They came to a stop at a door all the way at the end of the hallway. A videocamera mounted above the door focused its lens on them. One of the goons rapped on the steel door with a huge, muscular fist. The young man couldn't help but observe that there were at least three cheap-looking gold rings set with gaudy stones on his massive fingers.
There's no accounting for bad taste, the young man thought snidely. But they go awfully well with the big gold watch and chain-link bracelets on his thick wrist.
He heard the sound of a buzzer, and then the door clicked open. Straight ahead was a large, messy office, with cheap utilitarian furniture, all of it worn and derelict. The air was tainted with a miasma of blue-gray smoke that stank of cigars and cigarettes.
Jesus! he thought. Don't they ever air the cesspool out?
The goons propelled him into the office, one on each of his arms, then stood at either side of him. The mammoth behind the desk, which was a scarred, paper-strewn clutter, looked up, his ugly face expressionless. There was a tiny cell phone at his ear.
The young man waited, despising every minute of it, bored with the theatrics employed by these barbarians. He guessed that he was supposed to be intimidated by their strong-arm, gangland tactics, but he found them merely repellent. Their ridiculous sense of drama was off- putting in the extreme. He'd thought these kinds of Russians had surely gone the way of Stalin and Khrushchev and the rest of the old-time hardliners. These hooligans may not be Communists, he thought—they were hardcore capitalists of the first order, as a matter of fact—but they certainly were enamored of the worst of the old- fashioned Communist tactics.
The Neanderthal behind the desk finally finished his call and put the phone down on the desk. When he looked up, his wolfs eyes locked on the young man's.
"You've missed calling in a couple of Saturday nights." His voice was a deep baritone growl with a Russian accent.
"We were out of the country," the young man answered
"I don't give a shit where you were," the Neanderthal spat. "You call me every Saturday night no matter where die fuck you are. You understand me?"
"Yes, I understand you," the young man answered calmly. "But you've got to understand that sometimes we're at functions, parties and stuff, and it's practically impossible for me to get away without arousing suspicions. "
The wolfs eyes remained locked to his, never once wavering. "You've got a cell phone. You can use it in the fucking john or someplace. If that doesn't work, you'll think of something. You're getting paid to think, right?"
"Right," the young man answered a hint of anger in his voice.
The older man leaned back in the black leather desk chair and put his thick legs up on the desk, his arms akimbo back behind his head, which rested in his hands. "We've got some more instructions for you," he said casually. He eyed the younger man through deceptively sleepy-looking eyes now.
The young man didn't respond but stood waiting silently. He knew the old Neanderthal liked to take his time, tease him with his assignments, keep him guessing. He also knew that he irritated the shit out of the older man when he didn't act like an anxious puppy, dying to know what was next.
Suddenly, the older man swung his feet off the desk and sprang forward in his chair, slamming his fists on the desk All in one swift movement. "You're going to get Misha Levin to do a tour of Russia," he snarled "No matter what it takes. You're going to talk him into it. Right?"
"I'll try," the younger man said, "but I've already told you how he feels about that"
"I don't give a shit how he feels about it," the man growled "You're going to present him with an offer he can't refuse." He pointed a meaty finger at the young man. "You're going to change his mind."
"I said I'd try," the younger man repeated.
"You don't have any choice," the older man said. "There's a ton of money in this for us. Concert hall deals, CD deals. Distribution deals. All over Russia. All over the former Soviet Union."
The mammoth put a paw on a toothpick, which lay among several scattered about the paperwork on the desk. He began cleaning his teeth.
The younger man cringed inside. He loathed being witness to such uncouth behavior, but he didn't show it
"This is going to take a lot of time," he said in a firm voice to the older man. "You've got to understand that."
The Neanderthal jerked the toothpick out of his mouth. "Just do it," he spat. "You don't want to end up on a garbage barge, somebody else doing your work, do you? Am I right? You got that through your smart-assed head?"
"I got it," the younger man said, apparently unruffled by the threat. "If anybody can do this, I can," he added with confidence.
"Good," the man growled "Now get out of here. And don't miss any more calls. There'll be more specific instructions."
"Right" The younger man turned and started out of the office but halted when he heard the older man's voice behind him.
"And you can lose the smart-assed superior attitude," the man said
The younger man stood still for a moment, silent, then continued on out of the office. One of the goons sidled up to him, taking one of his arms.
"I'll show you out," the goon said with a thick Russian accent.
"I don't need your help," the young man said with irritation.
"You're going to get it, though," the goon said, propelling him down the dingy hallway, into the club's entrance hall, and out the door.
Filthy barbarians, the young man thought for the millionth time. Why did I ever get mixed up with them? But he knew the answer to that question was very simple. He was after the same thing they were: dollars. And lots of them.
Besides, he thought, nothing would give me greater pleasure than screwing over the imperious and talented Misha Levin, his perfect and beautiful wife, and his entire family.
Chapter Seven
Moscow
A bitter Arctic wind swept through the deserted snow- and ice-laden streets of Moscow on that January night in 1968, when Sonia Levin gave birth to her first and only child, Mikhail, called Misha.
For two months the city had been under a deep blanket of snow, and today the steel gray skies held the portent of yet another blizzard. It was a grim and desolate world, and Sonia's labor was long and arduous.
She was a tall and long-boned woman, with olive skin, raven hair, and large, Gypsy-dark eyes. She was often described as regal, not beautiful, but imposing and handsome. It was her strength—an inner strength of daunting proportions—and boundless energy, however, that friends and acquaintances would unfailingly speak of when describing Sonia Levin.
Today, however, Sonia felt anything but regal, and her normal vigor and optimism seemed to have deserted her entirely.
Not an auspicious beginning, she couldn't help thinking as she lay, racked with pain and fearing for the life of the child within her, in the ill-equipped, outmoded, and far from sanitary maternity ward in one of Moscow's state-run hospitals. No, indeed, she thought tearfully. This excruciating pain and sapping struggle in this cheerless, wintry place do not bode well.
But when she was finally delivered of a perfectly healthy seven-pound, eleven-ounce baby boy with a downy fuzz of jet black on his head, her exhaustion and pain were swept away. As her spirits lifted, she became absorbed in this miraculous bundle of joy.
His birth was miraculous. She knew that better than anyone. Hadn't she and her husband, Dmitri, tried for years to conceive? At thirty-nine years of age, she had begun to give up hope of ever getting pregnant.
Now, as she held little Mikhail, endearingly known as Misha, in her arms, that despair was replaced with an awe such as she had never known. Sonia had thought that she was prepared for this moment, but nothing she had ever imagined had readied her for the immense emotions stirred up within her by the arrival of this child.
She was overwhelmed by the powerful and sublime sense of wonder she felt, and the accompanying sense of responsibility ignited every maternal instinct within her, instincts whose existence
she hadn't been aware of before. Oh, yes, she had heard other mothers and fathers chattering on ad infinitum, and she had read everything that dealt with the subject.
Still, brilliantly intellectual as she was, she hadn't had a clue that her feelings would be this powerful, that her desire to protect and nurture this child would become the all-consuming purpose in her life.
So it was with thanks to a beneficent God and a determination to give Misha everything humanly possible that she and Dmitri Levin took their child home. It was on January 12, three days after giving birth, that she and Dmitri slowly but excitedly trudged up the four flights of dark and rickety stairs to their apartment with Misha. Dmitri unlocked the door to their Prussian blue parlor and immediately helped comfortably settle Sonia, babe in arms, on a Karelian birch daybed, which was swathed in old throws of wild boar and Moldavian kilims. Here she received their friends and acquaintances to show off their infant, Misha.
In later years Sonia delighted in telling anyone who would listen that it was on the Becker concert grand piano in that very room that little Misha had first focused his dark, bright eyes. On her very first glimpse of
the newborn infant, in fact, she had noticed his long, slim fingers—so suitable for playing that same grand piano. As she greeted the endless procession of friends who came to visit, Sonia felt like a czarina, surrounded as she was by the faded grandeur and beautiful objects of their parlor, the baby in her arms.
The Levins, Sonia knew only too well, were very fortunate to be able to bring their baby home to such rooms in Moscow. It was an attic apartment in one of the few remaining old mansion blocks within walking distance of the Kremlin, in one of Moscow's oldest districts. Like many apartments in that precinct, it had been purposely kept empty during Stalin's reign of terror, for fear that it could be used as a sniper's lair. After the dictator's death, artists were gradually permitted to move into the attics, and the Levins had lived there ever since, thanks to their prodigious talent as musicians and painters—and the ever-watchful eye of the Ministry of Culture.
Soma's and Dmitri's immediate forebears had managed to survive the waves of terror, from the revolution of 1917 on through the world war, plus the deeply entrenched anti-Semitism that had always pervaded daily life in both czarist and now Soviet Russia. But survive they had, even though any vestige of their religious faith and Jewish culture had been driven underground.
Sonia and Dmitri, like their deceased parents before them, were brilliant and hardworking musicians—pianists in their case—performers and teachers, who belonged to the union. Membership in the powerful unions was a rare privilege for Jews, and as a result they lived luxuriously by Soviet standards, even though they had to share an antiquated kitchen and a single, somewhat primitive, bathroom with seven other families in the old mansion attic.
It was a crumbling, once grand, house, with high ceilings, glittering chandeliers, beautiful plaster molding, and fireplaces with ornately carved marble mantels. Then- two private rooms were chockablock with antique furnishings and artwork rescued from rubbish dumps and demolition squads over the years. Some of the grander pieces had been scavenged by their parents after the revolution. Magnificent icons, salvaged from churches closed during Khrushchev's era—many traded for no more than a bottle of vodka—hung on the walls alongside nineteenth-century paintings. Porcelains from former imperial factories graced the Karelian birch and mahogany consoles and tables.
The only evidence of their faith was a small gilt menorah, which rested, almost hidden among family photographs and bibelots, on an ormolu-encrusted neoclassical sideboard.
It was into these splendid if time-worn rooms that their friends and neighbors came to get their first glimpse of the newborn, bringing gifts and glad tidings. Naturally enough, they were all in agreement with the doting parents: Mikhail Levin was destined for great things.
Just how great a destiny at that moment neither Sonia nor Dmitri—nor any of their visitors—had a clue.
Four years passed before they had their first inkling. At that tender age Misha gave them proof positive that he had a truly miraculous gift: he was a musical prodigy.
During those first four years, life for them had gone on much as usual, though it was infinitely more abundant since the birth of their son. Those years for Misha were radically unlike what most Russian youngsters experienced. He was never placed in one of the multitude of state-ran day-care facilities, but was coddled in the much grander and more cultivated atmosphere of home. If both Dmitri and Sonia were working or performing at the same time, one of the other musicians or painters who lived in the house would watch over the boy.
In that fourth year, on the day in question, Dmitri was at home, reading a musical score while watching over his son. Sonia was shopping, waiting in the inevitable and often horrendously long fines for the meager selection of groceries at various shops. At first Dmitri thought he had heard music on the radio; but he knew that the radio wasn't turned on. Then he rationalized that the music was coming from a neighboring apartment, even though he knew that theirs was the only piano in the building that he could hear with this degree of intimate proximity.
Finally, he put down his score and looked over his half-glasses across the room. There, perched on the stool at the grand piano, his chubby little legs dangling over its edge, sat Misha, playing a Bach piece, its rendering technically correct, though slow and strained, because of the size of the child's hands.
Dmitri was so astonished that for long moments he couldn't speak. When he eventually found his tongue, he could only whisper: "Misha?"
The boy didn't hear him and continued playing, strenuously making the effort to reach the correct keys.
"Misha?" Dmitri uttered again.
When the child still didn't hear him, Dmitri rose to his feet and strode over to the piano. He gently placed a hand on Misha's shoulder and cleared his throat. "Misha," he repeated.
Misha looked up at his father, his large, dark eyes shining. "Yes, Papa?" He was grinning happily, perhaps a little mischievously.
"Misha," Dmitri said, "when did you learn to do this? How—?"
"I don't know, Papa," the child answered. "I've just been watching and listening."
Tears sprang into Dmitri's eyes, and his body trembled all over as the realization of what he was witnessing dawned on him. It was frightening in all its implications, this scene he had just beheld. The profound responsibility he had felt with Misha's birth was now compounded a hundredfold, for the child had a God-given talent that was so rare and so precious, that Dmitri knew that he and Sonia must sacrifice all else to it.
When Sonia came home, her string bag bulging with purchases, she dropped the bag onto the floor, looking from her son to her husband and back again. Then she quietly sat down in shocked stupefaction, listening to her son as he switched from Bach to Mozart. When at last her initial shock had worn off, she and Dmitri quietly discussed the spectacle before them, then sat at the piano with Misha, testing him, trying to determine what he knew and what he was capable of.
After they had worked with him at the piano for an hour or more, she kissed Misha, and he tottered off to his building blocks. She and Dmitri debated the best way to deal with the prodigy in their midst, although any discussion was an unnecessary formality for Sonia, because she knew deep down inside exactly what they must do. She wiped her eyes with a finger and cleared her throat, then turned to her husband. "Dmitri?"
He looked at her. "Yes, Sonia?" He could tell from the bright intensity of her eyes that a plan was feverishly developing in her mind and that she could hardly contain her excitement.
Sonia took one of his hands in her own and looked into his eyes. "Dmitri, you know and I know that Misha is very special."
"Yes, Sonia," Dmitri answered, his voice almost quavering. He sighed. "You are right, as always, Sonia. You are right. But we'll simply have to do the best we can. What else can we do?"
Soma's eyes gleamed with fiery determination as she gripped hi
s hand hard and said in a low, intense voice, "We will emigrate, Dmitri! We will leave Russia so that Misha can get the training he has to have. We both know that the only place he can get what he needs is New York."
Dmitri jerked at her words and remained speechless for a long while. Finally he said: "You are tempting fate, Sonia. It's very difficult to emigrate."
"But—" Sonia interjected heatedly.
"But," Dmitri said quickly, squeezing her hand with his, "I think you are right, as usual."
Sonia felt relief flood through her, and tears of joy came into her eyes. She was reminded now of why she first fell in love with Dmitri Levin. He had never been afraid of taking chances, not with her. When they went into something together, no matter how hare-brained the scheme might seem, she felt indomitable and fearless, for Dmitri was at her side. And now, once again, Dmitri would back up her—and Misha—all the way.
She wrapped her arms around her husband, and Dmitri hugged her to him tightly.
She drew back at last and said to him: "Then it is settled. We will start the proceedings to get exit visas at once. Perhaps in a year to two, maybe even sooner, we will be able to leave."
"Yes, Sonia. Yes, yes," Dmitri said, hugging her again.
Sonia leaned back. "We may have to go to Israel first," she said. "But no matter. He can get very good training there, to start. Then who knows? It's only a short hop from there to New York City."
She threw her arms about her husband's neck again and kissed him on the lips. "It will work, Dmitri. I know it will. It will work out perfectly."
Dmitri nodded enthusiastically, but thought: Maybe in another world it would work out perfectly. But he said: "You are right, Sonia. Yes, as usual, my Sonia is right."
Chapter Eight
It was on March 16, 1972, when the world of Sonia and Dmitri Levin and their son fell apart. The snow and ice had just started to thaw in Moscow after nearly five months. It had begun as a perfect day, the first hint of spring in the air exciting them with the prospect of being able to take Misha to one of the nearby parks, or perhaps for an all-day outing in Leninskiye Gory—the Lenin Hills.
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