Honeytrap

by Aster Glenn Gray

  Daniel nodded.

  “But still, in the end this giving of reports is a betrayal of the trust that there should be in friendship. We should have accepted that it was impossible to be friends and remained friendly colleagues who never told each other anything important.”

  In light of Paul’s death, Daniel had no counterargument. He felt like he was suffocating. “Did you come here just to tell me that?”

  Gennady drew his fork through the maple syrup, leaving behind raked lines that the syrup slowly filled. “I came here because you asked me to,” he said.

  Daniel toyed with a burnt piece of toast. Across the room, a young waitress dropped a plate of scrambled eggs, and stood petrified among the wreckage.

  “I was the one who understood it couldn’t work,” Gennady said, “so I should have acted to keep more distance between us. But…” He shrugged. “Well, it was a beautiful dream, wasn’t it? The power of friendship bridges East and West, capitalist and communist, overpowers even the power of the state. Love is stronger than fear. When you want something to be true it is hard to believe that it isn’t.”

  “But it still isn’t.”

  Gennady didn’t answer right away. “Maybe it is for a while,” he said finally. “But not in the end. No.”

  They were silent. The diner clattered around them.

  Gennady pushed the folder gently across the table. “Keep that,” he said gently. “Remember him happy. It’s best not to think about how people die.”

  Daniel slid the folder back into his briefcase. “This is the end, isn’t it?” he said. “For us.”

  “Unless the world changes,” Gennady said steadily, “which it won’t. Yes.”

  Daniel clipped his briefcase shut. But he didn’t make a move to leave, and neither did Gennady. Gennady sipped his coffee. Daniel continued to shred his toast.

  At last Gennady said, “I have to get to work.” He stood, but remained by the table. “Daniel, you ought to eat that.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You will be later,” Gennady urged. “You should always eat when you have the chance.”

  Daniel put a piece of toast in his mouth. Gennady raised a hand, as if to touch Daniel’s shoulder or shake hands, then let it drop again. “Proshai,” he said.

  “Proshai,” Daniel said.

  Gennady crossed the crowded diner, slipping neatly past a waitress with a laden tray. A group of burly truckers came in, and Gennady disappeared behind them; and then he was gone.

  Part Three

  1992

  Chapter 1

  “It’s a nice apartment,” Gennady said.

  He was leaning against the stainless steel island in Daniel’s kitchen, munching one of the apples out of the wooden fruit bowl. Daniel had bought both the bowl and the fruit in preparation for Gennady’s visit, in the somewhat forlorn hope of making the studio apartment look like a home rather than a room where he crashed when the janitors finally prodded him out of the office for the night.

  “A nice view,” added Gennady, nodding at the window, which did indeed have a pleasant view of the nearby skyscrapers, currently glowing orange in the February sunset. “Your letters didn’t do it justice.”

  Daniel had sent the first letter four years before, in 1988. One of his old frat brothers had become a diplomat to Moscow, and Daniel sent the letter through him, if he should happen to find a way to get it to one Gennady Matskevich. “Don’t send it if you think it might put him in danger,” Daniel told him. “The newspapers keep going on about Gorbachev’s glasnost, but I don’t know if that actually means much on the ground.”

  But it must have seemed safe enough, because a few months later Daniel received a reply from Gennady, guarded but friendly – and possessed of a return address.

  And now it was 1992 and Gennady was in Daniel’s apartment, crunching an apple at the kitchen island. “What brought you to the United States this time?” Daniel asked. “Is the KGB still sending spies? Does the KGB even still exist?”

  “The KGB will always exist,” Gennady said, “although perhaps they’ll change its name now. But I am not a KGB agent.” A slight smile curved his mouth. “I never was. I was a GRU operative. Military intelligence.”

  “Really! So you really were a lieutenant in the Red Army when I met you?”

  “In a manner of speaking. But no longer. I quit.”

  “Really?” Daniel said. “Good for you.”

  Gennady shrugged. “Everyone is getting out who can – like rats from a sinking ship. And I’ve always wanted to travel, and after all I’m not getting any younger…” He shrugged. “And there are so many parts of the United States I would still like to see. The Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, the sequoia trees. And New York City.”

  “And you just happen to have a friend in New York City,” Daniel said, smiling, although he was wondering how Gennady intended to pay for this trip now that he didn’t have an expense account. The papers said that the post-Soviet economy was in shambles.

  But he could hardly ask, so he said instead, “How long are you going to be in New York?”

  “Oh – a few days perhaps. As long as it takes to see the major tourist sights. The Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Central Park.”

  “Want a tour guide?” Daniel asked lightly. “I pretty much did the circuit when my kids visited last summer, so I could easily show you around.”

  Gennady’s eyelids flickered. “If you’ve seen these sights already, I don’t want to make you see them again.”

  Daniel couldn’t tell if Gennady’s demurral was genuine or merely polite. “I’ve barely scratched the surface on the Met and Central Park. They’re both huge. I’d be happy to spend more time there.”

  “Then I would be happy to see them with you,” Gennady said.

  Daniel’s heart squeezed in his chest. The truth was that he wasn’t sure why Gennady was here: if it was just a courtesy call, a brief stop to see an old friend, or if, like Daniel, he hoped that they might rekindle what they once had.

  Well, what they’d never had, really. There never had been any possibility for Gennady to stay before. But now that the Soviet Union was gone…

  The oven timer rang. Daniel hurried to get out the lasagna.

  They discussed Gennady’s travel plans over dinner. He meant to go south first, to see Florida “while it is still not too hot,” and then to head west. “Ilf and Petrov said the deserts in America are very beautiful,” Gennady said, and Daniel couldn’t repress a smile.

  “I finally read Ilf and Petrov’s Little Golden America a few years ago,” he told Gennady.

  “Little Golden America! Is that how they translated the title in English?” Gennady scoffed.

  “What’s the title in Russian?”

  “Oh – it would translate to One-Story America, something like that. Because the belief in the Soviet Union, certainly in the thirties and perhaps now…” Gennady faltered. The Soviet Union had fallen less than two months before. “The belief in Russia,” he corrected himself, “is that all of America is New York City, all skyscrapers.”

  A brief silence followed. Daniel wanted to say something, but Sorry about your country seemed inadequate.

  “How are your children?” Gennady asked.

  “Oh, great,” said Daniel, with an enthusiasm that was mostly genuine but partly just relief at this change in topic. “David’s got a job up in Boston working for an engineering firm, and Emily’s going to graduate from Georgetown this spring. Here, I’ve actually got a photo of them both from just last summer, Emily gave me a framed copy as a Christmas present…”

  Gennady set aside his fork to take the picture in both hands. The photograph showed Daniel with his two children on the ferry out to Ellis Island. David stood taller than Daniel; Emily had a wide purple streak in her blonde-brown hair, tucked neatly behind her ear in the photograph.

  “Emily is all grown up,” Gennady observed.
/>
  “Yes. That shocks me too, sometimes.”

  “Does she still play checkers?”

  “No. It’s all D&D these days – Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t pretend to understand it myself, but it seems to make her happy.”

  “Well, that’s the important thing.” Gennady handed the photograph back and Daniel went to set it on the bookcase again. “And you? Are you happy?”

  If the question had come from almost anyone else, Daniel would have answered with a hearty and insincere “Yes.” But he couldn’t bring himself to lie to Gennady

  He also couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth, so instead he temporized. “I’ve been better,” he said, and added, “Elizabeth and I are divorced. Well, you know that already, I mentioned it in a letter.”

  “Yes, you did, but I don’t understand it,” Gennady said. “You loved each other so much.”

  Daniel stared down at the last few bites of his lasagna. “Oh, well. She fell in love with someone else. Another artist. They met at the opening of one her shows…”

  Daniel had come to that show, although he had arrived late. The caterers were packing up, only a few hors d’oeuvres left, and he had snagged a stuffed mushroom as he scanned the room for Elizabeth.

  He heard the swell of her laughter first, as unrestrained as an ocean wave, and then he saw her. She was talking with a tall thin man in a corner, the two of them leaning toward each other. In retrospect Daniel felt that he had known in that moment that he had lost her, although he must not have seen it, really: they had been together for two more years before Daniel asked for a divorce.

  “But I love you,” Elizabeth had protested.

  “I know,” Daniel had said, and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “But Julian’s the one you’re in love with, and I can’t stand playing second fiddle for the rest of my life, Elizabeth, so please just let me go.”

  “Daniel?” Gennady’s voice brought him back to the present, and Daniel realized that he was staring blankly at his lasagna.

  Christ. That probably undermined his concerted efforts to look like he had it all together: the fruit bowl, the fruit. An actual home-cooked lasagna instead of take-out.

  Daniel cleared his throat. “Do you have a place to stay lined up? The hotels in New York are so expensive.”

  Gennady waved that away. “Money is no problem.”

  “Really? I guess it’s none of my business. But didn’t the ruble just tank?”

  “Well,” said Gennady. “When I was posted to Zurich, I opened a Swiss bank account. And once I had opened one for myself, I began to help intelligence officers who wished to have a hard currency account, for a small fee of course…”

  “Of course.”

  “And in the course of time other opportunities arose…”

  “Oh no.”

  “You should be proud of my capitalist instincts, my friend. In America perhaps I could have been a successful businessman. But it was not possible to do these things legally in the Soviet Union,” Gennady said, “so perhaps I had better not tell you more.”

  “No, I think we’d better stop there,” Daniel agreed. He hesitated, then added, “But still, if you want to stay with me… Just for the night. Or for a few days, as long as you’re in New York City. Or not,” he said, wilting with embarrassment, because Gennady was staring at him, and clearly Daniel in his hope (desperation?) had misread the situation.

  “Where would I sleep?” Gennady asked.

  “The couch,” Daniel said, and managed not to say, Or the bed’s big enough for two if you don’t mind sharing…

  Gennady cocked his head. He peered into Daniel’s face as if trying to read his thoughts.

  “I bought cannoli for dessert,” Daniel added, and winced as he said it. He felt like a small child. I’ll give you a tootsie roll if you’ll be my friend.

  But Gennady said, “I have never had cannoli.” He was not smiling, but there was something conciliatory in his voice. “Yes, I’ll stay on your couch. It’s been a long day, why not?”

  ***

  They went to Central Park the next morning, for about an hour. Then Daniel conceded that he was too cold to wander the park any longer, and they headed for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “You still haven’t bought a real coat?” Gennady scoffed. “Americans.”

  “We’re perfecting the manly art of freezing to death,” Daniel protested, pleased beyond measure to find Gennady teasing him, just like old times.

  Of course, in those old times they’d never been to an art museum together, so that was something new. Daniel was not an art aficionado (really he couldn’t blame Elizabeth for wanting a partner who shared her interests), but Gennady was clearly enjoying himself. In fact it reminded Daniel a little of going to an art museum with Elizabeth, and the parallel felt like a spar in his throat, but fortunately Gennady was absorbed in Georgia Keeffe’s Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue, and didn’t notice.

  “They could have brought this to Moscow as a propaganda piece,” Gennady mused. “The cow’s skull over the colors of the American flag.”

  “Are you surprised to see it in an American museum?”

  “Nothing you people do surprises me anymore.”

  They stopped in one of the Met’s cafes before they went back into the cold. Gennady sat, chin on his hand, gazing down at his coffee. “Your nation was founded on blood and terror,” he commented. “Slavery. The slaughter of your Indians. There has always been a skull on the red, white, and blue.”

  Daniel couldn’t quite read his tone. “Yes,” he said cautiously.

  “I’ve been reading your papers since I came here,” Gennady said, “and they have been crowing about the fall of the Soviet Union. Well, the victors always crow once they have won the war.”

  “Have you been in the United States a while, then?”

  Gennady shrugged. “A couple of weeks perhaps.”

  Clearly visiting Daniel hadn’t been high on his priority list.

  “Some of your newspaper writers seem to believe the Soviet Union was always destined to fall because it was founded in blood,” Gennady said. “But your nation was founded in blood too.” He rubbed his face. “Were we so much worse than you? You committed the worst of your crimes longer ago, that’s all. And yet already your writers are writing as if the Soviet Union was only ever a mistake.”

  Daniel felt a sudden painful wave of compassion. Of course Daniel wasn’t Gennady’s top priority right now. If their positions were reversed – if it had been the United States that collapsed…

  Daniel doubted he could have carried himself with as much composure as Gennady displayed.

  “A lot of Americans have always thought the Soviet Union was only ever a mistake, Gennady,” Daniel reminded him gently.

  “Yes, I know. And when we had shot a rocket into space and you couldn’t get one to launch, it was easy to laugh at those people. But now how can I argue with them? So much misery, so much death, and it’s all come to nothing in the end.” He toyed with his coffee cup. “But then that’s the way of all empires. The empires of Egypt, and Greece, and Rome, and Great Britain, all fell in the end. And yours will too, someday.”

  “I guess that’s logical,” Daniel said reluctantly.

  “But you don’t believe it,” Gennady said. “It will not seem possible to you until it actually falls.”

  Daniel stirred his own coffee (decaf; he could no longer drink the real stuff after lunchtime). “It’s a little like imagining my own death,” he admitted finally. “Of course, in either case the world would go on afterward, but trying to imagine what it would be like if the star-spangled banner no longer waved…”

  His voice trailed off. Just saying it gave him an unpleasant feeling, as if someone had stepped on his grave.

  “Ask me in two years and maybe I will understand it well enough to tell you what it might be like for you,” Gennady told him.

  “So you’ll be back in two years, then?” Daniel asked, raising his eyebrows.
/>   Gennady leaned back in his chair. “Why not? After all there is always more of New York to see. Would you let me stay again?”

  “Yes, of course,” Daniel said. “Any time you want to come visit, just let me know.”

  ***

  Despite their busy day, Daniel didn’t sleep well that night. This had begun to happen frequently as he grew older, particularly since the divorce, and usually he turned on the light to read till he felt sleepy again.

  Only once the light was on did Daniel remember that it might wake Gennady. Daniel switched the light back off – the twist knob on the lamp sounded horribly loud – but Gennady was already sitting up. “Are you awake?” Gennady asked softly.

  “No. I turned the lamp on in my sleep.”

  Gennady laughed at him. Daniel waited for Gennady to lie back down again, but Gennady remained sitting, and so Daniel sat too, both of them sitting in the dimness and waiting for the other to speak.

  “I’m glad you came to visit,” Daniel said, at length. “That you’re staying with me.”

  “I was surprised when you wrote to me,” Gennady said. “I thought I would never hear from you again. After the way we parted.”

  “We parted because we realized that it was too likely that someone else might get hurt if we kept seeing each other,” Daniel said. “‘Until the world changes,’ you said. And then the world changed, so… I wrote to you.”

  Gennady plumped his pillow. “The world has changed, but not in that way. FBI would still fire you if you had a male lover.”

  “Oh.” And Daniel realized that he’d never told Gennady. “I quit the FBI.”

  “Oh. Well, you are of an age to retire, I suppose.”

  “No. I mean, I left after Paul… died.”

  “Oh.” Now Gennady sounded truly shocked. “Why? It was not the FBI’s fault.”