Death Is My Comrade

by Stephen Marlowe

  L. GOT OFF THE TROLLEY IS EN ROUTE YOU KNOW WHERE ARRIVING EARLY WEDNESDAY.

  JACK MORLEY

  I read the cable a second time. It didn’t tell me anything else. I pocketed it, thinking: all this and Semyon Laschenko too. I felt my lips part in a stiff grin. That’s it, keep smiling. The state mortician won’t have to do a thing to your face for the funeral.

  The door to the suite I’d shared with Mike Rodin wasn’t locked.

  The sitting room was dim, its heavy drapes drawn across the single window. At the far end of the room, Leonid Ivanovich Kalmykova sprang up from the chocolate-colored divan, an embarrassed grin pasted to his face. He was not alone. A girl sat up on the divan, buttoning her blouse. In the dim light I couldn’t make put her face. Probably the chambermaid, I thought.

  I asked Leonid: “What the hell are you doing here, besides making out with the hired help?”

  “I get off truck on Pushkin Street, come back for dreep-dry. Ees bargain, no?” He scowled. “What ees ‘hired help?’”

  I pointed a weary finger at the girl on the divan. She got up, fluffing her auburn hair. She was wearing a dark green blouse and a light green skirt, and a sleepy, contented smile. But her big eyes were shining with excitement.

  The hired help wasn’t the hired help. The hired help was Eugenie.

  “Ees your American sweedie,” Leonid said, sounding as embarrassed as he looked.

  “That’s a nice way you have of entertaining my American sweedie,” I told him. He shuffled his feet and looked down at the carpet.

  “Ees her idea.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “I still get dreep-dry?” Leonid asked, a shade pugnaciously.

  “She’s not my American sweedie.”

  Instead of looking relieved, Leonid gulped. “Ees bad.” He came close, placed both hands on my shoulders and whispered conspiratorially: “She say she ees your American sweedie. I tell her everything.”

  “Everything being what?”

  Leonid gulped again. “Bolshoi school. You and Mr. Williams. The Rodziankos. Zagorsk. Everything.”

  Eugenie spoke for the first time. “You look drunk, Chester. You look nice when you look drunk. Kind of tired, but still—dangerous. I hope you’re not mad at me for coming here, to your room and all. Are you? Mad at me?”

  There was a knock at the door. The hall waiter came in with my steaming pot of tea and said something in Russian.

  “He say only one glass,” Leonid explained.

  I waved the waiter away. When he had made his perplexed exit, Eugenie licked her lips and said: “If I knew you were coming … but this boy said you were in trouble with the police.…”

  “Let me guess. You arrived in Moscow with your stepfather. Is Lucienne here too?”

  “It’s their honeymoon.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “The funniest coincidence,” Eugenie said ingenuously. “My stepfather has a bachelor apartment in one of the Ministry of Culture apartment houses. It isn’t big enough for all three of us, and today he’s going to get new quarters. But meanwhile we’re stopping here at the Metropole. Just as we came in, a cable arrived. It was for you. I heard them talking downstairs.”

  “You understand Russian?”

  “A little. I asked at the desk if that was Mr. Chester Drum. They said no other. After mother and my stepfather went to bed—I have a separate room, of course—I went back downstairs. A few rubles and I got your room number. A few more to the hall waiter and I got in. Then—”

  “What for?”

  “—then Leonid came in.” She appraised Leonid, as if for the first time. “He’s cute, but—”

  “What do you want, Eugenie?”

  She gave me a hurt look. “To see you, of course. Leonid tells me you’ve come to Moscow to see Vasili Rodzianko. I think that’s thrilling.”

  “Your stepfather won’t think it’s so thrilling.”

  “Him? Mother’s got him wrapped around her little finger.”

  Eugenie asked abruptly, changing the subject with that swiftness which is as charming in a child as it is disconcerting in an adult or a near-adult like Eugenie: “Who’s Mr. Williams?”

  “Nobody,” I said. Nobody: just Lucienne Duhamel’s ex-husband, just your father, just Vasili Rodzianko’s long-lost brother.

  “You must think I’m awful,” Eugenie said. “Necking with Leonid like that.”

  She smiled. Then she pouted. “Whenever I arrive in a strange country I feel so free, so completely myself, like I can do anything, anything at all I feel like doing. And Leonid—”

  “Was handy,” I said. I poured myself a glass of tea.

  “You are mad at me,” Eugenie pouted.

  “Your stepfather know I’m here?”

  “No-o. I don’t think so. He was taking care of the luggage when the cable came.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Why should I? I don’t even like him very much. And after the way he shot Ilya, I certainly won’t tell him.” She fluttered her eyelids at me. “It’s because of Ilya’s letter you came to Moscow, isn’t it? You’re very brave. What are you going to do?”

  I sat down on the divan and took my shoes off. “Take a bath. Get some sleep.”

  “Was that a subtle hint? I mean later, silly.”

  That was a good question. I couldn’t answer it now. I felt irritable and annoyed with myself and as operationally effective as a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound matador. I said: “Look. Stop playing Mata Hari, junior grade. I want to get some sleep. Okay?”

  “Well, I just thought you’d like to know my stepfather is going to see Vasili Rodzianko. Tomorrow. I mean today. This afternoon.”

  “He’s going to do what?”

  “They’re old friends. My stepfather’s in the Ministry of Culture, after all. He used to be an editor. He’s known Vasili Rodzianko for years. He wants mother to meet him.”

  I just looked at her. “I’m going along too,” Eugenie said brightly, “even though things are a little bit strained between Semyon Laschenko and me.”

  “The nerve of the guy,” I said. “All you did was try to kill him.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re defending him? After the way he had those poor little boys kidnaped? Are you?”

  “I’m going to take a bath and get some sleep.” I sipped some of my tea. “Good night, Eugenie.”

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t go stumbling out there to Zagorsk when Semyon Lashenko was there. That’s all.” She went to the door. Then she came back, making a thing of walking across the sitting room in her tight skirt, and stood on tiptoe and kissed the side of my jaw. Her exit line was: “Even if you’re mad at me, I still think you’re cute. I still think you carry your life in your hands wherever you go. I think you’re exciting.”

  At the door again, she kissed her own fingers and waved them in my direction. She gave Leonid a look half-indifferent, half-frosty. “See you around, Leonid,” she said. “See you around, dreep-dry—maybe.” The door shut behind her.

  Improbable? Not if you knew the symptoms. I’d met a lot of weird ones in my day, but they’d all have to stand in line taking their hats off to Eugenie. She’d been spoiled blue and she’d probably been born a psychopath before that, if psychopaths are born and not made. Her behavior, like that of all psychopaths, was unpredictable because it was amoral. She had charm and intelligence, not entirely jejune; Leonid would have called her a sexy broad; but she was hell on high heels for anyone unlucky enough to get involved with her personally. Such as, I thought wryly, me. But I also thought: what the hell are you complaining about? She won’t tell Laschenko you’re here and she clued you in on Laschenko’s visit to the Rodzianko dacha.

  As if reading my thoughts, Leonid said, shaking his head in sad bewilderment: “Sexy broad.”

  “Yeah. Sexy and psychopathic.”

  “Sigh-ko—?”

  “Forget it. Leonid, what happens at Zagorsk now?”


  “Ees chance okay.”

  “Won’t the police intercept your cousin Sergei’s truck?”

  “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

  “Leonid,” I said, “you’ve earned the drip-dry suit. It’s yours. You can take it out of here with you. But not before you tell me what the hell is going on at Zagorsk.”

  “Cousin Sergei ees being scared. Mikhail Rodzianko ees being scared. Galina Rodzianko ees being angry, but scared for papa too. If papa ees in trouble, Galina ees in trouble. Are not going to dacha.”

  “Where then?”

  “Zagorsk monastery. Father Alexi there. Ees friend of Vasili Rodzianko. Religious man. He get message for Citizen Williams to Rodzianko dacha.”

  “You tell Eugenie that?”

  “Tell who?”

  “The sexy broad.”

  Leonid showed me a crafty smile. “Only necking,” he said. “I keep some secrets.”

  “Leonid,” I said in admiration, “you’re going to go far.”

  He was still smiling craftily. “Far as Zagorsk monastery?”

  “Can you?”

  Leonid marched into the bedroom. I sat on the divan and drank more tea. Heard drawers opening and shutting, heard the closet door slam. Pretty soon Leonid emerged with the drip-dry suit, two neckties, three pairs of socks and a shirt.

  “Fair exchange?” he asked. “American clothing good money in black market.”

  “Fair enough. Can you get me a gun?”

  He pretended not to understand, but I knew he did. I pointed a thumb-and-forefinger gun at him and said, “Bang, bang?”

  Leonid looked up at the ceiling and whistled. “Try,” he said. “I have motorbike for riding to Zagorsk. Meet you here later, Citizen?”

  I shook my head.

  “Lubianka Street ees watching?”

  “Lubianka Street is watching.”

  Leonid whistled at the ceiling again.

  CIA Moscow contact or no, he was just a kid. “There’s liable to be trouble,” I said. “Would you consider selling me your motorbike or lending it to me and picking it up at Zagorsk yourself later?”

  “Ees pride and joy. Where it goes, I go.”

  That was that. I went into the bedroom and returned with a pencil and the Metropole restaurant’s menu, that had been under the glass top of the dressing table. Turning it over to the blank side, I gave it and the pencil to Leonid.

  “I’m dead on my feet,” I said. “I need some sleep. This afternoon I’ll want to meet you and your pride and joy someplace away from the hotel. Someplace where it will be hard for the police to follow. Can you draw me a map?”

  Nodding, he did better than that. He gave me a complex subway route to follow. I had to change trains four times, and I’d find myself three blocks from the flat where Leonid lived. It was near Moscow University. Leonid was just a kid, but he knew his way around. There is no tail job more difficult than following your pigeon through the maze of a big city’s subway system.

  I took the menu. Leonid headed for the door. “Wait,” he said. He was back in a few minutes with wrapping paper. I never knew where he got it. He wrapped my clothing and tucked the bundle under his arm.

  “One o’clock?” I said. He nodded. “Can you get lost yourself on the way home?” He nodded again. “Don’t forget the gun.”

  When he’d gone I smoked a cigarette, stripped and took a hot bath. From ribs to groin my body was an interesting blue color with darker patches that were almost black. Still, I climbed into the tub almost trippingly enthusiastic. With luck, Mike Rodin was still safe, waiting at the Zagorsk monastery. With luck, I would reach Zagorsk myself this afternoon. The Lone Ranger to the rescue on a Moskvich motorbike. I climbed in trippingly but got out of the tub like an old man. The vodka had worn off by then. Even my aches had aches. I decided with a certain amount of clinical detachment that two ribs on the right side were probably fractured. I stumbled into bed, put Leonid’s map of the Moscow subway system under the pillow, pulled the sheet up to my ears and started thinking that I should have told Leonid to make it earlier because I was too overwrought to sleep.

  That’s what I started thinking. I got halfway through with it, and then the world and Moscow and the Hotel Metropole and the bedroom and everything in it, Chester Drum included, went swiftly away.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I woke up as sober as a saint and as sick as a sinner.

  My watch told me it was almost noon, which meant I’d have to hurry. Sitting up, I broke out into a cold sweat. The morning after, I told myself, is always tough.

  I climbed out of bed stiffly and clung to one of its big posts for support. I was made out of blown glass. One wrong move and I’d shatter. Parting the drapes, I saw Gorky Street dazzling and dun-colored under a bright sun. I poured what was left of the tea out of the pot. The dregs were room temperature and flake-filled. I got dressed, slowly and painfully. No shave; I was too stiff to shave. But it didn’t matter. Plenty of Muscovites went around grizzle-faced.

  At five minutes after noon, armed with nothing more deadly than my passport and visa and Leonid’s map, I went downstairs and outside.

  I crossed Gorky Street and ambled once around the park on the other side, like a tourist with no place to go. Then I quickly ducked down the entrance of the Place of the Revolution subway station and joined the throngs of Muscovites on the platform. Walking had made me feel less stiff. I could even gawk at the liver-colored arched ceilings and passageways, the arches supported by monolithic statues of workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors, all straining their bent bronze backs to keep the subway from caving in on you; the ceilings festooned with huge gold-and-purple chandeliers. The place had been hewn from rock in elaborate and almost macabre bad taste, like a tomb for the last remnants of a race of giants.

  My train came rumbling in, bringing a smell of ozone. I waited until the last moment on the wrong side of the platform, then dashed across and just made the sliding doors.

  Leaving my green plush seat at Komsomolskaya Place, I went through the same routine changing trains. The Komsomolskaya station had marble and whole walls of mosaic and more crystal and gilded plaster of Paris than the New York subway has vending machines. But it was clean, and the Muscovites, fresh from their shabby overcrowded one-room flats where the small shared bathroom is down the hall and yesterday’s Pravda or Izvestia has been cut into neat squares and stuck on a nail near the toilet, plodded through in awe.

  That was my second chance to shake a tail. I knew I had one but couldn’t spot him in the crowds. He was a pro. I had two more changes of train: get up at the last possible instant, squeeze through the sliding doors, walk across the platform, ignore the train you wanted until it was ready to pull out, then jump aboard. That is the technique, and I was reasonably sure it would work in the Moscow Metro as well as anywhere else.

  When I left the pillared portico of the last station, I could see the red-star-topped skyscraper of Moscow University a few blocks off. It dominated a neighborhood of ramshackle wooden buildings and narrow cobbled streets and a big square in which a farmer’s market had been set up.

  I passed a few push carts, and spotted Leonid.

  He was sitting half-astride the saddle of his motorbike, one foot on the ground for support. The large bike had two saddle seats and plenty of chrome trim which was as highly polished as the Metro’s bronze statues.

  Leonid looked me over. I needed a shave, my suit was wrinkled and torn, I wore no tie. “Ees okay,” Leonid said, and handed me a parcel wrapped in newspaper. I smiled, thinking of the gun I’d asked Leonid to get. But the package was too soft.

  “Open here,” Leonid suggested.

  A woman went by bent-backed, pushing a cart of peonies and chrysanthemums. I opened the package. It contained a large white turnip, a thick wedge of black bread and a bunch of dark grapes.

  “Hungry?” Leonid said slyly. I nodded. I couldn’t remember when last I’d eaten. “Am eating already,” Leonid said. “You eat, Citizen.”
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  I bit crunchingly into the turnip. It was strong. My eyes started to water. I shoved bread into my mouth after the turnip. It was dry and stale. I tried the grapes. They were delicious.

  “Look in saddlebag,” Leonid suggested, still slyly, when I’d finished.

  I unstrapped the motorbike’s saddlebag and opened it. Inside I saw a small black automatic.

  “Loaded?”

  “What else, Citizen?” Leonid pouted. “Ees costing one dreep-dry suit. Ready?”

  As ready as I would ever be, I straddled the back saddle of the motorbike. Leonid kicked down with his right foot and started the motor with an enormous roar. We zoomed out of the farmer’s market. Leonid waved one hand at a man standing before a wooden rack of second-hand clothing. The last suit hanging there looked like the dreep-dry.

  Moscow went by in a jouncing blur. My ribs began to hurt again. Not fractured, I decided. Bruised maybe, or cracked. If they were fractured clear through, Leonid’s driving and Moscow’s cobblestone streets would have driven them into my lungs.

  After a long time we reached the outskirts of the city. Wooden shacks, another farmer’s market, a Stalin-Gothic housing development going up, a park and then more shacks, these with weed lots between them, and then fewer shacks and the beginning of farmland. Every now and then Leonid would look over his shoulder and give me a cocky grin.

  The road narrowed. Farmland gave way to forests of birch and fir. The motorbike roared and sputtered and rasped. We passed a horse and wagon, a tractor, a bus—all as if they were standing still.

  We rounded a sharp curve to the left. Here the two-lane blacktop road clung to the embankment of the Moscow River, where Russian olives and willows grew to the water’s edge. Zagorsk lay on a broad plain a couple of kilometers east of the river. We crossed on a rickety wooden bridge, its slats rattling under the motorbike’s flying wheels. We turned left sharply, and then right, leaving black skid marks on the road behind us.

  And there was Zagorsk ahead of us, looking like a mirage.

  It had a wall hewn of great white stones and topped with green tile. It had bulbous blue-and-silver polka-dotted onion domes and gold onion domes and oxidized copper green domes and a single great belfry towering over all of them.