17
MANHATTAN COFFEE OFFERED a distinctly Russian improvement on Starbucks: overstuffed velvet chairs rather than wood; Formica tables in every color of the Day-Glo rainbow; thumping techno Russkipop rather than bland world music; and, of course, a full menu and full bar, complete with an array of Cuban cigars and—the season’s current fad—hookahs with your choice of filter liquid: water, juice, vodka, or red wine. The liquid, of course, had no effect on the tobacco’s flavor, nor did it ever get hot enough to even give off intoxicating fumes: the point was to let everybody see not only that you could afford to use a bottle of French wine as, effectively, bong water, but that you were discerning enough to choose a Margaux or a Pomerol. Two men with competitively thick necks and granite-hewn physiques at a corner table puffed cigars only a little smaller than pool cues, as their young, pneumatic, and fully paid-for “dates” shared a Macallan hookah. This marked them as climbers: single malt was last year; this year everyone had switched to Armagnac or Pineau des Charentes.
At 6:45 there was still no sign of Mina, and Jim was starting to draw grumbles and attention sitting alone (nobody came to restaurants alone) and nursing a forty-five-minute cup of coffee (the point of going out to eat was to spend freely, conspicuously, and to gorge). A waitress walked past with a steaming bowl of pelmeni, and the smell seemed to carve out a hole inside him: he remembered that he had not yet eaten today. He ordered a sendvitch filadelfski—salted salmon, pickled cucumbers, and tomatoes on black bread, topped with sour cream and dill—and a large Sibirskaya Corona.
He had a premonition he might be in for a long night, so he got a pack of Winstons as well. Smoking, while it did eventually kill you, was better than anything ever invented for killing time, for making one feel productive while accomplishing nothing. The ability of cigarettes to ward off boredom with just a match and a few deep breaths was ultimately far more addictive to restless gamblers like Jim than nicotine ever could be.
By seven thirty Jim had finished his sandwich and his second beer. He felt that familiar tug inside pulling him toward ordering a whiskey and settling in for the night. He had noticed, not without a tinge of worry, that he often grew jittery and uneasy when nighttime approached and he hadn’t yet taken the edge off the day with a drink. Of equal concern was his propensity to continue once he started, which he would have done tonight, had Mina not chosen that moment to stride through the front door. She had pulled her hair back and put on light makeup, a dress with a plunging neckline, and an elegant long coat. She looked dressed for a night out, but as she approached Jim’s table, her clenched jaw and white knuckles where she grabbed her purse showed something was wrong. She looked calm, coiled, purposeful, wonderful, like she might bite and draw blood.
He rose and pulled out a chair for her, and she kissed him on the cheek and ran a hand up and down his arm. “You look great. What was that for?”
“I’m your girlfriend, remember?” she said as she sat down, dropped a hand over his, and flashed an obliging smile across the table. “I dressed up because we’re going to meet your boss.”
“I guess we are. And I guess you are. Is everything okay? Why were you so late? Do you need anything to eat? Drink? Should we go? I’ll just settle up here.” He began to raise his arm to signal a waitress when Mina pulled it back down.
“You need to calm down and stop talking, first. Everything is not okay,” she said. She clasped her hands in front of her on the table, looked directly at him, and leaned in close. “We have a problem. The Russians know.”
Jim felt an icicle drop down his chest. “Know what?”
“About the disappearances. And they know that we know. Apparently one of our monitors was less discreet than he should have been. He broke into the dacha of a scientist who he thought had vanished. It turns out he was just sleeping. And it turns out this particular scientist had a fondness for hunting weapons and really didn’t like being woken up by a foreigner with lock picks.”
“By one of ours? An American?”
“No. This one had a Belgian passport. It doesn’t matter where he’s actually from; he’s passing himself off as Belgian and Belgian he’ll stay. But his consulate didn’t know anything about him, and so naturally they wanted to stay as uninvolved as possible. They sent the Russians over to us, which is where they would eventually have come anyway. Why I was late: Trudy had me listening to her meeting with the GRU. It was not a happy one.”
“Do they know about me?” Jim hoped his voice didn’t rise too much, didn’t grow too sharp and anxious at the end of that question.
“If they don’t they will soon. If we knew enough to keep an eye on Katerina Lisitsova, it’s a better than even guess they did, too. That’s assuming she didn’t work for them. If she did, then yes, I would imagine they know about you. You do seem to have your lucky socks on, though.”
“Lucky? You think I’m a spy; they think I’m a spy: what’s lucky?” Over the speakers came a grating techno version of “My Friend Has Left for Magadan,” a Vysotsky song about being sent to the gulag. Even the jackhammer beat and the unvarying bass could not entirely obliterate the humanity, warmth, and depth of his voice. Jim failed to appreciate the irony in song choice, though.
“You’re here, right?” Mina pointed out.
“Just be happy I’m alive, is that it?”
“No, you’re here. At the restaurant. The GRU requested an emergency meeting with Trudy right after I hung up. You weren’t at the office or at your apartment; you were someplace nobody thought to look.”
“Are you saying I can’t go home tonight?”
“No, not necessarily. But I’d be careful. Look: if they knew about you, they probably would have gone to your home and office first thing. They didn’t, right? So chances are you’re still clear. With them.”
“Not with you?”
“You’re on your way,” she said, with a mischievous smile. She brushed her hair back from her face without taking her eyes off him. Only then did two things occur to him: first, that she wielded her power well, which meant that he could trust her. And second, that she liked to look good. “But we need to get you out of Russia, and we need to do it soon.”
“Great. I’m ready when you are.”
“I said soon, not now. You need to take me over to Dave and Sara Willow’s house first.”
“You know, it might not mean anything.”
“What’s that, Jim?”
“His printing out the interviews. Maybe he just wanted to take them home to read.”
“Or maybe not. Do you have a better place to start?”
“No, no. I guess I don’t. Can I ask you one other thing before we go?”
She nodded and took a compact out of her purse. She looked at herself in the mirror rather than at him.
“I want to find Kaisa—Katerina—whoever. I want to know.”
“Know what?”
“Everything. I want to know . . .”
“I understand, Jim, how you feel, but we’re past that.”
He felt his back and hands tense and his face get hot like it did whenever he grew angry. He wanted to yell something, pound the table and tell her no, she didn’t understand how he felt. They wanted two different things. Jim had wanted redemption; he wanted to do something right, to put something right for once, and knowing Kaisa was part of that. Besides, he felt that Mina’s suspicions about her were wrong.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Jim, I’m not going to . . .”
“Yes, you are. Or I’m not going to. Look, you can do what you like to me; I haven’t done anything wrong, and I’m helping you. Just tell me if you know where she is. I’m not asking you to take me there; I just want to know if she’s okay. Or if she’s really working for them.”
Mina again drew her hair back from her face and tilted her chin upward, considering. Finally she gave a conciliatory nod. “We don’t think she’s one of theirs. We don’t know, of course, but we don’t think so.”
“Why not?” Jim interrupted. He was trying to take her measure, but something about her demeanor this evening seemed glass-fronted, impossible to grip.
“Because we have no evidence of it.” She shrugged. “From what we know of her background, she has no training; from what we know of her family, she’s inclined to be skeptical toward her government. Now, none of that argues definitively one way or the other, and we would of course like to talk to her, but we don’t know.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“She’s at home. Or at least she was when I left this evening. She and her mother. Rodion spends religious holidays with a friend of his, a monk of some kind, at Sergiev Posad. He’s due back tomorrow. But Katerina is fine. We’re watching.”
“Another Belgian?”
She shrugged.
“How are you watching? Aren’t the Russians watching, too? Wouldn’t they see you?”
She shrugged again.
“How do I know you’re watching? How do I know she’s fine?”
“Because I told you,” she said, standing up and dropping a few hundred rubles on the table. “And you can’t. Now, let’s go. We’re late enough.”
He helped her into her coat and held the door open for her. Outside she shivered and drew up against him. “If everything goes well,” she said quietly, looking down at the icy sidewalk as they walked, “we’ll have a quick chat with your friends, and then maybe you’ll be home by breakfast. Maybe we’ll talk to a few more people tomorrow and you’ll be home by dinner. If everything doesn’t go well, or if you’ve been less than honest with us, then, old neighborhood or not, you’ll die in Lefortovo. We’ll leave you here and give you to them.
“Now, hold on to me like you actually want to,” she said with a false sweetness, pulling his arm around her waist. “You never know who’s watching; they might be out for a walk, too. But if you move that hand down at all I’ll break your wrist.”