Manhattan 62

by Nadelson, Reggie

  On the TV, in the blurry black and white of a live broadcast, Adlai Stevenson is leaning forward now, angry, scowling at Zorin, the Soviet Ambassador, and he asks him point blank if his country is installing missiles in Cuba.

  There is a lot of fussing around with paper, and the translators are holding tight to their earpieces as if they would otherwise fly off. Zorin fails to answer. His people look around, fool some more with paper, they whisper to their underlings and consultants, and tap their headphones, as if the translators had gone silent. And then Stevenson, with his icy patrician manner, gets furious. He says, very intense, very grand, “Don’t wait for the translation, answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’!” Zorin refuses. Stevenson comes back at him:“I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over.” He shows Zorin some photographs of the missile sites in Cuba. No pussy that day: Adlai was tough, a man who accepts no horse shit. “Yes or no!”

  “Zorin is, what would you say, a jerk, and I’ve heard the rumor that he is off his rocker,” said Max.

  “Where did you hear it?”

  Max had his face flat against the TV, intent on the screen.

  I jumped up. “Listen, you tell me there’s an assassination in three days, and now you want me to sit down and watch television. For Christ’s sake, just tell me what the hell you’re looking at.”

  Max turned. “It’s Ambassador Stevenson.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Please, enough sarcasm. I’m trying to tell you something important. The target is Ambassador Stevenson. Look at the row of men behind Stevenson.”

  “So? A bunch of diplomatic big shots, what else?”

  “Yes. What would you say, Pat? That they are diplomats? People from the State Department, is that right? A translator? A military envoy?”

  “Right.”

  “Can you imagine that there would be an ordinary citizen right there in the Security Council when the fate of the world is in the hands of these men, our people, your people, Stevenson, Zorin?”

  “I guess not. Why, for Christ’s sake?”

  “You see that man, just at the edge of the screen, behind Stevenson and to his right? Thinning hair. Small head. Big, black-rimmed glasses that are very large for his face, don’t you think so? Big and square, as if for him to hide behind.” Max reached for the cigarettes.

  “You have one lit already.”

  “I’ve met that man.” The cigarette hanging from his lips, Max removed his broken glasses and started cleaning the remaining good lens. “I met him in Moscow, at the American Exhibition, that was three years ago, Pat. I met him demonstrating large American refrigerators.” Then suddenly, Max burst into Russian. He looked at me. “Sorry. He told me he was a businessman. He gave me a card. He said he was from Florida. He said he sold refrigerators, and other appliances.”

  Max said he had never met a real businessman, a true capitalist, and this one asked such good questions. He was a small man, with a pale pudgy face and heavy glasses. He wore a gray suit and white shirt, with a button-down shirt. But he wore a red silk tie, which Max, in his naivety, took to be a pleasant gesture towards his hosts. He had approached Max and, in a quiet voice, asked him many questions. Max was impressed with his curiosity, his interest in Moscow and the Soviet Union.

  “What is your business?” Max asked.

  “Ah,” said the man. “Nothing exciting, I’m afraid. You saw the kitchen where Vice President Nixon gave his talk? The refrigerator is from my company. I’m afraid that I sell refrigerators. They are useful things, but perhaps not too exciting.”

  “Yes,” said Max.

  “Excuse me, I can see my translator waving at me. Very nice to meet you,” he said and shook Max’s hand.

  Later, when he saw the man standing with Vice President Nixon, Khrushchev and the American ambassador, Max realized this was somebody important. “Then I made my report.”

  “What report. Jesus, they’re still talking. Maybe we should go to the UN and warn Stevenson.”

  “No. They won’t believe us, not yet. I want to see what happens at the session. Let’s just watch.”

  “What report. You said you made your report, on what, on refrigerators?”

  “In a way. My superior officer asked me, ‘Did you find it appealing?’ I said I did. I told him the American guides were excellent and open to questions and spoke correct Russian. He asked if we should do something like it. I say I think it is good for people to talk to each other. I announce—I was quite pompous in those days—that cementing international relations is an excellent thing, if it furthers the progress of the USSR. I say all these things, and because I am a good Soviet boy at the time, I also allow that I think it is shameful to see our own people lining up for plastic bags and small cups of Coca-Cola, which everyone knows is made of shoe polish. This makes an impression.”

  “They’d be more surprised now you love the stuff.”

  “But Pat, what astonishes me is that they never asked about the American who sold refrigerators.”

  “The KGB?” I said.

  “Yes. Six months later it was made known to me I could apply for KGB training.” Max crushed the cigarette, and got up and paced around the room, distracted, examining some of my aunt’s paintings and the little blue glass objects she collected. “What do you say to this, Pat? What can it mean, a refrigerator salesman from the southern area of the state of Florida is at the United Nations next to Adlai Stevenson?”

  “Is it Stevenson? Is he the target? Is that what Valdes told you? Christ.”

  “I felt it must be somebody in the American administration. Rica thought so. He had heard there were hard-line Cubans who hated Stevenson because he was so soft, that he would never make a confrontation. He was a man of peace. It would be useful to get rid of him, and also use him to provoke a confrontation. At first, I went up a stupid garden path, is that the right expression? I thought this whole business was only about the Cubans. It was also about us. There are Soviets who do not love peace, who dislike Khrushchev.

  “My refrigerator man you see on television here goes back and forth between the Soviet Union and Florida. He tells me he is an unofficial ambassador.

  “I remember, I remember. Everything about this man comes back to me now, he even tells me to visit him if ever I come to New York, which seems so improbable, so crazy, that it will ever happen, but such a delightful fantasy that I even keep his business card. He tells me he lives in Greenwich Village, and this sounds so magical, I think about it quite a bit.”

  “But you don’t call him when you get here?”

  “It seemed complicated. I wasn’t sure who this man really was, and I knew my FBI fellow, Ed, you remember, with the bad crew cut, was watching, and I wasn’t so interested by a refrigerator man. But I kept the card. It was the first one I had ever been given.”

  “And you have it.”

  From his pocket, Max pulled an engraved business card with a flourish, as if it were a sleight of hand. “Like magic, I still have this card. Mr Edward Forrester. 12th Street. Teddy. I heard somebody call him Teddy. He told me his wife teaches at the New School. This is the same man who whispers in the ear of Ambassador Stevenson, who also meets with our leaders so regularly, and so intimately.”

  “You’re saying that this Forrester is a Communist spy?”

  “Who can say? All I know is that I met him in Moscow and now he sits with Ambassador Stevenson, whispering into his ear, and it would make sense for an assassin to be so close to his target.”

  I got up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to see him, this Mr Forrester. It’s a very slim lead, barely a lead; it’s nothing except a hunch you have, but we have less than nothing, so I’m going to find out how close he is to Stevenson, how close they are, where he was the Tuesday night when Valdes was murdered. I’m no spy, but I’m a pretty damn good cop, so sit down, Max, You’ll get us both killed. What time is it? As soon as he’s off TV, I’m going,” I said. “While I’
m out, you’ll stay here, won’t you, Ostalsky? Take a shower. Get a little sleep.” In a bag I always kept in the car, I had some jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a hood I got working construction one summer long ago. “Here, take these,” I said, throwing Ostalsky the clothes. “Somebody might recognize that old suit of yours, and I’ll need my coat and hat back from you.”

  “I don’t want to impose on your aunt and uncle for the shower.”

  “You know we have plenty of hot water, you’ve been here long enough. This is America, man.”

  “Then thank you. Perhaps it will help wash away the stink.”

  I looked at him.

  “This moral stink, Pat. The horseshit.”

  “Wait.” I went into the kitchen and got us a couple of beers. “Listen, Max, we’re probably going down together, so you want to confess to anything? Us Catholics, we got confession, so you get to offload stuff. What do the Russkis do?”

  “Also, we confess. We admit our mistakes to our comrades. For some of us, there is also what the Greeks call catharsis.”

  “You ever do anything you feel really bad about, I mean, personal stuff?”

  He didn’t laugh or make a crack about Catholics, just smoked silently for a while. “I did, yes, I did more than one bad thing. I had heard how the KGB conducted interviews from my friend; his name was Vassily. We were in our third year at university when he is summoned to a hotel room somewhere. I was nervous for him. I knew what this meant. Others had been interviewed. He has a willful streak, he says what he thinks, and likes to do things his own way.” Max gulped some beer. “I said, ‘Vasya, please, be careful,’ but he is as cocksure as always, and later he tells me he went along, gave his name to the man outside the hotel room, and was told to go up. Afterwards, he told me, which was so dangerous for him, but he wanted to warn me. He was such a good friend.

  “Two men were inside. One says he is KGB, and shows his pass, the little pass with the red cover and the KGB insignia, and introduces his superior, then locks the door. Vassily says later he recalls only the musty smell and the cigarettes, and the odor of men who have not washed, and his own fear. The senior man asks if Vassily wants to help his country by reporting to them on his co-students and friends. They tell him if they know what’s going on, it is better for everyone. Vasya says to me he was so frightened he becomes contentious. He says to them, ‘But I’m a biologist.’

  “‘Oh,’ says the senior man, ‘So you’re not a patriot?’ ‘Can’t I be a biologist and a patriot?’ replies Vasya who is irritated now, as well as scared. In the end, Vassily refuses, but they want him to sign a piece of paper saying he would never tell anyone about the meeting. ‘What will you do if I don’t, put me in jail?’ he says.

  “‘You’ll wish you were in jail,’ says the other agent in a way that terrifies Vassily.

  “He never told me about this until many years later, when I ran into him. He was no longer a top biologist. He was working in a lab somewhere in the Urals, and was in Moscow only because his father had died.”

  “What about you?” I said.

  “They left me alone, until after I finished my degree, and my MA and had begun work on my doctorate. With me they were polite, perhaps because my father is well connected. They proposed I should go on with my studies, and just occasionally tell them what was going on among the students I knew, but, more importantly, with foreigners in Moscow. By this they meant Americans. They told me I would be invited to events—concerts, lectures and exhibitions—like the one I told you about—even parties at the American embassy. If I would tell them who I saw and met, it would be a patriotic gesture. So I did. I told them I would do it. I was recruited for training, and then offered the graduate fellowship in New York.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  “You could say so. Shall I tell you what I did, the worst thing I did? You asked. I lied to get a better job, to get ahead, as you would say. I lied when I was interviewed,” said Max. “I told them what they wanted to hear. I learned it was the thing you had to do.”

  “Are you looking for expiation? Absolution?”

  “Those are Catholic ideas, I like to read the novels of Graham Greene, because I admire his writing and his stories, but I wish this thing he believes could be true. I can’t believe in a God I don’t understand. I can’t believe in God at all. Perhaps God would have saved me from what I did.

  “I lied about a friend. I colluded. I schemed, and I did it in a way no one quite saw what I was up to. I was some bastard. For instance, this means I always knew how to ask a friend for a favor and make him believe I was doing one for him. I pretended I was only good at telling jokes, and having fun, but my superiors knew I was quite sharp and my superior said, ‘Max is the best, he can see around corners, he can fit in, he has the chameleon character of the best agents. Max can get what he wants, and that can be most useful.’

  “Did I tell you how I got my fellowship to New York? Did I say another man dropped out because he had a skiing accident and fell in love with some girl on the slopes? I didn’t? Well, Igor Petricov was much more talented than me, a much better candidate who spoke better English and already had his doctorate, and he was not so badly injured, or led by some girl, of course, but I made it seem as if he was unreliable, and I was from a better family and my father knew important people. There were many other students, more serious, I didn’t care. I lied and they considered Petricov undisciplined for chasing women, and he got a minor posting far away from Moscow and no real possibility of advancement. I got the fellowship to New York. They believed me. I fabricated just enough. I was a magician. I could easily conspire in my own interest. I told my uncle, the general, that I would so like to have this job, and he was happy to help, and I was charming to him. As my friends, my cousin Sasha most of all, said, Max gets what he wants. I think I even took Nancy from you, Pat. I am sorry. I will take a shower now.”

  Max came out of the bathroom, wearing my jeans and sweatshirt with the hood up.

  I laughed. “You look like a two-bit gangster.”

  “What else am I, Pat? This is what I am, wouldn’t you say so? Just a two-bit gangster, a hoodlum, what else is a spy? What I’ve discovered is that to be a good agent, you have to be without human feeling in order to do your job. We celebrate spies as daring men who will do anything, and we pretend it is about patriotism, and this might be true, Pat, for some, for some who do it for idealistic reasons. They also consider themselves in a sort of brotherhood, as priests, somehow ordained to do the unspeakable in the name of country, instead of God. We used to talk of the great undertakings of the great agents with such envy.

  “This is what they enjoy. I enjoyed this. Men together, bound by all the rules of their game—subversion, sabotage, spying—convinced like little boys these games are for the good of all. Did you know we have sports teams at the KGB? We have a house band? We are often bound together by families, because it seems safer to rely on somebody with good family connections. Some are cynical about it, of course. But all of us have a sense of entitlement. We convinced each other that this is for socialism, or capitalism, or freedom, or democracy. And it is all, all of it, as you say so often, Pat, horseshit. Crap. Farce. Malarkey. Isn’t that a term your uncle uses? We have much worse words in Russian.”

  “So do we.”

  “This is not the same as being a cosmonaut, or a great soldier in a patriotic war, like our fathers, or perhaps those girls in France who went behind enemy lines. They were different; they had an idea of what was proper. Professional agents are arrogant, but we are nothing. Just gullible, fallible men, like others, except that we are a little less human.

  “In that warehouse I was scared to death, cold, wishing I had, I don’t know, all kinds of ordinary things, even a cup of hot coffee and a roast beef sandwich, and a paperback book. I discovered that I am a terrible agent, and I was relieved. It seemed to me I might have a shot at being human. I was probably wrong. It’s probably too late, and you’ll understand when I tell you
something about Bounine. In case you have to finish this case by yourself.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Contemplating the can, Max finished the peanuts. “Let me talk. Bounine is in trouble. I failed at the job he ordered me to do. This means he failed. They will go after him. He might take chances to prove himself loyal. He’s, what do you say, a creep, but he is shrewd, and he may come looking for you. ”

  “Is he the assassin?”

  “He has a defect.”

  “Is he retarded or something? But he’s a doctor. He seemed pretty smart to me.”

  “His soft spot is my insurance policy. Everybody has a soft spot. Greed. Money. Women. Ideology.”

  “He was your friend.”

  “He made himself my friend. But it was to provoke me to talk freely so he can make, what you call brownie points. What he didn’t know was that two of us could play at the same game, and that I am better at it. But his job was always to watch me.”

  “Christ.”

  “Do you know what my cousin Sasha always said about me? He says, ‘We always knew this about you, Max. You could get anything out of us even as little children. You could always press the right buttons; you are like the magician with your silk scarves and disappearing coins, you are an actor. We used to whisper about you. Max is going to be a spy. Maxim is a spy. One of the girls even called you Felix.’”

  “Who?”

  “For the founder of our Secret Service. It doesn’t matter. When I was with Bounine at Caffe Reggio, and I see how intimately he speaks with the young man making coffee, I said nothing, but I let him know I saw, that I understood. He had been quite eager once in the summer to show me a new watch he had been given, and after he had enough to drink, he told me it was a young doctor who had presented it to him.”

  “You mean Bounine is homosexual.”

  “If you need help, you can use this.”

  “You’re a cold bastard,” I said.

  Max nodded. “Oh, yes, sure. Cold. Arrogant. Stupid, treacherous. I now understand that spies are the lowest form of all human life because we think we’re invulnerable, and we think we can do anything and say it’s for our country, for honor, for the motherland. Anyway, if Bounine intends to kill me, or you, I will use whatever this takes.”