by Joseph Kanon
“We won’t make the ballet if we wait for a table,” Frank said. “Anyway the point is just to see this.” He pointed to the vast room, a tsarist relic of tables grouped around a central fountain, potted palms, and lamps on tall gold standards, all dwarfed by a vaulting stained glass ceiling, bright blue, a glass sky. “Paris had the Ritz and Vienna had the Imperial, so Moscow had to have one too. To keep up.”
“Hard to imagine now,” Simon said, taking it in, the worn red velvet, the usual Soviet dinginess. “That must have been the string quartet.” He nodded to a raised platform at the end of the room.
“While they stuffed themselves with caviar. And outside people were starving,” Frank said. “The good old days.” He looked over at Simon. “Nobody starves now. So there’s that. Let’s have a drink. Jo won’t be here until the last minute. Hairdresser,” he said, touching his own hair. “To look nice for the trip. All packed?”
Simon nodded.
“Almost there,” Frank said, putting a hand on Simon’s shoulder to lead him to the bar. “Got the coordinates?”
Simon repeated them.
“Let’s hope old Pete’s memory’s as good as yours.”
“We’ll only have a minute in the men’s room.”
“Say something twice and it’s yours. So make him say it twice.”
They were on the second glass of Georgian wine when the waiter came with small plates of food.
“Will I be followed? At the Bolshoi?” Simon said.
“No, you’re with me. He will be, though. So make it quick. Just what you’d do in a men’s room. Wash your hands. Get a towel. Excuse me. Beg pardon. Like that. In and out.”
“Like that.”
“Don’t worry, it will be.”
“And if he has a question? Wants to change the meeting spot—something.”
“He won’t. It’s like I showed you on the map. They’ll still be in international waters. They’d never cross into Soviet territory. Agency rule. I know, I wrote it. They’d never risk that. So we go to them.”
“Outside Soviet waters. And the Service has no problem—”
Frank brushed this away. “It’s not like a fence. Just water. Sometimes it’s hard to know which side of the line you’re on. And he’ll be close enough to make them think he’s over. If he follows the coordinates.
“So your people intercept—outside Soviet territory.”
“They don’t have to know that. They just know there’s an American boat out there up to no good. And coming in. Better to act and figure out your location later. For the record.”
“When it’s your word against DiAngelis’s.”
Frank looked at him. “Except I won’t be here.”
Simon sipped his wine. “What if DiAngelis says he can’t make that time. For whatever reason.”
“Then he’ll miss the high point of his career,” Frank said smiling. “Don’t worry, Jimbo, he’ll make it. The leverage is on our side. They want me. It would be a coup for them.”
“And vice-versa.”
Frank looked up.
“DiAngelis would be a coup for you. If it worked the other way.”
Frank said nothing, not sure how to respond. “But it’s not the other way,” he said finally.
“No. So what could go wrong? Just in case.”
“Come on, Simon. You see somebody in the men’s room, that’s all. Say a few words and out you go. Mission over.” He looked down at his watch. “She’s cutting it close.” He raised his head, taking in the other end of the bar. “Well, look who’s here. Back at the old watering hole.”
Simon half-turned. Sergei, nursing a drink.
“How does he afford it?” Frank said.
“Doesn’t he get Gareth’s—?”
“No. Next of kin. Except there is no next of kin.”
“So what happens to him now?”
Frank shrugged. “He finds somebody else.”
“Or the Service does,” Simon said, curious to see Frank’s response. “A new friend.”
“That’s not how it works. Gareth picks somebody up, we have to vet him. Make sure he’s not—a plant. But we don’t provide.” Still we.
“Let’s go before he sees us.”
“We just sat down.”
“I’d rather not, that’s all. Considering.” Glancing down at his hands, seeing them squeezing.
“Considering what?” Frank said blandly. “Nothing happened.” Each word emphasized. Simon looked up at him. And nothing had, Novodevichy not even a bad memory. “Anyway, he’s seen us. He’s coming over. Sergei,” he said, raising his voice, public. “I’m sorry we’re going to miss the funeral. We’ll be in Leningrad.”
“No funeral. They don’t want to attract attention.”
“They?”
“The office. You know. They’re afraid the foreign press—” He hesitated. “So, for the obituaries, he died after a long illness. And that’s the end of Gareth. A long illness. I asked, could he be buried in Novodevichy—you know, so close to us and he liked to go there. But they said no. Somewhere out near Izmaylovo Park. So far. Who goes there? An hour on the Metro if you want to visit the grave.”
“I’m sorry. But maybe it’s for the best,” Frank said, his voice steady, reassuring.
“Yes,” Sergei said, polite, not believing it, then looked up at Frank, hesitant again. “I know we’re not supposed to say, but I wanted to thank you. What you’re doing for him.” Simon looked up.
“Me? I don’t—”
“I know. Everything’s a secret there. But people talk. So I just wanted to say thank you, that’s all. Now they’ll find him.”
“Find him?” Simon said, not following.
“The murderer. I thought at first, it’s like the funeral. Sweep it away. Pretend it never happened. But now they have to do it. They’ll listen to you. And to bring her in—it sends a message. Gareth used to say there was no one like her. A bloodhound. So now maybe we’ll find out.”
“Sergei,” Frank said quickly. “You don’t talk—office business. Not in front of—”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Nervous now, guilty. “Excuse me. It’s just—” He turned to Simon. “I wanted to say thank you, that’s all. Your brother, he’s a hero to me. Gareth, too. He always liked you. And now to do this for him. I know what the others think, how they laughed at him. But now something will happen. Justice.”
“Let’s hope so,” Frank said smoothly, a kind of dismissal.
“So please go on with your drink,” Sergei said, about to move away, and then grasped Frank’s hand and shook it. “They said today, nothing so far, but maybe soon. Justice. How pleased he would be, Gareth, to know it was you. Excuse me.”
Simon watched him go, heading toward the ornate lobby and out into the Moscow night. He pressed his fingers to the bar, holding himself in, and looked at Frank.
“He talks too much,” Frank said. “Everybody talks too much. Most secret organization in the world and everybody talks too much. What Pa used to call an irony. Come on, let’s finish here.” He tossed back the rest of the wine.
Simon kept looking at him, not sure how to begin. “Brought who in?” he said finally, already knowing.
“Elizaveta,” Frank said, looking back.
“To investigate Gareth’s murder.”
Frank nodded. “Under me. Would you rather have someone else in charge? She’ll look at everybody but me. It warms the heart to see it, how grateful she is. To be back at the office. The Service is like that—once it’s in your blood. And now she owes it to me. One of the foreigners. Another irony. All of them suspect now except one.”
“Until there’s no one else.”
“But by then I’ll be gone. We couldn’t let this get in the way. It would have ruined everything.”
“And if you don’t go?”
“What do you mean?”
“Hypothetically. If you were still here. You couldn’t call her off now. How would that look? What happens if she doesn’t come up with anyone?”
“But she will. The Service always does. Someone will have to pay. But not me.” He looked over. “Not you either. I told you I’d look out for you.”
Simon turned back to his drink, stomach clenching again.
“What did he mean about today? Nothing so far today.”
“There was an interrogation.”
“Ian,” Simon said quietly.
“Yes.”
“That’s why you were there today.”
“Well, you have to show a certain amount of interest. Especially in the beginning. Before you let her off the leash.”
“You interrogated him?”
“I was there.”
“Did he know, on Saturday, that it would be you?”
“No, of course not. It’s better this way.”
“Better?”
“It throws them off balance. Even your friends suspect you. Why? What did you do? You think about everything you’ve ever said, how it might sound. You go over it and over it. You’d be amazed what comes up, all those things you thought you forgot. That might explain it. Why you’re there.”
“And then you get tired. Say things.”
Frank nodded. “It’s not my favorite part of the job—”
“But he didn’t do it.”
“We have to give Elizaveta somewhere to look.” He paused. “I never said it was pretty. But neither’s Norilsk. Freeze to death. Starve. Or a bullet. You pick.”
“And when she doesn’t find anything?”
“We’ll be long gone. But she’s very good, you know. And she needs a win. She just might pull it off.”
With Frank still here, helping her.
“When were you going to tell me this?”
“I wasn’t. If Sergei hadn’t opened his—” He stopped. “You’re not used to it, the business. I didn’t want you to be—distracted.”
“Distracted? Frank, we killed a man. And now we’re making someone else—”
“Listen to me,” Frank said, grasping his arm. “We didn’t do it. That’s right, isn’t it? We didn’t do it. So somebody else must have. Or do you have a better plan?”
* * *
Prince Siegfried had already celebrated his birthday and was off with his hunting bow to Swan Lake before Simon could pay any attention to what was happening on stage. Up to now it had just been part of the blur—the lines of black Zils with Party officials, the lamps in Theater Square, Jo all dressed up, turning heads, as if she had stepped out of the Metropol’s fantasy of itself, how people used to look. They had crossed the square into another piece of tsarist Moscow, red velvet and gilt, the royal box still like a throne room at the center of the mezzanine.
“Stalin never used it,” Frank said. “He used to sit there, on the side.”
“Man of the people?”
“No. Afraid somebody would take a shot at him. In the tsar’s box. Sitting target.”
“But not in his box?”
“Well, he used to sit back, away from the railing. I didn’t say it made sense. He was crazy. That’s the way he thought.” He smiled at Simon’s expression. “My loyalty was to the Service, not him. I used to think, if we can survive this—and we did.”
“At a cost.”
“That’s right. At any cost. First you have to survive. Right?”
Simon stared at the curtain for a second, then turned to him, his voice low. “Frank, promise me something.”
Frank waited.
“Ian. Promise you won’t let him be—I mean, it’s bad enough, Gareth—” He stopped, glancing across to Jo, but she was looking around the theater, distracted.
“But you can somehow talk yourself into believing that was self-defense,” Frank finished. “Is that it? But not Ian. Even though it comes to the same thing.”
“No, it doesn’t. It’s not right.”
Frank looked at him. “Not right. Still Mt. Vernon Street. One of Pa’s dinner problems. Right. Wrong. You think it matters?”
Simon said nothing.
“Anyway, in a few days I’ll be suspect number one, not Ian. Unless you forget the coordinates.” Trying to be playful.
“Promise me anyway.”
“What’s this all about?”
“I don’t know. Bad luck, maybe. We don’t need another—”
“You’d rather they think it was me.”
Simon looked at him. Turn the board. “You’ll be gone. What difference does it make?”
Frank held his gaze for another second, caught off guard, then turned. “Fine. Ian didn’t do it. Feel better?”
“You’ll make sure?”
Another curious look.
“This is what you’re worrying about? Tonight? Ian fucking McAulife?”
Simon shrugged. “Now it’s one less thing.” As if Frank would do it, his promises real.
“What a pain in the ass you are,” Frank said, not able to let it go, then faced forward again. “It’s all self-defense, Jimbo.”
“What are you two whispering about?” Joanna said, leaning over.
“Stalin,” Simon said.
Her eyes darted left, uncomfortable, as if he had made a bad joke.
“Where he used to sit.”
“Up there,” Frank said, pointing.
“How do you know? You never went to the ballet then. Or now. I can’t think why you—oh look, the ambassador. They always stick out like sore thumbs, the Americans. It’s the suits. And the haircuts.” Glancing toward Mike Novikov’s crew cut, heading down the center aisle. Next to him a tall, vaguely familiar man and his wife. No DiAngelis.
Simon looked back up the aisle. No stragglers, no one else in the party. But he had to be here. In the embassy seats.
“What’s the matter?” Jo said.
“Nothing. I must stick out then too. The suit.”
“Mm. Isn’t it funny, you at the Bolshoi?” She looked away. “Any of us.”
Novikov was settling in next to the ambassador. Still no DiAngelis. One intermission, only one chance before they left.
He felt the audience stirring behind them, heads craned, a line of gray suits entering the royal box. For a second he half-expected to see Khrushchev, the tsar, but the familiar bald head never appeared, just the gray suits with blank faces, presumably Politburo members everyone else recognized. A big night at the Bolshoi. Would this mean extra bodyguards, plainclothesmen, all of them alert to American suits? He glanced around the crowd. Who was anybody? No DiAngelis.
And then the lights were dimming and the music was starting and he felt his stomach jump, not just nerves, not butterflies, a falling, a sense that something was wrong. He stared straight ahead, past Prince Siegfried, running through a mental checklist. Tomorrow they’d be under the watchful eyes of the Service, new eyes, eager to impress. The meeting had to be tonight, only a minute, two, swallowed up in an impersonal crowd. DiAngelis would need the time to set things up. Maybe he was sitting somewhere else, the ambassador a blind, waiting for the intermission.
The stage got darker, the lake at night, Siegfried with his bow. Simon twisted in his seat, restless, but everyone else was still, expectant. He had always assumed Swan Lake was kitsch, a ballet for tourists, but here it meant something else. There was a fluttering of white, the entire stage suddenly swirling with white, darting, floating. A quiet gasp went through the audience, a collective pleasure, everything as it should be, the precise toe steps, the graceful leaps, inexplicably beautiful, the dreary city falling away, mad Stalin in his side box, the brutal prison stories, lives with years snatched away, betrayals, all of that gone now, out of sight, nothing visible but this twirling, what the worl
d would be like if it were lovely. Nobody moved, drinking it in, an old ritual, maybe their way of reassuring themselves they were still capable of this. He turned to Frank, prepared to smile, an appreciation, and saw that he wasn’t watching at all, his eyes fixed on the embassy seats, waiting for DiAngelis.
After the swans flew off, he lost the thread again. Odette would become Odile, or was it the reverse? In New York, there would have been a synopsis to follow in the playbill. Here it was already in the blood, the whole implausible story. Real stories, Frank’s stories, were plausible. Simple. We intercept them coming in. But there were two stories, so the trick was keeping them both simple, both plausible, easier to juggle. Run through the details again. No surprises. Except there was always something you couldn’t control, someone. You couldn’t do it alone, you had to trust someone. The way Frank trusted him.
He glanced to his side, Frank still scanning the audience, then back to the stage. Any minute now and he’d have to get up, do it. During the war he’d never had to do anything, all the careful plans passed on to someone else. Now, finally, he had to act, like the boy in one of Pa’s dinner problems. Right. Wrong. The question isn’t what’s right, his father would say, tracing lines on the tablecloth with his fork. The question is, what’s the right thing to do? How do we act? They’re not always the same. What’s right is just an idea. But what we should do—there are other considerations. So it’s not always clear. But if it’s right, Frank had said, then it has to be the right thing to do. And then had done it, acted, and blown up all their lives. People were applauding, the curtain coming down. The jewel box room getting brighter. Now.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, standing.
“Meet us in the foyer,” Jo said over the applause, putting an imaginary cigarette to her mouth.
Simon started out, only to be blocked by clapping people in the row. Impossible to step over them. He looked back, a few people trickling out, the aisles beginning to clot. At the embassy seats, the ambassador and his wife were following a path Novikov was making for them.
“Relax,” Frank said. “It’s a long intermission.”
Some people were still clapping, but now the rush began. Out to the grand foyer, under the giant chandelier, then down the white marble stairs to the tiled vestibule, looking for a men’s room. What was the word? Muzhskoy. But what would that be in Cyrillic? Finally a sign with stick figures, one with pants. Follow the arrow, the crowd now thick around him, the long room already filling with cigarette smoke, all the doors open to the outside.
