Moscow Rules

by Robert Moss

  The only access route to the Aquarium itself is via a narrow lane flanked by the ten-meter-high blind walls of another classified establishment, the Institute of Cosmic Biology. There are checkpoints manned by soldiers from a special guards battalion, with red tabs on their uniforms, and then a broad open space where some nuggety old men — all of them veterans of the service — can usually be found sunning themselves and playing chess, just keeping a friendly eye on things. In case their attention wanders, the whole area is covered by closed-circuit TV cameras. Off to one side is a big apartment block where some of the staff of the Aquarium live. Directly ahead is a blank yellow structure whose windows all open on to an inner courtyard, a sheath for the main building, which is nine stories tall and mostly glass. To get inside, you have to submit to two more identity checks and a metal detector. Officers of the GRU are not only forbidden to bring any kind of briefcase into the building, but are under strict instructions not to carry anything metallic, not even a cigarette lighter or a belt buckle. Suspenders have a brisk sale among members of Soviet military intelligence.

  Captain Suvorin had predicted, before Sasha started his officer training course, that they would pick him for a ‘special assignment’ because of his academic credentials and his flair for languages. Sure enough, after basic training he was plucked out of the stream and sent to a museumlike building on People’s Militia Street, screened by dense foliage and an iron latticework fence. In the GRU school, they taught him about the heroes of Soviet military intelligence: about the spy ring, code-named ‘Dora,’ that penetrated the German General Staff from a base in Switzerland during World War II; about the network that had stolen the secret of the atomic bomb from Britain and the United States; about successive GRU operatives, from the era of the ‘Mrachkovsky Undertakings’ in the 1920s, who had set up commercial fronts to finance agent operations and induce Western businessmen to export vital technology to Moscow. He was especially intrigued by the stories of Richard Sorge, the celebrated spy who discovered in Tokyo the Nazi plan to attack the Soviet Union, but wasn’t believed by Stalin.

  He learned tradecraft, and spent a week chasing around Moscow, riding the metro and trying to detect surveillance, looking for good spots to plant dead drops or hold a clandestine meeting. He listened to lectures about the principles of agent recruitment, and about Western counterintelligence techniques. The French and the Israelis, they told him, were killers, ruthless and competent. The Germans were penetrated. Britain was an old lion that had lost most of its teeth, but not its cunning. The Americans were the main enemy as well as the main target. Nobody said in any of the classes, however, that the main competition was the KGB. Sasha had to learn that for himself.

  When he had finished his courses, they assigned him to the Second Directorate, which handled agent operations in the Western hemisphere, especially the United States. It was a promising start. With luck, he might progress from shuffling files in the Aquarium to a foreign posting in New York or Washington or San Francisco. But as one of his older colleagues kept advising him, he was going to need some influential friends.

  Kolya Vlassov was a hearty fellow who enjoyed playing big brother.

  ‘It’s easy to see your problem,’ Kolya would say to him. ‘It’s time you got married.’

  Vlassov had been talking this way since his own recent marriage to a Ukrainian girl whose father was something in the Party committee in Dnepropetrovsk. He had already served abroad, and liked to laze around with a glass in his hand and reminisce about Scandinavian girls, and saunas, and revels on midsummer’s night, when the thousands of boats in the fjords of Oslo were lit up like candles under a midnight sun. But when Kolya started sermonizing about marital bliss, he strongly reminded Sasha of the fox who lost his tail.

  ‘It’s Maria’s birthday this week,’ Kolya informed him one afternoon. ‘We’re expecting you.’

  Sasha didn’t need asking twice. He jumped at any chance to get out of the family apartment, which was convenient to the Aquarium but seemed unbearably airless and constricted now that he was alone with his mother. They had nothing to say to each other. She spent even more time than before at Krisov’s wretched Party meetings, and Sasha ate at friends’ houses or the office canteen.

  As a lieutenant without family connections, Sasha didn’t have access to the special stores for the higher-ups, so he bought a little bottle of French perfume for Vlassov’s wife at the GUM emporium. It was an unheard-of brand, but that didn’t stop them from making him pay through the nose. Maria Vlassova received it at the door to their apartment like a ticket collector.

  It was plain that Kolya hadn’t married her for her looks. Her flat, puffy face with the big nose plopped in the middle vaguely resembled Brezhnev’s. The primary appeal, quite obviously, was the father who was something in Dnepropetrovsk.

  Maria appraised him as if he were a piece of meat that might have been lying around for too long. At last she nodded her head, as if to say, ‘It will have to do,’ and announced, in her surprisingly deep voice, ‘I want you to meet my closest friend.’

  Sasha had the situation appraised immediately. Maria fancied herself as a matchmaker.

  Her friend was strategically deployed between the window and the table with the drinks and piroshki, dominating a group of young men who were vying for her attention. Lydia was conventionally pretty except, perhaps, for the rather solid jawline. Her hair was the color of ripened wheat; her skin was clear and milky white. She was tall — taller than one of the officers who was laughing at her jokes — with a high, full bosom. Her clothes were expensive and flatteringly cut, if perhaps a little too old for her. As she gave her hand to Sasha, he caught a whiff of a scent that certainly wasn’t available at the GUM emporium.

  Lydia talked about restaurants he hadn’t heard of, people he hadn’t met, Black Sea resorts he had never visited. She mentioned risqué French and American films she could only have seen at private showings, perhaps in the cinema that Goskino reserved for the Party and government elite. When she cracked a joke, she applauded it with a loud, brittle laugh, and expected others to follow suit. She was rarely amused by other people’s sallies. Sasha was mildly aroused by the lazy sexuality he could sense in her, stirring itself like one of the larger predators waking from a nap in the sun. But the brash, brassy exterior annoyed him. Lydia talked as if she had the right to whatever or whoever she wanted.

  He slipped away after a while, but Kolya collared him and shunted him off into the kitchen.

  ‘Well? What do you think?’ Kolya demanded. He slapped his left palm over his right fist suggestively.

  Sasha shrugged.

  ‘Your problem is, you never drink enough to see clearly. Here.’ He poured both of them a generous slug. ‘Davai glaz nalyom! Here’s one in the eye!’

  Sasha took a sip. It was Scotch, the real stuff. Kolya poured it down like vodka.

  ‘Good stuff, eh?’ Kolya said, wiping his mouth. ‘Single malt. Lydia brought it. From her father’s private stock.’ He saw Sasha’s quizzical look, and burst out, ‘You stupid bastard! You mean you don’t know who she is?’

  Sasha said nothing.

  ‘She’s the daughter of General of the Army Alexei Ivanovich Zotov, that’s all,’ Kolya announced. He added in a stage whisper, Now you know what it is to have friends.’ He refilled the glasses and said, ‘Postavish. You owe me one.’

  Zotov’s name was a household word around the Aquarium. He was a Deputy Commander of the Warsaw Pact and one of the few certified war heroes who had managed to survive both Stalin and Khrushchev. He was one of the commanders who had helped to break the back of the German offensive in the famous Battle of Kursk. He was regarded as a soldier’s soldier, not just another political general who knew how to lick asses at the Central Committee. The majors and lieutenant-colonels spoke of him with respect — something that could not be said for more than a few others in the top brass. Sasha had heard someone refer to Zotov as the helicopter general, because of his lightning i
nspections of military units. He was talked about as a man on his way to the top, a future Marshal of the Soviet Union and a possible Chief of Staff or even Minister of Defense.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Kolya nudged Sasha. ‘I’m an expert on body language. I can tell she likes you. You’re making a big impression. Remember our illustrious M. V. Frunze.’ He recited the maxim that every Soviet officer had memorized in class. ‘“The victor will be the one who finds within himself the resolution to attack.”’

  This show of military science drove Sasha back into the living room, where the party was getting well lubricated and extremely noisy. Someone climbed onto the sofa and attempted a rendition of a Fausto Papette song, before losing his foothold and crashing to the floor, his fall softened by the girl he brought down with him, who started screaming blue murder. Sasha noted that Lydia seemed to be holding her drink pretty well, sticking to Hungarian wine rather than the hard stuff.

  Suddenly she was next to him, and he felt her arm fold around his. ‘I’m bored,’ she said, close to his ear. ‘And the racket in here is giving me a headache. Let’s go to my place and have a nightcap.’

  Sasha, who had been mentally preparing his own line of attack, was surprised by the boldness of this proposal. Clearly, the general’s daughter wasn’t in the habit of waiting for whatever took her fancy.

  They flagged down a taxi with a green light in its front window, and the driver seemed happy with Lydia’s directions. General Zotov’s apartment was in one of the most famous buildings in the city. The Visotny Dom, on the embankment overlooking the river, had been built by Stalin in the same style as the main university building. The massive gray tower was home to scores of Party favorites, to scientists and film stars, academicians and Bolshoi performers, senior officials and others from the nomenklatura.

  The lobby was huge, with a vaulting ceiling and a marble floor with a star in the middle that radiated in all directions. There was no doorman, only the elderly liftiorsha, or elevator lady, perched in the reception area; she knew who belonged and who didn’t.

  ‘Good evening, Lydochka,’ she greeted the general’s daughter, with the familiarity permitted a family retainer. She took a good, hard look at the tall young man with the three small stars of a senior lieutenant on his shoulder boards.

  The lift was on the same outsize scale as everything else in the Visotny Dom. The car they rode in was the size of one of the smaller rooms in Sasha’s communal apartment, with panels of polished wood and lots of gilt around the mirrors.

  The Zotovs, father and daughter, lived in a splendid apartment on one of the middle floors of the thirty-five-story tower. Lydia rushed from room to room, flicking on switches, and Sasha’s first impression was of light refracted and reflected in a thousand points: from the chandeliers, the mirrors, from rows of crystal glasses in glass-fronted cabinets, from silver coffers and candlesticks. His feet sunk into deep-pile carpets. There were oriental rugs, a baby grand piano — Lydia tinkled a few bars — and a lot of heavy, stolid furniture that presumably reflected the general’s conservative tastes. Lydia was showing everything off, as if they were in an auction room. The general’s study interested Sasha most. The books were mostly on military history, and they looked well thumbed. The spaces between the bookcases were hung with trophies and plaques from all over the socialist world. There were photos of Zotov with Castro and General Giap and Yasser Arafat. On the desk was a museum piece: an old writing stand with inkwells, surmounted by the double eagle of the Romanovs.

  ‘Where is your father?’ Sasha asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s away for an exercise in Germany. Then he’ll go duck shooting on Lake Varna.’ The way she described the general’s life, he spent most of it away from Moscow. For a month every summer, they both went to Livadia, on the Black Sea.

  She took Sasha’s hand and dragged him into the kitchen. She pulled open the door of a special refrigerator, and showed him row after row of bottles. There were several kinds of French champagne and, inevitably, she picked the priciest, trailing her possessions in front of his nose. Sasha kept up the facade he had decided to adopt: polished and mildly flirtatious. He was already learning that despite his natural reticence — or more probably, because of it — he could dazzle with a focused charm that he was able to switch on or off at will, like a flashlight.

  Lydia brushed against him, as if by accident, as she handed him the bottle of Dom Perignon to open. He wondered how many lovers she had had before, and whether General Zotov had ever found out. Maybe her father checked with the liftiorsha each time he got back from giving the satellite armies their marching orders. From the few personal things he had gleaned about Zotov so far that evening, he couldn’t imagine that the general was altogether relaxed about his daughter’s social life. He might be away a lot of the time, but he sounded as if he was fiercely protective of the only family he had left.

  The glasses they drank from were sparkling Bohemian crystal, an offering to the general from the Czechs.

  After their second toast, Lydia said, ‘Now you have to see my room.’

  It was very different from the rest of the apartment. There were posters of Western heartthrobs — Marlon Brando, James Dean — a powerful hi-fi, and a mountainous bed piled high with pillows, some of them lace-trimmed. She motioned for Sasha to sit on the bed while she put on a record. Soon the nudging, teasing music of the Italian pop star who was all the rage in Moscow that year filled the room.

  She splashed more champagne into the Bohemian glasses. The wine fizzed, her eyes became misty, and a pink flush spread across her cheeks. He watched the soft quiver in her throat as she swallowed the champagne, the indolent smile that plucked at her lips.

  Then she was beside him on the bed. Their lips grazed, then she pulled him against her fiercely, and suddenly they were sprawled full length. She let him explore her body, testing the weight of her breasts, the gentle rise of her belly. But when he began to probe deeper she shivered and recoiled and pressed up against his chest with both hands and pushed him away.

  Coolly, as if nothing had happened, she got up and lit a cigarette with an absurdly thin gold lighter.

  Sasha felt thwarted and embarrassed. He stood up, turning his back to her to conceal his condition.

  She laughed and started rummaging around in her closet. ‘I’m going to put on something more comfortable,’ she announced, displaying a frothy white negligée.

  But the moment had passed. Sasha felt corraled. Her manner said that she thought she could add him to the inventory of her possessions when the mood took her. The initiative lay solely with her.

  At that instant, he thought of Tanya, and wanted to be anywhere other than in that room, with that woman.

  He made wooden excuses about night duty at the Aquarium.

  She made light of it, but he could see she was surprised and possibly offended. There was a little catch in her laugh, like a zipper that wouldn’t close properly.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ he said at the door. They shook hands as if they had barely been introduced.

  On the metro, and all the way back to Peschanaya Street, he brooded about Tanya. He told himself he was insane to go on moping over what he had helped to destroy.

  At the Aquarium the next day, Kolya Vlassov tipped him a wink and said, ‘You hooked a live one. Am I right?’

  Sasha just grunted, trying to shake him off.

  ‘Later, Kolya. I have to finish a report.’

  ‘Listen, you could do a hell of a lot worse,’ Vlassov persisted. ‘I wouldn’t mind sharing her bed. And the way they live! A dacha in the Silver Forest, stone, mind you, real stone. A palace on the Black Sea, a hunting lodge, whole brigades of orderlies ready to wait on them hand and foot. Just remember, Sasha, we’re expecting to be invited if you tie the knot.’

  Before Kolya would stop, Sasha had to promise to buy him a drink that evening, and they ended up in a restaurant not far from the office. Sasha picked up a few more scraps of information about the Zotov
family arrangements. Lydia was an only child. Her mother had been killed in a car crash soon after giving birth, and the general had never remarried. He was married to his profession. Lydia acted as his housekeeper and hostess in Moscow.

  Kolya rhapsodized about what an alliance with Lydia would mean: access to the fancy hard-currency stores, dazzling parties, a guaranteed posting abroad, easy promotion. He panted over every detail of the apartment in the Visotny Dom.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he pressed Sasha. ‘You’ve got to make your move while the bitch is in heat.’

  Sasha drank some more, and thought about it, while Kolya embarked on a complicated explanation of how a four-star general was entitled to an even higher standard of food than, say, a colonel-general. ‘Think of it, Sasha,’ he was saying, ‘every apple served on Zotov’s table is hand picked! The tomatoes are four-star quality!’

  There was one consuming attraction for Sasha in the situation, and it had nothing to do with Kolya’s vision of creature comfort. The attraction was power: a shortcut to the top of the military establishment, a means to fulfill his private agenda. He didn’t recoil from the idea of a marriage of convenience with Lydia. He felt nothing approaching love. But he doubted that he would ever experience that again, not after Tanya. The capacity had been burned out of him. On the physical level, there was a healthy animal attraction. Lydia was no intellectual, but she was smart enough. He felt that the problem, if he intended to take things further, was how to win control, how to avoid being smothered by her.

  He allowed a couple of days to elapse before calling her.

  ‘I want to thank you for the most beautiful evening of my life,’ he began. It was a transparent lie, but she enjoyed it. When he added, ‘Can I see you again?’ she immediately came back with, ‘Whenever you like.’