“Should be ‘Raven Lake,’” Vladimir said to Katherine.
Vladimir had taken a liking to Katherine.
Snow fell lightly as the American tour group filed out of the bus. Vladimir and Katherine exchanged cameras and took turns posing.
“Perhaps Olga is afraid you’ll wander off on another unscheduled stroll,” said Vladimir, as their guide led them around the lake to the entrance of the convent.
Katherine nodded. Olga’s gaze had rarely strayed from Katherine all day. She began to wonder how Victor could possibly make contact. So much for relaxing.
Inside the convent itself, there was little to see. They toured a small cemetery set off to one side. A souvenir shop sold crosses and poorly printed post cards. A chapel stood against the east wall, and Olga explained that it was customary to light a candle and place it in the candelabra. While in the chapel, Olga instructed, the men must keep their hands out of their pockets; the women were to cover their heads. Olga passed out white scarves she had brought for the occasion. Vladimir crossed himself three times and bowed before the icon over the door. Then the group went inside.
At first, Katherine was blind in the dimly lit chapel. The exhilarating smell of burning paraffin came to her nose. A voice spoke melodically. Gradually, her eyes adjusted. The chapel was illuminated by three bulbs suspended by cables from the high ceiling. The rest of the light was supplied by hundreds of candles. Icons of rich reds and black-flaked golds flickered in the candlelight. The walls were stained wood, almost black. A bearded priest in black robes stood at the front of the chapel chanting. He had an enormous gold cross around his neck. The scene was solemn and breathtakingly beautiful, the Middle Ages alive and well in the late twentieth century. About a dozen seemingly ordinary Muscovites were also inside the church. Most were old. One pretty young woman with round eyes and a red scarf over her head stood off to the side. She crossed herself and bowed.
Katherine went to the small table beside the door. A middle-aged woman seated behind an offering plate handed her a thin, yellow candle. Katherine dropped ten kopecks onto the plate. Following Vladimir, she carried the candle self-consciously to the front of the chapel. Olga remained at the door. Katherine lit her wick from the flame of one of the dozens of candles already burning in the enormous candelabra. The heat of the candles warmed her face. Katherine was only a few feet from the priest now. Vladimir whispered a prayer, crossed himself and turned away.
The girl with the red scarf slid into the space Vladimir had vacated. Katherine was about to turn and follow him when the girl spoke.
“Victor sent me,” she whispered in thickly accented English.
Katherine froze. She stared straight ahead.
“KGB follows you. Lena Ryzhkova arrested. Understand?”
The room whirled, and Katherine thought she might fall. She focused on the priest. He waved a bronze dish on a long chain.
“Yes,” Katherine said through her constricted throat.
“Do not contact Victor tonight. No matter what he says. You will be arrested. Understand?”
“Yes.”
The priest resumed his chanting.
“What about my message?” asked Katherine.
Katherine turned. The girl was gone.
Across the convent grounds, beside the souvenir shop, a tourist in a leather cap was taking pictures. He took pictures of the cemetery, the convent towers, the walls and the icons. He took pictures, too, of Katherine Sears as she stepped blinking into the daylight, her scarf still over her head. He watched as she looked around her nervously. She seemed to be searching for something. The man made a mental note of her unusual movements and then turned away. He took more pictures of the grounds.
By the time the group was back on the bus, the man had dozens of pictures of Katherine Sears. She was an attractive spy — if that’s what she was — with almond eyes, chestnut-brown hair and a shapely figure he could detect even beneath her gray wool coat. He wondered what it would be like to have her alone in a KGB interrogation room. But the days were over when a KGB agent operated with that kind of immunity. Taking advantage sexually of a suspect would bring reprisals. The Soviet Union, alas, was getting more civilized.
The man left, satisfied that he had documented every inch of her movement, with one exception. There were no picturesinside the chapel.
Within the chapel, cameras were forbidden.
What the hell went wrong?” asked Boris Orlov. He looked hard at Victor Perov.
Victor shrugged. “I told you. She’s not a spy.”
The two men were seated at a linen-covered table in the Moskva Restaurant. A glass wall treated them to a spectacular view of Red Square and an illuminated St. Basil’s Cathedral. It was eleven-thirty that evening, and the restaurant was empty except for a few waiters still clearing tables.
Ten minutes earlier, Katherine Sears and the group of American tourists had left the restaurant to go back to the hotel. It had been a long evening for everyone on Boris’s team — the agent posing as a waiter and the seven phony diners borrowed from a counterintelligence team at Lubyanka. The buffet had gone on for three hours. The entertainment was tacky and interminable. A Cossack troupe, dressed in smocklike shirts, rope belts and riding boots, danced to the balalaika and accordion. Women in red peasant dresses and tall white hats danced while a violinist played the theme song toFiddler on the Roof.
Victor had made contact with Katherine Sears at the coat check-in. She had just handed over her coat when he slid in beside her. He put his coat on the counter and waited for his check slip. It was exciting to be so close to her, and he knew she felt the same; he could see her hand trembling as she reached for her slip. But she kept her cool and never looked at him.
“In the corridor — 10:40,” Victor had whispered in English. He wore a wire, so the recording confirmed the contact to Boris. The bait was laid; the trap was set.
She never came.
Dinner ended, then the show. The group left, along with Katherine. Part of the regular surveillance team went with her, of course. The others went home. That left Victor and Boris alone at the table to ask, “What the hell went wrong?”
“She was spooked,” Boris said. “What spooked her, comrade?”
Victor shrugged. “I’m tired. Can I go home?”
Boris narrowed his eyes at Victor.
He suspects something.
Boris nodded. “Of course.”
Boris watched Victor leave the restaurant. Oleg, Boris’s top agent, sat down. “So, what do you think?”
“I think he double-crossed us,” said Boris.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Victor’s always been a good Party man. But since his brother died . . . I don’t know. Listen, tomorrow, I want to go over every scrap of surveillance data on both of them — notes, photographs, tapes, everything. Have it on my desk, first thing.”
“Yes, Major,” said Oleg. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Tell the team to come out of the shadows. The game’s up. She knows about us. So let Katherine Sears see our agents. Maybe we can scare her into doing something reckless. And increase the surveillance on Victor.”
“You don’t think he would try to contact her?” asked Oleg. “He’d have to be crazy and stupid.”
Boris lit a cigarette and blew smoke out into the room. “Victor is neither. But he is desperate. A desperate man is a danger to himself and others. We may have to protect him from himself. I want him watched round the clock.”
In room 1133 of the Intourist Hotel, Katherine Sears put her head on her pillow and thought:Was it all for nothing ?
She had seen Victor Perov. She had stood within a few inches of him at the coat check. It was maddening. He had told her where to meet. And she had done nothing. But that was what the girl in the chapel had said to do. And she said Victor had sent her.
Was it over?
Was it all for nothing?
Victor Perov took his car along the Moscow River and then circl
ed Red Square past KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square. The evening had gone well. A catastrophe had been averted. Lena Ryzhkova was safe at home with Vanya.
Now, he could go ahead with the next part of his plan.
Even before Oksana’s promise, Victor had known there was a chance of meeting Katherine. He had realized it in Boris’s office that morning when he saw Katherine’s itinerary. But it would mean bringing someone else into it, an old friend. Victor hadn’t seen him in a decade, yet there was no one in the world he trusted more. The friend’s name had once been Kostya, the same Kostya who had spent a magical evening in Baron Kerensky’s orchard looking at the stars through Victor’s new telescope. Today, Kostya lived in a world just as magical. In keeping with its mystery, he went by a new name: Father Andrei.
Victor reached the northern border of Moscow and was stopped by a traffic policeman at a permanent checkpoint. Victor submitted to a routine document check, slipped the lonely man a ruble and then continued north. An hour later, fifty miles outside Moscow, Victor passed a sign marking the entrance to the village of Zagorsk.
Victor found Father Andrei asleep in his room at the rectory on the grounds of the monastery. The priest dressed, and they greeted each other with three kisses, alternating cheeks.
In his black robe and heavy Orthodox cross, Father Andrei was a far cry from the chubby boy who had always been the last one picked for soccer. His decision, at age nineteen, to join the church had alienated him from his Communist party family and, of his few friends, only Anton had stood by him.
Priests in the U.S.S.R. were among the loneliest men alive. Many who wore the robes were, in fact, KGB informers, and it was impossible to know whom to trust. True believers like Father Andrei were locked away in monasteries, where they were displayed like actors in the Communist party’s Potemkin village of religious tolerance. In the end, each used the other — communists and priests. The communists needed the priests to keep up a front to the outside world, while the priests exploited this weakness to keep the Russian Orthodox Church alive. It was a dangerous game, and the travails had strengthened Kostya, built him into a husky man who looked more like a lumberjack than a priest. The beard hid his face, but his eyes reflected the intelligence and peculiar self-assurance Victor remembered from childhood. But there was a weariness there now that showed in the way the eyes had sunken. They were the eyes of an old soldier who had seen that there were greater things to fear than death.
The two men sat in Father Andrei’s study and talked as old friends. Father Andrei complained of the KGB’s infiltration of the church, and he fantasized about moving to a place where he would have more freedom to worship.
“Where would you go?” Victor asked.
Father Andrei’s eyes glistened. “Perhaps some small village in Siberia without even a proper church. I would go door-to-door like one of these dissidents.” He smiled at the impossibility of it. “But alas, sermons were never my strong suit.”
Victor laughed. He had nearly forgotten about his friend’s offbeat humor.
When the laughter died down, Victor asked if the priest knew about Anton.
Father Andrei nodded. “Such a troubled soul. I was surprised sometimes a mortal body could contain it.”
Sunlight crept through the window. Victor told Father Andrei what he needed. The priest didn’t hesitate. Yes, he would help.
“I have only one condition,” said Father Andrei.
He explained, and Victor laughed. “You never give up, do you?”
But the priest remained serious. “It is your soul at stake, Victor. How could I ever give up?”
“Okay, old friend,” said Victor. “You win. I’ll do it.”
7
At eight o’clock the next morning, Boris Orlov was in his office behind his conference table. Across from him sat Oleg. Between them, in two piles, lay the surveillance reports on Katherine Sears. They both stared a moment at the papers.
“What exactly are we looking for?” asked Oleg.
“Any contact between Sears and Perov,” said Boris. He reached for the pile on his right and began.
By ten-fifteen, the neat piles were a clutter of hand-written notes, cassette tapes, typed transcripts and hundreds of photographs. They lay scattered so that not a speck of the tabletop was visible.
Boris was going over the material from Katherine’s tour of Novodevichy Convent the previous afternoon. His suspicions had been aroused by a note that said Katherine had appeared nervous after her visit to the chapel. Why would she be nervous? But Boris had twice gone through all of the surveillance pictures. There was nothing suspicious. Now he studied the dozens of ordinary tourist shots the agent had taken to maintain his cover. One of these caught Boris’s attention. It showed the archway leading to the monastery grounds. On the right side of the photo, the agent had unintentionally captured an image, slightly blurry, of a woman in a red scarf.
After a minute, Boris slid it across the table to Oleg. “That girl,” he said, pointing, “does it mean anything to you?”
Oleg squinted at it. He picked up his magnifying glass and held it over the blurry image.
Oleg dropped the lens and began shuffling through some papers. He found Anton Perov’s case file and pulled a picture from it. It was a black-and-white photo of a pretty, blond-haired girl. Oleg set it beside the photo of the woman in the red scarf. He looked at one. Then the other.
“Devil!” he said at last. “That’s Oksana Filipova.”
Boris took the pictures and studied them.
Oleg said, “She must have warned Katherine to stay away from the meeting. But when? Sears was under constant — ”
“In the chapel,” said Boris. He fell back into his chair and shook his head. He had them meet in the church where he knew our agent would not follow.”
“Damn clever,” said Oleg.
The phone rang and Boris put it on the speaker. It was Pyotr Siminov, director of SAPO.
“Victor Perov just called in,” said the director. “Thought you should know. He said he was tired after last night and wanted to stay home.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yes. He wouldn’t normally call me, but given all that’s going on — ”
Boris hung up. He and Oleg exchanged glances.
Oleg said, “That makes things awfully easy, doesn’t it?”
“Too easy. What’s Victor’s number?”
Oleg gave it to him and Boris dialed. The phone rang. No one picked up. Boris’s stomach grew queasy. “Is Victor’s car outside his apartment?”
Oleg was on his feet. “I’ll get the surveillance team on the radio to check it out.” He dashed from the room.
A few minutes later, he came back to the office wearing an expression that gave Boris the answer.
Boris grabbed his coat and started for the door. “Come on!”
“Where are we going?” Oleg asked.
“Zagorsk.”
At the same moment Boris Orlov dashed past his secretary, a red Intourist bus bounced over a railroad crossing north of Moscow. In the back, Katherine Sears was shaken awake. She looked sleepily out the window. A sign on the road said, “Zagorsk — 30 km.”
Katherine had slept poorly the previous night, partly because of her bad mood, but mostly because of several not-so-mysterious phone calls she had received at one-hour intervals throughout the night. The caller always hung up, but she had a pretty good idea who was responsible. At least Olga, too, looked tired.
Olga picked up her microphone and blew into it. “Attention,” she said in her nasalized English. Katherine closed her eyes. Everything about Olga annoyed her this morning.
Victor Perov had let her down. But she had let herself down too. Katherine had come to Russia utterly unprepared. Her so-called “intensive” Russian language course with Titus Waal had been of little help. What little she remembered from childhood was, as Koos had said in London, “not enough.” Even as a tourist, the last two days had been a disappointment. Ka
therine had seen just enough to hate Russia. She felt bad for Titus, who had invested so much time and faith in her ability. Titus was a young scholar of the U.S.S.R. who had once worked for Jack Sears. He had been to the house several times, and Katherine came to realize he had a crush on her. So when Katherine needed help, she had shamelessly tracked him down in Amsterdam. He had put her in touch with Koos.
“You’re stronger than you know, Katherine,” Titus had said. “You can do this.”
She had used him. How could she have behaved so terribly?
There was only one answer, and it made her ashamed: Because she needed to see Victor again.
It was such a mess. She didn’t understand anything substantial about Russia. Even Victor Perov had become an enigma. Perhaps Vladimir Ryzhkov had been right — as an outsider, Katherine could never know the first thing about Russia.
Thank god her father knew nothing about this.
Olga was speaking into the microphone. “The monastery of Zagorsk has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries . . .”
Katherine tuned out the awful voice. She knew it all anyway from her guidebook.
The monastery had been founded in 1325 by St. Sergei, a monk who advised princes and blessed armies. He had played a critical role in the unification of Russia. His body still lay in the monastery. The monastery appeared repeatedly at important moments in Russian history. If the Kremlin was the heart of Russia then the monastery was its soul.
The bus rattled along for another twenty minutes. They passed through several Russian villages. Katherine smiled at the rickety, wood-plank houses with their brightly painted lattice shutters like puny assaults on a black-and-white world.
The bus came over a hill. Katherine looked ahead and gasped. About a quarter-mile away stood a village. In the center of the village, atop a hill, an oasis of color — blues, golds, oranges, yellows and greens — rose out of a desert of Soviet, cement construction. Surrounded by a high, medieval wall lay a tightly packed clump of perhaps a dozen churches, onion domes and towers. A tangle of Orthodox crosses rose into the sky like television antennas atop a New York City apartment block.
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