The Mercenary Page 14

  The two dancers laughed. The dark-haired girl with cherry lipstick and a long olive neck mocked Bogdan. “Don’t be a toad. You don’t have to show off your stupid Party allegiance.” She looked at Garin. “This man is being polite. You should learn from him instead of trying to seduce Natalya with your secret whispers—which are obvious to all of us, by the way.”

  The second dancer had flaxen hair, thin black lips, and scolding eyes. “Maybe you’d like to invite both of us to bed to show off your Party affections.”

  Anna and Galina were giddy with laughter.

  “Fine,” Bogdan said. “No more insults. There’s always something to look forward to. Always a tunnel at the end of the light.”

  Bogdan leaned toward Garin. “I was once a samizdat publisher, and for that I was called a traitor—but not enough of a traitor to go to jail. I applied unsuccessfully for an émigré visa right after I lost my job as a civil engineer and shortly before I took a job on the night shift at the botanical garden, joining the pool of the marginally employed. It was essential for a Soviet citizen like me, a Jew and a writer, to keep a low profile, and no one has as low a profile as a night-shift guard at the botanical garden that closes at dusk.

  “That is who I am,” Bogdan concluded, nodding at Garin. “Tell me about yourself.”

  Natalya stood and began to gather the plates. “Enough of politics. It’s boring. I have a walnut rogaliki for dessert. It is all I could find.” She handed a large serving dish to Bogdan. “Help me clear.”

  Garin never did say anything about himself. After-dinner aperitifs were poured, and with them conversation moved from one topic to the next, avoiding politics. The evening began to wind down, and inevitably the conversation returned to politics.

  Bogdan lifted his glass of wine. “Chernenko est mort.”

  “Why in French?” Galina asked.

  “It sounds more civilized to say death in French. The French seem to die gracefully in bed.”

  * * *

  NATALYA CALLED DOWN the circular staircase to the lobby, reminding her departing guests to secure the front door on their way out. She turned to Garin, who stood behind, glass in hand.

  “Well, those are my friends,” she said. “You succeeded in drawing attention to yourself by saying almost nothing.”

  “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “He was baiting you. He is jealous of men with faith.” She gazed at him as if trying to look into his mind. “Something I see under your mask.” She raised an eyebrow. “Now, when I meet Bogdan again, which may be never, he will remember you. But he is a dissident, and he will have no desire to draw attention to himself by reporting you to the KGB. He is a good writer, but he writes about his crummy dissident life, so nothing will ever get published. He didn’t like you, but you are safe.” She looked at him. “Are you adventurous?”

  “About what?”

  “Let’s walk to the roof. I will show you a different Moscow.”

  * * *

  THE NIGHT SKY was a pincushion of stars that dimly illuminated the dark, suffering city. The closest stars of the Milky Way were visible as distinct points of light, which made the constellation seem close and tangible, as if one could reach up and touch it. Natalya remarked on the clarity of the sky and how she rarely saw stars like this anymore.

  They stood at the edge of the stone parapet and were cold, having left the apartment without coats, and without thinking she put her arm in his. Suddenly realizing what she’d done, she withdrew and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “I come here on summer nights,” she said. “I look out and wonder what Moscow was like in Tolstoy’s time. I think of the people then, their lives, their struggles, and the smells of that city. All gone. And this too, what we are looking at, will be gone. But gone in a different way. I miss what it never was.” She looked at Garin. “Do you understand?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “I’m talking nonsense,” she said, laughing to herself. “I was brought up here as a child by my father, who told me stories about his father, and he pointed to the landmarks. Then I would come up by myself and look at St. Basil’s, the Kremlin, and Moscow River. I was an unhappy child, but I was content here. I wished I had lived in Tolstoy’s Moscow. I thought it would have been a better time to be alive. As if I had a choice.”

  She raised her arm toward the red star on the Spasskaya Tower inside the Kremlin wall. “Now there is only the State and the Party. Our Evil Empire.” She mocked the words. “It is a stupid phrase. We are not evil, and we are not an empire. Your politicians denounce us to feel good about themselves. This is Russia. We are only people. Yes, we have Party apparatchiks like the ones who pulled Maria Yudina from her bed to record her song. They were frightened of Stalin. Fear rules here.”

  She studied his face. She straightened her back. “I am a little frightened. Frightened of you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I am fond of you.”

  They were standing close to each other, not touching, but their eyes met. Neither said anything for a long moment.

  “Come,” she said. “It’s cold.”

  “It’s cold!” he shouted into the night.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s cold!” he shouted again.

  “You’re crazy. Neighbors will hear you. They’ll call the militia.”

  “This is the Moscow I remember,” he said, resisting as she pulled him toward the roof door. He pointed at the sheltering sky and the grim beauty of the sad city. He howled.

  “Come,” she said, laughing. “We’ll freeze to death, and then all the food in the refrigerator will go to waste.”

  They descended four flights down the winding marble staircase to her apartment.

  “You will sleep in my brother’s room.” She pointed to the small room at the end of the hall where he’d slept for two nights. “You know where the bathroom is.”

  The bedroom had a frilly dressing table and a satiny bedcover she had neatly turned down. He slid under the covers. A full moon had risen and washed the room in silver light. There was a fight in his heart that kept him awake. He went over their conversation, and even as he pushed aside thoughts of her, Natalya kept invading his imagination, until finally he forced himself to concentrate on Petrov’s escape. He considered the plan and tested its parts to understand where it was weak and where it could fail. The repetition of detail had a sedative effect. He clung to his drowsy worry like a drunk coddling his empty bottle, until the numbing patterns put him to sleep.

  At one point, he thought he heard a sound outside. He went to the window, closed the curtain, and pulled back one corner, making sure that he couldn’t be seen from the street. There was only a three-legged dog loping in the shadows. Garin looked in both directions, certain that he had heard the sharp click of a car door closing. The quiet street was dark and empty. He dropped the curtain. Before slipping under the bedcovers, he happened to glance down the hall and confirmed that Natalya’s bedroom light was off.

  * * *

  GARIN WOKE WITH a start. Bright morning light bled through the edge of the closed curtain. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was or even what part of his life he was in. He sat up quickly and recognized his shoes, clothes, and then the bedroom. He remembered.

  Garin was on the bed tying his shoes when he noticed his wallet on the dressing table was open. He went through it and confirmed its contents: cash, false identification, several old photographs, and two random receipts. He unfolded one. The trick was simple. He kept a strand of hair in the fold, where it would be imperceptible to any person who went through his wallet. If it was missing, he knew his wallet had been searched. The hair was gone.

  Garin considered her deceit. There was nothing in his wallet that compromised him, but she had been looking for something.

  17 ON THE RUN

  COMING, COMING.”

  Garin had knocked three times when he heard Natalya call from inside the apartment. When
the door opened, he presented a cloth bag with eggs, a loaf of black bread, and a duck he had bought on the black market in his old neighborhood. The toothless old woman had recognized him when she took his money but said nothing.

  “Thank you.” Natalya wiped her hands vigorously on her apron. Under the apron she wore a long skirt, a black silk blouse, and her pearls. She pulled him into the apartment and glanced nervously down the stairwell. “You’re late, but you weren’t followed. An American businessman was arrested this afternoon.” She took the cloth bag. “I made my mother’s favorite recipe. She had only one, so it was her favorite. Kotlety. I will also cook the duck. We will have the eggs for breakfast.”

  She looked at him, her head cocked slightly. “Your disguise is terrible.” She straightened his glasses on his nose. “I expected you hours ago. I thought you might have been detained. Thank God you weren’t. I hate to eat alone.” She removed the envelope from the bag. “What’s this?”

  Garin had made a second visit to the Russian Orthodox church. “It’s for Posner. He’s expecting it.” Garin removed his shoes in the vestibule, as he’d been instructed. “Smells good.”

  “We’ll see. I don’t cook often. There is always someone who asks me to dinner.”

  She had set the dining table and placed a vase in the middle with a single red rose. “White is for cemeteries. Red goes with the wine I got from a friend.”

  Garin washed his hands. He was aware that she’d straightened up. A pair of beige hosiery hung on the shower rod, and the overpowering lavender fragrance of a cleaning product came to him as violent red.

  “Comrade Posner was questioned today,” she called out from the other room.

  Garin emerged and pretended surprise. “For what?”

  “I don’t know. We had a meeting in his office, but he didn’t come. I asked where he was. Everyone was quiet. His secretary was almost in tears. Everyone knew something, but no one said anything. This is the way it happens.” Her brow wrinkled, and her voice deepened. “He protected me, and for that I am grateful, but everyone in his department will be under suspicion.”

  So it had begun. Garin tried to look worried. “Get him the envelope tomorrow. It’s important.”

  Wine and nervousness made Natalya garrulous at dinner. He asked about the apartment, and she said that it had belonged to her maternal grandfather, a prosperous criminal defense lawyer, who had once defended Lenin in St. Petersburg. After the Revolution, he’d had the privilege of joining the Party and keeping his bourgeois lifestyle. “He gave it to my mother, and now I have it,” she said. “With all its ghosts.”

  “Is that her?” Garin said, pointing to a photograph.

  “No, my father removed her pictures. He didn’t want to be reminded.” She drank her wine and was quiet. “She was a typical Russian Jew. She decided the best thing for me was to become a ballerina, and I thought, well, that’s a good idea, but then I realized that she wanted me to accomplish what she had dreamed for herself as a child. All her frustrated ambitions landed on me. And then she died.”

  She shrugged. “My father saw her suffer, and the needless inefficiency of the clinic made him angry. She died from their carelessness. It was the turning point in a series of difficult transitions, if you can think of tragedy as transition.”

  “What happened?”

  “Enough! I don’t want to talk about myself.”

  His silence undermined her resolve, and then slowly she was telling the whole story of her parents, as if she had been waiting a long time for an audience. “My father was not the same man after her death,” she said. “Moody, angry, blaming her doctors, and he drank. He began to resent the Party. I never knew a man could love a woman so much. All I remembered was their shouting, but in death she became a saint. Who knows what goes through a man’s mind. He put all his attention on me after her death. She had encouraged me to dance, and he took up that cause. It was like I had two parents pushing me. He knew men who put in a good word for me at the Bolshoi School. I was good enough to get in, but you only discover how bad you are when you compete against talented girls—and all the time I was thinking I should dance for my mother. I was fourteen years old. What did I know?

  “I never would have had a long career. My injury was a godsend. It protected me from public failure.” She refilled her wineglass and his. “You drink a lot. I know about heavy drinkers.” She stared at him. “My father was executed when I was twenty. That was the second transition. I am now on my third tragedy. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  She laughed sadly. “They said no child should bear the sins of her father. Dmitry Posner took responsibility for me, giving me the privileges I would have had if my father had lived. He helped my career at the Bolshoi, and he protected this flat from a bureaucracy that wanted to evict me. And when I was injured, he helped me find employment in State Security. My brother and I took a new last name after Father was executed. We were told that if we had the surname Zyuganov, we’d be connected to the traitor Zyuganov—and we would suffer.”

  She pointed to the photograph of her brother on the T-62 tank. “Luca was the talented one. Three years younger. Stupidly patriotic, but a clever boy. So eager to erase his father’s stigma with his own heroics. He volunteered for the front. And do you know the worst part? They used him against me.”

  Garin had been picking at the duck when she made her claim, and he lifted his eyes.

  “Posner. Talinov. All my father’s colleagues said, ‘Don’t dig up the past, Nastia. Don’t ask questions.’ They made it clear that Luca would suffer if I tried to find out why my father was executed so quickly.” She put a pistol finger to the nape of her neck. “I know how he died. I know where he died, and I know why. What I don’t know is who. Talinov pulled the trigger, but I don’t know who betrayed him.”

  Natalya carefully placed her knife on the table, aligning the blade vertically, and she raised her fierce eyes to Garin. “Was it you?”

  Garin didn’t respond.

  “Or maybe you just failed him,” she said. “Guilt doesn’t become you. For a quiet man, you have a hard face.” Her voice had turned angry.

  “He was compromised,” Garin said calmly, his eyes on hers. “Compromised from the inside. Someone knew he would be crossing that night. Yes, I visited his grave. Yes, I regret the failure. Could I have done more? Probably. I often ask myself what we did wrong. But in time, I have come to understand the problem was inside the KGB.”

  Natalya leaned back and pondered Garin. She tapped her palm with the knife. “They made it clear. ‘Don’t ask questions. Don’t do anything stupid, Natasha. Luca has a good career. You will hurt him if you are too curious.’ ” Natalya slowly leaned forward again and took her wineglass, coddling it. “I was quiet for years. Then Luca was killed. My third transition.” Her expression became a sad, careless smile. “Now, I am free to ask questions, free to leave, free to avenge him.” She patiently tapped the knife on the table. “A prisoner of all my freedoms.”

  She was silent for a long moment, then said, “We have a joke. We like jokes. There is a billboard near Red Square that proclaims capitalism is rotting away. A diplomat returns from his two years in London and a friend asks, ‘Well, is it true? Is it rotting?’ The diplomat says, ‘Yes, of course, but the smell of decay is quite pleasant.’ ”

  Natalya smiled. “A stupid joke, but soon I will again smell the bouquet of decay.” She noticed that Garin had been looking at her pearls. “Maybe you’re a thief,” she said, laughing, her fingers at her neck as she touched her pearls. “I don’t dress like this often. I want to feel better about myself. Does that happen to you? Do you dress up to feel better about your life?”

  Natalya suddenly looked at him. “There is a woman’s photo in your wallet. Of course I looked. Who is she?”

  “My wife.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She was skeptical.

  “Ex-wife,” he said.


  “You left her?”

  “She left me.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Natalya scoffed. “If you say you don’t know, then you don’t admit it. Men don’t know what they feel for women. They get confused by affection.” She paused. “I never wanted that responsibility—marriage. It was easy for me, as a Bolshoi dancer. Everyone wanted to sleep with me.” She shrugged. “Some men were nice, most were clumsy. I was with Bogdan a year ago. He still thinks I owe him some emotional privileges because I once took him into my life and read his shitty novels.”

  Garin listened to her casual insults tossed out like discarded cigarettes. He heard a hint of regret in her easy toughness.

  “Were you ever happy?” she asked.

  “A stupid question. Only an unhappy person would ask that question.”

  “Maybe not. What do you know?”

  “I know what you’ve told me. This apartment. Your childhood memories. Your brother, father, mother. So much pain for one life.”

  “I’m Russian,” she snapped.

  “So am I.”

  She laughed her answer. “A strange Russian with an odd accent who thinks you can be happy. Where is your suffering? You, a Russian American mongrel.”

  Garin felt the first stirrings of anger. The wine, which had begun to pleasantly numb him, and her rudeness combined to irritate him. He was glad neither of them was good at flirting. It was a kind of game, a deception, but at that moment he knew that they were not acting.

  “Speak,” she said. “Tell me your suffering.”

  “Your father knew.”

  “Well, perhaps you should tell me, since he never shared it. Where were you born? Who was your mother?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he grunted. “I don’t talk about myself. It’s not safe.”

  She laughed. “As if everything else you do keeps you from an early grave.”