by D. F. Bailey
Maybe.
※ — FOUR — ※
ALEXEI MALININ COMPLETED his degree in English Language and International Studies from Moscow State University in 1975. The following year he entered the 401st KGB training school in Okhta, Leningrad. There he met Vladimir Putin. After a few weeks they discovered that they shared the same birthday, October seventh, although Malinin was two years older than the future president of Russia. The coincidence provided reason enough to share a bottle of Stolichnaya and trade a few stories about their past and Putin’s skill in Sambo, the Russian combat sport. Malinin was experimenting with Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art. Their promise to spar with one another never materialized and after Putin had been posted to East Germany, Malinin, who spoke excellent English, took a job in Ottawa. Following his assignment in Canada — where in 1981 he secretly filmed and discredited the Soviet cipher-turned-traitor, Igor Gouzenko — he was rewarded with a post in the Soviet embassy in Washington in 1982.
Over the next five years, Malinin developed a propaganda specialty filming ten-minute profiles of drug addicts, prostitutes, the unemployed, the homeless — and anyone else from the seemingly endless stream of individuals and families who had fallen through the American social safety net. His method was simple and effective. First, identify a trending theme, preferably something broad-based and intractable like racism, drug abuse, prostitution. Next, select a dozen victims willing to publicly indict their oppressors in his films. When he approached potential informants, most agreed to serve as sources. Especially if the offer included a free meal at the local bar and grill while they dished up the details of their destitution. Following these preliminary interviews, Malinin determined which candidates would provide the best testimonials. Then he sent in a film crew to record the allegations for syndicated broadcast.
Back in the embassy, Malinin edited the tapes to create a narrative spine, a storyline like those he’d seen on American TV. 60 Minutes provided a good example, so he followed their formula. Why not, he thought; after all, they invented “gotcha journalism.” The irony never ceased to amuse him. Finally, he translated all the dialogue into Russian and added his narrative perspective in a voice-over. After the master tapes were flown to Moscow, copies were translated into all the languages of the Soviet bloc in Europe and into Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese — and the languages of every nation the Soviets might be courting. From Berlin to Beijing, his films were broadcast to over five hundred million people. But in North America and Europe, except to the CIA and MI6, Alexei Malinin remained largely unknown.
In September 1987, Malinin met Stepan Krupin, the comrade assigned to support Malinin’s expanding enterprise. Malinin had been ordered to train his new apprentice, the son of an apparatchik in the Kremlin recommended by the mayor of Moscow, Boris Yeltsin.
During their first month together Malinin realized that Krupin was the wrong man for the job. On three separate evenings, Malinin witnessed Krupin’s alcoholic outbursts. A closet drunk whose initial geniality soon led to angry rants, Krupin often lost control of his temper in a single moment — as if someone flicked a switch and ignited a lunatic. But worst of all, Krupin was a sycophant: a yes-man who spat out the latest communist propaganda as if it provided a legitimate way to understand reality. As they said in America, “He drank the Kool-Aid.” In Krupin’s case, the preferred beverage was a double vodka martini. Stirred, not shaken.
Despite his concerns, Malinin followed his orders and attempted to shape Krupin into someone resembling a propaganda specialist. After two months, he realized the task was hopeless. Still, he decided to press ahead with a new challenge: Operation Black Night. It marked the beginning of the end of Malinin’s career in the KGB and nearly cost him his life.
※
A little after six P.M. on November 26, as the afternoon faded into dusk, Krupin steered the embassy’s Lincoln Continental onto Wisconsin Avenue and immediately turned left onto Massachusetts.
“Should we start looking in Baltimore?” His voice conveyed a note of vexed boredom.
“No.” Alexei Malinin frowned in dismay. He’d already covered this with Krupin. Twice. “We have to make sure the entire operation begins and ends in Washington D.C. Do you think anyone outside the Kremlin has heard of Baltimore? Russians only know of three American cities. New York, Los Angeles, Washington. Maybe four if you count Chicago. Everything else is a forgotten suburb. In other words, besides these cities, nothing else exists.”
Krupin pressed his lips together as he drove on. “Got that wrong,” he muttered under his breath. “Broadway, Hollywood, Las Vegas — nothing else matters.”
Unable to make out these whispers, Malinin continued. “As I said before, we’ll begin in Southeast Washington. Now turn around and head toward the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge.”
“If you insist,” Krupin muttered, the blade of anger barely sheathed in his voice.
“I do.” Malinin decided he needed a distraction. He stared at two women crossing the street into the American University campus. Dressed in bright jackets and skirts designed to match the orange and red leaves dancing through the gusting autumn air, the women presented a subtle refinement, a careless comfort with wealth that Russian women could never imagine. Neither could their Russian husbands or boyfriends. After seventy years it was obvious that the revolution had failed to keep pace with the west. That’s what General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the coming man, maintained. All the leaders were desperate to find a new vocabulary to describe how the Soviet Union could still march forward. Expressions like “Perestroika” and “Glasnost.” If all else failed, perhaps words alone might save them.
“But I know for a fact,” Krupin insisted, “that Baltimore has more black citizens, more poverty, more homeless people than anywhere in Washington.”
“Yes, your facts are correct,” Malinin allowed, “but you refuse to think strategically.” He rubbed a hand over his face and decided to try a new tack. “Listen, Stepan. Did you ever have a chess rating?”
“No, comrade.” The angry tone had mutated to a kind of mockery. “Nothing like that.”
Comrade. Malinin let out a gasp of exasperation. “Did you not play chess in school?”
“A little. Which way, then?”
“After you cross the bridge turn north onto the 295, then onto Good Hope Road. We’ll start there.” Malinin felt that Krupin was trying to ignore the point he was hoping to hammer into his skull. “When I was nineteen and I still had time for chess, my FIDE chess rating was twenty-two hundred and thirteen.” He studied Krupin’s face for a reaction. “Not that I’m fishing for compliments. Far from it. The issue is strategy. Strategy has to be our first consideration. It’s the same thing in chess.”
Krupin drove the Lincoln across the Anacostia River and made his way to Good Hope Road in silence. Suddenly they’d entered a forbidden zone. The street, the sidewalks, the shops — all of it gave the impression of disrepair and neglect. The pedestrians, all of them African-American, appeared to stroll along the sidewalk as if they were waiting for something, or someone, to provide a diversion from their despair.
Krupin pulled the car to the curb and pointed out a bar four doors along the sidewalk. Three men stood at alert next to the entrance, their eyes scanning the passersby. He cut the engine and said, “This place offers possibilities.”
Malinin leaned forward and studied the broken awning over the front window. He studied the unlit “A” in the sign above the doorway: J-KE’S. “Maybe,” he conceded and opened the door and stood on the sidewalk.
When a sheet of newspaper flew against his leg and he tried to shake it away, Krupin began to laugh. “Come on Alexei, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Just remember: we speak English, only,” Malinin said and followed his partner past the three men at the door and into the bar. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness and the cigarette smoke that drifted through the room in a breathless fog. A crowd stood along the bar. A few men loitered next to
a hallway that led to a back exit, another group stood beside the jukebox. George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” blasted from the dented chrome speakers. Krupin took a seat at a circular table next to a pool table where four negroes studied the disposition of a dozen pool balls at rest on the green felt. A moment later Malinin realized that he and Krupin were the only white people in the room.
“Yes. This will do,” Krupin said. He flagged the bartender with his hand. When the barman shook his head, Krupin stood and glanced down at Malinin. “Vodka?”
“No.” Better to drink something American, he thought. “Get me a Miller High Life.”
As Krupin placed their orders at the bar, Malinin traded looks with the men surrounding the pool table.
“Looks like someone lost their way,” one of them said. He wore a tight-knit, rainbow-striped cap.
Another took a shot with his pool cue and the heavy slap of balls clacked in the air. “Seems like,” he said.
Malinin watched the seven ball drop into the corner pocket. He set a smile on his face. “Good shot,” he offered.
Rainbow looked at his friends. “Good shot?”
Seven-ball laughed at this.
“You call that a good shot?” A third man grinned at Malinin. His nose slanted to the right below a bump of broken cartilage. “He just fuckin’ sank Pinkie’s ball.”
“Ah. So that’s not a good shot!” Malinin smiled again. “You want the truth?”
Nose looked at Rainbow with disbelief. “The truth?”
“Yes. I know absolutely nothing about this game!”
Pinkie stepped forward and studied Malinin a moment. “It’s called eight-ball. Maybe you should play a round.”
He shrugged. “If you teach me, yes?”
The men traded laughs and Rainbow stepped around the table. “Only if you got some wad. This table don’t move without a little wad.”
“Wad?”
“Yeah. Say what? A Jackson. Twenty bucks each. Winner takes all.”
Krupin returned to the table and set four drinks down. Two shots of Smirnoff Vodka and two bottles of Miller High Life.
“Stepan, we’re going to play eight-ball.”
“To eight-ball!” Krupin raised a glass of Vodka to acknowledge their new friends and threw back the shot in one swallow.
Rainbow looked at him doubtfully, set a twenty dollar bill on the top rail and passed him his cue. “Where you from, friend?”
Krupin drew a breath of air to nip the heat in his throat. “Russia.”
Rainbow seemed surprised.
“Born in Kaliningrad,” Krupin added.
“Okay, Kalinstad.” Rainbow traded smiles with the others. “Put your money on the table and we’ll teach you a thing or two they probley don’t show you back home.”
Over the next hour Krupin lost a hundred and forty dollars and drank eight shots of vodka. Malinin enjoyed his two bottles of beer and bought a round for the boys. Because he saw it as a cost of doing business, Malinin didn’t mind losing the money. Besides, his operating budget could cover this charge without questions being asked in the embassy. But when he saw Krupin teetering as he rounded the pool table to line up and sink the cue ball in the side pocket, Malinin knew he had to approach Rainbow and Pinkie about scheduling a taped interview before Krupin destroyed their credibility. Furthermore, Krupin had reverted to speaking exclusively in Russian, a procedural taboo. Time to act.
“Say boys, let’s take a break. And I’m buying one more round,” Malinin said and patted one of the chairs at his table.
Pinkie, Nose and Rainbow sat beside him.
Meanwhile Krupin made an elaborate gesture of bowing out and said in Russian, “Gotta piss.” He stumbled down a hallway, then re-directed himself to the men’s room. Seven Ball followed Krupin, one hand braced on the wall to steady himself as he went.
By the time the bartender delivered a tray of drinks, Malinin had made his overture to the others. Had they ever considered telling their stories? Let the outside world know what the inside of their life really looked like? Explain what it meant to be penniless in a society run by money?
Rainbow leaned forward. “You mean being on some kind of TV show?”
“Exactly.”
“Where on?” Pinkie asked as he leaned back in his chair and tried to fix Malinin in his narrow eyes. “What stations?”
“In Russia. Then Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Korea, China.” Malinin swept an open hand above the table. “Over twenty countries. I’ll give you a complete list when we begin to record, yes?”
Rainbow let out a gasp of laughter. “You communist ain’t you?”
Malinin sipped his beer and shrugged. He often had to make light of his political situation. He grinned. “Aren’t we all at heart?”
“No, we fuckin’ ain’t.” Pinkie’s hand slammed the table with enough force to bounce Malinin’s High Life onto the floor. Malinin looked at the broken bottle as a shallow pool of white foam bubbled around the shattered glass. The steady buzz and murmur in the bar paused a moment and then resumed.
“Pinkie’s got that straight,” Rainbow said. “You cain’t turn none of us.”
Seven Ball wobbled back to the table and sat in the fifth chair. A fleck of blood sat on the edge of his lip. When he smiled at the Nose, Malinin could see red spittle smeared across his front teeth.
Malinin nodded, realized he and Krupin should leave as soon as possible. A clot of people stood idly at the front door, waiting for something. Waiting for a cue of some kind. Malinin looked past them, wondered if the back exit would be free.
Krupin re-appeared, his head tilted to one side. An angry twist contorted his mouth. He came up behind Seven Ball and snarled into the black man’s ear: “Fuck your mother.”
At least he’s speaking English again, Malinin thought. He raised a hand and said, “Krupin, settle down.”
“Say what?!” Seven Ball attempted to stand up but before he could rise, Krupin seized a pool cue from the table and lashed it against the side of Seven Ball’s head. The sound of his cracking skull cut through the noise in the room and he crashed backwards from his chair onto the table. One by one the glasses and bottles teetered and smashed against the floor. The room exploded with cries of rage.
Malinin dodged a left hook from Rainbow, grabbed his sleeve and used the force of the round-house punch to pull the big man forward so that he landed on the floor. Next he seized Krupin by his collar and advanced five or six steps toward the rear exit. Pinkie charged after them and drove the butt of another pool cue into Krupin’s lower back.
Krupin shuddered in pain, dropped away from Malinin’s grasp and fell to the floor. A crowd of fifteen, twenty men surrounded them. Malinin placed well-aimed kicks into the knees of three attackers to create a small opening. He picked Krupin off the floor, braced him under his arm and pressed ahead. Halfway to the door, Krupin recovered his strength, swung free and turned back to face the mob.
“Pozvol’te mne na nikh!” he screamed. He took a final step forward.
A blade swung from left to right and cut across Krupin’s throat from his right ear down through his larynx. A jet of blood spurted from his head, subsided, and surged again. Complete silence filled the room. Everyone stood back as Krupin choked on his own blood.
Malinin took a step backwards, then another. He knew that Krupin would be dead within minutes. No way to staunch the bleeding, no tourniquet to apply, no means to plug the severed carotid artery. As he jogged toward the exit he could see the crash bar on the door ahead. Four, maybe five steps more and he’d be outside.
Then someone called to him, “Hey, comrade!”
Why he hesitated, he would never know. He turned and as he spun around the knife plunged through his jacket, through his shirt and into his belly. He felt the blade turn, cut across his stomach, and then slip out of his body.
Malinin slumped to the floor and the bartender ran towards him with a baseball bat clutched in his fist. Malinin was certain that he was
about die. Then the bartender turned and swung the bat hard into Pinkie’s hand. He cried in pain as the knife flew across the room and rattled against an overturned chair. The uproar of noise dropped to a collective gasp. As everyone raced for the exits, Malinin could hear the distant sound of sirens approaching.
Later the surgeon told him that his liver was nearly cut in two, scored from the top of the right lobe down to the gall bladder. The pain from the injury would last a very long time and require daily attention for years to come.
But compared to Krupin, Malinin knew he was lucky.
※
Alexei Malinin met Senator Franklin Whitelaw, then the rookie senator from California, in George Washington University Hospital on December third, 1987. The senator had suffered a ruptured appendix during a hunting trip in the Ozark mountains and been flown to the hospital in a military helicopter. Seated in hospital wheelchairs, the two men met in one of the day rooms where post-op patients could soak up some sunshine through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Washington Circle.
When the senator learned that Malinin worked at the Soviet embassy he tried to cultivate a relationship. The following week Gorbachev would meet Reagan in Washington for an historic summit and the prospect of offering President Reagan some parallel support proved irresistible to Whitelaw. Besides, any media attention linking him to a victory in the cold war would be invaluable.
“You know, I’ve been warned not to talk to you,” Senator Whitelaw said with a grin.
“No?” Malinin leaned forward in his chair to ease the strain of the sutures in his belly. “I can imagine.”
“I’ve been told you’re a spy.” The senator’s grin slowly enlarged into his trademark smile.
Malinin frowned. Despite his training it seemed ridiculous to dispute the obvious, especially in his condition. Besides, while the embassy fixers had quietly shipped Krupin’s corpse to Moscow without alerting the press, no one could ignore Malinin’s race to the hospital in a screaming ambulance — nor the subsequent conjecture that he was a KBG operative. “And if I was a spy, it would make a difference?”
