She shook her head bemusedly.
Paranoia, she thought. It must be a genetic trait here.
It begins to seem as much a part of the Russian psyche as officiousness is to a German or stoicism to a Swede. It must also be a virus, borne in the Moscow air. She feared that she was catching it herself.
Take Lesko, for example.
She had expected him to return demanding answers. She felt sure that he would rejoin them, Valentin in tow, having had a full half hour to be alone with his thoughts, and he would place his hands across the back of Leo Belkin's neck.
“Okay, Leo. Time to level”
There would be no waiting for a quiet talk over dinner.
“No more games, Leo.”
He would refrain, in deference to her, from saying “No more bullshit,” but the word would be implicit.
”I want it straight. What the hell are you getting us into?”
But he had done nothing of the sort. If anything, he seemed restored, even pleased with himself.
She knew that look. It usually bespoke some private triumph. It was there each time he came home from one of his German lessons, which she was not supposed to know he was taking. It was there when he fixed a problem with her car after it had baffled the chauffeur. Or when he had bought her some . . .
Of course.
A gift.
This was a department store. She could see a small bulge in the pocket of his topcoat. He had bought her a gift. If so, he had probably bent the law in some way and would, therefore, not give it to her in the presence of their host.
Poor Leo.
He sees a Lesko who is suddenly in high good humor and he has no idea what to make of it. This newly appreciative Lesko had rejoined them at the fountain, carrying on about the architectural glories of GUM, saying that one day it will be all Waldenbooks, Radio Shack, and Sears Roebuck.
Leo had stared in the direction from which Lesko had come as if searching for a clue to his behavior. Next he had shot a questioning glance at Valentin. Valentin could only shrug.
“Ah . . . may I know what brought about this change in you?” he asked.
Also a shrug. “The pause that refreshes, Leo.”
Belkin blinked, not comprehending.
“No big deal. I got something out of my system.”
A cryptic reply. The dual meaning was clear to Elena, but she could see that Leo was struggling with it, attempting to decode it, wondering what could possibly have transpired during his brief absence. What he might have learned.
She sighed inwardly. KGB. CIA. Different names, same disease.
“Come.” She took Lesko's arm, then that of Leo Belkin. “We will start our wedding trip from here.”
26
This is stupid, thought the Sicilian.
All of it.
For the second time in as many hours, he had driven past the little stone boathouse on Lake Zurich. There were no lights inside before. There were none now. Carla Benedict's Volkswagen was still by the stairs that led to her apartment on the second floor. Corsini's car was nowhere in sight He had even telephoned the house to see if Carla, at least, would answer. He would pretend to have misdialed. The phone rang and rang.
So what does this mean? It means that they are someplace else. Maybe having dinner, maybe feeding their damned swans again. More likely, Borovik was right. They went someplace to fuck.
Is it so strange that Corsini has failed to report when expected?
The question is a joke.
With Aldo, it is strange when he does report on schedule. It means that he managed to get all the way to the transmitter without spotting a big pair of tits enroute. Aldo and his tits.
But Borovik says, ”I want him now. Find him.”
He had hoped to avoid talking to Borovik. It was bad enough being told to contact Moscow Center by telephone. Or rather to have Corsini do it. The Sicilian thought he'd better call himself. Find out what's going on here.
Procedure for calling Moscow Center, emergencies only,was to ring the new Press Information Office and then ask to be transferred to a certain Major Viktor. This was Podolsk. The Sicilian did so but, to his instant dismay, they patched him through to Borovik instead.
Podolsk has a stiff neck sometimes, but at least he listens to reason. Get him to Italy and he is almost fun. Borovik, especially lately, is something else entirely. Especially since this wedding.
No. It started before that.
The Sicilian knew when it started. It started when Aldo learned that Mama's Boy would be coming and this was reported to Borovik. That he was invited should have come as no surprise but it made Borovik crazy.
Why? Who knows.
Aldo seems to know, but he is irritatingly coy about it. He says that it is a personal matter. He says that to speak of it would be to be betray a confidence. He says that it has nothing to do with our business. ;.
Fine.
Then don't involve me.
The Sicilian had refused to go anywhere near the wedding, using the excuse that someone might show up who knew him. As it happened, several did.
Now Aldo tries to make light of it. He says that all Borovik wants to know is why this wedding trip to Russia. It is not all. The first question Borovik asked was if Banner-man intended to accompany them. Is this a reasonable question? When he asks it you can hear the hatred in his voice. When the answer is no, what you hear is disappointment. It is like the grumbling of a cat when the mouse has safely reached its hole.
Today, once again, the Sicilian could hear that hatred. This was not a good thing. But he did not argue with Borovik. He wanted to get off the line before Borovik forgot himself and spoke a name. Borovik's end might be secure— stress might—but his was certainly not.
He was sorely tempted to remind Borovik that a flash-code communicator is not a toy. Nor is it a beeper that says call the office. A signal goes up, it bounces off a satellite, it comes down to Ostankino, the only satellite link in all of Russia, and then it is relayed to Moscow Center. Anyone can hear it along the way. Anyone can pick it up. They can't read the code, perhaps, but they know approximately where it originated and they know that something important must be going on. A legitimate emergency is one thing. “Aldo, call home” is something else. .
“Find him,” he says.
But where?
The maid at Willem Brugg's house says that they left hours ago. There is no answer at Aldo's hotel. What now? Does he get a flashlight and shine it into the back seat of every parked black Audi he sees?
Corsini and Borovik, he thought disgustedly. The two weakest links.
If they had followed the careers for which they were best suited, Corsini would star in pornographic films and Borovik would be a vivisectionist.
With Borovik, pain is everything. Some argue that it's power, but this is nonsense. Power is for the faceless men who pull his strings. To Borovik, power and wealth would mean nothing if he could no longer inflict pain.
With Aldo, it is his cock.
He likes to boast of all the different places in which he has had women. Give me five minutes, he would say, any place, any time, with any normal woman and I will have her sitting in a puddle. Give me ten minutes and I could make a veal chop come.
On one occasion, he told of making love in a church. He was there to watch an infant being baptized, but Aldo had his own idea of what constituted a christening. So he worked his fingers on the woman he was with and soon they are in the confessional and the woman is performing oral sex on him. That, at least, was what he claimed.
The Sicilian could have slapped him cross-eyed for that one. A church is a church.
Lately, however, since his seduction of Carla Benedict, Aldo's behavior has undergone a subtle change. He has never once boasted about sex with Carla. How he makes her gasp and moan. How hard she tries to please him. Instead, he only smiles. He holds his chin a little higher.
At first, the Sicilian thought that Corsini might have developed a measure of sensiti
vity toward an associate who does not happen to share his sexual preferences. But it wasn't that at all. His remarks about fags and queens came as frequently as before.
He might also have realized that this particular associate could be sick to death of hearing about the famous Carla Benedict. Carla and her knife. That overblown reputation. The Sicilian had a reputation of his own, and sometimes— he would admit it—it gnawed at him to always hear that she was so much better.
But it was not either of these that accounted for the change in Aldo. What was happening, the Sicilian feared, was that Aldo has discovered a new path to manhood.
To Corsini, a woman bedded is a woman reduced. If she becomes less, he becomes more. If that woman is a Carla Benedict, he becomes much more. If that is the direction in which his mind has turned, it will truly be time to slap his face before he gets that cock of his cut off.
Which brings us back to finding him, thought the Sicilian.
It struck him that Aldo might be in that house with Carla after all. Doubtful, but possible. His car might have been left elsewhere for any number of reasons. Or he might have parked it inside those double doors in the space where boats are stored for the winter. Hidden it so that he would not be bothered. She might have turned down the volume on her telephone. They could have spent the afternoon making love and then, drowsy from the Bruggs' champagne, have fallen asleep.
The Sicilian grunted aloud. He wiped that picture from his mind, certain that Aldo Corsini has enough sexual fantasies of his own without more being provided for him.
Falling asleep, however, would explain no lights. Also no report to Podolsk. The Sicilian had no wish to call again and have Borovik ask him why he did not at least take a closer look inside the boathouse. Say “boathouse” over an open telephone line and you might as well say Carla's name.
He would drive by once again.
If still no lights, he would go in on foot.
27
At his uncle Pyotr's garage on Kurskaya, Ratmir's hands had at last stopped trembling.
Three glasses of good Georgian cognac had helped. So had some food. Ratmir had told his uncle that he was too upset to eat, but that was before Uncle Pyotr produced a whole half of a chicken, all for him. Also some cold beet salad and two thick slices of bread on which he could have his choice of honey, raspberry preserves, or butter.
Ratmir spread all three on the rich black chorny. His uncle did not object. Just the opposite. He smiled. The smile was because the first taste of this wonderful food had caused his nephew to weep. It was also because Uncle Pyotr liked to show how rich he was from time to time.
He was entitled, thought Ratmir. Uncle Pyotr had always been the smartest one in the family. The war had taught him. Twelve years in the camps had taught him. His whole life had taught him. Uncle Pyotr knew how to do more than survive.
The first thing he did when Ratmir arrived was to clean the blood from the sleeves of his jacket. Ratmir had not even realized that it was there. He knew that there was blood on his mallet, however, and he was about to throw it into his uncle's coal stove, but Uncle Pyotr said no. This wastes a good tool.
Instead,Uncle Pyotr washed the mallet and then dried it with a welding torch. In the end, the mallet was a little charred but it was otherwise good as new. As for Ratmir's clothing, his uncle had rinsed out the stains with cold water and, for the few that still showed a little, he smeared them with engine grease. No one is surprised, he said, that a taxi driver has a little grease on him. And no one will look for blood under grease.
Next, after the first cognac, Uncle Pyotr chipped a large piece of ice from his cooler and told Ratmir to hold it against his cheek. The cheek had an angry bruise from when it banged against the roof of his taxi.
“Are you sure this man is dead?” Uncle Pyotr asked.
“He is dead.”
“You have seen men die? How are you so sure?”
”I have heard engines cough and die. The sound was the same.”
Uncle Pyotr nodded, satisfied.
He found some clean grease and rubbed it on Ratmir's scalp, which was extremely tender where his hair had been pulled out in clumps. He rubbed a little more grease on the back and sides so that it would look like hair oil. Then he rearranged Ratmir's hair, combing it so that the gaps would be hidden.
Ratmir did not know what he would have done without his Uncle Pyotr.
Count on him, he thought, to think of everything.
Uncle Pyotr was so smart.
He was also, by far, the richest of them. His garage was very small, barely more than a shed, but there were always cars waiting outside because everyone knew that he was an honest man and that his prices were fair. For most jobs he would take a down payment of perhaps a bottle of vodka, and then he would give his customer a list of things with which he could pay off the balance. For big jobs, perhaps a fur coat or a Japanese television set. He would tell you what he needed. Often he would even tell you where to get it. Almost always this would be from the apartment of a former Communist official or that of a known informer. Meantime, Uncle Pyotr himself would steal the parts he needed.
He was not sent to the camps for stealing. He was sent because one time Stalin was giving a speech at Dynamo Stadium and Uncle Pyotr, who was trucked there from his factory to help fill the seats, was yawning throughout the speech and was the first to stop clapping when Stalin finished. This was witnessed by one of those tedious party women who speak only in slogans and who had a private grudge against Uncle Pyotr because she had once given him a stupid order and he told her that if she shaved her upper lip and clipped the hairs growing out of her moles, her face would look less like an armpit.
This woman had bided her time. Now she denounced him for insulting Stalin. Next day he was arrested. A magistrate, hearing that he had worked a double shift before going to Dynamo Stadium, let him off with a warning. But this woman got to her district party boss and word came down that an example should be made of him. The same magistrate had him brought back in and gave him two years. By the time Uncle Pyotr finished expressing his views on this subject, the sentence had grown to twelve years.
In those days, this was not so unusual. Everyone denouncing everyone else. Children reporting on their parents. Getting medals for it. Being held up as heroes.
But, before this, Uncle Pyotr had been a genuine hero. Early in the great Patriotic War he was revealed to be such a good shot and so patient under fire that his colonel sent him back for training as a sniper. He was back in time for Stalingrad. In that one battle alone he killed more than one hundred German and Rumanian soldiers and for that he was awarded his country's highest medal by none other than Nikita Khrushchev, who was then a lieutenant general.
Afterward, Khrushchev was photographed standing with Uncle Pyotr and admiring his rifle. He sent Uncle Pyotr a signed copy of that photograph with a note saying that they must go hunting together when the war is over. But five years later this Hero of the Soviet Union is sent to the gulag over nothing.
In the camps, he met other men who had no idea why they were there. One of these learned much later that he was there because he wiped his ass with a piece of newspaper that had Stalin's picture on it.
What had happened was this:
One day, he is in his outhouse, shitting. Meanwhile, the door is open because he is talking to a man he thought was his friend. He tears off strips of newspaper to wipe himself. His friend, who happened to owe him two goats, sees that he is wiping himself with Stalin's face and sees a chance to cancel the debt. Next thing you know, this man gets ten years for anti-Soviet activity.
Uncle Pyotr only got out because Khrushchev came to power and had already made his speech about Stalin's crimes. Some relatives wrote to him and asked him if he remembered the famous sniper from Stalingrad and his promise to go hunting with him. Khrushchev did. He made good his promise. He also got the ass-wiper released.
After this, no one should be surprised that Uncle Pyotr hates all Communist
s unless they happen to be named Khrushchev. Or that he steals from them. The woman who denounced him was getting her apartment stripped clean every few months and all her pension checks stolen until she finally put a plastic bag over her head. The man who .denounced his friend for two goats moved out of Moscow as soon as he was found out. This was too bad, thought Ratmir. He should have been drowned in that same outhouse.
Ratmir poured another cognac and picked at the carcass of the chicken. There was also a little beef and some other foods in the cooler. Uncle Pyotr said he could help himself to anything but the cheese and coffee because they were both for trade.
The meat, he knew, was from Uncle Pyotr's monthly food package which he gets for having been a “repressed person.” Everyone who went to Stalin's labor camps is entitled. He also gets a pension and extra ration coupons for being a Hero of the Soviet Union and, for just being a veteran, he gets to buy cheese and yogurt in a special store which is open to him on Sundays. He said that he would try to stop there on the way home. Get more cheese if the lines were not too long.
After he stops at a kiosk and makes his phone call.
After he calls the police.
He will call the police headquarters of the Krasno-Presnensky district because GUM is in that district.
Uncle Pyotr will not give his true name, of course. But he says that it is always better to give a name and address than to give nothing, because when you give nothing they are right away suspicious and they try to trace your call. Knowing Uncle Pyotr, he will probably give the name and address of some Communist or informer.
He will say that he was just leaving GUM and he witnessed a confrontation which he thought should be reported. There was this one man, fat, very short hair, wearing a fleece-lined jacket. He seemed to be watching two other men. He seemed to be matching their faces to some photographs he was holding. Of the two other men, one was young, not so big, and the other was not so young but he was very big and he looked like a foreigner.
Bannerman's Promise Page 19