The Mercenary

by Paul Vidich

  “It’s rude to eat before your guest arrives,” Petrov said.

  Garin had entered Sokolniki Amusement Park’s administrative cabin and found Petrov with his elbows on the plywood table, cutting sausage. The bottle of vodka was open, two glasses were set out, and the brown paper wrapping was open.

  “But I’m starved.” He threw a glance at Garin. “And now you’re a Russian playboy. Fuck me.” He laughed. “Did you trade a carton of Marlboros for those clothes?”

  Petrov placed two slices of sausage on a brown bread and bit into the sandwich. He poured Garin a tall glass. “I know I won’t be wasting this on you. What happened? You look terrible.”

  Garin drank, said nothing.

  “Quiet. Like usual. I saw your signal. I was here yesterday, too. What’s so urgent?”

  “We have to move up the date.” Garin saw a grim response on the man’s face.

  “Yob tvoyu.” Fuck. “I assumed something was wrong.” He looked steadily at Garin. “I heard an American woman died. Rumors are everywhere in Lubyanka. What I know is that so many rumors carry a lot of falsehoods, but just the fact of the rumors is enough. Talinov is livid. For an implacable man, he is loud. His office is down one floor, but I pass it on my way in. She must have been his asset. I heard him screaming into his telephone. There is a search on.”

  Petrov cut a slice of cured meat and moved it to his mouth with his blade.

  “We are crossing the border at Uzhgorod,” Garin said.

  “Not Finland?” Petrov gazed at Garin. “It’s better. They would expect Finland. It’s better to do what they don’t expect.” He looked up from the meat, cautiously suspicious. “You are now a risk. If they look for you, there is a chance that they will find me. What do I tell my wife?”

  “We won’t be seen together. You will travel together with your son in first class. I will be in third class. You have your documents. You only need to buy train tickets. Buy four round trips to Leningrad and four to Uzhgorod. If they look through the reservations, they’ll be looking for a party of three.”

  “When?”

  “In nine days. A week from Friday. You will board the train after work.”

  Petrov poured another glass of vodka. “Have you written my obituary?” With a butcher’s eye he patiently cut a thin strip of fat from the meat. “Beyond a certain point, there is no return. Perhaps we have arrived there. Or perhaps we arrived there when I gave you my name. I will miss these little meetings of ours. It’s pleasant to speak with you.” He threw back his vodka and slammed his glass on the table. “Okay.”

  Petrov stood. “Let’s take a walk. I think better when I walk.” He laughed grimly. “The point of no return.”

  It was an unusually warm and sunny afternoon. They walked along the narrow path, using the occasion of the mild weather to escape the administrative office’s claustrophobia. Bright white clouds flitted across the pale blue sky, and birds were a chorus in the budding flower beds. It was already spring and the implacable thaw of Moscow’s winter had turned the path into mud.

  Petrov dismissed Garin’s concern that they’d stand out walking in a park that had not opened to the public. This was Petrov’s danger, Garin thought—a man who took unnecessary risks on a whim.

  * * *

  THEY MET ONCE more the next day. Garin came at noon with arguments to address the reluctance he expected to hear from Petrov. The big, hulking Russian glided over the path, almost weightless with an uplifting enthusiasm, and when he was seated, he pulled out a cloth bag of film canisters. Garin reached for them, but Petrov kept them.

  “When we cross the border,” he said. “And there will be more. It will help in trusting you if I keep these.” Petrov stared at Garin. “The papers you had me put on Talinov’s secretary’s desk have stirred a hornet’s nest in Lubyanka. There are meetings, rumors, speculation, and violent apprehension about who will be pulled from his office. So, the process starts. It is a good time to leave.”

  Again, the weather was nice, so they walked, and Garin provided the new details of the exfiltration, using information that he had found in the envelope Ronnie had left at the agreed drop-off. A Mercedes with a specially fitted compartment would meet them to cross the border. His wife would be up front and he and his son would be hidden inside.

  When Garin was done, they continued in silence for a time, and then Petrov pointed to the park’s aging attraction.

  “They planned the Ferris wheel originally as a replica of the seventy-one-meter-tall ride in Prater Park in Vienna—the Wiener Riesenrad. Have you seen it? No? Well, it’s stunning. This one was supposed to be like that, but funds were short, and it kept being shrunk until it is what you see, a plaything for children. It’s like the Soviet State. Big ambitions, the beautiful idea of worker equality. But there was no will to build that world. It was easier to execute the ones who saw the hypocrisy. Billboards declared prosperity on collective farms while children starved. It was miserable under the tsar, and my family starved then too, but there was no hypocrisy.”

  Petrov sat on a bench and patted it, signaling Garin to join him. He lifted his face to the warming sun and enjoyed the spring moment’s little pleasure. Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, lost in thought. It was ten o’clock in the morning.

  “I have discussed a plan with Olga. We can’t just be seen going off to the train station with suitcases. Neighbors will take note. The guard in our lobby will report something. So, we have arranged to visit her parents for the weekend in their village, where we go frequently, but we will never arrive. We will make it look like we have died, but no bodies will be found. We will leave word with her parents and our friends that we are stopping on our way at a lake. I will make sure the boat is missing. It will appear as if we capsized. It will be days before the alarm sounds, and then a few more days before the KGB piece together their interviews with neighbors, relatives, and co-workers, and from all this they will only know that we arranged everything for a weekend visit to her folks. They will first think we were murdered. By the time they suspect I am alive, we will be across the border.”

  Petrov suddenly turned glum.

  “We found a listening device in our apartment. It’s not unusual, but still, when you find it in your own home, it’s upsetting. Posner may have planted it himself. Son of a bitch. Olga is beside herself. Now, when we talk about the plans, we walk along the river. At home, everything is ‘How was your day?’ ‘Did you go to the store?’ Stupid domestic stuff.”

  “We are handling Posner. Be careful.”

  “I am fully aware of the danger,” Petrov said. “I know the long list of the KGB’s counterintelligence successes, but there has never been the case of a man caught talking to his wife. Caught in a dead drop, yes. Caught in a brush pass, yes. Caught operating a clandestine radio, sure. Those are dangerous things, but there is no case of the KGB arresting a man because he happened to be strolling with his wife.” Petrov spat his opinion to the sidewalk.

  He glared at Garin. “Our preparations are complete. Everything we own will stay in the apartment. Clothes, photographs, old letters, jewelry, money. Everything. It must look like we left for the weekend and planned to come back. When we are reported missing, the KGB will come. They will examine everything, even the dust. As you requested, Olga has bought four first-class tickets to both cities.

  “We have set out clothing so we can change our appearance. We will leave the apartment in track suits. In the metro station bathroom, she will change into a dress, high heels, and a blond wig. You will know me when we get to the station because I will be wearing wire-rim glasses, a German suit, and paisley tie. Our appearance will match the identity documents. They are very good. Olga was impressed. They made her feel better.”

  “Have you told your son?”

  “He is five years old. We only have a chance if he genuinely doesn’t know.”

  “He has a new name.”

  “Olga has a pretend name game we will play. But he will also be se
dated. He will sleep on the train and again when we cross the border. He will be asleep at my side inside the compartment.”

  “What haven’t you thought of?”

  Petrov spat. “What haven’t you thought of? We will play our part. It’s up to you now.” He paused. “The story I heard was that Zyuganov made it to the border, and he was crossing alone.”

  “I will be in the car with you. What about your wife? Has she agreed?”

  “It depends on the day. She is worried about the boy. The sedatives will calm her, too.” Petrov looked at Garin for a moment. “If I am arrested, I want you to look after my son. He is smart, clever, and he should have a full life, even if I am not there. He’s a good kid.”

  “Nothing will happen.”

  “Something always happens,” he snapped. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “He’ll be safe. You have my word.”

  “Good. It might be your first decent act.” Petrov was silent again. “How do I know you won’t make the same mistake with me that you made with Zyuganov?”

  “I may make a mistake, but it won’t be the same mistake.”

  Petrov laughed. “Some sense of humor you have. The saddest men have the best jokes.” He looked at Garin. “I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t even know your name. Sukin syn.” Son of a bitch.

  Petrov raised his face to the warming sun again. “This you don’t know,” he said. “I will be bringing with me a technical report that will be of great interest to your Pentagon. We have built an ingenious weapon that can destroy your early-warning satellites, making you vulnerable to a nuclear first strike.” He smiled. “It’s why we win chess tournaments but can’t run a factory. A special type of concentrated intelligence.

  “You look interested. I too was interested when I first read it. Space is different. A world without gravity, and conventional explosives don’t do well, and then there is the problem of objects approaching each other at very high angular speeds. Pursuit curves are either the dog’s pursuit, where the dog chases its prey by running straight at it, or the wolf’s, where the wolf aims at a point in front of its moving prey. Neither works for the entire flight of an attack missile. Too much fuel is required, and it is impossible to be exactly accurate over the great distances the missile must travel.

  “I am an engineer by training. For an engineer, solving a big problem is very special. And the way we solved this crazy problem, well, the best way to solve a crazy problem is with a crazy solution.” He looked at Garin. “How did we do it? Huge filament nets studded with ball bearings, which hit the satellite at a speed of nine hundred meters per second. You won’t know we’ve launched a nuclear attack until it is too late.”

  Petrov stood. “And just to be certain I have the CIA’s full attention, and its best thinking on my escape, I will carry the film with me when I cross the border.”

  He started to walk along the muddy path, but arriving at a gate a few yards away, he happened to turn. The instinct of a man who knew he was being watched. Two militia stood on a bridge across the swollen creek.

  “A woman!” he shouted, nodding to Garin, who had slumped on the bench. He flicked his cigarette into the mud, adding, “Always a woman.” He opened the gate and was gone.

  Garin waited until the two militia had made their way back to the Ferris wheel. Then he too passed through the gate and walked in the opposite direction of Petrov.

  16 DINNER PARTY

  GARIN LEFT THE APARTMENT AND set out to arrange the final details of the exfiltration. He had his shoes shined inside the entrance to the metro station, and when he was done and ready to pay, he asked the boy if he could buy one tin of black boot polish. When the boy hesitated, Garin added twenty more kopeks to his offer. Next, he found a secondhand shop that sold eyeglasses. After trying on several, he chose a wire-rim pair that pinched the bridge of his nose—the careless choice of a tekhnikum instructor. He added to his teacher’s appearance with an old coat he convinced a pensioner to sell.

  He made his last purchase at the train station. He paid cash for two pairs of round-trip tickets for travel on successive nights from Moscow to Uzhgorod. For identification, he presented the Soviet passport Technical Services had created under another name. When he left the station, he made sure not to hurry. He knew he was being hunted. He settled into the persona of a Muscovite minding his own business, making his way home in the bustling street. He ignored sounds that made pedestrians around him jump, and he was careful not to look at the militia who watched him.

  There was one more errand. The Russian Orthodox church at 25 Mayakovsky Street was small and rose-colored, with a sad, cracked bell tower. It sat between taller, more robust buildings on a quiet side street, lost in time and neglected. He entered through the wooden door and found himself facing a dark nave with a single flickering candle. Cold dampness filled the unheated space. The shadows of evening added their depressing tone to the unused sanctuary—and to the dismal problems of his challenge. No one had ever been successfully exfiltrated from the Soviet Union. Below an icon of Madonna and child, in the gap between the wall and the cabinet that General Zyuganov had used for his dead drops, he found Ronnie’s envelope.

  Garin inspected the paper of the document. One edge was torn, the ink was faded to give the appearance of age, and the surface was worn as if repeatedly handled. He verified the Russian paper stock. A perfect forgery, unless you knew what to look for. He looked in the envelope for the second document, but it was missing. He looked behind the cabinet and on the floor but found nothing. Shit. He wrote a note for Ronnie and placed it where he knew she’d find it.

  He turned to leave but stopped briefly and placed his fingers on the icon’s delicate silver frame, submitting to his urge to test the relic’s powers. Then he stopped. She would come, or she wouldn’t. No prayer would change that fact.

  * * *

  GARIN STOOD AT Natalya’s third-floor apartment, raising his hand to knock, when suddenly the door opened and Natalya stood before him, horrified.

  “You’re late,” she scolded. Her black hair fell to her shoulders as if each strand was weighted. She wore scarlet lipstick, and her chartreuse blouse revealed a pearl necklace that curved to her cleavage. “Did you not remember? I had friends who were coming for dinner. They arrived an hour ago.”

  “I didn’t forget.” A lie. “Something came up.”

  “You’re rude.” She stared at him. “Come in. We just sat down. Let me introduce you.” She double locked the door and led him toward the dining room, where lively laughter made a festive atmosphere. She presented him to the three people who sat at the dining table, which was set with crystal wineglasses, mismatched china, and serving bowls of stewed meats and vegetables. She pulled him forward.

  “He’s been found,” she said to the table. Then to Garin, “We couldn’t wait. They were threatening to leave.” She whispered in Garin’s ear, “For a man who obsesses over time, you are remarkably late.”

  Garin sat between two flamboyantly dressed ballerinas with wild scarves over their shoulders and unkempt hair that they swept back self-consciously or pushed from their sullen faces. They stared. Natalya sat across from Garin, beside a man in his forties with long, graying hair, a decade older than the women, who ignored Garin. He tossed pieces of torn bread into his mouth and entertained Natalya with flirtatious whispers. They all seemed to know one another and, being familiar, they interrupted one another in the course of yelling. Garin slipped into his seat, happy to be ignored and, for a moment, he thought, unnoticed, but Natalya looked up.

  “This is Bogdan,” she said, swatting the man’s hand from hers. “An old friend. And they are Anna and Galina. Serve yourself.”

  Garin was quiet most of the dinner. He observed the others, listened without appearing to listen, and smiled when something clever was said or if one happened to look at him for his reaction. Anna and Galina were confident and haughty, stealing glances, and they talked about the ups and downs inside the Bolshoi c
ompany, offering their view of the artistic director’s new favorite. With each sip of wine, they opened up more and said funny or insulting things. Surly Bogdan popped bread in his mouth and kept looking at Garin until at last he couldn’t contain his curiosity.

  “Who is he?” he asked Natalya, looking straight at Garin, as though he were a rival. “He sits there like a turtle with his head in his shell.” Bogdan leaned toward Garin. “Tell us a little about yourself. You haven’t opened your mouth all night, except to fill it. We all know Natasha’s friends, but you are a new face.” The man poured himself a generous glass of wine. “We are all friends here. Writers, dancers, and Natasha—who knows what she does. Honor us with a few words of biography.”

  Garin met Bogdan’s boozy presumptuousness with a flat expression. He saw Natalya redden. There was a long silence around the table.

  “I am a translator,” Garin said.

  “Who do you translate?”

  Garin threw out a few writers, still current enough for the purpose of the conversation, and books he’d read so he could speak knowledgeably, if needed.

  “Anti-Soviet writers like Bulgakov?” Bogdan asked. “He was at the famous Spaso House party.” There was a startled silence. Bogdan leaned forward and looked directly at Garin. “Do you believe in God?” He pushed away Natalya’s hand. “Let him answer.”

  Garin paused. “No one has ever asked me that.”

  Bogdan laughed. “You know, God doesn’t exist in the Soviet Union. He’s been exiled. Anyone who has seen him walking like a beggar, or disguised as a child, is quickly reeducated.” Bogdan looked at Garin like a cat who had cornered a mouse. “You speak Russian well. Old phrasings, unusual accent, but a native speaker. Do you translate Russian into English or English into Russian?”

  “Both. Sometimes Russian into Russian.”

  Bogdan smiled. “We used to risk our lives to share samizdat manuscripts of dubious quality, made precious because they were forbidden. But those days are gone. They died with Brezhnev. Things are better now.”