"About what?"
"About when these names will be erased and the next set inscribed, of course. In another three hundred years? Or is the pace of history accelerating-—will we not have to wait quite so long this time?"
"That is not an appropriate remark, citizen," she murmured.
Volodya grinned and squeezed her arm. "Don't worry, my loyal little comrade, the state cannot watch all of us—at least, not all the time. Thank God for incompetence. So tell me: How was your day?"
She closed her eyes. The western wall of the Kremlin loomed behind her; in the Arsenal building behind that wall the Politburo met and made decisions that determined the future of her nation, perhaps of the world. Volodya had not let go of her arm.
He had come into her life soon after she started work at the Popov Institute. Valentina had been performing her miracles for several months, and the KGB was beginning to realize that she needed constant medical attention. Doctor Chukova quickly found out that taking the job had been a mistake, but like many people she couldn't turn her back on the benefits that came to one who worked for the security organs. And she couldn't turn her back on Valentina.
And so Doctor Chukova had needed laughter and excitement. She was lonely and she was depressed by her job, and every time she looked into a mirror she was staring at middle age, every time she tried to plan for the future she thought of the dissolution of her dreams, the long hard life still to be faced.
Volodya Osipov seemed never to think of the future. He had an engineering job that was too boring even to talk about, and he spent most of his time operating na lyevo, buying this, selling that, always managing to stay clear of the authorities. He seemed to have a limitless supply of Bolshoi tickets and restaurant reservations and American condoms; he knew whom to bribe to get medicines that even doctors couldn't obtain; he was the kind of person who kept the Soviet economic system afloat.
And he adored Olga Chukova. He praised her to the skies and gave her French perfume and invented a thousand pet names for her. He made love to her as if she were a goddess. He listened sympathetically to her troubles as she poured them out to him in bed or lying side by side in the Lenin Hills and staring out at the city. And if he didn't make her troubles go away, at least he made their burden a little lighter while he was with her.
And then one day she learned the truth. She tried not to think about that day anymore, but it haunted her dreams nevertheless. It was the day her life ended. She tried to go on in the same way, but soon enough he knew she knew. And it didn't seem to matter to him. He felt no guilt, and she couldn't even bring herself to feel angry at him for feeling no guilt, for ruining her life. He was the way he was.
And now he was sitting next to her, wanting to know what kind of day she had had, and she knew that what she would say to him would be pored over by cipher clerks and junior attaches, then beamed to a satellite and across the ocean for some other bored clerk to glance at and file. But Volodya was smiling at her, and his hand still rested on her arm in that intimate, reassuring way of his, and she knew that she had no choice but to answer his question. Absolutely no choice.
"It was very bad," she whispered.
"It's always so difficult, isn't it?" His voice was filled with sympathy. She was sure it was genuine.
"It's getting worse, Volodya."
"Tell me all about it, my nightingale."
Doctor Chukova half smiled. They were middle-aged lovers, sitting on a park bench on a beautiful spring evening; they were a pair of spies, plotting in the shadow of the Kremlin; she was a nightingale, about to sing. "It was a West German—Dieter Schmidt is his name. He's leaving Moscow soon. But not soon enough."
"The same setup—a potential defector who turns out to be anything but?"
She nodded.
"And your young friend in the pyramid listens in and does whatever it is that she does?"
"Yes. They're killing her, Volodya. It keeps getting harder and harder to bring her around afterward. She can't speak, she can scarcely move. It'll be weeks before she gets her strength back."
"And was she successful?"
"I think so. It sounded like she was, but what do I know? All I know is that they keep making her do it, so they must think something is happening. They are destroying her, and I am a party to it."
"It is a harsh world," Volodya said, stroking her shoulder. "It destroys many people. The best we can do is smile and go about our business and hope we are not called upon to destroy—or be destroyed."
"But I am a doctor. I should be able to do more than—" She paused. This was dangerous, but she had to say something, she couldn't hold it in anymore. "Why don't they save her, Volodya?" she demanded. She couldn't bring herself to say who she thought "they" were; there was no need, in any case. "She's such a danger to them. But she needn't be, if—" Doctor Chukova sighed and didn't say any more. The point was clear enough.
Volodya scratched his head and stared at his Italian leather boots. "What can I say?" he asked her. "People like you and me are not consulted about such matters. But you know, it occurs to me that if she is a danger to certain people, it would be far easier for them to destroy her than to save her."
Doctor Chukova nodded, accepting his point. "It is always easier to destroy than to save," she murmured.
Volodya suddenly grinned and planted a kiss on her cheek. "Ah, Olga, don't be too sad," he said. "It's spring, and we're still alive, while all the revolutionary thinkers have long since joined the proletariat in the sky. Why don't we enjoy ourselves before it's too late?" He reached into a pocket of his coat and produced a small box. "I have a present for you, my little water sprite. Coco, by Coco Chanel. You know—Chanel Number Five? Very chic. Please accept it as a token of my undying affection."
She looked at it and shook her head. "Not today, Vladimir Ivanovich. Thanks anyway." She smiled at him; she couldn't help it. "You are a strange person, do you know that?"
He shrugged and smiled back. "It's a strange world, my beautiful woodchuck. And I'm sure it will bring us together again."
"Yes, I'm sure of that too. Good-bye, Volodya." Doctor Chukova got up and walked out of the gardens. She headed for the Lenin Library metro station, thinking of her dreary apartment and the long, lonely night ahead of her. The thought was unbearable. She took the train back to the clinic instead. Her patient needed her.
* * *
Vladimir Ivanovich Osipov glanced at his Swiss watch. Plenty of time. He put the Coco back into his coat pocket. From another pocket he produced a copy of Pravda. From yet another pocket he produced a tiny Sony tape recorder, which he turned off. He took the microcassette from the recorder and arranged it inside the Pravda so that it wouldn't fall out. Then he put the tape recorder away, stood up, and started to stroll through the Alexandrovsky Gardens, humming a Beatles tune he had heard a militiaman whistling earlier.
His route took him past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the corner of the gardens. He glanced at the bouquets lying in front of it, laid there by brides coming from the Wedding Palace. A stupid custom. They should celebrate life, not death. He continued around the edge of the Kremlin and through Red Square. From a safe distance he grinned at the red granite of Lenin's Tomb. Behind the mausoleum were the graves of lesser luminaries, including Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police. Osipov gave them a grin too. So many dead people. And he was still alive.
He ducked into GUM, the huge department store, milled around in the crowds, then ducked out by another entrance. He hurried on past Saint Basil's and the Rossiya Hotel to the Moskvoretsky Bridge. In the middle of the bridge, a man was staring out at the spectacular view of the Kremlin. Just as Osipov was about to pass him, the man started walking in his direction, and they collided. Both men dropped their newspapers. "So sorry," Osipov said.
"My fault entirely," the man replied.
They picked up the newspapers and headed off in opposite directions.
Volodya Osipov grinned. As he disappeared in
to the spring night, he started humming the militiaman's Beatles tune again. From Abbey Road, wasn't it? When he got home, he would have to play that record.
Chapter 3
Most of the audience in Carnegie Hall knew the recital would end with a slow piece. That was the way Dmitri Khorashev did things. If you really have an audience with you, you can leave them pianissimo, while they strain to hear every note, desperate not to miss the slightest susurration of your genius. The result may not be the wild, mindless cheering elicited by a thundering cascade of octaves, but in its place you get a deeper response, one that will last long after the final bouquet has been thrown and the piano firmly and dramatically shut.
When Khorashev began the Raindrop Prelude for his third encore, then, the hall was hushed. If you didn't pay attention now, who knew when the old man would play again?
He didn't look like a legendary pianist. His posture at the keyboard made piano teachers wince—arms stiffly in front of him, hands parallel to the keys and scarcely moving. His eyes were half-closed, and his expression could as easily have been produced by boredom as ecstasy. He looked, in fact, more like a kulak than an artist; one could imagine him swilling vodka and bellowing a bawdy song in some Ukrainian tavern after bringing in the wheat harvest. But people paid to listen, not to look. And it was well worth listening to Dmitri Khorashev.
Audiences do not think as one, of course, even while the legendary Khorashev plays Chopin.
In the third balcony, a Juilliard student strained to penetrate the mystery of the man's legato. Was it the pedaling? The fingering? It all sounded so easy—until you tried to do it yourself.
In the fifth row of the orchestra, another legendary pianist, who had played the prelude for over half a century, was convinced that Khorashev's tempo was far too slow, his phrasing syrupy—that Khorashev was, in fact, a show-off, who aimed more to please the masses than to understand the music. This conviction would not, however, prevent the legendary pianist from leaping to his feet at the conclusion of the piece and joining in the ovation. It would not do to appear jealous.
The critic from the Times sat in his aisle seat composing his lead. "Recitals by the emigre pianist Dmitri Khorashev are rare events—far too rare, judging by his stupendous performance in Carnegie Hall yesterday...."
Near the rear of the orchestra, a white-haired man with a deeply lined face sat with his head bent forward and his eyes closed. Was he listening intently to the music, or was he asleep? The people around him were afraid he would start snoring, and that fear was enough to ruin their enjoyment of the piece. He was wearing stained brown pants and an old blue suit coat that was too short for him; his white shirt was dingy and frayed; he grasped a cane in his large left hand. He should have been feeding pigeons in Central Park instead of attending a piano recital, the people around him thought. And if he had to be here, at least he could stay awake.
Two rows behind him, at the very back of the orchestra, a dark-haired man wearing a gray suit stared intently at the sleeping—or listening—old man. If there was music being played, the dark-haired man did not appear to notice it.
And that was the dark-haired man's loss. The piece was not long, not difficult, but it managed to encompass both serene beauty—the beauty of a soft spring shower, perhaps—and grim menace—the menace of an underwater beast, perhaps, reaching to the surface to destroy the beauty. And at the end it all faded, the incessant pulse of eighth notes slowed and stopped, as if the music no longer had the strength to overcome silence.
In Khorashev's performance, the silence lengthened as he allowed the visions a chance to disappear into the mist. And then he slowly raised his hands from the keyboard, his eyes opened wide, and the recital was over. Time for the final applause.
It rained down on him from the balconies, it washed up at him from the orchestra. He stood and bowed and beamed, and let the applause soak in. The audience too was standing, unwilling to leave, unwilling to let him leave.
The critic from the Times was first down the aisle. The white-haired man was a close second; he stumbled past the people in his row, then limped through the swinging doors into the lobby.
The dark-haired man was right behind him. His eyes were narrow and alert; he looked like a dog on the scent. He caught up with the old man in the cream- and rust-colored art deco lobby and laid a hand on his arm. The old man stopped, startled, and stared at him. "Excuse me, Mr. Fulton," the younger man said. "I'd like to talk with you for just a few moments, if you don't mind."
The old man shook his head. "Fulton?" he rasped. "You've made a mistake. My name isn't Fulton."
"Please, Mr. Fulton," the other man persisted. "You're a difficult man to get hold of, and this is rather important."
The old man seemed to become agitated. "Absurd," he muttered. "Mistaken identity. Fulton, indeed." He started to walk away.
The dark-haired man then reached out a hand as if to grab him. Instantly the old man's cane came up and whacked him solidly on the arm. Then the old man rushed out of the lobby into the confusion of Fifty-seventh Street.
The other man pursued him for a moment, but stopped as he saw him dive into a cab and head off past the Russian Tea Room. He noted that the old man's limp had disappeared in his eagerness to escape, and that seemed to be enough for him. He rubbed his arm where the old man's cane had hit it, and he smiled.
Chapter 4
The worst hangovers are those that come from drinking alone for no particular reason. They don't even give you the solace of a pleasant memory as you suffer; there is just the pain, and then the oblivion, and then life starts up again, bloodshot and throbbing.
That was the kind of hangover Bill Sullivan had as he drove along the George Washington Parkway to work. The Virginia countryside was alive with spring, but he didn't notice; all he noticed was that it was hot, and the air conditioning in his Cutlass was broken, and he was already sweating out last night's beer.
Eventually he took the familiar turn off the parkway and drove through the woods to the building that was his life. One guard and then another examined his scarlet ID badge, and then he drove to his assigned space in one of the huge lots. He walked slowly under the hot sun to the side entrance of the building. He thought of the bronze statue of Nathan Hale around front. My only regret is that I have but one liver to give for my country, Sullivan murmured to himself. He went inside and got in line in front of one of the badge-reading machines. He needed a cup of coffee.
After he passed through the machine, he made a quick trip to the cafeteria for the coffee, then went up to his office on the fifth floor. The office was small and windowless. There wasn't much in the way of decoration—just a wilted fern on top of the file cabinet, and two photographs on the walls: a small boy in a hockey uniform, trying and failing to look fierce, and John F. Kennedy, vigorous and statesmanlike in front of an American flag. "Ask not..." the text on the photo ordered Sullivan. There was a pile of cables and reports on Sullivan's desk. He set his coffee down on the desk, took his suit coat off, and glanced through the pile. Then he turned on his terminal and logged into the system. He paged through a couple of screens of information, and then made a call. "Hi, this is Bill Sullivan. Anything in for me from Moscow station?"
"Nothing yet, Bill."
"Lemme know as soon, okay?"
"That's our job."
Sullivan sighed and sipped his coffee. He picked up one of the reports and looked at it. The letters swam in front of his eyes. There would be nothing of interest inside, he knew. Only one thing would interest him today.
It came after lunch, while he was struggling to stay awake. He read quickly through the cable, read it again, then stared at the photographs on the wall. Finally he made another call. "This is Bill Sullivan," he said. "I need ten minutes."
"Sorry, Bill. He's awfully busy this afternoon."
"I don't do this often, Celia. Ten minutes."
There was a brief pause as Celia toted up favors received and owed. He came out in the bla
ck. "Hold on," she said. He held. "Three-thirty," she said when she came back on the line. "Five minutes, max."
"Thanks, Celia. I owe you."
"Don't mention it." But he knew the transaction had been entered, his balance updated. It wouldn't be so easy next time.
As soon as he hung up, he started rehearsing. It probably wouldn't do him any good, but it made him feel a little less nervous. At 3:20 he put on his suit coat and went up to the seventh floor. He took a seat and waited. At 3:50 Celia nodded to him, and his five minutes started.
He went into a large office with a picture window that looked out over budding trees. The man who sat in front of the window was lean and craggy-faced, with hair the color of steel and eyes the color of coal. He wore a three-piece suit and a starched white shirt. Just looking at him made Sullivan start to sweat—not with fear, exactly, but with a sense of helpless inferiority that he was forever trying, and failing, to overcome. Being in Houghton's presence made him feel his belly bulging out over his belt, made him notice the dandruff on his shoulders, made him conscious of everything he wanted to be and was not. It was infuriating; it was devastating.
"Well hello, Bill, what have you got for me today?" Houghton asked in his patrician Harvard accent. Houghton's tone was exactly right: without a hint of condescension, but clearly intimating that the clock was ticking, and Sullivan had better not be wasting his time. He gestured for Sullivan to sit.
Sullivan placed the cable on the desk in front of Houghton and sat. "This came in from Moscow station a couple of hours ago."
Houghton picked it up and read it. "Give me the background here," he said.
Sullivan sighed. He had given Houghton the background before, pieced together from the reports he had received and his more informal sources in Operations. And Sullivan wondered, not for the first time, if beneath the three-piece suit and the aristocratic features Houghton was not really very bright. But it made no difference. Houghton had the picture window, and Sullivan had the wilted fern, and it didn't matter how that had happened. "Krieger has been running this guy Osipov for a couple of years," he said. "Osipov is evidently quite the ladies' man. One of his conquests is Doctor Olga Chukova. And she works at the Popov Institute, where her job is to look after Valentina Borisova. Borisova was in action again, so Osipov pumped the doctor to find out what had happened."
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