An Aeroflot movable stairway was brought to the plane and the crew was allowed aboard just long enough to grab their personal belongings. Somehow most of their things survived the chaos. In the Aeroflot bus to the terminal, Faith saw Frosty grin as he looked at the salvaged snapshot of his dog. He stuffed it into his wallet.
Ian whispered to her, “It’s not really in the cooler, is it?”
“No. Forgive me, but I had to motivate you. I have the cargo.” She made eye contact with him and then looked at her carry-on.
“Did you understand what that general was saying? Why did he countermand the other chap’s orders and permit us on board?”
“KGB politics are deadly. Let it go.”
A Pan Am employee and a uniformed KGB lieutenant greeted the bus and escorted them to the crew passport-control line. He ordered the official to process them even though they lacked the requisite crew manifest. The border guard examined each passport and then stamped a separate loose document. Hakan’s handiwork on the document that Zara had provided passed scrutiny. She thanked the official in English and joined the others at customs.
A squat man with the cheeks of a chipmunk stopped the purser and asked him to open his bag. The official removed a Grundig shortwave radio and said something in Russian. The purser shrugged and looked toward Faith for help. She ignored him. As far as the Soviets were concerned, all American citizens were suspected spies and Americans fluent in Russian were spies. The first officer elbowed Faith and relayed the message. She moved ahead in line, guarding her ribs from any accidental bumps. “What’s up?”
“Something with my radio.” The purser was still pale and withdrawn.
“Says it’s radio,” Faith said in broken Russian with a heavy American accent. “BBC. Radio Moscow, you know.”
The guard handed the purser a customs-declaration form.
“What’s he saying?”
“I don’t know, but I think you have to declare it along with your currency and make damn well sure you export it when you go. Whatever you do, don’t leave with any extra cash beyond what you declare.” She maneuvered back to her place in line.
The purser whispered to Frosty, “What’s with her? In Frankfurt she was fluent—”
“Keep it quiet, son. Do your patriotic duty and play along.”
While waiting for him to complete the declaration form, the inspector motioned for Ian to place the cooler on the counter. The official removed the dry ice and ogled the ice cream, then took out one of the hand-painted plates. He ran his hands around the side of the cooler and paused at the Leatherman. He folded it back so that it became a pair of pliers and proceeded to pull out each blade. “Not bad,” he said to himself in Russian. He tried to fold it back, but the last knife blade wouldn’t move.
Ian took it and pushed, but the blade was locked into place.
“Gimme,” Frosty said. “Takes an engineer.” He closed all the tools. “Safety mechanism. You guys wouldn’t know about those.” He handed it back to the customs officer.
The official made eye contact with Ian, glanced at the Häagen-Dazs and then looked back at Ian. “I’m sorry. You cannot take weapons into the Soviet Union.”
“The tool? I can assure you, it’s no weapon. I’m certain we can arrive at some understanding.” Ian slowly reached for the plate and returned it to the cooler. Without breaking eye contact, he stowed two containers of ice cream, put back the dry ice package and closed the lid. Two cartons of Häagen-Dazs were left behind on the counter.
“I suppose it is but a pocketknife.” The Russian smiled, his eyes now making love to the chocolate-cheesecake ice cream. In a single swoop, he returned the Leatherman and whisked away his booty. “You may go.”
The inspector motioned for a subordinate to replace him and he disappeared into a restricted area with the ice cream. The crew shuffled on. Faith followed them in tight formation.
“Devushka! Girl! Not so fast. Let me have a look,” the subordinate officer said.
Faith stopped, placed her Travelpro on the low counter and unzipped the bulging main compartment. The inspector removed a leather attaché and a neatly folded brown leather jacket. He pulled a ballpoint pen from the bottom and read the advertising embossed on it promoting Froneberger Reisen, a Berlin travel bureau. Faith prayed he wouldn’t unscrew it to find a few inches of time fuse.
He dropped the pen back into the case and set the jacket aside. He patted down the clothing, stopping when he came to her underwear. At that moment, she wished she had packed some chocolate to speed things along. He carefully lifted the clothes from the bag and stacked them on the brown leather jacket. He glared at her. “What is this?”
The entire bottom was filled with rows of small yellow canisters. He pulled out a Play-Doh can that she had coaxed Summer to purchase for her at the Army PX in Berlin. He opened it and pinched off a small portion of the doughy white substance.
CHAPTER
FORTY
SHEREMETYEVO AIRPORT, MOSCOW
The customs inspector wore the uniform of the KPP, the KGB border guards: greenish-gray with hunter green piping. He motioned for assistance. His supervisor came over and opened a Play-Doh can. Faith steeled herself for a long delay. Please, not a chemical analysis.
Faith faked broken Russian. “Play-Doh. Gift for children without mama and papa. For orphanage.”
The supervisor sank his fingers into the Play-Doh and felt for contraband stashed inside. He ordered the inspector to do the same. They poked and prodded. By the third can, the supervisor crafted a crude bowl, momentarily losing himself as his fingers worked to even the sides. When he noticed his subordinate watching his handiwork, he smashed it. He shoved the doughy substance back into the can and probed the next one.
Faith shifted her weight and thought she felt the wire of a blasting cap through the insole of her shoe. Thank goodness Play-Doh and C-4 looked exactly alike. She reached over and plucked off a small portion, rolled it into a ball and took a small bite. She swallowed and hoped the nasty stuff wasn’t as toxic as it tasted. She switched to English. “It’s harmless. Won’t hurt the kids one bit if they eat it.” Faith stifled a gag.
The supervisor sniffed the Play-Doh and replaced the lid, running his fingers around the edges to make sure it was closed. “Kids prefer ice cream,” he said with a sigh.
A few hours later in downtown Moscow, Faith used a public phone and received drop instructions from Kosyk’s man. As agreed, she called Zara from another phone to pass along the information so that her KGB backup would be in place.
No answer.
She dialed again.
The phone rang. Faith wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. Who the hell had planted that bomb? What if Zara was involved and had set her up? Kosyk had the real information about her father. Maybe she should cut out the KGB and deal directly with him. Just then the phone clicked as if the call were being rerouted. Someone picked up.
“Listening.”
Faith recognized Zara’s voice, but didn’t speak.
“Hello? Faith? Faith?”
Faith hung up the phone.
Five minutes later, in the cramped Intourist hotel room, Faith molded the white Play-Doh into a brick and wrapped it in cellophane. Frosty helped her.
“This really is Play-Doh, isn’t it?” Frosty said.
Faith nodded.
“That means inside the cooler?”
She nodded again. They finished the craft project and Faith lowered the last one into the leather attaché case. The Play-Doh bricks could pass for C-4. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she was confident that as soon as she handed over the C-4, they wouldn’t need her anymore and she doubted they would want to keep her around. She had to leverage the whereabouts of the plastic explosives to keep herself alive.
“I don’t know what that phone call was about, but ever since then you don’t look too hot,” Frosty said. “I hate to say this, but you looked better when you got off that crippled plane.”
<
br /> “Not here.” Faith held her index finger in front of her mouth.
“I don’t mess with other people’s business, but at least let me walk you to the Metro, Sandy.”
Frosty insisted upon carrying the attaché case with the faux plastique. She hated sexist chivalry, but she had a soft spot for Frosty’s old-fashioned manners. She inventoried the faces on the sidewalk, but no one seemed to be following them. “Frosty, you’re a sweetheart, but this is too dangerous.”
“I’m a friend. At least tell me what’s eating you about that phone call. You don’t have to go into details, or even make sense.”
“I got the drop site, but it’s sloppy. It’s in a KGB-controlled hotel bar and the guy I’m doing business with knows better.”
“A setup.”
“Afraid so. And I think my backup might have been the one who arranged for the bomb.”
“I always was a sucker for a gal in deep kimchee.”
An hour later, Faith walked down the long, raised concrete drive of the Hotel Cosmos—without the satchel packed with the imitation C-4. The hotel was so imposing that Faith suspected those who designed it for the 1980 Olympics secretly had created another memorial to Stalin. Sputtering Intourist buses from the state-run travel monopoly were dwarfed alongside the shiny behemoth. The glass structure reflected the nearby memorial to the first Sputnik satellite, its grooved-metal exhaust fumes shimmering in the setting sun, as if sparks were trailing the plump rocket.
A man wearing Levi’s rushed toward her and walked alongside her. The last thing she needed right now was a black marketeer preying upon her and drawing undue attention to her as if she were another Western tourist looking for a cheap souvenir.
“What country are you from? Do you have anything you want to buy, sell or trade?” The bug-eyed man spoke in English.
“Not now.” She didn’t look at him and walked straight ahead.
“I have whatever you want—matrioshki, lacquer boxes, znachki.”
She ignored him.
“True Red Army Kommandirskie watch. Only sixty dollars American.” He rolled up his sleeve and stuck his wrist in front of her face, too close for her to focus.
Faith pushed his arm back. The clunky timepiece’s metallic face had a large red star and a parachute with two jet fighters zooming away from it. A cameo of the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin decorated the leather band. “Thank you, Frosty” was written all over it. It would be a perfect token of her appreciation for his impromptu assistance, and buying the thing would be the most expedient way to get rid of a persistent black marketeer.
“I saw your eyes. You want,” the man said.
“My eyes say get lost, militia everywhere,” she said in Russian.
“No worry. I paid this week. You speak Russian. Then for you, special price. Thirty dollars.”
She reached in her pocket and rolled a twenty into her sweaty palm and flashed it to him. “You have two seconds. Decide now.”
He pressed the watch into her hand, snatched the bill and disappeared.
Faith dropped it into her pocket as she walked past a militiaman slumped against the glass lobby window. She never could figure out if the militia was the same as the local police, but their military uniforms were much more ominous than any other local police she had ever encountered.
A doorman stopped every Russian attempting to enter, but didn’t ask Faith for identification. She pushed the heavy revolving door, went inside and climbed to the mezzanine, where the hard-currency bar was located.
She paid far too many dollars for a Carlsbad and took a position on one of the bar’s gaudy couches. Five women with heavy makeup and expensive Western dresses sat alone on various sofas, each sipping a glass of water. Any one of them could have been a Paris model. Faith guessed that, in their profession, they might be asked to model from time to time. Alongside them Faith felt particularly dowdy; her sweater matched the carpet and a third of the paisley swirls in the sofa. Someone might mistake her as part of the furniture—not as a call girl from the KGB’s stable, even though she was whoring for them all the same.
She sipped the Danish beer. Her tastebuds already missed Germany.
A man with a trimmed beard and mustache sprinted up the stairs. As he approached her, he removed his aviator glasses and made eye contact. She assumed he was another European businessman looking for a good time. He ordered a martini from the bar and took a seat across from her.
When he opened his mouth, Faith expected a stale pickup line, but instead he said in German, “Although the apple is a Central Asian native, the pomegranate—”
“Shove it. I don’t have the item with me. Meet me in the small park in front of the Bolshoi during tonight’s intermission.” She dashed from the hotel to the metro.
No one tailed her to the columned rotunda of the VDNH metro station entrance, but a large crew could be assigned to her and could be passing her off along the way. She took a five-kopek piece from her pocket and shoved it in the turnstile. Four sets of escalators disappeared down a steep tunnel, running at an intimidating clip. She studied their rhythm and jumped on, clutching the rubber guide rail. Several dozen Soviets rode the escalator. She examined them, but couldn’t place any at the Cosmos. A metro veteran directly behind her read Pushkin as the long escalator ride carried him deep underground.
Air gusted up the long tunnel. A train was on its way. She walked down the escalator, weaving between people. When she stepped off onto the granite floor, inertia hurled her forward. She caught herself, then bounded onto the car as the recorded female voice blared on the loudspeaker.
She rode five stops and switched lines. When the train arrived at the Prospekt Marksa station, Faith remained in her seat. The automated voice announced, “Danger. Doors are closing . . .” She bolted out, twisting sideways to escape the guillotine of the doors. She turned back around and looked into the car. The man reading Pushkin leaped from his seat and slammed his body into the closed doors. He mouthed something. It wasn’t polite.
She navigated the underground passages, grateful for her year at Moscow State, when she learned her way around the labyrinth. She emerged from the metro beside the red brick Lenin history museum abutting Red Square. The fairy-tale onion domes of St. Basil’s glowed in front of her. Spotlights bathed the gaudy cupolas, towers and spires. The crowd of Soviet and Western tourists that she was counting on had already assembled for the hourly changing of the guard. She was late.
With military precision, the three honor guards goosestepped toward the red granite mausoleum. Each pointed his rifle straight up, the polished bayonet glistening in the camera flashes. Faith quickened her pace, racing them toward the tomb. Tonight several hundred people waited. She slipped into the crowd, but didn’t see Frosty with the leather case and Play-Doh bricks she needed for the hand-off at the Bolshoi. The sharp click of the guards’ heels against the brick came closer. Where was he? The guards approached the mausoleum. Two took their places on the inside of the ones they were relieving; the third stood in the center. Faith had only seconds until the clock sounded the hour.
Then she spotted him.
Frosty had positioned himself near the front, several dozen people away from her. She shoved her way to him, contorting her body between tourists. She pushed up against him. They didn’t acknowledge each other. All eyes were fixed upon the honor guards. The clock on the Kremlin tower struck. The guards swiftly maneuvered around one another with perfect choreography and Frosty fumbled the leather briefcase as he handed it to Faith. She dropped the watch in his pocket by way of a thank-you. The clock played the familiar chimes and then the crowd dispersed.
Faith was already gone.
She walked at a fast clip down the dusty back streets to the Bolshoi. She reached into the side pouch of the satchel. Frosty had come through as promised. She glanced at the Bolshoi ticket and shoved it in her jacket pocket. He had even managed to get her a decent seat—too bad she wouldn’t get a chance to enjoy it. She’d make the dr
op and weave through the intermission crowd to the theater. Ticket in hand, she could go inside and hide in the ladies’ room until the performance was over and then exit in the collective safety of the masses.
From the shadows of a doorway across the street, she surveyed the popular small plaza in front of the theater. Like wrinkled toothless bulldogs, two babushkas staked out their territories on separate benches, balancing their squat frames on the few intact slats. Several men wore sweaters tied around their shoulders and a few clutched keys in their hands as they paraded around the dry concrete fountain. A handful of women in low-cut cotton dresses intermingled with the sparse crowd. A black Volga sedan was parked on the far side of the square in a no-parking zone.
A company car.
The doors to the Bolshoi opened. Well-dressed Soviet couples and underdressed Western tourists poured out between the white columns. The man from the bar stepped out of the waiting Volga and strolled toward the fountain. When he turned back toward the Bolshoi to scan the crowd, Faith crossed the street. She approached him from behind and handed him the satchel.
He swung around and grabbed her arm. His other arm took away the case.
She swirled around, using her weight to try to break free. Pain radiated from her shoulder as it twisted, but he hardly moved. His fingers coiled so tightly around her wrist that she could feel the bones shift.
The man forced her toward the Volga, shouting in Russian, “If I ever catch you with another man again, you’ll pay for it.”
Rift Zone Page 23
