Blood of the Czars

by Kilian, Michael;

  Had the horrible Sergeant Lev not made the mistake of arranging the props before he made his telephone call, had she not found within herself the wit, desperation, and violence to snatch up the pistol and kill him, she would now be lying against the cold stone not of this alley but of Lubyanka prison.

  She would not give in to despair. Jack was coming, strong, handsome Jack Spencer, her life’s hero. He would take her from this—he would save her.

  She pictured her generational cousin, the Grand Duchess Tatiana, leaning against some cold Siberian wall six decades before and thinking similar thoughts. Heroes to come, who never did.

  Spencer did not arrive for almost an hour. She had by then consumed all of her vodka and nearly all her hope. Jack brought more vodka, two bottles of a cheap brand. He seated himself and pulled her close to him, handing her a bottle.

  “Drink,” he said, “and speak softly.”

  She drank, seeking and finding warmth, but for a moment could say nothing.

  “You must hate me for taking so long,” he said, “but I had no choice. I have an automatic tail wherever I go—we all do—and it took every trick I could think of to lose them. I’m not even sure I have. But we might as well stay here for the time being. I can’t think of any safer place to go to right now.”

  “Jack, what do I do?”

  “You are in the most serious trouble anyone could invent, Tatty. You are very close to being dead.”

  She sniffled, wiping tears from her eyes with her gloved hand. “That’s so encouraging to hear.”

  “Tell me now how this happened.”

  “The servant did it, an army sergeant. He came into the room and without any hesitation shot Griuchinov through the head. Then he said I had murdered the chairman. He put down the gun and started to telephone. I shot him. Then I called you. I was set up for this, Jack. They picked me out for this when I was back in New York.”

  “Who did?”

  “Some people in the CIA. I, I’ve done some work for them in the past. For a friend from college days. His name is Ramsey Saylor.”

  Spencer swallowed vodka, and said nothing for a minute.

  “It’s a damn strange thing,” he said finally. “The Soviet army is all over the place. Convoys, military police patrols, everywhere. But the militia hasn’t stirred. Dzerzhinsky Square is quiet. When Brezhnev died, every window was ablaze. There was nothing on the Tass wire. I’m not even sure that the news about Griuchinov is out. The KGB has a tap on my line, yet, despite your call, they’ve done nothing. I think Marshal Kuznetzov has a real problem on his hands.”

  “What do you mean? Did he arrange this?”

  “It’s my best guess. But he didn’t arrange it well enough. You’re here, not there. He needs you. With your beautiful corpus in hand, in Griuchinov’s apartment delicto flagrante, he discredits Griuchinov and his followers. He discredits General Badim and the KGB for letting you get to Griuchinov. He brings glory on himself and his GRU by apprehending you. And he acquires proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “That he didn’t kill Griuchinov. But he doesn’t have you. Here you are.” He took another, very big swallow. “But does the KGB know where you are?”

  “Jack, are you drunk?”

  “Not yet. I’m just thinking, thinking as hard as I can.”

  “Why did the CIA let Ramsey do this to me?”

  “The CIA did not let him do it to you. He did it on his own. Have you any idea why?”

  “Yes. I’m sure it was for money. But how would he be in contact with Marshal Kuznetzov?”

  “I know of Mr. Saylor. He’s in the Agency’s Soviet section. He has a hundred ways of communicating with Soviets.”

  “How do you know of Ramsey? How do you know the CIA didn’t let him do this?”

  “Tatty, I’ve done work for the CIA—many of us newsboys have. Some out of patriotism. Some in exchange for information. Some for money. I do it for all three reasons, especially the last. Thanks to your step-sister’s lawyers, I’m paying for Christopher’s boarding school, among a great many other things.”

  “What sort of work do you do for them?”

  “Most of the time I just bring them rumors and gossip. Sometimes I do odd jobs. In Iceland, once, I helped sink a Russian trawler.”

  “Did you know why I was coming?”

  “I was told only that it was part of an attempt to embarrass and cajole the Kremlin into letting the Bolshoi come back to the United States. My job was to ask the embarrassing question at the news conference. Your job, I was told, was to cajole the lascivious Griuchinov, who has authority over Bolshoi tours.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “My resident case officer, the faggot Meadows.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”

  “The faggot Meadows told me not to. I was going to anyway, after you were done with Griuchinov. Surprise, surprise. A family of spies.”

  A sudden flare of light shot along the street. At the corner two armed, long-coated militiamen—one with an enormous flashlight—were peering into the passageway, examining the drunks. The light flickered back and forth, moving down the street. As it neared them, Jack sat forward, shielding Tatty, and raised his vodka bottle in toast. The light paused, then continued its zigzag course to the end. Then it went out.

  “Do not stay here all night!” one of the militiamen shouted in Russian. “Is going to be very cold!” And then they were gone.

  “Can’t we go some place?” she said. The militiaman’s words had made her feel the harsh temperature more now than at any time since coming to Russia.

  “We can’t go to my place, because there must be a dozen microphones in my bathroom alone, which happens to give me great joy on bad mornings. There is an apartment of a Russian friend where I take … where I occasionally entertain lady friends, but there must be even more microphones there, and probably cameras. I know a great many dissidents, the so-called Soviet underground, but half of them probably work for General Badim or Kuznetzov. Our options narrow.”

  “Perhaps we should go to the American embassy. The ambassador is very nice.”

  “The faggot Meadows. And friends.”

  “Aren’t there any good CIA people?”

  “That is a philosophical question for which there is no time now to ponder. I’m sorry, Tatty. We can’t have you surface anywhere in Russia, especially in the embassy. Then Kuznetzov has his proof. If he can’t lay hands on you, he would still be able to point to you.”

  “He doesn’t have the pistol. I took the pistol.”

  “That was wise. It would be more proof. And also, you may need it.”

  “What am I going to do, Jack? Look at these people. They’re going to sleep. Am I just to go to sleep here, Jack? Freeze here? My God, damnit, Jack, what do I do?”

  “I’m going to get you a cab.”

  “You are drunk.”

  “I’m trying, Tat. After this, I’m not going to be able to do much drinking for a while. But I’ll get you out.”

  He set down his bottle and reached inside his coat.

  “Here is all the money I could lay hands on in the bureau. There’s about seven hundred eighty dollars in rubles and five hundred in greenbacks. Hide the greenbacks in your underwear, Tat, because in this country, American currency is golden and you can even get killed for it.” He reached into another pocket. “Here is my State Department press card with my photograph on it. It will identify you to some people I want you to try to find. Here is a list of their names and their last addresses, as best I can remember them.”

  She peered closely at the paper, but could not read from it in the dark.

  “You memorize the lines of plays, Tatty. I want you to memorize these names and addresses, and then destroy that paper. That paper could get them killed as dead as you.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The first is Waldemar Jozef Rodnieski. He’s a Pole, in Warsaw. He’s the foreman of a sausage plant. He was a leader
of sorts in Solidarity, when there really was a Solidarity, and a good source of mine, but he went over to Jaruzelski. One of the first. But it was to spy for Walesa and Solidarity. Trust him with your life. I have.”

  “If you can get to him, he can possibly get you onto a boat. A ship. Some stinking freighter. The Baltic’s still ice-free. If you get to Western Europe, try for the next people on the list. McLaren is an Australian with Reuters in London. We’ve saved each other’s lives a couple of times and gotten drunk together a million times. Brigitta Glaesner is our bureau chief in Bonn. Explain your situation and she will do everything she can for you. She was a young girl in Berlin when the Soviets came in 1945. She went out to the country because she thought she’d be safer. She was wrong. She’ll do everything for you, believe me.”

  “Jack—”

  “If Rodnieski can get you onto an Icelandic boat, one of the refrigerator freighters, all the better. The Russians don’t bother them much. If you can make it to Iceland, go to the man who’s last on the list, Sverrir Axelsson. He’s with a newspaper in Reykjavik called Kvoldbladid. He can get you home.”

  “These are all?”

  “All I can come up with at the moment, at least in the way of people I absolutely trust, and who owe me one.”

  “Can’t I just go to an American embassy, the embassy in Poland?”

  “That’s your draw, Tat. I wouldn’t. Marshal Kuznetzov has a long reach. And once he’s aware of this, General Badim will do his duty as well.”

  “Jack, what do we do right now?”

  “In a minute. Do you have any money in your purse?”

  “A lot. Three hundred dollars in American money and I don’t know how many rubles. I also have some traveler’s checks.”

  “Never mind those. Take out the money and give the purse to me. All your ID, everything else, leave that in. And you’ve got to get rid of that damn red coat. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could pick that up from a satellite.”

  “But what will I wear?”

  He glanced along the street. There was a woman curled up against the wall, snoring. Taking Tatty’s coat, he moved her to a sitting position. When she did not awaken, he gently removed her long black coat and pulled Tatty’s on in its place.

  “There,” he said. “If she doesn’t lose her toes and fingers tonight, she’ll wake up thinking she’s gone to Soviet heaven. It would take a year for a well-paid worker to earn enough for that coat.”

  Tatty put on the woman’s wretched shapeless garment with much distaste. “It probably has fleas.”

  “Be thankful if it doesn’t have lice. You can’t keep that fur hat. It’s much too expensive.”

  “I need something.”

  “Take mine. It’s only rabbit. Thirty-five rubles.” He untied the ear flaps and pulled them down around her head. “There, with your collar up, you can’t even see your blond hair. I wish we could get rid of your other things, but there’s no time.”

  “Jack, how are we going to get to Poland? How are we going to get away from here?”

  “It’s more than seven hundred fifty miles to Warsaw. I wish I could put you in a cab, tell the driver, ‘Byelorussia Station,’ and have you snug in a sleeping compartment on the overnight express. That’s impossible, and not just because it left hours ago. But I can put you in a cab.”

  “What do you mean?” Dread and doubts, unhappy thoughts about all the bad things Jack Spencer might actually be, began crowding into her mind.

  “No trains, no planes. You have no travel papers, Tatty, and there’s no way to get you any. You’ll have to bribe your way to Warsaw, and you’ll start by bribing your way out of Moscow by taxicab. It’s not an unreliable way to get about, Tatty. Many Russians on discreet business use it. Remember, this is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It has a black market like postwar Italy’s. You can buy anything you want with the right money. All you have to buy is seven hundred and fifty miles.”

  He took a long, long pull of his vodka.

  “You’re a swine, Jack. You’re a shit. You’re just as weak and cowardly and self-centered as Chesley said. You’re just going to throw me out into the dark like a stray cat and go back to your booze. And when you get transferred out of here you’ll call up my stepfather, if you can work up the nerve, and ask if I ever made it.”

  “You’ve got it wrong, Tat.”

  “The hell I do. I hate you so much right now I can hardly tell I’m scared, and I am truly very scared, Jack Spencer.”

  He sighed, and leaned even closer to her. “Tatty, I’m death to you. There must be a dozen, two dozen people who do nothing more all day than keep track of everything I do and every place I go. That’s the way it is for all of us correspondents. When they get around to transcribing the tape with that last phone conversation of ours, every militiaman in Moscow will be looking for me. I expect I’ll be picked up five minutes after I leave you. I hope not. There are still some things I can do to help you. But damn it, Tatty, I can’t help you by traveling with you. The two of us together make for ten times the target. I want you to have every chance out of this!”

  “That’s a crock.”

  “Listen to what I say. There’s a village about thirty miles southwest of here called Olinksovo, on the railroad. Country women gather there in the mornings to take the train to the Cheremushki free market in the city. Bribe a taxi driver to take you out there. Tell him you had a fight with your husband and you want to go home to your mother. It’s within the fifty-mile limit so you shouldn’t have much trouble with checkpoints unless Kuznetzov really goes berserk. Bribe the man well, but haggle. Act a little drunk. Act.”

  She stared at him stonily.

  “All those women are operators, survivors. Befriend them, help them, tell them about your awful husband. They can find a westbound truck for you. A trustworthy driver. You won’t get to Warsaw in one crack. The cities en route are Smolensk, Minsk, and Brest.”

  “Swine.”

  He got to his feet and pulled her to hers, then reached into her purse, removing the pistol. “You forgot this.”

  She let him slip it into her pocket.

  “There’s an all-night taxi stand not far,” he said. “The bureaucrats in this interesting neighborhood work late.”

  She kept her eyes away from his. Her limbs were stiff and cold from all that sitting. She needed to go to the bathroom.

  “Tatty. It’s time to go. It’s more than time.”

  The street was bright with orange light. It was empty, though traffic could be heard not far away. A few flakes of snow were falling, blown and tossed by the wind. He put his arm around her. She pulled herself away.

  “Tatty. For the few minutes we’ll walk together now we’ve got to be something normal and logical. Tipsy lovers might be out like this. We must be tipsy lovers.”

  She accepted his arm then, grudgingly glad for the warmth.

  “We will never see each other again, John Spencer. Never.”

  “I think that may very well be. But, Tatty, I want you to be the one to live through this. I wish it more than anything.”

  There were two cabs parked at the taxi stand, green lights glowing on their windshields, the drivers standing outside and stamping their feet like Dostoyevsky’s coachmen. Spencer hung back against the wall, releasing her.

  “Go, Tat. Luck and prayers.”

  She began walking away. The taxi men saw her and stared.

  “Remember that I love you, Tatty.”

  His unwanted words hastened her step. She didn’t look back. She was more alone than she had ever been.

  11

  As they pulled away from the cab stand, she began her performance for the driver, wailing and moaning about her drunken beast of a husband and how he had beaten her up at a party. She had not told the driver exactly where she wanted to go. When she did, he refused. She offered him twenty rubles for the trip, half again as much as the meter fare would be, but he still refused. When she gave him five rubles on account
and a drink of her vodka, he agreed at least to take her to someone who might help her. He also took her to a place to go to the bathroom, a cold, wretched public toilet with a drunken man sleeping in it. And rats.

  The someone who might help her proved to be an off-duty driver who lived in one of the poorer sections of west Moscow, his cab parked in front of his drab, nondescript apartment house. He was ten or fifteen minutes coming out of the building, still buttoning his trousers and coat. He and the other driver said the deal would be thirty rubles. Twenty-five for the man who would take her and another five for the first. She swore and began to cry. She was not rich, she said. She only wanted to get to her mother’s. She would pay the man twenty rubles and the other one already had his five. The new driver, a younger man in a cheap shapka and yellow vinyl coat, shrugged. He wouldn’t earn twenty rubles any other way that night.

  He smoked, sang, and coughed as they drove out the deserted streets, the singing as unpleasant as the coughing. She abided it gladly. She was in no mood to deal with the possible dangers of a conversation.

  As they entered the first of the suburbs, passing a group of militiamen standing beside a truck, he began to talk, asking, as had the first driver, about her strange accent. She told him, as she had the first driver, that she was Polish. She then realized she was portraying herself as a Pole who came from a village just outside Moscow. She quickly explained that her mother, a widow, had married a Russian army captain who had brought them here to this miserable country to a miserable life that now included her miserable husband. The word kapitan worked its magic. He grumbled some about how good the Poles had it, then fell silent.

  How good the Poles had it. She remembered driving by a store on one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares with Raya. It was crammed with humanity to the point of such excess that the people seemed packed for shipping. “Is Polish goods store,” Raya had said. “Is very popular.”