Manhattan 62

by Nadelson, Reggie

  Ahead of Nancy I went to the apartment, told Max to stay low, and put on the lights. Nancy arrived, and said, very softly, “I think Rush has pretty much lost his mind, and he just talked and talked, going around and around, telling me he had to save America from the Red curse, that unless he did what he had to, we would be overtaken by the Communists, and how God would not forgive him if he failed. He says only General Curtis LeMay ever understood the right way. That LeMay should be in charge. Might be in charge. This is a man, LeMay I mean, who wants to blow up the world. My God, Pat, I never realized that Rush was quite insane. I’m just going to change.” She ran into the bedroom and put on the sweater and slacks she had worn earlier. “What on earth have I done? He made me promise I’d spend the night with him. He’s staying in town. He’s never done that before, not with me, at least; he’s very paranoid about his wife who’s somewhere in Westchester, but he said this was so important and it meant so much to him, so I said I’d think about it, but he insisted. I told him I knew something big was on, and I wanted to be part of it, I implied it was the price of my spending the night with him, and he said fine but I’d have to go to mass with him tomorrow morning, and I said, darling, I’m Jewish. He just laughed. I have to go now. By the way, if this matters, he says we’re going to Old St Patrick’s, isn’t that where your Aunt and Uncle go, Pat? Didn’t you take me to hear Christmas carols there once?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, so long, Pat. Bye, Max. Take care of yourselves,” Nancy said, and without looking back, she went out the door and down the stairs.

  “Do you trust her?”

  “I don’t know,” Max said.

  “Could she be telling us a story? Could she be whatever the hell you call it, a double agent or some garbage? I’m going to Old St Pat’s.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You can’t. I looked outside, they’re back.”

  “All of them?”

  “Just yours. Your friends in the black Plymouth.”

  “Get rid of them.”

  “How?”

  “Call the police, not your own station, but a different one, and tell them the KGB is parked on West 4th Street,” said Max.

  “Do you think they’ll believe it?”

  “Perhaps not. But they may send a police car to check.”

  He was right. I muffled the phone with a handkerchief, and by some miracle I got hold of a guy in the First Precinct. Said he’d send someone by for a look.

  “Wait,” Max said. “Give them half an hour.” From his pocket he took a photograph and said, “Would you like to see a picture of my family? I don’t suppose I will ever see them again in my life.” He stared at the black and white snapshot, as if he could see his lost Russian life come alive. “This was my last visit to the dacha.”

  “Before Nina left you.”

  “Yes. Look, here is my mother and my aunt Sveta, Sasha’s mother, dancing together in their summer dresses and white sandals. My mother is the one with the short dark hair. My father is reading his newspapers. Here is Nina, with Sasha, on the grass playing cards. He always cheats.”

  A tall, dark, willowy woman in shorts, her long legs stretched out on the grass, Nina was laughing into the camera. Under his breath Max said, “I can smell the grass. Sasha’s wife and little boy are inside sleeping.”

  “You’re taking the picture?”

  “Yes.

  “It’s hot for May, the countryside is green, and we think, who knows when we will see each other? Sasha has been my best friend always. He has been called back to his naval unit where he is a missile engineer. So we are a little drunk; and we drink and sing and pretend to weep, Russian-style, but also we laugh at our stupid jokes. When we are little, we had a reputation for fooling around. Why am I telling you this?

  “Then Sasha tells me something I’ve been thinking about. He tells me his father, my uncle, the General, is out for some kind of revenge. Revenge for my mother’s sister, my aunt Sveta, Sasha’s mother, they split up right after Sasha was born. It was his fault, but this means it has been eating him up ever since that time.

  “I’ve been trying to recall exactly what else Sasha said about his father, that this is a hate-filled man who wants to return to the way of Stalin when he was important and happy and had a beautiful wife. But then Khrushchev came in, and he lost some of his power. His wife was already gone a long time, but he picks this like a, do you say, scab? It made him very bitter, except for me.”

  “Except for you.”

  “I was his favorite, he told everybody. Only Maxim Stepanovich pays attention, he says, and I’ve been thinking about this, Pat, about how easy it was for me to enter the KGB program, and how I got the fellowship to come to America. I knew my uncle always had, how would you say, put in a good word for me, but now I think it is much more. I would be his personal spy? He knew many men in the KGB, of course. I would be his for whatever he wanted.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “You see, my uncle believed we should strike at America first. Strike at Cuba, so the Americans would hit back.”

  According to the news on TV, the bombing would begin overnight, and I knew that if there were nukes, not much more than five percent of lower Manhattan would survive.

  The black Plymouth remained outside. I got ready to go. I had a gun, and in the little kitchen Max found a knife.

  “A knife, Pat. A knife with a dull blade, this is crazy.”

  “You’re not coming.”

  “Listen to me. I told you I went to the United Nations on Thursday, and I insist to Irina Rishkova we go to her office so I can take a look at some Soviet newspapers, and I make like I’m a little bit tipsy, so in her office, in front of many reporters, I kiss her on both cheeks and I say, ‘I hear you have some letters from my Aunt Sveta.’ ”

  “Did she know anything?”

  “She gets flustered in her pretty blue American suit. She’s worried. I say, ‘Have you seen your friend, Edward Forrester lately? Did you see him yesterday? He was here, wasn’t he?’ She’s nervous, and I ask where is her friend Bounine. She doesn’t want to answer. People are turning away from their TV sets to look at us. She knows I am desperate enough to expose her. I was very charming.”

  “I’ll just bet.”

  “I thank her for the photographs she had given to Rica Valdes, and for helping me stay in touch with my family at home. I make her understand that I know she instructed Bounine to order me to eliminate Rica Valdes. I ask if she also sent Bounine to the pier that night, as back-up, in case I fail.”

  She says can we speak somewhere quiet, and I say no, the office is fine, but I keep my voice lower, and she whispers to me, yes—not in so many words, but she did this. I failed to kill Rica. Bounine has failed to do his job, also he has his personal problems. So Rishkova has also failed. She’s scared. She doesn’t know who I’m working for now.”

  “You’re telling me this is all about, I don’t know, some bureaucracy, some order of command?”

  “Of course. I also ask if Rishkova knows about a certain plan.”

  “The assassination.”

  “Yes.”

  “She knows.”

  “What did she tell you.”

  “She only knows there is a plan. She can’t, or won’t say anything else, and then I make a, can you say, happy discovery. On her desk is a little box, very expensive, very old, a painted Russian box. As soon as I reach for it, she pushes me away and tries to grab it.”

  “‘What a beautiful object,’ I say. ‘I must look at it.’

  “‘It’s nothing. Just a gift.’

  “I pick it up. When I remove the lid, I see there is a little silver plaque inside, and I know I have her.”

  “Her soft spot. Can we just move on?”

  “Sure. Yes. It was a very personal inscription to her, engraved in silver, the kind you send to a lover, and it is from my uncle, the General, Fyodor Grigoryevich. I say to her, ‘I thought you were friends with my Aunt
Sveta, I thought she was your old good friend who asks you to post letters to me.’ She says, yes, of course, but also with Fyodor Grigoryevich, and so I know. She is his mistress. My aunt and uncle never speak. They hate each other. You can’t be friends with both. I tell her I know they are lovers. And she blushes. Such a simple thing. Rishkova is not a woman who blushes. In some way, she is proud of their love affair.

  “They will take her lovely job away. It will be like dominoes. One, two, three, all fall down. My uncle can’t protect her.”

  “Why not?”

  “If she has failed, he won’t risk anything for her. Where are the police, do you think?”

  I looked out of the window. Only the black Plymouth stood at the curb.

  “I’ve been writing to my father. Also Nina and my mother, in case, you understand, this means if I never…”

  “I understand.”

  “My father told me that writing helps him to remember.” “He’s a spy, too?”

  Max laughed. “He’s a doctor. But he’s smart, and he pays more attention to politics than I do, what happens in and out of the Kremlin. He used to talk to me when we were at our dacha in the countryside.”

  “He can only talk politics in the country?”

  “Easier,” said Max. “Less people are paying attention when you’re at your dacha. Cottage.”

  “Jesus, man, that’s some country. So what did your pa say to you?”

  “He tried to tell me there are men who were determined to return to the times of Stalin.”

  “Get rid of Khrushchev.”

  “You could be a good spy, Pat.”

  “Thanks, man, it’s a big compliment coming from you. But if we’re all dead, how will that help our enemies, since they’ll be dead, too.”

  “Politicians never quite think that way.”

  “You want to give your pop a call? I know it’s expensive, but go ahead, it will be OK with Nancy.”

  “ I don’t think I can just pick up the phone and say, hello, Dad, my pal Pat, who’s an American cop, he and I think there’s an assassin loose, and can you tell me if my uncle, the general, put this into place, and got me sent me to the United States. Dear father, would you have any ideas about it? I can’t call him at all, with people listening. This would put my family at risk. And Nancy.”

  My mind wandered to all the unfinished business in my life. The city was dead quiet, a fearful deep strange quiet I never heard again until the days after the planes hit the Twin Towers. “A pre-emptive strike,” I said.

  “Like your General Curtis LeMay.”

  “I told you about the photograph Forrester has, with LeMay when he was a young soldier. There were others with him, Rush O’Neill and Captain Logan, who wanted me off the job, or dead if necessary. Max, wasn’t your uncle a soldier at the Yalta Conference?”

  “Yes. He received a Parker pen from an American. He gave it to me before I left Moscow.”

  “Forrester was there. He told me.”

  “I don’t think he’s the killer. He’s too valuable.”

  “Who to?”

  “Both sides.”

  “There are four of them in that photograph of Forrester’s take of the 305 Bomb Squad, with Curtis LeMay.”

  “Who was the fourth?”

  The fourth man’s face had been obscured by the wing of a B-17, and two mechanics, young, looking like kids, with crew cuts, grinning. “I don’t know. It’s O’Neill. It’s him. He told Nancy it’s Old St Pat’s. We have nothing else.”

  “Who is the target?”

  From outside I suddenly heard police sirens. “Good,” said Max.

  “I have to go,” I said. “In case O’Neill is looking for me, in case he has someone in front of my building. I have to go home, I have to make them think I’m home with all the lights on. I need to put on the lights.”

  “You’re not safe in the streets.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I looked out of the window. “There’s a couple of uniforms out there, they’re talking to somebody in the black Plymouth. I’ll go now.”

  “Just wait until they all go away. Let’s have another drink,” he said.

  So we sat in the dark, trapped in that apartment, somebody in the building playing a pretty version of “Autumn in New York”. We finished the brandy and waited for the ring of a bicycle bell, in case Nancy had come back a second time, but she didn’t, and I thought about all the things I had never done and would probably never do. There was nothing else to do except wait for the bombs. We drank, and again the TV droned on with news of the end of the world.

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  October 28, ’62

  U.S. AND SOVIET REACH ACCORD ON CUBA; KENNEDY ACCEPTS KHRUSHCHEV PLEDGE TO REMOVE MISSILES UNDER U.N. WATCH

  THE NEWSPAPERS DIDN’T HAVE the story until Monday morning, but by Sunday everyone knew. Crowds gathered in front of the Post and the Times; the news was on TV. It was out, so that by Sunday morning at Old St Pat’s, people were streaming into church. Everyone was smiling, and waving to friends, and crossing themselves. Thank God. Thank the Lord.

  Almost everyone at the church was local: the Italian ladies in black and the husbands they dragged with them; the few remaining Irish parishoners like my aunt and uncle who still came to what they had considered their church back in the day when the Italians were nobody and were made to attend a separate mass downstairs; even artists from their lofts on the Bowery in spattered paint work pants and wrinkled shirts, a two-dollar tie thrown on to show respect.

  The bells rang out like crazy at Old St Pat’s. All morning they had been ringing from all over the Village, from St Anthony’s and Our Lady of Pompeii, and maybe those stuck-up Episcopalian places on Fifth Avenue and over on Broadway. Bells ringing; people hugging, laughing, crying in relief. We did it. We faced down the Russkis.

  Just outside the main church door on Mott Street, I stood and watched the faces of the men removing their hats. Teenagers, uncomfortable in their good shoes, eyed each other and figured out how to sit together, thigh to thigh in the back pews.

  For the first time in a week, everyone felt safe, the relief was palpable, the threat of nuclear war had receded, time had stopped dragging itself from hour to hour and had speeded up to a normal pace.

  “He did it. Our President. He won. We won.” I could hear the voices as they repeated what they had heard on the television and read in the morning papers. Kennedy and Khrushchev had made a deal on Cuba; Khrushchev had agreed to turn back the ships; there was to be no war. No war, they said. It was over.

  Miraculously the world had spun back on its axis; miraculously, our beloved President had done it, he had saved the world. The President had stared them down. Our President. Our Jack Kennedy. JFK belonged to everyone, but he was a Catholic, and an Irishman; and didn’t he visit Old St Pat’s once, when he was a senator? Yes, at least once. Didn’t he say how much he admired our church?

  It had become a legend among the faithful at Old St Pat’s, and there were photographs of Kennedy near the entrance. Pictures of all of them—the parents, Bobby, the others. All the Kennedys had come by, one time or another. Glancing at them, Bobby Kennedy caught my eye. He was a tough bird, but in the photograph with Ethel his wife, he was smiling. He seemed to catch my eye, seemed to understand something about me. One day, he would be President.

  “Oh yes, he knows we were first, the first cathedral in New York,” said a woman holding a tiny baby in a blue knitted blanket. “Of course,” said somebody else. Sure. St Patrick’s uptown was too gaudy, an upstart, one of the ladies in a homemade hat—this one with bright yellow flowers on it—said to another, then crossed herself hastily in case it was some kind of blasphemy.

  Almost lulled into lethargy, exhausted by lack of sleep, I nearly missed Homer Logan when he strolled into the church, shaking hands, removing his navy blue alpaca overcoat.

  I stayed out of sight, behind a crowd of people. Shirley Cowan had told me Logan attended an Episcopalian church
. Had left St Pat’s long ago.

  What was he doing here? I watched him, and a woman with a grey mink stole over her pink suit, a pillbox hat on her head. A cop in uniform saluted as Logan passed him and went to the front row.

  For a while, I was caught in the crowd; friends of my uncle and aunt who had known me from childhood stopped to shake my hand. “Paddy, dear, how are you? Married yet? You know Terry Sullivan’s daughter is very nice, single, a college graduate.”

  People couldn’t stop chatting. The President, God bless him, had succeeded; he had won. Russian missiles were being crated up and shipped home, announced one of the men, a plump fellow in a navy blue suit. He had his morning newspaper with him and was reading out bits of it. “Turned back,” he said. “Incredible. God bless him.”

  “And God bless Bobby, too,” said his wife, adjusting her red hat and then crossing herself. “Without him, the President would not have made it. God bless Bobby.”

  My head was tight, pulse racing, sweat dribbling down my back, under my suit and my overcoat. Was Nancy coming to mass with O’Neill? Was she safe? Did Ostalsky stay at her place?

  I remembered that day in Washington Square when I helped Max Ostalsky buy his first hot dog. I remembered how he had reminded me of a new convert faced with communion wafers and thinking: do I chew? Bite? Swallow?

  The crowd streamed into the church. Women in their going to church hats, men in their Sunday suits. I watched everyone closely as they jammed the pews. It was cold inside the cavernous old cathedral but nobody seemed to mind. I saw myself looking—for what? For something, someone, a clue, a familiar face, an assassin, for Rush O’Neill. Or for a Russian? Why not Rishkova? A woman can use a gun. This is what Russians do; they kill people. Why not her? Why not Max Ostalsky? Bounine had been interested in seeing Old St Pat’s, but didn’t Ostalsky ask first? Didn’t he pester me about never having been inside a church from the day we met in the park?