by Mitch Silver
Lara proceeded to invite the students to have their teacher text in questions for the president during the telecast. Thousands had already been received at the Broadcast Center, and they would start with a few of those. Turning to the smiling world leader next to her, Lara was startled to discover the man’s eyeglasses—which he had put on, giving his face an intellectual aspect—had no lenses in them.
She asked, “Are you ready, Mr. President?”
He smiled back. “Shoot.”
In Russian, Lara told the camera, “Question number one is from Sverdlovsk Primary School Number 6: ‘Mr. President, when you arrived here this week, you remarked how much bigger the Kremlin is than your own White House. As someone who constructed buildings for a living before running for office, are you jealous?” Then she turned to her right and repeated it in English for the guest.
The query had deliberately been chosen as an open-ended icebreaker, a softball the president could easily connect with and do with as he pleased. And so he did, happily and at length.
The second question, “Are all American women as beautiful as your wife?” elicited a smile and a simple “Almost, but not quite.”
By now the live texts were pouring in. The topics became more serious, covering Iran and the United Nations; governing in a politically divided democracy; how America was dealing with the worldwide immigration problem.
Lara knew it was now or never. To all outward appearances she was merely an interpreter sitting in a Moscow television studio. Inwardly, though, she had become the embodiment of The Motherland Calls, the statue commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad: a heroine with a sword, imploring her countrymen to join the fight for freedom.
She turned back to the camera and, more certain of what she was about to do than she had ever been, silently read the sixth question, typed in Russian by the operator in the control room. “The Belgorod Gymnasium asks, “The continuing ‘Arab Spring’ poses many opportunities and difficulties, especially in Syria and Iraq. How do you assess the chances for permanent change in the region?”
But what Lara said to the president in English was, “From students on Kosa Andrianova, an island in the Chukchi Sea, comes this: “Mr. President, several of our parents work in the merchant marine here, traveling back and forth to trade with Americans in your state of Alaska. They tell us there is great activity in your Wildlife Refuge, and the rumor is that you’ve discovered an enormous new oil field there. Is that true?”
Lara could see the startled look in the president’s eyes as his mouth fell open slightly in surprise. The TelePrompTer man on the other side of the glass, already typing in the next question, scrolled back hurriedly to see what he’d done; the question had been about Arabs, hadn’t it?
And then the president smiled. What the hell, he was going right from the studio to close the deal, wasn’t he? What better way to put the story out?
Leaning in toward the camera he said, “Yes, our people have struck oil exactly where we said we would. I’ve been there, walked the ground, talked with the hundreds of scientists and technicians and actually seen the oil gushing out for myself, a billion barrels of new American petroleum. We’ll be announcing it later today in America, but I’m glad to be able to provide the students of Russia with a major ‘scoop.’”
With that he leaned back, satisfied, as Lara translated her response to more than five million students and teachers—and a host of other viewers—from one end of the country to the other.
Chapter 62
The Chinese and Korean plasma TVs were stacked three high and a dozen across in the Electronics Department just inside the dramatic two-story doors that led into the vast TsUM department store from Ulitsa Petrovka. Every TV was tuned to Channel One and each silently displayed an image of the US president breaking the news of the American oil strike that Lara had teased from him an hour earlier, with Lara herself on-screen sitting alongside.
Suddenly, all thirty-six images were replaced by three-dozen more of a blown-up schematic of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The station’s business reporter stood in front of it, all thirty-six versions of himself ticking off the economic implications for Russia: a drop in the value of their biggest national asset, the possibility of inflation, etc.
Lara took the south escalator up to the main floor of the giant emporium. The people who held Lev were prepared to exchange him for the six Dictaphone tins that started it all. She’d insisted on a public place for the handover, so here she was.
With her plan of battle finally underway and the bag full of recordings at her feet, and the tiny USB device in her pocket—she tightened her grip on the handrail of the moving stairs. The giant clock high above the shoppers was already striking 12:00; Viktor and Katrina had better be in position.
Unlike an American department store such as Macy’s or Chicago’s old Marshall Field, TsUM is really a maze of individually leased boutiques, including the cosmetics counter upstairs where Katrina worked. Alexei would think he and his fellow goons could hide unseen amid the shoppers in the stalls and have the upper hand.
But Lara had her goons too. Well, goon: Viktor would station himself across the way in Jewelry. And, too, the store’s video cameras, focused 24/7 on all that glitter across the aisle from Cosmetics, would capture everything, if it came to that. Gerasimov, the unknown quantity, was back at the Broadcast Center, wrapping up the “interactive town hall” that had just made international news. So things were on track … if Lara was playing White.
She’d been given the Black pieces and, up till now, had desperately tried to figure out where the game was going and what all these strangers were up to. But now that Viktor had discovered that keylogger business, the table was turned. She was White now, wasn’t she? She was going to get her brother out of harm’s way, and keep herself alive in the process. If she could.
Cresting the main floor, she saw a young man wearing a raincoat with the hood up and looking in the other direction. Two meters away, Katrina stood on the other side of the counter, seemingly helping a customer but keeping an eye peeled. Viktor was where he said he’d be, apparently engrossed in the display of men’s watches.
Lara’s mobile rang. It was Viktor, whispering from his hunched-over position above the Rolexes. “Larashka, don’t look, but whoever it is brought three of them. The enormous guy who might be Mr. Spyware is now ten meters behind you.”
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing? Lara was working on a different piece of folk wisdom: knowledge is power. Knowing where the traps were laid meant you could sidestep them.
“Hello, Alexei.”
The young man across from her whirled around, the hood of the jacket falling back. He wasn’t red-headed.
Nikki replied, “Hello, Dr. Klimt.”
Chapter 63
So nice of you to come.” He stepped forward and kissed her on both cheeks. “Surprised?”
“What, what are you doing here?”
“Saving my country. What are you doing?”
“Freeing my brother. You have him, don’t you?”
Nikki smiled. “I believe he’s spending the day with American friends of ours.”
She involuntarily clenched her fist. “If you’ve hurt him …”
Nikki’s smile broadened. “He’s perfectly fine … except for his ankle. Lev’s quite comfortable, really, somewhere in Alaska. Let’s call it ‘cold storage.’”
Over Nikki’s left shoulder, Katrina was staring questioningly at Lara: who the hell is he? Trying to gather her wits, Lara spoke in a calm voice. “My original deal was with the red-headed kid.”
“And so it is.” Nikki gestured to his right. Diagonally across the way, looking back at her from within a forest of hanging ladies’ handbags, was the kid with the red buzz cut and tattoos. The messenger, he’d called himself. He smiled and gave a slight wave.
Nikki took out an envelope stuffed with high-denomination bills and showed it to her. “A million rubles, I believe he said.”
/> “You’re paying me?” Lara appeared stunned. “I don’t understand.”
The young man smiled again. “You’re not supposed to. You rose to the bait, that’s all—the old ‘loved one in peril’ gambit.”
The Red Army Hymn announced itself on Lara’s mobile. In a hoarse whisper from eight meters away, Viktor said, “What’s wrong? You’re white as a sheet. Do you need me to—”
In as normal a voice as possible, Lara said, “No, thank you,” into the phone and closed it again, getting over the shock. “Tell me something, Nikolai. Why steal the book if you were paying me to find it?”
“But that’s it, precisely: you found it so we could take it.” He patted the envelope. “Believe me, you earned this.”
He took a step forward until his face was just centimeters from hers. “You’re so innocent, I can see why my father came on to you. And you’re even more beautiful when those Tajik cheekbones of yours get that pink flush.”
She slapped his face, hard, leaving a red welt and bringing Viktor, Katrina, and the red-haired punk to high alert. But Nikki just grinned. He’d been slapped by women before. “Tell me, Larissa, were you always such a bad loser?”
Lara kept her voice calm. “Chess? I wouldn’t know; I hardly ever lost.”
“You’re not playing chess any more. And, as they say on the street, with your brother temporarily detained, we have you by the short hairs.”
“Not a classy neighborhood, your street. And who’s we? You and your father?”
“Him? Hardly. The other night at dinner, possibly you thought my father was the ventriloquist and I was the dummy. Turns out it was the other way around. No, in our family he’s precisely what he seems to be—the innocent bystander.”
Lara tried to keep her voice calm at the mention of family. “There’s something I have to know: why are you even here? You’ve got the Bible; why go to all the trouble of kidnapping Lev?”
“Without that English fruitcake on the tapes explaining what it all means, the Bible is just a book with a little bad poetry written inside the cover. We had to have both the book and the recordings. And we finally figured out money wasn’t enough motivation for you. So we appealed to something more basic … love.”
He moved a step toward her, as if to take her shoulder bag with the tins.
Lara backed away. “All right. Payment first.”
“You’re absolutely right.” He reached into the envelope and extracted one of the 50,000-ruble notes. “Business is business.”
Holding up the bill, he said, “There. I think the security camera will be able to read the denomination.” He put it back in the envelope and placed the thick packet on the glass top of the cosmetics counter.
Trying to look as reluctant as she could, Lara picked up her shoulder bag and put it on the counter as well, holding it open so Nikki could see what was inside. “Six Dictaphone cylinders. Better count them to be sure.” She hated to do it, giving the enemy the very material they needed. But her plan, no matter who was playing the other pieces, wouldn’t work any other way.
He reached for the bag. “Good girl.”
She didn’t let go of it. “Lev. First.”
Nikki picked up his mobile. He dialed a number and spoke. “We have what we want. Let him go.”
Then he put the thick envelope in her hand. Lara tried to take it, but now he wouldn’t let go. He said, “I know what you did.”
“What I did?”
“You found the key-logger program. Very … adroit. I guess I underestimated you.”
He let go of the envelope, which Lara put in her purse. She said, “Yes, I guess you did.”
He smiled his biggest smile yet. “Well, maybe not entirely. We just established, on that security tape up there, that you sold the recordings to me.” He made a small gesture with his hand, which Lara didn’t understand. “Now if the question of their—shall we say—English provenance ever comes up, it’s all on you.”
At that moment, Lara realized Alexei was moving across the aisle toward them, still clutching the silver clutch he’d been pretending to examine in Ladies’ Bags. A tall, unfriendly-looking man approached as well from the back of the store. If she turned around, she guessed she would see a heavyset, bull-headed guy coming toward them.
Viktor looked up the instant the kid left his position and he too was headed her way. Katrina, leaving her customer, was at the unwitting Nikolai’s elbow, pointing an atomizer of White Shoulders in his general direction, ready to spray it in his eyes.
Nikki started to say, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to—” when a major in the Russian Army came up to Lara. “Larissa Mendelova, remember me? You spoke at the War College. Major Bondarenko.”
“Yes Major, I remember. Funny running into you.”
As quickly as the three toughs had moved in, they now moved back among the shoppers. Viktor said, “Dr. Klimt, please introduce me to your friend.”
The young man looked uncomfortable. He reluctantly held out his hand. “Nikolai Grigorevich Gerasimov. An honor to meet you, Major.”
Viktor said, “I’m tight with Lara’s husband in the Army. That’s how we were able to have her speak about the war. Do you know him? A great, great man, Viktor Maltsev. Smart, tough …”
Lara was staring hard at Viktor, but Nikki didn’t notice. He said, “No, I haven’t had the honor.” Then, glancing at his watch, he turned back to Lara. “Oh, look at the time. I must be going.”
He picked up the shopping bag with the tins inside. “It was a pleasure, Larissa Mendelova. You’ve helped me more than you know.” Turning to shake hands with Viktor, he said, “A pleasure to have met you, Major …”
“Bondarenko.”
“… Major Bondarenko.” He moved up the aisle toward the north entrance with a lanky man and a kid with a neck tattoo in his wake.
Viktor and Lara walked in the other direction. An enormous human was coming their way. As they squeezed past him, the man from the Listening Room looked at Lara and nodded almost imperceptibly in recognition before hurrying on.
Lara took out her mobile and called Lev. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, they took a phone call just now and then walked away. What’s going on?”
“Thank God you’re okay. Go home. I’ll call you when this is all over.”
As they hurried down the store’s moving stairs, Viktor asked, “What just happened back there?”
“Someone walked into a trap.”
“Yours or his?”
“Mine. Now hurry up, we have to get divorced before they close for the weekend.”
With everyone gone, Katrina still held the atomizer out in front of her in attack mode. Then, turning it around, she sprayed the air with White Shoulders, enveloping herself in a romantic, classic floral bouquet rooted in gardenia and jasmine, with a tuberose top note over accents of woods and musk.
Chapter 64
Between the Smolenskaya and Park Kultury Metro stops, the Legalization Department on Neopalimovskiy Pereulok is an oasis of leftover Soviet bureaucracy in the arid sameness of modern governmental Moscow. There are four vast halls full of paper files, the clerks still smoke in your face, and they close the place early on Fridays.
When Lara and Viktor handed over their signed divorce decree, the sallow-faced man who took it exhaled a nice cloud of Sobranie Black Russian across the counter. He said, “You know the rules. The decree is posted online for twenty-one days before it’s final.”
Lara wanted to say, “Know the rules? We’ve never been divorced before,” but she didn’t. Instead she asked the man, “How can we see the paperwork on someone else?”
Without looking up, the clerk gestured behind him at the four rooms full of files. “Postwar Births to the left, as well as pre-2007 baptismal certificates, before the Church reconciled with the Government; then Marriages, Divorces, and, far right, Deaths, as long as they occurred in the federal region.”
After explaining for a second time what she wanted, Lara sen
t Viktor to the left and she took the hall on the right. Like a library, each room was equipped with public computer stations where the human milestones were indexed alphabetically and chronologically. An hour later, they met back in Divorce.
By the time Lara and Viktor were out on the street again, loudspeakers and shop radios were blaring out love songs, the way America’s malls play Christmas tunes at holiday time. To put the new exes in the mood for Conception Night.
Chapter 65
Then, Pavel was working for Kasparov?”
Viktor asked the question with his mouth full of egg foo yung.
Lara speared another steamed dumpling. “Your guess is as good as mine. Someone wants to keep the Bible from seeing the light of day and ruining everything for our American friends. Pavel just took it a little too far.” She bit into the dumpling. “A lot too far.”
“So, you just gave that guy Nikki what he wanted?” Having posed the question, Katrina daintily dipped a takeaway egg roll into duck sauce, careful not to mess up her newly painted nails before bringing it to her mouth. The afternoon light was starting to fade outside the windows of Katrina’s new and very tiny flat, and the Muscovites who wanted to get a place down in front were already making their way to Red Square, five blocks away.
“Yes, everything.”
It would be a while before the start of the son et lumière broadcast from the Kremlin, when International Week and Conception Night would come together in one spectacular climax—followed, the organizers hoped, by millions more around the nation. Gerasimov wasn’t there; he was overseeing the setup work of his vast broadcast crew from a production truck in the Square.
Viktor rummaged through his Army duffel bag, burrowing under what looked like fifty pairs of unwashed boxers—“well, I didn’t exactly have time to do the laundry”—before coming up with a heavy Toshiba portable that had seen better days. One corner was crushed. “My field unit,” he shrugged. “Or rather, Vassily Bondarenko’s. It will have to do.”