The Moscow Club

by Finder, Joseph

  “You are quite mad,” the KGB chairman said. “Who are you? CIA? Don’t make a mistake your Agency and your country will surely regret.”

  “Interesting,” Stone said, “to meet you after such a long journey. A long journey for both of us, I imagine. Now, lower your gun. You’re outnumbered now. It’s that simple.”

  Pavlichenko did not lower his gun. He watched, his eyes moving slowly back and forth, assessing the situation, probing for the weak spots. The idiots had to be taken seriously, talked down. One was foreign, probably American. But the others—Russians, surely? Were they CIA? Or—yes. The CIA employee Stone. Of course. “I admire your bravery,” he said gently. “But come now. Kidnapping the chairman of the KGB? I don’t know what goals your service wants to achieve, but you must understand, now that you have done it, how foolish you’re being. Brave, yes, but foolish.”

  “Put down the gun,” Stone said. “We know about the mausoleum. We can get you to a telephone so you can countermand the orders—there’s still time, I believe. Or we can get you to Red Square right away, if you prefer.”

  An edge of desperation had crept into the chairman’s voice, despite the gentle, confident tone he was now assuming. “I can offer you amnesty. I will allow the CIA to arrange your removal from the Soviet Union. That is a very generous offer.”

  “Please don’t force me to kill you,” Stone said. “I’ve been forced to kill before, and I’m quite willing to do so once more.”

  Stefan began to say something, but was silenced by Stone’s glare. Not a word, Stone had instructed him. Neither Stefan nor Svetlov was to speak. This was to be Stone’s operation entirely.

  “There is an old Russian saying,” the chairman said. ” ‘A man who is buried before his time will live longer.’ ” As he talked, he slowly, slowly, turned the gun directly at the American and got the man’s head within his sights.

  “All right,” Stone said. “Place your gun down on the seat in front of you. Carefully. Know that if you make any sudden moves you can only hit one of us, and then you will immediately be killed. At the same time, we will place our weapons down on the hood of the car. Agreed?”

  Pavlichenko nodded. “What do you want?”

  “We want to take you into Red Square,” Stone said. “As simple as that. You will issue the proper instructions, and then we will release you.”

  “Fair enough.” He extended his gun on the flat of his hand, moving it slowly toward the front seat, leaning forward as he did so.

  “Carefully,” Stone said. “Remember, there are two guns trained on you. You have one. We want to be fair about this.” He, too, placed his pistol on his palm and moved it toward the ambulance’s hood.

  “Drop both of them,” Pavlichenko ordered. The men were not murderers, he realized with relief. They had assessed the odds, knowing that they would never escape. They were being foolish, of course, but they could not know how foolish.

  “Now,” Stone said. Stefan let his revolver fall to the ground. Stone dropped the gun on to the car, and at the moment it clunked onto the metal, bouncing once, Pavlichenko dropped his on the front seat, and leaned back.

  “Well, then,” the chairman said. He smiled, knowing what would soon happen to these three men, and he glanced at the American. For a moment, he thought he saw a pinpoint of red light.

  He looked again: yes, a red pinpoint of light.

  And then he saw what the American was holding aloft: a remote transmitter, the sort of thing one used to detonate a car bomb.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Pavlichenko asked. His composure was shot through with fear; his voice had actually begun to tremble. The American was edging his thumb over to the white button on the side of the device. “Who gave you that?” he asked. “Was it someone within my organization? That’s a KGB-issue device, isn’t it?”

  “We’re all chess pieces to you, aren’t we?” Stone asked, his thumb millimeters away from the detonator. He watched Pavlichenko sitting on the edge of his stretcher in the ambulance, saw the chairman’s powerful body, his unnaturally dark hair, his pastv’, coarse complexion and sturdy features. So this was the man. What did it take to claw your way to the top of Moscow’s slipperiest pole? And then to plot to bring it all down around you? “The Kramers, me, my father—we’re all part of your plan, isn’t that right? You never knew my father, did you?”

  “Whoever gave you that must surely be the person who wishes to bomb Lenin’s mausoleum,” Pavlichenko said. “Do you know who he is? We can find him. I’m a sick man, but you can help me. Get me to a phone and I can call some people. We can stop this thing together.” He smiled. “No, my friend, I have no idea who your father was.”

  Yes. Pavlichenko knew Alfred Stone was dead. Pavlichenko had ordered Alfred Stone s death.

  Everything came together. The anger was almost kaleidoscopic, the flash of emotions hypnotic. Stone felt a sudden calm, remembering his father’s murder, remembering Paula. He remembered Lehman, feeling a newfound compassion. This man, this very ordinary man in the back of the ambulance, this madman …

  Pavlichenko was now speaking direcdy to Stefan. “You can help

  your Motherland in a time of need,” he said to the Russian. He suddenly leaped forward and snatched his gun, firing at the Russian behind him, but the shots shattered the side and rear windows of the ambulance and cut through the air, harmlessly. He whirled around and grabbed the handle of the ambulance’s back door.

  Locked.

  “How did you know we meant a bomb in the mausoleum?” Stone said, his voice calmly inquisitive. “We said nothing about a bomb.”

  Pavlichenko aimed his pistol at the American and listened for a moment, overtaken by curiosity.

  Stone clutched the live transmitter and moved his thumb over toward the white button. His voice was choked with emotion. “This is for my father,” he said, and pressed the button, detonating the bundle of dynamite affixed to the underside of the ambulance’s gas tank, setting off a colossal, thundering explosion, leaving a roaring ball of fire where the car had been a moment before.

  It was 9:55.

  9:56 a.m.

  Sonya Kunetskaya, half mad with apprehension, returned to her apartment building. She had gone out to make a call from a pay phone, a call to her father. To tell him what she’d just learned from Charlie. But there was no answer at his hotel room, and she wondered whether he had left to go to Red Square for the Revolution Day ceremony. He had said he was not going to go. Where was he?

  She had to talk to her father once more; and she had to talk to Charlie, to tell him face to face what she had been afraid to tell him.

  A green van was parked in front of the building, its license plates unmistakably belonging to the KGB.

  Sonya knew. They had come for Yakov, Stefan—and her. No, please. Her knees felt weak; she could barely walk; but somehow she got herself to the entryway, and then stopped.

  She heard voices from the stairwell. Men’s voices, echoing.

  She turned and walked out of the stairwell and across the courtyard, concealed herself behind a column, and watched.

  A cluster of figures emerged. A KGB soldier, and another one, and—and Yakov. Handcuffed. And another KGB soldier.

  She wanted to scream. All she wanted to do was to run to him, to save them, but even in her crazed grief she knew that was impossible.

  They will arrest me, she thought, and then it will all be over.

  If I want to help Yakov, I must run. I must not let them get me, too.

  Did they get Stefan?

  No, she thought, as she edged her way along the apartment building. No, please. Protect us all.

  On the two occasions a year when the Soviet Politburo reviews parades in Red Square from atop Lenin’s tomb, they normally emerge from the Kremlin through a door just behind the mausoleum and mount the porphyry steps outside. There have been times, however, when, for reasons of inclement weather or the ill health of a leader, the members have instead chosen to take t
he underground passageway from the basement of the Council of Ministers building. In his later years, Leonid Brezhnev favored approaching the tomb this way, because the several underground passages that lead to the mausoleum are heated, and one of them even contains a toilet, a grave necessity when one is standing in the cold for four or five hours.

  This day, for reasons not of poor weather or poor health but of security, the members of the Politburo, joined by the American President and Secretary of State and their wives, assembled in the Gouncil of Ministers building and descended to the underground passage.

  There had been too many incidents of terrorism in Moscow, and the Politburo was determined to see that nothing whatsoever happened today. The summit had officially begun, and the meetings would begin in earnest tomorrow. The Politburo wanted everything to go off without a hitch.

  The twelve Politburo members, the ten candidate members, and the four Americans were accompanied by five security officers from the MVD, dressed, like the others, in heavy woolen coats and karakul or sable hats, with large red ribbons pinned to their left breasts.

  It was nine-fifiy-seven.

  There is no elevator in the mausoleum itself; the group climbed the interior staircase, which led to the outside parapet of the tomb. They filed up the stairs and around to the front. Gorbachev and the President of the United States, the foreign minister and the Secretary of State took their assigned positions in the center of the line, before the five microphones.

  At ten o’clock exactly, the Spassky Tower bells rang, followed immediately by a loud, metallic, recorded voice that proclaimed: “Glory to the great Lenin! Glory! Glory! Glory!”

  And with a chorus of cheers from the thousands of assembled spectators, the ceremony had begun.

  10:25 a.m.

  For a moment, the MVD guard almost laughed. He saw a small, bespectacled middle-aged woman running toward him, waving her hands, shouting something. The militsiyoner stood with nine of his comrades at the entrance to Red Square by the red brick Historical Museum.

  Now he could make out what she was shouting: “You must stop this! There is going to be a bomb! You must help!”

  The man grabbed the middle-aged woman just as she tried to break through the barricade. “How did you get this far?” he asked her roughly, shoving her away. “Get out of here before you get killed.”

  “No!” Sonya said. “I need to talk to someone in charge. It’s important—you have to listen!”

  The militsiyoner was tapped on the shoulder by one of the KGB guards. “What is it, comrade?”

  “This crazy woman keeps shouting something.”

  “Let me talk to her.” He approached the woman. “Tell me what the problem is.”

  “There’s a bomb in the mausoleum. It might go off any minute. I’m not crazy. Listen to me!”

  “Come with me,” the guard said. “I want you to talk to my commander.” He pulled her by the elbow toward the far side of the Historical Museum, signaling to his comrades that it was all right, and brought her to the narrow passageway between two buildings. “Now, tell me what you’ve heard.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Sonya said, and then she saw that the KGB guard had drawn his revolver and was pointing it at her chest. “No, please—”

  She looked plantively at him, then felt a flash of anger. Please, God, save me, she thought. Save me, save Yakov, save Stefan.

  Please don’t shoot.

  She stared, unable to speak, shaking her head slowly.

  And the guard fired, once, into her heart. The noise of the shot was drowned out by a momentary crescendo of the marching music that came from Red Square.

  At exactly eleven o’clock, the valve timer on the small tank of propane that sat in the center of the arsenal beneath Lenin’s mausoleum clicked, and the gas began to jet forth with a hiss that filled the room.

  80

  11:02

  Ilya M. Rozanov, a Kremlin Guard, would have greatly preferred to be out there, in front of the mausoleum, taking part in the changing of the guard. But he had done his time a few months ago, changing the guard in the dark of night, marching in the bitter cold and standing ramrod-straight before the tomb’s entrance for almost an hour and not flinching.

  It was too bad he could not have had that proud assignment today. It was the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the biggest holiday of the year, when all of Russia—all of Stavropol, his home town— would be watching Lenin’s mausoleum on their TV sets. And the world, too: for the first time ever, the news said, the President of the United States of America would join the Politburo atop the tomb to pay honor to the Revolution.

  But there were worse assignments than patrolling the back of the mausoleum.

  It even had its thrills. He was able to see the members of the Politburo emerge from the bowels of the mausoleum and march around to the front to take their places on the reviewing stand. He even thought he might have glimpsed the American President!

  True, he had hoped to see them walk right by him, through the door in the Kremlin wall, past all the graves, but for some reason they had chosen to take the underground route. Still, he was able to make out some of the dignitaries standing in the Important Persons area on either side of the tomb.

  The Kremlin Guard, of which this man was a member, was sometimes known straight-facedly as the Palace Guard, the Okhrana. In their smart, well-pressed blue uniforms and karakul hats, they were the cream of the crop, the guards in the position of highest trust in the nation’s capital.

  It was bitter cold, and Rozanov would have liked to warm up in the basement arsenal of the mausoleum when his shift ended, but for some curious reason the arsenal had been off-limits for the last few days.

  There had been a lot of talk about it, and his superior officer, the Kremlin commandant, who was a KGB man, was furious. Why in hell had Pavlichenko gone and done such a thing as ordering the arsenal closed? Securit}’ precautions, Pavlichenko had said! But his boss, the Kremlin commandant, had lasted through four KGB chiefs and far more general secretaries, and he resented this intrusion into what he considered his domain. The arsenal was always in use on these state occasions—for gathering and giving orders, for storing ammunition, all that sort of thing. And now the guards had to gather to receive their orders outdoors, next to the Kremlin wall. It was unheard of.

  But the guard cared for one reason: it meant that the only place he could warm his hands was in the bathroom several levels below ground, under the mausoleum. An inconvenience. The politics of it he couldn’t care less about.

  He waved at another guard to signal that the next shift was up, and he walked to the back door of the mausoleum. He could hear the endless speech of whoever was talking, followed by the unison cheers, echoing in the square.

  And then, as he entered the mausoleum and walked toward the staircase that went down to the bathroom, he noticed something peculiar. The odor of gas: an overpowering stench. The farther down the stairs, the stronger the smell got. It seemed to be coming from the arsenal, and he wondered if anyone else had sensed it. It smelled like the sort of gas that was highly flammable.

  In front of the arsenal’s closed doors stood a guard brought over from the KGB, not one of the Palace Guard.

  THE MOSCOW CLUB ■ 533

  “Hey,” Rozanov called to the KGB mannequin. “You smell that?”

  The guard turned, took note of Rozanov’s uniform, and ventured: “You think it’s poisonous? I’ve smelled it for the last ten minutes or so.”

  “Gas,” Rozanov said, coming closer. “It’s coming from inside there.” He pointed.

  “Stay back,” the guard said, suddenly menacing.

  “It’s probably poisonous,” Rozanov said. “Could kill you. Let’s take a look.” He came closer still.

  “Back,” the guard said. “My orders are not to let anyone in.”

  “Look, comrade,” Rozanov said more stiffly. “Your orders are not to stand there like a moron if there’s a gas leak.”

  Th
e guard seemed to consider this.

  “Let’s take a look. Who knows, you find a gas leak, you get a commendation. Maybe a promotion, right? Pavlichenko admires a little initiative in times of crisis.”

  The guard relented. “All right, but quick. Someone else could come by, and I’m dead. Our orders are to shoot anyone who enters the room on sight.” He turned around and slowly unlocked the double metal doors. “Shoot first, ask questions later,” he elaborated unnecessarily.

  The arsenal was dark, illuminated partially by the light from the outside corridor. The stench of gas was overpowering, and the air in the room was hazy. Rozanov could hear a distinct, loud hiss.

  “Don’t touch that!” Rozanov shouted when the KGB guard reached for the light switch. “This place is full of gas! A spark from the light could set this off.”

  And then he noticed the tank, in the center of the room, from which the hiss was coming. And then the wires that ran throughout the room, and the blocks of plastic explosive, and the grenades. A bomb? Here?

  “What the fuck—?” was all he had time to say as he wheeled around and was bayoneted in the throat by a second KGB guard, whose form was suddenly framed in the arsenal’s doors.

  534 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  So much seemed to happen in unison at the Revolution Day ceremonies in Red Square, Admiral Mathewson noticed.

  Squeezed into the dignitaries’ section, he had an unrivaled view of the mausoleum, maybe ten yards away.

  Everything was synchronized. A man in a gray suit, a parade marshal, stood on one of the lower balustrades of the mausoleum, directing the crowd, instructing it when to cheer. Two open limousines careered through the square, one carrying the commander of the Moscow district, the other carrying the minister of defense, and as they passed, the serried ranks of soldiers chanted Ooorah! Ooorahl The troops, thousands of them, turned as a man, mechanical as robots.