more than habit. It was virtually unthinkable that a car belonging to a member of the Central Committee would be tampered with in any way. Such things rarely if ever happened in Russia.

  Finding nothing, the chauffeur got into the driver’s seat.

  Stefan watched the Volga pull out of the lot in front of a silver Mercedes-Benz, watched the chauffeur nod at the guard in the booth and pull into the traffic on Kutuzov Prospekt. Stefan followed a good

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  distance behind: no reason to arouse suspicion, since he knew the route Borisov always took.

  The thought of the act he was about to commit—the enormity of it—sickened Stefan, but he also knew that, if they didn’t go through with it this time, he risked the discovery of the bomb, and the failure of their entire mission.

  Borisov’s car traveled down Kutuzov Prospekt, turned onto the adjoining Kalinin Prospekt, a major thoroughfare, then stopped at a traffic light. Borisov appeared to be concentrating on a sheaf of papers.

  Quickly Stefan screwed the seven-inch-long antenna into the transmitter and put his forefinger on the button.

  He closed his eyes for an instant and could see the face of his brother before him. He whispered, “For you, Avram,” and pressed the button.

  The sound was deafening, even hundreds of feet away. The Volga exploded into a ball of dark-orange fire as the car split in two and pieces of it sprayed the street, still afire. An enormous column of smoke rose; pedestrians gaped in amazement. The job was done.

  One of the pieces of the explosion landed on the sidewalk very near Andrew Langen, a second secretary in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, who was in truth employed by the Soviet Russian Division of the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. Langen knew very little about explosives, but he had recently attended an Agency seminar on terrorism, and he was quick-thinking enough to pick up this peculiar bit of detritus and take it to work with him. In the process, he gave himself quite a painful burn on his left hand.

  The Borisov bombing rated front-page treatment around the world, from London’s lurid News of the World and assorted other British tabloids to Le Monde of Paris and Bild Zeitung of Hamburg. The New York Post ran a full-page headline: “Red Boss Slain.” On the front page of The Wall Street Journal, under the heading “What’s News,” the news appeared with typical journal restraint: “A prominent Soviet official, Sergei I. Borisov, was killed in Moscow when a bomb planted in his automobile was detonated on one of the city’s main boulevards. No group claimed responsibility.” The New York Times featured an analysis on its Op-Ed page by a Soviet expert at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute who dilated on domestic opposition to the Kremlin. Ted Koppel devoted an episode of “Nightline” to the assassination. Tass, the Soviet news service that had become so much more open in recent years, did not mention it.

  22

  The President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, does not have an official residence—no White House or Buckingham Palace. He maintains a residence in Moscow, a dacha near Moscow, and a dacha by the Black Sea. Unlike his predecessors, who most often lived in the building at 26 Kutuzov Prospekt, Mikhail Gorbachev preferred to stay at a dacha just west of the city, on Rublyovskoye Shosse.

  Gorbachev had summoned his guests late at night, after midnight. Normally, he did not keep nocturnal hours; he was usually in bed by eleven.

  And rarely, if ever, did Gorbachev hold meetings in his dacha. His three guests trembled with anticipation, knowing that the matter was of the utmost urgency.

  The three Zil limousines pulled past the do-not-enter sign in front of the dacha, where each was stopped by a pair of armed guards, who inspected the passengers and then waved them by. As they disembarked, the three men were inspected by another set of guards, who searched them for concealed weapons.

  The three—the KGB’s Andrei Pavlichenko; Anatoly Lukyanov, who was one of Gorbachev’s most trusted aides; and Aleksandr Ya-kovlev, Gorbachev’s closest ally on the Politburo—entered the dacha quietly. They passed through the front sitting room, which was decorated by Raisa Gorbacheva in rich English fabrics, to the President’s study.

  Gorbachev was sitting behind his desk, his bald pate illuminated by a round circle of light from a desk lamp. He was dressed casually.

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  in gray slacks and a blue pulloer sweater. The man radiated confidence and strength, but he also looked tired. The smudges of gray under his eyes were darker than usual.

  “Please, come in,” Gorbachev said. “Sit.” He indicated several chairs.

  When they were seated, he began. He seemed to be under considerable strain. “I’m sorry to disturb you—take you away from your wives or your mistresses.” He gave a brief smile. “But you are men I know I can trust. And I need your advice.”

  Each of his visitors nodded.

  “We are faced with a problem of great consequence. This is the second act of terrorism in Moscow in two weeks,” Gorbachev continued, knowing that his visitors had heard the news about Borisov. “Of the members of the Politburo, you are the only ones I trust fully. I need your help.” He turned to his newly appointed KGB chief. “Andrei Dmitrovich. Sergei Borisov was your friend.”

  Pavlichenko flushed with anger, biting his lower lip. He bowed his head, then looked up. “That’s right.”

  Aleksandr Yakovlev, a balding man whose tinted glasses set off a pudgy nose, interjected: “Is it possible that these acts are being perpetrated by mere dissidents? Is it possible?”

  “Yes,” said Lukyanov. “These terrorists have somehow managed to gain access to equipment made in the West, perhaps Europe, perhaps America. They must be working with anti-Soviet elements—”

  “No.” The KGB chairman interrupted, almost timidly at first.

  “What makes you say that?” Gorbachev asked.

  Pavlichenko bit his lower lip again, and then spoke, as if combating a powerful resolve not to say a word. “I mentioned at the Politburo meeting that the explosive used in one of the bombs was Composition G-4, which is made in the United States.”

  “Yes,” Lukyanov said impatiently, “but what—”

  “I didn’t say everything.” He let out a long, measured breath, rubbed the flat of his palm against his jaw. “I’ve got my people hard at work on this. And they’ve come up with some results even I didn’t want to hear. The stuff isn’t just any C-4. It’s a particular, unique formulation.” He looked around the room, then squarely at Gor-

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  bachev, and shrugged. “Made only for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  The shock did not register immediately on Gorbachev’s face, and when it did, the barest flicker of fear showed in his eyes. He spoke steadily. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Look, the Americans would be crazy to do anything to undermine you, right? But that assumes the conventional logic of power politics,” the KGB chairman said gravely.

  “I don’t follow,” Yakovlev said.

  “Tensions between Moscow and Washington are at an all-time low,” Pavlichenko said. “Since the war, anyway. So who in Washington in their right minds would want us out of power?”

  Gorbachev shrugged. “A lot of people would like to see me pushing papers back in Stavropol.”

  “No doubt,” Pavlichenko said. “But they’re not in Washington.”

  “There, too, I’d imagine,” Gorbachev said.

  “The military-industrial complex,” suggested Lukyanov, whose understanding of America was not terribly sophisticated.

  “All right,” Pavlichenko said. “We can assume anything. No doubt there are reactionary forces everywhere, who would benefit from the old, vintage Gold War. Such as the entire Gommunist Party ap-parat. Members of the Politburo, who are about to lose their jobs. Yes. No doubt.”

  “But—?” Gorbachev said.

  “I’m suggesting that the terrorism may well be coordinated directly by American intelligence. And I am suggesting that the Americans may— may —be working with forces within the Soviet Union. Perhaps within our ranks. I am saying that there may be forces within our country that are trying to unseat us.”

  PART TWO

  THE PURSUIT

  Emperors are necessarily wretched men, since only their assassination can convince the public that the conspiracies against their lives are real.

  —Domitian

  23

  Moscow

  If it’s not easy being an American woman in Moscow, Charlotte Harper had decided, it’s just about impossible being a married American woman separated from your husband. Moscow, as everyone knew, was hardly busding with eligible males.

  On arriving in Moscow a year and a half ago, she had kept to herself, avoiding any romantic entanglements, protected by the simple lack of opportunities. She was determined to consider her separation from Charlie merely temporary—they’d work things out, he’d learn to respect her need to work, and all that psychobabble stuff.

  But it did not take long for her to grow terribly lonely. Two months ago, she had briefly become romantically involved—if “romantically” was the right word—with the press attache at the U.S. Embassy, a middle-aged man named Frank Paradiso, who was no doubt a CIA official.

  She was torn about it, knowing in her heart that fear and loneliness were the wrong reasons to become attached to someone, that her marriage was far more important than any dalliance. When she had first met Frank, at a press briefing at the embassy, she had been attracted by his energy and his sarcastic humor. He seemed intelligent and sensitive, and he came without cargo: he was divorced. He had asked her out to lunch first, at the National Hotel, and then to dinner at the Praga, and one thing had led to another. It had lasted fully a month. Since then she’d spent her nights alone—often lonely, but at the same time feeling a bit better about herself than she had with Paradiso.

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  Though on depressed days she thought she might have passed her peak, Charlotte knew that she was attractive, or, as she preferred to think of it, telegenic. Her blond hair and radiant smile projected well against a backdrop of the Kremlin. But, of course, the reporting was what was important, or so she told herself.

  She had the reputation for being the best-connected American journalist in Moscow, one unpleasant result of which was that some of her colleagues looked upon her with envy. The prevailing notion was that TV reporters were useless here anyway—all they really had time to do, in the two or three minutes they had on the nightly newscast, was to read off an item that had appeared in Pravda, show a clip of an interview with some Soviet apparatchik, and do a stand-up in front of the Kremlin or Saint Basil’s Cathedral.

  All those ink-stained wretches from the world of print journalism— The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal —fancied themselves serious observers of the Soviet scene. Everyone else, they were sure, was just window-dressing. The wire-service reporters were little more than court stenographers, they felt, and the worst of the bunch were the TV reporters, who got all the fame and recognition and didn’t know shit about Russia. Didn’t even speak Russian. And to some extent the snobs were right; but Charlotte was an exception.

  In a few years, she had become one of the stars of the evening news. Her editor seemed to think she could shoot up the ranks, maybe een make weekend anchor, within a year or two. As they put it, the big thing at the networks these days was “glamorizing” the Moscow beat.

  But she’d had it with Moscow. Had it with the gray skies and the huge puddles of grimy slush, the fierce crowds, the pushing and shoving in the metro, the empt' stores. Paradoxically, as much as she’d grown to despise this forlorn city, she was fed up, too, with the isolation that being a correspondent here forced upon you.

  After a year and a half—despite her fascination with the language, the history, the culture—she was aching for home. She wanted, maybe, to get assigned to the State Department, to get back on the fast track. To return home. And she wanted to repair what she had with Charlie Stone, regain that old happiness, have a family.

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  She was sick of Moscow. And yet, every once in a while, something exciting happened and she was glad she was there.

  Only a few days ago, a high Soviet official had been assassinated when a bomb in his car went off on Kalinin Prospekt. It was an extraordinary story: the first time in her memory that such an act of terrorism had taken place in public in the Soviet Union. But virtually nothing was known about it.

  If anyone could ferret out anything about the story, Charlotte knew, she could.

  She arrived at the ABC office, spent a few minutes chatting idly with Vera, the sweet, tiny Russian woman who cleaned, did various errands, and made tea, and Ivan, the middle-aged, bearded man who looked like a peasant of old and who read through the Soviet press for her. Both of them, no doubt, had to report on her to the KGB, but they were kindly, benevolent people nonetheless, who simply liked to do their jobs well.

  Both of them had opinions about who might have assassinated Borisov—the Estonians, Vera believed; plain old dissidents, Ivan maintained. But there was nothing in the newspapers, and not even a mention of it on the Soviet evening news program “Vremya,” which Vera had videotaped for Charlotte, as she always did.

  Every once in a while, Charlotte got ideas from just sitting around talking with Ivan and Vera. They liked her; she spoke to them in Russian. And she liked them. But they knew no more than anyone else in Russia did about this, not a damn thing.

  A telex had come in from the head of the network news division in New York, who wanted to come to Moscow and wanted her to arrange a meeting with … Gorbachev. Of course. The big guys in the network always thought they could just issue orders like that to their employees in Moscow. She shook her head and smiled.

  Then she went through the coils of paper that had spewed forth during the night from the teletype, glancing through news dispatches from around the world, where of course the Borisov story figured prominendy.

  She settled back in her desk chair and thought. Somehow she

  192 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  had to crack the story. A few minutes later, she made a brief, cryptic phone call, then went out to her car.

  In an hour, she was sitting in the dining room of a new cooperative restaurant that served hearty Georgian food, speaking with the editor of a prominent Soviet journal. He was a good, reliable source; often he “leaked” things to her, information h
e had picked up from friends in the new Congress of People’s Deputies. For his part, he trusted her discretion, knowing she would take care to disguise where she’d received her information and would treat whatever he gave her with sensitivity.

  “No,” the editor said, shaking his head, his mouth full of chicken tabaka. “We hear nothing of this.” He preferred speaking in English, and he spoke it well. “But you’re aware that the man who was assassinated—this Borisov—was known to be a good friend of the chairman of the KGB.”

  “I’ve heard it,” Charlotte said.

  The editor shrugged and gave her a significant glance. “What does that tell you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, preferring to hear his interpretation. “You tell me.”

  He shrugged again. “It tells me that there may be some very serious power struggle within our own government. Gorbachev depends upon Pavlichenko, the man he appointed to KGB. He needs Pavlichenko’s support, right?”

  “Right. The guy needs the KGB to keep him in power—so he can carry out his reforms.”

  “Yes. Well, then, maybe there are some people—is it not possible?—who are not sympathetic with Gorbachev’s people.”

  “Obviously, but—people who’d resort to terrorism? You mean people within the government?”

  The editor shrugged again.

  After lunch, she went over to the old U.S. Embassy building on Tschaikovsky Street, where she had a quick cup of coffee with her friend Josh Litten oiThe New York Times, then stopped by her mailbox in the press section upstairs. There were the usual assortment of mag-

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  azines, a couple of personal letters, a statement from her New York bank. Nothing much.