by Robert Moss
‘That’s an excellent idea.’
Zaytsev took the tumbler away and shoved the bottle into Suchko’s hand.
‘Iz gorla budesh,’ the Spetsnaz commander said. ‘Go on, take a swig.’
Suchko took a small swallow, and started to feel queasy. Colonel Orlov came over and jammed the neck of the bottle into his mouth. Some of the vodka dribbled down over his chin.
‘No, really, I’ve had enough,’ Suchko began to protest. But Orlov came at him again, forcing his jaw open. Quarter of a bottle must have gone down. Suchko was coughing and spluttering. Then he started throwing up over the rug, a yellowish-green bile like a cat that has been eating grass.
Orlov was waiting with a second bottle.
‘What are you trying to do?’ Suchko exclaimed, but his tongue seemed to have swollen and the words came out in an incomprehensible gurgle.
‘Drink!’
Suchko felt something jabbed hard into the base of his stomach and opened his mouth again. The liquid went down like molten fire. He was drowning in it.
He was barely conscious when they carried him out to his own car. Then they were driving somewhere. He could see the lights of the base, whizzing like fireflies. Then they were pushing him onto a metal ladder; the rungs clanged under his feet. He tried to get off, but there was one of them pulling and the other shoving from below. They manhandled him up the ladder like a sack of potatoes until he couldn’t see the ground anymore. When they reached the top, they left him winded, swaying about on top of a tiny platform without a railing. It might have been the top of the world.
‘Where —’
‘You take such an interest in our activities, Major Suchko,’ Zaytsev said patiently. ‘It’s really time you tried one of our parachute jumps.’
Then Suchko understood where they were. They were on top of the tower the Spetsnaz people used for practice jumps, two hundred feet up, maybe more. More recruits had broken bones trying to jump from the tower than dropping from planes.
‘Holy Peter,’ Suchko croaked.
‘He can’t even swear like a man,’ Orlov spat.
They threw him down head first, just to make sure. Drunks sometimes had the luck of alley cats, their nerves and muscles loosened by alcohol. Suchko didn’t.
‘Do you think there’ll be an inquiry?’ Orlov asked.
‘Everybody knew he was a bottle-jockey,’ Zaytsev said. The danger, he thought, was that Malenov might have talked to Suchko before he had caught them together. Nikolsky would be able to find out about that. In the end, there was bound to be some sort of inquiry. But maybe, before it got underway, everything would have changed...
In the meantime, they had to dispose of Malenov’s body. Zaytsev decided to follow Suchko’s suggestion. They put the informer’s body on the road and ran over him with a truck.
*
Sasha followed a zigzag course on his way home from Gogol Boulevard. He circled around behind the Metropol, and he couldn’t have analyzed why. He didn’t seriously expect to catch a glimpse of Elaine. The last thing he wanted was another of their ‘chance’ meetings on the street. Anyway, for all he knew she had left Moscow already. Yet he was drawn to her presence.
But he counted the minutes, as he usually did, and arrived at the metro station where he had arranged to meet Nikolsky a couple of minutes before Feliks did. Zaytsev had given him a delphic description of what had happened at Kavrov on the telephone; now it was urgent to establish how much of the truth was known in the Third Directorate of the KGB.
They talked in the car. The heater needed fixing, and it was chilly inside, but at least Sasha was sure there were no bugs.
‘Topchy’s completely in the dark,’ Feliks reassured him. ‘But there’s bound to be some kind of investigation. Who ever heard of a chekist falling off a parachute tower? It would have been smarter to have Suchko fall out of bed. I just hope there weren’t any witnesses.’
‘How long before they start asking questions in Kavrov?’
‘Well, Topchy will have to pick a new man to replace Suchko, and then he’ll have to inform your august colleagues. It could take a few days. Topchy has been rather preoccupied of late.’
‘Good. As long as we have a little time. Have you heard anything from Kuntsevo?’
Feliks shrugged. ‘The old man can hardly sign his name. Askyerov is already in charge.’
‘I know. I had a talk with the Marshal this morning. We found out that Askyerov has given orders to form two completely new army divisions, made up of troops from the Caucasus. His own people, of course, men he can trust to pull the trigger when he tells them.’
‘If they’re not busy running away,’ Nikolsky said scornfully. ‘How did this get past the Marshal?’
‘They didn’t tell him. Askyerov and the Defense Minister arranged the whole thing by themselves. They used Togliatti as a pretext. They claimed that they need a bigger reserve of reliable troops in case of further labor unrest. Of course, they’re setting up a pretorian guard. Doesn’t it remind you of something?’
Feliks hesitated for only a moment. ‘Beria!’ he exclaimed. ‘The wild divisions! What did the Marshal say?’
‘He remembers,’ Sasha said. ‘He’s running out of patience. He’ll be ready to move when the time comes. But there’s something that’s very important, Feliks.’
‘Yes?’
‘We all have our own ideas of what ought to be done for the country. We need to pull them together, to make a synthesis. Otherwise, we’ll be navigating without maps.’
‘Have you talked to Zaytsev about this?’
‘Oh, yes, Fedya has some very pronounced ideas about agriculture. I think the Marshal will approve of them. I talked to Kolya Vlassov, too.’
‘Vlassov?’
‘At the Aquarium. He’s a budding diplomatist. I want you to think about what we’re going to do with your honorable chekists, Feliks.’ He consulted his watch. ‘Now I’m going to drop you at the metro. I promised to be home before Petya goes to bed.’
He had started to slow the car when he turned abruptly to Nikolsky and said, ‘I think you once mentioned you had a friend in the Tourist Department.’
‘Mitik? Oh, he’s a good sort. But I don’t think he’s serious enough for you, Sasha.’
Sasha was on the point of asking Feliks to try to find out, discreetly, whether Elaine was still in Moscow. He suppressed the words that had already formed. He was sure of Feliks, but it would be inviting discovery to go making enquiries in the Tourist Department of the KGB.
‘Oh. I see,’ he said lamely. Feliks gave him a curious look as he left the car.
*
Lydia came to the door of the family apartment as he turned his key in the lock.
She was wearing a bathrobe and the kind of face pack that made her look like a plaster cast. She no longer bothered about how she looked when she was alone with Sasha in the house, but would spend hours preparing for a social event. Sasha had noticed how the younger officers paid court to her, and realized that he was supposed to feel challenged. He didn’t. There was no rancor between them, but not much pretence either. Each of them recognized the marriage as what it had become: a convenience, a well-appointed terminal for travelers who were planning to leave for separate destinations. When they made love, which was rarely, it was comfortable and undemanding. They had not slept together since Sasha had taken Elaine to Bangladesh.
‘I want you to tell me what happened today,’ Lydia said to him, folding her arms the way she always did when she wanted to take a stand. ‘Papa came home in a flaming temper and has locked himself up to get drunk.’
‘Let him,’ Sasha said. ‘He’s got reason. Askyerov is behaving as if the General Staff was a mausoleum.’
‘Askyerov? Always the same cockroaches!’ In the privacy of the Visotny Dom, Lydia was given to using her father’s abusive slang. ‘I had tea with Katenka today. She was telling me that Askyerov gave his wife an emerald necklace. The stones were as big as that.’ She made
a circle, her forefinger grazing the joint of her thumb.
Sasha’s attention flickered. He regarded Katenka as one of the more featherheaded of his wife’s friends. But he started when Lydia added, ‘Katenka says the emeralds were smuggled out of Afghanistan. Is it true there’s an emerald mine in Afghanistan?’
‘Yes, there is.’ And our men are dying to put baubles around Madam Askyerova’s neck, he told himself. It has to end. One way or another.
‘We’ve already eaten,’ Lydia said. ‘But I can warm up something.’
‘Where’s Petya?’
‘Watching TV. I told him he could wait up.’
Petya had the door shut — he liked to create his private world — and he had whole companies of toy soldiers lined up on the floor. He came running to embrace his father, and Sasha let him swing from his neck while he swiveled on his heels.
‘There was a film about Pavlik Morozov,’ Petya reported excitedly when he had slid down.
This wasn’t one of Sasha’s favorite subjects. Pavlik Morozov, the legendary hero of the Pioneers, was a central figure in Soviet iconography. He earned his fame as an informer. When young Morozov found out, in the dark days of the Twenties, that his father was selling false papers to wealthy peasants who had been exiled for hoarding grain, he informed on him to the authorities and bore witness against him at his trial. His father’s friends took their revenge by dragging the boy off to the woods and stabbing him to death.
‘Well, what did you think about Pavlik Morozov?’ Sasha asked his son.
He watched the small face crease in parody of his own frown. ‘I’m not sure,’ Petya said solemnly.
‘You must have some opinion.’
‘I mean...I don’t think what Pavlik did was right. I would never do that to you.’
Sasha laughed. But even muted by the sound of the announcer’s voice on the television, it seemed to him that his laughter was unnaturally loud.
He said, ‘I hope you’ll never have cause.’
Petya came over to him, not looking at him directly, the way he always approached when he wanted to ask for something.
‘Dedushka gave me a tank today,’ the boy began. ‘It’s a T-seventy-two, I think. It works by remote control. He says he’s going to let me ride in a real one.’
‘Your room looks like a battlefield already,’ Sasha complained gently. The Marshal was always bringing the boy toys, usually with a military bent: plastic tanks and Howitzers and fighter planes, machine guns and grenades, whole battalions of model soldiers. Sasha didn’t resent the presents. But, as he ruffled his son’s hair, he resented the fact that the Marshal spent more time with his son than he did, and was perfectly ready to make him conscious of it. ‘I believe he’s more my son than yours,’ the Marshal had said only a week or two before, not entirely in jest. ‘He looks like me. It’s the blood winning out.
‘Are you going to be with me tomorrow?’ his son was asking, looking at the floor.
The next day was Sunday. There had been little difference between one day of the week and another in Sasha’s life for a long time past.
That’s all that he’s asking, Sasha thought. My time.
‘Yes, I’m going to be with you,’ Sasha said. ‘If you like, we’ll go somewhere by ourselves. Without any women around,’ he added, as if to include his son in a grown-up male conspiracy.
‘Let’s go to the American Hills!’ the boy shouted joyfully.
‘Not the Devil’s Ring?’
‘Oh, yes! That too!’
Sasha laughed, and thought the sound was better. It might be the last Sunday they would have together.
*
At the entrance to Gorky Park was an immense triumphal stone arch leading through a high metal fence. The park was crowded, and Sasha had to stand in line for fifteen minutes to get tickets for the rides. Then they had to wait in line again to get on the roller coaster. To ease the wait, Sasha bought ice cream, thick, frozen cream glazed with a rich coating of chocolate. His son’s eyes were shining with excitement as they finally reached the head of the line. When a car creaked to a halt in front of them and discharged its passengers, he jumped into the front seat; Sasha got into the seat behind him. A teenage girl with her younger sister came and squeezed in next to them.
Then they were climbing in a laborious upward spiral. Sasha looked across the amusement park. There was a blare of loud music from another of the rides, the volume was turned up to mask the screams as the flying saucers whirled, rising higher and higher into the air. He could see people hanging upside down from the cockpits of whizzing propeller planes. He craned his neck as they reached the top of their ascent, to look over to the Moskva River. The sun caught the cables of the Krimiskiy bridge, giving it a silvery sheen. He thought of Elaine, and how her face had crumpled when he had told her they couldn’t meet again. Would she go on waiting for him, when he had given her so little cause for hope? Would he be able to find her, if he had the freedom to choose only for himself? Would Petya like her, or resent her? The questions became too painful, and he tried to push them away. He reminded himself that he could not afford distractions now; since Kavrov, his course was set on iron rails.
Their car hung there for a long moment above the steep descent. The tracks seemed to fall straight down. Then they were falling too, hurtling along at ever-increasing speed, and the teenage girl next to Sasha was screaming and clutching at his arm, and he heard Petya screaming too, and saw the child beside him wriggling and bawling, trying to get out of the car. Sasha himself felt a sudden fear, the fear of powerlessness in that vertical descent, the knowledge that, however much he wanted, he could neither get off the roller coaster nor change its course until the end of the ride. The little girl next to Petya was rocking from side to side. He put his hand on the child’s shoulder, gently restraining her. Then they had reached the bottom, and were slowly trundling up the next of the ‘American Hills.’ When the ride was over, they all laughed at each other in relief. But Sasha had the sensation that, in his own life, he had only completed the ascent of the first slope, and was swaying above the gulf that had opened ahead of him.
‘That’s the trouble,’ he said to the girl who had been so frightened. ‘Once you get on, you can’t get off.’
Chapter Eight – Topchy’s Solution
‘If you had a bite, played your fish, and the line broke, don’t waste your time asking questions.’
Gogol, Dead Souls
Yurovsky, of the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB, was a patient fisher of men. He liked to trawl for as long as possible before he pulled in the net. His special responsibility was American tourists, and he had a large apparatus, including the staff of Intourist, at his disposal to make sure that no one of interest slipped through the mesh. Almost everyone was of interest. There was that case, only a month ago, of a real estate salesman from Bethesda, Maryland, who had been married for sixteen years but preferred boys. As it turned out, he had some very interesting Washington clients on his Rolodex.
Yurovsky was intrigued by the report on this American girl Elaine Warner, who had been observed boarding a train for Moscow at a station just outside Togliatti. Informers in the strike-bound city had already reported the presence of foreigners, including a girl matching Warner’s description who had visited the family of Misha Repnin. Yurovsky had a copy of the girl’s visa application in front of him, together with some notes from the consular official who had processed it. She was a Jew, of course. Her father had come from Odessa, and had known Zionist affiliations. It was therefore possible that she was engaged in Zionist agitation, like that stupid bunch of students from Columbia University who had just been intercepted at Leningrad airport trying to smuggle in propaganda leaflets.
But it was equally possible that Elaine Warner was a CIA agent, sent to Togliatti to establish contact with the leaders of the underground labor movement. That was worth exploring. So instead of booting her out of the country, Yurovsky had her watched, and he did the job properly. Twent
y men were detailed to follow her in shifts. There was no shortage of manpower in Yurovsky’s section. Even if she was a professional, it was highly unlikely that she would realize she was under observation.
The operation had already produced results. She had been observed attending a reception at the American Embassy in the company of Guy Harrison, a suspected agent of Western special services. The following night she had gone with Harrison to a performance at the Theatre Romen. It was only a matter of time, Yurovsky calculated, before they would assemble the proofs that would totally discredit the Russian imitators of Solidarity.
He decided that he would like to take a look at the girl for himself. Even in the drab visa photograph, she was quite striking. So that morning he joined one of the surveillance cars that tailed her as she left her hotel. It was suspiciously early; the subways had been running for less than an hour. They watched her walk along Marx Prospekt and vanish into the Sverdlova metro station. One of Yurovsky’s men, loitering across the street, crossed over quickly and followed her down. She took the green line, but got off at the next station, switched platforms, and doubled back the way she had come. She made two more changes, and took a brief taxi ride, before Yurovsky received a radio signal that she was entering a car park near the river, not far from the Visotny Dom.
It was a clandestine meet, he concluded. It had to be.
He ordered his driver to head for the Visotny Dom. They were halfway there when another radio message crackled through: ‘She’s approaching someone...He’s in army uniform...I think he’s a general.’
‘A general?’ Yurovsky echoed, incredulous.
‘One star...Now they’re talking. It looks like he knows her. Do you want us to move in?’
‘No. Are you getting anything from the directional mikes?’