“It’s either that or fly Finnish,” Senator Jasper had explained. “The Soviet Union won’t let any airlines from N.A.T.O. countries in.”
When we landed in Riga, three paper-mache fighter planes were parked at the end of the runway to fool aerial photographers. Not a bad effort, but inside the minuscule airport, in a cold, colorless waiting room, an M.V.D. man in a green uniform took only a cursory look at our passports while our bags stayed on the plane. Think of the dope or firearms you could smuggle in. And here I’d left my .45 behind.
Then the senator and I filled out a slip of paper itemizing our foreign currency. Supposedly we’d have little need for cash, since we were traveling via Intourist, the official Soviet agency. The thirty-bucks-a-day Intourist tickets covered hotel, meals, limo/chauffeur, interpreter, museum entry and other public fees, plus twenty-five roubles for walking-around money—drinks, smokes, theater tickets. But I had five hundred in cash with me, because a buddy in the know told me the roubles-to-dollars exchange rate was high, and even higher when you offered greenbacks to Muscovites.
“Uncle Sam’s simoleons can get you damn near anything you want in Moscow,” a certain Herald Trib columnist had told me.
At Vnukovo, the much larger Moscow airport, the Slavic porters may have looked half-asleep, but they delivered our luggage to the Intourist lobby faster than I’d ever got them at Idlewild. As the senator’s sole flunky, I was the one who asked the attendant about the Hotel National reservations, and was told a car was waiting.
And I’ll be damned if it wasn’t, a black limo called a Zi, which looked like a Packard circa 1947. The backseat had an oriental carpet, a clock and a fire extinguisher. Our driver was no cabbie— this was a militiaman, another branch of the M.V.D., and he wore a long blue coat with red-and-white tabs. He was friendly and spoke just enough English.
We had barely left the airport when an intimidating line of tanks rumbled alongside us, also heading into the city.
“November seven,” the driver said with a huge grin filled with nasty, crooked teeth. He might have been announcing Christmas. In a way, he was, since November 7 was a big deal in Russia, the anniversary of the Revolution.
Our driver was otherwise no tour guide, leaving us to form our own impressions of Moscow
Like the wide boulevards, where taxis and trucks outnumbered private cars, and pedestrians scrambled out of the way of vehicular monsters like ours. Like traffic signals run manually by officers in a booth. Or the lack of big city sounds—no honking car horns, trolley buses moving damn near silently thanks to overhead wires, no loudspeakers or sirens from ambulances or police cars or fire engines.
Or take Moscow’s skyscrapers, if you could call them that, twenty or thirty stories of ugly ornate architecture that at night hid behind glowing red stars and flickering red lights. Or the blocks of apartment housing that were bland echoes of housing developments back home. And no trees to speak of.
Why so many people on the street? It was after eight p.m., most shops looked closed, but families including swaddled babes were braving the chilly night in their colorless overcoats, marching along as if to a brass band. A silent one, in this city.
Jasper must have read my mind. He said, quietly, “Mike, living conditions here are dramatically over crowded. You’d come home from a hard day’s work and rush into the out of doors, too.”
But it was a clean city, despite thronged sidewalks. I was thinking Manhattan might learn something on that front, but when we arrived at our hotel, the first thing I saw was an M.V.D. man in his blue coat grab a citizen by the arm and make him retrieve a spent cigarette from where he’d pitched it in the street, making him place it in a receptacle.
Good thing I gave up smoking, back when I was drinking so much I didn’t want to waste money on such a filthy habit.
The National was a mammoth turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau relic in the heart of Moscow It had seen better days, but the lobby had a grand sort of shabbiness, with its marble stairway, mosaic floor, and stained-glass windows that were clearly pre-Revolution. Like Moscow itself, the hotel was antique and worn out in spots, but clean.
I checked in for our little party, feeling more like a secretary than a bodyguard. The desk clerk wasn’t as old as the hotel, but it was a close call, a gent in formal black with a shaved skull and white handlebar mustache, on loan from a Tolstoy novel.
“When does the dining room close?” I asked him.
His English was simple but perfect. “At midnight, sir. There is no hurry.”
Regular folks in Moscow might be overcrowded, but our suite was three times the size of my Manhattan office. A bellboy as ancient as the desk clerk distributed our bags to our respective bedrooms. I gave the old boy a dollar and he studied it like a palaeontologist who just found a dinosaur bone.
He bowed several times as he exited, saying, “Spasiba, sir. Spasiba.”
The senator grinned and said, “That means ‘thank you,’ Mike.”
“I gathered.”
Jasper settled down on a sprawling sofa, a Victorian museum piece that was more comfortable than it looked, and I joined him, giving him plenty of room—there was plenty to give. We loosened our ties. It had been a long day and we both needed shaves and maybe twelve hours of sleep.
“I don’t believe the size of these digs,” I said.
There were elaborate double windows, sealed with tape to keep the winter out, a grand piano, a nine-foot long brass-studded, green-felt desk, an array of Bukhara rugs, lamps with fringed silk shades, a stained-glass window of white flowers and bleeding topaz hearts, and several framed oil paintings, including one of an emir in Central Asia being attended by his harem.
“Princes used to live in this hotel,” he said.
“Yeah, right up to where they lined them up next to a ditch and shot them.”
Jasper smiled wryly and said, “Their loss is our gain. Ready to go down and eat?”
“Should we spruce up first?”
“Why, do you want to?”
“No, but I’m not a visiting dignitary.”
“Nobody knows who I am.”
“You want to bet? You think all Intourist chauffeurs are uniformed M.V.D. men?”
His eyebrows went up. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”
“How about those four guys in the lobby in black suits reading newspapers.”
“So?”
“Reading newspapers at eight-thirty p.m.? You think there’s a late edition of the Moscow Gazette? Get used to it, Allen. You’re going to be watched.” I lowered my voice. “You need to decide if you want me to sweep this room for bugs, or if you think yanking them would be impolite.”
He was frowning. “You really think...”
I put a fingertip to my lips. “Let’s go down and put on the feed bag. And let’s hope in this country that’s just an expression.”
The dining room was surprisingly cozy for such a large hotel, with dark yellow brocade walls and lots of tables for four. The place was doing good business, couples mostly, overweight men with overweight wives in nice but drab attire. Younger couples featured girls who didn’t need to lose thirty pounds, but they wore little or no make-up and their hair, whether blonde or brown, was in buns or braids. They looked like Heidi, if Heidi had breasts and didn’t wear bright colors.
The English-speaking head waiter, who knew who we were and that we had just checked in, asked us if we wanted privacy—the practice was for guests to share tables if space was scant. I gave the guy a buck and said we’d like privacy.
“You will not be bothered while you are with us, sirs,” he said with an obsequious nod.
This was a promise he would not be able to keep.
While we waited for the first of our three courses to arrive— fresh caviar, what else?—we were enjoying a little five-piece combo heavy on the violin doing an odd variety of tunes including the “Blue Danube Waltz” and a Cuban rhumba. But when they went into “South of the Border,” a drunk Russian shouted out
at them in what was apparently an anti-American speech, punctuated by finger wags in our direction.
Everybody knew we had checked in.
When the drunk weaved over, red-faced, and started shouting at us, the words were foreign but required no translation. I was just getting up to escort him out when a waiter, the first Russian I’d seen who stood over six feet, came over and dragged him back to his table, and sat him down hard.
“What are you paying me for?” I asked the senator.
He smiled. “That just shows you. Anti-USA sentiment here is very real. I think it’ll be mostly in check on our tour. But it’s there. Bubbling right under the surface.”
“Allen, we’ve made a lot of polite conversation these last few days, but you’ve not told me what this trip is really about.”
“It’s a fact-finding mission.”
“Sure. I get that. But why you? Why a staunch conservative? A liberal would get a warmer welcome.”
His eyes tightened. “That’s the point, Mike. I’m only going to mention this once, since you’ve made it clear our room may be bugged and we’re being driven around by a militiaman and followed by men in black suits pretending to read newspapers.”
I grinned at him. “Okay. Tell me once.”
“The President himself suggested I make this trip.”
“The President is a democrat.”
“He’s also the President. And he’s an American. I’m not on any great secret mission, Mike. But I will be having some fairly high-level, unpublicized talks while I’m here, designed to show that Americans are not warmongers.”
“I’m not much for appeasement.”
“Not appeasement, Mike. You know I’m all for maintaining our superior military might. But war isn’t what it used to be. It’s not the shooting one we both fought in.”
“You mean both sides can blow each other to hell and gone by pushing a couple buttons.”
“Right. And things are particularly volatile at the moment, now that Mr. Khrushchev has stepped down, uh...”
“Voluntarily?” I said lightly, providing the word he was looking for.
An eyebrow arched. “Yes... ‘voluntarily.’ I’m here, in my unofficial capacity, to test the waters with the new regime. Is this Brezhnev character going to thaw the Cold War? Or heat it up? I’m here to help us start getting a read on that.”
We both had the wiener schnitzel and it wasn’t bad. Jasper had after-dinner coffee, which he pronounced excellent. I tried a beer, which I pronounced tasted like soap suds. Our waiter suggested a vodka martini and I took him up on it.
“In future,” I said, after a sip of the potent cocktail, “I’m going to stick with the native drink.”
The senator smiled. “The Russians call vodka a little ray of sunshine in the stomach.”
“That’s my new favorite Russian proverb,” I said.
Upstairs I found the bugs easily—lamps and fireplace—and pointed them out to the senator. The bathroom was clear, so we could talk in there if necessary, with the water running.
But right now I took my turn with the facilities for an overdue delousing in a huge old cracked tub with no plug but a workable shower gadget.
This was considered a good hotel, even a fine one, and certainly Senator Jasper wouldn’t have been placed here if the Soviet government was ashamed of it. But as I drifted off to sleep, under warm blankets, my belly filled with good food and a couple rays of sunshine, two thoughts drifted into my mind.
First, that this relic of a hotel, whose lingering opulence dated back before the Commies improved things, was the best the Soviets could come up with to provide decent accommodations to a visiting dignitary from the world’s only other superpower.
And second, that all around this great city, its actual citizens were huddled together in far inferior circumstances, so bad that walking around in the chilly outside was preferable.
* * *
The next morning, after a breakfast of buckwheat porridge and diluted grape juice in the dining room, we found a strikingly attractive young woman waiting for us in the lobby. She recognized us at once, how I’m not sure, but she strode over with confidence for a petite doll of maybe twenty-five, and introduced herself as our Intourist translator.
“Zora Tabakova,” she said, extending her hand first to the senator and then to me. “If you will please to call me Zora.”
Her severe-looking black jacket and skirt with white shirt failed to disguise a slender shape whose top heaviness was all she had in common with the other Russian women I’d seen. The biggest shock was that this fetching thing wore make-up, her eyebrows shaped and darkened under a bouffant blonde hairdo—no braids or bun for this one. Her purple eye shadow made her brown eyes jump out of a heart-shaped face whose full, sensual mouth wore lipstick that made a bright crimson threat, or maybe a promise.
I guess my silly grin must have told her how jazzed I was seeing a pretty girl in this land of dumpy dames, and it made her smile, a big, gleaming smile.
Literally gleaming: her upper teeth were stainless steel.
“I have a schedule for you, Senator,” she said, and handed him a sheet. “Would you like to wait in your room while I summon your driver?”
Her English was perfect, with just a little stilted taste of Russian accent mixed in.
“Please,” Jasper said, nodding. “Just call us from the lobby when the car is here, Miss Tabakova.”
“Zora,” she insisted, and flashed that gleaming smile.
Oddly those steel choppers didn’t take anything away from her beauty. If anything, they added an industrial touch to her earthy good looks in a somehow very Russian way.
She went briskly off.
We went up to the room and sat on the sofa.
“Pretty girl,” Jasper said, amused by my stunned reaction to our interpreter. “Lovely smile.”
“She’d look fine without any teeth. There are benefits to that, you know, particularly in pastimes where steel teeth might be a hazard.”
He laughed at that, shook his head. “Porcelain teeth are damn near impossible to get over here. The last time the Bolshoi Ballet appeared in the West, the dancers who didn’t want to defect were trying to buy porcelain for false teeth.”
“So maybe those steel uppers can come out. Promising. But what about that make-up, Allen? That’s the first lipstick I’ve seen in this burg. Is that hard to get, too?”
“Not really. Just frowned upon. A symbol of the decadent West, you know.”
“Sometimes I think decadence gets a bad rap. But her arriving made up like a show girl means one of two things.”
He frowned in interest. “What, Mike?”
“If Intourist sent her over dolled up like that, it’s so she can get nice and cozy with us.”
He was nodding. “Make it easier to spy on us. What’s the other possibility?”
“That putting on that war paint was her own idea. Which means she likes Americans. Who knows? She may try to crawl in one of our suitcases and come home with us.”
Jasper allowed himself a lecherous smile. “Would that be so bad?”
“Better than bringing a baby alligator home from Florida.”
But if I was expecting a come-on from our beautiful silvertoothed translator, I was dead wrong. She was business-like and helpful all the way. She had scheduled us to begin with the museum inside the Kremlin.
“The Soviet government is anxious to share its treasures with the people,” she told us, as we rode in our limo. She was sitting facing us in a fold-down seat. “This means all museums here are crowded. It is good to start early in the day.”
Soon we were walking across Red Square, which was an oblong not a square, its bricks like big loaves of bread whose reddish color—not politics—dictated the name. Heading toward the Kremlin, I was struck by the soaring, ancient beauty of the place, its red walls with battlements and towers, the golden spires of churches peeking up proudly from within.
To me, the word “Kremlin” ha
d always conjured menace. On this cold but sunny morning, however, it was just another tourist trap, with kiosks selling postcards.
And little Zora had been right about the crowds who were taking in such fabulous treasures as Ivan the Terrible’s ivory throne and Peter the Great’s ornate crown—school kids, foreign delegations, and wide-eyed peasants, all jammed together like the bargain basement at Gimbel’s.
We took in an art museum, had lunch at an Armenian place, then spent the afternoon at the big state department store called GUM. It was a series of arcades, one on top of the other, selling everything from hairpins to fur coats; but the sales clerk used wooden abacuses, not modern cash registers. Without much arm-twisting, Zora had dinner with us back at the hotel. I was feeling like a third thumb, having encountered no situation where a bodyguard was remotely needed.
So far this was a vacation with pay.
In the lobby, Zora shook hands with us both, adding, “While you are visiting, I stay in the hotel. Should you require my service, call the desk and ask for my room.” She turned those purple-eye-shadowed big brown eyes loose on me. “Should you need anything, do not hesitate to call. Night or day.”
Back in our room, the senator said, “I think our little translator likes you, Mike.”
“She’s a cute kid. A guy could get used to that shiny smile.”
We were on the sofa again, having some room-service coffee, which you summoned not by phone but ringing a bell.
“Careful, Mike. Haven’t you ever heard of Baba Yaga?”
“No. Should I have?”
He was grinning at me, having a fine time. “Old Russian folk tale. Baba Yaga, the witch with iron teeth. Fearsome creature. But you should be fine, Mike.”
“Yeah?”
“She has no power over the pure of heart.”
“Great.”
Before I went to bed, I went to the window that provided a fine view of the Kremlin. Dusk hadn’t turned to night yet. This was what the movie people called magic hour and its blue shadows were kind to the old citadel’s crimson walls and golden palaces. When dusk finally darkened to night, the Kremlin’s towers seemed to flash with red stars—not an optical illusion, but weather vanes. Practical, these Commies.
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