The television in the main room was on, the volume up as a few of the CIA men perched on the surrounding sofas, intently watching an evening NBA game. The non–basketball fans had retreated to the deck around the pool or the surrounding buildings. Grief, an early riser, had already gone to bed, as usual.
Kaz and Bill Thompson were at the small table at the other end of the central area, in what the previous actress owner had described as the sun nook. Each man had an open beer in front of him.
Bill watched as Kaz delicately rubbed one of his eyes. “Tired?”
Kaz smiled and lowered his hand, tipping his chin towards the hallway. “Yep, that horse-themed bedroom is calling to me.” He took a sip of his beer and regarded Bill for a few seconds. “Does the CIA teach you more about Russia than just the language?”
Bill frowned, his heavy glasses shifting slightly. “What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to understand what makes Sascha tick.” And other Russians too. He hitched in his chair, putting his weight on an elbow. “At the Academy and in the Navy, the Soviet Union has always been portrayed simply as ‘the enemy.’ A malevolent monolith, some big bear lurking just beyond the horizon. There hasn’t been much nuance.” He shrugged. “Makes it easier for everyone in the military, I’m sure, but not very insightful. I was thinking maybe the CIA taught you guys to go deeper. ‘Know thine enemy,’ and all that.”
“Yeah, in fact they do,” Bill said. “At the Farm they give us a required reading list.”
Kaz rolled the beer bottle in his fingers. “Any chance you could give me the CliffsNotes?”
There was a tinny series of shouts from the television, followed by a deep murmur of disapproval from the gathered men. Bill waited until it quieted.
“Sure. Russia’s different, Kaz. Think about it. Here in America and in places like Australia and Japan, we have the oceans, and most of Europe has the Alps or a coastline that helps protect them. But Russia has no natural borders, so over their thousand-year history they’ve been repeatedly invaded by their enemies.” He held up both hands so he could count on his fingers and thumbs. “Genghis Khan and his Mongol Horde, the Teutons, the Ottomans, the Poles, the Swedes, Napoleon, the Japanese, Hitler.” He looked at his hands, rubbed them over each other in that odd way he had and then dropped them. “Huge losses of life too, extreme numbers, especially early on. Heck, in World War II alone we figure they lost over twenty-five million people.” He paused, considering. “Imagine how we’d be if that was our history.”
Kaz nodded but stayed silent. When an expert is willing to teach you something, listen.
“Russia also never had a Renaissance and all the cultural underpinnings of Western humanism that came with that. The complicated European Enlightenment that the Italians started, and the French and Germans continued along with the English, who then spread it all around their colonialized world, just never happened in Russia.” Thompson was gazing over Kaz’s head now, focused on his thoughts. “I was posted to the embassy in Moscow a few years back and saw it for myself. The Russians have operated on a feudal loyalty to strongmen leaders right from the beginning, and they still do, right up until today’s Soviet Union.” He nodded down the hall towards Grief’s bedroom. “Some might say there’s much to be admired in that kind of loyalty, but it’s a pretty foreign idea here, where everybody behaves as if they are the makers of their own destiny, deluded as that can also be. Our man has a lot to unlearn if he’s ever going to accept and fit into the cult of the individual that’s normal here.”
Thompson smiled self-consciously and picked up his beer. “After that lecture, I need a drink!” He took a swig and then wiped the wet from his mustache, staring across the room at his men, their focused faces blue in the light from the television. “Did you know that the original founders of Russia were Vikings? They led the Kievan Rus tribe—that’s actually where the word ‘Russian’ came from.” He looked back at Kaz. “That, coupled with the endless violent invasions and the lack of moderating cultural influences… it’s as if the whole country had a long, brutalized childhood.” He shrugged. “It’s no excuse, but it helps me understand the behavior of the Soviets I deal with. And the men who lead them.”
He exhaled and focused an intense, unblinking, guarded stare on Kaz. “Heavy stuff for a tired military man to take onboard.”
Kaz shook his head. “Not at all, Bill. It’s clarifying.”
The CIA man looked at his near-empty beer bottle. “Okay, one last thought, then I’m done with my sermon. Average Russians think all Western leaders are weak. Sascha likely extrapolates that weakness to me and you. It’s as if power and fate are the same thing in the Russian mind.” A pause. “They have an old saying: ‘Beat your own so that strangers are afraid of you.’” He cocked his head and looked hard at Kaz. “Can you imagine that as an operating principle here?”
Why does that sound like a threat?
Kaz let a long silence grow between them, to see if Thompson would say anything else. When he didn’t, both men tipped up their bottles and drained them.
The basketball watchers suddenly yelled, and Kaz spoke above the noise.
“Nope, I can’t imagine that.” He stood, picked up the two empty bottles and set them on the counter by the sink. “Thanks, Bill. You’ve given me lots to think about in the ten seconds it’s going to take me to fall asleep.”
As he walked down the hall towards his room, he noticed that light still showed under Sascha’s door.
You’ve got much to learn, my Russian friend. Kaz went into his bedroom, turned on the light and shut the door behind himself.
And so do I.