Moscow Rules

by Robert Moss

  ‘That’s not what we have in mind,’ he said. ‘If we wanted to go that route,’ he added more harshly, ‘we have all the pictures we need. I shouldn’t tell you this,’ he confided, ‘but some of your friends in the Bureau wanted to use them on Sasha before he left New York. I managed to stop them.’

  She shivered involuntarily at the thought that her most secret moments with Sasha had been shared with a spy camera.

  ‘I’m sorry I mentioned it,’ Gladden went on.

  ‘No need to be sorry. I brought it up.’ She felt renewed confidence in the man. There was nothing shifty about him. He met her eyes when she asked questions, and he didn’t cover his mouth with his hand before responding.

  A great pasha of a marmalade cat, the club pet, made its majestic progress towards the fire, then jumped up, uninvited, on Gladden’s lap. It purred in measured appreciation as he scratched behind its ears, uncaring about the ginger hairs on his dark suit.

  Elaine couldn’t be sure afterward whether the cat or the question of the photographs had counted for more. Either way, it was instinct more than reasoning that settled her course for her.

  ‘No strings?’ she repeated.

  And again he said, ‘No strings.’

  ‘What do you want me to do next?’

  ‘Go back to your Russian class, write your book, put in for your tourist visa. I’m sure there won’t be any problem.’ He patted her hand. It seemed he had the gift of making strays feel safe. ‘When the time is right, I’ll let you know.’

  *

  Andropov’s body was on display in the House of Unions for three days, with his decorations laid out on a satin pad at the foot of the bier. On the last day, the corpse was surrounded by an honor guard of the Party elite. All over Moscow and throughout the country red flags of mourning trimmed in black, drooped at half mast. The official photographs of the General Secretary were also draped in black. Factory whistles, the sirens of the ships on the river, the gun salvoes of the Taman and Kantemirov Guards divisions all marked his passing. But nobody wept in public, as they had after Stalin’s death.

  On Gogol Boulevard, Sasha was busied with arranging memorial ceremonies in the military districts and even among the ‘Limited Contingent’ of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, as the Moscow papers always described the army of occupation. He and Marshal Zotov both turned out for the funeral in Red Square, standing in places of honor among the army brass. They watched the coffin roll past on its gun carriage, and saw Chernenko, atop the mausoleum, claiming his inheritance, heard him rush through the expected eulogies. ‘Yuri Vladimirovich lived an eventful, action-filled life...remarkable qualities as a Marxist Leninist...faithfulness to communist ideals, unbending will, modesty and business ability...concern for the working man...’

  They stood there on the podium, these old men in hats and heavy coats, except for Ustinov in his Marshal’s uniform, and they reminded Sasha of a photo he had once seen of Easter Island statues, weathered and eroded, crumbling in front of your eyes. After Chernenko had wheezed his last, they produced Gromyko, another perennial survivor and then a token worker, a press-tool operator from the Likachev auto factory in Moscow, to testify to how Andropov had always had the interest of the proletariat at heart. Then the Defense Minister came to the microphones to report that the men of the Soviet armed forces were gripped by the deepest grief over the death of the General Secretary. Imperceptibly, Sasha shifted from one foot to the other. He could see Zotov’s profile, impassive, seemingly hewed from granite. At 12:45 precisely, the guns rang out.

  ‘They had it all sewn up,’ the Marshal remarked to Sasha after the new General Secretary was named. ‘Just like you said.’

  Some months later, Sasha came home to the Visotny Dom to find the Marshal crouched over an elaborate model railroad that he had had set up in a back room of the family apartment for Petya, controlling a very realistic 0 gauge Marklin armored train — a vintage piece that had been presented to him by the East Germans. It struck Sasha that the train Lenin had travelled on from Zurich to mount his coup might have looked something like that.

  ‘Come over here, Sasha,’ Zotov summoned him. ‘You can work the points while I pour us a drink. I have a few things to tell you.’ Sasha shunted the armored train along a siding.

  ‘All right, that’s enough of that,’ the Marshal interrupted him, holding out a brandy snifter. ‘We’re not schoolboys. Let’s toast the new Chief of Staff!’

  Sasha stared at him, and the Marshal broke into a broad smile. ‘You mean you didn’t know?’ Zotov guffawed.

  ‘There’ve been rumors, of course —’

  ‘Well, as of tonight, it’s a fact. I take charge at the end of the week.’

  ‘Your health, Comrade Marshal!’ Sasha exclaimed. He was grinning too. ‘But how did you manage it?’

  ‘Here’s to our esteemed Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Comrade Askyerov,’ Zotov said by way of response. ‘We owe it all to him. Fuck him to the nth degree!’

  They drank again, and the Marshal explained the game of musical chairs that had made him the master of Gogol Boulevard.

  ‘They put off cutting down the dead wood so long that it started falling under its own weight,’ he began. ‘The Prime Minister couldn’t work for more than an hour at a stretch — believe me, I’ve watched the man. Our august Defense Minister never recovered from that last trip to Damascus. Mohammed’s revenge. So finally even the boss’ — he was still careful to avoid criticizing the General Secretary by name — ‘was made to see that we need some men who can stand up without being supported on either side. And just look at the prize pair he’s appointed. As Prime Minister, Askyerov. As Defense Minister — can you guess, Sasha?’

  Through his own channels, Sasha had a fairly good idea. But he waited for the Marshal to answer his own question.

  ‘Serdyuk!’ Zotov snorted. ‘Another chekist! And a fucking Ukrainian to boot! They’re going to make him a Marshal of the Soviet Union. And the only shooting he’s ever witnessed is the kind they do in a chekist jail!’

  ‘When did you get the news?’ Sasha asked quietly.

  ‘Two hours ago,’ Zotov said, consulting his watch. ‘We were called to a surprise meeting of the Defense Council. You should have seen the chief’s face when they told him. I thought he was going to go for Askyerov with his fists.’

  The former Chief of Staff had been expecting to get the top Defense job himself. He had made no secret of his view that it was time that a professional soldier took charge.

  ‘They had it all prepared, Sasha. They told the chief they were reluctantly prepared to acept his resignation, on the grounds of his health. But they knew the army wouldn’t like it. They’re scared of us, Sasha. Why do you think they’ve agreed to all our weapons projects?’

  This was true, Sasha thought. As the civilian leadership faltered, the military establishment had steadily grown in power. Blunders like the shooting-down of a Korean passenger plane and the failure to produce anything approximating a victory in Afghanistan had not altered the trend. The shoddy performance of the Soviet system in every area except military strength had helped to accelerate it. And as traditional slogans and leaders fell into disrespect, the Party was forced to rely more and more on the fear of enemies abroad to rally public support — which again meant building up the army.

  ‘They made you Chief of Staff,’ Sasha suggested, ‘because our own people admire you. They think it will make us accept Askyerov and Serdyuk while they build their own power.’ He paused before adding, ‘They think they can control you.’

  ‘Do you think I’m blind?’ the Marshal roared, pouring more brandy. ‘I know they’ll try to keep me on a leash and choke me with it when I’m no longer useful. But I’m on to their game, Sasha. They don’t realize what they’ve done. The whole fighting machine of this country is now under my fist. Think of it. Think what we can become. A country should be like this.’ He clenched his great paw and raised it aloft. ‘A country should be like a fist. Ins
tead of this.’ He let his hand flop open, like a beggar asking for alms.

  Sasha watched him as he started pacing the room. The deep-pile rug was not enough to muffle his tread. It’s beginning, Sasha thought.

  ‘You can change the history of Russia,’ he addressed his father-in-law’s back, mixing flattery with provocation. ‘The army will stand behind you. And the army is the only institution the people still believe in.’

  The Marshal swiveled on his heel and stared at him. ‘You know what they call that kind of talk. They call it bonapartism.’

  ‘Not in the barracks,’ Sasha said softly.

  The Marshal pretended to be absorbed in the model railroad. He set the train in motion, then stopped it at a level crossing.

  ‘I think we understand each other,’ he turned to Sasha. ‘There are things I don’t need to explain to you, nor you to me. You’ve got your ear to the ground. You’ve been to fourteen of the districts.’

  ‘Fifteen,’ Sasha corrected him. There were sixteen military districts in the Soviet Union.

  ‘I want you to make me a list. I want the names of the commanders we can count on, men who understand the type of leadership we need. Also of those who will oppose us. Are you with me?’

  ‘Totally,’ Sasha said with conviction.

  ‘We can’t trust anyone to begin with. Not completely,’ the Marshal went on. ‘With Serdyuk at the Defense Ministry, the chekists will be crawling all over us.’

  ‘We’ll be watching them too.’

  The Marshal looked puzzled. Sasha explained. ‘I have a source — a friend in the Third Directorate. He’ll help us.’

  ‘You’re insane!’ Zotov protested. ‘He’s a provocateur, trying to trap you the way they got whatsisname, that Slavophile in Leningrad.’ A captain in Leningrad had gathered a circle of ardent Russianist officers and circulated samizdat denouncing ‘cosmopolitan influences’ and appealing for a military regime and a return to the Orthodox church. The circle grew steadily over a period of some months until the KGB, which had helped to set it up, decided it had trapped enough ‘bonapartists,’ and arrested the lot.

  ‘I can trust this man,’ Sasha pursued. He told the Marshal enough about his relations with Nikolsky to see the older man’s reaction shift from angry incredulity to admiration.

  ‘I wasn’t mistaken about you, Sasha,’ he commented. He started discussing the personalities of several senior officers in the Moscow Military District, including the commanders of the Kantemirov and Taman Guards, the ‘court divisions’ deployed within easy reach of the capital.

  Listening to him, Sasha thought, It will never work that way. The court divisions are too closely watched, and their commanders are political opportunists. Why are generals always trying to fight the last war?

  ‘Alexei Ivanich,’ he said. ‘You have far more experience than I do, so forgive me if I seem too outspoken. I think your plan could only end in disaster, even with an inside source in the Third Directorate. The Party and the KGB have always looked on the Moscow garrison as the main source of danger. Try anything out of the ordinary, and they’ll pounce.’

  ‘Have you got a better idea?’

  ‘There are weapons available that they haven’t thought about,’ Sasha said carefully.

  Tor example?’

  ‘Spetsnaz.’

  Zotov stared at him with what appeared to be blank incomprehension for a moment, then his big face molded itself into a grin. He remembered that one of Sasha’s first requests, after he had joined him at Gogol Boulevard, had been to confirm the appointment of one of his fighting comrades, Fyodor Zaytsev, as commander of the special forces base at Kavrov.

  ‘Very original, Sasha. And how is your friend Zaytsev these days?’

  *

  Elaine spent the first couple of days in Moscow sightseeing like a normal tourist. They put her up at the Metropol, and the first night she found herself sharing a table with a group of red-faced men who were drinking and eating hugely. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t speak Russian,’ she said to the one who started trying to pick her up. To her embarrassment, he turned out to be a Scots engineer from Glasgow.

  She wandered Red Square, stood in line with the people waiting to view Lenin’s embalmed corpse, spent time at galleries and museums. She rode the metro and the trolleybuses, trying to get her bearings. The city looked as drab as she had expected, under a cast-iron sky, and the people had a defeated look, she thought. She couldn’t be sure if she was under surveillance, but everywhere she went, she felt that eyes were following.

  When she called Guy Harrison, the correspondent Luke Gladden had mentioned in New York, she didn’t give her name, feeling sure that his phone must be tapped. He wasn’t a bit put out. Harrison had an odd, ecclesiastical turn of phrase. He said, ‘Bless you, my child,’ after inviting her to a party at his flat.

  ‘Failed seminarist, you know,’ he explained that evening, when the other guests had left. ‘It’s the right background for this place. Did you know that Stalin went to a Jesuit seminary? Never underrate a Jesuit.’

  Harrison’s guests were eclectic: an American art dealer, a few diplomats from various European embassies, a dramatically beautiful star of the Theatre Romen who was finally persuaded to sing a few gypsy songs, and a number of sleek Russians who didn’t seem at all perturbed about the risks of slipping in and out of the closely monitored apartment block. Harrison himself reminded her of Robert Morley. He had the reassuring rotundity of a man who would rather look at a roast potato than a naked woman, as well as that disconcerting habit of raising his hand to deliver his apostolic blessing. He was accredited to a number of publications in London, Toronto, and Hong Kong. Elaine wondered who else he worked for — the CIA? the British? — and why the Soviets put up with him. These were mysteries that Guy Harrison was certainly not going to elucidate.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he told her, ‘I’ll show you the bright lights. Godspeed!’

  He picked her up at the hotel, gave her lunch at a Uzbek restaurant, and took her on a spin around the city in his car, a dun-colored Lada that was the only thing about him that blended into the landscape. He showed her the Ministry of Defense, a hulking block of yellow-brown stone with the inevitable neo-Greek portico, on the embankment near the main Aeroflot offices.

  ‘The brass hats are all there for a meeting,’ he said. ‘Something to do with Afghanistan and the Paks.’

  They drove up Komsomolsky Prospekt, across the Garden Ring Road. Harrison had to circle around via a narrow underpass to get onto the Ring Road. He pointed out an old metro station, a one-story building with high wooden doors and a red pointed roof. Park Kultury, Elaine made out the name. It was an old quarter of the city. The houses along the road were three and four storys, off-white and yellow, with narrow slits of windows that opened like shutters at the bottom.

  Then they were up on the Ring Road, crossing Krimskiy Most, Moscow’s most beautiful bridge. As they drove east, Harrison pointed out the floating restaurant on the river, and the big roller coaster in Gorky Park, on the far side. ‘The American Hills,’ Muscovites called it. They recrossed the Moskva River by a second bridge, cutting the loop, and suddenly they were passing Visotny Dom.

  ‘That’s where he lives,’ Harrison said quietly. ‘He usually drives himself home.

  ‘It’s a long shot, I admit,’ Harrison remarked when he finished explaining his plan. ‘But I haven’t been able to come up with a better idea.’

  Sasha had been observed following the same route from the Defense Ministry that they had just taken. The road was broad and busy all the way, except for the detour along Novokrynskiy Proyezd, past the old metro station, wide enough only for single-lane traffic, moving at a snail’s pace. The old Park Kultury station was quiet, but it was not unusual to see a few people, mostly students from the nearby technical institute, milling around near the doors.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘Wave him down like a cab?’

  ‘Do you think he’ll recogn
ize you? It’s not as if it’s a main road.’

  ‘What time will he be coming home?’

  ‘He will leave the Ministry around six.’

  ‘Then it’s going to be dark,’ she pointed out.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ Harrison said. ‘Couldn’t you stand under a street lamp or something?’

  ‘You mean like a hooker?’

  ‘Good heavens, no, it’s not like that here at all.’ Guy sounded quite shocked.

  ‘I’ll manage,’ she said, taking charge. ‘Providing I can spot him.’ This was what she was here to do, after all. Dealing with the practical difficulties was a relief from trying to cope with her private doubts. Would he be glad to see her? Had he found happiness with someone else, wife or mistress? Would he suspect that she was being used by Gladden, or someone like him, and cast her out? It was easier to concentrate on what she would wear to the meeting. Something he might remember. Yes, the scarf he had given her in New York, with a vivid paisley design of greens and golds.

  ‘He’ll be driving his own car,’ Harrison went on. ‘See that one ahead — no, the second car. That’s a Volga. Sasha’s is like that, only black. He has a special license tag, with the letters MO on the left-hand side. The number is seven-nine-dash-thirteen. But look for the letters MO. They’re reserved for senior defense people.’

  She nodded.

  ‘You must tell me if you’re having second thoughts,’ he pursued. ‘There could be an easier way. It’s just that we haven’t come up with one. You can’t exactly go knocking on his door in the Visotny Dom.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said decisively.

  ‘Splendid. The thing is, his conference ends tomorrow. Can you be ready around three-thirty?’

  As she passed the floor attendant in her hotel and opened the door to her room, the only thing she regretted was that they couldn’t have attempted the rendezvous today. It would have been better not to have had a lonely evening in which the old fears could spawn new ones.

  *

  The sky was oppressive, and the drizzle, light but unremitting, was as cold as melting ice. Elaine felt the snap of the wind against her cheek as she walked out of the Metropol, with a heavy sweater under her black winter coat. Around her throat, lapping over her collar, was the green-and-gold scarf that Sasha had bought for her.