Artur stood as soon as he saw his target. “So what did they say?”
Edik shook his head. He held a piece of paper in his shaking hands.
“Don’t tell me they called you down here to deny you again,” Artur said.
The bureaucrats in the back office better not have screwed this up. Their job was the simplest one in the whole scheme. They merely had to give the man his paperwork.
“They… They… They…” Edik stuttered, and Artur’s self-righteous fury grew.
His fellow agents at KGB headquarters already questioned whether he should have been given this assignment. Artur would make sure heads rolled if someone else’s incompetence sabotaged his opportunity to prove Semyon’s faith in him wasn’t misplaced.
“Edik, tell me what happened,” Artur insisted. After a few tense moments of stretched patience, Edik still hadn’t managed to put two coherent words together.
Artur snatched the letter and read it for himself. Edik’s visa had been approved. Edik was scheduled to leave the country in two weeks, exactly as planned.
Artur clamped his hand on Edik’s shoulder. “I don’t understand. This is great news. Why are you so shaken up?”
“Sofia,” Edik mumbled feebly.
Artur resisted the urge to roll his eyes. After nearly a week of boozing the man up and pretending to offer a sympathetic ear to his self-made misery, Artur hadn’t developed even an ounce of sympathy for Edik.
He couldn’t comprehend the man’s ridiculous obsession with his cousin. His married cousin.
“What will she do without me?”
“Didn’t you say her husband came home?” Artur reminded him. He had mentioned the fact at least twenty times today.
“Yes,” Edik grumbled.
“I’m sure he’ll take good care of her,” Artur said.
“That’s because you don’t know him,” Edik said glumly. “Sofia might need me now more than ever.”
Artur couldn’t imagine anyone needing Edik. At thirty, the man was an easily distracted, overgrown child. No wife. No child. No career. Not like Artur. Though a couple of years younger than Edik, he had already started his family and was on the fast track in his career.
The hapless Edik still lived with his father and would leave his apartment without a coat and hat if his father didn’t remind him to bundle up for the chilly Moscow weather.
Artur expected the truth of the matter was that Edik wasn’t sure how he would function without Sofia.
He hooked his arm around Edik’s neck. “This is a miracle. It’s wonderful news,” he said. “In two weeks, you’ll be in a new country with a whole new life.”
“But why now all of a sudden?” Edik asked. “After all of these years of denials?”
“What does it matter?” Artur said. “You’ve got your freedom.”
Edik’s slow-churning thoughts gathered momentum, though. “First Mendel gets released, and now this right after. Too many coincidences. There’s a conspiracy,” he said.
“What conspiracy?” Artur tried for a hearty laugh but only managed a muddled sound, tinny and weak. Edik seemed too absorbed in his own viciously cycling thoughts to notice. “That’s ridiculous,” Artur said. “You sound paranoid.”
“Paranoia doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,” Edik said.
Sometimes he made an infuriating amount of sense, leaving Artur to worry how much Edik truly knew or suspected and how much his conjecture might rile up his compatriots.
“A change of luck doesn’t mean a conspiracy,” Artur countered.
He had two weeks to get his hooks into the people in Edik’s inner circle before the Jew departed. He couldn’t risk that Edik might reject the precious visa that had been granted him or worse, that he might render worthless Artur’s careful stratagems with his suspicions of conspiracy.
“You’re just scared because things are finally, finally going your way, my friend,” he said. “I for one am happy for you. Let’s go celebrate.” Any question Edik might harbor over this sudden change of fortune, Artur would drown in mighty quantities of vodka.
He led Edik out of the OVIR waiting area and into the chilly Moscow night. He pulled on his fur hat and gloves and waited for the shell-shocked Edik to follow his example.
Edik actually had his hat with him tonight, and Artur wondered whether the listening device was still lodged in the cuff where he’d hidden it last week.
“We should splurge tonight,” Artur said. He grabbed Edik’s upper arm and dragged him to a restaurant, a place that represented a true indulgence for two allegedly out-of-work Jews.
They ate thick borscht and split a plate of pilmeni, but Edik remained listless and depressed as he downed the shots Artur insisted the waiter keep pouring.
Artur’s best attempts to coax Edik out of his taciturn shell yielded almost no result. Shaking his head in misery, Edik only raised his glass, “To my dear, dear friend.”
Artur supposed the toast in itself resembled progress, a quick promotion given that they’d only met last week, but he worried that Edik’s stubborn devotion to his own misery could botch his careful plans.
The bill came and should have represented a staggering amount for the unemployed Edik, but he didn’t flinch, and he refused to accept any of Artur’s money.
Edik pushed away from the table. “I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “I need to go talk to Sofia.”
“But, Edik, you’re drunk.”
“No drunker than you.” A little unsteady, Edik nonetheless managed to move with determined strides, and Artur hurried to keep up with him. “I’m going to her apartment. Don’t try to talk me out of it,” Edik warned.
Artur wouldn’t dream of trying to talk Edik out of visiting his cousin. Sofia Reitman was near the top of his list of people central to this investigation. The fool would make the introductions, leading the wolf straight into a pen of unsuspecting sheep.
This was almost too easy.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
ARTUR
TENSE WITH ANTICIPATION, Artur climbed into the backseat of the cab Edik had drunkenly hailed. So long as Edik fell in line with his plans, he would now begin to embed himself more deeply in his undercover alias as the newly arrived Yosef Koslovsky.
Semyon would be pleased. Very pleased.
“What are you going to tell Sofia?” he asked. The introduction and even the visa plot could go all wrong if Edik started spouting about government conspiracies.
Perhaps, even if Edik expounded on his theories, Sofia would dismiss them as the ravings of a drunk man. Or maybe not. Aside from the loud belch that accompanied his instructions to the cab driver, Edik managed to sound clear-headed.
“I’m going to ask her what she wants me to do,” Edik said.
“Isn’t it your decision?”
“It affects her,” Edik said.
“But won’t she want you to go? You’ve been trying to emigrate for so long.”
“So have a lot of people,” Edik said. His eyes took on a glassy sheen, and he fell silent for a long moment, but his lips moved soundlessly. Artur wasn’t sure whether Edik had fallen into a drunken stupor or was carrying on a full conversation with his cousin in his head.
Finally Edik said, “Some things are more important.”
“You mean like love?” Artur asked.
Edik frowned at him but didn’t answer, and Artur worried he’d inadvertently alienated Edik by not showing the appropriate sympathy for his situation. He really couldn’t bring himself to understand Edik’s unnatural devotion to his cousin.
“Are you going to tell her how you feel?”
“How I feel about what?” Edik asked. His obtuseness couldn’t be an act, Artur decided, but it was confusing. Edik seemed so perceptive about some things and so dim about others, making him dangerously unpredictable.
&nbs
p; The cab pulled to a stop in front of a stark, concrete apartment building. Edik threw some money at the driver and jumped out of the car, and Artur scrambled to follow.
Edik tripped over his own feet, and his knee touched down in a crusty snow bank left over from the last big storm. He popped back up, as if after a lifetime of cowardly surrender nothing could hold him down any longer. Across the street from the entrance, two agents nursed coffee thermoses and watched the building from an unmarked car. Tonight’s visit would make for an interesting scene. Artur wondered if the agents would be able to hear the whole drama play out on their radios.
Edik barreled into the lobby. He jabbed at the button for the elevator and then turned on his heel, grumbling, “Out. Again. And she lives on the seventh floor.”
Edik found his way to the stairwell and started to climb. He swayed a little and hung to the rail, and he was winded by the time they reached the second landing. Still, he kept on, swaying slightly and losing momentum with each consecutive floor.
By the fifth floor, Artur worried Edik might pass out from the combination of intoxication and exertion.
He couldn’t let Edik fail at this, the way he suspected the man had petered out and failed at so many other points in his life. Not when Artur needed the introduction for his mission.
Artur wedged himself between Edik and the rail and half-carried the pathetic man up the remaining two floors. Edik pulled free when they reached the seventh floor.
Panting, Edik staggered down the hallway and stopped at a door in the middle of the row. He pounded on it with his fist. “Sofia,” he yelled. “Sofia! Sofia, open up damn it. I have to talk to you.”
Sofia didn’t open the door. Her husband did.
Mendel Reitman was a rangy man, bordering on skeletal. His dark eyes were haunted and his cheekbones gaunt. His pajamas bagged on him, and it was likely he had been in bed before Edik had started banging on his door.
Though he looked like a tattered scarecrow, he had a fierce and imposing presence. His eyebrows cut harsh slashes over his eyes. “Edik? What the hell do you want with my wife?”
“I need her advice,” Edik said.
“Advice about what?” Hands on his hips, Mendel blocked the entrance. Edik tried to look around him into the apartment.
“Is she here? I have to talk with her. I have to—” His words died on a belch.
His breath stank of bile and rich food. Mendel wisely took a step back.
“Mendel?” a female voice called softly. “Is everything all right?”
“Sofia, Sofia, Sofia,” Edik lamented.
“Everything’s fine,” Mendel said gruffly. “Your idiot cousin is here.”
There were soft footsteps, and then Sofia appeared behind her husband. Her photograph hadn’t done her justice.
Artur’s vision tunneled, and the details of the hallway,—the stale air, the worn carpet, the nicks in the plaster and chipped paint on the walls, the burnt-out light bulbs, the drunken man wobbling beside him—faded away, and she filled his awareness.
She wasn’t beautiful.
She was compelling.
There was something absolutely captivating about her in person.
Her gaze slammed into his, and the force of that collision shook him.
Maybe Edik wasn’t a complete fool. Or maybe Artur had been more affected by tonight’s vodka than he had credited.
“We haven’t met,” she said to Artur. She pinned him with a clear-eyed gaze.
For an instant he was convinced she could see right through his guise, that she instinctively knew he didn’t belong. He stumbled over his alias. “I’m Yosef. Yosef Koslovsky.”
“My friend. My dear, dear friend,” Edik said drunkenly, and he started to cry.
“Edik, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“He doesn’t deserve any pity,” Mendel said. “He got himself drunk and then decided he had to see you.”
She cut in front of Mendel to get to Edik, who chanted her name like a mantra. She pulled him into the apartment and Artur followed, crowing to himself over his won success.
Housed in one of the buildings quickly constructed in the post-war era, the Reitman’s apartment was small and utilitarian. The short front hall opened to a main living area that might have qualified as modest were it not also bisected by a bookcase to make a sleeping nook.
“What’s happened?” Sofia asked.
Edik took her hands in his and started to bawl.
“Is it your father? Has someone been arrested?” She peppered him with questions.
Edik tried to talk to her through his loud, hiccuping sobs, but his words were unintelligible. He belched loudly again and then ignominiously vomited all over his beloved’s foyer.
“Goddamn it!” her husband cursed.
Sofia ignored him and kept her focus on her cousin. “Come in the kitchen. Let’s get you cleaned up. Maybe you want some water.”
She led him away, toward the kitchen, while Mendel groused about the mess and unwanted visitors making a racket in the middle of the night.
Artur followed Sofia and Edik, and just like that, he was in!
Chapter NINETEEN
SOFIA
SOFIA GUIDED EDIK, still bundled in his coat and hat, into the kitchen. He was unsteady on his feet, and he reeked of vomit. She pushed him into one of the chairs and then took a healthy step away from him. She heard Mendel grumble and curse as he cleaned the mess Edik had made in the hall.
“Breathe,” she urged Edik. She waited for his drunken sobs to subside enough for him to speak again. Mendel joined them in the kitchen. Arms crossed, he glowered at Edik, but Sofia knew something had to be terribly wrong. It was unusual for Edik to reach this level of agitation.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she urged. “Is it your father?”
Edik pulled a crumpled letter form his pocket and handed it to her. She read the letter over twice in shocked disbelief. The Office of Visa and Registration had granted Edik’s request to emigrate to Israel. “This is wonderful news,” she said. “A miracle!”
Mendel snatched the paper from her and scanned the page. “You big fool,” he scolded Edik. “Why would you need Sofia’s advice about this?”
“Should I go?”
“You shouldn’t have come in the first place,” Mendel said.
“No, I mean to Israel.”
“Of course, you should go, you moron,” Mendel said, not giving Sofia a chance to speak. “I don’t see what there is to discuss.”
Edik ignored Mendel. He took her hand and clutched tightly. “How can I leave you?”
“There’s no choice. You know that,” she said. “You can’t pass this up.”
He was such a sweet man, so earnest and dedicated. Also, at the moment, a damp, sweaty, and stinky one. She extricated her hand from his clammy grasp and patted him comfortingly on the back, using the rhythmic taps that she knew helped ground him. Her cousin wasn’t like most people. Sometimes he had trouble regulating his emotions, feeling too much or too little. He could get caught in the stickiness of big feelings, and he sometimes needed a little help to find his way back.
“Who’ll take care of you?” Edik asked.
Behind her, Mendel snorted with impatience. He had never understood their connection.
People regularly misjudged and underestimated Edik, even the KGB, which had determined he didn’t need his own tail, unlike the other men in her family. People tended to focus on how socially awkward he was, how unnervingly direct and simple in his interactions. They imagined that if he was a social idiot then maybe he was one in the rest of his life, too.
But Edik was no fool. He had a remarkable memory and a talent for numbers. He’d used those skills for his own benefit to make a small fortune counting cards, and for hers to be an invaluable partner in crime. He kept track of their blac
k market stock and sales and calculated all of the ledgers in his head. No paperwork trail. Less chance of discovery. His lack of social graces sometimes kept him from reading the cues of his clients, and Sofia could often command better prices on the same batch of goods than he could. Nonetheless, he had built up a dependable network of buyers, and, like her, he could come and go without constant harassment from the KGB.
She would miss Edik terribly when he left for Israel. He was one of the few people she let herself depend on. But he had a chance to be free, and she desperately wanted that for him—for all of them.
“You have to go,” she said.
“But what about—”
“We’ll talk when you’re sober.” She cut him off before he could say more.
His friend, Yosef, stood in the corner, watching their exchange with avid fascination. His hazel eyes sparkled with keen intelligence, and he seemed to be stockpiling every detail.
He made her uneasy.
She couldn’t risk that Edik would accidentally let anything slip in front of him. Or Mendel.
“But, but, but,” Edik protested.
“Hush. Calm down.” She tried to preempt one of his fits. When he got too wound up, it was hard to settle him again. She spoke soothingly, in the tone of voice she’d learned best calmed him. “I’ll visit tomorrow, and we’ll talk it through.”
“I don’t fucking believe this.” Mendel threw his hands up in the air. He marched toward Edik and towered over him. “Grow the fuck up!”
Sofia gasped at the harshness in his tone. Edik began to rock in the chair. He was in distress, and Mendel was only making things worse.
“Stop! You’re upsetting him,” she warned, but Mendel talked over her. “Pull yourself together. You think you take care of Sofia? You think she needs you?” Mendel shouted at Edik, “Look at yourself! Showing up in the middle of the night, crying like a baby and looking to her to wipe your spit. You’re pathetic.”
“That’s enough.” She planted herself between them to shield Edik. “You’re being cruel.”
“No, I’m telling it like it is.”
To Catch a Traitor Page 10