Hotel Moscow

by Talia Carner

  “Amanda? Brooke?”

  “Judd?” Brooke jumped out of bed and opened the door, conscious of her thin negligee and bare feet. “What is it?”

  Judd stepped into the small vestibule and closed the door behind him. In the light coming from the bathroom, there was something strange about him, but she was too self-conscious about her own state of undress to stare.

  She brushed her hair from her face. The travel clock on her night table indicated it was two-thirty in the morning. “What’s wrong?”

  “The uprising is getting nasty, possibly dangerous.”

  “How bad?” Amanda asked from her bed. She rose to lean on her elbow.

  “Yeltsin is finally responding, but the army is on Rutskoy’s side. So Yeltsin’s asked civilians to fight.”

  “That already happened, yesterday at five o’clock,” Brooke said, recalling her conversation with Olga. “What’s different?”

  “Fifteen thousand people showed up and thousands more are flooding into the city—in addition to the many thousands that had poured in these past two weeks of standoff.”

  Cold sweat erupted on Brooke’s back. “Civil war?”

  “So far, the army says it’s not their job to shoot Russian citizens, but that could change.” Judd’s tone was urgent. “Without the army, Yeltsin might not make it.”

  “We could wake up in the morning back in Communist Russia,” Brooke said to Amanda. “I don’t get it. Yeltsin’s had weeks to prepare.”

  Amanda got up and stepped to the vestibule. “What are we supposed to do?”

  Judd said, “I want the group packed and ready to leave. I don’t want the bunch of you stuck here with no protection.”

  Brooke stared at him. “Where would we go? The airport is shut down.”

  “What about the embassy?” Amanda asked. “We are registered with them.”

  Judd shook his head. “Their compound is closed. I’m checking some possibilities, maybe move you all to a village outside of town.”

  “You sound like you’re back in Vietnam.” Brooke’s eyes suddenly took in his clothes. He wore tattered pants held up by a rope, and the soles of his work shoes had separated. “Why are you dressed like a hobo?”

  “I’ve been outside tonight and didn’t want to attract attention.”

  “With the curfew on?” Who was he? Brooke hugged herself, hearing the distant roar of something heavy thundering down a hill. “Are those tanks?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “If the army doesn’t support Yeltsin, where are the tanks going?”

  “We’re caught in a goddamned war.” He crossed the room and pushed the window open. Brooke heard the muffled rumble punctuated by the rat-a-tat of machine guns. The air smelled of gun powder and something orangey, like rotten garbage.

  A cold breeze rushed in. Brooke threw open her suitcase, yanked out her robe and put it on. Whatever scheme Judd was concocting, he was the only one trying to help them. She began placing the matryoshka dolls one inside the other. How she wished she had Hoffenbach’s home phone number. Although it was still the weekend, she hoped he had received either the message she’d left at his office or news of Moscow before heading to the airport to fetch her.

  Judd closed the window and lifted the phone receiver. Brooke could hear the dial tone’s flat shrill. “We may lose electricity soon.” He hung up the phone and stepped to the door.

  “What should we do?” Amanda asked.

  “Stay tuned.”

  DAY FIVE

  Monday, October 4, 1993

  Chapter Thirty-three

  NO ADDITIONAL NEWS arrived. Amanda woke the rest of the group and asked them all to pack and be ready—and then catch sleep for the rest of the night in their clothes. They’d have to wait to leave until curfew was lifted. Brooke’s memories of her harrowing journey through downtown Moscow still fresh in her mind, she was relieved not to have to brave wild masses or barricades in the dark of the night.

  At seven, she placed a phone call to the embassy—just in case someone picked up—but there was no answer at the other end. Only a few members of the hotel staff could arrive this early, so the women settled in the seating area on the ninth floor, drinking tea and munching on their supplies of crackers and cookies. Brooke couldn’t read the thin smile on Amanda’s colorless lips, but her own eyes burned from lack of sleep.

  Aleksandr had surprisingly managed to show up early, and so had the bus.

  “Just check us out,” Amanda told him. “We’re ready.”

  “We can’t check out until we settle the bill.”

  “It’s long settled. We paid EuroTours in advance.”

  “I must talk to my boss first. The guards won’t let you take out your suitcases until they get approval.”

  “Whose approval?” Amanda asked.

  “Let’s ditch the bags and get the hell out,” Brooke said.

  Before Aleksandr had a chance to protest, Jenny yelled from the floor matron’s room, “Come quick! Everyone! CNN!”

  On the screen, tanks rolled down the boulevards, scattering citizens. Clusters of people, huddled in winter coats, flattened themselves against walls as the heavy armor moved through. Alternate cameras zoomed in on units of militiamen and soldiers taking up positions in city squares and in front of office buildings whose super-size Soviet insignias indicated they belonged to the government.

  Bile rose in Brooke’s throat. Except for the color picture, she could be watching a World War II movie. In the corner of the screen showing the besieged parliament building appeared the bearded face of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, his words dubbed into Russian. Brooke searched for Aleksandr to translate, but he hadn’t bothered to enter the room.

  Judd, who had come up behind the group, said, “Looks like the army’s negotiated with Yeltsin and has finally agreed to support him. Yeltsin’s counterattack has already begun—”

  “Can you read Blitzer’s lips?” Jenny asked. “You’re full of surprises.”

  Brooke said nothing. Judd’s keeping secret his knowledge of Russian annoyed her.

  “If the uprising is contained—” Amanda began.

  “Yeltsin unleashing his army on civilians is hardly a comforting thought,” Brooke said. “I’d rather hide in a remote village than be stuck in the city.”

  “We’re far enough from downtown, so we’re better off staying put,” Amanda said.

  “With tanks and lunatics all over the place, we may not be safe here,” Brooke said, and looked at Judd for guidance.

  Amanda glanced at a watch she had picked up at the craft market, a huge Russian-made contraption with a hammer-and-sickle emblem on its face. “Let’s see how the next couple of hours develop. Our meetings must be canceled, so there’s no place we need to be. Let’s ride out the storm here.”

  “In the meantime, please get EuroTours to release us from this prison,” Brooke said. “We can’t be beholden to some mistake.”

  As the women filed out, murmuring, she slunk back to her room to think and evaluate the situation. Judd must have a way to get things done. What kind of people were his contacts here? What had been his purpose when he prowled the streets during the night? What village had he planned to take them to?

  Olga’s was the only voice of reason she knew in this city. She called her again.

  A radio was blaring on the other end. “I saw the tanks on TV,” Brooke said. “What’s really going on?”

  “Disinformatsiya. The old propaganda, all half-truths.” Olga’s voice plodded on as through sludge, and Brooke figured that Olga was starting her political campaign in case someone was eavesdropping. “When Gorbachev established glasnost in the late 1980s, it meant ‘openness.’ He promised to end these predigested slogans, these force-fed scripts. He promised freedom of expression, freedom of the press—and we began to believe it. Yet here we are, five years later. No democracy looks, sounds, or behaves like this—”

  An explosion jolted Brooke. A louder boom followed. The glass in the window q
uaked, once, twice. “Did you hear that?” she called out to Olga.

  “Hear what?” Olga paused as though listening, and then whispered, “Go with Svetlana and meet me later at my office.”

  It took Brooke’s brain a few seconds to switch gears. Go with Svetlana where? Go to the Economic Authority offices? Bile arose again from her gut. “Today?”

  “Just go in for twenty minutes, she’ll translate for you, then you leave.”

  “Olga, I can’t—”

  “It’s simple.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  BROOKE SLID INTO the back seat of a private car Svetlana had hired as a taxi. As they headed out of Lenin Hills, all Brooke could discern from Svetlana’s responses was that the cab wouldn’t drive them to the Economic Authority building—only to the subway that would take them to the station nearest their destination.

  They drove along the southern embankment road that followed the twisting Moskva River. Beyond it, hills curved up and away, nestling under a blanket of red and yellow trees as picturesque as upstate New York would be right now on the other side of the globe. Apprehension welled in Brooke. She told herself that Olga was right; she had the savvy to read the files, and if she was lucky, a brief glance accompanied by Svetlana’s translation would give her all the cues. In and out in twenty minutes, she would offer some basic assistance to women working in Svetlana’s or Vera’s factory.

  Only a few passengers were on the train when she got on with Svetlana. When Brooke sat down the ridges of the window frame dug into her back.

  The train swooshed through Moscow at full speed. “Hey! It didn’t stop at the station!” Svetlana called out as the empty platform disappeared behind them.

  All Brooke wanted was for the ordeal to be over, the uprising to be squelched, and the airport to reopen.

  Fifteen minutes later, they managed to get off and take another train back. This time, they were delivered to the station they wanted. When the door opened, Brooke saw soldiers moving about the platform, their guns hanging from shoulder straps as they stopped random passengers and interrogated them. She clutched the train door until it began to close. Svetlana gave her a quizzical look, and Brooke stepped out.

  A couple in front of them fumbled for their passports. Brooke touched Svetlana’s elbow and, holding her chin high, strutted on. Svetlana imitated her, and the soldiers let them through.

  As they emerged from the underground station, cannon fire shook the ground under Brooke’s feet. Windows rattled in the building above her, echoing the booming explosions. Brooke covered her ears. This was indeed a war zone.

  She pulled Svetlana back inside the entrance. “This is insane.”

  “Dr. Rozanova said—”

  Brooke’s heart pounded. She produced a notepad and map of Moscow. “In case we get separated, show me where we are and where we’re going.”

  Svetlana traced with a bitten fingernail the ten blocks to the Economic Authority, and Brooke’s blood ran cold. “The building is only a few hundred yards away from the White House!”

  Svetlana dropped her head. “I know.”

  Did Olga know that? Brooke scanned the empty street. The military must have cleared the unruly mob she had seen the evening before. She glanced back into the long corridor of the subway and considered turning around.

  It was too late, she realized. They were here. There might never be another chance to check the files. “Please write down in Cyrillic Dr. Rozanova’s office address,” she said, handing her notepad and pen to Svetlana.

  Nearby, cannon shells exploded and the rapid fire of machine guns rattled the air. Svetlana handed the pad back to Brooke, who tucked it in her bag. Then she glanced right and left and stepped back into the street, incredulous at her own foolhardiness. Linking arms with Svetlana, Brooke whispered, “Don’t lose me.”

  They scurried along, keeping close to the buildings. Brooke’s heartbeat thumped loudly in her ears. Smoke hung in the air like the aftermath of a fireworks display, making her eyes and throat burn.

  They darted across a wide street, and Brooke caught sight of the Novoarbatsky Bridge a hundred yards away. She had passed the bridge with Viktor some forty hours earlier. A few brave bystanders were still gathered on it. In the open space, the noise of the cannonade was deafening and dust thickened the air, but the people seemed untroubled as they watched the battle raging around the White House in front of them as if it were a sports competition.

  Brooke quickened her pace, ignoring Svetlana’s labored breathing. She let out a sigh of relief as they entered the unheated lobby of the Economic Authority just ahead of a nearby blast. A guard behind a desk clutched the edges of his coat against the cold. Brooke was prepared to give him a five-dollar bill, but the man only wiggled the end of a finger poked through a buttonhole, waving her and Svetlana in.

  The hallway on the eleventh floor was deserted, the lights off, the doors closed on both sides. Wan light poured in from the uncovered window at the end. A thin carpet absorbed their footsteps. Neither woman spoke until Svetlana stopped in front of a door.

  “This is the Finance Department,” she whispered. “Where they approved my loans.” She put her ear to the door. “My friend Katerina works on this floor.”

  A cannon shell exploded outside, its echo reverberating through the hallway. The window at the far end shattered, and glass flew toward them, some pieces landing just feet away.

  “God Almighty.” Trembling, Brooke pressed herself against the wall and shook her clothes to free whatever minute shards might have stuck to them. “You’ll just read and translate for me the important page from each file and then we’ll leave.”

  Svetlana turned the door knob, and Brooke hurried after her into a room lined with wooden filing cabinets, handwritten Cyrillic letters marking each drawer. She took out an Evian bottle, twisted open the top, and, after taking a sip, handed it to Svetlana. “Do you have the list?” she whispered.

  “I memorized it, then destroyed it.” Svetlana struggled with the latch of a drawer.

  Another explosion boomed outside. When the windows stopped rattling, Brooke peeked out and realized that that side of the building overlooked the Moskva River. All she could see was a hanging stripe of smoke bifurcating the sky: crisp blue morning above, murky gray below.

  Svetlana laid out four files on one of the desks. “Which one do you want me to translate?” Her voice quaked.

  A huge explosion tore the air, shaking the windows. Brooke fell to her knees, then crawled under the desk. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Gunfire followed. Svetlana, crouching next to Brooke, reached for the files and put them on the floor. Brooke couldn’t help but admire her tenacity. She looked dubiously at the files. Each was one to three inches thick. What had made Olga think it would take only twenty minutes? Of course, she realized, Olga had never seen a business folder. As educated as she was, the sociologist possessed not a shred of knowledge of the world of commerce.

  “We can’t go through them now,” Brooke whispered. The rat-a-tat of machine gun fire sounded.

  “We must do as we’re told,” Svetlana said.

  “Not to get killed. I’m not staying.” Brooke glanced at Svetlana’s glum expression and compromised. “Let’s take them and get out of here.” She withdrew her folded nylon bag from her purse. “You’ll return the files another time.”

  Svetlana’s fingers fluttered near her throat. “We might get searched.”

  “You’ll tell the soldiers that we’re on a special assignment for Yeltsin,” Brooke said, her heart hammering, and her patience wearing thin. She regretted her blind acceptance of Olga’s assurance that this was simple. Simple? If she got caught, she might be charged as a spy and her government might be unable to save her; it had failed to release American hostages in Iran and Lebanon. Still, she stretched the bag open. “Put the files in.”

  Svetlana’s lips were pale. “Nothing is right when the whole thing is wrong in the first place,” she mu
mbled, dumping in the files. The weight strained the bag’s straps.

  Svetlana was right, of course. The whole scheme was insane from the get go. Heading toward the elevator, Brooke searched for words to keep the young Russian calm. Her own safety depended on it. “So far so good. It’s great that you know the building.”

  “My friend wanted me to apply to work here. They hire people who know two foreign languages—” Svetlana stopped. An expression of horror settled on her face as she slammed her hand against her forehead. “Bozhe moi, my God.” She leaned against the marbled wall. “I forgot!”

  “Forgot what?”

  “That place,” Svetlana replied weakly. “Katerina told me about it— I must check—” She shook her head as though to clear it.

  “Now? What place?”

  “The eavesdropping center.”

  Unwillingly, Brooke followed Svetlana back down the hallway.

  Svetlana opened a door. “You wait in Katerina’s office.”

  Brooke stood gaping. All around the room, laid out on mismatched shelves, stands and small tables, were recycled marmalade jars, tin cans, and butter crocks holding large and small house plants in every shade of green. “This is incredible,” she said.

  “Katerina can’t grow them at home. She has no window.” Svetlana handed her a watering can. “Pretend you water the plants.”

  An American caught watering plants in the Economic Authority? “Hurry back, please.” Brooke surveyed a sweet-potato vine that was so long it had been snaked up to the ceiling and was tied to the overhead light fixture, where it intertwined with other plants suspended from hooks to create a canopy of leaves. Spider plants and ferns hung in front of the window, while large ficus and elephant ears stood in the corners. Jade plants, aloes, cacti, and a midget palm completed the thick foliage.

  Who was this Katerina who could create such a sanctuary of beauty in the midst of drabness? In what kind of hovel did she live if it didn’t even have a window? Brooke rationed the water in the can to make it last, and pictured this unknown, spirited woman. Would a woman with such a soul turn on her Jewish neighbors?