18
“HEY, THERE , JIM,” Sara sang down the broad half-staircase from her doorway. Jim and Mina advanced up the five flights of stairs in semidarkness, the only light coming through the windows and from the door that Sara held open. Her voice went down and then up on his name, two notes in a syllable. She thought it sounded coquettish and charming; really it sounded like a mother trying to charm a recalcitrant child into doing something he does not want to do. “We’re so glad you called. Sorry we couldn’t meet you, but, you know, on a Sunday night . . .”
She let the sentence trail off, and at the doorway she greeted Jim and Mina with the broad but tight smile of the imposed-upon. She was smaller than Mina, with sharp features, honey-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, and the sinewy, lithe physique of a yoga practitioner. Her eyes were light blue, almost clear; where Mina’s reflected curiosity and reserve, Sara’s seemed hard and judging, with the stock-taking stoniness of a campus radical or a nineteenth-century preacher.
Dave had his hand on Sara’s shoulder, and the four of them just stood staring at one another across the threshold, their chimpanzee grins frozen as each tried to figure out what the other was really doing. Jim was right: they knew he wasn’t the type to just drop by unannounced, especially with a girlfriend whom he had never mentioned before (“Mina . . . She works in sales . . . over visiting from home . . .” “Washington not quite cold enough for ya? Ha-ha-ha”). But neither could they turn him away. And Jim could not imagine that these guileless doofuses in front of him could mastermind anything more complicated than how to speak in academic, freedom-for-the-masses jargon while maintaining a two-car garage, ethical-granola lifestyle. Eventually, though, propriety asserted itself: Dave and Sara stood aside and allowed, if not exactly welcomed, Jim and Mina into their apartment, while Mina reached into her purse for a bottle of wine and some carefully wrapped peonies.
“Well, look at these, Mina!” Sara cooed. “These are lovely, just lovely. ‘Just happened to be in the area,’ huh? You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, you bet,” chirped Dave. “Always welcome over here. Always good to see someone else from home. Gifts totally unnecessary.” He started to lean forward with his big goofy smile, like he was about to hug or collapse into Mina. She even stepped back, but, as usual, he was just stretching: he fell into a bridge against the hallway wall, extending his hamstrings and lower back, grunting with showy exertion. Jim smelled beer on his breath as he exhaled.
“David, stand up,” Sara remonstrated, looking at Mina and Jim as she shook her head and laughed at Dave. “Stop doing that. We have guests. You show them in; I’ll get some drinks.”
“Sorry about that,” Dave said, looking genuinely cowed. He stared at the floor, scratching his beard and shuffling his feet back and forth. “Guess it’s a habit. So you guys were, what, just out strolling, is that it?”
“Yeah, I just wanted to show Mina a quieter side of Moscow. We had a late lunch at the Starlite, walked down to Red Square and over the river, then just followed the Garden Ring around the city for a while. I guess after three days of nobody but each other, we needed a little humanity break.”
“That’s a long walk. You guys must be tired. Have a seat over here at the table. I’ll get rid of these old plates and we’ll see if we can’t find something else lying around for you.”
Mina jumped up to help. She and Dave carried away the remnants of their dinner: two bowls of cloudy green soup with foamy cubes of something that may have descended from a soybean sitting on the bottom, a salad of pinto beans and raw onions, and two glasses of water. Jim shuddered at the health of it all.
The apartment looked like a Russian translation of Swedish design: blond wood floors and built-ins, brushed chrome cabinets and fittings, track lights running in more or less straight lines across the living room. The Russian translation manifested itself in size: instead of small but powerful lights hanging from the ceiling, Dave and Sara’s place practically had klieg lights. Circular burn marks made a halo around each lamp. The space itself was massive in every particular: bookshelves that dwarfed the books, a TV cabinet that would have housed a movie screen, brushed steel doorknobs the size of basketballs. It had an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to it, devoid of any sense of warmth or coziness, made to appeal to a Russian idea of Western tastes. Jim imagined the architect shaking his head in bewilderment at what foreigners called home.
In the kitchen Sara was giving Mina the usual litany of American complaints about Moscow (cold, corrupt, bleak, etc.), and Mina chirped sympathetically with each one. Jim marveled not at how much her personality changed (because, of course, it didn’t; she just turned up certain attributes and turned down others) but at how different Sara’s and Dave’s impression of her must be because of how she acted. She was right: what matters is what you can plausibly be. Nobody is looking within because nobody cares. But of course, she was only as right as she had to be: eventually, you would be left with yourself. Fooling other people—whether as a spy or a poker player—is fine, as long as you don’t confuse yourself.
“What do you want to drink, babe?” Mina asked from the kitchen. It took Jim a second to realize she was talking to him; it took a second longer to stifle a laugh.
“Ah, what is there?”
“We have water, filtered or bottled,” Sara said. “We have some grapefruit-carrot juice I made this morning. We have the wine you brought. And Dave, don’t you have something left from the Cal game?”
“Yup, yup. Got a few bottles of Bud Light, maybe some Cokes at the back of the fridge.”
“If they haven’t frozen,” Sara said sourly. “We also have tea.”
“A Coke would be great, actually. I don’t think I’ve had one since I left home.”
“Coming right up,” Dave called out. Jim heard the familiar pssht—after so many years in a restaurant, he could tell by that sound whether it was a Coke, Diet Coke, ginger ale, club soda, domestic or imported beer. The only one that gave him trouble was Sprite; depending on the weather and how long it had been refrigerated it could sound more like Coke or more like ginger ale. He knew, even before they reappeared with drinks and a tray of what looked like crushed acorns, he was getting an actual Coke.
“Thank you,” he said, taking the can. “Those look . . .”
“Sara was telling me they’re live cookies. Right?”
“Not quite. I can’t get cane juice here, so I have to use cane sugar, which means I need to bake them,” she said apologetically. “But no processed anything. Try one.” Jim did: it had the consistency of wood pulp. He chewed it for about thirty seconds to no discernible effect.
“These are great,” said Mina enthusiastically. “I’m always trying to get him to eat healthier.”
“I know; they never do.” Sara rolled her eyes at Dave, who was drinking a Bud Light and intently trying to peel the clear label off the bottle, then adopted a teacherly expression of stern compassion. “But it’s not just about the health of the individual. It’s about thinking about the whole planet, and using your choices to educate others. White sugar, you know, it’s all they have here? My father had to send my sugar from the Berkeley Bowl, but anytime we have guests over, I make sure to have a bowl on the table. That way people can ask me what it is. I can tell them, and I can tell them to tell their grocery store that they should have it. Not because it tastes good, or because people will buy it, but because it’s right.”
Mina nodded somberly, staring into Sara’s eyes like an acolyte. She turned to Dave. “Jim told me what the Foundation does. It’s such great work. I think it’s, like, so important to know about your past. I mean, memory is everything, right?”
“Well, Jimmy’s done some great work for us himself. Especially this past week; he’s really been on a roll.”
Jim explained the past week’s activity to Mina, as though for the first time, being careful to remain as literal as possible. She nodded, wide-eyed and admiringly, every so often interjecting a “wow” or “ooh,” every inch the adoring, supportive girlfriend. When he finished, she said, “It’s like a secret chain.”
Dave, his voice full of beer enthusiasm, concurred. “Yeah, he’s done great. Just a few more to go, I guess.”
“What do you mean?” Mina asked sweetly. Only because he knew her did Jim notice her eyes grow sharper and her jaw set. “A few more to go before what?”
“Oh, you know. A few more in the chain.” There are few spectacles more pathetic than someone trying to shepherd spoken words back into his mouth. For a split second, panic jolted Dave’s face: he blinked quickly, he let out a breath and tried to say something, but, like a cartoon character pedaling furiously in midair after going off a cliff, he was lost. “No, well, you know. I just . . . I figured he’d tell . . . The chain would keep going, right? I mean, after Faridian . . .”
“Dave!” Sara shouted. “Honey.” She giggled nervously. “Honey, what are you talking about.” But she did not sound bewildered; her voice had the telegraphed sharpness of intent.
“Oh, just babbling,” he said, still trying. “Got a little ahead of myself, I guess.” He grinned, shaking his head at his own idiocy for their benefit. “Just figured it would have had to keep going, you know.”
“But why . . .” Jim began.
“These cookies are delicious,” Mina interrupted, holding up half of one and chewing with great determination. “Can you give me the recipe sometime?”
“Sure,” said Sara. Slowly her nervous glances from Dave to Jim to Mina to the table to the floor to the window subsided. She even managed an indulgent smile. “I’d be happy to. Of course.”
“Can I take a couple to go?” Mina asked, standing up. “Jim, honey, we should get going. I’ve got an early train tomorrow.” Jim followed her lead and rose.
“Well, that was fast,” chuckled Dave, “but I’m sure glad you stopped by. Where’s the train headed?”
“Tallinn. I figure Jim’s going to be working, so I might as well take advantage of geography, right? Just a quick trip for a couple days, then I’ll finish up the week here before heading home and leaving him behind.” She clasped Jim’s hand between hers and swung it back and forth.
“Oh, absolutely. Oh, Tallinn’s great. Just beautiful. You’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will. Thanks for the cookies. I’m sorry to eat and run like this.”
“That’s okay,” Sara said. “Maybe we’ll see you again later in the week, if you have a free night?”
“Definitely,” Mina said enthusiastically. “Definitely let’s do that.”
AT THE THIRD STORY, Mina dropped Jim’s hand and pulled out her phone. Jim started to ask who she was calling, but she shushed him until they were out of the building, around the corner, and in the corner of one of those little children’s parks—a slide, a bench, a couple of carved wooden gnomes—that dot inner Moscow.
“They knew,” Mina said, flipping open her phone. “Even you must have caught that.”
“Sure, I did. So what are you . . .”
She held up a hand. “Yes, I’m trying to reach Velez?” she said brightly. “Econ Affairs?” After a short pause she resumed speaking in her characteristically businesslike voice. “It’s me. Our friends seem interested. You should meet them. Yes. Yes. Tonight. I’m at O’Leary’s, that Irish place out by Barrikadnaya. How long? Yes, an hour’s perfect. Of course. I’ll be there by myself. The usual table at the back. Good. See you there.”
She hung up. Before Jim could ask anything, she started walking toward the Metro station. Jim rushed to keep up. “This week we’re giving opposites,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“Stations. When we’re calling in from a mobile phone. Sometimes it’s one station east, one west, sometimes it’s two north. This week it’s opposites. The purple line crosses the circle line twice, once at Taganskaya and once at Barrikadnaya.”
“I got that. So where’s O’Leary’s?”
“At Barrikadnaya, of course. Haven’t you been there? They show all the games; I thought it was a rite of passage for all young, single male expats to spend a night puking in their bathrooms.”
“I hate to disappoint, Mina, but I’ve been holding my liquor for almost two decades now. Besides, don’t they show soccer and Gaelic football?”
“All the same to me, I’m afraid.” They crossed through a churchyard and emerged onto Taganskaya Street itself, which had a fair amount of foot traffic for a Sunday night, including the usual crowd of older, grizzled men gathered around a drinks kiosk. Mina tensed and stutter-stepped when the men turned to stare and catcall at her, but she recovered and just put her head down and walked faster. Attractive, young, dark-complected women are still rare enough to be a treat in Moscow. They followed Mina with their eyes until she and Jim reached the Metro entrance.
“Are we going in?” Jim asked.
Mina held the door open, ushering him into the stuffy, fluorescent-lit cavern. “Usual table in the back,” she said quietly. “Means second-to-last car.”
She led Jim over to the token machines and fiddled in her purse for change, occasionally glancing over toward the door.
“I’ve got a pocketful here,” Jim said. “What do you need?”
She ignored him. Satisfied that all of the drinkers were, in fact, drinkers—one followed them into the Metro—she fed seventeen rubles into the machine and took her single ticket. They sat vigil on a bench at the far end of the station. Six trains came and went. Each time, a few people got off and headed for the exits; a few straggled on. Nobody looked at the two dark-haired loiterers.
Trudy disembarked from the seventh train at the opposite end of the station. Mina rose when she saw her, but rather than walking toward her she led Jim away, up the staircase and out of the station. They crossed Taganskaya and sat down on a bench outside the church. Trudy followed, sitting on another bench on the other side of the steps until she was satisfied that she had, in fact, come alone. She flicked her head up and Mina started retracing their route toward the Willows’.
Trudy’s pace quickened on the side street until she drew even with them. “You know, Seamus, it’s not paranoia if you’re actually being followed.”
“Are we?” he asked.
“Who knows? Mina told you that our inquiry acquired a little urgency this afternoon, didn’t she? I’m just being safe. How did he do?” she asked Mina over Jim’s head.
“Fine, fine.”
“A born follower, is he?” Jim shot her a glare. “Keep your temper in check, darling, and take every opportunity to shut the fuck up, and you just might get home alive. Mina, you have our car here?”
“I do. It’s on the other side of Taganskaya.”
“Why don’t you go get it. Keep it parked and running outside the apartment.”
She nodded and turned around.
“And you,” Trudy said to Jim, slipping an arm playfully under his, “are going to introduce me to your friends.”
“They’re not my friends, Trudy.”
“Well, I hope not. I hope you convince me they’re not. Speaking of people who are not your friends, Gramm has promised to make you spit some teeth the next time he sees you.”
“Sensitive, is he?”
“Sucker punch a sucker puncher, you get what’s coming.”
Jim slowed outside the frosted yellow building. “Is this it?” Trudy asked.
Jim nodded.
“Call and tell them you’ve left something.”
“What did I leave?”
“I don’t know, Jim. A book. A scarf. A hat. Your wallet fell out of your pocket when you were sitting down. Just make sure you don’t say your phone.”
“You know, I think even I could have figured that one out,” Jim said darkly. He dialed the Willows. Sara answered.
“Hi, Sara, it’s Jim.”
“Hi, Jim,” she said cautiously.
“Listen, I hate to be a bother this late at night, but I think my wallet fell out of my pocket when I was over at your place.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Dave can bring it to work tomorrow.”
“Actually, I need it tonight. I was on my way home when I realized my keys were in it.”
“Oh.”
“Can I just run up for a second?”
“Run up here?”
“Yeah. We’re downstairs; we couldn’t get into my apartment.”
“You mean downstairs from us? Right now?”
“Right now.”
She sighed audibly, looking for an excuse. When she couldn’t think of one she sighed again. “Sure. Fine. I’ll buzz you in.”
The lock clacked open, and Jim held the door for Trudy. “Just remember what I said about not talking,” she whispered.
Sara stood in the doorway in her sweats. Her expression changed from annoyed to annoyed and perplexed when she saw Trudy.
“Who’s that, Jim? I thought when you said ‘we’ you meant you’d actually have the same girlfriend you had an hour ago.”
“Mrs. Willow, I’m Gertrude Bantz. I work at the United States embassy.”
“Here?” Sara asked. “At the embassy here in Moscow?” Dave, in a Berkeley football T-shirt and sweatpants, appeared in the doorway and put his arm awkwardly around his wife. She looked exhausted and angry; he looked exhausted and abashed; they had clearly been fighting.
“I’m afraid so. Can I come in?”
“We were just about to go to sleep,” Dave said.
“It’s not really a hallway conversation.” Trudy put a hand on the door and stepped forward. Dave and Sara retreated.
“Two uninvited guests in one night, Jim,” Sara said as Trudy slung her coat over the back of the couch. “I had no idea our place was such a tourist attraction. Can I get you anything?” she asked Trudy.
“Just a few minutes of your time. Please.” She gestured to the kitchen table. The four of them sat.
“By the way, Jim, if you’d like to look for your wallet, feel free. Poke around anywhere,” Sara said.
“Blame that one on me,” Trudy said. “I didn’t give him a choice. Can you tell me what Jim has been doing for you?”
“For me?” Dave asked.
“For you, yes. We have a few questions about his recent activity.”
Dave shot a hopeful glance at his wife: perhaps this discussion was really about Jim. “He’s been recording interviews with former political prisoners. I think this week he did, what, three? Four?”
“Four,” Jim said.
“Under your supervision?”
“Well, I guess technically, sure, but really he’s been on his own these past few days. We don’t ‘supervise’ our reporters; in the field they’re mostly independent.”
“So you don’t know who Jim’s been interviewing.”
“No.”
“No, you don’t, or no, you do.”
“I do.” Dave giggled nervously. “But only because I’ve read his interviews. The transcripts, I mean.”
“You read all of them?”
“That’s right.”
“As he does them, or at the end, or when?”
“It depends. Usually at the end of the week I just print out whatever anybody did and take it home to read.”
“So you’ve read the interview with . . . what was the name, Jim?”
“David Faridian,” Jim said.
“Yes.”
Sara narrowed her eyes and pulled her hair band out. She ran her fingers roughly through her hair. “I’m sorry: what’s your name again?”
“Gertrude Bantz.”
“Right,” said Sara. The name bounced off her; she had forgotten it before Trudy had finished saying it. “We’re both pretty tired, so if we could do this in the morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Trudy said, matching Sara’s smile with one of equal frostiness, “but we can’t. Now, Mr. Willow, you referred to a continuing chain. ‘A few more,’ I think you said.”
“I don’t remember that,” Sara interjected.
“I do,” said Jim.
Sara just stared.
“My associate does as well,” said Trudy. “Ms. Haddad, who was over earlier?”
“You mean Jim’s girlfriend?” Sara asked sarcastically.
“She remembers it, too,” Trudy repeated. “We’d like to know how you knew. By the way, a butcher from Tenth Planet was taken into custody by the Russian Security Services this evening, about two hours ago. He was charged with corruption and receiving bribes, and is being interrogated at Lubyanka right now. So if there’s anything you want to tell me, now would be a good time.”
“Hey, look,” said Dave, waving his hands and growing agitated. “We didn’t steal any property. All we did . . .”
“David!” Sara banged on the table. She looked from her nervous husband to a placid, reassuring, but watchful Trudy staring at her and shook her head. Neither of the Willows had any experience on the wrong side of the law; consequently, when it came for them, Dave caved and Sara treated it like something to be sidestepped, tricked. The law was something to be called upon when needed and demonstrated against when not; until they saw Trudy’s expression, they never had any sense that a functioning legal system’s principal attribute was neither indifference, brutality, nor corruption, but inexorability.
“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” Sara spat. “They didn’t give a name, you imbecile. Just don’t say anything else.” She looked down at the table, picking at imaginary crumbs. “Stupid, weak, fucking, gutless. I knew you couldn’t do this,” she muttered.
Dave exhaled roughly, shook his head, put his bottle gently on the table, laid the rolled-up label next to it, leaned over, and backhanded his wife across the mouth. She emitted an almost canine yelp, and an arc of phlegm and blood shot onto the table as she fell backward in her chair and slammed her head against the door frame.
Dave stood up calmly, with a vacant, determined look in his eyes, but as soon as he made a move toward his wife Trudy took her gun—an archaic but reliable snub-nosed Dan Wesson .22—out of her purse and jammed it into Dave’s side. He collapsed into the chair with his head in his hands.
“Jim, go get some ice from the freezer and bring it to Sara. There’s a towel over the oven rail. You, sit right there and put your hands flat on the table.”
By the time Jim had whacked some ice free of the tray and wrapped it up, Sara was next to her husband at the table, her arms crossed and her split lower lip already starting to swell. Neither she nor Dave looked at Jim, Trudy, or each other; Dave stared at the table while Sara, smirking, looked over Jim’s head.
“Does she need stitches?” Dave asked, still not looking up.
“No. I don’t think so,” said Trudy. “Do you?”
Sara shook her head balefully.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’ve never done anything like that.” He spoke just above a whisper and now stared up at Trudy with watery eyes, pleading for her to believe him. “I’m not a wife beater or anything. I just . . . I don’t know why I did that.”
“I don’t care,” Trudy said brusquely.
“Of course you don’t,” Sara snapped. “Nobody cares. There are rivers drying up; have another beer. Wars everywhere; here’s another credit card; buy an SUV. Gertrude, I’d love to know: how does it feel to work for war criminals?”
Trudy stayed silent, holding Sara’s gaze until she looked away. “Would you like to know who I work for, Sara? Dave? I do IIE on smuggling and white-collar crime. That means Intelligence, Investigation, and Enforcement. It’s a quiet division of Homeland Security. And at this moment, I am the nicest person you are ever likely to meet again.”
Dave and Sara did not look convinced.
“Now, Dave, you said that Jim was supposed to meet more people. This wasn’t just a statement of optimism; you seemed to know, roughly at least, how many more. A few, you said. How did you know?” Dave stayed quiet. She relaxed her posture and smiled. “How did you know? How many people was he supposed to meet?”
Still nothing. “Look, you can talk to me, and I can arrange for you to come home with whatever goodwill you generate here, or you can talk to the Russians. They’re curious, too. Sara, you got depressed by life in a remodeled apartment in central Moscow. Can you imagine spending the next five decades in a Russian prison?”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” she whined.
“Good,” said Trudy brightly. “That’s good. Maybe this is just a misunderstanding, then. It wouldn’t be the first time. But you need to tell me about it. Dave, how did you know Jim was supposed to meet someone else? How many people was he supposed to see?”
“Eight,” said Dave, throwing his head back and staring helplessly up at the ceiling. From the vent running the length of the room there came a hiss, followed by a blast of hot air. For all their fearsome reputation, Moscow winters aren’t cold; they’re stifling. The heat is still controlled centrally, for the entire city; it is turned on too late in the season (usually after a few little old ladies living alone freeze to death) and is shut off too late (to show how much the mayor cares). “I was told to expect eight interviews.”
“Do you mind if I open a window?” Sara asked, not waiting for Trudy’s response before she stood up.
Trudy gestured her back into the chair with her gun. “I mind. If you’d like to go outside, I’m happy to take you, but we have to finish here first. Dave?”
He shook his head. Trudy sweetened again. “Come on, Dave. Please. Who do you know in the army?”
“The army? Our neighbors back home have a son in the marines.”
“The Russian army, Dave. The one you’ve sent Jim to talk to.”
“Who do I know in the Russian army? Nobody. Not a soul.”
Trudy let a look of puzzlement float across her face. She gave a half-turn to Jim before thinking better of it. “So who told Jim where to go?”
“The people he met did. I had nothing to do with that.”
“You were just supposed to start him.”
“Right.”
“And collect the transcripts.”
“I read all the transcripts as a matter of course, yes.”
“You know what I’m asking, and it’s tiresome asking the same thing over and over. Like I said before, we have you. I’m sure the Russians would like to chat with you, too, but we’d like to keep you. You can tell me now or tell the Russian investigators in an hour.”
“Like there’s a fucking difference,” Sara mumbled.
“I’m sorry you see it that way.” Trudy stood up, the gun still in her hand, neither pointed at nor away from Dave and Sara. With her other hand she took her phone from her purse and was about to start dialing when Dave emitted a long, self-pitying sigh.
“Mr. Vorov,” Dave whimpered, sliding down in his chair and letting his head loll off to one side, limp on his neck, looking at nobody. “Anatoly Vorov.”
Trudy and Jim looked at each other. Each had heard the name before, but Jim couldn’t quite place it. “Anatoly Vorov the economist?” Trudy asked dubiously. That did it: Jim remembered Ian’s GOV dinner—Golovna, Orsonov, Vorov.
Dave nodded, his head in his hands. Trudy held the pen above her paper, poised, but wrote nothing. She looked at Dave dubiously.
“You are telling me that Anatoly Vorov, who has visited with the president, who’s coming here to receive an award . . . when? . . . this week, the vocal opponent of the Kremlin, told you where to send this kid here?”
Dave nodded again. He was sobbing quietly, soft animal noises that bobbed his head up and down. “Jesus Christ, what did I do? What did I...”
“Will you just shut up. For once, just be quiet! Stop whining about everything,” Sara shouted at her husband. She turned to Trudy. “Yes, Anatoly Vorov. Your dinner guest, right?”
“That’s right. But he’s . . .”
“A normal American professor? A writer, a thinker?” Sara interrupted. “Don’t insult him. He’s not normal; he’s better than that. Anatoly Vorov is doing something good for the world. We’re helping him. At least he’s not shuffling papers at the embassy as part of the war effort.”
“He must be very impressive.”
“I guess to some people, decency and concern for other people and the world we leave our children is rare enough to be impressive.”
“And what you’ve been doing is decent?”
“What have we been doing?”
Trudy opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, squinting slightly and saying nothing. She didn’t actually know what they had been doing. A triumphant smile quivered around the corners of Sara’s mouth. She had been worrying the towel that had once held ice, clenching it in her fist, rolling it back and forth: now it was just a wet rag. Sara let it drop to the ground. The heater stopped hissing, and almost immediately, the temperature dropped. It was eleven p.m. Heat went off between eleven and six the next morning. All decent citizens should be asleep—under the covers—at those hours; unsavory elements who chose to remain awake at their fellow citizens’ expense had no right to expect their fellow citizens to keep them comfortable.
“Falsifying research, in the first place,” Trudy hazarded.
“I never would have published that,” Dave said sternly, wagging his finger.
“No? And what would you have told Jim when he saw that all of this research, that you said was so impressive, that you encouraged him to do, didn’t make the final report?”
Neither of them said anything. Dave picked up his beer but Trudy took it out of his hand and set it out of his reach.
“I see,” she said quietly. “There wouldn’t have been a Jim, would there?”
“How can you ask that?” Dave demanded, slapping the table. “How the hell can you sit here in our house and ask that? Who do you think we are? We’re not Russians; we don’t just kill people we disagree with.”
“Dave, fuck off,” Jim said, standing up from the table. “Moral superiority doesn’t suit you.”
“Okay, let’s calm down, both of you.” Trudy extended her hands across the table and gestured Jim back into his seat. “Sara? Would there have been a Jim?”
“You don’t understand.” She shook her head slowly, a superior little smile on her lips as she looked over Trudy’s head and out the window. In the apartment across the street a young woman stood at the stove, stirring a pot. She brought the spoon to her mouth, nodded, and brought it off the stove and into the next room, where a man and two boys waited, forks clenched in fists, singing and beating them on the table in unison. The man reached over and bopped the youngest one on the head with the fork, then leaned his head over the table to get the same treatment in return.
“Maybe not. Maybe I don’t. But look, I need to write something down for my bosses. Why don’t you try to explain it to me?”
Nobody said anything.
“Who was Jim talking to? What was Anatoly Vorov getting from you? What were you getting from him?”
Still nothing.
A curtain dropped over Trudy; her polite demeanor vanished. “Either the two of you start talking, or I’m leaving. Do you understand? The Russians are salivating at the prospect of having two Americans, dogooders, meddlers, in custody. Is this getting through to either of you, or do you think your noble intentions will protect you? Do you have any idea how much they hate people like Anatoly Vorov, and anyone who works for him? I don’t care whether you talk to me or not. Tomorrow I’ll still have a job, and I can spend my next holiday out in California. What about you? You know where you’ll be? Do you know, Dave, what they do . . .”
“We didn’t do anything wrong!” he shouted. “We just . . . we just directed.”
“What do you mean by that?” Trudy asked.
“All we did was help people get out. Help people who wanted to leave, leave. That’s it.”
Trudy shook her head, her expression still stern. “Not good enough, I’m afraid. You tell me everything—and that’s start to finish, nothing left out—and we’ll do what we can for you. But to do that effectively, we need to know details. Do you understand? We can’t get caught stupid. So, if you want to dig your heels in, I’m the wrong person to talk to. You can try it with the Russians. But if you want to start at the beginning, I am, as they say, all ears.”
Dave ran his hands down his face like a Muslim preparing for prayer. He nodded once, twice, to himself, then removed his glasses and pressed his fingers into his eyes. When he put them back on, he stared at Trudy with the lively reddish gaze of a rabbit. “Last week, the whole staff goes to The Pilot. Jim comes in late the next day, not the first time. He comes into my office and says he met this girl. Her grandfather was a survivor; should he talk to him. I say yes. Of course; what else would I say. I go to lunch that day and I get a call from Tolya . . .”
“Who you knew how?”
“We met him back home, maybe five . . . no, seven years ago. There are a few Russian societies in Berkeley and the Bay Area. He was at SF State then; I think he’s at Stanford now. Anyway, these societies attract a mixture of grad students, academics, reporters, lonely immigrants. Tolya used to buy us all dinner once every couple of months, whenever he was in town, at Shinok Kabudok, this Ukrainian place on Telegraph Road.”
“Just out of the goodness of his heart?”
“Yes, in fact, I think so.” Dave’s voice took on a wounded cast. “Is that so hard for you to understand? He was a long way from home and he liked speaking his own language.” He picked up the label and started folding and unfolding it again.
“So a few weeks ago, I’m on my way to my Armenian vegetable guy, and Tolya calls. He says he’s coming over to Moscow; he’d love to see us. We talk about work. He asks how everything’s going. I tell him our grant came through and we hired this new guy, a Russian American, speaks well. He’s interested: starts asking questions. Is he married? Does he have a lot of friends? Is he social? Political? Quiet? I ask why; he says he’s just curious, then he changes the subject.
“Then a week or so later he calls and says he’s just heard about Jim. He found a survivor. I ask him how he knows and he doesn’t say. Tolya says he’ll find more. Be sure you keep him interested, he says. I ask how he knows again. He doesn’t say anything. He says he wants to see these interviews when Jim’s done. I say no”—Dave wagged his finger again, eager to demonstrate his fealty to principle—“I say, Tolya, that’s against rules; we can’t have anyone influencing what we write; we are an independent body interested only in the truth.
“He says, well, are you interested in helping people, too? Living people? And I remember this, because he said is it more important to you to help living people who need help, or to write about the dead. I said what do you mean. He says to just give him the transcripts of Jim’s interviews. He needs to know what they say. I ask why. He says it will help certain people who need it. Certain older Russians, poor people who can’t emigrate under normal channels because they’re old and poor, this will help them get out. They’ll get medical attention in Europe, be reunited with their families. I’ll give them something to live on. But you need to get me those transcripts. And you need to decide what’s more important to you: the living or the dead. The living or the dead.” Dave sighed and pushed his glasses up on his face. He pulled his lips into a grimace. “The living, of course. Always the living.”
Trudy shook her head. “You didn’t think . . . Never mind. Who are these people that you helped?”
“They served in the army,” Sara said. Dave’s head whipped around in shock; clearly, he didn’t know that Sara had ever talked to Vorov. “And because of what they know, the Russians won’t let them leave. Yes, David, Tolya and I spoke. He was always . . . he was a gentleman. Always.” Dave collapsed in his seat as though someone had removed his spine. Sara giggled.
“So that’s why you did all of this,” Trudy said. “To help people.”
“Yes.”
“Not for money.”
Too quickly, Sara said, “Of course not.”
“So you weren’t paid at all.”
Neither of them said anything. Trudy shook her head, slowly looking from one to the other. “The first thing we’re going to do is run a check on every bank account in the United States with the last name Willow on it. We’ll run down every family connection you have.”
“Be our guest,” said Sara.
“Then we’ll move to Western Europe. Then we’ll try here. And I’m thinking we still won’t find anything.”
“You won’t. Because we weren’t paid anything.”
“And by then,” said Trudy, leaning back in her chair and moving into full-reverie mode, “we’ll have given your names and information to the Russians. You’ll be safe at home, of course, because I’ll have kept my promise to get you there, and you will, of course, have given me your complete and honest testimony. Just to be sure, though, the Russians will start checking into offshore banks. Switzerland, Grand Cayman, Liechtenstein. And you still won’t care, right? Because a prominent economist promised you that your money would be safe. Anonymous. Whatever happened—even if the unthinkable happened—your money couldn’t be touched or traced, because it went someplace with ironclad bank secrecy. Only here’s the thing: there’s the kind of information we can legally obtain, and then there’s the kind we can just obtain. The Russians are great at that second one, when they need to be. Two decades of capital flight and high-resource prices have given them great influence in tiny little tax havens. You know what would happen if a few select members of the Russian government, or some close businessmen friends of the government, were to ask, say, Bermuda or Panama to either trace all deposits, withdrawals, and transfers to Anatoly Vorov’s known ISPs or they’d move their billions somewhere else? Do you know how quickly they’d get that information? The country would deny it, of course, and it wouldn’t hold up in court here on its own, but we could work backward easily enough. And if we did, I promise you we’d send you back here. My right hand to God, we’d find someone worthwhile to exchange you for.
“Now, one last time, before you make me find out for myself: were you paid at all?”
“Yes, of course, we were paid. We were paid,” Dave called out from way down in his seat.
“How much?”
“Tolya promised us two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Promised you? So you haven’t been paid anything?”
Sara cut a quick warning glance at Dave. Trudy caught it. “David,” Trudy said, “if you make us check, I won’t be happy. Have you been paid?”
“He gave us twenty thousand dollars.”
“When were you supposed to get the rest?”
“When he got home.”
“What bank?”
“First National of Montserrat.”
“Wow. You guys made out well.”
“We fucking deserved it,” Sara said indignantly. “You can’t say we didn’t. Dave gave up a chair at Berkeley to come here. I gave up my family. We gave our lives for this shithole.”
“So why didn’t you go back? If you hated it so much, why didn’t you just go home?”
“And say what? Say we made a mistake?” Sara’s voice rose and grew shriller; her hand gestures became more violent and her eyes widened as she considered the prospect of social and professional stagnation, ostracism, error. “And tell people what? Let’s go back where we were, with our hats in our hands, please please please take us back? No, thank you. We took this job because we thought it would move us forward. We got here and found out everyone forgot about us. We had to get something out of it.” She licked her finger and rubbed hard at a spot on the table. “That money was ours,” she said quietly, certainly. “We worked for it. We deserved it. So it’s ‘illegal.’” She made finger quotes in the air and rolled her eyes. “Everything else here is, too. If they won’t care—if nobody cares—why should we?”
“Do you mind if I interrupt?” Jim asked. “There’s something I don’t understand.”
“Now, Jim?” Trudy asked.
“Not you. Them.” He pointed to the Willows. Trudy looked dubious but nodded warily. “Why me? I mean, why did you have to send me out at all? Why didn’t Vorov just tell you where to go? Why didn’t he go himself?”
“Vorov couldn’t go,” Trudy said dismissively, writing in her notebook and not even looking up. “He’s the front, right? The straight man. We love him; we’re giving him rubber chicken in library paste at an embassy dinner. So the Russians hate him. He starts snooping around himself, the whole thing collapses. Right?”
Dave and Sara sat at the table, across from each other but looking off in opposite directions. Neither of them acknowledged the question.
“Right,” Trudy answered. “But I am curious: why Jim? Why didn’t one of you just go?”
They remained silent.
“I’ll tell you one more time: answer for me or answer for them.”
Dave lifted his head, stared off into the distance, and scratched his beard, but still said nothing. It was Sara who broke the silence with a sharp, vicious chuckle.
“Tell them, honey.” Dave slammed the table with his fist and looked like he was about to jump across the table until Trudy leveled the gun at him. Sara shook her head, cutting Dave a look that expressed a degree of contempt produced only by long, unwilling, dysfunctional familiarity.
“He just couldn’t do it,” she hissed. “He was scared.” Then she started laughing—not contemptuously like before, but with real venom and vigor. Jim looked at her with alarm, and even Trudy appeared nervous. Her cackle sounded like it had been building for a long time. That, combined with Dave’s punch earlier, made him feel almost sorry for her. Almost.
“He told Tolya he would do it, but he can’t lie; he can’t talk to anyone who doesn’t have at least a master’s. Except me, of course, who he made drop out to work while he finished his doctorate. He told Tolya he would do it. Dave begged Tolya to let him go. You might not think it to look at him, but he takes his manliness seriously. He has to run things.
“So Tolya tested him one day. He sent him out to Yugo-Zapadnaya—you don’t mind if I tell this, do you, honey?—on a fake interview, and paid a few low-level cops to scare him a little. Not to arrest him or shoot him or anything like that: just to intimidate him, so Tolya could see whether Dave could handle it.”
“And?” Trudy asked.
“He couldn’t. Dave cried when one of them pushed him down. Cried. I was in the car with Tolya, watching. Dave didn’t know that until now, did you? I had to come, to persuade him: he had to be the one inside the office in contact with Tolya. We told Grynshtein we needed to hire someone else—someone fluent, this time; not another library-carrel Russian, but someone who could actually talk.” By this time, tears were streaming down her face, though you would not say she was crying, really—there was no grief, only release and anger.
“Why not use someone already in the office?” Trudy asked. She kept her voice calm and her hand near, but not on, the gun.
“Yuri’s too smart and Birgitta’s too dumb,” Dave said softly. “We needed someone new; someone who wouldn’t get too used to life here, who didn’t have too many connections. We actually interviewed a couple dozen people before we hired Jim. Good language skills, eager to please, not too many friends, unmarried. He was perfect.”
“And after he had finished?” Trudy asked.
Dave opened his hands, palms up: what would you expect us to do with him? “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
Jim shook his head and walked over to the window. Let Trudy shoot him; he didn’t care. He wrenched the window open and let the Moscow night air, moonlit, smoky, and clean, wash over him.
“So are you coming?” Trudy asked, standing up. She put the pad and paper in her purse but kept the gun in her hand. You can join me now or take your chances with them later. Your choice, but you need to decide right now.”
Both of them stood up slowly, as though pulled, and in the mixture of disbelief and contempt on Sara’s face Jim saw them for what they were: not criminals or spies, but monsters, people who believed their intentions could justify anything, were all that mattered. Sara didn’t say they did nothing wrong to make Trudy leave or mitigate punishment; she said it because she believed it. She was the sort of person who, in building a fire, could accidentally burn a house down and walk away pleased with herself at the warmth she had provided her neighbors.
“Good choice,” Trudy said.
THE QUARTET WALKED from the apartment two by two, Dave and Sara in front, Trudy and Jim behind. A light snow—a fine silver dust that sparkled like cut diamonds in the yellow glow of the streetlamps—had started to fall. This late on a Sunday night they passed no pedestrians; even cars were infrequent in the little tangle of side streets that led from the apartment to Mina’s car, a black Volga (no diplomatic plates, nothing at all identifying it as embassy-owned).
Trudy put a hand on Jim’s chest as Mina held the back door open for Dave and Sara. “Listen, Jim, you did great up there. You have a real gift for silence.”
“Thank you.”
“Shut up. We’re taking them in, and quickly, too. What you’re going to do is go back to your apartment and pack your things. Also quickly.”
“No escort?”
“No, Jim. No escort.” She darted her eyes up and down the street, and for a moment something akin to sympathy flickered across her face. “I’m sorry, Jim. I don’t like it either, but we came lean and quietly, and we’re leaving that way, too. They go in first, then you. I figure they don’t want to come with me but you need to. Less risk of an escape that way. We’ll drive you home, but if I send Gramm or Joseph upstairs with you you’ll be worse off than if you went alone, right? Just relax, and be efficient. You know the saying ‘Go slowly; we’re in a hurry?’ No? Good. Then you’re going to come to the embassy, ring the bell around back, and we’re going to get you home. We should have a temporary diplomatic passport waiting for you back at the embassy.”
She held open the front door and gestured for him to climb in. She opened the back door for the Willows and watched them slide all the way over. When she was satisfied, she glanced up and down the empty street, got in, and told Mina to go.
“Be quick and careful inside,” Trudy said. “No more than fifteen minutes at home. And I don’t want you hailing cabs, either: you take the Metro and keep your wits about you. Ninety minutes is plenty of time.”
“What if it isn’t?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Jim.” Trudy sensed Jim’s nerves, and gave something very close to a gallows laugh. Jim couldn’t help noticing how hard she swallowed. “If something happens to you between the time you leave this car and the time you reach your building, it’ll happen to us, too.”