by Paul Vidich
“No. Just us,” she said.
The maître d’ led them to a corner table set for three, and he crossed the knife at the third setting, signaling the change for the waiter. Silverware was perfectly aligned, and the linen napkins were folded to reveal the hotel’s embroidered insignia.
“Is this to your liking?” the maître d’ said.
“Yes. Perfect. Thank you.”
“You come here often?” Garin asked when the maître d’ left and she was unfolding her napkin.
“Not anymore. It’s too expensive. We would come after a performance to drink, and if someone managed to entice a patron to join, we got a meal out of him.” She nodded at the maître d’. “He sees everything but keeps his mouth shut. There—look.” She discreetly pointed across the room to a woman in a beaded silver dress who possessed unambiguous celebrity, collecting polite sideward glances from other diners. “She is Brodskey’s favorite now. A good dancer, ambitious, clever with her compliments, and very cold. An ice queen.” Natalya pointed to her ankle. “It was her boyfriend, but he wore a mask, and it was never confirmed.”
Two flutes of champagne arrived at the table on a silver tray. “Compliments of the maître d’,” the waiter announced.
Natalya started to sip but hesitated, and then raised her glass. “Na Zdorovye. To your health.”
Garin threw back his drink and grabbed the escaping waiter’s arm. “And one vodka martini, straight up, no olives.”
“Two,” she said.
Dinner was ordered, wine selected, and the prompt arrival of the appetizers followed by entrées put them in a pleasant mood. She chose a red Burgundy from a good vintage that she knew was in the cellar, and they had taken the chef’s suggestions—he had the cranberry-braised goose with a tower of aromatic rice, and she had taken the steak pommes frites, eating the frites one at a time.
“You would wait hours for this beef in a store, but this is the Metropol. Posner has his sources, and he lets his palm be filled.”
With the food and the wine, their conversation turned from dull topics of war and corruption to lively gossip, and then to the differences between men and women—and specifically their different tastes in literature.
“I didn’t know you read novels,” she said, shocked. She was a fan of Wuthering Heights, which she’d read in London and loved for its audacity and Heathcliff’s cruelty. And then, in a flirtatious way, she said that men only liked books by other men—Hemingway, or Tolstoy, or the Englishman, le Carré. “In their books, young men never die of broken hearts. They die from knives and bullets. Which do you prefer?”
“Broken heart or bullets?”
“No!” She laughed. “Which authors?” She looked over her lipstick-smudged wineglass. Without waiting for an answer, she added, “Your question may be the better one. I can see from your hesitation you aren’t familiar with those authors. I guess you are the type who would prefer a bullet.” Her eyes had averted, but they settled on him. “I prefer the tragedy of love.”
“You’re a romantic,” he said. He swigged the dregs and licked the wineglass. “Drowning is low on my list of preferred ways to die.”
The check came in a red leather portfolio. She made no effort to pick it up. He let it sit between them, thinking that Posner would have paid, but now it was his to pay. He put cash from his wallet inside the portfolio.
“Thank you,” she said brusquely.
* * *
LIGHT SNOW HAD been falling earlier, but it had stopped when they stepped into the night. A brisk wind swept the boulevard and park across from the Metropol. They found themselves standing under the Karl Marx monument, a looming figure who commanded the square. A few Russians were out at that late hour, and a few foreigners from the hotel took advantage of the fresh snow to make snowballs, which they threw at each other playfully, laughing.
“What now?” she asked. “Have you had enough of me?” She formed a snowball in her hand.
“It’s late,” he said.
She threw it at him, striking his shoulder. “I know the time. You don’t have to tell. It makes you sound dull.”
He batted away a second snowball. He looked at her playfully mocking face and tried to look inside her mind.
“Maybe you prefer men?” she chided.
Garin’s eyes had drifted to the dark edges of the park, and to the night’s stillness, as he looked for surveillance. “Do I look reluctant?”
“Yes. Or disinterested.” Her third snowball hit him in the face, powdering his eyes. “You should be cautious. You’re an American in Moscow. It is past midnight. You might encounter a woman who wants to take you home.”
Garin saw an energy and vitality that were different from the abrupt, scolding woman he had come to know. “Yes, I might meet such a person.”
He balled snow and returned her volley, and an energetic snow fight ensued, each approaching the other, seeking playful advantage. They scooped handfuls of snow, hefting it at each other at close range, and she called him endearing obscenities, until they found themselves face-to-face. Their eyebrows were white, cheeks flushed, lips wet from melting snow, and she planted a kiss on his mouth.
She pulled away, slightly embarrassed. He stared at her, uncertain what to make of the advance. He remembered to smile, and then she leaned forward and put her lips on his again, indulging a moment of nervous excitement. They remained kissing in the open snow, and the surprise of the intimacy caught the attention of several hotel guests, who clapped like an audience.
Snow had begun to fall again, laying a false peace on their romance.
* * *
GARIN HOPPED OFF the No. 39 tram. He followed a few steps behind Natalya until she put her arm into his and pulled him forward along the quiet, tree-lined street of prewar apartment buildings. She dug for her keys at the entrance to a five-story building with a Beaux Arts façade. In the distance, he heard the tram’s bell clang. She inserted a key in the front door, and they passed through a small vestibule to a circular staircase that wound up toward a dark skylight.
“Shhh,” she whispered, finger on her lips. “Neighbors.”
They walked up the wide, curving marble steps, passing a baby stroller outside the second-floor apartment. His hand slid along the ornamental cast-iron railing, and his eyes took in the terra cotta fresco, wooden moldings, and ornate wall sconces that dimly illuminated their way.
“You live here?”
“What do you think?”
“How long?”
“So many questions.”
Garin glanced back down the staircase and looked for an escape route, if needed. Instinct and experience made him cautious. She walked ahead in darkness, like a ghost.
Natalya hit the vestibule wall switch inside her third-floor apartment, and the living room filled with dim light from a Venetian chandelier above a mahogany dining table. He was struck by the apartment’s size and grandeur. A worn Chinese rug lay on the parquet floor, and set against one wall was a claw-foot sofa of worn crimson velvet. Against the opposite wall was a French Empire breakfront with crystal glasses and stacked dishes.
Garin tried to make sense of the objets d’art obviously collected over a lifetime. He lifted a porcelain vase of exceptional craftsmanship, and when he looked closer, he saw the glue lines where it had been poorly repaired. When his first impression passed, he saw everywhere the hints of a place that had fallen on hard times. The wall paint was yellowed with age and flaked in spots, parquet squares were loose, and the beveled wall mirror was cracked. Several dark wall sconces were empty of replacement lightbulbs. Twined newspapers were stacked in one corner beside empty glass jars saved for the occasion when a use presented itself. He noticed the duality of the apartment—the richness of a time capsule that helped make its present poverty less visible.
“This was my grandfather’s flat. He got that vase in Germany.” She placed her shearling coat on a closet hanger and invited him to do the same. “Drink?”
“Vodka.”
She returned in a moment from a hidden room, holding two glasses and a decanter. He was standing at a wall of framed photographs. A young Soviet Army officer in uniform was standing in the turret of a T-62 tank among a group of shirtless enlisted men with ammunition bandoliers draping their necks and beer in their hands, mugging. He was tall, dark-haired, with fierce, commanding eyes.
“My brother,” Natalya said, seeing Garin’s interest. She poured modest portions of port. “Zdorovye.”
Garin nodded at the photograph. “Does he live here?”
“He’s dead. Last year, in the mountains outside Kabul. A mujahideen rocket hit his tank.”
He turned and looked at her.
“We were close.” She abruptly turned away. The room was cold, but she’d lit a kerosene heater when she entered, and it put out meager warmth. She stood by it. “It’s warmer here. The heat goes off before midnight. Do you like the apartment?”
“No one lives like this in Moscow.”
“My father had a good position, and he kept it when Grandfather died. We were three generations. Now it is only me.” She nodded at the photograph. “He was a brave soldier and a stupid patriot.” She looked at Garin. “And you? Tell me something that will surprise me.”
Garin sniffed the port.
“It’s local. Not good, but not poison. So,” she said. She didn’t finish her thought and suddenly went to the sofa, relaxing into the cushions and stretching her long legs onto a Turkish hassock. She patted the sofa. “Sit. My father collected things on his foreign postings. He collected the Meissen porcelain in Dresden after the war. And you,” she said, “where did you learn Russian?”
He sat beside her. “As a child.”
“An émigré? That makes sense.” She sat up, dropping her legs from the hassock, and took the glass he had placed on the coffee table. “May I?” She took the amber liquor in two quick swallows and looked at him with curiosity. “You speak Russian, but you’re not a real Russian. You’re difficult. I don’t understand you.”
She snuggled against him. “It’s cold. Put your arm around me.”
He did, and they sat together in silence for a moment. Then she pulled away and looked at him. She began to undo the top button of her silk blouse, and her eyes dropped to the second button, which she also undid. Her fingers fumbled nervously.
“I want to do this,” she said, her eyes averted. “Everything else will go away. You will leave. But we will have this evening.”
He saw her nervous excitement, her defiance, and her fear. She had rehearsed well, he thought. He felt her hand on his, taking it gently and placing it on her neck. He knew she was acting. Acting, but not acting?
They moved to the bedroom, and in letting her guide him forward, he looked for the silvered smokiness of a two-way mirror or a hidden microphone. His ears were alert for the soft click of the front door closing.
She had stepped out of her black skirt and removed her stockings, which she placed carefully over the back of a chair. She leaned forward, reaching behind to undo her bra, and laid it by the dress. She stood before him naked—alive with apprehension. Her fingers worked to undo his belt buckle, her eyes meeting his, and he struggled out of his shirt, working an uncooperative button. She admonished him with a whisper: “Slowly.”
Her body was as pale as milk and thin, but with the sinewy strength of a dancer. He found her performance amateurish, which was attractive in its own way, and she seemed ignorant of how to help him along. He saw sullen urgency in her movement, and he admired her willingness to take a risk. For one frightening moment, he felt a terrible attraction.
Her hand was on his arm, slowly moving along the scar on his neck, feeling its contours. She kissed his lips with a passion he was returning, and she continued until she coaxed his ardor and he relaxed the vigilance that was a reliable companion when he sensed danger nearby. Her eyes closed, and her body moved with the frothy passion of an inexperienced lover. In the back of his mind, he heard someone enter the apartment.
“You would be more beautiful without your fear,” he said.
“A stupid, romantic thing to say,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m not a romantic.”
Two men burst into the bedroom, bringing a confusing kaleidoscope of sensations. Bright overhead light washed everything in harsh illumination; shouted instructions came fast, and he smelled violence on the men who took him. He was naked, and his arms were pinned behind his back. In the midst of the drama, he struggled to look shocked and embarrassed. His cheeks purpled with anger, and he stared indignantly into the beefy, thick-necked faces of two KGB.
Garin caught a glimpse of Natalya. She had hurriedly wrapped herself in a bedsheet and was rushing from the room. Garin twisted his head toward the two men holding him. They were professionals who knew how to immobilize without leaving marks on his body.
“Shitheads,” he grunted.
Both men stepped aside, and Garin saw a third man standing in the doorway. What struck Garin first was the man’s nonchalance, and then Garin noticed the unpleasant way he had of looking at Garin with predatory interest.
“Don’t struggle,” Comrade Posner said. He drew on his cocktail cigarette holder and released smoke from the corner of his mouth. “You might bruise yourself.”
Garin felt the man’s gaze like a fashion designer evaluating a model on a runway.
“You won’t look good bruised. Someone will ask what happened, and you’d have to come up with a believable story. You are better unmarked.” He threw Garin’s clothes at him. “Get dressed.”
Garin shoved his legs into pants and his arms in his sleeves, buttoned his shirt, and sat on the bed to put on his socks. He focused on his clothes, but his mind calibrated what would come next and how he could use his jeopardy to his advantage. Nothing so far had surprised him. Then Posner added the predictable details: a microphone in the lamp, the record of the encounter, the hidden camera with a lens that looked through a small dark hole in a black-and-white oil canvas on the wall. “It’s one of Golukov’s,” Posner said. “We had to damage the painting, but you are worth the cost.”
Garin finished tying his shoes but didn’t respond.
“How clever you’ve been, thinking you could enter the country, do what you are up to, and be gone before we found you,” Posner said. “I have diligent staff who matched your visa to our old photos. A young woman saw the visa’s forgery, and that started our investigation. The glasses threw us off, and the graying hair, but the girl noticed the scar. You’ve changed your name, shaved the moustache, gotten rid of the mutton chops, but the scar is the same, and the face, too.”
“What do you want?”
Comrade Posner stood in the middle of the room, and having the upper hand, he wasn’t to be rushed. He held the cigarette holder delicately and nodded at the door Natalya had fled through. “She has suffered. Her father’s execution, her brother’s death, and then the ankle. So much pain for such a young woman. What does an ex-ballerina do?
“I knew her father. He was high up in the First Chief Directorate. I was able to protect her. A handsome young woman, even an orphan, attracts supporters. Her brother’s death was a terrible blow. After her father’s execution they were close and now… well, she works for me.”
Posner held his cigarette at arm’s length, observing it. His eyes dropped to Garin again. “This doesn’t have to be hard for you.”
“What do you want?”
Posner motioned for the shorter KGB agent to bring two glasses and the bottle of port. Posner filled both. “Chernenko is dead. The news will be in tomorrow’s papers.” He drank the ersatz liqueur and put down the glass. “Local shit,” he said. He looked at Garin. “Why am I telling you this? I will get to that. Patience, Alek Garin—or whatever your name is. Patience in a spy is a useful thing. Though I am not sure you are patient. Excitable? Cautiou
s? But I haven’t seen your patience. Maybe you will surprise me.”
Posner brought the glass to his lips but stopped. “Americans don’t understand what is happening in the Soviet Union. You are still fighting the Cold War of ten years ago, but the Soviet Union of Brezhnev and Khrushchev is dead. Chernenko was the last Bolshevik—elderly, dull, uninspiring, the personification of decay. He has been sick for years. The surprise is not that he is dead but that it took him so long to die.
“He could barely stand at the podium to read his eulogy of Andropov last year, and when he finished, two bodyguards helped him from the stage. He was a chain smoker and a drunk, and he suffered from cirrhosis and heart disease, and who knows what else. He was a stumbling example of the Soviet Union. Now he is dead. His death will be announced on page two of tomorrow’s Pravda. Gorbachev’s ascension will be on the front page. He will be making changes.”
Posner looked at Garin, making a judgment. “Excitable, but also stupid,” he declared. “Deputy Chairman Churgin found your performance at Spaso House insulting. He was livid when he was told his thugs didn’t get to rough you up on your way back from Golukov. Maybe he’s forgotten about you, and maybe he hasn’t.” Posner took a measure of Garin. “Do you know Lieutenant Colonel Talinov?”
Garin considered which answer to give. There was a risk to any answer, but only one answer preserved his cover, but that was also the answer that shut down the conversation and left him clueless of Posner’s intentions.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He’s KGB. Ambitious. Ruthless. Plays the piano.”
Posner tapped cigarette ash into his palm. “So you do know him.” He smiled. “I too am KGB, First CD, but you probably already knew that, or suspected it. I don’t try to hide myself. How do you know Talinov?”
“I don’t.”
“You said you did.”
“I know of him. I’ve heard the name. What do you want from me?”
“Cooperation.”
