The Russian Affair Part 25

"Please explain what you mean."

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

"In this car?" she asked, almost amused.

"Don't underestimate my faithful Zhiguli. The gas tank's already full."

"Why not just call Alexey on the telephone?"

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

Anna noticed that Petya was making signals to her through the window. She put her hand on the gla.s.s and answered his finger language. "I can't, Anton."

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

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

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

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

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

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

They walked off together, hand in hand.

THIRTY-THREE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outside the birch leaves were quivering; Rosa's colleagues had opened the window and were having a smoke. The reason why Rosa felt she might have missed something had to do with the location where Kamarovsky's seizure had laid him low. When he'd described the symptoms of his disease to her for the first time, Rosa had been fascinated by the idea of a "grand mal," a sudden illness that fell upon its victim like a punishment from heaven and paralyzed his entire organism. Why had he collapsed right in front of the library? What was he doing there, and why had he chosen this day, of all days? Rosa's experience with the KGB had taught her that when it came to making any sort of transfer, subway stations, major intersections, museums, and libraries were the best venues; she'd been certain she'd chosen the right spot for her convergence with Anton. Should she have left the country right away, as soon as she saw Kamarovsky sprawled on the steps? Was it still possible for her to leave now? But wouldn't that be acting too rashly if the Colonel had been at the library only by chance, if he hadn't even seen her? As a member of the inner circle of Kamarovsky's collaborators, she'd simply had to show up at the hospital, Doctor Shchedrin's medical paradise. The Colonel's peaceful sleep made Rosa think her speculations were improbable; nevertheless, she'd informed Anton of her suspicion. In case of necessity, he was to prevent Bulyagkov from walking into a trap.

The spring, Rosa thought, the spring lures you in and clasps you tight, its breezes blow away clear thoughts until you're dizzy. If she had to stand around in Shchedrin's clinic and discuss the consequences of the department leader's temporary absence, the spring didn't care. It made the birch wave to her through the window, made the birds chirp and the clouds, no longer low and heavy, sail gaily through the upper sky. Rosa went over to the window where the others were gathered, turned down the offered cigarette, and listened to what her colleagues had to say.

THIRTY-FOUR.

How green, how splendid, how light, Anna thought, conscious of every breath she drew into her lungs. Why would she be happy at a time like this? Did it take so little to transform her feelings? Or was everything else simply too much, and too awful? She felt like a child who runs and plays and works herself up to such a pitch that she can't stop laughing. "Where are we?" she asked, turning to Anton.

"We haven't gone very far yet, Comrade. We're not even to Volokolamsk."

"So why is everything so beautiful here?"

"I take it you don't leave Moscow very often."

"You're right. Not since before this past winter. And a terrible winter it was." She clenched her fists in her lap.

"This is fertile country, with gentle hills and woods full of oaks and willows. Willows grow here, Comrade, because there's so much ground-water. And the sky is always in motion."

The road was patched in many places, and if Anton failed to dodge a pothole, his little car snapped and crackled. "We're on the old Volokolamskoye Chaussee," he informed her, answering her earlier question. "You might think the M9 would be faster, and you'd be right, except traffic's always bottled up around Krasnogorsk at this time of day, so we avoided that. Once we're past Volokolamsk, I'll swing onto the main highway."

Anna listened to him with only half an ear; she was almost wholly captivated by what she was seeing. They went through a village where only the utility poles revealed what century they were in; the wooden houses with their colorfully painted window frames, the meadow edges, the piles of firewood, birch and pine, depleted by the long winter-all these indicated a time that had pa.s.sed and yet was obstinately holding on in this inconspicuous spot.

"It really blows hard out here," she murmured, observing a tree bent diagonally by the west wind. Something was being hawked on the side of the road, but Anton was driving too fast for Anna to be able to make out what the offered wares were.

"The train would have been another possibility," Anton said, resuming the small talk. "The Baltic Railroad, Moscow to Riga in one day."

"Why didn't we just take the train, then?"

"We still can if something goes wrong with the car. I've learned one thing from Alexey Maximovich: 'In love and on the run, you must always have two ways out, Antosha.' " In sudden high spirits, Anton leaned on the horn. "Words to live by," he said.

"He chose a single way this time," Anna pointed out. "With no turning back."

"I don't know. You may well be right, Comrade."

"Please call me Anna, like everyone else."

"I can try." He smiled. "But habit, Comrade, habit's a big, strong horse that pulls in only one direction."

Now that she was talking to him at some length for the first time, Anna realized that Anton was no urbanite; he was a country boy, and his years in Moscow hadn't succeeded in driving that out of him.

They reached Volokolamsk and shortly thereafter left it behind. Anna saw the golden towers of a cathedral shining between houses, and then a sw.a.n.ky house, once a n.o.ble's residence, that had been turned into a club building for the agricultural combine. Beyond the town limits, Anna admired the private vegetable gardens, where bean plants and lettuces were sending their first shoots up into the light. Anton took the feeder road to the big highway, and their pace increased substantially.

"Do you know what's special about Volokolamsk? When the n.a.z.i troops were advancing on Moscow, this was the farthest they got."

"Here? I thought that was Yakhroma. On the trip to Dubna, we were told-"

"Yakhroma? Nonsense!" he said vehemently. "It was Volokolamsk, I can a.s.sure you. I know the history. Twenty-eight soldiers under General Panfilov managed to destroy dozens of n.a.z.i tanks before they themselves were killed. There's a monument to the twenty-eight heroes in Volokolamsk." He gave Anna a penetrating look. "Here is where the Wehrmacht was brought to a standstill, not Yakhroma!"

They left the Moscow administrative division, crossed into the Tver oblast, and an hour later were nearing the town of Rzhev. Anna grew tired and even briefly fell asleep. A noise as loud as an ongoing explosion made her start awake in terror. "What is it?"

"Sukhoi Su-9," he said, smiling at her and pointing skyward.

The sound faded away and came back. Another black fighter plane swept across the clear sky, leaving its noise far behind.

"Where are we?"

"There's an air force base a few miles from here," Anton said, shouting over the roar of the jet engines. "That one was a Tupolev." He leaned forward and struck the dashboard. The temperature gauge needle bounced. "I think it could use a little drink," Anton said. He patted the steering wheel. "It won't be long, my thirsty friend."

The town lay a little distance off the M9. Anton stopped in front of a simple house on the outskirts. A woman was outside, weeding her vegetable garden. "It's better if you ask her for some water," Anton said, handing Anna a jerrican.

She got out, stretched, and walked toward the fence. "Excuse me, Comrade ..."

The woman, bending to her work, hadn't heard Anna coming and jerked herself upright. As a sign of her innocuous wish, Anna held up the container. "Could you give us some water?"

"Water? How about a gla.s.s of lemonade?" She stuck her little knife into her pocket and opened the garden gate for Anna.

After a brief glance at Anton, Anna followed the woman into the house and entered a living room where her eye was struck by something she would never have expected to find in such a place: silver-gray wallpaper with a white pattern, perfectly hung and cleanly finished at the top, a hand's width below the ceiling. Light, freshly washed curtains were suspended from gleaming, gold-colored rods, meticulously aligned with the top line of the wallpaper, and alongside them hung drapes with a dark brown pattern. Anna noticed a television set, a house plant, and even central heating.

"You've got a lovely place here," Anna said. "How did you get ahold of this first-cla.s.s wallpaper?"

"My brother's the local priest," the woman explained. "I'm his housekeeper."

Behind her, Anna spotted a cross and some pictures of martyrs. "Your brother?"

"Our members spend generously," she said, plucking at the lace tablecloth until it lay smooth. "Are you hungry, my girl? I've stuffed some hardboiled eggs."

"Thanks, but we're in a hurry." Anna turned toward the kitchen.

"The wallpaper was a gift from G.o.d's children in our kolkhoz," she said. Then she laid her hand on the samovar. "But surely you'll drink some tea, won't you?"

"Many thanks, but no. Maybe on the way back." Anna pointed to the jerrican.

"We could have filled that in the garden," the woman said, clearly irritated by the rejection of her hospitality. She gruffly ran her hand over the cherrywood sideboard, as if she'd discovered a speck of dust on it. Then she accompanied Anna outside again, turned on the water faucet at one corner of the house, and, while the container was filling up, peered at Anton. "Yours?" she said, meaning the man.

"His," Anna answered, pointing at the automobile. Just then, Anton lifted the hood.

"Where are you headed?" The woman tried to decipher the license number.

"To visit some friends."

When Anna brought the water, Anton thanked the woman with a nod. Apparently forgetting her garden work, she went back inside the house.

"What took you so long?" Anton asked, closing the hood.

"She has beautiful wallpaper on her walls."

By the time they pa.s.sed Rzhev, the day was drawing to its close. Anna tried to sleep, but the road had become worse, and she was constantly shaken awake. Anton looked at his watch. "We won't reach the border before midnight," he said.

The landscape turned monotonous; Anna's happy feeling had vanished. She thought about the hours that lay before her; she'd see Alexey again, but she wasn't expected this time, and the circ.u.mstances were thoroughly transformed.

"Didn't you say you'd taken delivery of some doc.u.ments for Alexey?" Anton nodded. "And so you turned those doc.u.ments over to him?"

"When I drove him to the airport."

"But then ..." She sat upright as though jolted. "Then you had time to warn him in Moscow!"

"No," he said softly.

"I don't understand." A pothole made Anna's chin bounce off her chest. "You knew Kamarovsky saw you. Why didn't you tell Alexey before he got on the plane?"

"Unfortunately, I didn't know that." He clicked his tongue. "She didn't call me until later, when Alexey Maximovich was gone. She told me about Kamarovsky."

"Who?"

And so Anna learned that the agent for internal security, Rosa Khleb, whom Anna liked to think of as a modern witch, was capable of even more artfulness than she'd imagined. Anna listened in amazement as she learned that the Khleb and Bulyagkov had been in contact for at least a year, and that it was she who had worked out his escape plan via Stockholm. Anton was even able to report that an untimely overlap had taken place the last time Anna visited the Deputy Minister in the Drezhnevskaya apartment: The mysterious visitor was Rosa; she was the one who'd brought Bulyagkov the little parcel, and it was her footsteps that Anna had heard sounding in the stairwell.

They pa.s.sed villages and little towns; the sun shone red in their faces and finally disappeared; Anton began to smoke, which was the only hint he gave that he might be getting tired; and while all this was going on, Anna was arriving at the realization that she, who had considered herself so clever and calculating, who had even reproached herself for her great cunning, was nothing but a beginner. The game had gone on without any partic.i.p.ation from her. She hadn't even known the rules-she was just a piece that had fit in. She'd done exactly what she'd been expected to do. And at this moment, Anna saw that as her greatest defeat.

THIRTY-FIVE.

The Kremlin stands above the city; above the Kremlin stands only G.o.d. The fortress was rebuilt eighteen times; why eighteen, the man in the pale blue hospital gown wondered. The first stone wall was erected in 1366; Ivan III's architects put up twenty towers, a palace, their city's first fortification. Kamarovsky was gratified to ascertain that his eyegla.s.ses had been taken away from him; the unreliable things only stopped him from seeing connections properly. They were Italians, he thought; in those days, the Italians were the best builders. They put twenty streets and ten squares inside the Kremlin walls-a tour de force of fortification architecture. Why did Napoleon have all that burned down? Out of vexation, Kamarovsky thought, nodding. Who wouldn't be vexed, after dismantling the biggest country on earth, to wait in vain for someone to come and submit to him? One of the people in the room giggled, and Kamarovsky looked around; that was no giggling matter. Napoleon must have felt like a spurned lover, sitting there in the Kremlin, with not a single Russian showing up for a rendezvous. While he let his capitaines plunder the city, he overlooked the fact that it was already the middle of September: time to start getting ready for winter. The fire he lit in Moscow wasn't hot enough to warm his army. He who burns something down makes a site for reconstruction, Kamarovsky thought. Thicker walls this time, and then, later, they set shining, red-ruby-colored stars on the tops of the towers. "Ruby stars"-the words resounded in him. The sound evoked something like beauty, still incomprehensible, but it announced its presence. The beautiful, the great-it flowed into him like a stream, penetrating him. He took several deep breaths.

"In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we have one," Kamarovsky said. "But now that power is in our hands, in the hands of the workers, we have a fatherland, and we will defend its independence." The Colonel made a great effort to recall who'd said those words. Not Vladimir Ilyich, the patient was sure of that, but of course it had to do with him, as did everything else. Kamarovsky nodded: Everything else. No, those words came from the great speech given in the Grand Kremlin Palace to the graduates of the Red Army Academy on May 4, 1935. I was there, the patient thought. By that time, Vladimir Ilyich was long dead. I heard the speech, and I understood. Why was it so important to remember the Kremlin and the beautiful stars shining on its towers? Red stars, ruby stars, the Colonel thought; in the past, he'd sometimes called her Rosa, my ruby star. Whoever saw her today would hardly have been able to envision how bright this Russian soul, how beautiful this most beautiful of Soviet girls, had been.

He struggled to keep his thoughts from falling into confusion again; he dared not go back there, where they all became one. Kamarovsky propped himself on his elbows. The cathedral, he thought, built in 1457 under the direction of the Italians-here stood Ivan's throne under the carved pavilion roof. The bell, the Tsar Bell! Remembering the bell was important. It was supposed to sound out from the Tsar's Tower, but that never happened.

"It never happened!" he shouted into the room, trying to avert another collapse. "Right from the start, the master founders struggled with difficulties in the casting. Who would build such a monstrosity? Over twenty feet in diameter, just imagine, to this day the biggest bell in the world!"

The bell meant-he sank back down onto the pillows-the bell meant a certain place. Not the Kremlin, not the pit where it was cast, not the pedestal where it still stood. The bell meant ... the library! Of course, the library. Kamarovsky had been there and observed a young woman who knew all about the Kremlin Bell, who'd studied it closely.

Now the Colonel was waking up and calming down. The multiple ideas in his head fell together and made room for the one idea that he could grasp. He let the calm sink into him more and more deeply, and behind it he could feel himself reviving. A. I. Kamarovsky looked around. His vision was still blurred, obviously, because he didn't have his gla.s.ses. It wasn't about the bell, he realized, nor was it about the young woman in the library that bore Vladimir Ilyich's name. But in its halls, yes, Kamarovsky had seen someone. His memory came back slowly, gradually, and in the end he knew that the person he'd seen had been Rosa, his ruby star. After he was sure he'd identified all the connections properly, he rang for the nurse and had her call Doctor Shchedrin.