“Yes. Working how? Drinking vodka?”
“It clears the brain. We have a big story today.” He handed her a carbon flimsy.
BY JOHN A. SPENCER
MID-STATES NEWS SERVICE
MOSCOW—THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT TODAY ANNOUNCED SWEEPING NEW PENALTIES FOR PROFITEERING AND OTHER ECONOMIC CRIMES IN WHAT IS VIEWED AS AN UNPRECEDENTED KREMLIN CRACKDOWN ON INTERNAL CORRUPTION.
“With the premier in intensive care, as this morning’s rumor has it,” Jack said, “Badim is finally making a move, a hell of a move.”
“You mean General Badim, who runs the KGB?”
“He’s a purist. As we might judge by his art collection alone, he believes in the Soviet good life, but as a reward of rank and service to the CPSU, service such as gassing Afghans and bullying dissidents. He refuses to tolerate it as the end product of skimming, winky dink, and collectivist wheelie-dealie. The penalties he seems to have pushed through include a minimum of three years’ forced labor for taking a bribe, the smallest bribe. Every bureaucrat in Moscow could be in danger of a gulag. Your friend Griuchinov ought to be a little nervous, not to speak of Popov, Sukhanov, and Yevgeni the Great.”
“Who?”
“The oversized Marshal Kuznetzov. You dined with him, remember? Badim has put the fear of Lenin into the entire ruling circle. The premier may not let him get away with it, but right now the premier is on a respirator.”
“He is?”
“Or so I’ve heard.”
“What has all that to do with this ghastly restaurant?”
The dining room was now filled with gray and brown-green uniforms, most with bright red trim. Some of the officers were watching them, too boldly, but most in the room were talking excitedly among themselves. Thick cigarette smoke hung low, much like clouds over the sea on a rainy day.
“My story thus far is based on a terse handout from the Foreign Ministry and all sorts of rumor and gossip. None of us has any real sources here, you know. The State Department never tells us what it knows, which is well, because it’s usually nothing. You can’t even get the embassy CIA types to exchange information. We all have people among the dissidents, but those underground groups are so infiltrated by the KGB and GRU that the stuff they give us might as well be in Pravda. So we turn to other sources. This is one of mine.”
“One-ruble lunches?”
“One-ruble lunches here at Lefortovo. I look for sudden changes, anything different. Rapid comings and goings. Military traffic. Arrests. Excitement.” He gestured at the Russians in the room. “These fellows now are carrying on as though the Chinese had just attacked on a thousand-mile front. It’s clear the army had nothing to do with this, had no idea it was coming. I’ve overheard some of these fellows calling it a great insult to Kuznetzov. He must be very angry.”
“Can we go now?”
“Oh no. First the delightful one-rouble lunch. Today it’s not bad. Kvas. Borshch. Pirog. You know that? It’s a pie made of cabbage, eggs, and mushrooms. Halva for dessert. And vodka. Vodka costs another two rubles.”
“These soldiers make me nervous.”
“That’s their job. Is Russia getting to you? I would have thought you’d be in heaven.”
“Heaven and hell, all in the same place.”
“I’ll find a better place for dinner.”
“Jack, I can’t. I have to meet with some Russians.”
His look turned to that of a small, hurt child, and then a very clever one. “The very charming Comrade Griuchinov.”
She let her expression turn cold.
“What would all your czars and nobles say, Tatty?”
“Please, Jack. Let it drop.”
A waiter brought the borshch. Jack took a spoonful, and grimaced. “Well then,” he said. “When next, for you and me?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to call you.”
“Is there a you and me?”
“Yes. Of course. Obviously. That has nothing to do with it.” She tried the borshch, pushed it aside, then pulled it back and began eating.
Looking up, she touched his hand. “Jack. This isn’t a lark for me, you know. This isn’t some Caribbean cruise. This is business for me, and it’s not over.”
“Perhaps there’s just been too much vodka.” He drank some, a lot.
“Oh, shut up.”
They did not say another word throughout lunch. The moment she set down her fork for the last time, he rose. She followed him to the foyer, where he paid a waiter or manager a ruble to telephone for a cab. Crossing the street to stand and wait on the opposite curb, they were almost run down by a convoy of military vehicles, including a long green staff car, that came careening around the corner. Jack pulled her tight against him and out of the way, then released her, still not speaking.
They waited for so long that Tatty was almost at the point of marching around the corner where she was sure Raya was lurking in her purple car, but with everything else, she was in no mood to see what might result from mixing Raya and Jack together. Matters were combustible enough.
The cab that finally came was a large Volga. Their bodies did not touch. They did not speak. The taxi followed much the same route Raya had followed outbound, but when they neared what looked to Tatty to be Karl Marx Prospekt, Spencer leaned over and said something to the driver in Russian. He immediately turned left, and then pulled up at the curb.
“Dzerzhinsky Square,” said Jack, helping her out. “No one should leave Russia without seeing it. Many who see it never see anything else again.”
As the cab pulled away, she saw that the square was actually a circle. Opposite was a very large, grim, old-fashioned office building with narrow windows, and a more modern annex that looked even grimmer. In the center of the circle was a statue of a man in early twentieth-century dress.
“Felix Dzerzhinsky,” Jack said. “Father of Soviet terrorism, mastermind of Lenin’s beloved Cheka, and all-around great guy. Also Polish. The big building over there is where General Badim does his thing. It used to be an insurance company in the czar’s time. The Bolsheviks made certain modifications.” He urged her on, and they began walking around the circle, he with some obvious lingering pain, she with much reluctance.
“Is that where Lubyanka Prison is?”
“The most terrifying basement in the world.”
There was a fair amount of traffic around the square, but few pedestrians. Tatty felt as though there were dozens of pairs of eyes upon them, staring coldly from those narrow windows.
“Do you think the premier is going to die?” she asked.
“Not with the certainty everyone had about Brezhnev, but it’s a good possibility. This is heart attack two.”
“What would happen if he does?”
“The New York Times lads don’t agree with me, but I think it would quickly narrow down to a knock-down drag-out between Griuchinov and Marshal Kuznetzov, with the worst man winning.”
“Griuchinov.”
“No, Kuznetzov.”
They crossed a street, continuing around the circle. Tatty’s eyes were tearing from the cold wind.
“What about old Popov?”
“Too old. The premier made him his deputy just to keep his rivals out of striking distance.”
“And General Badim?”
“The sentimental favorite in some Western circles, but very doubtful. It’s too soon after Andropov’s ascension. The others in the Politburo don’t want to see the KGB established as the only avenue to the CPSU chairmanship. And there’s a strangely Western feeling that a nation of spies should be run by someone who is not a spy.”
“Why do you say Kuznetzov is worse than Griuchinov?”
“Because, for all his use of slave labor on his irrigation projects, Griuchinov is what used to be called a ‘good Communist,’ like Dobrynin. The jolly giant is a murderous butcher.”
“Kuznetzov is a butcher?”
“The butcher of Kabul, among many other places. When he was head of the GRU, he
was in charge of the butchery in Angola, North Yemen, Somalia, and Ethiopia. He has some American blood on his hands as well.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the sixties, he was chief of Soviet military intelligence in Southeast Asia. A lot of our fliers went to their unmarked graves in little pieces because of that son of a bitch, especially in the early days.”
“Of the Vietnam War?”
“Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand. He’s worked with all the red guerrillas there.”
“You call Griuchinov a ‘good Communist.’ Wasn’t he in Southeast Asia, too? Working with guerrillas?”
“He may have been there. They don’t let me leaf through their personnel files. But as far as I know, his background is strictly farm-boy. I doubt if he’s ever picked up anything more lethal than a pitchfork.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure of nothing about this place. But that’s the best we news types have on him. If the CIA has something better, they’re not telling.”
“Are you saying we should want Griuchinov to win? That that would be best for the world?”
“Tatty. Comrade Griuchinov may well be a fiend who would sell all of the women of Europe into white slavery, as you may have occasion to discover. But Kuznetzov is the only one of these bastards who I feel would have no compunction about ordering a preemptive nuclear strike if he thought it necessary.”
She bit down hard on her lip. He’d been holding her hand, but now she pulled it away.
“I know too little about politics,” she said.
“Be grateful.”
They were standing now just outside the building of narrow windows. She could not see dozens of pairs of eyes, but there was a man looking at them from the second floor, with apparent displeasure.
“Please, Jack. I want to get away from this place.”
“That’s fine with me. I’ve seen what I came to see. Business as usual at Chez Badim. No excitement. Everything under control.”
She pulled his arm, hurrying him away.
“I think I’ll nip by the Kremlin,” he said. “Will you join me? Your hotel’s just down the street.”
“I think I’ll go directly to it. I need to lie down.”
“In that case …”
“No, Jack. I need bed rest. Not bed.”
“Of course. You have to perform.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. You have a performance tonight.”
“Let’s get a cab.”
“Let’s not. Red Square’s very near. We can walk. I find it improves my condition.”
Reaching Khmelintsk Street, he took her on a short diversion, turning a corner into a dark, narrow public way that was little more than an alley. People in scruffy clothes were sitting or standing in doorways, drinking. A few, despite the cold, were sleeping.
“As good a place to get drunk in as there is in Moscow,” he said, “and there are streets like this all over Moscow. The great Soviet alcoholism problem. Lacking solution, it’s kept out of sight.”
“Please, let’s go on,” Tatty said. Some of the drunks were women.
“Don’t be so contemptuous, Tat. What’s the difference between us and them? We just sit on chairs and drink a better grade of vodka.”
She stepped back, moving away from him.
“I’m going to go on by myself, Jack. I’ll call you. As soon as I can.”
She began to walk quickly toward Red Square.
“Tatty. Don’t wear that czarist pin of yours in front of Griuchinov.”
“Stop it, Jack. Or I won’t call you at all.”
After a long nap in her hotel room, she took a long hot bath. Laying out a black evening gown, she then thought better of it. The gown was perhaps more seductive than she wished, and it didn’t go well with her pin, which she now most definitely intended to wear. She decided to take the gown with her to the theater and wear it only for her reading. Afterward, she’d change back to her red blouse and black suit, and Czar Nicholas pin. If Griuchinov was not amused by it, too bad. It came with the rest of her.
The telephone rang. Still in her lingerie, she answered it, hoping it was Jack, regretting her stupid churlishness. When this was over, she would make it up to him, in ways that would please them both.
It was not Spencer, but Meadows. Tatty wished she had more clothes on.
“My dear,” he said. “I was just checking to see if you managed to get a Russian invitation.”
“Everything’s fine, thank you.”
“You haven’t had a Russian invitation?”
“I’m doing just fine, Mr. Meadows. Just fine.”
“If you should get an invitation from the Soviets, well, I know you’re seeing an American friend here, but, my dear, it would not do well to insult your Soviet hosts, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do, Mr. Meadows, but you have nothing to worry about. I’ve no intention of insulting anyone. Now I really must go. Thank you so much for your solicitousness.”
She hung up the phone sharply.
The Russian limousine driver was waiting outside her dressing-room door when she emerged after changing. The audience had been slightly larger this night, but Griuchinov did not come. Neither was he in the car.
“Are we going far?” Tatty asked, in Russian, as she eased herself into the back seat.
“Nyet, gospozha. Blyzko.”
Near. And the driver used the old style, prerevolutionary term for madame. She sat very quietly.
Her rendezvous was much more than near; it was at the Kremlin. The chauffeur pulled up abruptly at the gate of the Nikolsky Tower at the northernmost point of the Kremlin walls, then escorted her through a tunnel to the interior, where she was met by a man in a soldier’s uniform, who introduced himself as Chairman Griuchinov’s servant. He led her to what she recognized from Raya’s tour as the Council of Ministers Building, an old classical palace with a big dome on top. Raya had said Lenin had lived and worked there. He had lived none so well as the “good Communist” Griuchinov. The servant ushered her into an apartment on the second floor that was as elegant and decadent as Ramsey Saylor’s pied à terre in Georgetown, done in reds, blacks, and assorted greens, with heavy draperies and expensive paintings.
She seated herself on a plush velvet dark green sofa in what she took to be the drawing room, edging close to the adjacent fire, which was blazing with six or seven logs. The waiter brought her a small carafe of vodka in ice and a chilled glass, then retired. As she sipped her drink, she had a moment of panic. Of what possible use was this? What cameras, tape recorders, or eavesdropping devices could Ramsey Saylor possibly have intruded into this Kremlin palace? Was CIA penetration so marvelous it could reach into this innermost sanctum of the Soviet government? All for nought. Rien. Nichevo. Nothing. She would be making this sacrifice, enduring this ordeal, to no purpose.
She calmed herself. She would do what was asked of her, and, win or lose, leave the rest to Ramsey. That would be that. She had no reason to doubt the CIA’s capabilities. She was working for the Agency, after all, and here she sat.
Griuchinov entered smiling, reaching to take both of her hands. He was wearing a black belted peasant blouse of the old Russian style, black trousers, and soft black leather boots. With his longish gray hair, he looked something of a poet, or musician; a circus-bear trainer perhaps, anything but a Soviet bureaucrat.
“Miss Chase,” he said, getting the “Chase” right this time if not the “Meese.” “I am so pleased that you could join me this evening.”
Kissing both of her hands, he released them and sat himself beside her, reaching to light an American cigarette. The servant, whom Griuchinov addressed as “Sergeant Lev,” brought a carafe of vodka for his master, then bent to whisper in his ear. Griuchinov frowned and said a few sharp words in Russian.
“Our dinner will be a little late,” he said, as the army servant retired. “The cook is ailing and another had to be found. In meantim
e, he is preparing an ample zakuski. You will enjoy, yes?”
There was a spark of mischief in his eyes.
“I have learned to appreciate your country’s excellent vodka more slowly now, Mr. Chairman. And I look forward to enjoying your zakuski.”
It was more than ample. The sergeant set down a huge tray with sturgeon, herring, two kinds of caviar, sausage, spicy cheese, anchovies, and dark bread set on plates in a bed of ice. Dinner might not be necessary.
Something had bothered her from the moment she entered the apartment, and she realized what it was: the music. He had a tape or record system hidden away somewhere and it was playing very Western music, indeed, a jazzy version of “Southern Nights.”
She smiled, and so did he. He was quite charming, really, and it infuriated her.
“That’s very interesting music, Mr. Chairman, to be hearing inside the Kremlin.”
“Yes? You like it?”
“I do, thank you. But I am very fond of Russian music as well. There’s a song, ‘Evening Bells.’ Would you have a recording of it?”
“Oh yes, yes.” He clapped his hands twice and called Sergeant Lev’s name. When that produced nothing, he went to a small box affixed to the wall near the doorway and pushed a button, twice. This finally produced Lev, who received his instructions dutifully and then disappeared. By the time Griuchinov returned to his seat and raised his vodka glass to his lips, “Southern Nights” was replaced by a strong Russian basso. The song was “Evening Bells,” but sung playfully rather than traditionally. The singer had an extraordinary range, and used the song to exercise it as he might the scales.
“Is Ivan Rebroff,” Griuchinov said. “His parents were born Russian, but not Sovietski. He was born in Germany. But we accept him. He has remarkable voice. Five octaves, perhaps more. He has sung at your Carnegie Hall.”
Tatty sipped, closed her eyes, put back her head, and listened. Her feet were too warm in her boots. With another man, with Jack Spencer, she would remove them now. Her evening with Griuchinov was still too formal.
“You are called Tatty, Miss Chase. Your name is actually Tatiana?”
“Tatiana Alexandra.”
“Beautiful Russian names. And your Russian family name? What was it?”
Blood of the Czars Page 17
