“Will you help me? I can’t stay in my room forever. And I might learn some manners.”
Sergei smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be hard on you.”
“No, you’re right.”
“You just don’t know how insulting that sounds.”
“You’re right, I don’t. So what about the institute?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Then Katherine told him about the Latvian in Bolshevichka.
Sergei groaned. “Of all the bad luck.”
They modified Katherine’s cover story so that she was from Latvia, yes, but the daughter of Polish immigrants. That would explain her bad Russian and nonexistent Latvian.
With that decided, Sergei said, “Now, let’s discuss this idea of yours.”
Katherine took a deep breath. “There is a ferry, theEstonia , that runs three days a week across the Baltic Sea from Tallinn to Helsinki — ”
“How do you know that?”
“I was at the port in Helsinki. I checked the schedule.”
Sergei nodded, and Katherine went on. She finished several minutes later, and Sergei said, “Nice idea, but I doubt it would work.”
“But it might.”
“It might not.”
Katherine nudged him playfully. “Don’t be such a pessimist. Besides, it’s only a backup plan in case Cameron fails me. I hope I will never have to use it.”
“Suppose for a minute that you actually did make it to Finland,” said Sergei. “The Finns might just hand you back to the Soviets. They do it all the time.”
“If I were a Soviet citizen, yes. But I’m American.”
“You have no passport to prove that.”
“I could arrange to have my father meet me at the port in Helsinki. He could have my papers already prepared. I don’t think the Finns would dare turn me over then.”
Sergei thought about it. “You will need Soviet documents,” he said. “Two passports — internal and international — and an exit visa. Good counterfeits, not the usual stuff. These will have to fool a passport control officer.”
Katherine recalled the thorough inspection her American passport had received at Sheremetyevo-2 Airport when she arrived two weeks earlier with her tour group. Sergei was right, the quality of the fake documents would have to be very high indeed.
Sergei said, “I may be able to get the passports, but the exit visa . . . that’s practically impossible.”
“Then we’ll focus on the passports first.”
Sergei bit his lower lip. “You realize, Katherine, this could take months.”
“Then we had better get started.”
20
If one had to pinpoint the exact moment when Victor Perov’s fall from grace began, it probably would have been that Monday morning when security guard Ivan Petrovich scowled at Victor and said, “Open your briefcase.”
Victor stood at the security check to the SAPO Institute and gave Ivan a look of disbelief.
“Are you joking?”
In five years Ivan had never checked the contents of his, or as far as Victor knew,anyone’s briefcase.
Ivan glared at him.
Victor shrugged and put his briefcase on the small inspection table.
“Open it, please,” said Ivan.
Victor released the catches with asnap and stepped back.
Ivan approached the open briefcase as though it were a live bomb. He extracted a notebook and peered at it distastefully. He fanned the pages and set it gently on the table. He repeated this with the next notebook.
“What is this?” he asked.
Victor looked at the notebook. It was part of a calculation for X rays traveling in a gravity field. “Research.”
“You often take such things home?”
“Every night.”
“Hmm.”
Two men came into the lobby. “Good morning,” they said, and Ivan waved them through. Victor felt the back of his neck getting hot.
Then Ivan found something that seemed to really interest him. He held up a single sheet of paper. “What is this?”
Victor looked at it. “A list of items I need.”
“No,this,” Ivan said and pointed to a symbol at the bottom.
“That, my friend, is the letter ‘X,’” said Victor. “It commonly signifies the end of a list.”
“It looks like a swastika to me.”
Victor lifted his head and laughed. Ivan’s expression didn’t change.
A group of three men came into the lobby. Ivan nodded at them, and they pushed open the swinging gate that led into the institute. As they passed, their heads turned toward Victor, his briefcase open on the table, its contents scattered about.
Victor blushed. “You think I’m a fascist?”
“I don’t think anything,” said Ivan. “I’m just the security guard.”
“Come on, Ivan,” said Victor. “Stop this. We’re friends. At the summer picnic I looked after your daughter Katya while you played soccer.”
“I am just doing my job, comrade,” he said, still holding the list. “About this document, I will have to confiscate it and present it to the director for evaluation.”
“Suit yourself,” said Victor. He threw his papers into his briefcase, snapped it closed and then pushed his way through the gate. He slammed it behind him. The crash seemed to shake the whole building.
At ten-thirty a flyer went up on the bulletin board.
Respected Comrades!
Our collective has been betrayed! Petty bourgeois interests have infiltrated oursacred workplace! Dear patriots! Make your feelings known at a special meetingof the worker’s committee! Tonight at 19:30 hours in the Lenin Auditorium!
Victor’s heart sank when he spotted it. Five sentences, six exclamation points. Someone passed behind him in the hall, and he could feel his back being studied.
An hour later, Alexander Kaminsky stopped by to ask if Victor would be at the meeting. Kaminsky was the institute’s director, and a longtime supporter of Victor’s work. Three years earlier, he had stood up to Boris Orlov to push through Victor’s Soviet-American project.
“I’m on the committee,” said Victor. “Of course I’ll be there.”
The Worker’s Committee had the power to expel any member of the collective. Victor’s whole life had been devoted to getting into SAPO. To be thrown out meant never working as an astronomer again. He consoled himself with the knowledge that without a signal from the institute’s Communist party cell, led by another loyal colleague, Pyotr Terolyov, it was unlikely the Worker’s Committee would act. But he could have been wrong about that.
“People are likely to be a little hysterical,” Alexander said. “Just try to stay calm. I’m sure we can work something out. You are a valued member of the collective. No one is going to forget that.”
Victor came through the back door of Lenin Auditorium at seven-thirty. A woman shoved a piece of paper into his hand and then looked up at him. She gave a start to find herself face to face with the evening’s guest of dishonor. Victor glanced at the paper; it was a Russian translation of Hines’s article. He folded it and put it in his pocket.
The lecture hall buzzed with voices. At the front, four men and a woman sat at a long table. They looked out at the crowd blankly, their faces as dour as a government photograph. How many times had Victor entered this sacred auditorium with a tinge of excitement at a coming lecture, at the privilege of being in the presence of the greatest minds in the Soviet Union? He felt sick. He had thought he was ready for this moment. Now he feared he was not.
In the first five rows a tight cluster of about fifty people were huddled. Another hundred or so were scattered about the hall in small groups. Everyone held a copy of the paper. A few faces turned toward Victor when he came in, then looked away quickly. To Victor’s left he spotted several members of the Helsinki delegation, including Dr. Mikhail Yakovlev, who had been with him in Stockmann’s department store that day with Katherine Sears. Their e
yes met and Mikhail dropped his gaze. Victor descended three steps, then inched along the narrow row until he found a seat alone near the edge of the auditorium.
Five minutes later, the chairman of the committee tapped his water glass with a pen, and the meeting was called to order.
“Respected comrades,” he said. “We are here this evening to discuss an issue of great significance to our collective. All of you by now should have received a copy . . .”
The back door creaked, and Victor turned to look. A man stepped into the auditorium and stood a moment on the top step, surveying the room. He wore the uniform of a traffic policeman, agaishnik. He was tall, with short blond hair and a powerful, bony face. He slipped into a seat in the back row.
Victor turned back to face the podium.
Someone was on his feet. It was a fifty-five-year-old technician from Victor’s laboratory, a quarrelsome man whom Victor had recently helped earn a promotion.
“I am shocked by this article,” he said. “It is nothing more than an exercise in anti-Soviet propaganda, imperialist lies and deceit. And they call it journalism!”
He sat down. The room murmured approval.
A thin man in spectacles rose. He was an astronomer who had been with Victor in Helsinki. He had spent most of the time drunk, watching porno movies in his room.
“I say Victor Perov has betrayed more than the institute, he has struck a blow to the future of world socialism!”
A few heads nodded, but Victor was relieved to see that quite a few of his colleagues looked uncomfortable. The evening, he decided, could still go either way.
“The chair recognizes comrade Dr. Oleg Ivanov.”
Victor sat forward, as did the entire audience. Their heads moved like a wave.
Ivanov was the elder statesman of SAPO. He had worked alongside some of the greatest astronomers of the twentieth century. Though two decades had passed since Ivanov had made a significant contribution to the progress of science, he was regarded as the spiritual guru of the institute.
The old man stood. He ran his fingers through his gray beard and then lifted his head.
“Esteemed comrades,” he said, his voice rising to the pitch of an accomplished orator. “It is a sad day, and a sad, sad thing we now contemplate. But face it we must, or else bury our heads in the sand and dismiss the dreams of the founder of our great socialist state, our guiding light, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. For the heinous act we consider today is nothing less than an attack at the very heart of our society: the collective. And for this savage, thoughtless and inexplicably petty betrayal, I am outraged.”
He slapped his hand against the paper that carried Hines’s article. “Not at this paltry, fleeting article, which is typical of the so-called free Western press, which as we all know is controlled by the military-industrial complex of our enemies. No, I am outraged that a trusted member of our collective, Victor Perov, a Party member, a man upon whom all the benefits and privileges of our Great Society have rained down, would place into the hands of the forces of imperialist repression the very instrument of slander against his own collective. For this crime, dear comrades, I can find no forgiveness in my heart.”
The room erupted with cries of “hear! hear!”
The chairman raised his hands to quiet the room. He looked in Victor’s direction. “Comrade Perov, your name has been invoked. This is a fair and impartial forum. Do you care to speak?”
Faces turned to Victor. Victor got slowly to his feet. The room fell silent.
“How can the truth slander?” Victor asked.
Victor stood facing Dr. Ivanov, but the old man avoided his gaze.
“Go on, comrade,” said the chairman.
“What can I say to those who would call me a traitor?” said Victor. “I consider myself a patriot. I am truly sorry that some of you feel as you do, and especially my esteemed colleague Dr. Ivanov, whom I respect greatly. It was not my intention to slander this institute, but merely to rectify an injustice.”
“An injustice in which you played a part!” This was Mikhail Yakovlev.
“All the more reason for me to be the one to set things right.”
Mikhail was on his feet now. “Victor Perov has received every benefit this institute can offer. He has a private office, the demanding tools his work requires, an apartment, a good salary, and even foreign travel. He has repaid this generosity by betraying us to our enemies. This evening, the West laughs at the SAPO Institute, thanks to Victor Perov.”
“Why are you so concerned with what the West thinks?” asked Victor. “Do they possess a moral authority our own people do not? Let our accomplishments speak for us. As long as the quality of the work here is excellent, no one will dare laugh at our great SAPO.”
Several people nodded.Why don’t they speak up?
The chairman said, “Are you willing now, before all of your comrades, to admit your mistake?”
“But comrade chairman, I do not consider my actions in helping to exonerate Dr. Vladimir Ryzhkov a ‘mistake.’”
“But you went to our enemies,” said the woman who sat beside the chairman. This was Dr. Raisa Mikhailova, one of Victor’s closest friends. She had been to his dacha several times. He also knew her to be a dedicated scientist. “As far as I am concerned,that was your mistake. You should have come to us. You should have trusted your comrades.”
“But I had no choice,” said Victor. “Certain members of this institute perpetrated this injustice. I had no recourse but to find an outside channel.”
Now Dr. Ivanov was on his feet. He looked at the chairman and stabbed a finger in Victor’s direction. “How dare this . . . man . . . continue to slander our collective! Does he have no shame?”
A frail, middle-aged woman got timidly to her feet. She was vaguely familiar to Victor, but he couldn’t place her.
“I have something to say,” she said in a screechy falsetto voice, like a parody of a wicked witch.
“Yes, comrade,” said the chairman. “All may speak here.”
Dr. Ivanov sat down, and the faces of the auditorium turned to the old woman.
“Victor Perov is not one of us,” she said. “I always said that. Very uppity, he is. I would come into his office sometimes, and he wouldn’t even speak to me.”
No one said a word.
“Would the speaker please identify herself,” Victor called out.
She poked her chin in his direction and said, “Galinova, Lena Grigorevna.”
That meant nothing to Victor. “What is your field?”
“I’m a janitor.”
Victor nodded. So that was how he knew her. She emptied his trash can every day.
Dr. Igor Lunts, an astronomer, got to his feet. “I must agree with the esteemed Dr. Ivanov. Victor Perov has enjoyed every privilege of this institute and has repaid it with treachery. Recently, these privileges included research time on the most powerful radio telescope in the world. I motion now for a vote to withdraw his grant.”
Victor shook his head at that. Lunts was bitter that his own proposals had been turned down.
Victor said, “Comrade chairman, that grant has already been approved by the advisory board of the Academy of Sciences.”
“Notapproved ,” said the chairman. “Recommendedfor approval. It is within our rights to consider a motion to refuse to follow that recommendation.”
“I second the motion!” someone called out.
Victor was still on his feet. “Dear friends, don’t do this. That experiment is not for me, or for the SAPO Institute or even for the Soviet Union. It is forall of mankind.”
Victor looked around. “Doesn’t anyone want to speak on my behalf?”
The auditorium was as quiet as a library.
The vote was taken. At the call of “For!” every hand in the audience was raised. At the call of “Against!” only Victor raised his hand.
“The motion is carried.”
Tears filled Victor’s eyes. “Look at what you have done! Look atyourse
lves! Are we scientists? Isn’t our first duty to truth?”
Again, several of his colleagues looked uncomfortable. Just when it seemed some of them might rise to his defense a shrill voice rose self-righteously out of the silence.
“My first duty is to the motherland!”
It was Lena Galinova. The janitor.
Hear! Hear!
The denouncements came like machine-gun fire.
“He has a new car!”
“He has a four-room flat!”
“He takes confidential papers home.”
“I saw him reading an English-language newspaper!”
“He sleeps with his brother’s wife.”
“He has a two-story dacha!”
Victor closed his eyes, and for some reason he thought about a Young Pioneers meeting when he and Anton were boys. Anton was about to be thrown out of the youth organization for absenteeism and insubordination. With Anton absent, Victor rose to his twin’s defense. Victor denounced another boy, Dima, for having failed to read enough books during the previous month. For a Young Pioneer there was no more damning condemnation. Dima, a soft-spoken boy with thick glasses, lowered his head and said nothing — as Victor knew he would. When the minutes of the meeting were submitted the next day, Victor made sure Anton was credited with having denounced Dima. The record saved Anton from expulsion. Anton never knew about it. He would have been furious.
I deserve this, Victor thought.
At last, Dr. Ivanov rose. He cleared his throat, and the room quieted.
“Esteemed comrades,” he said. “I have heard nothing tonight from comrade Perov that would alter my view of his reprehensible behavior. Frankly, I don’t see how he can remain a member of this collective. I motion that we vote to expel him now.”
“I second the motion,” someone cried.
Hear! Hear! Hear!
Victor sank back in his chair. It was a lynch mob.
Alexander Kaminsky was on his feet in the third row. The room stilled.
“Comrades,” he said. “Dear friends. I appreciate your feelings. But I would like to suggest that we postpone the question of expulsion. Perhaps our dear comrade Perov has indeed made a mistake — ”
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