The Russian Affair

by Michael Wallner

  But not if his fatherland isn’t Russia, Anna thought. Not if the Central Committee doesn’t represent the instrument of his political convictions and the Ministry of Research fails to come up to his standards of scientific advancement. Maybe enticements reached him from over there, offers that have given him hope of resurrecting, at this late date, his buried life’s dream. Anna was certain that the people over there welcomed only those who brought something with them. Even though Anna had only an inexact notion of how Lyushin’s work fit into the overall structure, she nevertheless understood that her own trip to Dubna had been part of the plan. She was supposed to deceive Kamarovsky about Lyushin’s results.

  She used one hand to fan her burning face, her eyes were red, and on this spring day she was feeling unseasonably hot. Only now did she discover that two plates of cakes and two glasses of lemonade were standing in front of her; she drank half the contents of one of them. Loud shrieking made her look up; the biggest of the peacocks clapped his tail together and made a run at Petya. Still clutching a handful of grass, the boy turned away and took off for the terrace. Close to his goal, he tripped on a sill and fell to the ground, fully expecting the bird to attack him from behind. But the peacock remained at a safe distance from the humans, ascertained that his mission was accomplished, and sauntered back to his peahens. Anna made her way between tables and reached Petya, who was so frightened he didn’t even cry.

  “That’s what you get,” she scolded him. “Come on, now, nothing happened. We’ve got cakes waiting for us. Want some?”

  He let her lead him to the table, where the waiter stood ready with the check fluttering in his hand. Anna paid the check, sat down, and watched Petya as he ate.

  Whom should she inform? Who was capable of soberly assessing her suspicions—for despite her certainty, that was all they were—and taking steps? Certainly not Kamarovsky; confiding in the Colonel was tantamount to throwing Alexey defenseless to the lions. It was too late for her to speak to Alexey himself; he and the delegation were meeting the press at that moment, and after the meeting, they’d go straight to the airport. Petya sat beside Anna, eating happily, his soul at peace. What was she supposed to do with him? She needed freedom of action.

  “I have to make a phone call. Take the last piece with you.”

  “More juice,” Petya mumbled, his mouth full.

  “Later. You’ll get some juice at home.” Anna took his hand and drew him away from the café terrace. She spotted a pay phone on the other side of the ornamental stream and hastened toward it without paying much attention to whether Petya could keep up with her or not.

  “What’s the matter?” he whined.

  “This won’t take long.” Anna kept her eyes straight ahead, ran over the little bridge, dodged two bicyclists, saw someone a little distance away also heading for the telephone booth, snatched Petya off his feet, and ran. Panting, she burst into the booth with Petya in her arms, closed the door, turned her back to the oncoming person, and put the first coin in the slot. She dialed Rosa Khleb’s number. While Anna listened to the ring tone repeat itself unanswered, she admitted to herself that out of all the possibilities, she’d chosen the one that would thwart Alexey’s intentions. If her suspicion were confirmed, he was planning to do something wrong, and it was Anna’s duty to avert damage. Outside, the man who also wanted to use the telephone was only a few steps away. She was about to step out of the booth when she recognized Anton. Petya started to push the door open, but she took him by the hand. Anton looked at them through the glass panes.

  “I have to talk to you,” he said. “Not here. Let’s go to the car.” He pointed at the spiral staircase that led up to the street. Anna stepped out with Petya.

  The boy dragged his feet, unwilling to go farther. “We’ll be home soon,” she said to encourage him. When they reached the street, Anna looked around for the black ZIL.

  Anton indicated the automobile in front of them. “We’re taking this one.” He opened the passenger door of a Zhiguli and pulled the seat forward.

  Stressed as she was, and unable to understand the situation, Anna laid her head back and laughed. The sun shone on her face. “What is this?” she cried, as if it weren’t obvious that Anton was driving his own vehicle instead of the official limousine.

  “It’s as good as new. One point two liters, sixty horsepower, with a radio and genuine synthetic fur.” He reached in and stroked the back of the seat.

  Anna shoved Petya into the back and climbed into the passenger’s seat next to Anton; they were sitting side by side for the first time.

  “Would you like this?” He handed Petya an opened package of chocolates.

  After a questioning look at his mother and a shy one at the stranger, Petya accepted the gift.

  “How long did you save up for this car?” Anna asked.

  “Six years.”

  “How did you track me down?”

  “I went to your home, Comrade. Your father told me where I could find you.”

  “I’m surprised. He doesn’t know you.”

  As though declaring that there was no time for such chitter-chatter, Anton leaned toward her. “But you and I, we’ve known each other for a good while, Anna Viktorovna. We’ve driven down many roads together. Something’s happened.”

  “To Alexey? What? What is it?”

  “He’ll be taking off soon.”

  “So?”

  “I did something for the Deputy Minister. Apparently, I was observed when I did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “I took delivery of certain documents for Alexey Maximovich.” Anton ran his hand over his forehead and through his oiled hair. “Someone saw me do that.”

  “Who?”

  “Star-Eyes.”

  At first, the name and the man who’d spoken it didn’t fit together. So Anton was in on it, too? Was everyone she knew involved in this affair? “What does that mean?” she asked in a whisper.

  “The Colonel probably had a suspicion he couldn’t substantiate—until today.” Anton cleared his throat. “Now things look different.”

  Anna saw her line of thought confirmed in Anton’s words. “Alexey wants to defect,” she said grimly. “He wants to betray his country.”

  “He only wants to start a new life.”

  “But that’s not possible. You have only one life, and you have to face up to it. You can’t change it like a coat.”

  Petya stared in amazement at his impassioned mother. She rubbed his head and tried out a reassuring smile. “We’re talking, we’re just talking,” she said.

  “There’s still time,” said Anton, coming to his real point. “Alexey Maximovich must be warned.”

  “Why? Isn’t he about to take off for his new country? He’ll be in Stockholm in a few hours.”

  “You’re mistaken. The delegation has a twenty-four-hour layover in Riga. It has something to do with an old invitation from the Latvian Central Committee. Bulyagkov’s supposed to give a presentation there.”

  “So why are you coming to me with all this?”

  “I thought …” He lowered his voice. “It seemed to me that the right person to warn the Deputy Minister would be someone he’d listen to, not just someone he trusts, but someone he has feelings for,” Anton said, in a serious, businesslike tone.

  “And that’s supposed to be me? Why?”

  “Because I don’t know anyone else Alexey Maximovich really loves.”

  For a moment, there was silence in the little car.

  “Who’s Alexey Maximovich?” Petya asked.

  “An old friend.”

  “If he’s a friend of yours, why don’t I know him?”

  “He’s … he’s not here anymore.” Anna looked out the window.

  Anton opened the door. With a glance at the child, he signaled her to step outside.

  “We’re already outside,” she said, getting out of the car.

  They talked over the Zhiguli’s roof. “We can be in Riga in thirteen hours,�
� Anton said, as matter-of-factly as if he were proposing an outing to the Kremlin.

  “We?” Anna made an effort to grasp the lunacy of the proposal. “And what do we do there?”

  “You talk to him.”

  “If Kamarovsky knows what’s going on, he sent his people there a long time ago.”

  “He hasn’t done that, Comrade.”

  “Why not?”

  “The current state of his health doesn’t allow it.”

  “Have you done something to him?”

  Anton smiled at her dramatic imagination. “The Colonel is an epileptic.” He saw surprise, almost shock, on her face. “You didn’t know?”

  “How could I? Our meetings …” She fell silent.

  “We have to make use of this grace period.”

  “It’s not just Kamarovsky. He’s certainly smuggled a couple of his people into the delegation, and they can draw similar conclusions.”

  “I don’t think so. There’s a particular, crucial point that the Committee for State Security has remained unaware of until today.” Anton gave the boy in the car a friendly look.

  “Please explain what you mean.”

  “I’d be glad to, Comrade. But we don’t have time. You must decide right away. Otherwise, I’m going on my own.”

  “In this car?” she asked, almost amused.

  “Don’t underestimate my faithful Zhiguli. The gas tank’s already full.”

  “Why not just call Alexey on the telephone?”

  “In a hotel in Riga?” He tilted his head to one side. “You know why that’s a bad idea.”

  Anna noticed that Petya was making signals to her through the window. She put her hand on the glass and answered his finger language. “I can’t, Anton.”

  “In all this time, Alexey Maximovich has never asked anything of you. He isn’t asking anything now, either. I’m asking you. I’m begging you to save Alexey Maximovich Bulyagkov’s life.”

  Anna looked up at the tree in whose shadow the automobile was parked and saw that they were under a venerable Russian silverberry. Then her eyes slid down to her own fingers, which seemed to be holding Petya’s hand through the glass. She asked Anton why he was so sure of reaching his goal; after all, there was a border in the way.

  “I’m a driver,” he said with a smile. “I’ve been a driver for so long I can hardly remember the time before I started. If there’s anything I understand, it’s driving.”

  Anna didn’t want to be taken in again. She was tormented by the feeling that this affair would never end and that as long as she had anything to do with Alexey, her life would be turbulent and hopeless. Even now, when she was supposed to be free of him, he was dragging her back, pulling her behind him, entangling her in his guilt, giving her qualms, and she wanted out, she wanted to strip all that off like a soiled dress. But it was only an affair, she thought, kept up against my will—an affair that had already damaged various aspects of her life. What would have to happen before she could say the thing was finished, over, done with, one way or another? And so she was standing there, looking back and forth from the silverberry tree to her son in the backseat.

  She cast about for a gentle way to tell Anton that his proposal was ludicrous and she wasn’t available. Anton’s hair was stiff with brilliantine, but as she turned her gaze to his questioning face, the wind tousled him and blew a lock onto his forehead. This little change had an effect: Anna looked at him no longer as Alexey’s appendage but as an independent person.

  “I’m going to take Petya home now,” she said. “Wait for me in the little street.” She bent down, opened the back door, slid the passenger’s seat forward, and helped her son out of the car. “Are you hungry?” she asked. Petya shook his head. “Do you want to go home?”

  They walked off together, hand in hand.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Nagged by the impression that she’d missed something crucial, Rosa Khleb stood by the unconscious patient’s bedside. The KGB’s elephant, the man who’d taught them all, lay before them in a pale blue hospital gown, felled by the illness people had whispered about for decades. Rosa and two colleagues found themselves in Doctor Shchedrin’s clinic, in the section reserved for special cases. The room’s furnishings were dignified and the prevailing silence extraordinary for a place in the heart of the city center. Outside, a young birch tree gave a touch of faux rurality to the scene.

  Rosa’s cogitations had yielded no conclusions. Almost mechanically, she’d checked the validity of her visa, which she’d been granted because of her work as a foreign correspondent. One of the two possible escape routes went through Prague, the other through Dresden; there was no getting around a stop in one of the Soviet Union’s satellite countries. Rosa had the flight times for Dresden in her head. Her passport, the visa, and her press credentials as a reporter for the Moscow Times lay ready in her apartment. No request for foreign travel had been made for her, but that fact alone wouldn’t be enough to arouse suspicion right away. The Khleb had taken many a spontaneous trip, on assignment for the newspaper or in the service of the Colonel.

  It was said that Rosa was so beautiful as a girl that people in her vicinity would start to laugh or cry, because they couldn’t stand it. She’d been called to Moscow to work as a “greeting girl”; when flowers and kisses were to be presented to friendly statesmen, Rosa had been the presenter of choice. She was the blond girl standing behind Kosygin when he addressed the Pioneers, and once, when the selection of “attentive listeners” at an appearance by Brezhnev in a synthetics factory hadn’t seemed sufficiently telegenic, Rosa had been outfitted in work togs and placed in the front row. And thus, at the age of fifteen, she’d shaken the General Secretary’s hand.

  Rosa’s beauty increased with each passing year; she became breathtaking and desirable, but her state propaganda assignments occupied her so extensively that she hardly had time for private offers. These were too numerous to count, some of them pushy, some polished, but no one could boast of any success. The blond, all-Russian girl was still a virgin when Kamarovsky received permission to train her for work in his department. He didn’t go about it the way he usually did with future adepts—promises, intimidation of the parents, or blackmail because of past misdeeds. A. I. Kamarovsky counted on the seventeen-year-old’s intelligence and vanity. When she appeared as a pretty ornament for the clown in the Russian National Circus, Kamarovsky waited for her behind the big tent in an official government car and took her to the Turkmenyev, a nightspot whose doors remained closed to ordinary comrades. Kamarovsky gave himself out as a big wheel with some numinous foreign committee and offered Rosa the possibility of accompanying him on a tour as a “friendship ambassadress.” In spite of her popularity, Rosa Khleb had so far been a decorative face known only within the Soviet Union; when Kamarovsky offered her a broader opportunity, she showed even more enthusiasm than he’d hoped. He was amazed at how hard-nosed the young woman was when she spoke about putting herself on display, how accurately, even back then, she assessed herself and her value for the apparat. It had been child’s play for him to transform his project into reality; a “finder’s fee” forestalled Rosa’s parents from worrying about her.

  And so she had come into Kamarovsky’s service and was at his side on the tour, which took them exclusively to Western countries. He was cautious enough not to burn Rosa out with normal missions; she didn’t infiltrate anything, and she didn’t have to sleep with Western politicians to pick their brains; the Colonel put his money, as it were, on her virginity. With her, he had something inviolate on his team, and therefore her assignments were of a particular nature. During a security crisis, negotiations led to an exchange of undercover agents. Fourteen men were set free on the far side of a bridge in the dark of night; when they reached their native soil, a blond angel was there to welcome them. Kamarovsky liked toying with such romanticism and used the beautiful young woman as a figurehead. Victory, freedom, revolution—hadn’t such concepts always been symbolized by women, with
scabbards slung from their waists and swords in their hands? Kamarovsky didn’t flinch from dressing Rosa in attire appropriate to those iconic images. The uniform of an officer in the Red Army was tailored to her measurements, as was some traditional Cossack garb.

  At some point, however, there came the day when Rosa’s youthful magic had completed its service; she herself noticed this later than the Colonel did. Even the prettiest outfits could no longer hide the fact that she wasn’t a girl anymore. When Rosa, too, became aware of this, Kamarovsky unscrupulously exploited her disorientation. The KGB was all she knew; a return to normal life would have necessitated the kind of trivial activities for which she’d long since been spoiled. The Colonel had Rosa go to journalism school, and while she was still taking courses, he employed her in assignments related to the news services. He lifted his prohibition on her having her first boyfriend, who was himself a journalist and, naturally, Kamarovsky’s man. As expected, a normal sex life did away with her aura of inviolability; from that point on, she was only one of the attractive women on external duty. She slept with a Western diplomat, compromised him as directed, and produced the desired results. However, Rosa Khleb’s youthful fame precluded planting her as a decoy in some Western embassy, and therefore she was given short, concise assignments, among them the recruiting of the house painter Anna Nechayevna. It had taken Rosa only two meetings to gain Anna’s trust and deliver her to the Colonel.

  What neither he nor anyone else in Moscow knew was that Rosa’s abilities had also attracted notice outside her own sphere. During one of her trips as a foreign correspondent, she allowed some harmless banter with a Swedish Ministry official to turn into something more. The Swede turned out to be in the service of the French, who subtly conveyed to Rosa that it made no sense for a stream of interesting information to flow in only one direction; the heavier the traffic, the greater the likelihood that both parties could profit from it. Of course, money played a role in Rosa’s decision, but even more important was her desire for revenge on Kamarovsky, who’d pushed her into an irreversible career. Maybe it was also that she’d been to Paris, Stockholm, and Vienna a few times too often to be able to forget the delights of private property. From that point on, the Khleb played a childish game with herself: Since she confided secret details about her department to her Swedish lover and only to him, she could maintain the illusion that she was simply chatting with a friend and not committing treason. In return for her information, she received payment from the French, which the Swede concealed by means of discreet transfers to a Stockholm account. One day, in the course of a meeting in Switzerland, he informed her that a man at the second level of the Soviet hierarchy wanted to change sides. She’d been assigned to establish contact with this man, to learn his intentions, and to find out what he intended to bring with him. A complicated ritual had been required to make Alexey Bulyagkov pay attention to her and then to convince him that she, Rosa, Kamarovsky’s devoted follower, was the person charged with responding to his signal. After long negotiations, Rosa’s suggestion was accepted and Stockholm agreed upon as the best place for Bulyagkov’s defection.