To Catch a Traitor

by Shuster, D. B. ;

  “Moscow isn’t nearly as dangerous as you seem to think.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “It’s not smart for you to walk home by yourself after dark. A young woman. Alone.” He turned to Kolya. “What do you think, Kolya? Does that sound smart to you?”

  “No.” Kolya said.

  “Your mother does it. Every night,” Vera said. “She comes home from work when you’re asleep.”

  “Because she has to. Because there’s no one to take care of her,” he said softly, revealing worries she hadn’t known he had. “But you have Gennady.”

  “I told you you were smart,” Gennady praised him, and Kolya seemed to stand a little taller. “Can we make a deal? Will you make sure she waits for me?” He stuck out his hand for Kolya to shake.

  “Deal.” Kolya grasped Gennady’s hand and shook once.

  “Nice grip,” Gennady said, admiringly. She searched him for any signs of mockery but saw none.

  When Kolya smiled for the first time in a long while and Gennady smiled back, she wished it were just a little easier to continue hating him.

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  ARTUR

  “COME ON, EDIK,” Artur wheedled. “You should go.”

  “Ugh,” Edik moaned. He threw his arm over his face to block out the light. “Leave me alone.”

  “You don’t want to miss one of your last chances to say good-bye to everyone before you leave for Israel.”

  Today was Saturday, the Jewish sabbath. While most of Moscow’s Jews did not observe any religious rituals related to the weekly holy day, they reportedly gathered in great numbers outside the Moscow Choral Synagogue on Archipova Street on Saturday afternoons. Artur had great hope that Edik would introduce him around at this large gathering and help him insinuate himself into the Jewish community.

  “No one cares. They’re glad I’m leaving,” Edik whined. “They all think I’m a useless failure.”

  “That’s not true,” Artur said, playing the loyal friend. “Don’t let what Mendel said get to you. He was just jealous of how much time you spent with Sofia when he was locked up.”

  Mendel’s harsh words seemed to have decimated Edik. He hadn’t wanted to leave his room, let alone socialize. Much to the detriment of Artur’s investigation, Edik had taken to his bed.

  “No,” Edik said. “No, he was right. I’m an overgrown child,” he repeated Mendel’s insult with cloying self-pity. “I should have been a man for her. Taken care of her.” He looked plaintively at Artur.”

  Artur threw his head back and blew out a frustrated breath. He was quickly losing patience. Edik’s moping threatened to derail his case, and he couldn’t go back tainted with the stink of failure. He needed Edik to fall in line with his plans and introduce him around.

  “If you don’t get up out of that bed, I’ll call Sofia over here to help me. She didn’t agree with what Mendel said, but she could change her mind if she sees the sorry state you’re in now.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to me,” Edik said.

  “Watch me.” Artur turned on his heel and stomped to the phone in the next room. He lifted the receiver and paused when he heard the dial tone. He didn’t actually know Sofia’s number. “How long has it been since you showered?” Artur called. “I want to let her know what to expect.”

  Edik came flying out of the room and grabbed his arm. “Don’t!”

  “Then go get showered and let’s go,” Artur said.

  “Fine,” Edik mumbled. He shuffled to the bathroom and slammed the door.

  “You’ll thank me for this,” Artur called after him, but he had to concede that Mendel’s criticism had been spot on. Edik did behave like an overgrown child.

  When he heard the shower running, Artur snooped around Edik’s room. He hadn’t observed the passing of any goods the other morning, but he had a strong hunch that the American visitors typically smuggled the family objects of high worth.

  He surmised there must be a hiding place somewhere in the apartment. He had managed to check the kitchen and the front hall, but he hadn’t found a stash of cigarette cartons or anything else of interest.

  Nothing of interest under the bed or in the drawers. The narrow closet yielded nothing unexpected either.

  Think!

  Then he noticed the scuff in the parquet floor next to the dresser, as if that piece of furniture had been moved frequently. He grabbed the corner of the dresser and dragged it along the scratch until the foot met the rug in the center of the room. Behind the dresser, he found a short door with a latch. He crouched down, unhooked the latch, and eased the door open.

  Inside was dark. He peered into the shadows. Jackpot!

  The door opened on a full-sized walk-in closet that spanned the length of the room. He had to enter on his hands and knees, but once he’d crawled inside, he could stand.

  A stockpile of American cigarette cartons lined the back wall from floor to ceiling. Boxes upon boxes of Marlboros and Virigina Slims. Next to those, he found a bookcase with shelves heavy with cameras, rolls of unused film, batteries, tape casettes and other items that could intermittently be found in Russian stores, but more frequently were out of stock. Such luxury items carried a premium on the black market.

  The government had moved to curtail the financial support the Jews were enjoying from abroad. The law now required that recipients of packages pay the hefty Customs taxes before they could receive their goods. Most people couldn’t afford the taxes up front before turning a profit on sales, and so the shipments had dropped off sharply.

  Yet Edik, simple childlike Edik, had a secret closet full of western goods that could only have been smuggled into the country.

  Artur didn’t have time to explore further. He’d solved the mystery of where Edik had gotten his cash, at least. Most likely, the guests who visited the apartment smuggled in the goods, and their sale kept the Jew bastards flush with money.

  He ducked out of the closet, just as the water from the shower shut off. He hurried to shut the door and slide the dresser back into place and then skidded out of Edik’s room. He threw himself onto the sofa in the living room, crossed one leg over his knee, and managed, he hoped, to look like he’d been sitting there, perhaps dozing off, through the duration of Edik’s shower.

  Mercifully, Edik returned to his room and got dressed without any further protest, and in a few more minutes, they were on their way.

  Although sober, Edik moved at lumbering pace. He plodded beside Artur, head down, limbs heavy, as if he were an exhausted pack mule climbing a mountain with an untenable load on his back, instead of a healthy and relatively young man on his way to a social gathering.

  Artur refused to chance that Edik might lose steam before they could reach his chosen destination. He needed to gain introductions to as many of Edik’s associates as possible before Edik left. He had a limited window to make the most of the gathering on Archipova Street, which promised a windfall of opportunity to make himself known. He hailed a taxi.

  “Do you think we’ll meet any pretty girls today?” Artur asked.

  “None prettier than Sofia,” Edik said glumly, and Artur abandoned his weak attempt to make conversation. They passed the rest of the short ride to the synagogue in sullen silence, and Artur found their arrival a relief.

  Up ahead, he saw a large butter-yellow building with white columns. A large white dome with a gold six-pointed star was affixed to the steeple, instead of a cross.

  “That’s it. There,” Edik told the driver, who dropped them at the end of the block.

  “Is it always so crowded?” Artur asked. He’d read reports of the weekly gatherings, but he hadn’t anticipated this throng of Jews.

  “On Saturday, yes,” Edik said.

  “It looks like everyone’s out.”

  He wasn’t sure he had realized there were so many Jews in Moscow. Or
at least so many who would identify themselves in public.

  The KGB had arrested a score of Jewish activists and Hebrew teachers and harassed and intimidated others. They had installed obvious surveillance and assigned escorts to likely troublemakers.

  Yet, here the Jews were, talking and laughing, matchmaking, trading books, passing money, conducting all manner of business, boisterous and unabashed.

  The presence of the KGB agents standing at the fringe of the crowd and monitoring their activities didn’t sober them. Rather, these Jews seemed to be thumbing their noses at the Kremlin, defiantly pursuing their agenda, putting his country in danger.

  Artur hated all of them.

  Chapter THIRTY

  ARTUR

  “I SEE MENDEL,” Edik said to Artur. Edik pointed to the lanky man standing on the synagogue steps, surrounded by a knot of loud, gesticulating Jews. Five years in prison had left Mendel slightly bent and sallow, but obviously not defeated. By rights, he should have been lying low and spending time with his wife and child, not playing to an audience from the synagogue steps. Not blatantly repeating the crimes they’d stopped him for in the past.

  Unless Victor had put him up to it.

  Artur had precious few details about Victor’s side of the investigation.

  Artur searched the crowd for Sofia but didn’t spot her. His reports said she was a regular at these gatherings outside the synagogue. She, at least, had more sense than her husband, keeping a lower profile.

  Where was she now?

  Edik tugged on his sleeve and pulled him into the crowd. He headed toward the steps. “Ilya,” he called out, and a portly man turned in their direction.

  Artur recognized his fleshy face. Ilya Soifer, Edik’s uncle, Sofia and Vera’s father. The man had a voluminous file. He’d had a KGB tail for the past several years.

  “Uncle Ilya, I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Yosef Koslovksy,” Edik said.

  “Koslovsky,” Ilya repeated and rubbed at his double chin. He cocked his head and regarded Artur with a hint of suspicion that made him wonder if he’d done something to give himself away. “I don’t know that family. Where are you from?”

  “Leningrad,” Artur said. He’d created a truth-tinged legend around his cover. Artur had indeed grown up in Leningrad. “I just arrived in Moscow.”

  “Well, welcome to Moscow,” Ilya said, but unlike his words, his gaze stayed sharp and slightly suspicious. Unlike Edik, Ilya wouldn’t easily extend his trust to an outsider.

  Mendel’s voice rose over the hubbub. “You claim you are Jews,” Mendel said.

  “No, the Russians insist we’re Jews,” someone shouted back. “They stamp it on our passports and hold it against us.”

  Catching the trail of the propaganda he’d been sent to stop, Artur marked the speaker’s face in his memory. He would discover his identity, perhaps with the help of the other agents lined up on Archipova Street, and track him down later.

  “Judaism is more than a nationality,” Mendel said. “Jews are the Chosen People. Identified and chosen, not by the Soviets, but by God. The God of our ancestors. And we have an obligation to do as God commands. To live as God commands. So that we will be blessed and not cursed.”

  A few onlookers seemed to be engaged with Mendel, but most of the crowd ignored the would-be prophet in their midst. Mendel raised his voice to carry above the animated chatter. “When we embrace God’s teaching, no matter where we are—in Moscow, in the holy city of Jerusalem, even in the gulag—we will be truly free.”

  “How come the KGB agents aren’t stopping him?” Artur asked. “Wasn’t he arrested for teaching?”

  “He was arrested for teaching Hebrew,” Ilya said. “But now he’s preaching.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Not according to Mendel. Hebrew is the language of the Jews and Israel. It’s vocabulary and conversation. But this is different. This is religion. Mendel says he found God in the labor camp, and now he’s spouting nonsense about rules and rituals,” Ilya said with disdain, as if Mendel had contracted a nasty, infectious disease. Artur shuddered with shared sentiment. “I guess five years in prison with nothing but a book of psalms for company will do that to a man.”

  “How come he’s not inside the synagogue then?” Artur asked.

  “No one goes inside,” Edik said. “Except the synagogue elders and the rabbi.”

  “He was there earlier, too,” Ilya said. “The old men finished their mumbling in there about ten minutes ago.”

  “But isn’t he afraid of the KGB?” Artur asked. “He just got back from prison, isn’t he worried they’ll arrest him again?”

  “He insists they’ve never bothered with the religious zealots.” Ilya shrugged. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe they don’t mind if the Jews have a little opiate of the people, eh? Maybe they think we’ll quiet down if they let us observe our holidays and eat special food. And then the new guy—Chernenko—can pull the strings of his puppet rabbi, and the man will say the Jews have it good in Moscow. No problem here.”

  Ilya’s analysis was a bit too piercing. The man was shrewd and outspoken and, obviously, a dangerous radical. He already had a detail of two KGB agents assigned to him, but Artur would put in a request to have that number increased. Odds were good Ilya himself was one of the traitors he hunted.

  “But what do I know?” Ilya said as if he perceived the shadows of Artur’s gathering suspicions and sought to disperse them.

  “They also could be superstitious, like all good Russians,” the bright-eyed Jewess beside Ilya said. Artur also recognized her from the file, Ilya’s wife, Renata. “And they don’t want to mess with anything mystical.”

  Was that how these Jews saw the KGB—as backward and superstitious? Did Mendel actually think he could get away teaching Hebrew again if he said he was teaching religion instead?

  “He does look like a mystic, doesn’t he—with that ugly beard and big black skullcap? A modern day Rasputin. Poor Sofia,” she clucked.

  Poor Sofia. Any dissatisfaction Sofia felt over her husband’s religious awakening was bound to help Artur’s bid to seduce her.

  “He could be the rabbi’s agent.” Edik offered an unexpected insight. “After all, he installed those listening devices on the rabbi’s say-so.”

  “What listening devices?” Ilya asked sharply.

  “In the—what do you call them?—things that go up on the doors,” Edik said.

  “Mezuzot?” Ilya supplied.

  “Yes. I think that’s what they’re called. Mendel put up three of them that the rabbi gave him, and every one had a bug inside.”

  “Ah, that must be what Kolya was talking about. He was going on and on about bugs the other day,” Renata said. “We thought he meant a different kind.”

  “Do you think Mendel knew they were in there?” Edik asked.

  They all shrugged, not knowing, but Artur noticed that none of them jumped to Mendel’s defense.

  Perhaps Victor and the rabbi were pulling Mendel’s strings, doing exactly as Ilya had suggested, and trying to shunt the community’s rebellious tendencies into less dangerous directions.

  Ilya and Renata moved on, leaving Artur alone once again with Edik, whose avid gaze remained fixed on the synagogue steps, where Mendel continued to wax on about God and Jewish heritage. Artur followed his line of sight, straight to Sofia. Of course.

  She stood at the fringe of the crowd near the steps. Artur hadn’t noticed her at first, hiding as she was in plain sight. Her long, curly black hair was tucked up in a wool hat, and she wore a bulky coat that easily lent the appearance of an additional twenty pounds to her slight frame. Despite what seemed a brilliant disguise, he now recognized her bold ethnic features, almond-shaped eyes, full lips, and a long nose.

  He shouldn’t have found Sofia attractive, especially now with her frumpy
, shapeless coat and the bemused frown that wrinkled her forehead as her husband’s speech increased in intensity and conviction.

  As if feeling Artur’s eyes on her, she turned and glanced in his direction. She started walking toward him, and once again he was captivated.

  He loved his wife. He had never once considered having an affair. But now he imagined what it would be like to kiss her, to undress her, to take her to bed. His thought flowed freely in directions he wouldn’t have let himself contemplate before, now that he knew he had to seduce her.

  Sofia walked past him and embraced Edik. “Edik, you came.”

  She gave Artur a cursory acknowledgment, enough to be polite, but not overly friendly. If she felt the same atraction he did, she didn’t show any sign.

  She focused on Edik. “I’m glad to see you up and about. Are you feeling better?”

  Edik’s face flushed a deep red. He stammered an unintelligible response. She gave him an understanding smile, and an answering smile bloomed on Edik’s face, as if all was once again right with his world.

  “How are the preparations coming?” she asked. “You must have a lot to do to get ready to leave. Let me know if you need any help.”

  Edik shifted his eyes toward Mendel, as if seeking permission that would never be granted, and then back to Sofia. “I don’t. I won’t.”

  In the past, Edik would undoubtedly have leaned on Sofia to make arrangements for him. Whether or not Edik could handle the preparations on his own, he would likely have embraced the excuse to spend time with her. He might even have manufactured more tasks for her to do on his behalf. But Mendel’s tirade the other day had suitably shamed him.

  “I’m heading home,” she said. “I’ll see you later.” She started to walk away.

  “Wait!” Edik said. “What about Mendel?”

  “He’ll catch up with me when he’s ready,” she said. Her smile was brittle. Artur could almost taste her discontent with her husband, and it made his mouth water.

  “But you shouldn’t walk alone,” Edik said.