On the day Dimka’s divorce became final, there was a meeting of top Kremlin aides to discuss the crisis in Czechoslovakia.
Dimka was bucked. He longed to marry Natalya, and now one major obstacle was out of the way. He could hardly wait to tell her the news, but when he arrived at the Nina Onilova Room several other aides were already there, and he had to wait.
When she came in, with her curly hair falling around her face in the way he found so enchanting, he gave her a big smile. She did not know what it was for, but she smiled back happily.
Dimka was almost as happy about Czechoslovakia. The new leader in Prague, Alexander Dubcek, had turned out to be a reformer after Dimka’s own heart. For the first time since Dimka had been working in the Kremlin, a Soviet satellite had announced that its version of Communism might not be exactly the same as the Soviet model. On April 5 Dubcek had announced an action program that included freedom of speech, the right to travel to the West, an end to arbitrary arrests, and greater independence for industrial enterprises.
And if it worked in Czechoslovakia it might work in the USSR too.
Dimka had always thought that Communism could be reformed—unlike his sister and the dissidents, who believed it should be scrapped.
The meeting began, and Yevgeny Filipov presented a KGB report that said bourgeois elements were attempting to undermine the Czech revolution.
Dimka sighed heavily. This was typical of the Kremlin under Brezhnev. When people resisted their authority, they never asked whether there were legitimate reasons, but always looked for—or invented—malign motives.
Dimka’s response was scornful. “I doubt if there are many bourgeois elements left in Czechoslovakia, after twenty years of Communism,” he said.
As evidence Filipov produced two pieces of paper. One was a letter from Simon Wiesenthal, director of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, praising the work of Zionist colleagues in Prague. The other was a leaflet printed in Czechoslovakia calling for Ukraine to secede from the USSR.
Across the table, Natalya Smotrov was derisive. “These documents are such obvious forgeries as to be laughable! It’s not remotely plausible that Simon Wiesenthal is organizing a counterrevolution in Prague. Surely the KGB can do better than this?”
Filipov said angrily: “Dubcek has turned out to be a snake in the grass!”
There was a grain of truth in that. When the previous Czech leader became unpopular, Dubcek had been approved by Brezhnev as a replacement because he seemed dull and reliable. His radicalism had come as a nasty shock to Kremlin conservatives.
Filipov went on. “Dubcek has allowed newspapers to attack Communist leaders!” he said indignantly.
Filipov was on weak ground here. Dubcek’s predecessor, Antonín Novotný, had been a crook. Now Dimka said: “The newly liberated newspapers revealed that Novotný was using government import licenses to buy Jaguar cars that he then sold to his party colleagues at a huge profit.” He pretended incredulity. “Do you really want to protect such men, Comrade Filipov?”
“I want Communist countries to be governed in a disciplined and rigorous way,” Filipov replied. “Subversive newspapers will soon start demanding Western-style so-called democracy, in which political parties representing rival bourgeois factions create the illusion of choice but unite to repress the working class.”
“Nobody wants that,” said Natalya. “But we do want Czechoslovakia to be a culturally advanced country attractive to Western tourists. If we crack down and tourism declines, the Soviet Union will be forced to pay out even more money to support the Czech economy.”
Filipov sneered: “Is that the Foreign Ministry view?”
“The Foreign Ministry wants a negotiation with Dubcek to ensure that the country remains Communist, not a crude intervention that will alienate capitalist and Communist countries alike.”
In the end the economic arguments prevailed with the majority around the table. The aides recommended to the Politburo that Dubcek be questioned by other Warsaw Pact members at their next meeting in Dresden, East Germany. Dimka was exultant: the threat of a hard-line purge had been warded off, at least for the moment. The thrilling Czech experiment in reformed Communism could continue.
Outside the room, Dimka said to Natalya: “My divorce has come through. I am no longer married to Nina, and that’s official.”
Her response was muted. “Good,” she said, but she looked anxious.
Dimka had been living apart from Nina and little Grigor for a year. He had his own small place, where he and Natalya snatched a few hours of togetherness once or twice a week. It was unsatisfactory to both of them. “I want to marry you,” he said.
“I want the same.”
“Will you talk to Nik?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Soon.”
“What are you scared of?”
“I’m not frightened for myself,” she said. “I don’t care what he does to me.” Dimka winced, remembering her split lip. “It’s you I’m worried about,” she went on. “Remember the tape recorder man.”
Dimka remembered. The black market trader who had cheated Natalya had been so badly beaten that he ended up in hospital. Natalya’s implication was that the same might happen to Dimka if she asked Nik for a divorce.
Dimka did not believe this. “I’m not some lowlife criminal, I’m right-hand man to the premier. Nik can’t touch me.” He was 99 percent sure of this.
“I don’t know,” Natalya said unhappily. “Nik has high-up contacts too.”
Dimka spoke more quietly. “Do you still have sex with him?”
“Not often. He has other girls.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“No!”
“Does he?”
“Not much.”
“His pride. He’ll be angry to think I could prefer another man.”
“I’m not afraid of his anger.”
“I am. But I will talk to him. I promise.”
“Thank you.” Dimka lowered his voice to a whisper. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Dimka returned to his office and summarized the aides’ meeting for his boss, Alexei Kosygin.
“I don’t believe the KGB, either,” Kosygin said. “Andropov wants to suppress Dubcek’s reforms, and he’s fabricating evidence to support that move.” Yuri Andropov was the new head of the KGB, and a fanatical hard-liner. Kosygin went on: “But I need reliable intelligence from Czechoslovakia. If the KGB is untrustworthy, who can I turn to?”
“Send my sister there,” said Dimka. “She’s a reporter for TASS. In the Cuban missile crisis she sent Khrushchev superb intelligence from Havana via the Red Army telegraph. She can do the same for you from Prague.
“Good idea,” said Kosygin. “Organize it, will you?”
• • •
Dimka did not see Natalya the next day, but the day after that she phoned just as he was leaving the office at seven.
“Did you talk to Nik?” he asked her.
“Not yet.” Before Dimka could express his disappointment she went on: “But something else happened. Filipov came to see him.”
“Filipov?” Dimka was astonished. “What does a Defense Ministry official want with your husband?”
“Mischief. I think he told Nik about you and me.”
“Why would he do that? I know we’re always clashing in meetings, but still . . .”
“There’s something I haven’t told you. Filipov made a pass at me.”
“The stupid prick. When?”
“Two months ago, at the Riverside Bar. You were away with Kosygin.”
“Incredible. He thought you might go to bed with him just because I was out of town?”
“Something like that. It was embarrassing. I told him I wouldn’t sleep with him if he were the last man in Moscow. I probably should have been gentler.”
“You think he talked to Nik for revenge?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“What did Nik say to you?”
“Nothing. That’s what worries me. I wish he’d bust my lip again.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m afraid for you.”
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“Don’t walk home, drive.”
“I always do.”
They said good-bye and hung up. Dimka put on his heavy coat and fur hat and left the building. His Moskvitch 408 was in the Kremlin car park, so he was safe there. He drove home, wondering whether Nik would have the nerve to ram his car, but nothing happened.
He reached his building and parked on the street a block away. This was the moment of greatest vulnerability. He had to walk from the car door to the building door under the streetlights. If they were going to beat him up they might do it here.
There was no one in sight, but they might be hiding.
Nik himself would not be the one to carry out the attack, Dimka presumed. He would send some of his thugs. Dimka wondered how many. Should he fight back? Against two he might have a chance: he was no pussy. If there were three or more he might as well lie down and take it.
He got out of the car and locked it.
He walked along the pavement. Would they burst out of the back of that parked van? Come around the corner of the next building? Be lurking in this doorway?
He reached his building and went inside. Perhaps they would be in the lobby.
He had to wait a long time for the elevator.
When it arrived and the doors closed he wondered if they would be in his apartment.
He unlocked his front door. The place was silent and still. He looked into the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom.
The place was empty.
He bolted the door.
• • •
For two weeks Dimka walked around fearing he could be attacked at any minute. Eventually he decided it was not going to happen. Perhaps Nik did not care that his wife was having an affair; or perhaps he was too wise to make an enemy of someone who worked in the Kremlin. Either way, Dimka began to feel safer.
He still wondered at the spite of Yevgeny Filipov. How could the man even have been surprised that Natalya rejected him? He was dull and conservative and homely-looking and badly dressed: what did he imagine he had to tempt an attractive woman who already had a lover as well as a husband? But clearly Filipov’s feelings had been deeply wounded. However, his revenge seemed not to have worked.
But the main thing on Dimka’s mind was the Czech reform movement that was being called the Prague Spring. It had caused the most bitter Kremlin split since the Cuban missile crisis. Dimka’s boss, Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, was the leader of the optimists, who hoped the Czechs could find a way out of the bog of inefficiency and waste that was the typical Communist economy. Muting their enthusiasm for tactical reasons, they proposed that Dubcek be watched carefully, but that confrontation should be avoided if possible. However, conservatives such as Filipov’s boss, Defense Minister Andrei Grechko, and KGB chief Andropov were unnerved by Prague. They feared that radical ideas would undermine their authority, infect other countries, and subvert the Warsaw Pact military alliance. They wanted to send in the tanks, depose Dubcek, and install a rigid Communist regime slavishly loyal to Moscow.
The real boss, Leonid Brezhnev, was sitting on the fence, as he so often did, waiting for a consensus to emerge.
Despite being some of the most powerful people in the world, the top men in the Kremlin were scared of stepping out of line. Marxism-Leninism answered all questions, so the eventual decision would be infallibly correct. Anyone who had argued for a different outcome was therefore revealed to be culpably out of touch with orthodox thinking. Dimka sometimes wondered if it was this bad in the Vatican.
Because no one wanted to be the first to express an opinion on the record, as always they had to get their aides to thrash things out informally ahead of any Politburo meeting.
“It’s not just Dubcek’s revisionist ideas about freedom of the press,” said Yevgeny Filipov to Dimka one afternoon in the broad corridor outside the Presidium Room. “He’s a Slovak who wants to give more rights to the oppressed minority he comes from. Imagine if that idea starts to get around places such as Ukraine and Belarus.”
As always, Filipov looked ten years out of date. Nowadays almost everyone was wearing their hair longer, but he still had an army crop. Dimka tried to forget for a moment that he was a malicious troublemaking bastard. “These dangers are remote,” Dimka argued. “There’s no immediate threat to the Soviet Union—certainly nothing to justify ham-fisted military intervention.”
“Dubcek has undermined the KGB. He’s expelled several agents from Prague and authorized an investigation into the death of the old foreign minister Jan Masaryk.”
“Is the KGB entitled to murder ministers in friendly governments?” Dimka asked. “Is that the message you want to send to Hungary and East Germany? That would make the KGB worse than the CIA. At least the Americans only murder people in enemy countries such as Cuba.”
Filipov became petulant. “What is to be gained by allowing this foolishness in Prague?”
“If we invade Czechoslovakia, there will be a diplomatic freeze—you know that.”
“So what?”
“It will damage our relations with the West. We’re trying to reduce tension with the United States, so that we can spend less on our military. That whole effort could be sabotaged. An invasion might even help Richard Nixon get elected president—and he could increase American defense spending. Think what that could cost us!”
Filipov tried to interrupt, but Dimka overrode him. “The invasion will also shock the Third World. We’re trying to strengthen our ties with nonaligned countries in the face of rivalry from China, which wants to replace us as leader of global Communism. That’s why we’re organizing the World Communist Conference in November. That conference could become a humiliating failure if we invade Czechoslovakia.”
Filipov sneered: “So you would simply let Dubcek do what he likes?”
“On the contrary.” Dimka now revealed the proposal favored by his boss. “Kosygin will go to Prague and negotiate a compromise—a nonmilitary solution.”
Filipov in his turn put his cards on the table. “The Defense Ministry will support that plan in the Politburo—on condition that we immediately begin preparations for an invasion in case the negotiation should fail.”
“Agreed,” said Dimka, who felt sure the military would make such preparations anyway.
The decision made, they went in opposite directions. Dimka returned to his office just as his secretary, Vera Pletner, was picking up the phone. He saw her face turn the color of the paper in her typewriter. “Has something happened?” he said.
She gave him the receiver. “Your ex-wife,” she said.
Suppressing a groan, Dimka took the instrument and spoke into it. “What is it, Nina?”
“Come at once!” she screamed. “Grisha’s gone!”
Dimka’s heart seemed to stop. Grigor, whom they called Grisha, was not quite five years old, and had not yet started school. “What do you mean, gone?”
“I can’t find him, he’s disappeared, I’ve looked everywhere!”
There was a pain in Dimka’s chest. He struggled to remain calm. “When and where did you last see him?”
“He went upstairs to see your mother. I let him go on his own—I always do, it’s only three floors in the lift.”
“When was that?”
“Less than an hour ago—you have to come!”
“I’m coming. Phone the police.”
“Come quickly!”
“Phone the police, okay?”
“Okay.”
Dimka dropped the phone and left the room. He raced out of the building. He had not paused to put on his coat, but he hardly noticed the cold Moscow air. He jumped into his Moskvitch, shoved the steering-column gearshift into first, and tore out of the compound. Even with his foot flat to the floor, the little car did not go fast.
Nina still had the apartment they had lived in together at Government House, less than a mile from the Kremlin. Dimka double-parked and ran in.
There was a KGB doorman in the lobby. “Good afternoon, Dmitri Ilich,” the man said politely.
“Have you seen Grisha, my little boy?” said Dimka.
“Not today.”
“He’s disappeared—could he have gone out?”
“Not since I came back from my lunch break at one.”
“Have any strangers entered the building today?”
“Several, as always. I have a list—”
“I’ll look at it later. If you see Grisha, call the apartment immediately.”
“Yes, of course.”
“The police will be here any minute.”
“I’ll send them right up.”
Dimka waited for the elevator. He was slick with perspiration. He was so jumpy he pressed the wrong button and had to wait while the lift stopped at an intermediate floor. When he reached Nina’s floor she was in the corridor with Dimka’s mother, Anya.
Anya was wiping her hands compulsively in her flower-print apron. She said: “He never reached my apartment. I don’t understand what happened!”
“Could he have got lost?” said Dimka.
Nina said: “He’s gone there twenty times before—he knows the way—but yes, he could have got distracted by something and gone to the wrong place, he’s five years old.”
“The doorman is sure he hasn’t left the building. So we just have to search. We’ll knock at every apartment door. No, wait, most of the residents have telephones. I’ll go down and use the doorman’s phone to call them.”
Anya said: “He might not be in an apartment.”
“You two search every corridor and staircase and cleaning closet.”
“All right,” said Anya. “We’ll take the elevator to the top floor and work down.”
They got in the lift and Dimka ran down the stairs. In the lobby he told the doorman what was happening and began to phone apartments. He was not sure how many there were in the building: maybe a hundred? “A little boy is lost, have you seen him?” he said each time his call was answered. As soon as he heard “No” he hung up and dialed the next apartment. He made a note of the apartments where there was no answer or no phone.
He had done four floors without a glimmer of hope when the police arrived, a fat sergeant and a young constable. They were maddeningly calm. “We’ll take a look around,” the sergeant said. “We know this building.”
“It’ll need more than two of you to search properly!” Dimka said.
“We’ll send for reinforcements if necessary, sir,” the sergeant said.
Dimka did not want to spend time arguing with them. He went back to phoning, but he was beginning to think that Nina and Anya had the best chance of finding Grisha. If the boy had wandered into the wrong apartment, surely the occupier would have phoned the doorman by now. Grisha might be going up and down staircases, lost. Dimka wanted to weep when he thought of how scared the little boy would be.
After he had been phoning for another ten minutes, the two policemen came up the stairs from the basement with Grisha walking between them, holding the sergeant’s hand.
Dimka dropped the phone and ran to him.
Grisha said: “I couldn’t open the door, and I cried!”
Dimka picked him up and hugged him, striving not to weep with relief.
After a minute he said: “What happened, Grisha?”
“The policemen found me,” he said.
Anya and Nina appeared from the stairwell and came running, ecstatic with relief. Nina snatched Grisha from Dimka and crushed the boy to her bosom.
Dimka turned to the sergeant. “Where did you find him?”
The man looked pleased with himself. “Down in the cellar, in a storeroom. The door wasn’t locked, but he couldn’t reach the handle. He’s had a scare, but otherwise he seems to have come to no harm.”
Dimka addressed the boy. “Tell me, Grisha, why did you go down to the basement?”
“The man said there was a puppy—but I couldn’t find the puppy!”
“The man?”
“Yes.”
“Someone you know?”
Grisha shook his head.
The sergeant put his cap on to leave. “All’s well that ends well, then.”
“Just a minute,” Dimka said. “You heard the boy. A man lured him down there with talk of a puppy.”
“Yes, sir, he told me that. But no crime seems to have been committed, as far as I can see.”
“The child was abducted!”
“Difficult to know exactly what happened, especially when the information comes from one so young.”
“It’s not difficult at all. A man inveigled the child down to the cellar, then abandoned him there.”
“But what would be the point of that?”
“Look, I’m grateful to you for finding him, but don’t you think you’re taking the whole thing rather lightly?”
“Children do go astray every day.”
Dimka began to be suspicious. “How did you know where to look?”
“A lucky guess. As I say, we’re familiar with this building.”
Dimka decided not to voice his suspicions while he was still in a state of high emotion. He turned away from the officer and spoke to Grisha again. “Did the man tell you his name?”
“Yes,” said Grisha. “His name is Nik.”
• • •
Next morning, Dimka sent for the KGB file on Nik Smotrov.
He was in a rage. He wanted to get a gun and kill Nik. He had to keep telling himself to remain calm.
It would not have been difficult for Nik to get past the doorman yesterday. He could have faked a delivery, entered close behind some legitimate residents so that he looked part of the group, or just flashed a Communist Party card. Dimka found it a little more difficult to figure out how Nik could have known that Grisha would be moving from one part of the building to another on his own, but on reflection he decided Nik had probably reconnoitered the building a few days earlier. He could have chatted to some neighbors, figured out the child’s daily schedule, and picked the best opportunity. He had probably paid off those local policemen, too. His aim was to scare Dimka half to death.
He had succeeded.
But he was going to regret it.
In theory, Alexei Kosygin as premier could look at any file he liked. In practice, KGB chief Yuri Andropov would decide what Kosygin could and could not see. However, Dimka felt sure that Nik’s activities, though criminal, had no political dimension, so there was no reason for the file to be withheld. Sure enough, it arrived on his desk that afternoon.
It was thick.
As Dimka suspected, Nik was a black market trader. Like most such men, he was an opportunist. He would buy and sell whatever came his way: flowered shirts, costly perfume, electric guitars, lingerie, Scotch whisky—any illegally imported luxury difficult to obtain in the Soviet Union. Dimka went carefully through the reports, looking for something he could use to destroy Nik.
The KGB dealt in rumors, and Dimka needed something definite. He could go to the police, report what the KGB file said, and demand an investigation. But Nik was sure to be bribing the police—otherwise he could not have got away with his crimes for so long. And his protectors would naturally want the bribes to continue. So they would make sure the investigation got nowhere.
The file contained plenty of material on Nik’s personal life. He had a mistress and several girlfriends, including one with whom he smoked marijuana. Dimka wondered how much Natalya knew about the girlfriends. Nik met business associates most afternoons at the Bar Madrid near the Central Market. He had a pretty wife, who—
Dimka was shocked to read that Nik’s wife was having a long-term affair with Dmitri Ilich “Dimka” Dvorkin, aide to Premier Kosygin.
Seeing his own name felt horrible. Nothing was private, it seemed.
At least there were no pictures or tape recordings.
There was, however, a photo of Nik, whom Dimka had never seen. He was a good-looking man with a charming smile. In the picture he wore a jacket with epaulets, a high-fashion item. According to the notes he was just under six feet tall with an athletic build.
Dimka wanted to pound him into jelly.
He put revenge fantasies out of his mind and read on.
Soon he struck gold.
Nik was buying television sets from the Red Army.
The Soviet military had a colossal budget that no one dared question for fear of being thought unpatriotic. Some of the money was spent on high-technology equipment bought from the West. In particular, every year the Red Army bought hundreds of expensive televisions. Their preferred brand was Franck, of West Berlin, whose sets had a superior picture and great sound. According to the file, most of these TVs were not needed by the army. They were ordered by a small group of mid-ranking officers, who were named in the file. The officers then declared the televisions obsolete and sold them cheaply to Nik, who resold them at a huge price on the black market and shared out the profits.
Most of Nik’s dealings were penny-ante, but this scam had been making him serious money for years.
There was no proof that the story was true, but it made total sense to Dimka. The KGB had reported the story to the army, but an army investigation had turned up no proof. Most likely, Dimka thought, the investigator had been cut in on the deal.
He phoned Natalya’s office. “Quick question,” he said. “What brand of TV do you have at home?”
“Franck,” she said immediately. “It’s great. I can get you one, if you like.”
“No, thanks.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’ll explain later.” Dimka hung up.
He looked at his watch. It was five. He left the Kremlin and drove to the street called Sadovaya-Samotyochnaya.
He had to scare Nik. It would not be easy, but he had to do it. Nik had to be made to understand that he must never, ever, threaten Dimka’s family.
He parked his Moskvitch but did not get out immediately. He recalled the frame of mind he had been in throughout the Cuban missile project, when he had to keep the mission secret at all costs. He had destroyed men’s careers and ruined their lives without hesitation, because the job had to be done. Now he was going to ruin Nik.
He locked his car and walked to the Bar Madrid.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside. He stood still and looked around. It was a bleak modern place, cold and plastic, insufficiently warmed by an electric fire and some photographs of flamenco dancers on the walls. The handful of customers gazed at him with interest. They looked like petty crooks. None resembled the photo of Nik in the file.
At the far end of the room was a corner bar with a door next to it marked PRIVATE.
Dimka strode through the room as if he owned it. Without stopping he spoke to the man behind the bar. “Nik in the back?”
The man looked as if he might be about to tell Dimka to stop and wait, but then he looked again at Dimka’s face and changed his mind. “Yes,” he said.
Dimka pushed open the door.
In a small back room four men were playing cards. There was a lot of money on the table. To one side, on a couch, two young women in cocktail dresses and heavy makeup were smoking long American cigarettes and looking bored.
Dimka recognized Nik immediately. The face was as handsome as the photograph had suggested, but the camera had failed to capture the cold expression. Nik looked up and said: “This is a private room. Piss off.”
Dimka said: “I’ve got a message for you.”
Nik put his cards facedown on the table and sat back. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Something bad is going to happen.”
Two of the card players stood up and turned to face Dimka. One reached inside his jacket. Dimka thought he might be about to draw a weapon. But Nik held up a cautionary hand, and the man hesitated.
Nik kept his eyes on Dimka. “What are you talking about?”
“When the bad thing happens, you’ll ask who’s causing it.”
“And you’ll tell me?”
“I’m telling you now. It’s Dmitri Ilich Dvorkin. He’s the cause of your problems.”
“I don’t have any problems, asshole.”
“You didn’t, until yesterday. Then you made a mistake—asshole.”
The men around Nik tensed, but he remained calm. “Yesterday?” His eyes narrowed. “Are you the creep she’s fucking?”
“When you find yourself in so much trouble that you don’t know what to do, remember my name.”
“You’re Dimka!”
“You’ll see me again,” said Dimka, and he turned slowly and walked out of the room.
As he walked through the bar, all eyes were on him. He looked straight ahead, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment.
He reached the door and went out.
He grinned to himself. I got away with it, he thought.
Now he had to make good on his threat.
He drove six miles from the city center to the Khodynka airfield and parked at the headquarters of Red Army Intelligence. The old building was a bizarre piece of Stalin-era architecture, a nine-story tower surrounded by a two-story outer ring. The directorate had expanded into a newer fifteen-story building nearby: intelligence organizations never got smaller.
Carrying the KGB file on Nik, Dimka went into the old building and asked for General Volodya Peshkov.
A guard said: “Do you have an appointment?”
Dimka raised his voice. “Don’t fuck around, son. Just call the general’s secretary and say I’m here.”
After a flurry of anxious activity—few people dropped by this place without a summons—he was directed through a metal detector and led up in the lift to an office on the top floor.
This was the highest building around and it had a fine view over the roofs of Moscow. Volodya welcomed Dimka and offered him tea. Dimka had always liked his uncle. Now in his midfifties, Volodya had silver-gray hair. Despite the hard blue-eyed stare, he was a reformer—unusual among the generally conservative military. But he had been to America.
“What’s on your mind?” said Volodya. “You look ready to kill someone.”
“I’ve got a problem,” Dimka told him. “I’ve made an enemy.”
“Not unusual, in the circles within which you work.”
“This is nothing to do with politics. Nik Smotrov is a gangster.”
“How did you come to fall foul of such a man?”
“I’m sleeping with his wife.”
Volodya looked disapproving. “And he’s threatening you.”
Volodya had probably never been unfaithful to Zoya, his scientist wife, who was as beautiful as she was brilliant. But that meant he had scant sympathy for Dimka. Volodya might have felt differently if he had been so foolish as to marry someone like Nina.
Dimka said: “Nik kidnapped Grisha.”
Volodya sat upright. “What? When?”
“Yesterday. We got him back. He was only shut in the cellar of Government House. But it was a warning.”
“You have to give up this woman!”
Dimka ignored that. “There’s a particular reason why I’ve come to you, Uncle. There’s a way you could help me and do the army some good at the same time.”
“Go on.”
“Nik is behind a fraud that costs the army millions every year.” Dimka explained about the TV sets. When he had finished he put the file on Volodya’s desk. “It’s all in there—including the names of the officers who are organizing the whole thing.”
Volodya did not pick up the file. “I’m not a policeman. I can’t arrest this Nik. And if he’s bribing police officers, there’s not much I can do about it.”
“But you can arrest the army officers involved.”
“Oh, yes. They will all be in army jails within twenty-four hours.”
“And you can shut down the whole business.”
“Very quickly.”
And then Nik will be ruined, Dimka thought. “Thank you, Uncle,” he said. “That’s very helpful.”
• • •
Dimka was in his apartment, packing for Czechoslovakia, when Nik came to see him.
The Politburo had approved Kosygin’s plan. Dimka was flying with him to Prague to negotiate a nonmilitary solution to the crisis. They would find a way to allow the liberalization experiment to continue while at the same time reassuring the diehards that there was no fundamental threat to the Soviet system. But what Dimka hoped was that in the long term the Soviet system would change.
Prague in May would be mild and wet. Dimka was folding his raincoat when the doorbell rang.
There was no doorman in his building, and no intercom system. The street door was permanently unlocked and visitors walked upstairs to the apartments unannounced. It was not as luxurious as Government House, where his ex-wife was living in their old apartment. Dimka occasionally felt resentful, but he was glad Grisha was near his grandmother.
Dimka opened the door and was shocked to see his lover’s husband standing there.
Nik was an inch taller than Dimka, and heavier, but Dimka was ready to take him on. He stepped back a pace and picked up the nearest heavy object, a glass ashtray, to use as a weapon.
“No need for that,” said Nik, but he stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him.
“Piss off,” said Dimka. “Go now, before you get into any more trouble.” He managed to sound more confident than he felt.
Nik glared at him with hot hatred in his eyes. “You’ve made your point,” he said. “You’re not afraid of me. You’re powerful enough to turn my life to shit. I should be scared of you. All right, I get it. I’m scared.”
He did not sound it.
Dimka said: “What have you come here for?”
“I don’t give a toss for the bitch. I only married her to please my mother, who’s dead now. But a man’s pride is hurt when another man pokes his fire. You know what I mean.”
“Get to the point.”
“My business is ruined. No one in the army will speak to me, let alone sell me TV sets. Men who have built four-bedroom dachas from the money I’ve made for them now walk past me in the street without speaking—those who aren’t in jail.”
“You shouldn’t have threatened my son.”
“I know it now. I thought my wife was opening her legs for some little apparatchik. I didn’t know he was a fucking warlord. I underestimated you.”
“So bugger off home and lick your wounds.”
“I have to make a living.”
“Try working.”
“No jokes, please. I’ve found another source of Western TV sets—nothing to do with the army.”
“Why should I care?”
“I can rebuild the business you destroyed.”
“So what?”
“Can I come in and sit down?”
“Don’t be so fucking stupid.”
Rage flared again in Nik’s eyes, and Dimka feared he had gone too far, but the flame died down, and Nik said meekly: “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll give you ten percent of the profits.”
“You want me to go into business with you? In a criminal enterprise? You must be mad.”
“All right, twenty percent. And you don’t have to do anything except leave me alone.”
“I don’t want your money, you fool. This is the Soviet Union. You can’t just buy anything you want, like in America. My connections are worth far more than you could ever pay me.”
“There must be something you want.”
Until this moment Dimka had been arguing with Nik just to keep him off balance, but now he saw an opportunity. “Oh, yes,” he said. “There is something I want.”
“Name it.”
“Divorce your wife.”
“What?”
“I want you to get a divorce.”
“Divorce Natalya?”
“Divorce your wife,” Dimka said again. “Which of those three words are you having trouble understanding?”
“Fuck me, is that all?”
“You can marry her. I wouldn’t touch her now anyway.”
“If you divorce her, I’ll leave you alone. I’m not a cop, and I’m not running a crusade against corruption in the USSR. I have more important work to do.”
“It’s a deal.” Nik opened the door. “I’ll send her up.”
That took Dimka by surprise. “She’s here?”
“Waiting in the car. I’ll have her things packed up and sent around tomorrow. I don’t want her in my place ever again.”
Dimka raised his voice. “Don’t you dare hurt her. If she’s even bruised, the whole deal is off.”
Nik turned in the doorway and pointed a threatening finger. “And don’t you renege. If you try to screw me I’ll cut off her nipples with the kitchen scissors.”
Dimka believed he would. He suppressed a shudder. “Get out of my flat.”
Nik left without closing the door.
Dimka was breathing hard, as if he had been running. He stood still in the small hall of the apartment. He heard Nik clattering down the stairs. He put the ashtray down on the hall table. His fingers were slippery with perspiration, and he almost dropped it.
What just happened seemed like a dream. Had Nik really stood in this hallway and agreed to a divorce? Had Dimka really scared him off?
A minute later he heard footsteps of a different kind on the stairs: lighter, faster, coming up. He did not go out of the apartment: he felt stuck where he was.
Natalya appeared in the doorway, her broad smile lighting up the whole place. She threw herself into his arms. He buried his face in her mass of curls. “You’re here,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “And I’m never going to leave.”