WAYS OF DECEIT is a 75,000-word political mystery that ...



THE FIREBIRD AFFAIR A novel by Dusko Doder @2011 AUTHOR’S NOTEThis book is a work of fiction. It is set against the background of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Although some of the events depicted in this novel bear a similarity to those in my own life, the characters are a product of my imagination and any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental.I would like to thank those who helped me in various way during the preparation of this novel: Barbara Rosenfeld, Nancy Lieber, Suchma and Mark Palmer, Carol Simons and my agent Ronald Goldfarb. A special thanks goes to my wife, Louise, to whom the book is dedicated.Dusko Doder For LouiseWhat’s never known is safest in this life.Under the skysigns they who have no armsHave cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghostAlone’s unhurt, so the blind man sees best. --Dylan Thomas1My former life caught up with me at a party on P Street in the shape of a man I never wanted to see again. His name was Holz and he entered the room as if he owned it. Tuxedo. Pleated dress shirt. Malachite studs. Patent leather shoes. He looked more like a successful plastic surgeon than what he really was—one of those curious public servants whose trade is secret, violent, and thankless. When our eyes met for a brief instant, his eyebrows made a little jump as if signaling, Ah, there you are. It’s curious how an almost imperceptible jump of the eyebrows can disturb one’s inner peace. He’d come for me, I thought. It was an odd intuition. Definite. I turned toward the back of the house and for a brief moment, it was touch and go whether I’d quickly slip out the back door and go home. Then I told myself I needed to think things through, I mustn’t be cowed by Holz, mustn’t let him spoil my evening. The fact is that I had been looking forward to the annual reunion of old Moscow hands; I enjoyed stepping back into my old life for a day. Anticipation itself was half the fun: getting the old tuxedo from the plastic bag, putting on the ruffled white shirt, struggling with the bow tie and the gold cufflinks with my initials—a gift from Emily on my thirty-fifth birthday. In front of the mirror, I had looked the same as I used to. Or so I told myself. Alcohol emboldens normally cautious people, or perhaps it was a bond we had—our shared experiences in Soviet Moscow—that quickly washed the starch out of our collars and made us feel young again. I was quite shocked when my young (fourteen years younger) significant other announced last year she’d never attend another Moscow reunion. “It’s creepy,” Jennifer had exclaimed, dismissing as boring our recycled Cold War tales: “Rich old farts and has-beens talking gibberish.” She’d suddenly reminded me just how much the world had changed; it was as if the new generations had the nerve circuits of their brains rewired to eliminate all memories of communism. Holz’s arrival changed the acoustics of the party. The hostess was uttering shrieks of delight and treated Holz and his wife Jane with that special consideration reserved for persons of high rank. Other guests, some in dinner jackets and long dresses, others in smart-casual, surrounded them and clinked glasses. I thought I’d make myself invisible. Not like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. More like playing the game we used to play as kids, a type of hide and seek called come to my den. Whenever you saw another kid first, you’d get a point. You’d win if you avoided being seen by others. The house seemed to offer lots of hiding places. Its deceptively modest Georgian Revival front on P Street concealed a structure of substantial proportions. I moved back to the sunroom—I guess that’s what they called this recent addition—which was about as large as my Rosslyn condo and had cathedral ceilings and a wall of glass with a view of a large deck and an outside swimming pool. Other walls were covered with paintings framed in gilt with little plaques to identify the artist and two oversized TV screens.It was a warm and humid spring night, and inside the house it was pleasantly cool. The barman poured me three fingers of amber vodka from a bottle kept in the freezer. It poured viscous, like oil.“Careful, Todd darling.” Maggie Dobbs materialized behind me, running a finger down my neck. She wore a flowing satin trouser-suit which offered a bird’s-eye view down the highly revealing front. “What’s new in the world of chess?” I thought the question was pointed, as if to remind me that after years of covering diplomatic and national security issues for the Washington Tribune, I was now in the lower depths of journalism—writing about chess. Perhaps I imagined this, being overly sensitive to possible slights. Granted, chess was no longer as sexy as it used to be way back when Bobby Fischer “taught commies a lesson” and when ninety percent of New York bars had their television sets turned to the Fischer’s match with Soviet champion Boris Spassky instead to the baseball game. I remember New York Post reporters going from bar to bar to check; the score was 18 out of the 21 bars were tuned to the chess. But with the days of Cold War competition over, chess was just a cerebral board game and I enjoyed writing about it. I ignored Maggie’s question and raised my glass to her. “You haven’t changed a bit since last time.”“Liar,” she smiled, looking over my shoulder the way important people do at parties. “Hey. Holz is here, did you see?”A white-haired black waiter in a white jacket pushed a silver tray of canapés between us. I skewered a shrimp and Maggie took asparagus wrapped in bacon.Maggie’s large brown eyes slid away from me and back across the room. “God, haven’t seen him for ages. Not since Moscow.” Her face became a puzzling grimace. “I don’t remember him ever coming to one of our reunions.”I shook my head, no. “They say he’s going to be the next DDO, you know, the nation’s top spy,” she said, patronizingly I thought, as if the acronym had to be explained to me. For a moment before she moved away, I recalled the pretty young foreign correspondent I first met in Moscow long ago. There was still something girlish about her—same freckles and slightly snubbed nose—despite a hint of vertical lines above her upper lip. But now there was an air of unshakeable self-confidence about Maggie and something else that reminded me of my younger self: I saw quite unmistakably in her gaze a flash of the audacity of a huntress. By God, her eyes said, I have to find out if Holz has already been offered the job. The barman gestured if I wanted a refill. “Three fingers?”I nodded to him. He winked. How quickly we forget our own frailties and follies. Once I relished political rumors. I, too, had used social functions to elicit comments from high officials on the latest rumor about this or that personnel or policy change—a few off the cuff remarks a skilled writer could tease out to twenty inches of the thumb-sucking we used to label news analysis. Nowadays, I sometimes resorted to rumors to liven my column—say one about Hitler playing chess against Lenin at Cafe Landtmann in Vienna in 1909; or Ivan the Terrible dying suddenly in the middle of a chess match in 1584 (some historians suspect his opponent of poisoning the czar with mercury). But who reads stories entombed deep inside the Tribune’s D Section? That’s what Maggie’s final look seemed to say; in her eyes, I’d been sentenced to perpetual irrelevance. That was when I noticed a red glob of shrimp sauce on the left cuff of my white shirt. Shit! I had taken it to the dry cleaners only last week.I downed a couple of vodkas in quick succession to calm the nerves, then tiptoed cautiously toward the bathroom, determined to wash off the shrimp sauce with tepid water. An antique lacquered cabinet was in my way and I knew I was heading toward it as if someone had put a spell on it, as if possessed by demons who drew me to it. As I tried to get around it, I stumbled with cartoonish inevitability straight into the lacquered piece, bringing several framed Webster family photos crashing down. Thank God, I thought, the noise of conversation was high; the guests were flushed from vodka toasts and talked all at once. Only Betty Webster, the big la-di-da on the Georgetown social circuit, saw everything and was staring at me from the other end of the room, giving me one of those smiles that show the gums above the teeth. Would the earth crack open and swallow me up? I managed an embarrassed smile before escaping to the bathroom.I dabbed at the red stain on my cuff with a wet napkin until it started disintegrating into white flakes that resembled dandruff. One part of my brain kept wondering: why is Holz here? He had never once attended the annual get-togethers of those of us who worked in Moscow in 1991—diplomats, journalists, spies. He may have been present at the 1992 reunion to mark the first anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but I couldn’t say for sure.Before leaving the bathroom, I stood in front of the mirror and finger-combed my hair into place. Then I saw the sparklingly shiny black shoes in the hall. Holz was waiting for me. “I’d like to have a word with you,” he said. “About what?”“Emily. Your late wife.” “Really?”“Yes.” Suddenly I felt nauseated, like I had stepped barefoot on a lizard. “You didn’t give me the time of day when I wanted to talk to you about Emily,” I said. “Remember?” He may not have remembered, but I did. That was a time in my life when I wondered if I wanted to wake up the next morning, when I struggled with a form of melancholia for which Dr. Kaiser, our family physician, ordered a battery of expensive tests; when all of them came back normal, he prescribed Prozac. Emily, you see, had died in Moscow while I was covering the beginning of a Caucasus war between the Armenians and the Azeris. I have often wondered, as I wondered now, what course my life might have taken had I not gone on that trip. Could I have protected her? The question remains academic, of course, but my mind often searched its darkest corners trying to imagine Emily’s final moments, and each time there was Holz hovering in the background. How come nobody had asked for a toxicology report before she was cremated? Other questions hung in the air. This was a form of torture that nearly drove me mad.In normal times, the Embassy would have the answers, or some bureau in the State Department. That’s what consular sections are for. But 1991 was not a normal year in Moscow. The Evil Empire was disintegrating; by Christmas, it had ceased to exist. Witnessing such epochal events diplomats could not be blamed for giving insufficient attention to more mundane matters, which was regrettable, as officials in various bureaus of the State Department reminded me. Except that finding out the truth about my wife’s death was hardly a mundane matter as far as I was concerned. But I got no answers and to know nothing was agony. I began to think the life itself was futile. Finally, I was discreetly pointed in the direction of McKinney Holz, former science attaché, who in reality had been chief of the CIA Moscow station. I had a hard time imagining this aloof dandy with sparklingly shiny shoes doing things secret agents do—steal, pick locks, rifle desks, hack into computers, photograph documents, and use a gun.It wasn’t easy to find a phone number for Holz. Eventually, I got it from his wife. “Don’t tell my husband I gave it to you,” Jane Holz cautioned. I used to see Jane regularly at the embassy. She always addressed me with sardonic formality when I stopped by the Press and Culture section, which handled the mail for correspondents and exchange scholars. With her long black hair and pale luminous face, she looked like Cher and was great fun. Holz refused to talk or meet with me. This just goes to show why his presence was a serious cause for anxiety and my secret wish was that he be consumed by hellfire for all eternity.“That was eleven years ago, pal,” Holz said dismissively. “In the Pleistocene era, as far as I am concerned. Besides, I had nothing to say at the time.” I was overwhelmed by resentment and could feel a frown taking over my whole face. Fuck you, I thought. I didn’t know what the term Pleistocene referred to. I tried to push him out of my way, but nervousness made me clumsy and I snagged the edge of an antique Chinese vase with my elbow. Holz caught it. One-handed. “You need to sober up, pal,” he said, steering me to a door at the end of the hall. “Let’s go to Chip’s office.”Fuck you, Holz! I thought. But I followed him anyway, walking unsteadily, his hand on my back.He showed me into a room full of cream leather furniture. My body sank into an overstuffed chair next to a little teak table. I registered two walls of floor-to-ceiling bookcases and French windows looking out over the property that basked in the yellow glow of Tikki torches and hidden floodlights. “What’s it exactly you want to talk about?” His eyebrows lifted. “I have some information, sensitive information,” he paused and watched my expression closely. “Regarding your wife’s death.” I opened my mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. What now, God, said a voice in my head. Why? This was 2002. It had taken years to bury Emily’s memory, make my peace. Not that she would ever completely leave me; a woman who so abruptly disappears from your life can never do that. But I had got to the stage where I no longer dreamed of her; my palms and my fingertips no longer tingled with the memory of touching her in those twilight seconds just before falling asleep. “Is this some kind of a joke?” That was all I managed to say.“No!” He had that seen-it-all world weary aura that you find in people who had been in the same job too long. “I’ve talked to a recent Russian defector. Looks like the KGB may have had something to do with it.” I saw him smile on one side of his mouth, and as he did so, I knew the news was bad. His body language said the same. Now mystery spread through my body as I watched his hands before him, gesturing, shaping some point. His eyes were fixed on me and I read in them the confirmation of my own worst fears.Suddenly, my mind was clear and alert. It must have been the adrenaline that cleared it. I was instantly, terribly alert, and angry. The ghost of Emily suddenly materialized midway between the green screen and the bookcase on the wall behind. She was thin, straight-backed, beautiful, wearing blue jeans and my saffron button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up.? I blinked; she disappeared.? Like fallout from a dirty bomb, the?new realization started to radiate through me, sickening me, poisoning me. I felt every fault in me opening at once. Guilt. Remorse. Regret that I was not at her side, that I had not even attended her funeral. My mind may have been running a hundred miles per hour, but my mouth apparently wasn’t quick enough for Holz. I said, “Your own people didn’t dispute the official medical report on her death. You found nothing wrong with it.”He nodded. I felt a flush spread up my face. “Goddammit, man!” I said. “Calm down, pal,” Holz interrupted sharply. “You’re drunk!“ That stung a bit and I attempted to get out of the overstuffed chair in a small gesture of defiance.“Oh, sit down for God’s sake.” He frowned, and a look of severe impatience came over his face. Nonetheless, he pushed calmly ahead. “I want to talk to you—but when you’re sober.” He halted for a while and stared directly into my eyes. “And it has to be confidential.” The fucking rules, I wanted to say. There are no rules for you people. You make up the rules as you go along; you have conversations that never took place. I knew I’d had too much to drink and was slurring certain words. I tried to say as little as possible. “Holy shit, Mac!” I said.“Let’s have lunch. Tomorrow.” He grabbed a ballpoint from a C-SPAN mug and scribbled something on the back of a credit card receipt which he handed me. “This might be a good time to call it a day,” he added and abruptly left the room.I leaned back and waited. I wanted to put a little distance between Holz and me. Suddenly, I needed sharp focus to keep the room from spinning and I stared at the yellow glow of Tikki torches outside. I wished to God that the last twenty minutes had never happened. It seemed an hour later that I pulled myself together and followed Holz into the living room, though it may have been only a minute or two.2I wouldn’t want you to think that my anxiety was without foundation. The series of events that were to change my whole life had begun in early May of 1991. My four-year stint as Moscow correspondent was due to end in June. Emily had been making final preparations for our departure home; dealing with the packers; arranging the farewell reception at the Prague restaurant, a centrally- located establishment with proper facilities for such functions. Eager as ever to impress my bosses, I’d been scrounging around for behind-the-scene scoops I could use in my final—I thought of it as valedictory—series of articles. That’s when I met Professor Voronov. Stumbling into Voronov was a piece of extraordinary luck. It was quite a coup to have a long talk with a physicist who had spent his entire life in the secret world of nuclear weapons; even more exciting was his openly stated interest to establish direct contact with Livermore Lab scientists to discuss his new idea of disposing nuclear waste. This was Page One stuff. As a graduate student, he had solved a theoretical problem that had allowed the Russians to build their first hydrogen bomb and was immediately awarded a doctorate degree on orders of Stalin’s police chief Beria, who personally ran the nuclear weapons program. When other scientists questioned the obvious violation of academic norms, the chairman of the state nuclear commission was reported to have said, “He did something none of you could do!” No other explanation was ever offered. It’s a superstition with me always to try to get a firm understanding of a person I was writing about. What fascinate readers are the details of a person’s life, and I knew next to nothing about Voronov’s. That’s why I’d gone to the embassy that day. Instead, I found myself escorted by Holz to the top floor of the old embassy building on Tchaikovsky Street. It was the high security area with a coded digital lock, a thick steel door, Marines all round. I looked around for high-tech spy gear, the kind of stuff you see in the Hollywood movies? The place resembled an abandoned warehouse with the super-secret “bubble” sitting like a box perched on Lucite stilts, a room within a room, made entirely of special plastic.Ambassador Morgan and Joe Garment from the Consular section were already inside the bubble. Morgan had removed his jacket and tie. “So you interviewed the Voronov? The guy who created the Soviet hydrogen bomb?” Holz did not say this pointedly, I thought, but with an effortless sincerity cultivated over the years to flatter people whenever he wanted information out of them.Yes, I said. Emily and I had met the professor at a concert last week. I had a four-hour-long interview with him the next day, I said and proceeded to outline some highlights. They sat, stony faced and silent, listening attentively. “We’d like to meet Voronov,” Holz said briskly after I’d finished. Can you do us a small favor, wouldn’t take much time, we’d be grateful, and on and on. He spoke clearly. He had no doubt that the embassy would be eager to help the Russian professor.“Yes,” the ambassador coughed, his hands folded in his lap.Joe Garment nodded his approval, and tugged at his earlobe. He was famous for being a hard-line conservative. “But how can we be sure this is not a KGB setup?”Holz said the professor was up front, speaking publicly and saying he wanted to deal directly with his counterparts at Livermore. As the science attaché, he’d do his best to facilitate the contact. I offered to provide Voronov’s phone number. Holz didn’t trust the phones, he said, what with KGB eavesdropping blanketing the city. The suggestion was that I take a note directly to Voronov. “You put us in touch with him,” Holz added with a meaningful nod to me. “And you’ll get the first crack at the story.”There was no reason for this crude bait to make me lower my guard, or so it seems all these years later, but that’s just what it did. I’m conditioned to think scoops. Not that I could quite imagine the shape of another possible Voronov scoop—his idea for a joint Soviet-American project on disposing of nuclear waste has Gorbachev’s blessing and would cause be regarded as a scoop when it’s published. Yet it’s always possible Holz had something very big in mind, I reasoned. I’m obliged to admit another fact that I had long half-hidden from myself: I was seriously tempted. I don’t know how long this moment of weakness lasted before I heard alarm bells ringing inside my head. No, I had said eventually, I can’t do it. I cannot be an intermediary. That’s not my job.Holz was now staring at me. “Your wife knows the guy, you said. She could help us?”“Good idea,” said the ambassador, passing a hand lightly over his wavy hair. “Exactly,” Garment chimed in.“That’s up to her,” I said. I should have known better that say that. That was what it was to be careless. Emily had a mind of her own; her smile may have been as mysteriously as Ingrid Bergman’s in Casablanca but she could have never said, “You have to think for both of us” to Humphrey Bogart.Those few words—that’s up to her—had haunted me ever since. Also made me feel guilty whenever I thought of Rick. Guilty, because I’ve never told him about the conversation in the bubble, never leveled with him. I’d lied to my son, hadn’t I? Was that enough of a reason for a son to reject his father? It was stupid lie; not a lie at all, I’d often rationalized, merely a failure to mention a few details. Yet it created a void in my life, a sadness of spirit that affected many of my daily activities.*I have no memory of leaving the house on P Street. I remember being angry and moaning profanely while looking for my Jeep Cherokee, which was parked by Dumbarton Oaks on R Street. The wet sidewalks of Georgetown seemed aglow with a mysterious yellow. The rain was not actually falling; it just hung around like lackluster, foggy netting, as it does sometimes in Washington in the spring. I drove cautiously, watching out for police patrol cars. I didn’t need another DUI. I took M Street, and then crossed Key Bridge. My condo was on the other side of the Potomac, in a new high-rise on North Quinn, just off Wilson Boulevard. I sat in the underground garage for a while, then took the elevator up. Once inside the apartment, I staggered toward the drinks cabinet, poured myself a glass of gin, then made my way to the wet balcony. My only logic was to drink myself into oblivion. Eleven years after the fact, for Christ’s sake, and now they want to tell me how Emily died. I downed the gin and shuddered as it went down. I felt sick and groggy enough to question whether I hadn’t been hallucinating all along. But Holz’s words came back to me like the tremor of an earthquake, threatening to break open the tightly-woven surface of my life. Something, some faint guilt buried deep, barely accessible, was stirring. I wanted to know the truth.3 L’Auberge chez Francois?is hidden away in Virginia, ten miles from the Beltway. It’s a place of understated elegance where high officials and wealthy businessmen entertain their mistresses or one another. McKinney Holz was already in the restaurant. The maitre d’ led me to the secluded table where he was munching on a roll with poppy seeds, which he dipped in a small plate covered by a thin film of virgin olive oil.“Ah, Todd,” he stood up. “Good to see you. Sobered up, I see.”I ignored his jibe and his outstretched hand and sat down. Holz was unfazed, feigned not to notice. A waiter presented menus, rolled French-accented specials off his tongue. ?I ordered a glass of house chardonnay. He asked for a vodka martini.“Yes, Mr. Holz,” the waiter ‘d smiled ingratiatingly. “Two slices of lemon. Straight up.” “Exactly. And a glass of ice water.”Holz was in his sixties—I could see it around his eyes and a touch of silver at the roots of his hair—but I had noticed last night that there was a bounce to him that was young. His face seemed deceptively benign. He was the type of man who could be easily underestimated, an attribute that must have served him well in his career. Impeccably dressed. His light gray suit and French-cuffed shirt—respectfully elegant, but not overbearingly so—made me feel grubby by contrast. Shabby.? Grotto-like candles flickered shadows over Holz’s face even though it was daylight and our table had a view over much of the restaurant.? The white-aproned waiters glided around, taking orders, pouring ice water, and bringing fresh rolls.?Holz pulled out a thin elongated plastic container from an inside pocket. “Pills,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Five different pills each day.”I didn’t care about his pills. I didn’t even feel smug that the big shot in the clandestine service had to rely on a daily intake of a few little pills. I wanted to hear what he had to say. But he was making me wait and enjoying it, I could see. A dignified waiter with a thin mustache, hair just over his ears, and an expression of perpetual anxiety took our orders. A small Caesar’s salad?followed by broiled grouper for me; the warm monkfish salad and the grilled trout with wild rice and lentils for him; and a bottle of white Burgundy. Holz began talking about the zealotry of Islamic fanatics, their inhuman dedication and self-discipline. Not a proper enemy for a superpower. Now Russia, with its eleven times zones full of missile silos, was an enemy you could wrap your mind around. But waging war against cavemen that control no territory or hard assets? Who would do anything and everything to win? “In my opinion, things will get worse before they’ll get better.”I didn’t know how long I could listen to this. I said, sharply, “We didn’t come here to discuss Islamic fundamentalism.” “No.” Holz summoned a false smile.He tasted the wine and pronounced it adequate, and the waiter poured it into our glasses. Another waiter set out the food.After they left us alone, Holz cleared his throat. He looked around to make sure no one was within earshot and leaned across the table.? “Now,” Holz said, clearing his throat again. “I have some information from a KGB defector.” He was watching me closely, as if to gauge my reaction, but I kept my cool. But a hard ball of anxiety had formed in my belly and was beginning to grow.“It looks to me like the KGB was implicated in Emily’s death. In a manner of speaking. She was lured to the restaurant, then given a psychotropic drug.” Holz now briefly scrutinized his finger nails.A psychotropic drug. My mind stumbled over the word. “As I understand it, she and her girlfriend were seated in a small intimate dining area on the second floor of the Prague restaurant. The defector says the girlfriend, whose name is Zvonareva, was a KGB freelancer. An agent apparently dressed as a waiter slipped the drug into Emily’s drink. But instead of becoming talkative, Emily collapsed on the floor a few minutes later.” “Jesus Christ!” I felt a flush begin just inside my collar. He saw my discomfort, and his face softened. “I’m sorry,” he said.I said nothing.“The drug….” Holz pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and peered at it. “Is named SP-117. Highly concentrated alcohol made of natural herbs. Don’t know which herbs. You swallow it, start talking. Afterwards, after they give you black coffee laced with some special substance, you forget everything.” “Bastards. Fucking, fucking bastards.” My grief had long gone beyond the tears to a place that had no outlet somewhere in the center of my body, where it had been dormant for years. Now everything was churning, and I imagined thin-lipped, pasty-faced agents slipping the deadly potion into Emily’s drink. Whenever she was frightened, Emily would become quite inarticulate because of her slight stammer.??Now I imagined her collapsing on the floor, writhing in pain, with blood streaking from the edge of her mouth. I wanted to find them, inflict horrible physical torture on them. “God damn you, Mac. Why do you say in a manner of speaking?” I was gripping my chair tightly. This was a crime that demanded vengeance, I thought. I owed her memory that. Holz said, “The prospective defector insists it was an accident. They had no intentions to harm her.” He signed. “Look, I’m really sorry.” “Fuck accidents,” I said.Holz continued: “They never had a problem with this particular drug. Never once, he said. For whatever it’s worth, big Russian companies nowadays use it to test the loyalty of key corporate officers.” Holz chuckled, looking briefly amused. “What a screwed-up country!” He stabbed at his fish.I thought about my son Rick. My then newly-tall, gangly 17-year-old son. All spiky, gelled hair and pencil thin moustache. And… and what? I could see both the young man he was becoming and the little boy I remembered. “Mom was killed,” he had insisted. Over and over. The boy was passionately attached to his mother, who single-handedly carried most of the burden of raising him. I must admit, I never considered myself much of a parent; I wasn’t the cool dad who indulged his only child. Part of it was the times, I thought; fathers were not nearly as involved in parenting as they are today. But the one thing I did know early on was that I’d die to protect Rick. At the time I remember thinking that if I’d gladly die to save him, I should also be willing to bend the truth a bit, right? Why burden the boy with doubts that were hatched in a nest of my own wild imagination and overinterpretation. “You believe the defector, Mac?” Holz shrugged, dismissively. “He can’t bullshit us. He gets what he wants only if we get what we need to get.”“A reward? Like lots of money?” He nodded tolerantly. “He and his family will be taken care for the rest of his life.”“And what do you need to get?”“Hell, he’s not a defector yet, he wants to defect. So we have leverage…”I interrupted him. “What do you want from him?”“A lot,” Holz said, leaning toward me and I felt his warm breath as he came closer and began cutting his sentences shorter and shorter. “He also told us about a mole. And I want to get the son of a bitch. I need evidence.”I could practically hear his brain working. His face changed, became more intense. “I’d always suspected there was a third man,” he said softly. “Because we couldn’t explain everything by blaming it on Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. It turns out I was right. And you know what? The son of a bitch was in the Moscow embassy at the same time when I was there. Imagine?”I’ve read about Ames and Hanssen, the two great American traitors who have worked for Moscow for many years while holding top position in the US intelligence community. I stared in the middle distance, feeling my brain was suddenly immobilized. Then there slowly crept over me, like a disease, a foreboding of what Holz wanted from me. No, I said to myself, I ‘m not a spy catcher. I don’t care about the third man. The Cold War is a thing of the past.“I hope you’re not trying to tell me I should help you find your fucking mole?” I said. I looked him squarely in the eye, hoping that my gaze was saying I meant it.“But I do,” Holz said. “He not only sold out our country, he sold your wife, too. And the professor and your friend Joseph. And me. I told you earlier that the mole worked in our embassy in the spring of 1991.”I tried to imagine how could a mole betray Emily; the idea itself was disconcerting. Holz continued: “He’s got blood on his hands.” He kept twirling his reading glasses to give his hands something to do. “Besides, we can’t even begin to guess what stuff the son of a bitch handed over to the Russkies. We do know several agents had been betrayed. All were eliminated….”“Executed?”“Yeah.” “And you still have no clue who it is? After all these years?” Holz’s brow corrugated. He narrowed his eyes. “Boy, I’d give my left nut to nail him. At my age, one doesn’t have a whole lot of desires, but this is one I want to see before I die.” “You must suspect someone?”We sat in silence for a while. If the Russians had an agent inside the US Embassy, I thought, why would they want to drug and interrogate Emily who had no access to classified information. I’d have to get to the bottom of this, start turning over rocks.“There’s a kind of weird logic working here,” I said. “Why Emily? It doesn’t make sense.” “I guess you’re right.” “There’s got to be some explanation?” I could see the mental struggle in his face. He had clearly thought about the same thing a great deal, but he had decided to keep that to himself. “Yes.” His brown eyes now looked at me with the calmness of absolute conviction. “Intelligence services are normally quite rational.”The serving woman interrupted us to clear away crumbs. We waited until she was done.I said, “Tell me, Mac, what exactly Emily did for you?”He inhaled sharply, as if he had scented danger. “She took a note to the professor. Gave it to him during the intermission at the Tchaikovsky Hall. It was an Igor Oistrakh concert.”To the left of Holz, a young woman approaching a neighboring table reminded me of Emily: the slim body, the long flowing lavender skirt, the sunglasses pushed over the mass of long blond curls, the wide green eyes, the self-confidence evident in her every gesture. She had something of Emily about her—Emily back then, frozen in time, breathless, arms outstretched, so comfortable in her body which filled her clothes like the living sea, fluid and beckoning.“That’s all? One letter?”“Yes.”I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “Let me come to the point,” he said, somewhat officiously, “I was hoping you and I could…” “You and me?” I almost shrieked. I had been expecting something like this, and yet I was taken aback.He cleared his throat, as if to swallow his annoyance, I thought. “I don’t need an answer now. Just think about it.” Then he raised hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s up to you, of course.” He hunched forward, the breath again in my ear. “I just assume you’d be interested in helping me find the man…. the mole, I should say, who betrayed her.” We stopped talking.I don’t want to appear too Jekyll and Hyde about this, but as the lunch progressed I could feel myself starting to get intrigued by Holz’s idea.At one time, years ago, lost in my own imaginary world of draconian retributions, I’d close my eyes and fantasize about ways of avenging Emily, and the retribution I had in mind was something like what Charles Bronson did in the Death Wish series. Thinking of creative ways to torture her killers made me forget my pain. But these fantasies were short lived; when I opened my eyes, the old familiar pain returned. There was nothing I could do except suffer my helplessness. No matter how many therapists told me it wasn’t my fault, I thought it was. I knew it. It was useless to try to explain everything in terms of good and evil. I knew it. Yet Rick’s sullen face kept bobbing up in my mind and his silent hostility implied that I had abandoned Emily in her moment of need, that I had failed them both. This did something to our relationship; something that went deep and that has been so poisonous. In the minds of children, a father is expected to move heaven and earth to avenge mother’s death. Make them pay! But who’re them. I had no leads to grab on to. Nothing. But how could you expect a reasonable conversation with a seventeen-year-old whose angry moodiness had taken over his entire personality. Even so, I often thought later, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble had I leveled with Rick right then and there. That was the moment I should have let my son know of my mistake. Even later, there was still a chance to mend the fraying rope that bound him to me. But I didn’t do it.Holz interrupted the silence. “You’ve got nothing to lose,” Holz said, and the way he said it sounded as if he was helping me face up to reality. “No more foreign assignments. Out of the Big Boys game, eh?” It was true. I knew it. I never remarried; I don’t think I had it in me to fall in love again. Well, there was Jennifer, but she was an arrangement. Certainly not a partner; we didn’t lived under the same roof.. I had no family. No career. But I didn’t like to hear from Holz that I had lost the life I had lived..“What do you mean?” I said with a forced smile. I couldn’t have believed it was possible to feel more miserable than I had felt in years. “You’re free,” he said.Fuck you, Mac, I thought. From what did I free myself? From guilt? From duty? He reached out and touched my arm. “This is strictly between you and me. No Agency role, no need for a finding. The fewer people the better. The problem with this town is that as soon as more than three people know something, it’s impossible to keep it secret.” I noticed his hands were covered with those brown marks, which are said to be signs of approaching death.I sat for a while, tracing intricate patterns with my fork on the now stained tablecloth. How could this be just between him and me, I wondered. “What about the Agency?” He gave me a strange look, as if it were the strangest question he’d ever heard. But then a smirk of superiority saturated his features. “The Director is aware, of course. In general terms, that is. He likes it that way because if things blow up he doesn’t get caught in the fallout. Besides, everything we are these days and everything we do is about Nine-Eleven.” He grimaced and shook his head, as if to say that there are situations that don’t fit the usual categories. “Let me put it this way: this is something within my discretionary authority.” I said, “You’re lying, Mac?”I felt his eyes boring deeper into me. “Todd. Todd!” His tone changed abruptly and became more personal. “Let me tell you one thing: I don’t like to lie, I don’t want to lie. I lie only when it’s absolutely necessary.”“But your business is lying.” His brow corrugated again. “You know what, Todd. Let’s talk about that some other time. What I’m saying now is a straightforward matter. I’d like you to join me, but I can’t make you. That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself. All I’m saying is that there’s a traitor on the loose. I’m prepared to give you everything I’ve got.”The waiter brought in two espressos; another began to sweep crumbs away, but Holz waved him to stop.In the silence, Holz opened a packet of Sweet’ n Low, emptied it into a spoon, added half a spoon into his cup and looked at me with a new interest. “You’ll get leads, information, money. Whatever else you need. I’ll put you on the scent…”“Why?” I was trying to figure out his game. I feared my curiosity would outweigh my caution.“There’s this one thing,” he said. “Just this unfinished business I’d like to take care of before retiring.” He suddenly looked tired, a grimace of weariness on his face. “I feel it’s time to call it a day. Jane can’t wait for me to do it. You know how she is, she’s working out plans, wants to start building. We have ocean front property down in Virginia Beach.” “What about all these rumors about you becoming the new DDO?”“It’s bullshit. I’m not the right of guy,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m a Cold War man and the Cold War’s over.”“But someone high up is leaking that stuff.”“It’s black humor, gets Jane all worked up. They know I’m not going to be bullied into providing phony intelligence. The director has no problems with watering down intel, fudging, telling the vice president what he demands to hear instead of what he needs to hear.” He smiled and rolled his eyes. “Going back to your earlier question. I hate to be taken for a sucker, and hatred is a great motivator.”“Let me make one thing clear, “ I said abruptly. “If I were to do anything, I’d do it in my own way.” I needed a caffeine jolt, but the coffee was lukewarm and sour on my tongue.“That’s fine with me,” he said softly. “Anyway, once you are out there you’re on your own.”We stopped talking.“Let’s settle up,” Holz said and signaled to the waiter for the check.We emerged from the restaurant and stood in the shade of a huge gnarled oak tree in the front yard. Holz took a few steps and spun around. “Get in here for a second. It’s damn hot.” Here meant Holz’s car, which had crawled from behind, a midnight blue government limo with tinted windows and two aerials on the roof. It was cool inside. The driver raised a partition between the front and rear compartments. I said, “You never answered my question. You got oodles of people working for you, professionals. Why an amateur?” “This is a job for an outsider—a very capable outsider, I must add.”I said, “Cut the shit.”“No, no, it takes a lot to become a good reporter, to know how to cultivate sources, learn the oblique language of Russia, develop a sixth sense for what’s solid and what’s not. You have to know hundreds of things which are absolutely useless in other walks of life.” He shrugged his shoulders, turned his eyes heavenward and the palms of his hands up. “In short—you,” he said confidently, with that calculating look that suggested he knew exactly what to expect next. Irony, truth in delicate balance, I thought.“Besides, you and I have a few things in common,” he went on, frowning slightly. “This is something very personal for us. I want to see the motherfucker in prison. He betrayed me, betrayed your wife, betrayed our country.” Suddenly, he formed a fist with his right hand and slammed it vehemently into the mitt of his left. I thought I saw a hint of torment in his eyes. “You of course want to avenge Emily… you owe it to her.”I was trying to work something out in my head, but the thought was elusive, sidetracked as I had become by the idea of vengeance. I wanted to look the son of a bitch in the eye, I thought. But Emily’s gone and nothing would bring the scales back in balance. But it would bring closure. The idea’s to atone and go on. Yes, I thought, I’d do it.I said, “If you think I’m going to be your flunkey and you’re going to run me, then you’re crazy.” I climbed out of the limo and slammed the door shut.Holz?rolled down the window and handed me one of those disposable cell phones, still in its plastic wrapper. “Here, use this if you want to reach me. There’s twenty dollars’ worth of calls on its chip. Otherwise just throw it away.” 4In the car on my way back home, I tried to methodically analyze the complicated road to recovery from the shock that was Emily’s death. It had taken me years to regain my moorings. I told myself that I was content with my life. What would happen if I went along with Holz? An unease rose up from my stomach, like I was about to dive deeply into something dangerous. A single wrong step could mean disaster.Then another thought came to me: did I really want to risk losing my chess column? It was intellectually as demanding as almost anything you’d ever do. It provided me with my daily workout in the gymnasium of the mind. I know other accomplished foreign correspondents that were assigned desk jobs upon returning home—jobs in which their mental skills were allowed to rust for want of use. Plus there were other fabulous things about chess, which was now being shaped by the computers and the Internet. After IBM’s Deep Blue crushed world champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, online computer programs have mushroomed. Now they are offering running commentaries on major chess matches, telling worldwide audiences whether a move is brilliant or blunder, and which player is ahead. Everybody except the two players knows which way the game is headed. And yet, and yet. Chess is played on the board and in the head. The computer programs—even those drawing on a database of five or more million games—can’t take into account the momentum or the intuition or other strictly human qualities. I sometimes wonder why anyone would want to become chief editor of the Tribune. The chief editor is more a politician than a journalist and I’m not a very good politician. In my case, it was blind ambition. In my last year in Moscow, there were rumors (published in the Washingtonian magazine) that Kevin Page and I were the most likely candidates to succeed the legendary editor Ed Hurd, the avatar of journalistic excellence who had made the Tribune to nearly equal the New York Times and the Washington Post on most days, and sometimes look better than either of them. Strange what rumors could do to a person. Thinking back, I remember Emily, ever the accountant’s daughter, entertaining fantasies about enlarging the back porch of our Newark Street house. Why not turn it into a large sunroom, something she had often considered in the past when we had no money to do it. I tried to shine in my final months. I scrounged around for scoops. That’s the reason I flew to the Caucasus; burgeoning ethnic wars spelled the doom of the Russian empire. “Do you really have to go?” Emily had asked. “Isn’t it dangerous?”“Only for a few days. A war is under way and it’ll get worse.” For a split second, as she turned her head, I sensed she understood fully that reporters make their careers in wars. Was there a more dramatic venue for capturing the collapse of an empire? “Yeah, it leads if it bleeds,” she sighed, her bottom lip curved over the upper one. Then she cocked her head thoughtfully. “I sometimes feel you don’t exist outside of your work anymore. Do you have any real friends outside work, baby? We only see people who are connected to your work.”I had no answer to that. I said, “One last time, honey.” If I could relive my past, I’d certainly forego the Caucasus trip. But by the time I realized that, it was too late. Emily was gone. Gone from me was the mental vigor that comes from natural happiness. I no longer coveted Hurd’s job. When in the winter of 1992 Kevin Page was appointed chief editor, I astonished myself by sticking out my hand and warmly congratulating him.Even so, the thought of resigning and finding another job had crossed my mind. But the Tribune was my life. No one ever left in those days; no one was ever fired. This was before the newspaper industry was plunged into a financial crisis and staffers like myself felt fierce loyalty to our employers who, in my case at least, gave me promotions and social prestige that practically crippled me for any other life. How could I quit? Now, each man has his vanity and mine was about having what the Chinese call chu loo—a graceful way to save face. Mercifully, the publisher, Phil Binder, came to my rescue. In making public Page’s appointment, Binder also announced that I was being promoted. My freshly created new title: the paper’s chief foreign correspondent, based in London. This was not something I was eager to do; in practice, it meant spending a lot of time covering ethnic wars in the Balkans. But there was something about Phil that made me not want to let him down. He was one of the last patriarchal newspaper owners in the country and he’d never forgotten that I had taken a bullet while working for him. So I went to London, where I figured I’d soon enough get swallowed up in the exigencies of my job. Three years later, when Page raised the issue of my coming back to DC, I didn’t know what to do. I dreaded the prospect of office politics and petty gossip. I’d seen several of my colleagues, men who had lost the wind and the legs to stay with the pack, return to desk jobs and ending up out on the street within a year. But then I heard that the chess columnist Murrey Bloomberg was about to retire and I phoned Phil to express my interest in the position. 5All day in the office the next day, trying to do my work, I thought about my lunch with Holz.The sixth floor of the Tribune building looked like the newsroom one floor below; dark gray carpeting, off-white acoustic tiles on the ceiling, walls covered in beige fabric. But unlike the newsroom, the sixth floor was quiet as a graveyard. For the most part, the only noise was the soft rattle of computer keys. I was contemplating the blank screen and its pulsating cursor when I saw Essie Levi’s swaying figure heading toward my cubicle, a clipboard in her hands. She was a pretty woman with black hair, dark brown eyes, and an olive complexion. She wore platform shoes and a light navy blue dress with a gold sash belt that accentuated her slim waist.Essie was one of those terribly organized people and her cubicle was papered with link charts and schedules in 10-point font. She handled the back pages: the daily horoscope, crossword puzzle, scrabble box, Beetle Baily, Blondie, and other funnies, the weekly chess corner, and the weekly book section. She’d saved me from more missed deadlines than I can count. I also owed to her my Internet skills. I had hated computers with a passion, and they hated me, until Essie taught me how to handle them. Suddenly, I no longer had to drive to Connecticut and S to look for foreign publications with new chess gambits and other puzzles now that they all lived inside the gray box on top of my desk. On most days, we’d banter—mainly her scolding me for habitual truancy. Today, there was a tremulous note in her voice. “The management is going to offer buyouts,” she said. “Next week, they say. Everybody on the sixth floor is an endangered species.” She feared that she might be laid off after all these years. I could see it in her eyes.Rumors of cutbacks had been circulating for weeks—getting closer, squeezing me, and reminding me that my job was not forever. Yap, yap, gossiping all the time, I thought. All that afternoon in the office, in the back of my mind there was one question: what was owed the dead? I had no answer; my thoughts were thick as molasses. My latest column danced on the computer screen. It was a big, fat blank where I should be pontificating about some complicated end game or telling my readers about a Norwegian boy named Magnus Carlsen who was rumored to be a new chess wunderkind. “The Cassandra of the Tribune,” I joked and imagined the beautiful Cassandra winding through the streets of Troy, banging her gong and calling Listen, Listen.“Oh, forget it,” Essie snapped and drew her lips into a tight grin. Then she looked at the clipboard and added, “They are asking for the corrections. Want to close the page early.”As Essie shimmied off to her desk, I wondered how old she was. Same age as Jennifer? Essie’s fresh face flashed through my mind: a one-night stand centuries ago. We went for drinks to the Statler Hilton bar and ended up thrashing around on the carpet in her Vermont Avenue apartment. One of those things: pleasure was demanded, pleasure was given in return, the word love never uttered. I’d always shied away from casual affairs in the office, because what always happened was that colleagues found out, gossiped at the water cooler, gave you meaningful looks in the hallway. I didn’t want any of that. The thing about Essie was that she never once mentioned our brief encounter. That’s how we became friends.It’s almost funny, when you think about it, that suddenly I felt the urge to talk to Rick. Once I had tried to protect him from the burden of the knowledge, and that had backfired. Now I wanted to tell him everything I learned from Holz. Every single detail and nuance. Everything. The pros and cons in Holz’s proposal; that Holz evidently figured I would have no choice but to agree, that I had had long time to stew and rage. But when I picked up the phone, I had to repress an irrational fear that my son would not want to speak to me, would never speak to me again. It was the fear that returned again and again—like a toothache.Rick’s girlfriend answered the phone. I use the word girlfriend because I don’t know what else to call Kate (partner sounded odd in my ears). My mind stumbled over the word fiancé. “Rick and I don’t believe in formal marriage,” Kate had once told me.Kate and Rick have been living together in California for the past four years, Rick teaching history at a Costa Mesa middle school. This was the extent of my knowledge, due to Rick’s firm desire to keep me at arm’s length (which was preferable to an earlier stage in our relations when he had severed all connections with me.) Kate and Rick had met as teenagers in Moscow and had been inseparable since boarding school days in Connecticut. Kate was a strong willed young woman, something that Joe and Bev Garment commented each time Emily and I met them at Sheremyetevo airport. Last time was in January 1991. Kate wore a short flaring skirt that showed off her nice legs—under a sheepskin overcoat—and we watched Rick run a bony hand along her hip with such familiarity that I caught my breath. Then he was saying something into her ear, his tongue curling around a strand of her blond, expensive, spoiled brat hair. “She’s only sixteen,” I whispered to Emily. “Who cares,” Emily snapped back. I knew she was jealous, if only for a moment. “Don’t worry, these things don’t last,” I said. She sighed as we watched the kids go through the passport control accompanied by Joe Grimes who, with his diplomatic passport, could walk them to the gate. That was a long time ago and I was wrong. Now the main thing to keep in mind, I had to remind myself, was to avoid asking about anything even remotely controversial. Like their relationship. “Mr. Martin,” she had said last time I’d asked about it, “many of our friends had beautiful weddings and were divorced two years later. We’re as married as anybody.”Now again she called me Mr. Martin, explaining breathlessly that she was rushing to an appointment. I suspect I was a nuisance in Kate’s book.“No, no. Call me Todd.” I could hear my own voice. It was embarrassing, it sounded whiny, it was thinner than usual as if coming from a different place. Normally I happen to have a rich voice.“Okay, Todd. Sorry.” She sounded girlishly sassy. “Rick’s out. Why don’t you email him and he’ll call you back, I’m sure.”So I sent Rick a brief email: “Rick, something has come up that you should know. I have new information about Mom’s death in Moscow. I plan to go to Russia to look into this. Give me a call when you get a chance. Love to Kate.”6 “This is a ten on the Richter scale of bad ideas,” Alex said after I laid out my plan for him. I had to discuss my secret with Alex or another friend I could trust, so as to release the newly formed obsession from the confines of my mind, where it could only expand. But I needed a sympathetic hearing. Alex Angelides was my best friend since the time we were both freshmen journalists doing the late night shift on the Tribune copy desk. He was lean, angular, relentlessly honest, and unnervingly free with his opinions. “Why don’t you just tell Holz to fuck off?”, he added. “Why?” Alex was playing with his coffee cup. “Sounds to me like he’s not just off the reservation—he’s departed the planet earth altogether.”I made a noncommittal grunt. There was one thing about Alex one had to discount: his tendency to see the gloomy side of life, something that became more pronounced now that his once jet black hair which he brushed back without a parting was showing strains of grey. In the past, I’d often found his bluntness to be reassuring. I appreciated his skeptical and shrewd accounts of what had transpired in the city and at the paper during my frequent forays abroad, Alex being an indefatigable fact-hound with the knack for pungent one-liners. When shrapnel grazed my thigh during the Cyprus fighting, he said: “If scoop is an over-the-wall home run, than taking a bullet is a grand slam.” But there was something oddly annoying today about his strenuous refusal to see my point of view. “What’re you going to do?” “I’m thinking seriously about it.” “You’re nuts,” he said, waving his arms. “What exactly is he saying?” I said Holz had proposed to give me all the information he has at his disposal, plus whatever else I may need if I’d join forces with him to discover the identity of the mole. It was not going to be a fudge factory operation, it’s something between him and me, I added. Alex didn’t believe that. What he wasn’t most sure of was Holz himself. He laughed one of his sardonic laughs.“Well, I imagine he has the authority to run his own irregulars,” Alex said. “So many of the old Cold War types have retired that he’s now a senior man. Technically, he’s number three, I think. The acting DDO is a political appointee and clueless. But that’s not the point here.”“What’s your point?”Alex hunched his shoulders and lowered his head almost to the table level before speaking. “First, Holz and such people are poison. They’re liars. You can’t trust anything he says.” I said nothing. I myself had been wondering about Holz. He had graduated from Yale, breaking away from the southern Indiana farm which had been in the Holz family for four generations and from a gravitational force that bound his people to the Midwestern horizons. Ever since, he had lived a bigger life in a bigger world: in Berlin, Miami, Saigon, Rome, Moscow, London, Washington. Alex went on: “How can you be sure there’s a new defector? As I said, Holz and his people are congenital liars. Why not check it out with intelligence committee staffers on the Hill. Check your Rolodex…”“C’mon, Rolodex!”“Shit, you know what I mean.”I knew, of course. After two decades on the Tribune, I had good contacts in just about every agency of the government as well as on Capitol Hill. But what exactly was there to check? Alex continued: “Which brings me to my second point: the conflict of interest. The paper would never approve it. You’d have to quit.” He went on expanding on this point and using as many words as possible, like radio sports commentators. Then he let out a small dismissive laugh. “Remember: if Uncle Sam gives you money, Uncle Sam wants a return on his investment.” “I’ve no intention of taking Uncle Sam’s money. Period.” I felt I was even entitled to a little bit of moral superiority because I was doing the right thing.“Man, you don’t have a clue about Holz’s real agenda. These folks operate on several levels.”I said, “He may be shit, but he’s human. He was Moscow station chief and there was a mole under his very nose. He wants revenge, pure and simple.” Alex was silent for a moment. “Sounds like you’ve pretty much decided in your own mind to do it.”“Let’s say I’m almost there.”“You mean you’d take a leave of absence? What if Page nixes it?””I’d do it anyway, I think.”“You can’t,” Alex cried. “You have too many years in. Your retirement would be toast.”I shrugged my shoulders. The talk didn’t go as I imagined it would and I gazed at the TV screen in the distance. The sound was turned off, but I could see congressional grandees striking dramatic poses, looking both grave and indignant. But my mood plummeted and suddenly I was flooded with intense annoyance. Was this my best friend? I was tempted to tell him what I expected more understanding from a friend. Alex persisted. “Mind you, if push comes to shove, Holz’ll throw you under the first bus. It’s against the law for the Agency to use U.S. reporters. Strictly verboten!” He kept playing with his cup, turning it round with his index finger. I knew all his gestures, the subtle language of his face. He disapproved. Alex was afflicted with an exaggerated sense of right and wrong. “There’s a big fat 201 file at Langley with your name on it,” Alex said. “There must be a reason for you being headhunted by someone like Holz.” “I don’t give a flying fuck about his reasons,” I said. But Alex’s argument wasn’t so far-fetched, I had to admit.And yes, journalism is a never-ending apprenticeship, requiring one to adapt constantly to changing landscape. That’s its reward—the discovery of the diversity of life. But no reporter worth his salt would abandon a good story by contemplating everything that could possibly go wrong. Or succumb to fear. I remember the fear I felt entering a war zone would melt away once I was on the scene.“Stay away from this one,” Alex said, sighing. “It’s too personal. Your judgment gets clouded, you do things you know you shouldn’t do. I’m just giving you my two cents.” He got up and picked up the tray with the two cups. “Why don’t you come over to the house,” he said.“Some other time,” I said. I was worn out; his criticism had left me feeling a bit introverted.As we walked out of the elevator, he said, “It’s Rick, isn’t it?“ He gave me an odd searching look. “Well, in part…” I thought, yes, of course it’s Rick. “I knew it.”I tried to shut my ears and my mind and concentrate on Rick. But then, suddenly, I became conscious of an extra note in my friend’s cutting remark. Was that an oblique allusion that I was a bad parent? Didn’t I always have Rick’s best interests at heart? True, I had not seen much of him except for the first couple years of his life. I couldn’t claim like other fathers that once upon a time, I used to drive him to school or the late night skating and Little League games, or that I had taken him white-water rafting to show him the larger world. I never had dinner at Chuck E. Cheese’s at five o’clock. I had been working, hustling to make a living. Once Rick went to boarding school, we only saw each other during holidays. The bad blood between us was no secret; Emily used to keep peace in the family. The real break came after her death when he had insisted on going to live with his grandparents in California. I put on the best front I could, insisting for years that the reason was the pursuit of higher education. Rick evidently saw me differently. Most likely as a self-absorbed man, capable of indifference, deceit and dishonesty. But I am no longer that man, I thought. Now I wanted to make it up to him. When I was young, the lesson I learned from my mother, as much by slaps as caresses, was that love was action. Love is what you do, not what you feel or say, she’d say. We learn that later in life. I wondered: when you’re no longer thinking about a person, can you still be in love with her? Sometimes I felt as though Emily had existed only erotically for me, as though she had never existed in fact. But I thought about Rick almost every single day, even if only very briefly; I no longer thought of Emily. What kind of love could it be eleven years after her death? I thought frequently about other women, wondered what it would be like to fuck this one or that one. Whatever I now felt toward Emily, it was more like guilt than love. Guilt is a Jewish thing, my Mom insisted before she descended into the abyss of dementia. The reasons for Emily’s death, she said trying to calm a tempest she knew was raging in my soul, the reasons were hidden in the mysterious designs of an inscrutable providence.What a pity that I couldn’t accept this explanation. Nor could I accept the possibility that it was accidental. What if? Over and over I’d torture myself: She would have been alive today if I had I not traveled to the Caucasus war; if I had sent her home early to prepare the house; if my blind ambition, yes, my ambition…. well, you get the idea. There was yet another crucial point that could not be disregard: if I had let Emily down, I had let me down too. Could I live with myself if I turned down this opportunity to find out the why and the how? No. I knew I had to learn about the last hours of Emily’s life before I’d be able to put my soul to rest again. Discover who’s responsible and have them punished. See that justice is done. If I don’t do it, no one else will. I disregarded a new element which Holz had introduced and which over time became my nightmare of choice: the mole.I went to bed that night and dreamed I was following the mole, first through a maze of snow-covered streets, then in a cab that kept racing down a lonely road until it reach a dead end. When the driver turned around to ask me where I wanted to go, he had Holz’s face. 7When Rick called the next day, I again found myself tongue-tied and flustered. I woke shortly after eight. The power shower pummeled me awake. I put NPR on the little kitchen radio. I made coffee, toasted two onion bagels and took them to the tiny balcony off my bedroom. I opened the sliding door and the flimsy white curtains were fluttering as I stepped through them. It was lovely out there, with the sun climbing up in the sky. A small section of the river shimmered in the distance. I watched a solitary jetliner approaching the Reagan National go into the glare of the sun. I used to watch low-flying silvery birds roar up and down the river as they were landing or taking off. But after 9/11, their frequency had plummeted. I expected Rick to call before going to work; given the time difference that meant around nine thirty. I was prepared, I thought. I had to be calm. Whenever we talked in the past, it seemed like all the accumulated hostilities reasserted themselves. They say this is only normal. He lived on one coast and I on the other. We hadn’t met in years.I picked up on the second ring. “Todd Martin.” Pause.“It’s me. Rick. Hi.” “Oh, Rick! Good to hear your voice.”Silence. “Got your email. What’s happening?”“Well, I bumped into Holz, you remember him, the CIA man in Moscow. He thinks the KGB had something to do with Mom’s death.”“Shit!”“Some defector says they gave her a psychotropic drug in that restaurant, you know the stuff that makes you talk. The defector insists it was an accident.”Silence.“Are you there?”“Where else?” In the two words I heard all his resentment. There was a snappishness to him. I tried to control my voice, keeping out any hint that I wanted to make up for the wrongs of the past. I could not afford the luxury of being myself, I could not start an argument. “I’m going to Russia to look into this,” I said. “I could email you details as things develop.”Neither of us said anything for a while.“I guess I’d like that.”I said, ”You always thought there’s something fishy about her death.”“Yeah.”Again, we were silent for a while, together.“Dad?” “Yes?”“I meant to tell you something…”“Yes?” For a brief instant I thought he wanted to wish me luck, or something like it. I held my breath. Whatever he was going to say, he thought better of it. “Oh, nothing. Just email the stuff as you go along. Okay?”8I used the disposable cell to phone Holz the next day. He answered within a few seconds. He gave me the address of a safe house in Tysons Corner and the time. I punched the address into the GPS as I drove out. The little navigation monitor came to life, and the red arrow settled over the yellow path leading west. “In two hundred yards, turn right onto George Washington Parkway,” a mechanical voice instructed. The drive was pleasant. June had drawn out every leaf on the trees along the Potomac. There were sheets of butter-yellow daffodils and white narcissi in the grass along the way.The safe house was on a quiet, U-shaped cul-de-sac with soothing green lawn trimmed by barbered greenery in front, fenced-off gardens in the back, and waxy privet hedges bordering brick walkways. Scattered azaleas sprouting around gave the scene crimson, pink, and white touches. A dozen or so hundred-year-old poplars and oaks carefully preserved by the developer gave it the look of a long established middle-class neighborhood. I made my way through the fecund smell of a recent mowing, thinking of all the old movie stars in all the old spy movies that I saw after midnight. Men in big trouble, but boy, could they maneuver around dangerous situations and you knew for sure that they were never going to be hurt by anything or anyone, even when making love to beautiful enemy agents who kept a .22 caliber under the mattress.The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the house.Holz got up from the sofa to greet me. He was wearing a gray striped business suit and a sparkling white shirt with a maroon tie—he was always dressed for an official lunch or a diplomatic cocktail party. I must admit that I had a prejudiced view of Holz, which stemmed from the unhappy incident in Moscow. But now my view kept changing. Obviously he was a complicated man, in spite of his hard work at making his surface simple. Hard to grab hold of. Last week, I had blamed him for everything that happened in Moscow. But then one night this week, as I struggled to fall asleep, some mental judge in my head ruled in Holz’s favor—absolved him of guilt. It made no sense to blame him for something Emily—my inexhaustibly enthusiastic Emily—had done of her own free will. Something she wanted to do. “Are we wired?” I made a spinning motion with my hand, pointing at the walls and ceiling.Holz sneered. “Don’t worry, everything is disconnected.” As if reading my mind, he said, “I’ve asked you to come here because if we met at the Main Headquarters, you’d have to go through Public Affairs, which means lots of paperwork and a paper trail. We don’t want that, do we?”The CNBC financial channel was on, but the sound was off. Holz briefly glanced at the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen.I looked around. Anonymity and impersonality was etched into every feature. The walls were cream. The large living room was furnished with beige leather couches and two sets of sofa tables and easy chairs. The hardwood floors were covered with factory-made oriental rugs. The place smelled of the lemon-scented furniture polish I remembered from my youth, stirring the memory of my parents expecting guests and Mom offering me a lick of the spoon with raisins and sweet farmer’s cheese she mixed in her kugel cake.I went over to the bookcase and examined the top row of books. The hodgepodge selection was probably bought by the yard by the Agency’s acquisition department.Holz returned from the kitchen with two steaming mugs, a jar filled with packets of Sweet’n Low, and a plate of doughnuts.A thick black folder was on the table in front of him. Holz had me sit beside him as we went through the contents. There were the names of the Russian investigating officer; of doctors who signed the death certificate, both of whom had passed away, from natural causes, it was said; the address and phone number of Galina Zvonareva, Emily’s Russian girlfriend. Zvonareva’s photo showed a triangular face tapering to the chin and marked by perpetual sorrow, like the sad face of Virgin Mary on an icon. Then Holz took out a black and white photograph and held it up between thumb and forefinger. “This is Oleg Vissarionovich Bogumilov,” he said pronouncing the name slowly. “Hector’s KGB case officer.” It showed a dark handsome man, probably in his late thirties. Mass of curly black hair, long sideburns, big eyes, a prominent nose, and strong chin. The sloppy knot of a tie with a diamond-patterned weave poked up into the frame. “Oh, the cryptonym of our in-house traitor is Hector.” “Hector!” The prince of Troy, I thought, who opposed war and yet bravely led the Trojan army against the Greeks to save face and kin. So my nightmare of choice was a man with a code name. What was its significance, if any? If Hector had an honorable way out, I seem to remember, he would have taken it. But he didn’t. In the ancient world, there was no honor or dignity in giving up. “Bogumilov is obviously not his real name,” Holz said, handing me the photograph.He had few details about the man. Bogumilov served as a diplomatic courier, frequently traveled to the United States between 1979 and 1988. “We believe he was Hector’s controller in 1991—an important detail. Given the way the KGB operated, it probably meant Bogumilov originally recruited him.” I got up and was now looking out through the French doors at a Japanese cherry tree in the middle of the backyard. “Is it possible that Hector is dead?”“No,” Holz said, his nostrils flaring. “Don’t think so.”“You’re certain?”“Pretty much. Only Colonel Sokolski is no longer among the living. You remember he was the air attaché.” He shook his head. “There’s no chance in hell a Pollack would work for the Russkies.” Adam Sokolski was of Polish ancestry and a native of Gary, Indiana.“Okay. What about the rest?”“I have every single person in the computer. We ran all sorts of Agency traces a number of times, with negative results. We’ve done other types of database mining.” They had done extensive cross-referencing, he added, trying to spot the mole’s tracks and put a name to a traitor. He said this with a hint of self-accusation, as if he were the one at fault to suspect everybody.“Hell, the US community was so small,” I said.“Less than four hundred people, which includes wives and kids.” I said, “I assume all Agency people knew about the operation?”“Yes, of course.” Holz’s voice suggested that to distrust his staff was to distrust himself. “How many non-agency people knew about your dealings with Professor Voronov?”Holz glanced suspiciously at me. Then his face split into a shy smile, a filament of spittle fluttering between his teeth. “Well, the ambassador had a vague idea. We had to give him a shovel in case the Russkies dumped a ton of shit on his doorstep. The ambassador had to say something to the press attaché, so he couldn’t be ambushed.” He paused for a while, then added, “You and your wife knew. So did your Russian friend who originally put you in touch with Voronov.”“Joseph?” I moved away from Holz and fixed him with a defiant look. I was getting angry. I can read between the lines—in a way that’s the essence of my trade—but I wasn’t sure what Holz was saying. I didn’t know back then, I said, that the Agency had wanted to exfiltrate Voronov to the United States. Nor did Joseph. I suspect that the professor himself had no idea what Holz was preparing for him.Now, in the silence, Holz began flipping the pages in the file, then pulled another smaller file from his attaché case and appeared to be searching for some specific rebuttal. I watched these histrionics, remaining impassive.“Let’s not get diverted here,” he said, sounding irked. “Naturally, I had everybody checked out.”I started at him for a long while as it dawned on me. “Oh, no, you didn’t…”“Of course I did.” Holz chuckled the way he chuckled when he was dealing with an uncomfortable matter. He allowed a fake smile. “I must apologize to you. I asked the FBI to put you under surveillance.”I cut in sharply, loudly, “You were tapping my phones! Jesus H. Christ!”He shook his head, noncommittally.My mind flashed to 1992 when Joseph left four voice messages on my office answering machine, suggesting we meet. I had simply ignored them. Later, I had been horrified by my cowardice. Joseph, my friend, teacher, and guide to the mysteries of Russia. I could still hear Joseph’s voice: Hey Old Man, I’m three blocks from your office—at the Madison Hotel. How about that? Want to see you. Ending each message with “tseluyu,” sending kisses. Pure Joseph.I decided against meeting Joseph to avoid reopening the wounds in my soul that could plunge a man into a deep loneliness for which there is no cure. That’s what I used to tell myself. It’s only now, so many years later, that I can admit that I had construed this narrative because it was a story I could live with. In fact, I’d been influenced by US Embassy investigators who, in a post-mortem on the Voronov debacle, had singled out Joseph as the most likely leaker. Joseph, you see, was their ideal candidate: an independent-minded person who was neither a regime supporter nor a dissident activist. What else could bureaucratic minds think of a brilliant young mathematician with a physics degree from Moscow State who abandons everything for literature?I said, “You people are too much!” “I’m sorry about that,” Holz said in a self-deprecating tone. He shrugged his shoulders, turned his eyes heavenward and the palms of his hands up as if appealing to a higher power.Holz got up, put his hands behind his back, and began pacing. “Let’s have a few facts: in 1992, your friend Joseph was running a high-class prostitution ring in Moscow and mixed with some very, very unsavory types. We knew he’d try to contact you when he came over with the ridiculous Russian business group.”“But you knew Joseph had ended up in a loony bin because he put me—and indirectly you, I might add—in touch with the professor. Hasn’t he already suffered…”Holz interrupted. “You know that for sure, eh?” He threw me a hard look. “Let me remind you that people are as honest and truthful as they can afford to be. So it’s safe to conclude that one never knows anything for sure.”We stopped talking.Yes, I had to concede privately, friendships in Moscow during the communist dictatorship were tenuous affairs at best. We correspondents moved in and out of people’s lives as easily as we slipped on a fresh shirt each morning. In a dictatorship, meeting an average person is a one-time affair; a second meeting may put that person on the wrong side of the law. Far easier was to develop sources and friends among political dissidents. The fact that I was genuinely sensitive to their plight, that I gave them small gifts, made me feel better about myself. In reality, I’d exploited everybody, especially Joseph. They were sources of information and I was little more than a mercenary with a good eye. While listening sympathetically to the wife of an imprisoned dissident, or a Jew just fired from his job for applying to go to Israel, I kept all along mental notes of details that’d give color to an eventual story—a tear in her eye, the single bare light bulb, peeling paint, three generations living in one room, fear of bugging in the air. A minimum of guile would make them trust you and open their hearts and their minds. That’s why sometimes I wondered about my friendship with Joseph. I was uneasy about my own motives.I said firmly, “I never had any reason to suspect Joseph of lying to me.”Holz looked on unmoved as he patrolled the room. I could hear the breath whistling through his nostrils. “We have to consider all the possibilities, disagreeable as they may be,” he said finally. He returned to his seat on the sofa and fidgeted for a moment. “This is all neither here nor there, pal. Let’s get back to Bogumilov. He’s the one lead we have. Not a gilt-edged clue, I grant you, but it’s at least something concrete.” He went on to speculate that Bogumilov and Hector first met in some unknown capital, where Hector was recruited. If only we had any indication about Bogumilov’s other foreign postings. I said, “It’s all very thin.” “You can’t wait for four aces forever when you can win with worse hands,” Holz quipped. “I’m not talking about reckless gambling.”We sat in silence for about thirty seconds.“There’s got to be a few old timers around who remember the guy,” Holz said. “There always are.”“You didn’t find them.” I spread two fingers at Holz’s eyes. “Don’t tell me you haven’t tried all the angles.” He walked me to the door. “You know, in emergencies we can always deposit funds in your accounts. Or help out on other stuff. All I need is a signal from you.” “You’re not listening,” I said as I opened the door. I turned around to face him before shutting it. “I’m not working for you, Mac.”9I had chosen Jennifer’s favorite restaurant in Dupont circle and asked for a table as far away as possible from the piano and the bar where pudgy men with ruddy faces and dark suits were facing into the lounge, their elbows thrown back behind them onto the counter. I wanted to put her in a good mood; she was going to Los Angeles on business the next day and for all I knew I might be in Moscow by the time she returned.I’d spent the day preparing for the trip even though I had not yet been granted a leave of absence. I had asked for four weeks of unpaid leave and was told Kevin Page would have to decide. I arranged for the last of my monthly bills to be paid by direct debit; talked to my affluent neighbors, Ian and Lisa, who would look in from time to time, water my plants, and collect the mail downstairs. I readied a small rollaway bag with a week’s change of clothes, a sweater, and a spare pair of shoes. The rest of the time I spent working on four columns, which Essie would slot in each week I was away. I was nursing my third Red Label when she showed up, making no apologies for being late and promptly ordering gin and tonic. “Monday night and this place is crowded and noisy.” “We don’t have to stay here,” I said. “What about that little Greek place around the corner? Or Nora’s?” “I can’t be bothered.” Jennifer crinkled her nose in distaste. Her face was not so much pretty as unforgettable; full lips, a narrow nose, and a fullness of her cheeks made her look younger than thirty-seven. In a dark Bill Blass suit, she looked like one of the female attorneys in Law & Order, equipped with a Louis Vuitton bag and a maroon attaché case. She bought her clothes at Neiman Marcus, knew all the best restaurants, and pretended to love golf weekends, a sport her law partners favored. Invariably around the third or fourth hole, she’d look at me, inhale deeply, stretch her arms, and say, “This is the life, baby.” Yeah, yeah, I’d go along, although convinced I was engaged in a mindless activity. Jennifer was a graduate of Stanford Law, a partner in Golden, Stryker, a blue-chip law firm on Eighteenth Street, and she was making more money than I’d ever hope to make. Her estranged husband was a lawyer, too, and had once done something big in the Pentagon before moving to Wall Street. He was always wearing dark suits on TV and barely moved his head even when greeting people. Why Jennifer had never formally divorced him was something of a mystery. I suspected disagreements over the mega mansion in which she lived with a lovely young daughter called Nina and a Salvadoran housekeeper. In nearly five years we have been together, we’ve had a dozen or so dinners at her house. She cooked only when inspired, and could make surprisingly fine dishes, but she always left the big black granite island in the middle of her kitchen looking like a battlefield—as though she had prepared dinner for forty. It was getting dark outside and the buildings opposite all had their lights on. For more than a week, ever since my safe house meeting with Holz, I had been distracted and preoccupied with the forthcoming trip. I motioned to the waiter for a refill as I told her about my travel plans: I’ll fly to Helsinki, buy a package tour to Moscow. But I realized that she wasn’t listening. “Aren’t you drinking too much,” she suddenly said.“C’mon, baby. I’m a little tense and this calms me down.” Instead of making me drunk, the scotch seemed to make me more sober, able to see things more accurately. Once upon a time, our conversations had flowed naturally, gracefully. Like good tango dancers attuned to each other’s moves, we used to intuit responses and avoid confrontations. Now I tried to lift her mood and leaned over to kiss her, but she recoiled. No, not that. I remembered too late that she hated the sweet sour tang of whisky on my breath. “You’re an alcoholic,” she said. “You’d better be careful, baby.”“Why do you keep going on about it? I’m not an alcoholic.” She snorted. “I think you’re on the way to becoming one.”A waiter appeared like a ghost; an overhead light flashed in his glasses, making his eyes disappear. But his presence ended this particular line of conversation. Jennifer ordered smoked salmon with capers, chopped eggs, and onions; I ordered a steak medium-well done. I said, eager to move to another topic, “How was your day?”“Exhausting! Getting ready for LA.” She pursed her lips in annoyance, picked up a thick folder from her maroon attaché case, and flicked through the pages. “How about you?”“Getting ready for Moscow,” I said. “Why’s everything done on the sly?” she suddenly said. “You should check up on that man Holz.” As a lawyer, she had little faith in arrangements that were not written down, signed, notarized. “For all your intelligence, honey,” she continued in her raspy voice, “you’re na?ve about people, always erring on the side of trusting them.”“I’m not that na?ve,” I said.“You are being beautifully manipulated,” she went on. “He keeps dropping tantalizing bits of information along a prepared path which leads to the exact place he wants you to be. You just watch.” I made a surrendering hand gesture to stop bickering. I didn’t want to argue; Jennifer was in one of those moods when she tended to take any dissenting view as a kind of personal affront. “Tell me then, why are you playing spies, like children,” she said and wiped the corners of her mouth. “What exactly are you doing for him?”“Nothing.” “What if something happens to you? Remember those two college students who strayed into Iran and were jailed for months?”She stopped talking and chewed on her pinky finger. “And who’ll take care of your plants?” she asked later, evidently to make sure I wouldn’t ask her.“Lisa and Ian,” I mentioned my neighbors.A little later, while she went to the ladies’ room, a sense of discontent came over me. Perhaps because I had been rummaging through old cardboard boxes where parts of my life had been put away and forgotten—life stored on discs, notebooks and scraps of paper, yellowish clippings and photographs and rolls of undeveloped film, menus, opera programs and ticket stubs. This was my true history and it prompted hundreds of what-ifs and might-have-beens to spin through my mind. I had an uneasy feeling that the world was moving forward and I was stuck in one place. Old doubts reintroduced themselves as they did recently in my darker moments. I tried to tell myself that these doubts were misplaced, that my annoyance with Jennifer was a passing thing. Like her constant use of an electronic organizer, which she turned on with a twist of the thumb? Or her contrariness; whatever I said, she would quote the Bard, “Nothing is good or bad, only thinking makes it so.”The truth was Jennifer had become part of a good life I had created for myself. She was not Emily, to be sure, but I wasn’t looking for a woman to replace Emily. I had a well paying job. The publisher’s steadfast support had made me unfireable at the paper. I liked my condo; I took the Metro to work most of the time—the escalator at Rosslyn would whisk me down to the train and a five-minute air-conditioned ride to Farragut Square. It was a predictable, comfortable life. Yet, suddenly tonight, I felt overwhelmed by a sense of deep discontent and all my daily routines for some reason appeared to symbolize everything that was wrong with my life. A shrink would probably tell me that I was entering a midlife crisis.I had to conceal irritation when Jennifer’s voice jerked me out of my mental meanderings. She was ordering another gin and tonic. “Two tables over—don’t turn right now—two tables over, that former CBS news anchor is talking to that senator who’s always on TV,” she said in a low voice. “Charlie Gibson is here, too.”Now we were back to our normal routine: locating fashionable or famous diners. Followed by a long running commentary on office intrigues, rumors of infidelities, and the latest news about the senior partner named Larry, whose wife had filed for divorce after discovering he was banging his secretary. I was half-listening to her monologue, and found myself unexpectedly aching for sleep. 10The Boeing’s blue cabin was half-empty. Flight attendants moved in a leisurely way down the aisle with trays of gin and tonics and bloody marys. I had taken a paperback novel for the long overnight flight east, expecting to get through it by the time we landed in Moscow.I could not concentrate. An excitement took hold of me. I looked down on a vast canopy of clouds for a while, then leafed through the Economist and Newsweek, before I finally put on the ear-phones, closed my eyes, and listened to the classical channel. “Da, da, da, dum,” the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth boomed as if forecasting a gloomy future. Dinner was served somewhere over Newfoundland. I had three small bottles of red with my pasta. Then with eyes closed, I began coming to terms with the strange idea that I was flying directly to Moscow as a Tribune reporter! It was like a bizarre dream—part of me still found it unreal, expecting to wake up. Last Tuesday, I was suddenly summoned by the chief editor. Conveying the summons his secretary, Pam, didn’t sound particularly friendly. This was enough to send my mind to the darkest places I could imagine: was I really unfireable? Good news is usually conveyed over the phone, I reasoned; bad news required a face-to-face meeting. I had half expected that at some point, I’d be asked to take early retirement, but not so soon.I took the steps down to the fifth floor, stopped by the men’s room, splashed my face with water, and adjusted my collar before stepping into the newsroom. A sea of faces seemed like ghosts from another lifetime. Voices floated about. At the far end, there was Kevin Page behind the glass wall, looking very preppy in a sparkling white shirt and polka dot bow tie, leaning back in his swivel chair, his feet up, one hand making sure his hair stayed carefully slicked down. He widened his eyes when he noticed me approaching his office and waved me in and at a seat without interrupting his phone conversation. Hard to imagine that at one time we’d been rivals and competitors. We held similar editorial positions. He served as a correspondent in the Middle East and Africa, and had done two summers in Moscow as a vacation relief; I was a correspondent in the Middle East and later Hong Kong before going to Moscow. And yet somehow I had stayed in the shadows, while he had gone on to become one of the most powerful figures in Washington. I’m tempted to ascribe this to our different social backgrounds (his father had been secretary of the Navy in a Republican administration; my dad, a clerk with the US Postal Service), but that would only expose my deep dislike of the man from the moment we first met. I was still on the night copy desk at the time when Page waltzed in late one night straight from Beirut, where he had been posted at the time, looking like a foreign correspondent in a white linen suit, light blue shirt, and gold tie. The truth is that I recognized in him all that I wasn’t; he made me feel inferior, if not envious. But I held a grudge against him for a specific reason. Back in late 1991, as I was recovering from my Moscow ordeal, I got a call one Monday morning from a researcher at the Washingtonian Magazine. Just a quick question, she said sweetly and enthusiastically. “Do you mind if I plug in my tape recorder?” To my amazement, her question was about my Caucasus trip. “Our sources say you’ve been detained there on narcotics charges?” This was so preposterous that I had no idea how to respond. How do you prove the negative? Indeed, I had been detained in a war zone in the Caucasus on account of having lost my press card. That’s why I couldn’t be contacted and informed about Emily’s death. After a few days, the local authorities suddenly claimed to have found some narcotics in my luggage and kept me confined to the hotel for two extra days before conceding a mistake. The Soviet Foreign Ministry subsequently issued a statement apologizing for what it termed a “regrettable incident.” The young lady at the other end of the line appeared satisfied with this explanation. Yet, a week later, the magazine printed the rumor, attributing it to US diplomatic sources. It included my denial. It also quoted Page, deputy editor at the time, as emphatically dismissing the rumor and effusively praising my “superb work” for the Tribune.Curious how a whiff of scandal excites people inside the Beltway. The word spreads through the buzzosphere like ripples on the surface of a pond. Even a completely false rumor is deeply destructive of the soul; no point in pretending it isn’t. I was already like a living zombie. Emily was dead. I was estranged from my son. Without them, everything fell apart; that’s how I felt. Vulnerable. I couldn’t see the way ahead. To top it all, I was in the midst of one of those odd, inexplicable periods in middle age in which we shun rational explanations. I searched for omens, saw significance in the most innocuous incidents, consulted the daily horoscope. I took yoga classes to learn ujjayi breathing (it is supposed to relax and center you if you breath like Darth Vader), saw a fortune teller on Route 7 in Falls Church, and a Haitian numerologists on U Street, near 14th Street. Who had it in for me, I kept wondering. Why? In the Washington playbook, you protect your sources by quoting them as dismissing the information they’ve just leaked to you; that’s why for a brief instant I thought of Page, more rival than friend, then promptly but dismissed it as ludicrous. “I wouldn’t worry about the fucking gossip column,” Page said later when I raised the subject during a lunch at McCormick & Schmick’s. “Who reads the Washingtonian?”“All my neighbors.”“They subscribe to it. They don’t read it.”“Someone in the State Department has it in for me, Kevin.”“Everybody in Washington has it in for somebody,” he laughed. “Focus on the menu. This is the best seafood place in town. And it’s Phil Binder’s tab.”I survived the attack of shame. The story was soon over. It became ancient history after a few weeks and was largely forgotten when, three years later, I accidentally discovered that the anonymous source was Kevin Page. My informant was Max Dawson, the recently retired editor of Washingtonian, and his young Korean wife, Betty. I was introduced to them by Jean Trevisan, wide-eyed star of several popular British movies, who thought that one of the perks of beauty was the freedom to be mischievous. I was interviewing Jean at the Connaught bar in London when she invited the Dawsons to join us. She had recently married a rich Italian industrialist and there were rumors around that she may prematurely end her career. It turned out that the Dawsons had attended her wedding in Venice. After a few drinks, I asked the question which had secretly bothered me for a long time.“I’d like to know who’s the little shit who leaked a completely false story about me supposedly smuggling narcotics in the Caucasus?”“I can’t remember,” Dawson said a bit too quickly. “Besides, we journalists never disclose our sources.”“Oh, come on, Maxie,” Jean pounced on Dawson, her impertinent charm asserting itself. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? Even if the information was completely false?” she said, looking at Betty.“Maxie Dawson,” exclaimed Betty, a note of warning in her voice.“It’s ancient history,” Jean giggled.I said, “Someone in the government had it in for me, I guess.” “It came from someone at the Tribune,” said Betty, looking first at Jean, then at her husband.“My God,” gasped Jean. “That’s incredible.”Dawson said, “It wasn’t deliberate. Our society reporter, Sonia Bartos, said that the source asked her to swear she’d not use it.”“Sonia Bartos and Kevin Page are next door neighbors on R Street,” said Betty. Page? I lay in bed that night thinking of Page. I wanted so badly to confront him, it paralyzed me. I never confronted him. It’s not like I had lost my nerve. The problem was that the moment had gone. I had found my new niche on the paper; it was a downshift in activity compared to everything I’d done before, but, mercifully, I had nothing to do with the new chief editor. Which kept everything in control, emotions buttoned down. *When Pam unexpectedly announced that Page wanted to see me, I felt the knife tickling between my shoulder blades. This is Washington. I expected trouble. Page wanted to kill the chess column, I speculated as I continued to review in my mind the argument I’d fashioned to defend it. I tried to look cool.My strategy was simple: first concede a decline in interest since the days of the Cold War, when the Soviets used chess as a propaganda tool, as proof of the superiority of communism over capitalism, until Bobby Fischer, the boy genius from Brooklyn, won the epic battle of the brains against the Russian champion Boris Spassky; then assert that while chess was no longer the field of struggle between the two superpowers, the column serves an important niche audience, especially among university and intellectual elites (I had lots of letters and email messages from readers to prove it); finally, insist that no great newspaper can afford to be without a chess column. “How about some lunch, Martin? Pastrami on rye? Miller light?” Page was pulling up his tortoiseshell reading glasses to glance at a sheet of paper before signing it.Probably, I thought, Page wanted to soften the blow when he eventually delivered it. “Sure,” I said, adding a joyless laugh.Page asked Pam over the intercom to get the sandwiches from Harvey’s Deli and bring them to the rooftop garden. “I don’t eat the stuff from our cafeteria,” he said. He crumpled a sheet of paper and threw it into the basketball hoop fixed to a bookcase. “Excuse me a moment!” He disappeared behind a panel into his private bathroom.We made our way up to the rooftop and sat down at a round wrought iron table in the shade. The sun was bursting off the new high-rise office building across the street. Page closed one eye—pirate like—against the glare and looked past me at a maple rising forty feet in the air. “Look at these trees! They were saplings when I—when we—joined.” He yanked his tie loose.“Yeah,” I grunted. I remembered those days. The atmosphere was intoxicating. Everyone around was so clever, so knowledgeable, so sophisticated, and even a copy editor got to talk to important people. Senior reporters talked to top administration officials with the confidence of someone who knew an important person before he became important. Every day the job seemed to change a bit, what with meeting new people and hearing fresh stories.“Remember, we were still using pencils back then, six-ply paper, spikes, and that awful white paste.” Page was smiling, looking disquietingly young, I thought. His professional life at a peak—unlike mine. Physically, he looked like an athlete; he worked out for an hour each day. “Now we’re into a new century. Internet. Web sites. Blogs. Everyone’s an expert, which means nobody is. The Founding Fathers thought self-government required an informed population to make all their delicate mechanisms run smoothly. What we have today is the hopelessly corrupt politics and mindless debates. All that matters is how does it play to Joe Six-Pack in the bar?” His lower lip pushed up into an inverted smile.Pam appeared with a round crimson plastic tray with sandwiches dripping in mustard, several pickled cucumbers chopped into fine slices, and two cans of Miller Lite. Page watched her enter with a smile. She had on a tank top the color of Pepto-Bismol and a long white skirt. She had lovely lips—trout pout was the term that came to mind—as if they were cosmetically enhanced. She placed the tray between us, then looked directly at Page, so directly that it made me think there was something more between them. I suddenly remembered the red-haired Pam with a nose little upturned and pale skin with freckles who, according to my friend Alex, was a great cocksucker. That was ten years ago, when she was a twenty-something telephone receptionist on the fifth floor. She still had no husband, no children, but she had to be the highest paid secretary in the company. After she withdrew, Page took a sip of beer. He scratched the underside of his jaw, tightened his facial muscles. Then he leaned back, tented his fingers before him, and said, very by the way, as was his style: “I’d like you to go to Moscow for a week or two.” My jaw must have dropped. I was surprised beyond words and was not certain that I’d heard him correctly. He looked as pleased as punch that he had taken me by surprise. “Me?” I said without thinking. Why’s Kevin Page suddenly, incredibly, asking me to go to Russia? How long is the arm of coincidence? Is this some hidden joke? My mind was still unsure whether to rejoice or not.He nodded. “We have a tip. A Russian nuclear physicist named Voronov has gone missing. I seem to remember you used to know him?”“Yes,” I said. “That was years ago, Kevin. I don’t follow Russian affairs anymore.”“No, Martin, you don’t understand. You should go to Moscow, poke around, figure out what’s happened to Voronov. You can take a leave you’d asked for after you come back.”“Now, hold on,” I said.He used his hands to prevent me asking a question “This is scoop material, Martin. Hell, we’re talking Pulitzer for public service, okay? National Security Agency intercepts tell us that Al Qaeda is about to snare—bribe, grab, who knows what the exact word is—a Russian nuclear expert.” I placed my sandwich down on the plate. “From what I know, Voronov’s not a type who’d be bought. He’s quite old by now.”Page snapped: “Our people are shitting green apples. He’s missing. Think about it, Martin. The terrorists have vowed their next attack is going to be bigger and more devastating than September 11. That could mean nuclear. Keep in mind that at least one and perhaps two satchels are missing from the Russian arsenal. All you need is someone who knows how to set off fission inside the plutonium core. And boom!”“You think this is where Voronov comes in?”“Possibly. Who can tell? But this is one hell of a story, Martin.” I found irritating Page’s habit of calling people by their last name. It made me think of some hoity-toity schools where rich kids wore blue blazers and gray flannel pants. Very different from my McKinley High classmates with unpronounceable names in South St. Louis. For some reasons, the words of the speaker at my graduation flashed through my head. He was a distinguished-looking St. Louis Post-Dispatch Washington correspondent whom I saw regularly on Meet the Press on Sundays. He wore a polka-dot bow tie and spoke of the romance of journalism. And of fairness. I was hooked. I suspect that mine and Kevin’s must be the last generation of journalists to care deeply about fairness. That’s true no matter how trite is sounds. “Something wrong?” Page studied me intensely.“Wrong? No.”“You look like you can’t make up your mind about it.”I was silent for a while. You have no idea how right you are, I thought and took a bite of my sandwich. “Why don’t we ask the Russians about Voronov’s whereabouts? We’re friends now, aren’t we?” “Our people secretly keep track of their scientists,” Page said in a confidential tone. “We want to keep this secret.” He chewed and swallowed, then made an appreciative lip-smacking sound and shook his head. “Remind me, what did Voronov do? Develop some new gadget, as I recall.”“Yes,” I said. “A nuclear-powered rocket powerful enough to escape the earth’s gravitational pull, if launched from an orbital platform. His intent was to load them up with the nasty radioactive waste and send them on permanent journey into outer space. Since the Soviet Union was broke at the time, he wanted to explore the possibility of doing it jointly with the US.” Page said thoughtfully. “Nuclear waste disposal is still a huge headache.”“That’d solve the Yucca Mountain issue,” I said. Page ignored my remark. “You know that stuff remains radioactive and hugely poisonous for centuries, no thousands of years. Now imagine it starts leaking out! Or there’s an earthquake and ground shifts. Boy, I don’t want to think about it.”After a while, Page sighed and shook his head. “If the professor’s missing, it’s a huge fucking story.” “Perhaps he’s gone fishing?”“Still a big story. Imagine, the president is shitting green apples because an old-timer’s gone fishing! Imagine how helpless the most powerful man in the world must feel! A few fanatics might get hold of a nuclear device and smuggle it into the country. Sneak it into, say, the New York harbor or Chesapeake Bay. Doesn’t that tell you something about the kind of world we live in? Let’s cast it in terms of permanent insecurity facing us: How do we respond? This would be public service and, hmm, we’d get a jump on the Times and the Post.”I nodded, pretending to think deeply about his suggestion. Page stood up. “I have a meeting to go to.” As we walked toward the elevators, I said, “By the way, what’s a satchel?” “It’s a type of nuclear mine. You use it to stop an advancing army by literally moving mountains of rocks and earth in its way.” “Why satchel?”“I guess it must look like a satchel.”11We made our final approach to Sheremyetevo Airport at eleven in the morning local time. I woke up red-eyed and disoriented. I had been dreaming, but couldn’t recall what about. When the plane banked, I was briefly blinded by the sun. Then I caught the glimpse of a large IKEA sign near the terminal building, which signaled to me that I was coming into a vastly different city. But then I recognized the gigantic anti-tank barrier, which marks the spot where Hitler’s advance on Moscow was halted in December of 1941. When I was through immigration, I wheeled my bag into the reception hall. A young man held up a sign: Todd Martin. It was the Tribune bureau driver, Fyodor, a short, chunky, jovial-looking guy whose boyish lick of hair kept falling into his eyes. He must have been in his late twenties by the looks of him, and was quite talkative. “That’s new,” he kept saying proudly as we pushed through a tangle of access roads until we got onto a modern freeway to the city. “And that, too. And that.” It was a surprise—even if I had seen photographs of the roofs crowned by giant advertisements for German cars and billboards three stories in height promoting various consumer goods. Buildings appeared taller, roads wider, scenes more colorful, traffic heavier. The new Moscow was old Moscow on steroids, I thought. This realization crept upon me slowly as we reached deeper toward the center, like drifting through swamp mist. I had a sense of the passage of time, remembering the drab, gray city drained out of food and most basic goods, filled with people in grieving black and buildings with stucco cracks along brick lines and weeping stains around window casings. It’s amazing how fresh paint and colorful advertisements conspired to alter things. I felt as if the world was spinning around me, a world full of big German cars, pulsating neon signs, and bright billboards. We sailed past a row of excusive boutiques worthy of Rodeo Drive. Women were in slacks cut low on the hip, stylish clothes and high heels with pointy toes; young people in T-shirts, blue jeans, and Nikes.When we stopped at a traffic light, I was engulfed in a sweet reek of tobacco mixed with the pungent aroma of good coffee and fresh pastry. As I glanced around, I could see bookstores, wine shops, restaurants, kiosks selling erotic material, Japanese sushi bars, Korean nail salons, grocery shops with fresh produce laid out in an appealing manner on the sidewalk. This made me think of Emily who used to go to Helsinki once a month to bring back fresh vegetables and fruit.I felt the adrenaline rush as we passed the old US embassy on Tchaikovsky Street before turning right toward the Kutuzovsky Bridge. The skyscrapers of New Arbat behind us were glowing white and orange. It was on this stretch of the road that Boris Yeltsin mounted a Red Army tank and became the symbol of New Russia. In front of us, the sun was glinting off the Ukraine Hotel, the 650-foot Stalinist skyscraper with a 250-foot architectural spire on the top. Behind it the new New York-style skyline of modern skyscrapers. The White House, or the seat of the Russian government, is on the opposite bank of the Moscow River.The Ukraine was a moderately expensive three-star establishment; this was before Americans bought it from the city and turned it into super-luxurious Radisson Royal Moscow. I’d chosen it because of its proximity to the Tribune bureau, which was on the other side of Kutuzovsky Avenue.Inside the lobby, a young man in a maroon uniform with gold braids and flashy buttoned epaulettes picked up my bag. The receptionist took my passport and gave the room key to the porter.In the chrome of the elevator door, I studied my reflection and was surprised by the dark circles around my eyes. My room was on the tenth floor. It had twelve-foot-high ceiling, a queen-sized bed, and the polyester blend sheets. The night lamp gave off an ochre light clearly insufficient for reading. On the plus side, it had a heated towel rail, bathrobe, and other toilet accessories in the bathroom.“The bartender’s name is Maxim,” said the porter, who must have been barely twenty by the look of him. “He can be quite helpful if you’re looking for company.”After tipping the boy, I unpacked and hung my few clothes in the maple-veneered wardrobe. Then, after a hot shower, I saw myself in the mirror. Still dark circles around my eyes. I splashed my face with cold water, shaved, brushed my teeth, and put on a fresh pair of khakis and a navy blue polo shirt.Refreshed, I stared out the window down on the avenue when the phone rang. It was Barbara Browne, the Tribune bureau chief, welcoming me and offering in a somewhat lukewarm manner to provide any assistance I might need.“Thank you,” I said. “I have to tell you it feels very odd to be here after all these years.” “If you need the driver to take you around, you’ll have to tell me ahead of time,” she said later. “I don’t need a driver, Barbara, I still remember my way around Moscow.”“Fine.” She sounded relieved. “In that case, you may want to use the old beat up Lada. But we can talk about it later. Now don’t forget we’re having dinner tonight. You know how to get to your old apartment.”Suddenly I felt energized. There was not a moment to waste, I said to myself. I sat on the bed near the particle board night stand and started calling people. I began with Joseph, then rapidly went down the list: Igor, who was Joseph’s friend and who I used to see from time to time; Misha the actor who may have emigrated to Israel; Avtandil, the Georgian journalist who was my drinking partner and friend; Sasha Ivanov, my KGB source whose bushy eyebrows almost met in the middle of his forehead and who supposedly worked in the policy planning department of the Foreign Ministry. The telephone, annoyingly, refused to cooperate. It was giving high- pitched noises. Or unfamiliar voices kept saying “you have the wrong number” —ne tuda popali—in different degrees of irritability. I suspected the hotel phone system. I went down to have a talk with the concierge, but while in the elevator I changed my mind and decided to go straight to Igor’s apartment. Fifteen minutes later, the cab deposited me outside a block of identical four story houses near the Krasnopresenskaya metro station. I entered a courtyard with a few scrawny trees and immediately saw Igor’s entrance. I could picture Igor in my mind: a friendly bear of a man, with broad face and powerful shoulders, looking like a hippy with heavy brows, a Vandyke beard, and hair that fell to his shoulders.The hall had a low ceiling and compressed atmosphere. The familiar smell of carbolic acid and urine assaulted my nostrils. I ran up two flights of stairs to a familiar door. I knocked several times. Then I wrote a note—my written Russian barely adequate to convey the idea that I was at the Ukraine Hotel, Room 1010—and slipped it under the door.Back at the hotel, I drew the curtains and set the alarm clock to 8:30. When I fell asleep, I had a dream about Holz—he was floating through the air, fully dressed, ahead of me. He whispered to me that he knew who Hector is, pointing at a dark shape in the distance. You go after him, Holz said and vanished. I pressed forward as the dark shape turned into an almost familiar figure and he was about to turn around face me when the alarm went off. 12The Russian maid at the door was plump, with thick ankles and broad hips. She was wearing a black skirt, a white blouse, and a white apron. I stepped into the foyer of my former home—Barbara lived in the Tribune apartment which had been my home for four years—and suddenly felt suffused with unanticipated sadness for the past. The memory of the place had a special compulsion for me: in a vague sort of way, I sort of expected Emily to be there. I looked around for her potted plants, the remains of her work, her Chinese snuff bottle collection which I had bought in Hong Kong on our tenth anniversary, her paintings, her cosmetics in the bathroom, five varieties of shampoo and hair conditioner, the soap in various pastel shades. Perhaps even her scent and the sounds of Billie Holiday singing Mean to Me; Emily liked to play Billie Holiday tapes. Then I remembered the stuffed teddy bear Emily had slept with most of her childhood; the teddy was missing when our belongings reached Washington eleven years ago. I still had somewhere in my condo a photograph of Emily standing naked and holding Teddy to cover her breasts, her eyelids like rose petals—velvety delicate. Seeing only the profile of her form was like looking at the statue of a Greek goddess. I’d feasted on her naked body, taut and strong without flaps of excess flesh or intimations of plumpness. She’d been proud of her figure. Even when pregnant; she had gained twenty pounds or so, but six weeks after giving birth she was back to her pre-pregnancy shape. Once, girlishly insecure, she had suddenly asked whether I might consider leaving her if she got very fat and old. I remember we were playing Scrabble in the garden of her parents’ home, and I shot back immediately, “No, never.” I still like to believe my loyalty was iron clad.In my memory, the Tribune’s third-floor apartment was an oasis of elegance and comfort. That’s how it felt coming home back then, happy to leave behind the ugliness and nastiness of the outside world. The Tribune had hired Peter Justesen & Co, purveyors to Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark, to supply top-of-the-line Scandinavian furniture and state-of-the-art equipment, appliances, electronic stuff. It was like being on a luxury cruise ship in a sea of shit. Except for the toilet which had a metal cistern above, and you pulled a chain to flush it. One thing about communist Moscow: the lack of everyday amenities was offset by an abundance of cheap household help. But without Emily’s things, the whole place looked shabby, as something furnished by Goodwill Industries. All junk. No, I said to myself, there’s no record of my former life here.“Let’s talk a bit,” Barbara Browne said after disengaging herself from other guests. She had a finely-sculpted face with a thin nose, big eyes, and prominent cheekbones. Large turquoise earrings accentuated her striking appearance. Her hair was swept back, and her skin was the glossy color of milk chocolate.“Great to see you!” I said as I followed her into the interior of the apartment, trailing in her cloud of scent. “How does it feel being back in your old home?” She held my upper arm and steered me into a small bedroom. She had a guttural, infectious laughter. “Very weird, I must say.” That was an understatement.“I’ll bet.” Her voice was mockingly sympathetic. “Listen, before I forget. We had a phone call from a woman inquiring if you’ve arrived in Moscow. I told her you’re staying at the Ukraine. She sounded quite seductive, if I may say so. Hung up before I could ask for her phone number.”Who could that be, I wondered. “A Russian?” I asked.“I guess so. She sounded like you two knew each other.”“No idea.” “So, what brings you back?”“I’m still trying to figure out a few things about my wife’s death.” Her face turned into a question mark. “Kevin Page’s paying for it?” she said incredulously, all the while trading nods of recognition and smiles with people passing by. “Our budget has been cut in half,” she added acidly. “Slashed to the bone. No lunches with sources, no subscriptions to other publications.”She obviously didn’t believe me, I thought. “Well, I’m doing something else for Page.” “And you can’t tell me what it is.” Her plucked, widely arched eyebrows hinted suspicion.“My business here has nothing to do with the bureau… or with you.”Why was it that most colleagues thought I was still one of the movers and shakers at the paper? I could see from Barbara’s skeptical face that she imagined I had been sent to assess other possible cost cuts for the bureau, perhaps eliminating one of the two correspondent slots, which in practice meant her job.“Let’s talk tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to my guests.”Guests kept arriving in groups of five-—that was how many persons could fit in the elevator cabins—mostly correspondents and diplomats.Left alone, I moved to the window and stared for a while at a red brick building in the opposite corner of the yard. I remember the story about a young Russian girl jumping from the eighth floor balcony during a party at a Cuban diplomat’s apartment. There were rumors that she had been pushed, but the whole business was hushed up, even if it remained part of the ghetto lore.My favorite story actually involved the Tribune apartment. It was far less dramatic. It occurred the second week after we moved in. Emily was trying to get her grip on things with the help of a Russian maid named Nellie. They were cleaning a gorgeous Swedish crystal chandelier, the most conspicuous feature of the place; it hung proudly in the dining room above a rosewood table for twelve. It was Nellie who spotted something dangling at the base of the chandelier before she fell off the stepladder, either from fear or excitement. She wasn’t hurt. But the dangling bit turned out to be a tiny bugging device, identified as such by the third secretary in the US consular section named Lew Astrachan, who said the device probably was no longer functioning. The existence of eavesdropping equipment in foreign apartments and embassies was a given—all countries engage in this nefarious practice. We soon forgot about the incident, except that I used it from time to time as an entertaining tale at a boring dinner party. The incident was not inconsequential for Nellie; she was removed a week later by the government agency that supplied local staff to foreigners and replaced by a more docile Klava.As I moved through the apartment—it was in fact two two-bedroom apartments combined—I found one thing that once belonged to me: the 1968 framed cover of LIFE magazine showing Bobby Kennedy jogging on the Malibu beach a day or two before his assassination. An evocative photo I had kept since college: RFK’s unmistakable silhouette caught against the background of the blue Pacific, a pale blue sky, and yellow expanse of sand.A suntanned young woman, standing in a group with her back to me, very prim and tall, made me start. It could have been Emily, her yellow dress with narrow spaghetti straps, the sweet line of her calves down to the flats, the way she looked from behind. Same hair pulled into a ponytail. My heartbeat grew erratic. It triggered a memory of the time when I first saw Emily with girlfriends in Café Rondo, at the corner of 19th and Q. It was the last day of April, an exciting day in DC when Nixon’s four top aides resigned and he took personal responsibility for the Watergate scandal but denied any personal involvement. I was at the sidewalk café when the news of four resignations came; Emily and her friends talked about it at the next table. It took three weeks of secret pursuit—I was satisfied just to watch her graceful figure from a distance or stroll past her to get a whiff of her perfume—before I worked up the nerve to ask her out. Don’t tell that to anyone else, I said to myself. Nowadays, people meet online and the coordination is done electronically.Then the woman in the yellow dressed turned around as if she had become aware I was staring at her and immediately turned back. I registered a slip of her hair curled under, soft little chin, high cheekbones. I approached the group and recognized George something whom I had met years earlier when he worked for the AP in Athens. I exchanged nods with to George, who was busy talking. “The guy’s wife eloped with the Argentine military attaché,” George was saying. “They just took off. Flew to Bali.”“This is shocking,” George’s wife made a face. “Eww.” She was a rail-thin woman with short platinum hair wearing an aubergine suit. Tina Turner’s strong voice from another room floated over us: What’s love got to do with it. The woman in the yellow dress turned and smiled at me. “Do I remind you of someone,” she said.“Not at all,” I said. Had I been staring too hard at her?The crowd kept growing. The music became louder. People were nibbling cheese bits and crackers with dollops of Russian caviar on top. White wine was served by a waitress; those who wanted hard liquor had to serve themselves in the kitchen. I made my way to the bar in the kitchen, humming a kiss is just a kiss, ta da dada da, the fundamental things apply, as times goes by. Emily’s favorite tune from Casablanca. As I worked my way back, a glass of freezing Stoli in hand, I noticed the woman in the yellow dress standing across the room with several men and chatting with one in particular, an athletic thirtyish man with close-cropped blonde hair. I figured he was an American by his scrubbed, healthy complexion and the way he stood, chin cocked up. I moved closer to hear what they talked about, but without success. All I registered was a curt voice and a face self-assured and supercilious.Something told me that this was not going to be the day when I’d meet people I was interested in. I was interested in Russians. But there’s always hope. Cocktail parties and dinners were a necessary evil of my business, a venue for that peculiar trade in hints, leaks, half-truths and revelations when you can learn state secrets or completely misleading gossip. Circulate, I said to myself. Circulate.13The buffet table had been shoved against the rear wall of the dining room; laid out on it were large bowls of pasta, meat sauce, grated Parmesan cheese, mixed salad, baskets with garlic bread, several types of cheese and two cakes iced in black chocolate. When I joined a line, the woman in yellow squeezed in behind me. “Mind if I come in here,” she said.“Be my guest,” I said and smiled at her.“Amanda Paul,” she said, breezily, to my great surprise. “I’m with the YAMA photo agency.” It had taken me years of experience to master the cocktail party art of walking up to complete strangers and introducing myself.I introduced myself. “I saw you back there. By the way, who eloped with the Argentine military attaché to Bali?”“Oh,” she laughed, “the wife of a correspondent for the Sun. That’s a big scandal.”“What happens now?” “I don’t know,” she shrugged her shoulders, then added frivolously, “They live happily in Bali ever after, I guess.”Something made me wonder why would such an attractive young woman even talk to a middle-aged man with a slightly swelling potbelly. I pulled in my stomach. Was she mocking me? Or just being friendly? I could see that she was used to people volunteering to help her, suggesting she needed this or that thing even when she had no clue what she needed. I usually found myself unnerved by women I found beautiful and mysterious; my way of dealing with it was to be blunt. But I was old enough to know that women didn’t give off the kind of body heat that radiated all over me if they weren’t looking for a hook up. Some women preferred mature partners, I consoled myself while secretly admiring the curve of her throat. Popping a boner was a reflex, I thought, nothing more. After a pause, I said, “YAMA! That’s a French outfit?”“Yes. I’m based in Paris.”“What sort of stuff do you do for YAMA?”“News photographs only rarely… mainly portraits of top people, or pictures for various art books and stuff. I’ve done a couple of glossy coffee table books.” Her smile was quizzical, perhaps because she was uncertain about its reception.I said, “Are you staying in this compound?’“Yes, my company has a one bedroom apartment.” She mentioned the number of her entrance. “And you?”“I’m at the Ukraine, across the street. I used to live here a long time ago. In fact this used to be my apartment.” “So what brings you back?” “I’m on assignment. And you?”“Same.”She hoisted her glass in affectionate fashion. The glasses touched. “Here’s to quitting talking shop.” She had that ability to look at you as if you were the only person in the world.I said, “Agreed. I have a rule against talking business with attractive women I’ve just met.”“Are you trying to flatter me?”“Good Lord no.”By the time we finished dinner, I had outlined all the main biographical facts—my age, my immigrant parents’ arrival in America, my education, move from St. Louis to Concord, New Hampshire for my first newspaper job, the marriage to Emily. I told her how, until that shrapnel grazed my thigh during the Cyprus war, I was a twenty-three-year-old man destined to grow old on the copy desk of the paper, and turn into a deeply frustrated middle aged man saddled with enough hang-ups to fill a walk-in closet, and how that accident brought me to the attention of the publisher and propelled my Tribune career onto an upward path. Emily’s death in Moscow eleven years ago under somewhat mysterious circumstances and my desire to find out what had happened to her. Finally, becoming a chess columnist, which everybody viewed as a big comedown.“And was it?”“I’d thought it might be. But I’d come to love it. Sometimes I struggle a lot, but the end is result is my work, nobody else’s. I own the product I create.” I went on and on about my work and as I did so I suddenly realized that for the last seven years I’d spared the annoyance—perhaps humiliation, too—of looking at a story under my byline which I could barely recognize.Amanda said wistfully, “I wish I could care about something as much as you seemed to care about chess. Maybe you can tell me what inspires such devotion.” “I love what I do, I guess. I’m lucky.” Her story was brief. Both her parents were physicians in Richmond, where she grew up. She talked about graduating from William and Mary and Columbia J-School and about her YAMA job. I imagined her playing lacrosse as a girl; now she probably played tennis. No, she rode horses. She loved horses, she said. That probably explained, I thought, a small scar on the left side of her chin carefully covered by makeup.Rather smoothly, she moved the conversation to me, so smoothly that I realized it only later.“Your wife must have been a great lady,” she said. I nodded—yes.“Did she mind being dragged around the world on someone else’s whim?”“I don’t think so.”“You mentioned amends. What sort of amends? A mystery always surrounds an unwitnessed death. The circumstances are unknowable, don’t you agree?”“Maybe amends is not the right word,” I said, figuring how much to tell her and where to begin. “Let’s say I’m determined to find out all I can about her last day. How she died. I owe that to her.”She shrugged her shoulders, as if considering how much we owe dead people, I thought, then shook her head. “How very romantic.” After a while, she added, with a touch of irony, “But then again, men are supposed to be more romantic than women.” ”You may be right.”“To romantics,” she said. Our glasses clinked.14The wine had made me more talkative. “I’m not a romantic,” I said.Talk about the romantics? I knew I looked like my father, and when I looked in the mirror, I sometimes saw him there. But I certainly didn’t want to be like him. He was a dreamer who dreamed about returning to what he called our country once the Communists were overthrown in Belgrade and always talked about an imminent American invasion of Europe. He always had his suitcases packed, mentally. I kept correcting him: America is our country, dad! But he was a stubborn man and after a while I gave up. Now whenever I call his face to mind, the image that comes up first is one of dad patiently feeding the mail into the canceling machine in the sorting room in the Clayton post office. He and Mom were completely different from each other. In contrast to his Balkan self-confidence, she seemed afraid of her own shadow. Then again, she was from a part of the world that expected nothing good of anybody. As a teenager, she had to fend for herself—all her relatives vanished after the Nazi armies passed through Minsk in 1941. She’d never seen them again and rarely talked about it; she believed many had ended in Treblinka. Her special talent was empathy, and that may have been the reason that she and Dad never argued. Or, perhaps, it was the absence of a common language: they communicated in a mixture of Russian, Serbian, Yiddish, German, and of course English. Growing up in this atmosphere, as you might expect, made it hard to figure out where I belonged—given different nationalities, religions and ethnic backgrounds, and the fact that I was born in exile. No wonder I wanted my parents to settle down somewhere, anywhere. I like to think that the moment when the SS Vulcania entered the New York harbor with hundreds of displaced persons from Eastern Europe on board – I was nine at the time -- I had made the decision to I detach myself from the past, abandon the crucial values of heritage and identity, and embrace America without reservations. Perhaps that’s not exactly how it happened; perhaps I just wanted it to be so. But what is unquestionable is that from the moment we landed, I had an unquenchable thirst to become a genuine part of America. I was certain that my future was wider and broader than the ocean I’d crossed.I said, “My father had a romantic streak, and he suffered for it.” I sketched the scene for her: my father, a former royal Yugoslav cavalry captain turned postal clerk in Clayton, Missouri. “You don’t want to end up like me,” he’d say. Military types had had time adjusting; his commanding officer with a punctured eardrum worked for the Swift meat-packing plant; another fellow officer was a night guard at a Ladue bowling alley. Come Sunday, they’d meet, all spruced up, addressing each other formally—Mr. Lieutenant Colonel, Mr. Captain, Mr. Lieutenant, whatnot. They all loved Richard Nixon, insisted liberation was always just around the corner—next week, next month, next year.” I could hear my father’s sardonic voice as I sat in front of the television mesmerized by John F. Kennedy’s thrilling campaign rhetoric. “On je luftiguz,” he’d angrily say of JFK (a good for nothing gasbag).I said, “Funny thing was that once a year, Dad and his friend all had a black tie dinner to celebrate the king’s birthday. Always in the French restaurant in Gaslight Square. Toasting His Majesty’s health.”Amanda was silent for a moment—startled, it seemed to me, by these exotic details. “They seem fascinating characters,” she said. “Why black tie?” “To remind themselves of their former status, I guess.” I thought about my father. Remote, stern, cold. Sometimes cruel. I got seriously whipped several times for minor infractions. Yet I admired his stoic obstinacy, his faith. I loved the old man, not despite his quaint values but because of them. “This is all so…” she halted.“Weird? Bizarre?” She couldn’t possibly know how right she was, I thought. “But I’m boring you…” “Not at all! Honestly.” Her hand was on my arm; her face and her voice seemed animated with sudden interest. “My background is boring. My parents are nice people but nothing romantic about them. They met in college and married. How did your parents meet?”“That’s a long story. I’m going to have to turn in. It’s been a long day for me. I’ve got work to do tomorrow.”“Okay, to be continued.” She laughed and squeezed my arm just a little, like a substitute for a hug, I thought. There was something in the way she did it that made me feel I shouldn’t even try to go with her home tonight. She didn’t rebuff my ardor but her body language said, if you think you can fuck me on our first meeting you’ve got another think coming.I walked back to the hotel. Why was I wasting time with Amanda Paul? I had more important things to do. Whatever her game was, I said to myself, I was too busy to play. I tried briefly to shift my thoughts to Hector. Then again, I thought, she was rather lovely. The way she was playfully swishing her hips. Probably smarter than she appeared, deliberately keeping her lights on dim. There was a slightly prudish quality about her, a reluctance to use profanities, which I found rare among younger women. For a brief moment, a thought crossed my mind that she was trying to get me to like her. I must admit that I went all strange inside that first time I saw her. This is what has happened and might as well admit it. So what, I said to myself, imagining the contours of her sleeveless summer dress, and wild shapeless thoughts filled my head. Dreams are free. She was like a star in a distant orbit, which had nothing in common with my orbit.The red light was flashing in my room. “Todd, dorogoy (my dear),” I heard a familiar hoarse voice. Igor always sounded as if he was in the initial stages of laryngitis. “What a pleasant surprise. It’s Igor. I’ll tell Joseph you’re in town. We’ll call in the morning. Welcome. Celuyu (kissing you).” So Joseph is in town, I sighed with satisfaction. It was a good omen. 15Joseph phoned at nine. “What! Still sleeping? Good God, you haven’t changed, you fuckhead,” his voice exploded in my ear. “Why didn’t you warn me you’re coming, Todd Martin, you son of a bitch. Igor just told me. And I’m calling you, Starik, right away. Not like some people… but we won’t talk about that.”“Yeah.” The morning sun was peeping between the curtains. I was hung over.“Come out to the house for lunch, swimming. It’s going to be the first real scorcher of the summer.” “Yeah.” I was wet. My t-shirt clung to my body. There was an infectious enthusiasm in Joseph’s voice, which was a good sign. Joseph was still my friend. “We’ve lots of catching up to do, starik.” Joseph used his old nickname for me: old man.“Yes, we do.”“I’ll send a car to pick you up at eleven sharp. See you soon, you fucking guy.”“Okay.” I pulled the curtain, and the bedroom filled with light. My eyes were hurting. Out the window, I could see the river and the steeple of the Foreign Ministry, another of Stalin’s seven gothic skyscrapers.It must have taken me twenty minutes to shave, wash, and dress. Once upon a time, a cold shower was enough to clear hangovers, but now they seemed to linger longer. Downstairs in the restaurant, I picked up coffee, orange juice, two eggs sunny side up, bacon, and two slices of toasted bread. I ate quickly and ravenously. I had a couple of hours to kill before Joseph’s car came to pick me up and I decided to walk to the Tribune bureau. I had bad vibes about the hotel phone and wanted to use bureau phones instead to get in touch with other contacts. Especially Avtandil and Sasha Ivanov—the two guys I thought might steer me in the right direction.The Tribune bureau was on the fifth floor of a yellow brick building, two flights of stairs up from Barbara’s apartment.A plump young receptionist with corn-silk hair and milky blue eyes gave me her professional smile and pointed me with her big eyes toward Barbara’s office.Barbara wore a cream-colored pants suit and a maroon silk blouse. I remembered her as an impeccable dresser when she briefly worked for me on the Foreign Desk.“I supposed you can use your old office,” she said bleakly. But her body language wanted me out of there. “While Jim Johnson’s on home leave,” she added.We talked for a few moments about the prices of gas and oil and about Chechnya – two themes that seemed to weigh on Barbara’s mind. It was clear that, while at pains to be pleasant, she was reserved. “Is there anything I can do for you?”I realized that if I was to get anywhere, I had to take the initiative. I needed Barbara’s help. “Can we take a walk,” I said, slowly craning my head toward the courtyard. That was an old instinct: always assume places are bugged. We didn’t speak in the elevator. As we descended slowly, the loud whir and clink of gears reminded me another age. I had to find some former KGB officers who’d be willing to talk about the past, I said. Someone familiar with details surrounding Emily’s death. I had to get to the bottom of it. At least fill in the blanks.“Well,” she said in a low voice. “You’ll have to grease the right palms.”“I know,” I said.“They call it a consultation fee.” She made the quotation marks with her hands and shook her head. “The going rate is a thousand dollars per hour, I’m told. I’ve never done it myself. What could you expect from an African American woman from South Carolina?”I was silent for a while.“Now,” she continued, “this place is full of con artists. Many of them have memories that can be altered if the price is right.” I needed a fixer, I said. “Or someone who could put me in touch with these characters.”“I’ll have to think about it.”“Just between you and me,” I said, “this is the reason I’m here. I don’t have much time.”We stood now outside the entrance lobby. “I thought you might be spying on us. All these rumors back in DC about buyouts and stuff make you paranoid.” She laughed and blushed slightly and I could see she didn’t believe me. “Besides you never told me last night why you’re here.““Good God! Do I look like a spy to you?” I laughed. Yes, I said to myself, I’m something like a spy, but my mission is different.“I don’t know what a spy looks like,” she said.16At eleven sharp, a silver-colored Bentley with blacked out windows pulled up in front of the hotel. A driver in a dark gray suit and black cap scrambled to open the right back door. “Welcome, Mr. Martin,” he said. I door closed behind me with a pneumatic thwack. It was cool inside. The television was showing a taped soccer match between St. Petersburg Zenith and CSKA Moscow. The car sped west, riding low and heavy with bulletproof glass and armor. I enjoyed the city’s new skyline from inside the car where the air was filtered and drinks were available in the built-in bar. A tender haze hung over the Triumphal Arch, which from a distance, rose up like an island in the middle of the avenue. Passing it we turned right onto Rublyov Highway and I let my eye slide across the soothing gardens of Kuntsevo and Rublyovka, watching big up-market homes sail past the tinted windows. New homes, many of them mansions built in the past decade, conjuring the image of an affluent Los Angeles suburb.Finally the car turned left onto a familiar road, which police once guarded as a sacramental aisle. Back then, we called it the government road because it was mainly used by big black limousines carrying top officials to their country homes hidden in the forests along the banks of the Moscow River. The paved road ended at the diplomatic beach, a pitiful, muddy stretch of the river full of sedges and reeds that was set aside for use by foreigners. I remember driving up and down this road hundreds of times, always feeling a chill going up my spine when I passed Stalin’s summer home. It was the only dacha visible from the road, atop a steep incline and looking like a haunted castle, something I imagined Dracula might have lived in. Empty, yet lovingly maintained, its ten-foot-high brick wall, the high steel gate with guard towers on each side. Empty—decades after the dictator’s death. I remember asking Joseph once, how come no Kremlin leader has ever moved into Stalin’s dacha? “Because his successors are still scared shitless of his ghost,” he said. Before we reached Stalin’s dacha, known as the Dalynaya, the Bentley slowed down, veered sharply to the right, and nosed onto an unpaved road. We were surrounded by the lush impenetrable tangle of birches, ash, broad-leaf beeches, oaks, and spruces that the sun seemed to penetrate only in single rays, which I thought created a sense of peace and timelessness.The car halted briefly outside a gate of wrought iron railings with spikes like spears. The driver waved to the sentry and the gate swung open automatically. The car moved up a tree-lined path, past a tennis court, a flower garden with neatly trimmed hedges, and a white gazebo with a green weathervane on top. The path curved, and moments later we faced a stately mansion with elaborate cornices, stucco walls, and red brick chimneys at both end. It was painted a creamy yellow trimmed by white. Tall Ionian columns supported a balcony that ran the entire length of the front. Holy shit, I thought. Joseph is living in a fucking palace. In Stalin’s old neighborhood! It crossed my mind that Holz may have wanted me to see Joseph right away. Was that so implausible? If Joseph was linked to the Russian underworld, this would make sense, from Holz’s point of view..Joseph was waiting in front with a small entourage.“You son of a bitch!” Joseph threw his arms around me, kissed me on both cheeks. “Welcome, my dear! Welcome!” He eyed me as he might a model on the catwalk. “You look the same.” “You look more prosperous,” I said, looking him up and down. He glowed with health and power. We both laughed. “This man once saved my life, I mean literally,” Joseph said, turning to two young men in white shirts behind him—serious men with close-cropped hair who appeared professionally unpleasant. One of them held a gun pointed downward, its barrel parallel to the seam of his black pants.I shrugged, embarrassed. Once I had given Joseph a thousand dollars to bribe a housing inspector who wanted to throw him out of his apartment. That couldn’t amount to saving someone’s life, but Joseph had always loved the hyperbole.It was the same Joseph, except his hair showed flecks of white and was receding deeply. He was also a bit more chubby, a roly-poly guy in a lemon-yellow knit shirt with a monogram woven in blue thread under his left breast, razor-edge pressed gray slacks, and orange-brown Gucci loafers. He put his arm through mine and led me in. The heavy wooden door swung open onto a soaring entrance hall with pink marble floors, gilded moldings, and a regal stairway curving up to the second level, the carpet held to the bottom of each riser by a shining brass rod. There were paintings in elaborate gilt frames on the walls. The cathedral ceiling and an immense chandelier gave the place an aura of grandeur. Rather than overwhelmed by this display of extravagant wealth, I wanted to laugh. Is this what happens when a poor man becomes rich? All that’s missing, I was tempted to say, was a phalanx of retainers in blue waistcoats with white trim, black knee britches, and white silk stockings.Instead I said, “I see you’ve become a tennis player, huh?” “Ahh. The courts came with the house.” Joseph sounded almost apologetic. “Audrey likes to play,” he waved to a photo, silver framed of a pretty young brunette I assumed to be his Dutch-born wife. Audrey was in Rotterdam visiting her parents, together with their seven-year-old daughter, Zina. “Drink?” Joseph asked. “I suggest freshly squeezed orange juice with a touch of vodka.”He fussed about the drinks, placed them on a thick glass coffee table top that was supported by a heavy brass frame. “This thing—” he encompassed everything around him with a wave of his hand “—I bought at an auction.”Unbidden, there flashed in my mind the mental picture of Joseph’s old room on Yuzhinski Lane: a cast-iron stove in the corner with a long black stove pipe reaching half way up the wall; two tall windows sealed shut for the winter with a homemade paste of flour, glue, and water; a narrow cot with a flattened mattress sagging in the middle; three wobbly chairs, more wooden stools, and a table covered with papers. And yes, the remnants of a beaded curtain, which was supposed to be an imaginary partition between the bedroom and living room. We drank vodka from chipped coffee cups and ate stale bread and dry goat cheese. He must have changed, I thought, what with all that opulence and bodyguards who are de rigueur at the higher levels of Russian society. But was he my friend still? Could I count on his help? “Let me first get one thing off my chest,” I said. “I never returned your phone calls when you were in Washington.”“I was really pissed off, starik. You know what I’m saying.”“Somebody had betrayed Professor Voronov and the science attaché and our security people thought it was you.” “That’s fucking absurd!” Joseph exclaimed, sliding to the edge of his chair and leaning forward. “Who said that?”“You were the main suspect, I guess. I was also a suspect.” “Fuck your mother!” Joseph said bitterly. “You believed it?”I felt tired and old, my judgment clouded, my will feeble. I found myself sinking in my own estimation. I had no defense. “No I didn’t. But people in the government did. Perhaps you could have inadvertently mentioned something…” “How could you—” “Hold it there!” I put my hand up. “We’re both exonerated.”“Big fucking deal,” Joseph said, shaking his head. “Exonerated by who? The shitheads who accused me in the first place? You know, starik, I don’t like to talk politics, I don’t care who wins elections. I’ll be doing my job whoever wins. So I buy people. In your country, you call it free speech; here we call it bribery. Oh shit, forget it…”He stood up, went to the liquor trolley and filled two more glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice with a touch of vodka.“So why are you here?”I had anticipated the question and had worked hard on the answer. My strategy resembled a chess game: two moves in, and I knew my mind would shut down overwhelmed by many possibilities. That’s why I had honed down a long story into a crisp concept. I’d thought about Emily’s death a great deal and had come to believe—I still can’t prove it, I emphasized—that there’s something fishy about the official version of events. I don’t know what. But I want to find out because I want closure. I was still prey to misgivings and guilt, I said. I’ve had more than my share of nightmares, struggles with depression, popped pills, therapists. It was important that I convince him. I never asked for his help, but that was implicit. I’d decided not to inquire about Professor Voronov, my other interest, because I knew for certain that subject would arise spontaneously.I had enough experience to know that a supplicant is always a suspect, even to his friends. I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell the whole truth either, and that shook my faith in the nobility of my mission. A few weeks earlier, I had derided Holz’s notion that life runs more smoothly with some secrets left undisturbed. Now I found myself carefully parsing words—a misstep or two could allow a man with as agile a brain as Joseph’s to form a plausible picture of just what I was up to.Joseph had listened, clucking tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk several times. But my doubts must have been written on my face because he suddenly interrupted: “She had a rather lonely life here, didn’t she?”“Yes,” I had to admit. I’d been away most of the time—away even when I was at home. Emily had her own life. She taught music at the Anglo-American school, she had joined an embassy wives book group and had started a film club.“So you’re feeling guilty, right?”I nodded. He shook his head as if to indicate he understood my motive. Then I saw worry creases on his forehead deepen. “You know, starik, when I heard she was having lunch with Zvonareva I thought there was something fishy about it. Zvonareva was a KGB freelance.”“Are you sure?” I asked. I remembered that Holz had said the same thing about her. “I’ve tried to phone her, but there was no answer.”He nodded. Then he stood up and pointed toward the back of the house. “We’ll talk about it later. Let me show you around.” He led me through the building, his arm over my shoulders. We passed a couple of rooms before reaching a French door that opened into a large living room, one of its walls a wide, floor-to-ceiling window that looked onto a formal garden. We entered a hall with a wall of books on one side rising fourteen feet to the ceiling, and a ladder to reach the upper shelves, and ended up in what he called the “garden” room. “Wait!” Joseph stopped abruptly. “Something here doesn’t ring right, starik.” A sly gleam flashed across his eyes. “Your editors sent you to investigate Emily’s death?”“No,” I said hastily. “I’m doing a nuclear proliferation story.” I added, trying to sound cheerful. “Something I can write in my sleep. I’ll give Professor Voronov a call, talk to a couple of think tank people.”It was a matter of willful positive thinking, I said to myself. Maintain a front, create a mask. I’m pretty good at acting—one of the remaining legacies of more than two decades of interviewing people and pretending to be deeply interested in what they had to say. This time it was hard going. I consoled myself with Holz’s adage that people are as honest as they can afford to be. While I had reservations of my own I recognized the fact that they had to be overridden if I was to unmask the mole.We settled in the garden room,, in wicker chairs painted white. My entire Rosslyn condo, I thought, could probably fit in this cool conservatory with a checkerboard marble floor and filled with exotic trees in huge ceramic vats. “The professor’s practically gone nuts,” Joseph said. “His only granddaughter died in a car crash three months ago. A real tragedy.”“That’s awful.” I had to conceal my satisfaction that Page’s assignment was completed on practically the very first day; now I had free time to concentrate on my own investigation. “She was twenty-four.” “Good God.” She was younger than Rick, I thought. “But even before this tragic accident, Professor Voronov had started acting strange. You know, like those Dostoyevsky characters guzzling vodka and despairing of God. His obsession is coming global holocaust. War is the ultimate fruit of modern technology and its ultimate test. He had worked out a mathematical proof—that’s his claim—that a technological civilization self-destructs after ninety odd years! Something like that. Crazy stuff!”“You think he’s a bit loopy?”“No, I think it’s guilt. He’s one of a few fellows still alive who actually made the most terrible weapon. And probably the onset of dementia; he’s getting on in years. I’ve heard he’s become religious, insists that our destiny is in the hands of a Being welling beyond the scope of man’s reason.”I said I’d like to visit him. “He’s at his daughter’s dacha in Podmoskovye, not seeing anybody,” Joseph said. “I think he’ll see you, though.”17The year-round pool in the back of the house had its Plexiglas roof half way removed for the summer. Beyond the pool and across several acres of blue-green lawn was a guesthouse. It was designed as a German hunting lodge and set in a birch grove. Hidden by the lodge was a low building housing the Tajik gardener and his wife, who was the cook. A young maid with a broad peasant face, dressed in black and wearing a white apron, wheeled in a tray of canapés and a bottle of vodka in a silver ice bucket. She filled two tumblers. Joseph threw his down in one gulp.“What happened to you that day?” Joseph leaned back, locking fingers behind his head. “The day Emily died.”What happened that day? I had lived it, in slow motion playback, a thousand times.“On the day she died, I was a thousand miles away. In a godforsaken place called Lachin on the edge of Karabakh. Jeff Taubin of United Press and I had arranged to meet with leaders of an Armenian guerrilla group that was fighting the Azeris in the neighboring mountains. These were small-scale battles—got very little press attention—but soon evolved, as you know, into all-out war.“Lachin was under martial law—for all practical purposes. Phone and telex lines were down. The Soviet army maintained a semblance of normality. I heard hints that the local KGB was no longer under full control of Moscow Center. The border of Karabakh and Azerbaijan was mined and the only way to get to Azerbaijan was enter Armenia, then take a circuitous route to Baku. That’s what we wanted to do after we did the reporting. Alas, I couldn’t find my press credentials. I still had my passport and thought that would be enough. But soldiers at the checkpoint said the lack of press credentials supposedly raised a question whether I had a right to be in Lachin at all. Jeff was free to proceed, but he decided to stay until the situation cleared up. That meant forfeiting the arranged transport to Yerivan. ‘It’s only a formality, I’m sure,’ a heavy-set KGB man with wavy grey hair told me. ‘We’ll sort it out in a day or two.’ “I insisted on phoning the US embassy. The heavyset agent sweating in his cheap brown polyester suit said that was impossible. I asked him to pass a message to my wife or to my office, and he said he’d check whether he’d be allowed to do so using their internal communications. Meanwhile, I was placed into the custody of the hotel manager, a frightened-looking little man with waxy skin who tried to look somebody. But he had not much going in the way of thought. Fortunately his grimy restaurant had a solid supply of Georgian red and plenty of the lavash bread, which looked like parchment.“When we heard nothing from anyone by the next morning, I urged Jeff to go back to Moscow. But leaving Lachin proved more difficult than we could imagine. Bus communications were cut; some Azeri travelers were massacred not far from the town, there was chaos all around. It was as if a time of pre-civilization had come around again to teach as the meaning of chaos.”One night, I recalled, we heard a newscast on a neighbor’s radio. It must have been Radio Liberty because it talked calmly about unrests in Baku and Tashkent, armed skirmishes in Nagorno-Karabakh, the use of poison gas in Tbilisi, Islamic rallies in Turkmenistan, miners’ strikes in the Ukraine, railroad stoppages in Siberia. Finally, it said two American journalists were reported missing in the Nagorno-Karabakh area and gave our names. The State Department had been in touch with the Soviet authorities seeking urgent clarification.“Holy shit,” Jeff said, incredulously. “They don’t even know we are here!”“We’re in the middle of a three-way civil war,” I said. “No easier place on earth for a reporter to vanish.” Being under kind of house arrest, I started to protest vigorously. Each time I was assured politely that problems would get resolved any minute, any day.“It took Jeff four days to find a ride to Yerivan. Six days later, I finally received a phone call from Moscow. From a guy in the consular section who told me about Emily’s death. What can I tell you! That was the worst moment of my life. You could well imagine my state of mind. I no longer cared about anything. The consular man said that since I was reported missing, they had shipped Emily’s remains to California for burial, at her parents’ request. “A week later, they had a call from Jeff. But then the embassy was told that a stash of hashish was found in my luggage, and that an investigation was under way. Now a consular official was on his way to Yerivan and things are being sorted out. I had no idea what he was talking about.“To make a long story short, I remained there for another couple of days until the local KGB man said I was free to go. It took me four days to get to Baku and then to Moscow. “Later, much later, I thought that there was something weird about this whole episode. The Foreign Ministry apologized about the incident and blamed it on a clerical error by local authorities.”Joseph stared into the distance. He stood up and gave me a sudden bear hug. “What a story,” he muttered.I felt like I was again talking to my friend the old Joseph. But we sat in silence for almost a minute. “So what about you,” I said.“Let’s have a swim,” he said.We stripped off our clothes in the changing room. On a hat rack hung a dozen men’s bathing suits. Beneath were flip-flops in various sizes. “Take one that fits you,” Joseph said. I dived into the bracing blue water, glided beneath the surface, enjoying the sensation of the cold water on my skin. Then I set off in a splashy crawl to the other end of the pool. After a few laps, I waited in the shallows for Joseph. “When I heard Professor Voronov was detained, I fled Moscow,” Joseph said. “Just got the hell out. My cousin Petya and his business partner, Vasya, shared a dacha. In the middle of nowhere, so I figured let them find me. You know the feeling. I know shit is about to happen and I can do absolutely nothing to prevent it. Six days later, they raided the place looking for Petya and Vasya, the currency speculators that they were. Found me instead. Jinxed? Know what I’m saying?“They took me to Butyrka prison and beat the living hell out of me because I couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know. What I didn’t know was that Petya and Vasya and a handful of other fledgling shabashniki (semi-legal businessmen) each month paid the salaries of twelve men—all former KGB types—who were hired to be Yeltsin’s bodyguards. Remember, there were attempts on Yeltsin’s life that year; he had to have security around the clock. But I had no clue. So they transferred me to a psychiatric prison and gave me electric shocks, injections, pills, you name it. After the August coup, Petya gets me out of there. I’m free.”“Now comes the most interesting part. Yeltsin’s suddenly the top political figure in Russia. As a token of his personal gratitude, he grants Petya and Vasya a license to open the first private bank and handle foreign currency. They are like pigs in shit. I start working for them, you know I’m a mathematician.“Hell, our bank was a hole in the wall… a glorified money changing stand… but we were raking it in like you can’t believe. Those were the days of total chaos, starik. No rules, no regulations. Everybody wanted dollars and Deutschemarks. Inflation like ten percent a day. The country being auctioned off, piece by piece. The banking system in the Ice Age.“But, hey, we’re in Russia where the devil never sleeps. Know what I’m saying. Something might happen and you lose everything overnight. So we had to move funds into foreign bank accounts. That meant literally carrying the cash out of Russia. In bags or suitcases. When I flew with Yeltsin to Washington, you remember when I phoned you and you never called back, that time I had a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills. No customs inspection for presidential visits at Andrews Air Force Base!” I spread my arms as if to embrace everything around me. ”Boy, a long way from Yuzhinski Lane.” How does one accumulate such wealth? The pool and sauna and general opulence of the place— everything made me uneasy. And yet, a voice in the back of my head kept saying, Don’t rock the boat, you need Joseph’s help. You went into it knowing what you have to do. Why worry?18As we downed another shot of freezing vodka, Joseph winked at me and gently slapped my stomach. “You’ve got to exercise, starik,” he laughed. He opened the door to the sauna.“Shit,” I said. Hit by a blast of dry heat, my skin turned pink. I climbed onto the upper bench and sat back, felt burning wood against my backside.I thought about how years ago, I introduced Joseph to his first sauna. He talked about it for months. Emily had prepared snacks and a bottle of ice-cold vodka, which we took to the old czarist Central Bath on Neglinaya. We rented a separate sauna suite for three hours and had a feast. Joseph poured water from a wooden bucket onto the burning rocks. Hot steam hit me in the face. Joseph laughed through his nose. “I know you’ve heard rumors that I run a high-class whorehouse and I launder money for major drug dealers. Right?”I shrugged. Okay. He said he wanted to set the record straight before I got the wrong idea about him.He was in London on a business trip in 1992, he said, staying at the Dorchester, when he was first introduced to the concept of escort service. His escort was called Lauren, a blonde with the boyish body of a Paris model and an incredible aura of cleanliness. Twenty-four, very clever, doing graduate work at the London School of Economics. “Screwing Lauren,” Joseph said, “didn’t feel at all like screwing a whore. Not like in Soviet Russia where prostitution was a sordid business, crude and vulgar. Women were forced into it by poverty, hunger, stupidity, men’s brutality, for the most part making very little money—five to ten dollars a night. Spending a night with someone like Lauren, for a thousand pounds a night, was like participating in an expensive time-share; there was a temporary emotional and erotic bond between us.” Joseph said he almost felt a sense of camaraderie with her other clients who possessed the same level of good taste and financial standing.After his third night with Lauren, the idea came to him that this kind of exclusive service could be lucrative in new Russia with its newly minted millionaires and mafia bosses. “I had nothing to do with the pimping side of the business,” Joseph said. A partner handled that part; he recruited pretty, well-educated girls, mostly from the provinces, and taught them sophistication and grace. “I handled the real estate,” Joseph said. Joseph looked for apartments in prime locations, bought them dirt cheap, and then fixed them up. Inflation was raging at the time. “I remember the government issued a 5000-ruble note, which was worth forty dollars in September and by December was worth ten dollars.” The ruble stabilized a couple of years later, and Moscow became the most expensive city in the world. “I sold a two bedroom apartment near the Sovremenik Theater for more than a thousand times more than I’d paid for it, no kidding.” He used the proceeds to buy more shares of the Russian Bank of Agriculture and Commerce.“And your cousin Petya? His partner Vasya?“They grabbed oil leases and coal and uranium rights. Retain a small stake in the bank.” I said, “It’s really hot. I’ve had enough.” I was feeling uncomfortable. I suddenly wanted to be thousands of miles away from Joseph’s palace. His manner was full of charm and deprecation, but I was wary of subtle falsehoods and could smell the odor of corruption. I was about to cross some kind of journalistic Rubicon, but I knew I needed Joseph’s help to get to Bogumilov; Joseph had already solved one of my problems by telling me about Voronov’s whereabouts and the reason for his disappearance. In essence, I wanted to have my cake, eat it, and have pills ready to cure my indigestion.Hot and sweaty, we jumped in the pool. After doing a few laps, we climbed out and wrapped ourselves in fluffy white terrycloth robes. “Ah, yes, the money laundering bullshit. Well, it’s true that I don’t ask our customers where their money comes from. I’m a banker, not a policeman.”I wanted to turn the conversation toward the events of the summer of 1991; tell him about my suspicions. But the sudden shift in his mood led us toward politics, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan.A servant rolled in the food: rack of lamb, roasted mixed vegetables, chopped lettuce, and sprouts.“Igor will be here any minute,” Joseph said after we finished the main course. “I’ve asked him to help you. He works for me.”A young secretary came in and handed Joseph as brown manila envelope. “Latest business news from Interfax,” he explained leafing through the pages. “They deliver it by a special messenger. Shit, I have to keep track on the prices of gas and oil.”The driver in his grey outfit appeared in the doorway. “Iosif Davidovich,” he said and stood there silently. Behind him were two young security guards with Skorpion 7.65 mm machine pistols. “Five minutes, Nikolai,” Joseph said, then turned to me: ”I have work to do, starik. Know what I’m saying.”“What does Igor do for you?” “Security. He’s someone I trust.”“You need all these security types?” I recalled that Igor had served in the spetznaz troops, the Soviet equivalent of the Navy seals, while doing his military service. Joseph laughed out loud, his lips curling downward, and his head making small circular motions.“One bad thing about our democracy is when someone doesn’t like you, he gets a gunman. Wham! And you’re gone.” He lifted his right hand, made a ninety-degree angle between his thumb and index finger, and briefly pointed the imaginary pistol at me. “Or sets a bomb under your car. Boom!” He suddenly produced two silvery metal tubes and handed one to me. “Romeo Y Julieta, your favorite.” “I stopped smoking,” I said, almost apologetically. “You have changed!” Yes, I thought, but perhaps not as much as he had. I was also beginning to have doubts whether he was deliberately ignoring my implicit plea for help.It was as if he had read my thoughts. After lighting the cigar, he exhaled smoke upward. “Just between you and me, I’ll talk to Volkov about your problem. Radomir Volkov, formerly of the KGB First Directorate, a full colonel, used to be very high up in the hierarchy. Know what I’m saying. I hired him ten years ago.” “You hired him?”“Yup! I offered him ten times more than he was making!” Joseph spread his hands. “He’s still working for you? In security?”“Yes. He also has his own security firm and is a minority partner in the bank.” “Could he help with the archives?” I ventured, cautiously.“Archives?” He gave out a big belly laugh. “Starik, starik! This is Russia. When something out of the ordinary happens here you won’t find it in the archives. Know what I’m saying? Volkov has contacts.” He looked at his watch then made a gesture as if to suggest he had to run. “Just relax. Igor should be here any minute.”I chewed on that for two long minutes, in silence. Then I heard the arrival of a car.19I pulled out from my wallet a folded yellow Post-it note with the phone number and address of Galina Zvonareva who lived on Malaya Bronnaya. “That’s in Patriarch’s Pond,” Igor exclaimed, mentioning one of the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods. “Galina Zvonareva,” Igor mumbled, a sense of distaste on his face. “She always smelled like an informer.”“How does an informer smell?”Igor laughed. “I’m talking about intuition, I guess.” “That no longer makes much difference,” I said. Even during communism, Patriarch’s Pond was Moscow’s Sutton Place. The city at its best. The pond is the size of a large city block, bordered by a knee-high iron fence and tucked in a park, a rectangle oasis of trees, lawns, and paths. I used to go there in the spring when the daffodils were blooming. Emily would sit on the grass, looking like one of those women in Chekhov. We would watch the black and white swans, and speculated what the place must have looked like when they stocked fish there for the patriarch’s table. I would take off my shoes and socks to feel the grass, moist and cool. The leaves rustled; they were darkly polished on top and greenish gray underneath. Sometimes I would come alone—there was no parking problem in those days—and sit in my car on Yermolayevskaya Lane, one of the four streets that fenced the park, waiting to catch the glimpse of Red Army marshals who lived in the House of Lions, a luxurious neoclassical stone building with two gilded lions at the main entrance. The only time the place was filled with people was in winter, when the pond became the largest skating rink in the heart of the city. Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov used to skate here and so did Mikhail Bulgakov who described the neighborhood in detail in his novel The Master and Margareta. “Why do you want to see that bitch?” A pale scar on the side of his right eye gave his face a menacing touch. His cheeks were decorated with broken capillaries indicating a life of eating and drinking. Last time I saw Igor, he had no scar.“She was the last person to see my wife alive.” I said. “Id like to hear from her what happened on that day.”“Did you phone her?” “I did, a few times, but no answer.” “Maybe she’s out of town. Or taking a walk.” Igor tapped the wheel nervously as the silver Mercedes SUV raced toward the city. The car had lemon-color leather seats, a navigational system, and other fancy features. It hugged the road like a tank.“Nice car,” I said. “Very nice.”“It’s got a 382 hp 5.5-liter V8 engine,” Igor said. “Belongs to the bank, but I use it. Joseph told you I work for him.”“You do security.” I remembered he used to be an engineer. Although we never became close friends, I thought him the kindest soul among my old Moscow acquaintances. “Yeah. Making good money. Now I can afford vacations in Cyprus or Greece. ” “Remember you and I used to argue about Gorbachev?” I said.“Ah, yes, the guy with the map of an unknown country on his forehead… er, the people said that was the mark of Cain, that he was cursed.” “You used to like him,” I said.“You must have thought me very na?ve.”“No, quite the opposite.”“Well, I’ve changed.” Igor grimaced. “You know, Gorbachev’s genius was to freshen up the clichés of Soviet politics by the sheer force of his personality. Even his toughest opponents were briefly silenced when he came on the scene. Listening to him you’d have thought he and his family lived in a cramped communal apartment and scrounged around for food. A good man, certainly. In the end it was all empty talk. Fucking boltun (gasbag).”“I liked the guy,” I said. “A national leader has to be very smart, but also must be a son-of-a-bitch. Gorbachev was a good man, smart, but not an SOB. Yeltsin was an alcoholic SOB, not very smart. Putin’s very smart and a real SOB. If he turns out to be a good man, we’ll benefit.”Yes, I thought, Gorbachev was their Jimmy Carter. I had once toyed with the idea of writing a biography of Gorbachev. Went as far as putting together a twenty-page proposal. I still remember one publisher’s rejection note. Although your subject is very intelligent and seems to have a strong personality, the note said in effect, the editor had reservations whether the subject, as I presented it, was a psychologically credible character. I said, “What you’re saying is that Gorby failed because he was a good man?”Igor made a face at once annoyed and embarrassed. “It took Russia centuries to build an empire. Centuries. He gave everything away in a few months.” He made a slight cough, shook his head, and chuckled. “You know, if Gorby was on fire today, I wouldn’t piss on him to extinguish the flames.” We were now passing the Prague restaurant, made a loop in front of the yellow General Staff building and got on the Tsvetnoi Boulevard. “How does Joseph look to you?”“Hasn’t changed at all, yet he’s somehow different,” I said.“It’s the money.” He coughed, and shook his head. “He’s got plenty of it.” An illegal left turn took us through a maze of familiar streets—Skaterni, Hlebni—to reach Vorovski Street, except that its name had been changed back to the pre-revolutionary Povarnaya, before turning into Spridonovskaya Lane. “Aren’t you worried about getting a traffic ticket,” I said as were passed the building where Professor Voronov used to live, which was a couple hundred feet from the walled Norwegian embassy compound.“Ahhh,” Igor laughed. “Cops aren’t going to fuck around with a Mercedes SUV. They don’t know who’s the owner.”What he was doing was a bit irregular, Igor said, but then so were many things in Moscow. “We haven’t lost our conspiratorial soul,” he chuckled.I pondered on his use of the word irregular. Irregular places are populated by irregular people. Igor was irregular in the same way Joseph was—seeming to be one thing, but in fact something quite different. In Moscow, I have forgotten, everything was something different, something indecipherable to outsiders, but not to those who lived here. Was the irregular regular, and the regular irregular?“You must see the Alla Pugachova building,” Igor said as we approached the pond on Yermolayevskaya Lane. “They’ve put a small version of Tatlin’s Tower on top. Crazy, you’ll see.”“Alla Pugachova, is she still around?” The most popular pop singer of the eighties. “Still going strong.” There was a new feel to the area. I saw Tatlin’s Tower on top of a 13-story building. The original design—a monument to the Communist International supposed to dwarf the Eiffel Tower in size—had never been built. Here was a modest appendix sticking out atop the Pugacheva building—a metaphor for the modern Russia.The whole neighborhood reeked of wealth and privilege. The chauffeured limos were idling in the street. The doormen stood guard at the entrances of the grand old buildings, which had been renovated and repainted. An up market café named Margarita on Malaya Bronnaya seemed inviting. Only the pond and the park didn’t change. Old men sat on wooden benches under ornate lampposts. Ladies walked their dogs. Squealing children played at the boathouse, painted pastel yellow with a white trim. For a moment I could imagine Emily sitting by the pond, the first blush of youth faded from her cheeks, but possessed of a subtle beauty. Something in me always vibrates to the memory of her voice. But I thought: best not to haunt old sites and come away from them mourning what’s forever gone.“Oh fuck your mother!” Igor suddenly hissed and frowned.A white ambulance and a police patrol car were parked outside the entrance to Zvonareva’s apartment building, which was eight-stories high and had a red brick fa?ade. He immediately slowed down and took the first available parking space. I began to sense worry in the atmosphere; it was as if it seeped in through Igor’s pores. He opened the door, put his left foot down, and waited.“What’s wrong,” I said.“Maybe nothing,” he said. “Wait.”We sat in silence for a while, watching. The ambulance driver was smoking and talking to a tall burly policeman sporting a wide mustache. Two paramedics in standard white hospital overalls emerged from the entrance lobby, picked up a stretcher, then hurried back in.There were no traffic in the street.“It’s a medical emergency,” I said. It can’t be Zvonareva, I said to myself. I jumped out to stretch my legs. Another policeman in a blue uniform was talking earnestly to an old lady in a light blue cotton dress. The two paramedics returned, carrying someone on the stretcher covered by a white sheet. They were followed by a man in the white coat. They briskly lifted the stretcher into the ambulance, jumped in and shut the back door. The doctor climbed in the front, and the ambulance took off.Igor said sharply, “You wait here.”He crossed the street, had a word with the mustached policeman who repeatedly pointed to the old lady. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that she was back inside behind a chest-high counter, talking on the phone. Then I felt paralyzed for a moment; the other policeman with a hanging stomach on him approached Igor from behind, walking with that peculiar swagger affected by Russian cops for centuries. He tapped Igor on the shoulder. Igor looked up, and then quickly produced something from his pocket. Probably his identification card. The policeman pulled a narrow notebook from his side pocket and wrote something in it before letting Igor enter the lobby. Igor then talked briefly to the old lady, swung around, and walked out. “Not your day, starik,” he mumbled when he returned and grabbed hold of my arm. As we climbed back in the Mercedes, I understood in a flash. “Zvonareva?”“Yeah,” Igor barked.“Shit!” I felt nausea in my stomach. “Shit.” My investigation had ended before it got off the ground. Zvonareva was my only lead. I felt lost. Igor, looking slightly troubled, clunked the car into reverse, the engine whining as he backed down the street. “Heart seizure, the old lady said.”All deaths are heart seizures, I thought. It means the heart stops pumping blood. Emily’s heart stopped pumping blood. But it was particularly distressing that Zvonareva should have heart seizure on the day when I came to visit her. The last person who had seen Emily alive. Too much to be a coincidence, I thought. Or was it?“I don’t believe in coincidences, starik,”Igor said looking frowningly thoughtful. “But who can tell for sure?”I said, “That cop took down your name? Why?”“Just in case, he said. Fucking cops!” He slowed down, looking around before turning left on Spiridonovski Lane. The last stretch of this road used to be called Yuzhinski Lane. I had to search my memory to pinpoint the location of Joseph’s old building in a row of three story buildings painted aquamarine blue with white trim. It was, I remembered, near the point where the street made a 90-degree turn to the right to become Sytinski Lane. “I’ll get off here,” I said when we halted at the corner of Sytinski and Tsvetnoy Boulevard. “I need to clear my head. I’ll grab a cab later.”I sauntered into Pushkin Square, comparing the surroundings to that frigid December evening long time ago when I first met Joseph. This time I was in the middle of a mushrooming metropolis of new shops and boutiques and cafes and restaurants; I was dodging the shoppers and the sightseers and was exposed to all the assaults that modern life makes on our senses. Walking aimlessly and trying to make some sense of what had taken place, I began to wonder whether I would discover what I had come to discover. Strange things happen when one least expects them. I must not be paranoid, I told myself. What else could I do?19There was a puzzled expression on the face of the white-gloved attendant who met us outside the hotel’s entrance when I pulled up to the red silk rope with brass fittings and handed him the keys to the Lada. He picked up the keys and handed them to one of the blond parking attendants attired in blue blazers, with all three buttons fastened.Amanda suddenly came to life when we entered the lobby of the Savoy. She looked overpoweringly alluring in her short black cocktail dress and high-heeled shoes. Her bare shoulders had a healthy glow. She had washed her hair, put on makeup; and wore a gold necklace and large fluted gold earrings. My first impression of the new Savoy was one of timeless luxury. The atrium featured a white marble water fountain in the center and a pale blue domed ceiling filled with white cherubs blowing bugles and voluptuous nymphs prancing around. Guests lounged in leather sofas and easy chairs, chatting or leafing through glossy magazines. The main dining room hummed with laughter and the cheerful clinks of champagne glasses. The orchestra was playing Strauss. As the maitre ‘d led us to the table, I noticed Amanda stealing glances at herself in gilt-framed mirrors which made the place seem larger than it really was. She perfunctorily checked her hair and straightened her dress.“This is a fabulous place,” I said. “It’s been completely redone.” I recalled coming here with Emily many years ago when communist management shunned elegance and luxury.“Yes, it is,” Amanda said. “Reminds me of the Willard, which is my favorite.”The sommelier, wearing a tasting cup around his neck, inspected a bottle of Medoc in a silver bucket. “Chateau Barreyres 1992,” he said with satisfaction and poured the wine after I gave it my benediction. We discussed the elaborate menu. She selected une bouchee a la Reine Marie-Antoinette, to start with, and les deux tournedos for her main course. I chose a Roquefort cheese salad and the Chateaubriand steak with herbs de Provence. We talked on and, in the course of our conversation, it emerged that Amanda had been recovering from the unhappy termination of a grad school love affair. She had been abused, she added as she sawed away at her twin tenderloin of Angus beef, which was sautéed with mushrooms, asparagus, and béarnaise sauce. I was suitably appalled. I watched her pick up her drink: long fingers around the silvery glass, white teeth, red lips slightly open, holding the promise of a smile. During a lull between courses, she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. My mind flashed to Patriarch’s Pond and Zvonareva’s body being rushed away by an ambulance and I was trying to figure out if that was a coincidence. “You’re somewhere far, far away,” Amanda observed when she came back.“Not really,” I said and told her about the incident. “Maybe it was a coincidence,” I said.“No,” she said firmly and immediately began backtracking. “Well, it’s possible, though I don’t believe it. Was she the only point of contact you had?”“Yes.”“There’s a lot at stake here for you,” she said. “So what are you going to do now?”“Don’t know.”She nodded slowly in the way that people do when they’re not buying any of it. “You need someone who has contacts in the Moscow underworld,” she said. “You know, Mafia types…”“That’s the right place to start,” I said jokingly to move the conversation into a different groove. “But we’re here to have a good time.”After a while I found—to my surprise—that I was enjoying her conversation. She was something of a raconteur and could hold forth on any number of topics. She loved horses and cross-country skiing. There was something both warm and feisty about her. Her eyes were flattering—sincere-looking. Absolutely was the word she used frequently. Things were cool or uncool; my gestures of attention were sweet.She took a sip of her wine and placed the glass back on the table. “Now let’s have the long story you promised. About your parents.” She reached across the table, briefly lacing our fingers together.I told her. That my dad romanced my mother in a refugee camp; that they got along probably because they shared no common language; that I was born outside Salzburg (“a true child of the Cold War,” I amplified, “my birth was an accident”); that my name was Todo Martinovich which became Todd Martin upon arrival to America (after a huge family argument in which, for once, Mom would not yield to dad’s threats and blandishments); that my story was typical—immigrant parents making sacrifices so their children would have a better life.“He must have been very proud of you,” she said, running a finger over the rim of her wineglass.“Yes.” I was not so sure. I must have been a disappointment to my parents for having intuitively fled from centuries of East European anxiety and guilt. I suspect Mom didn’t mind so much that I showed no interest in her side of the family; her father was a commercial clerk in Minsk, whom I imagined with a hook nose and flat feet; her grandfather, a hunchback Talmudic scholar in a long woolen black coat. I imagined Dad’s ancestors as mustachioed tribesmen festooned with weapons, wearing embroidered black Montenegrin hats and clutching long rifles. I knew he was hurt because I wouldn’t listened to the family mythology about my heritage, but I couldn’t help it—I’m American, beyond past, beyond blood, looking straight ahead. “How did he pass away?”“Suddenly. An artery burst in his brain.”“Shame he didn’t live to see the end of communism,” she said.“On the contrary. I don’t know how he would have taken the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia.”She was silent for a while, looking as if she were shifting pieces of furniture in her brain. She reached across the table and covered my hand. “At least you have Joseph helping you?”“He says I saved his life. He exaggerates, of course. I used to help him with money from time to time. Once I gave him a thousand dollars, to bribe an official…”“Did he pay back?”“No, but I never expected it. It was a gift. A thousand bucks was a fortune in Russia in those days. For me, it was a minor expenditure—I could write it off as an office expense. The Tribune was very generous when it came to entertaining important people.” As we left the restaurant, the street was bustling with tourists returning to hotels from a night at the theatre. We drove back in silence. I could feel my damp shirt sticking to my shoulder blades. When she moved her left hand on top of mine, I felt an inviting pressure.She said, “We all live by the Augustinian principle, don’t we? Oh God, let me be moral—but not quite yet.”“You, too?” She was of a generation, I thought, where young women were encouraged to do whatever they wanted.“Of course. But I’d better stop telling things—otherwise you won’t want to be with me for very long.” I parked outside Amanda’s entrance. Without saying a word, she took me by the hand, tugged me by my fingers. In the hallway I stopped to kiss her. I felt her breasts against my chest and held her tightly for a long time.“Come upstairs,” she said. She hugged herself to me, and we awkwardly climbed the two flights of stairs to her apartment. Our lips were locked before she latched the door and dropped her handbag. “Careful,” she said breathlessly between kisses, pulling me into the bedroom. It was the right place for seduction—shiny parquet floors, thick carpets, pale peach upholstery, a queen-sized bed with crisp white sheets. One of Amanda’s predecessors had stuck a big old Carrier box in the window facing the Ukraine Hotel. On a hot and muggy night like this, it was a blessing. We didn’t talk. She turned off the light and I heard her necklace and bracelets crash on the nightstand. A sliver of light from the bathroom allowed me to observe her kick off her shoes and then slowly take off her fluted earrings before shedding her dress and panties. I felt my cock thicken. I stripped off my clothes quickly and suddenly felt weakness, trembling as I moved across the dark space between us.Afterward, our bodies covered with thousands of tiny beads of sweat, we lay exhausted. “Not bad for an old man,” she said with a throaty laugh, her tone playful to make sure I would not take offense. It was something about that laugh that suggested a rich sexual history.“You were wonderful,” I said. As delicious as a bruised peach, I thought. I had picked up this image from late night movies and I couldn’t get rid of it.I was slightly embarrassed. I wished I could see her face. I imagined her grinning. So what, I said to myself. This was a one-shot deal—only sex, only straight forward, mature pleasure. There’s only now, I thought, and I was old enough to know that.“You’re in jail,” she giggled. She had hooked her legs around my butt and wouldn’t let go. She demanded me again, reaching down and holding until I felt a fierce potency spread throughout my body.Later, she slipped out of bed. “Stay there,” she said and padded to the bathroom. After a while, I heard her shuffle in the kitchen, than turn the lights on. She said something, but I couldn’t make out what and did not reply. I admired her naked silhouette in the doorway. The kitchen lights stayed on when she returned with a bottle and two glasses on a tray. She stripped the lead foil, twisted off the wire cage, expertly opened the bottle of Champagne and poured it into the fluted glasses. “For special occasions,” she murmured, letting the bubbles settle, then pouring in some more. “This is to you!” she said and raised her glass. Then she sat beside me on the bed, put an arm on my shoulder. I thought about arranging a meeting with a former KGB man whose name was Shishkin and who was recommended by a friend of Barbara’s. The man was tricky, Barbara had warned; don’t part with money until you establish it would be worth your while. “Penny for your thoughts,” Amanda said, stroking my head. “Thinking about you,” I said, unconvincingly.“What about me?”“Just trying to figure out things… like what makes you tick. You told me you were not an easy person to know.”She snuggled up to me and we drifted into sleep. I woke up with a jolt. I was dreaming about Hector who seemed to resemble my friend Tony Scarna, the press attaché. The digital clock’s numerals glowed 3:31. Amanda was breathing steadily. I gingerly slid out of bed, grabbed my clothes from the floor, pulled on my pants and shirt, and let myself out of the apartment.It was four when I returned to the hotel and took the elevator to the room. Later, in my own bed, I had just drifted to sleep when the phone rang. 5:36 a.m.“Where are you?” Her voice was possessive, an angry tinge to it.I mumbled something. I had only two more hours of sleep. Then I had to work. The deadline was pressing. 20I was restless, impatient. There seemed to be too much waiting. Pointless waiting, day after day. I was beginning to feel panicky. I remembered the prolonged periods of inertia during ceasefires in Beirut—waiting for the competing militias to withdraw, for talks to start, for something to happen. Reporting is waiting; when you get frustrated and don’t know what to do, wait longer.Joseph learned through his police connections that the coroner had ruled Zvonareva had died of natural causes. Who’d want to kill the 52-year-old Russian spinster? I thought, where do I go from here? Bogumilov was my only remaining lead, but that was a name I couldn’t even mention to anyone.I kept calling Joseph until he snapped irritably, “Listen, starik, you’ve got to wait. I’m very busy right now.”I apologized. “You know,” I said, “a reporter without contacts is like a pilot without a plane.”“I gave you Igor, starik. I gave you Volkov,” he said. “Volkov’s the best fucking contact there is! Isn’t that enough?” I had lunch with Volkov at the pricey Sakura restaurant, all on my dime. There was a slight commotion as he arrived in the restaurant; waiters bowing and scraping; guests waving to him as he negotiated his way to the table where I was waiting. He was wearing a light-weight tailored suit (which he had made on the ground floor of the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong, he told me), navy blue shirt, and a gold tie held in place by what must have been the heaviest gold tie-clip I’ve ever seen. We were sitting on tatomi mats at a low-black lacquered table, sharing a large warm saki. He smacked his lips when the waiter brought seaweed salad. Then he took a phone call. The St. Petersburg branch of Joseph’s bank was raided this morning by the local police, he said. He waited for a while, thinking, looking reluctant to elaborate on bad news. “We had a mask show,” he added with forced lightness. “What’s a mask show?” “Oh, just a bunch of agents wearing face masks and holding semi automatic weapons. You’ve seen it on TV.”“Yeah,” I said. I just logged this fact away, not wanting to examine its implications. “It’s psychological.” Volkov, frowningly thoughtful, pushed his lips out, like a blowfish, then pulled them back in. His face became a puzzled grimace as he dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “Now if they did that to the headquarters here, I’d be worried. It would mean someone was sending us a message. But St. Petersburg? Just local bullshit.”“What’s local bullshit?”“Uh, you know, someone didn’t get paid. Some such stupid thing.”We chatted about the purpose of my trip. I explained my rehearsed goals.“Joseph Davidovich mentioned something about it,” Volkov interrupted and sighed. “Funny thing about conscience… it’s there when you need it, not there when you don’t, right?”“I didn’t quite get that,” I said.“I’m just yakking,” he said. “Don’t worry.” Disoncerting thing about Volkov was that I never had a sense of where I was with him.I felt strangely depressed by the end of the lunch. But as he walked off, Volkov said I should stop by his office on Saturday. “I can’t promise anything, it all depends.”I watched him leave, thinking, Was that the hint that a bribe could speed things up? 21I was rather hoping to see Joseph the next day, but he disappeared for several days. Instead, I had three strange phone calls the next morning. Two of them from hookers offering their services, the third from a man who said his name was Vadim.“Mister Todd. Todd Martin.” The accent was Russian.“Yes,” I said to the man on the phone. “Who’re you?”“That’s not important, Mister Todd. I have important information that you’re interested in.” “What information?” I hesitated now, thinking back. Who in Moscow knew what I was looking for? Barbara knew in vague terms. Perhaps this was her fixer? But I had already spoken with Shishkin, the man recommended by Barbara’s contacts.The charged silence passed when he cleared his throat. “I have what you’re looking for. I’m waiting for you at a coffee shop near your hotel.”I said, “Who gave you my phone number?” “A friend,” he said.“What’s the friend’s name?” “I’ll explain later. We shouldn’t do it over the phone.”I didn’t like the answer. “That’s not good enough.”“Mister Todd?”“Yes?”“As I said, I have information you are looking for. I’m at the coffee shop Rainbow. Across the street from you. Its awning has blue, white, and red stripes. You can’t miss it. Don’t worry, I’ll recognize you.”“Look, I’m too busy.”“This is very important for you Mister Todd. As I said…”I interrupted him. “Thanks for calling and please don’t call again.” “You’ll regret that, Mister Todd. It’ll be too late,” he said rather harshly before I hung up.Having lived four years in Moscow, I thought I could smell KGB men at some distance. Even sniff them at the other end of the phone line. *Shishkin was near the top of my to-do list. He had sounded credible on the phone. Insisted on elaborate precautions: I was to take the metro, get off one stop before the Sokolniki Park station, take a cab to the park’s main entrance, and go the rest of the way on foot. Even as I followed these instruction—on a hot and humid day, the leaves on the trees looking limp and tired—I should have figured them a bit too theatrical and probably totally unnecessary given the fact that Russia was no longer a totalitarian country. We met on a bench in the park like in a James Bond movie. He was an unappealing man with dark hooded eyes, ears sticking out either side and the mannerism of someone in the protection business. It took only a few minutes to realize I was dealing with a con man.But something odd happened on my way back from Sokolniki Park. I was about to grab a taxi outside the main en trance when an old black Volga came round the corner and drove straight at me. I jumped back between two parked cars to escape being run over. Sparked by anger and adrenaline, I managed to thump my fist against the car’s rear panel before it raced away.“It was a near thing,” the taxi driver said when I hopped into his car. “I saw it. You’d better be careful, little brother.”I dismissed the remark, but then realized with a start that the driver may have a point. I could see the driver’s eyes; he was staring at me. But the whole thing didn’t make sense. Why would a random driver want to run me over? I was getting paranoid.That day, I got a handsomely-embossed card inviting me to a garden party at the Peredelkino home of a Russian writer named Kozlov, an acquaintance of mine from the old days. “It’s been a long time,” he had scribbled on the back. “Do come. Bring a friend.” Once known for his novels about Soviet rural life, Kozlov had recently turned his hand to detective fiction and become very rich. I had contacted him because I wanted to see his wife Dara. Not only because she had been friendly with Emily; they had met on a shopping trip to Helsinki. I thought Dara was somebody who could help me. A former Bolshoi ballet star and a famous beauty whose first husband was a KGB general, she still occupied a unique place in Moscow’s high society and had a wide circle of acquaintances. Kozlov’s house was on a street thronged with parked cars. I had to turn into a side street to find a space some distance away.The house was packed. About sixty people were standing there with drinks in hand, laughing and talking as they looked to see who was arriving and who was leaving. The smell of ladies’ heavy perfume and the odor of fried food from the kitchen saturated clouds of cigarette smoke. A detachment of perspiring waiters in white coats soared by with trays of canapés. I was reminded of vastly different Russian parties years ago where intimate thoughts and sophisticated ideas were exchanged. Now the kind of laughter and chatter suggested a very Westernized style with guests milling around and only the elderly sitting down on sofas and chairs in the corners.We quickly escaped to the verandah overlooking a garden that shimmered with beautiful women, lavishly made up and extravagantly dressed in sleeveless and backless dresses and plunging necklines.Amanda gave me a look that said, Look at my shabby clothes! I told her she looked very attractive in a tapered black skirt and a green silk blouse. Suddenly, a pretty young waitress wearing a bow tie appeared with a tray of drinks. Amanda took a glass of white wine. I took a glass of beer. As we stepped onto the verandah, I heard a voice saying “Todd Martin!” We both turned. Kozlov was extending his left arm to embrace me before we went on a brief trip down memory lane.“Still with the Trib?”“Yup,” I said. “Still writing books?”“Yup.” Kozlov was in his sixties with a craggy face. There was a sparkle in his eyes when he looked at Amanda. If it’s possible for eyes to embrace another person, his embraced her, creating an instant intimacy. “Wonderful you could come,” Kozlov said, draping his left arm over my shoulder, his right hand holding a tall glass of silvery bubbles. “And who’s the lovely lady?” Then he turned to Amanda, giving an approving once over. “You must meet some members of Russia’s cultural elite,” he said, taking her elbow. “Alla Pugachova’s here.” I disliked his showing an undue interest in Amanda, so I said nothing.“Are there any interesting new writers?” She spoke in a casual way, but there was something in her tone that was anything but casual, as though she was seeking information.“Well, yes…”I said, “Now that you don’t have censorship…”“Well, censorship was not that bad...”Amanda clicked her tongue in disapproval. “How’s that?”“You see, the Soviet Union was an empire of deception, so creative impulses came from the need to unmask in some way that deception. The imagination was stimulated by the limitations the state imposed on us.” He turned to me apparently seeking support. “Orwell was wrong when he said that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. Quite the opposite! Don’t you think so?”I grunted.“That’s why a writer used to be a figure of importance,” Kozlov continued, now again facing Amanda. “Remember Solzhenitsyn saying in The First Circle that for a country to have a great writer is like having another government.”“Wasn’t he being a megalomaniac?” said Amanda.I said, “Well, the Soviet government was certainly afraid of him.”“Now,” Kozlov said, “in modern Russia, nobody gives a hot rat’s tail about writers. We’re now into money,” he said and rubbed thumb and forefinger together. “We’re no longer a Third Rome, or the capital of world communism. We’re now a gas and oil kingdom. Sort of like Saudi Arabia, one could say.”Amanda jumped in. “Are you sad that you’ve junked all that communist drivel about the struggle to protect the poor and weak, all that deception about the quest for social justice and against tyranny everywhere? It that what you’re saying?”Kozlov cocked his head. “Yes, my dear lady, there was a lot of lying and we were all corrupt. You’re right. And yet and yet, the idea of socialism was right, fundamentally. “”That’s absurd,” said Amanda. I interrupted eager to change the subject. “Where’s your lovely wife?” He looked around, making a visor with his hand. “She’s out there somewhere.”I left Kozlov and Amanda as soon as I saw Dara Kozlov in a far corner of the garden. The years seemed to have forgotten her; she was art in perfection, I thought. Every strand of her hair was glossy and in place. She was wearing a two-piece suit, skirt and jacket, with a cream silk shirt. It was hard to believe she had turned fifty. I thought she must be doing Botox and getting some other face plumper.After cheek kisses, she took me aside. “I’m sorry for what happened. I never had the chance to express my condolences.” She became silent when I told her that the loss had sucked the life, color and joy right out of me and that I had never come to terms with it. I had been obsessed by the idea, I said, that the official report had been tampered with, or at least was incomplete. I was trying to discreetly inquire into the circumstances of Emily’s death. “Just to clear the air,” I added, and I could tell that she was intrigued.“So you suspect our security services,” she asked after a pause, her nose twitching as if she wanted to sneeze. “I don’t exclude anything.”“Nothing would surprise me?” she said. “ I must say I never heard any gossip about it.” She added after a while, “Let me sleep on it. Now tell me about yourself.”When she learned that I was writing about chess she said, “I once met Bobby Fischer at a party in the Soviet mission in New York. Where is he now?”“He’s become a hermit.” I said. “Hiding somewhere. I don’t know.”She made a little snorting sound at this, but I didn’t pick up on her gesture of slight contempt. I probably should have remained silent. But I said, “I guess he’s living in exile because our tax authorities are after him.”She snorted again. “What a shame. He was a hero during the Cold War. Now chess is again a boring game.”Later, before we parted, she suddenly said, “I’ll make some discreet inquiries.“ She gave me her cell number. “Call me before Thursday. I hope to talk to them before we go to Cyprus.”“Cyprus?”“Ah, yes, we’ve bought a house not far from Limasol.”We left the party early, Amanda flushed, even flustered with the attention of Kozlov and other men. “Kozlov was hitting on me,” she said as we were walking to the car. “Made it clear he was interested.” That bastard didn’t change at all, I thought and remained silent as we drove home. But suddenly I was looking at the city with different eyes; I could not—hard as I tried—stop thinking about the Russia I remembered and the gas and oil kingdom it had become. I liked Kozlov’s insight. Indeed, I thought looking around, this could be Stockholm, or another northern European city where life revolves around practical commercial interests and certainly not around monumental ideas to reshape human societies and the world. I tried to imagine pitching a story about Moscow to the Tribune foreign desk and my mind went blank. How awful!I called Dara two days later. Both her neighbors, she said, were unfortunately in the countryside.I was running out of leads. It was demoralizing. One thing was for sure: I was well out of my depth, like the fish you just pulled out of the water and into the boat, thrashing, with the hook still in its mouth.“You look tired,” Amanda said.“I hit a dead end every which way I turn.”“It might help to talk it through,” she said. “There’s no point anticipating failure, is there?”“I know,” I said, becoming calmer.It’s only now, so many years later, as I recall this moment in our relationship, that I realize how self-centered I was. I was certain I’d never be able to form deep attachments to women. Amanda was a welcome distraction. She gave me a sanctuary of ordinary life. Each evening, I ended up in her apartment, emptying a bottle of wine and making love. I had made a crude cost-benefit analysis and saw no reason to complain. Every night I’d slip into the bed of a woman who had bathed and powdered and anointed herself in readiness, then slip into her. I still believed that the last thing in the world I needed was emotional entanglement. This was a passing fling, I had decided at the onset, not an affair of the heart, which was something quite different. Sex, after all, was just another appetite, as natural as hunger or thirst. I was flattered and delighted by a reckless streak in her: sometimes we’d make love in the battered Lada; sometimes she’d be so impatient that she’d start unzipping my trousers while I was driving and I had visions of us being found impaled on a tree or a lamppost. More than once, I’d sensed that she was interested in her own pleasure and that she needed my body, my lips and fingers to discover the pleasure potentials in her body. By the time we returned to her apartment, her impatience would be replaced by a slow and deliberate expertise and she’d give herself over to pleasure completely in a way that always amazed me. But even casual relationships have an inherent dynamic to them: they are moving up toward a deeper understanding, or they are heading down toward a final disengagement. Ours was static; we remained at the point we reached during that second date when she tugged me by my fingers upstairs to her apartment. 22Finally, Saturday. That’s when I first heard of Firebird affairs.Volkov’s office occupied nearly one half of the eighth floor of a sleek office tower with a glass and stainless steel fa?ade overlooking the muddy Moscow River where it bends west in front of the Byeli Dom, the seat of the Russian government.. The security guard, seated behind a curved black counter in the middle of the lobby, asked me to sign in. I smiled. He smiled back and phoned Volkov’s office. I took the elevator to the eighth floor and approached it with some apprehension. My last conversation with Joseph had left me with a bad taste in my mouth because he had implied that my whole effort clung to one reed of hope, and that thin reed was none other than Colonel Volkov. Which in turned forced me to consider another unpalatable fact I was hiding from myself: that I was wholly dependent on Joseph. I fell into a kind of daze and was wondering what it was that had brought me to this point when an electronic ping reminded me we had reached the eighth floor.Volkov’s outer office contained chairs of bright chrome and black leather. A receptionist, a fresh-faced girl who seemed to be suffering from a severe summer cold, was busy on the phone, ignoring the seesaw whine of a fax machine. A big-breasted assistant in a black pantsuit scurried past the reception desk and walked into Volkov’s office, then came out, leaving the door open. Volkov, on the phone, sat behind a huge desk that enclosed him from three sides, a desk meticulously tidy in the manner of someone who organized his life so as to avoid all surprises. He peered at me as if I were an unexpected visitor, then extended his left arm and beckoned me in with the flick of his hand. The place had glossy black furniture, soft lights, a battery of phones and electronic gadgets lined up on the left side of the desk, which seemed to me like an aircraft carrier. Russian nesting dolls lined up atop a bookcase. A banana tree in the corner. A brass samovar on a marble and brass sideboard. When the call ended, Volkov rose to greet me and walked around the desk. We shook hands vigorously. When he resumed his seat, he rubbed a hand over his chin as if he had a beard. “Great view,” I said looking toward the south window, which revealed acres of blue sky and the steeple of the Ukraine Hotel. I stood up and moved to the window. Down below a tugboat was pulling three blue container barges low in the water, and joggers were punishing themselves along the embankment.“Well, I appreciate the finer points of capitalism,” he said in a light, ironic tone. I had difficulties imagining him mouthing all that Marxist claptrap in his previous incarnation. Volkov was one of those Russian secret operatives who would adopt the brisk and hearty approach of America. He was smooth, adept at playing the part of man of the world. Clever enough to pull it off. When I placed a white envelope on his desk, he sniffed as if his sensibilities had been somehow offended before dropping it in a drawer. “You’ve got something to tell me,” I said.“Maybe yes, maybe no. First we have tea.”He gave me a wide smile and leaned back in his chair, his legs crossed, his hands clasped across his stomach. “Now tell me, how does Moscow look to you after all these years?”“Very impressive.”“Better than before?”“Absolutely.”More chitchat, more waiting, which I found unnerving. The pauses between his sentences seemed interminable. I wondered: how much information does a thousand dollars buy? The rational part of me knew that the answer was not too much—Volkov probably demanded much more—but the irrational had the upper hand that morning; I felt it was better to make a proper gesture, even though Joseph had not said anything about it. In fact, I had heard Joseph tell Volkov over the speakerphone the other day—after I had told him about my suspicions— “This is something you should really look into, Radomir Pavlovich, for my sake.” Volkov had sounded non-committal. “Don’t worry, Joseph Davidovich, I’ll do my best.” “If Volkov says he’ll do it, he’ll do it,” Joseph said later that day. The most important thing about Volkov, Joseph went on with a complicit smile of confidence, is that he belongs to the Club. “ Some people call it the Five Hundred Club, a secret society of movers and shakers, an old boys’ network that includes the very top people in the Kremlin. I mean the very top. No one’s ever quite sure who belongs to the Club since members deny its existence. Everybody knows who doesn’t belong.”The receptionist brought two cups of tea, sugar and lemon separately. “I’m not here, Regina,” Volkov said and flashed a broad smile, revealing two gold teeth in the back of his mouth. “Cigarette,” he said turning to me. I declined his offer. He lit one himself, holding it between his middle finger and ring finger, which made him seem slightly effeminate. After the receptionist closed the door behind her, he blew smoke in my direction and said with reluctance, “Well, your instincts are correct…”The service, as he referred to the KGB, had indeed been involved, but in a very tangential way. Two officers were sent to talk to Emily at the Prague restaurant that day, he went on. “Nobody seems to know why, or what about. There are some operations that are so secret that…” He sighed and casually flicked his hand. “She had a heart attack before they had a chance to approach her. There was a doctor in the restaurant who tried to revive her. He immediately called for an ambulance. It must have been quite a scene.” “That’s it?”My over-fertile imagination suddenly kicked in. Emily popped up in my thoughts, writhing on the floor of the Prague restaurant. I was surprised by my own behavior. I’d managed to keep a cool exterior while inside my stomach was in a knot.He nodded, and raised his eyebrows. “Something here doesn’t make sense,” I said aggressively, shaking my head to emphasize my skepticism. Volkov had made no mention of psychotropic drugs, I thought. “It just doesn’t sound right.”Volkov was momentarily distracted by the cigarette ash about to fall on his clothes. He tapped it into his cupped hand, then brushed it into a wastepaper basket. “It’s the truth,” he said and gave a toss of his head.“Shit,” I snapped. He seemed to be deliberating whether this rated a response. “Look, no need to get angry,” he said softly. “I’m just telling you what people said. I wouldn’t be even talking to you if Joseph hadn’t asked…” Angry didn’t even begin to cover the depth of my inner rage. What was the conceivable reason for the Ruskies to want to talk to Emily? All she had done was take one message to Professor Voronov, probably setting up a meeting for Holz, which they knew anyway from their mole. One fucking message. No matter how often I turned it in my mind, I came out at the same place. “Why would the KGB want to talk to someone like Emily?” I said.Volkov rose from his seat, sucking in his gut, and walked to the window. He was silent for a full minute, as if processing the meaning of my question. “Honestly, I don’t know,” he said turning his head around, an expression of extreme discontent on his face. “I could only speculate.”Sometimes silence is the most potent weapon in a reporter’s arsenal, so I just looked at him.“What do you call in English the most secret operations that the government would never admit to? Totally off the books? We used to call them Firebird files.” He made quotes with his fingers. “You must have seen Stravinsky’s ballet. Maya Plsetskaya as Zhar Ptitsa… was fabulous. You know, the fairy tale about the czar’s youngest son Ivan finding a kindly bird gifted with magical power… whose feathers shone like gold to illuminate the night like thousands of klieg lights.”I nodded. “Vaguely.” It was a part of my induction into international affairs to be silent about my mother’s Russian Jewish background. “Zhar Ptitsa doesn’t exist, Firebird files don’t exist. Right?” Volkov again pushing his lips out like a blowfish. “This must have been a Firebird matter.”This made me think of my strange parents. They never attended meetings with my teachers or read books to me or took me skating and stuff other parents did. But Dad taught me to play chess, which was a passion of his, and Mom enjoyed telling me fairy tales. Not those by the Grimm Brothers or H.C. Andersen, but reciting from memory old Russian tales full of oriental splendor and miraculous exploits. Of course I knew Zhar ptitza. The bird whose song could heal the sick and return vision to the blind. I remember Mom saying, zh, zh, zh? Say zhhh. I rarely responded to her Russian when I was growing up, and outside our home, I’d pretend to have nothing to do with the strange lady who spoke accented English and who—after a lifetime in America—wrote her sevens with lines drawn through them. I used to think when I was a teenager that she was somehow inadequate when compared to other ladies in the Chauteau Avenue neighborhood. Only later I realized my condescending attitude was wrong. She was actually quite smart. Her English was more than sufficient to navigate everyday life, even if sometimes difficult to understand. But at night, when she’d sit on my bed and embellish stories, her Russian was soft and soothing and her inflexion so suggestible as to quickly transport me to a faraway land of green valleys with trees whose fruit were precious jewels and pure gold. Surely it was because of her that I started writing stories. Because of her, I’ve always been suspicious of authorities; I still cringe when I recall how submissive—even obsequious—she’d become in front of uniformed officials. This I believe had something to do with calamities and humiliation experienced in her youth. Perhaps that’s why she was a very private person who knew how to leave many things unsaid. One great thing about America, she’d say, is that it’s up to you to decide how much of yourself you want to reveal. Well, she was like an iceberg—nine tenths of her below the waterline. “Still doesn’t make sense,” I said. I saw a shadow briefly pass over Volkov’s face. “Well, yes, I see,” he acknowledged.“Could we check the archives? There must be a paper trail!” His face said, that’s a stupid thought, petulant and impossible. “A Firebird operation means no paper trail. Perhaps a few cryptic references Kuzmich wrote down on the chairman’s schedule. Kuzmich was his right hand man.” He was silent for a while. “Mind you, we’re talking about the summer of 1991 when documents were shredded by the ton and the incinerators were going full blast round the clock.”That was the summer the old order unexpectedly collapsed. I tried to imagine Volkov and his panicked colleagues burning documents and bundling the most sensitive papers into bags to be moved out of sight by a secret underground rail link connecting the Lubyanka and the Kremlin. Outside the Lubyanka, a howling mob unsuccessfully trying to topple the massive statue of Iron Felix—Felix Dzerzhinski, the founder of the Soviet secret police—until a crane, under the glare of klieg lights, lifted a man up to attach a cable around Dzerzhinski’s neck and pull him down. I saw these things not from any vivid recollection but from a thought in my head, as real only as the lines in the newspapers. Perhaps, I wondered, my late father’s passionate anticommunism had transferred itself wholesale to the son? Volkov must have guessed my thoughts. He said, “How fast a life can get all twisted around.” Then added quickly, “By the way, I was at Yasenovo at that time.” The headquarters of the First Directorate in the southwest suburbs of Moscow. This seemed an important point for him—his way of saying that he had been involved in foreign espionage—not internal repression. The old wolf, as his name implied, knew the KGB was mainly hated for suppressing domestic dissidents, not for spying on foreign governments. I said, “I want to talk to someone who’s familiar with Emily’s case. That would mean a lot to me. I imagine there are still people like that around.”I supposed it was my bluntness, or the emotion with which I asked my question, that caught him off guard. A doubtful smile appeared on his lips. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that’ll be possible,” he said frowning.“Why?”The receptionist knocked on the door and opened it.He looked up in annoyance. “I said no calls.” “Sorry, this is urgent. Line two.” He turned around in his swivel chair and picked up the receiver. He assumed the calm demeanor of a Buddha. He listened carefully, said yes or no several times, and stared at the phone.I picked up my tea, finished it, took the opportunity to study him a little. With a hooked nose, a brow that expressed permanent impatience, deep-set dark eyes and thinning dark hair as a fringe to his naked scalp, he reminded me of the actor who plays Inspector Poirot in Agatha Christie’s BBC series.Volkov hung up and turned back to me, his eyes widening. “I wish I could be of more help,” he said, adding with an air of finality, “All that happened in another country and in another century.” No leads. Nothing. Another dead end.The trouble is, once you start assuming there was no point in doing what you’re doing, you’re tempted to bring it to an end. I took a gulp, literally and metaphorically, and thought about making one final stab at it.“It all happened right here in Moscow,” I said, shaking my head dejectedly. “Only eleven years ago. Don’t tell me there’s no one around who might know things.”He studied me for a moment before answering. “All the people in the know are gone,” he mused with an air of furtive sorrow for the past. The chairman died from cancer of the liver; one top aide died in a Black Sea sailing accident; Churkin’s gone “soft in the head;” two others died of old age; finally Kuzmich had a fatal heart attack while vacationing in Greece.I realized immediately that something possibly important had happened, that buried within his lengthy explanation was the first nugget of information I was looking for: Churkin. I filed away the name. Maybe I’d finally hit pay dirt, I thought. But what exactly did gone soft in the head mean? Senility? Alzheimer’s? Parkinson’s? “You mean to tell me only five or six people knew about this case?” My mind flipped through other possible questions.“Yes,” he said with a knowing air. “In Firebird operations, even cipher clerks were cut out. Take your Aldrich Ames; his case officer communicated directly with the chairman. No intermediaries of any kind. Or take another famous compatriot of yours, Robert Hanssen. Even the chairman himself didn’t know his identity! Nobody here did, yet he was one of the best ever.” I said, “Okay, I understand that: these are traitors who spied for you. They held high government positions. But how the hell could my wife figure in a Firebird operation?”He casually flicked his hand. Who knows? “An interesting question,” he said.“Don’t you know. I mean, you yourself must have been involved in such operations?”He was silent. Then he nodded—yes.“In each and every case, I presume, there was a reason,” I said. “So there must have been a reason in this case, too.” “I think so,” he said. “Why would the KGB worry about Emily at a time of great upheavals,” I went on. “She was a music teacher and housewife, for crying out loud.” My mind flashed to the time when Emily was the second cello for the Fairfax Symphony, immediately followed by the guilty notion that I had robbed her of a musical career.He took his time before answering. He started out the window into the distance, and then lit another cigarette. “Honestly, I don’t know.”“You got a theory?”For the first time since we started talking, he gave a shout of laughter. “There are lots of people who could spin theories, who claim to know. All former colonels! Believe them all, and you must wonder if the Service had any lower ranks. To have a theory you need a few facts…” He looked puzzled, and I believed him. The interview had reached a dead end. I could tell he hadn’t warmed to me, but that didn’t dampen my good mood: I had a lead. I got up. “I hope I haven’t taken too much of your time.”“Everything’s normal,” he said. He came around his desk and looked at me, nodding. “A word before you go, my friend,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders to walk me out. “We have a saying—the nail that sticks out gets hammered,” he said and craned his head forward, an anticipatory look on his face. “My advice to you is: don’t rock the boat.”It took me a couple of seconds to do a mental translation, but I could not decide whether this was a veiled threat.23Later that day, I received a message from Tony Scarna, the former press attaché and my occasional tennis partner. After leaving the Foreign Service, Scarna had joined a K Street lobbying firm which, according to a recent Drudge Report story, had been approached by the Kremlin to help refurbish Russia’s image. But the reason for coming to Moscow was the annual Russia Fund board meeting. Also coming were former ambassador Morgan and a few other embassy colleagues. I was invited to meet them at dinner Thursday night. At the Noah’s Ark. There were two other messages: from Jennifer and Kevin Page. I first read Kevin’s. He approved my request for a week’s extension and inquired about my progress. This brought me back to earth. I immediately replied. “Onworking, but need more time to nail it down”—onworking being a contraction that meant being terribly busy with researching, reporting, and related matters. How long could I pretend to be looking for the professor? Not too long in this age of cell phones and instant messaging. Why not pretend this was still the old communist Moscow in which I’d sometimes felt as isolated as one must feel on the dark side of the moon? This means avoid direct phone contact with the head office, I said to myself. On the phone, Page could take a spontaneous decision that could not be ignored; electronic messages get mislaid all the time. Jennifer’s message was in the form of an inquiry—was I okay and so on—but its tone sounded disapproving, as though I had been wasting my time on some frivolous business. My silence, it seemed, was treated as a capital offense. I knew that I could recoup by promptly confessing my guilt and offering abject apologies. But the truth was that, at that moment, I simply didn’t care. For the first time since arriving in Moscow, I was starting to feel positive about my mission. So I sent a brief, friendly reply, telling Jennifer that she should not expect any messages from me for a while.When I saw Amanda in the evening, she said: “You look like the cat that got the cream.” She was frightfully perceptive, I thought. I told her that finally I probably had a real lead. She asked a few questions, then she flipped her hair from her eyes with a practiced toss of her head and gestured seductively at the bedroom.When I awoke, it was dark and I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was. Then I heard her breathing and it all came back to me. For the first time, I remembered, yes for the first time, I had a name of someone who seemed to be the exact type of person I was looking for. I was no longer like a boat without oar and rudder. I knew who to look for. Now I was in full journalism mode. It kicked in whenever I was working on a story I deeply cared about: a single-minded need to get information, to find out. Almost nothing else mattered. Food. Comfort. Nothing. 24Igor kept glancing up into the rearview mirror. “You just say yes and no in the right places. Otherwise keep quiet and smile.”“Right,” I said. I was wearing a T-shirt so faded its legend was completely undecipherable and frayed short pants I had bought long ago at Wal-Mart in Fair Lakes.It was Joseph who had obtained through his connections two bits of information about Churkin. One was that he spent most of his time playing chess or building telescopes from scratch and grinding the lenses himself. The other was that Churkin was recuperating at the Burning Bush sanatorium. It was a secret police rest home, Joseph said, “something between an old people’s home and a funny farm.”Joseph had been reluctant at first “Okay, I’ll help you on this,” he finally said.The plan of action was simple. Igor and I were going to visit the wife of a former KGB electronics wizard named Arkady who had installed surveillance cameras and infrared detectors around Joseph’s property. She was at the Burning Bush in the early stages of dementia. Arkady, who regularly swept Joseph’s house and office for bugs, had mentioned that last couple of times he had gone to see his wife she had failed to recognize him. “Her name is Larissa Vadimovna,” Igor said, looking up again into the rearview mirror. “She’s my aunt.” He was leaning forward over the wheel to rub clear a spot on the windshield. “Got that? We’re bringing her favorite cookies and chocolates.”“Yes.” I nodded.Once we got off the beltway, the traffic immediately thinned out. At first we passed gated dacha communities and new shops and restaurants. After about fifteen minutes we were in the country of back gardens full of weeds and grimy lean-to greenhouses where the telephone and power lines hung like wash lines between shaky poles. We passed a couple of biblical-looking villages with television aerials as the only symbols of the twenty-first century. “Fuck,” Igor barked, looking up at his mirror. “We’re being tailed! Fuck! Fuck.”I turned around. The only other vehicle on a two-way tarmacadam road was a yellow SUV. It was a long way behind them.“I first saw them way back,“ Igor said. “Cops?”Igor said, “I don’t think so.”A finger-shaped sign was nearly obscured by a heavy bank of scarlet honeysuckle. It read: Burning Bush 4 km. Igor slowed down and turned left onto a narrow rutted road. I looked back and saw the yellow SUV, fitted with two aerials, continue down the tar= macadam road and disappear behind the brow of a hill.“There he goes,” Igor said. He went quiet for a while. “Now,” Igor resumed, “remember: You say yes and no in the right places.” “But what if she has a lucid moment and says, ‘Hey, who are you? I’ve never seen you before.’” I had considered not coming along on this trip, but Igor had insisted that we’d have no problems.“Don’t contradict her! Just say she’s right. Remember, she didn’t recognize her own husband the other day.”Burning Bush was set in a bucolic landscape about twenty miles outside Moscow’s outer ring road. The estate was surrounded by the lush tangle of old forest made nearly impenetrable by ubiquitous ferns, ivy, and the boughs of secondary growth.The once imposing main building had a hint of Versailles about it, offering a distinct architectural nod toward a French chateau. It had obviously belonged to a Czarist mandarin. Two mutilated marble lions on pedestals flanked the high iron gate. We were waved in by a guard, a short, bald man with thick jowls and red patches on the cheeks. His expression suggested he was bored to death by his job. Next to the main building, there was a rectilinear modern structure evidently built after the revolution, when the estate had been taken over by the secret police. It looked fragile, threatened by an enormous poplar that had been allowed to grow to an obscene height. Hurricane weather, I thought, could halve it like cheese wire. This was where the secret police looked after their own. Still.The compound had a ten-foot-high chain link fence, which was mostly hidden behind mature evergreen trees and bushes on both sides. A group of men stood in a semi-circle in the deep green shade of an old chestnut tree.“Chess,” Igor said. Igor parked near the base of a wide stone porch. A babushka in a colorless cotton smock stood near the entrance staring at me. She made me feel uncomfortable. I heard the cello drone of insects.We walked around the building and climbed six steps to a stone terrace. A pair of French doors gave onto the terrace and we were met by a nurse in white, her ginger-colored hair teased and baked into a stiff beehive. She had chalky skin and appeared so morose that I could imagine real bees buzzing around her head. “We’re looking for Larissa Vadimovna,” Igor said to her. “Not possible today,” the nurse frowned. She had a manner of speaking that made questions seem not only unnecessary but also rude.Igor took her aside. “We came all this way, dearest,” He said ingratiatingly, attempting leverage to guilt her into being more cooperative.“No, not possible. She’s having a bad day.””We’ll wait. Maybe she’ll get better.”“Not possible,” the nurse said sharply. “You’re disturbing the patients.”They were now glaring at each other. How Igor planned to get to Churkin was a mystery, but I understood intuitively that we mustn’t cave in. Then I saw Igor fish out what looked like a thousand ruble note from his pocket, fold it into a white kerchief and with lightening speed, slip the kerchief into the breast pocket of the nurse’s white coat and then slowly adjust it as if to achieve a proper esthetic effect. It was a move so brazen and so unexpected that I thought the nurse would scream for help. I was gooseflesh, head to toe. The nurse had started making a baleful gesture with her finger—that’s it, I thought—but then she quickly glanced to the left and to the right, shook her head and cracked one of those smiles Russian country women crack when pretending that someone has made an improper sexual advance. “Let me see what I can do,” she said, her face seemed to soften. “Come this way.”We followed her through poorly-lit, endless corridors of gray walls and brown doors to the apple green common room. A dozen women sat in wooden chairs around an elongated table covered with a plastic tablecloth, talking, laughing, or dragging deeply on cigarettes. When we entered, everybody went quiet. “You sit down, boys,” the nurse said to us. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Everybody stared at us. Igor stared back. I averted my gaze. Did not want to be reminded; I’d reached uncomfortable territory. Six years earlier, I had left my mother in a nursing home. Well, I had to. Last time I visited her, she was only a shell of who she used to be; the doctor said she was acting more confused every day. She’d forgotten who she was and she no longer recognized her things or knew she had them. Occasionally, her stunted youth would reassert itself like when she insisted she was in a Nazi Strafkamp and spoke German to the nurses. At the end of my visit, I felt so shitty because I was abandoning her. It cut me to the bone, that memory.“God, it’s depressing,” I said.He nodded and shrugged. “Keep quiet,” he said.The nurse reappeared. She was accompanied by a tall, bald, and slightly bowlegged man in a white short-sleeved shirt. There was a red cigarette pack peeking out of his breast pocket behind a plastic protector and a row of pens. “Our administrator, Gennady Ivanovich,” she introduced him. “These comrades want to wait to see if Larissa Vadimovna comes down for dinner. Is that okay?”“Is she sleeping now?” the administrator asked. The nurse nodded—yes. “They can wait a bit, Zina,” the administrator said. “I’ve got to run.”The nurse said, “I’ll take them to the library. They can wait there.”Now that Igor found out her name, he promptly began calling her ingratiatingly by an endearing diminutive: Zinochka—little Zina. We were halfway down the hall when Igor said, casually, “How’s my friend Vassily Petrovich? Is he still grinding lenses for his telescopes or is he playing chess?”“Churkin?” The nurse gave Igor a strange look, as if searching for a sign of some irregularity. But then she chuckled. “It’s chess under that old chestnut tree— all the time.” She opened the door to the library and showed them in with a wave of the hand.“He’s a chess fanatic,” Igor said.“He’s back home now,” she said. “Left two weeks ago.”“Oh?” Igor said. “Back at Sadovaya-Samotochnaya?” “He’s on Zubovskaya,” the nurse said.“That’s right,” Igor responded quickly. “I always get those two mixed up.” I felt as though I had witnessed what amounted to a coded exchange. “What was that all about,” I asked after Zinochka left us alone.“We know now where he lives,” Igor said, smiling broadly. There were several relatively new apartment buildings for senior KGB and military, Igor explained. He chose the two in central Moscow. “A shot in the dark. Like Ostap Bender, eh? Not bad, eh?” He winked and uttered a deep guttural laugh referring to the most famous con man in modern Russian literature. “Now we’ve got to get out of here.”The nurse appeared after a while with two cups of sweet tea. “Come to think of it,” Igor suddenly said, “we really should come back here another time. You’re such a sweetheart, Zinochka. Really appreciate your help. We’ll phone in advance before we come out next time.” He handed her a plastic bag. “Here’s a little something for Auntie Lara. She loves chocolates.”The nurse grabbed it and began to rummage through gift-wrapped boxes. “We have to check all gifts,” she said apologetically. “Regulations, you know.”“Absolutely,” said Igor. “By the way, the big Toblerone is for you.”25As soon as we were back in the car, Igor smiled. “I’ll drive by Churkin’s building on the way back so you can take a good look.” He slowed down before turning on to the macadam road. ”Now watch out for the yellow SUV. It’s a Mitsubishi,” he said and glanced at the rearview mirror.There were no cars on the road. Igor stepped on the accelerator.“No tail,” I said, searching the horizon. “Too early to tell. Let’s see.” We took a circuitous back road. The sun was about to slip below the western treetops. We were sixteen kilometers from Moscow, the first sign said. As we came closer to the highway, the scenery began to change. Gas stations and auto repair shops appeared, then car dealerships and diners and nascent suburbs of fancy homes with decks and colorful awnings.Igor turned onto an access lane, which led onto the inner loop of the Ring. The double highway had a middle strip of grass the width of a basketball court. We headed west for about ten minutes, Igor checking his mirror occasionally. Jaguars, Toyotas, Volvos and BMWs tore up past us, going one hundred or more. The miles passed with nothing but the whine of tires and the whoosh of cars and my mind drifted into memories that had been stirred by the sight of dementia patients.Suddenly, Igor said, “Fuck!” He kept glancing at his side view mirror. “Fuck. Those guys are professionals.” I turned around. The yellow Mitsubishi SUV was some distance behind us, in the slow lane.“You sure they aren’t cops,” I said.“Fuck no,” Igor said, and continued cursing. “I assume…” I began.Igor interrupted, “Let’s not assume anything for the moment. We’d better let this play itself out. I want to know why they are following me.” Indeed why! I hadn’t asked because a part of me preferred the illusion that Joseph’s banking business was an above-board enterprise, perhaps slightly crooked but not criminal, and certainly nothing to do with the gang warfare I’d read about. But why all the bodyguards? And guns? Until a few weeks ago, I’d never had any contact with people from the underworld.He suddenly turned off the highway at the exit leading to a place called Terehovo. “We’ll find out who these assholes are,” he barked, steaming like a locomotive. “An old buddy of mine runs a little beer joint out here.” It was darkening outside. I could see a few lights on in a square two-story building. A neon sign in Latin reading Starlite Bar was suspended next to a Cyrillic one. Four cars were parked outside. I could hear the clatter of plates and pots.“Here we are,” Igor said. He rummaged in the trunk, pulled out a pistol, and stuck it in his waistband.“You need that?” I asked.“Probably not, but just in case,” Igor said with a thin smile. The downstairs was paneled in dark brown wood. Small booths with red vinyl seat covering along one wall, a thirty-foot zinc counter complete with chromium footrest and lit by a blue neon strip along the other. Behind the bar was a thirty foot long mirror from which protruded glass shelves supporting every imaginable brand of vodka, whiskey, gin, whatnot. The whole establishment, I thought, was wrapped up in something like Americana diner decor.The place was nearly empty. A giggling young couple was kissing and embracing in a booth. A pudgy middle-aged man, sitting on the last of the high chromium-legged stools, was watching a soccer match on TV. “Look who’s here,” a woman from behind the counter cried. Her eyes were rimmed with gothic mascara, her flaming red hair was twisted into a tight chignon, and she held a cigarette in a holder.“Well, well, well, how’s our sleeping beauty,” Igor said, grinning. “As I told you, whenever you get tired of him, you know where to come…”She responded with infectious laughter. ”You lecherous bastard,” she said. “Slava’s back in the office.”We took seats at the bar and ordered beer.“Slava’s my old army buddy.” Igor explained, looking at the mirror. “Nice place, eh? Downstairs he’s got a sausage menu, upstairs is fancy. White table cloths, wine lists, a classical guitarist.” Igor got up, signaling he was going to the toilet.I looked at the mirror and saw the yellow Mitsubishi pull up some distance from the Mercedes SUV. Igor returned as two men pushed open the heavy wooden door and headed for the bar. One was a tall gaunt man—over six foot, with a heavy five o’clock shadow and a meaty upper lip. His skin was pitted and flecked with red.The other was a bull, looking like a professional wrestler with a flattened nose and lots of blond hair down his shoulder blades; his neck was wider than his face and rose out of a blue shirt, wide open at the throat. The tall one coughed loudly, took a bar stool, and ordered a lager. The other asked for double vodka and glanced curiously at me.“To your health, buddy,” said the wrestler, giving me a goofy grin.I nodded. These are not cops, I thought.“Tourists?” he asked after downing his vodka. Somewhere underneath the folds of flesh, an Adam’s apple moved.“Sort of,” I said nonchalantly, as if I were talking to no one in particular. But the moment I said it, I realized I should not be talking to these ruffians at all.“What does it mean sort of,” said the gaunt fellow in a rude, grating voice. His eyes were deep-set and shifty. “Foreigners,” the wrestler butted in.“You should know,” Igor said, still looking at their reflections in the mirror.“Huh?” said the wrestler. He turned to his friend. “This clown here’s trying to pick a quarrel.”“You’ve been tailing me since Kievskoe Shosse,” Igor said calmly, still not turning around. “I’d like to know why.”The gaunt brute said, “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” The two men quickly exchanged looks, which I thought were openly spelling trouble. In all the years I had worked as a reporter, I’d never been physically attacked. I don’t count stray shrapnel that grazed me in Cyprus. I had been in the midst of wars, invasions, political shenanigans, crooked elections, strikes, earthquakes, and other conflicts. Observing catastrophe from a safe distance. Always an observer, never a participant. Now I recoiled at the prospect of being pummeled unconscious by a couple of ruffians. For a split second, I was back on Russell Avenue outside McKinley High being beaten unconscious by the class thug named Rex. He had thrown me to the ground and demanded a nifty miniature camera I got for my eleventh birthday. “Listen—” I tried to conciliate, my heart pounding.“Shut the fuck up, asshole!” the wrestler exclaimed. “That’s unnecessary,” I said. In that moment, I knew what was about to happen.“I said shut up.” The wrestler struck me on the mouth with his left hand before swinging his right fist directly into my chest. I took a step back, but then my body buckled and collapsed. I tried to heave myself upward, but a shuddering blow to the back of my neck pushed me down. I knew that I was out for the count before I hit the floor.When I came to, I felt my mouth full of blood. I saw the wrestler lying unconscious on the floor next to me and Igor sitting on top of the surly tall man and holding a broken glass bottle to his face.I heard Slava’s voice, “Let’s clean up the mess.”“I’m going to give you one more chance,” Igor said to the tall man. “Who sent you and why? Tell me. Or you’ll need plastic surgery.”The man blinked then shook his head. “MSK,” he mouthed. “Speak up,” Igor commanded. “MSK what?”“Moscow Security Consultants.”“So MSK sent you to spy on us,” Igor said. “And why?”“We’re subcontractors,” the man moaned.“Who’s the client?”“An American security firm subcontracted a London firm which hired MSK.”“What’s the name of the American firm?”“Don’t know.” The man squirmed.“Who did you report to?” “We gave our reports to a secretary and she would email them.”“Email them to whom? What’s the email address?”It’s Jim@yellowflower2.co.uk. We actually never send messages. We only write drafts. That’s all.”“You don’t send your e-mails! Never?” I said. “Do you CC your boss?”“No. Our instructions are very specific. Write a draft, then press SAVE.”“You don’t press SEND?”“No.” Igor pondered the matter. “It must be your boss who sends them, I guess.”“Probably.”Igor said, “And what does Jim want to know about us?”“He’s interested in your American friend.”“No shit,” said Igor sounding surprised.“Me?” I wiped blood off my face and T-shirt. Who in America would go to the trouble of hiring a couple of goons to follow me around Moscow? Why? My mind flashed to the Russian woman with a seductive voice who had called Barbara to inquire whether I had arrived in Moscow.Igor said, “And what are Jim’s instructions?”“Try to scare him off.” His voice faltered and his face twisted with anguish.“Scare him off what?”“Whatever he’s doing… don’t matter… Make him go home.”“And if he doesn’t?”“Don’t know. Sanctions could get more serious. That’s not up to me.”Igor got up and threw the broken bottle away. Straightening his shoulders, he wagged his finger. “Now I suggest you don’t come anywhere near this man if you value your life.” The surly man grunted. He turned to his side and lifted himself up slowly. “Is he all right?” Slava asked, gesturing toward the wrestler who was now moaning softly. Igor’s pistol was on the bar next to him. “Should I call a doctor?”“He’s fine,” said the surly man. “No doctor, no police.”26“Who in America wants to throw a scare into you?” Igor said as we climbed back into the car. “Why?”I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I felt mystified and slightly uncomfortable. What did that thug mean by saying that sanctions could get more serious?“You’re okay now?”“I’m fine.” I had washed myself in the upstairs bathroom, which had soap and towels. Slava had also given me a shot of pertsovka for the road and I could feel my movements powered with a new sense of purpose. Meeting Churkin. “Thank God for spetsnaz training,” I added. “You beat the shit out of those two.”“It’s not good.” Igor shook his head. “Those two thugs don’t come cheap.” He kept tapping the steering wheel with his left hand. “What have you written recently? You know, some journalists here have disappeared suddenly, just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “They beheaded a reporter down in Kiev last year. Newspapering is a dangerous business!”“I write about chess, Igor. Haven’t done it for six years.”“Then it doesn’t make sense.”“No, it doesn’t.”Igor went quiet. “Well, we’ve got the e-mail address. At least something,” he said after a while.I said. “I have a friend in Washington who should be able to get someone to run a trade.” I had Alex’s friend Bob Pittman in mind.“I know a few hackers here. One owes me a favor.”I found myself wondering, as we talked, who could be behind those thugs. But my imagination failed me. Nobody knew my plans—with the exception of Holz and Alex. Obviously, it couldn’t be either of them.After we left the Outer Ring, we headed north on a wide road cutting through urban blight of shattered warehouses, rundown workshops, aimless packs of dogs in empty lots strewn with garbage and discarded barrels, and worn dwellings with peeling plaster. I could see the streetlamps stretching away in parallel lines like tiny candles in the gloom.At a traffic light, Igor said, “I don’t think you’ve seen the last of those punks.” He gazed shrewdly at me. 27I parked the car outside a group of shops with colored canopies in a side street about a block away from Churkin’s high-rise. I had put on a long-sleeved shirt to cover a bruise, the color of an eggplant, on my upper arm. For the first time since arriving in Moscow, I could feel my physical movements were powered by a sense of purpose. This was the interview for which I’d been preparing myself these past few weeks. It was a warm August morning. I sat down on a wooden bench in the shadow of a tall building, rehearsing my pitch like a nervous best man at a wedding.I’m researching a book about the last days of the Soviet union, I planned to tell Churkin. I needed to consult him. ”Tell him Volkov gave you his name—which is true,” Igor had said. “What the fuck! And make sure you bring up the matter of compensation.”This sounded plausible; a strong dramatic narrative requires a colorful account of the coup against Gorbachev. A man like Churkin should understand that. “I’m not good at bribing people,” I had said. “The worst that can happen is that he shows you the door. I think you must act quickly.” “Want to come along?” “You know Russians don’t talk in front of witnesses.”I knew that was true. I could think of a few occasions when I’d had to twist myself in knots to elicit even the most mundane information. One time I had practically witnessed a near plane disaster at Vnukovo Airport. An Ilyushin’s landing gear had jammed, and the pilot had just completed an emergency landing. A thick layer of white foam-like stuff covered the runway. The plane rested askew, surrounded by firefighters and ambulances and police cars flashing their lights. “Anyone saw the accident,” I had asked. “What accident?” people responded glumly. “There’s been no accident.”It was almost eleven o’clock in the morning, and Ring traffic was heavy in both directions. I crossed the vast boulevard, sprinting across twelve lanes and maneuvering between crawling cars, rusted wounded hulks, and trucks loaded with huge tree trunks or long iron bars. As far as I could tell, I was not being followed. Churkin lived in a tall block of apartments considered luxurious during Soviet times. I hovered for a few minutes outside the lobby entrance. When the doorman, a squat and rumpled middle-aged man, left his post behind a wooden lectern, I leisurely walked in, slowly walked past a row of metal mailboxes until I saw the name Churkin, 7C, then took the cement steps rather than the elevator. All my little subterfuges probably were completely unnecessary, I thought. The stairwell was dark. I felt uneasy groping my way up, and slightly fearful. As if I was doing something illegal. I remember the incredible tension I had felt ages ago, when I had found myself in a similar dark stairwell with a classified document I had collected from a would-be political dissident. It was hardly deserving of top-secret classification, yet I could have well ended up in jail if police had found it in my possession. I remember thinking: What if the source was an agent provocateur? All my senses, everything in my body, was concentrated on reaching the safety of my car as fast as possible. But once I turned on the ignition, I realized I was scared out of my wits; a steel band seemed to tighten around my chest and I found it impossible to hold down the clutch so I could shift into a gear. Now, I wasn’t doing anything even remotely illegal. So what it is about Russia that makes one feel guilty when doing the most mundane things?My breathing became labored when I reached the seventh floor and stepped into a soulless long corridor. Identical flush doors were differentiated only by their numbers. It was empty and semi-dark. Most of the lights were burned out. The tangy odor of a potent cleanser hung in the air. I could hear the rattle of the elevator doors. I knocked lightly on Churkin’s door, at first almost wishing not to be heard, then harder. A little girl with blond pigtails and rosy cheeks opened the door. She looked at me suspiciously, but did not retreat. She was about ten.I gave her a friendly wave of hand.“Who is it, Rita?” a man’s voice called.“A man,” she said quietly.“Let him in, dear girl,” the voice said.I hesitated, feeling every bit an unwelcome intruder. An old man with a sallow malarial complexion sat hunched over an ebony-and-maple chessboard. He was wearing a green robe, frayed around the collar, and brown slippers. Tufts of gray chest hair peeked out. He stared at me for a few moments; I had a feeling I was being judged and the judgment was not favorable.“Excuse me just for a moment,” he said, holding the White king in a trembling hand and never averting his eyes from the board. He finally put down the king to protect a pawn and thereby keep lines of attack for Black’s rook closed.I said, “No, not there.” The old man looked up. “You got a better idea?”I recalled one of my columns: the queens had been exchanged and the endgame had reached the phase where the king was no longer a liability (to be guarded) but had become a fighting unit (supporting the advancing pawns). With the rook blocked, Black’s position seemed hopeless. The situation called for a textbook sacrifice—the rook for a pawn. Still standing, I bent toward the board and picked off the Black pawn with a White rook.“Hmm,” the old man muttered. He had a long bony jaw, sunken cheeks, and his teeth were dark and discolored. His bald head was liver-spotted. I remembered Volkov saying that Churkin used to wear a toupee and tried to imagine what he looked like with it. “I’ll take the Black rook with my king,” he said, puffing on his cigarette. He flicked a questioning glance at me.”Then you’re finished,” I said softly. Still standing, I pointed at lines of attack that the sacrifice had opened for Black’s pawns. “In three moves.”“Hmmm.” The old man looked at me quizzically, shook his head, and then stared at the board for a long time. “Not bad, not bad at all,” he said while his hand signaled for me to sit down.Pulling up a green vinyl chair, I introduced myself. I spoke rapidly, repeating the points I’d rehearsed on the way over. My words formed themselves into a convincing order, and I felt a small surge of self-confidence. Churkin looked me over carefully. “You are American, I take it. Who sent you here?”“An old friend of yours. Colonel Volkov.” “I’ll be damned.” Churkin went silent. “I know, we are friends now, I mean we’re no longer enemies, but….” His face was now expressionless, immobile. Talk about the consultancy fee, a voice in the back of my mind said. Do it right away, Igor had said.Churkin tensed up at the mention of a consultancy fee. There was the briefest pause. “Go to the kitchen, dear girl,” the old man said with a curious flatness in his voice. She spun and left us alone. He opened a silver cigarette box. I declined the offer of a cigarette, and he lit one, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs.“Ahh, yes… I do consulting… from time to time.” He leaned back in his chair and exhaled. I thought he had something cruel in his face and a brow that conveyed permanent impatience.I handed him an envelope with ten Benjamins. He opened it gingerly, felt the notes with his fingertips, then slid it in the pocket of his robe. His hands trembled and I wondered if this was Parkinson’s or merely old age. “Everything’s off the record,” Churkin insisted.“Your name will not be mentioned at all,” I assured him. “I’m looking for a dramatic story. Interesting detail and stuff.”The room was slightly shabby and crowded, like a jungle, full of telescopes of various sizes along walls covered with flowery, faded wallpaper. A sagging pullout sofa was covered with a colorful blanket. A glass-fronted bookcase was shoved into a corner. It was crammed with unpolished trophies from his past: a silver star on a wooden shield, several bronze medals, two glass squirrels, a crystal bear and a whole slew of phials and jars.As he started his longwinded tale, I took out my notebook. He stopped immediately, looking at me as if I had just pulled out a gun. “No notes,” he said and gave me an unfriendly smile. “Okay.” Just let the old man talk, I said to myself. Churkin narrated the chain of events that began with the committee, as he referred to the KGB, originally helping Gorbachev’s rise to power. “At first we supported perestroika and glasnost. We trusted him, even after he got started with his wrecking ball. There was so much rot around. As you know, he was a protégé of our much beloved chairman, Andropov. But after a while, our top people became convinced that we were witnessing a catastrophic mistake unfolding. We were heading straight for an abyss.” He paused briefly, lit another cigarette, and waved the match out. “We’ll have a shot of lemon vodka,” Churkin said. He called Rita— “my granddaughter’s taking care of me”—and issued instructions. “The bottle is in the freezer.”Rita disappeared into the kitchen.“Dear girl,” Churkin said. “She comes every morning to check up on me. She blames me for forgetting things, says one day I might forget to go on living. And say people don’t die from forgetting.”We were silent when Rita returned with the bottle and two glasses. “You were talking about the spring of 1991,” I said, picking up the thread of the narrative.“No, no. 1990,” Churkin said. “By then Gorbachev himself was our biggest problem. We feared he’d bring everything crashing down. Truth be said, many of us felt he was hell-bent on making sure we’d all end up in hell. I heard the chairman complain. ‘You can’t turn Russians into Germans,’ the chairman had said. Certainly not overnight. Not in a generation. Gorbachev no longer knew where he was going. The Americans played on his vanity and he’d gotten to believe his own publicity. Fuck your mother! He thought he could walk on water, if you know what I mean. They sang his praises—Gorby, Gorby—but played him for a sucker. They’d not lift a finger for him, let alone lift the economic blockade on Russia. Don’t forget, the blockade was imposed way back in 1917. Gorbachev had to pretend he was making headway, but after his trip to Washington in the spring of 1990, my chairman was alarmed. The crisis deepened; nationalist revolts erupted everywhere. “We in the committee were still sort of functioning—even though there were serious divisions in the ranks. In late winter, my immediate boss, Kuzmich, asked me to his dacha near Barvikha. Kuzmich had been working for the chairman for more than twenty years, first as chief of staff at Yasenovo, and then at the Lubyanka. I’d been Kuzmich’s personal assistant for sixteen years, you know, and yet he tested my views in a very roundabout way before taking me into his confidence. He had to do it, I guess, either that or move me to another job. After dinner we went for a walk in the woods. A small group of comrades, including the chairman and the marshals, Kuzmich said, were thinking about removing Gorbachev. We had to discredit him first, accuse him of high crimes, quickly arrest him and announce the new government. ‘You know what that means,’ he said.“This was to be a Firebird operation, of course. Very tricky, because the level of mistrust was so high that a mere whiff of something out of the ordinary could alert Gorbachev loyalists among us. Fuck your mother, there were still people around who were loyal to him. Sp the chairman kept his cards close to the vest as he laid a couple of snares.”“Is that what the Voronov business was all about?”“Yes. It was one of the snares. The great man had a fancy new idea—something to do with nuclear waste disposal. Fuck nuclear waste, we said. Who cares about nuclear waste at a time like this?”“It is a major issue, though,” I said. “Even today.”“Shit. Russia was broke. Descending into chaos. And here was Voronov asking Gorbachev to divert funds for a fancy new scheme. Fuck your mother!” He paused and lit another cigarette. “To his credit, Gorbachev turned him down. But he suggested Voronov discreetly approach American scientists and propose a joint project. ‘Nuclear waste disposal is a big issue in America,’ Gorbachev said. ‘The Americans don’t want radioactive debris in their backyards.’ He was very imaginative, Gorbachev was. You have to hand it to him. He wanted to open a back channel to Washington and he hoped the Americans might take the bait.”I said, “How did you know all this?” “Oh, the committee knew a lot, you know.” “You telling me the KGB monitors the president’s conversations?”Churkin sighed. “Phoooh. The equipment was there for the president’s protection.” His face assumed a passive grimace, the pocker-faced mask of a man from a world where deals were made on secure phones, in conversations that never took place, in places that didn’t exist. After a pause he added, “You have no idea how often he used it against his opponent.”I said, “Why Voronov? ““He was an ideal man. Like a hero from a folk tale. Fellows like Voronov are usually capricious, arrogant, and have egos like Bolshoi coloratura sopranos. Voronov was a modest and humble man, a sort of Holy Fool. He had stopped working on weapons projects sometime in the late fifties. But everybody assumed he was still doing weapons research because his lab was in Semipalatinsk. And that’s why Kuzmich figured he was irresistible bait! We counted on the Americans to take the bait… end up like hooked fish… get them the moment they tried to snatch Voronov. We also had—I can now tell, I guess—good information from inside the American embassy.”“Someone inside the embassy!?” I pretended surprise.“Well, yes, we’d penetrated the embassy.” “Whoa,” I said, sighing dramatically.Churkin chuckled. “The plan was to use glasnost to our advantage! Put the professor on national television and have him tell the people that the president himself had urged him to establish a secret contact with the CIA, etcetera, etcetera. You see, Voronov would in effect accuse the president of treason.”“What makes you think Voronov would do that?”“His psychological profile: he wouldn’t lie.”I said, “Gorbachev could easily explain that, couldn’t he?”“Huh.” Churkin waved his hand contemptuously. “When one is accused of treason, nothing sounds as feeble as the truth. Hell, we grab Voronov just as he’s about to leave the country with his CIA handlers. Put them on national television… ”“That wouldn’t have worked,” I injected. “It always works.” Churkin’s voice drifted off and a small smile came to his face. “In Russia, my friend, accusations are convictions in the public mind: you’re guilty until proven innocent. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.”Did I imagine it, or did tiny muscles around those thin bloodless lips give his face a contemptuous twitch. Stay cool, I checked myself. I didn’t travel all this way to argue with Churkin. “And then what happened,” I said wanting to steer him back to the relevant topic. “Well,” Churkin resumed, “everything was prepared. We were poised to dump Gorbachev. The Defense Minister was ready to order the troops onto the street of Moscow. The commander of the presidential bodyguards had selected a group of reliable KGB officers to arrest him. The Alfa unit was deployed, these are specially trained KGB troops.”He smiled without a trace of joy. Then his hands found the glass, brought it up to his lips, and he took a quick gulp and groaned. “But as they say—you fish for tuna and come up with a shark. We didn’t count on our counter-intelligence boys. Not the brightest bunch. God only knows how they stumbled on a rumor that the CIA planned to kidnap a senior nuclear scientist. They sounded the alarm.“Suddenly, all the old bets were off. All intelligence outfits, including the military counter-intelligence, got in on the act. The chairman’s hands were tied. Everything was put on hold. The Second Directorate took over.” “What about arrests,” I pointed out cautiously.“Strictly counter-intelligence stuff. We did only one thing, a minor diversion, which nearly turned into a disaster. We were trying to divert attention away from our agent in the embassy, you know, creating a paper trail to show the information came from somewhere else. Not our agent. The thing is, our boys gossip in the canteen, you know brag over lunch, and the word gets out, accidentally…” Churkin stopped himself. “I see.”“Pure theater, you know. The boys who handled the case were completely out of the loop. They slipped a special herbal mix in her drink, but never had a chance to interview the American woman. She had a heart attack. Fuck your mother! In a restaurant! In the middle of Moscow!”Stifling anger, I said, “A truth drug, I presume. Was that necessary?” “It had to look real.”“To protect your agent inside the US Embassy.”“Yes.”“I don’t quite get it.” I later marveled at my composure and the ability to control surges of anguish and nausea.“Okay. In a case like this, only a handful of people had access to the agent’s file. Let’s call him Mr. X. I—” Churkin pointed his both hands at his chest “—I saw everything—his dossier, his reports, the assembled artifacts we kept in the archives. But I never learned his real name. That’s the nature of our business. I read about Aldrich Ames in the newspapers recently and I realized he was the agent I knew as KARAT. Or take Robert Hanssen’s arrest last year. Brilliant agent! He’d given us the best stuff ever but even the chairman didn’t know his real identity.”I said, “Maybe one day we’ll read about the arrest of Mr. X?”The old man’s faced twisted into a grimace and he shook his head. “Something tells me he’d checked out for good. Saw the chaos… the collapse… If I were Mr. X, I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with post-Soviet intelligence.” Churkin was now on a different tangent. He criticized the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the now renamed KGB’s First Chief Directorate, disparaged his old rivals, speculated about which of them had betrayed Ames and Hanssen. “The snitch was a very high-ranking intelligence guy.” “How come Mr. X was never exposed?” I ventured. “Was it because the chairman himself was his case officer?”“No, no, no. His handler was a fellow who originally recruited him,” Churkin chuckled. “One of those very clever chornozhopie.” I was taken aback. The harshly racist “black ass” sounds much more offensive in Russian than it does in English. There was something wrong here, I thought. Bogumilov was definitely a Caucasian. “A black ass agent!” I used the pejorative to keep up with the spirit of the conversation, mixing disbelief and false joviality.“One lucky son-of-a-bitch. Got the Order of Lenin.”“How unusual’s that,” I said. The Order of Lenin was the Kremlin’s highest honor. “Cherkashin got it for recruiting Aldrich Ames and Richard Hanssen. Mr. X was our third big-time agent.”“The third mole,” I said.“Yeah.”“Was his handler really a black man?” He smiled at that. “Oh no. He’s a Tajik or something. From Uzbekistan,” he said. Like Russians of his generation, I quickly realized, Churkin held appalling views on race. In his mind, all Central Asians were colored people. “Rashidov looked like you and me. But hey, we’re straying away—” “Okay. Let’s get back to the August coup,” I said quickly and made a mental note of the handler’s name—Rashidov. This was the man who knows the identity of the American turncoat.My mind was racing and reeling. I had to restrain myself from asking questions about Rashidov. This was like the end game in chess. When you come down on to a piece or two on each side and a victory goes to one who manages to queen a pawn. It’s usually agonizingly slow, and offers no chance for a dynamic frontal attack.I said, “Last thing you said was that the chairman was dancing on a tightrope.”“Yes. He was a very sophisticated man, could be charming when he wanted to. But, fuck your mother.” Churkin shook his head and groaned in a contemptuous way. “He didn’t know how to organize a coup d’état. That is the bottom line.”He lit one cigarette from another. “As you know, we made a move two months later. In August, Kuzmich forewarned me: If we don’t do it now, we never will. Gorbachev had left town for his Black Sea vacation home. Our plan remained the same even if, in retrospect, we should have seen loose ends dangling everywhere. The Service was rife with treachery.“On Saturday August 17, Chairman Kryuchkov gathered eight plotters at a secret meeting. They formed an emergency committee to run the country. The next day, the chairman deployed a crack KGB combat unit called Vympel in central Moscow. Columns of tanks began moving toward the city during the next night. You saw the rest on television. The chairman, Marshal Akhromeyev, Vice President Yanayev, the prime minister appearing on television. But everybody forgot the presidential bodyguards, all elite KGB men. Nobody could imagine them refusing a direct order from their commanding officer to arrest Gorbachev. But they did. So we had a crazy standoff. Army and KGB troops surrounding Gorbachev’s villa were held off by thirty-two bodyguards. When the elite Alpha Group commandos in Moscow refused to move against Yeltsin, that was the end. The rest is all on public record. Marshal Akhromeyev committed suicide, as you know. So did Interior Minister Pugo. The chairman and others explained themselves… you know… at their trial.”“And you?”“I was arrested, released after a while and retired from the Service. On full pension. The Service has been good that way.”“You witnessed quite a chunk of history,” I said. I looked at my watch. A sixth sense told me that I should be close to some real answers. I had the name of Hector’s KGB case officer: Rashidov. And yet—and that was the frustrating part as I writhed around in my chair—I needed one more crucial hint, another prompt, a last nudge to connect the dots. If Rashidov was Hector’s case officer, who was Bogumilov? But this was a question I could not ask.I said, “Gee, it’s much later than I thought.” I ransacked my brain for the right strategy. A thought crossed my mind that Rashidov and Bogumilov were one and the same person. Was that implausible? But that line of inquiry was closed. Just the mention of Bogumilov’s name, Holz had warned, would certainly alert the Russians that my information came from the CIA. Churkin was old, but he was nobody’s fool. “Let me just clear up one last point,” I assumed the tone of a pedantic researcher reconstructing a crime. “What did Mr. X do to make the Americans swallow the bait—hook, line, and sinker?”Churkin cut in harshly. “This is outside the scope of our consultation.” His tone told me he could be a very obstinate old man.“We’re talking ancient history,” I said. “But this sounds to me like one hell of a interesting yarn. The kind people like to read about.”“Yes, but it’s a story that won’t be told.”“That could never happen in Washington,” I said, trying to make light of it. “Nothing remains secret if more than two people know about it.”Churkin’s response took a long time as he muttered to himself, counting on his nicotine-stained fingers the people who knew the secret. “All of them have passed away.”“All?”“Yes.” “Rashidov, too?” I said. Churkin’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks. “Did I mention Rashidov?” he asked, looking surprised.“You did.” “I’m forgetting.” He tried to smile. “God knows what happened to him. After the empire went belly up, all black asses were sent to their national republics.” He thought about that. I waited for him to say more, resisting the temptation to fill the silence. A few seconds passed. Then a few more. Then I thought that sometimes you need to goose your subject, and this was one of those times. “I wonder what happens to old spies like Comrade X?” Churkin frowned. “All that ended in August 1991. That’s when the ground moved. Don’t you see it?”He paused and looked down at the chessboard. “I came to work the day after the coup collapsed. The chairman was in jail. The chief of the First Directorate, Shebarshin, was now acting chairman. I didn’t know that was going to be my last day. “By mid-morning, the soldiers had arrested Kuzmich at his desk. And what the hell, I knew I was next in line. So there I’m sitting and pretending to control access to the acting chairman when, around noon, we get a visitor. Marcus Wolf, the former East German spy chief, you know. Misha the superspy, our most faithful ally. Fuck your mother! Misha the Great, as the chairman used to call him. His wife was with him, a pretty blond, much younger. They were asking for asylum. The German government had asked for Misha’s extradition and he didn’t want to go to jail. ‘Sorry Misha,’ Shebarshin told him, ‘we can’t help you; we can’t help ourselves. We can’t protect you. You’ll have to go back.’”He paused for a few seconds. “Pouf,” he said, “I never thought I’d see the day when we’d betray our most faithful ally. Our Service had lost its soul, it was no more. The writing was on the wall: everyone cut loose, each man for himself.”A silence followed and I eventually said, “And what about you?” “The soldiers picked me up at home in the evening.”And Hector, I wondered. Would his treachery go unpunished? Collecting his thirty pieces of silver from a Swiss bank account, and living the life of a rich investor at a luxurious beach house in the Bahamas.28I sat in the car for a long time writing down all that I could remember about the conversation. Then I kept rummaging through the permutations and the implications of Churkin’s remarks. What did it all mean?The story of the coup he had told me was simple and seductive, like a fairy tale, and like a fairy tale, it had an air of its own reality. The more I reflected on the story, the clearer it became to me that I’d finally struck gold. My heart felt bubbly, like a glass of champagne. Then I crossed the Borodinski Bridge.Only yesterday, it seemed depressingly evident that many unexplained matters stored somewhere in the back of my mind would remain unexplained forever. Now, there was hope. I felt as if I had had an adrenaline transfusion. I had advanced the ball. To the ten-yard line. A vigorous final push was now required.I stopped at a small bakery opposite the Kiev railway station and bought two fresh baguettes. Then I picked up a bunch of flowers from an old man with a gray film in his eyes who was selling leftover vegetables from a cart on Dorogomilovskaya.Amanda seemed pleased by my attentiveness. She put the flowers into a cobalt-blue vase. There was an enigmatic look in her eyes, I thought, something I could not decipher. She looked gorgeous in her navy halter and white shorts; she was one of those women who would look beautiful in rags.Only later did I realize how quickly Amanda’s little apartment had become home, how soothing it had been to smell her body, her perfume. Looking back, I can see that I was on the verge of falling in love with her though, at the time, I was convinced that couldn’t happen to me. I’d stumbled into a life that I was meant to live, though I couldn’t have described it before I met her.“How was your interview?” she said, her fingers laced through mine.“Fantastic.” I gave her an abbreviated summary.After lunch, she led me into the bedroom, ran her tongue over her lips, then leaned toward me and swept her middle finger across my lips—ever so lightly, barely touching them. I could never forget the sensuality of that gesture, as if she had been a professional courtesan or a veteran of many exotic love affairs. “I want to do something for you today,” she whispered. She was in a special mood today, I thought. We were still dressed, lying face to face. I was holding her hand and caressing her fingers with my thumb. No sooner had I kissed her on the lips than I wanted to kiss every part of her. “Wait,” she said and as we kissed slowly it felt as if Amanda’s mouth had melted into mine. Then she quickly slid out of her clothes and I thought just looking at her gave me pleasure, even the little flaws on her body—the hairs, dark freckles, tiny blemishes. She began to undress me and suddenly there was a look of horror in her eyes when she noticed my bruised shoulder. “My God, baby, you must see the doctor. Why didn’t you tell me?” The bruise had ripened, eggplant purple and black, and was rimmed with yellow, like some stellar explosion photographed by the Hubble telescope. “There’s nothing to tell, really,” I said. “Let me see,” she pulled me toward the window.“It doesn’t hurt at all,” I said, touching the blackened area. She ignored my invitation to touch the bruise to convince herself that I wasn’t hurting. “How did you get that, for God’s sake?” Her brows were arched into a spasm of concern.I told her briefly about the incident in the café.She stared hard at me, then slowly shook her head. “Poor baby, beaten up by thugs,” she murmured. “Are you going to be all right?”I pulled her toward me and we kissed again. “You deserve special treatment,” she whispered. “Just don’t rush me.”The special treatment began in earnest with her licking my nipples. She moved slowly, completely uninhibited, her face covered by the veil of her fallen hair. Take it slow, I said to myself. But I soon realized I couldn’t last much longer. I stiffened, and tried to turn her around. “I’ll take the lead today,” she said, gently pushing me back down on the bed. Then she knelt on all fours and lowered herself on to me, her hair flung over her face. She began slowly, worked herself to and fro, her eyes closed. Later, there was the interminable thwacking sound of buttocks hitting against thighs. Then silence. Only tiny undulations as I lay back immobile. The stillness, the lack of bodily contact, of any hewing and straining, made the experience seem other-wordly. When we finally collapsed, she lay on top of me and we were both gasping for air.We rested for a while without saying a word. When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me, an anxious expression on her perspiring face.It didn’t take long before I felt her right hand working on me. She was now on her back and her body language, I thought, was asking for it. I leaned over, kissed her and began sucking her nipples. “Not that,” she said and nudged my head down. “It’s wonderful,” she moaned. “Come into me,” she demanded later, a tone of urgency in her voice, her eyes shut. “Yes,” she welcomed me, exhaling softly. Soon, we found our rhythm. I was giddy with pleasure, sensing that today, more than ever before, she had given herself to me one hundred percent, no holds barred. As the pace quickened, she made little cries before starting to moan: “Yes, yes, yes.” I collapsed into a contented stupor, under the spell of intimacy our lovemaking had cast. She gently pushed me away, stood up, and walked over to the bathroom. When she returned, she brought two glasses of cranberry juice. She was now wearing the blue silk dressing gown with yellow flowers, wrapped around her and tied with the sash. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.“Now that you’ve done your brave investigation,” she said, and drew her knees against her chest, “isn’t it time for Mr. Clark Kent to go home?” “You want to be rid of me?” She reached out, ran her hand through my hair, and nuzzled up against me. “No, of course not.” She kissed my cheek. “What I meant is that you’ve accomplished what you came here to accomplish. You now know what happened and why, don’t you?”“I have to tie up the loose ends.” Now that I was closer to nailing Hector then ever before, I thought, but I couldn’t tell her.“What loose ends?” she said, her voice changing, a little sterner.“There’s one more fellow I have to see. The guy in Uzbekistan.”Moving away, she tore the elastic off her ponytail with an angry gesture and her hair fell down on her back.“You know what your problem is?” she said. “You’re still obsessed with your wife.”I shook my head—no. Her words felt like pebbles at the bottom of my stomach. If anything, I had become obsessed with Hector, obsessed with the pursuit of Hector.She said, “Yes, you are.” She blushed, but the way she said it she knew I’d be hurt and upset.“No I’m not. I just want to be able to tell my son I have tried everything possible.” “Why?”“Because I screwed up before.” I grinned unhappily. “Miserably, I might add.” Deep down, I’d always felt guilty about my failure to confront Emily’s death head-on. I had kind of walked away from it armed, to be sure, with countless valid reasons. This time, I would be able to look in the mirror and say I’d done my best. That’s when you reach closure and become free. “Do I detect a tinge of self-loathing,” she said. A petulant note crept into her voice.“A tinge, perhaps,” I said.“You reap what you sow.”“Well, yes.”“Poor baby,” she said. Her eyes went to the window. “But Uzbekistan? Really.” “Yeah,” I said vaguely.“For starters, it’s impossible to get an Uzbek visa. Besides, you don’t know if your man’s still alive.” “I’ll find out.” “That may turn out to be more than you’ve bargained for,” she said a little warily. An expression of distraction passed across her face. She puckered her brow. “Perhaps you’re right,” I said. The conversation was becoming awkward, I thought. I got up and went to the living room to phone Joseph. When I returned, she was smiling again, only there was something else in her eyes, something, I thought, that hadn’t been there before. She had withdrawn into herself.“So your Mafia friend is going to help you. Right?”“Joseph is not mafia.”“He is,” she insisted, coldly.“Why do you keep going on about that?”“Because he’s mafia.”“There you go.”“You got a blind eye for your friend’s flaws. What would you say if I told you his main customers are dope smugglers and gun-runners?”I laughed. “Okay. You just told me.” I wanted to sound conciliatory. “Sure, he has some shady customers, but who doesn’t?”Her face had set hard.I tried to shift the focus of the conversation. “They say the government in this country is run by the Mafia, and by that they mean, I guess, that gangsters pay off corrupt officials. By the way, was it JFK or RFK who hired the American Mafia to kill Castro?”She grimaced, sinking her teeth into her lower lip as if looking for the right words. “Why don’t you go back to your chess column?” She was becoming agitated, I thought. “Why are you talking like that?”“Just because,” she said petulantly.“Okay, okay. Maybe you have a point.” An argument with Amanda, I had discovered, was like an avalanche—difficult to stop once it got rolling.“Of course I do,” she said.“Right.” A wise man knows what to ignore, I reminded myself. “I have to go,” I said. Then on an impulse, I added, “I’ll see you tonight.”“After the Noah’s Ark? The place with Himalayan prices?” She laughed and added, “Must have been a good year for the Russia Fund.”“Yes, I think so.”“You’ll come back?” she said. “Yes. It will be late.” She gave me her cheek to kiss, offering it in a deliberately polite way, which made me feel she was thinking of something else.When I climbed into the car, I realized the scent of Amanda lingered in it. She was everywhere. Under my skin, on my tongue, in my soul. I could hear the memory of sex in her voice. I wanted to be with her—like a teenager, hungry for life to begin. Could I be in love with her? It was the first time I let that thought form in my mind. But inside me was a coolheaded pragmatist insisting that I mustn’t be sidetracked just now. I was creeping toward Hector. The hours I spent with Amanda couldn’t possibly change one iota in the course of my life, I thought, perhaps because I was not yet aware of what I was experiencing.29Joseph, naked from the waist up, was waiting for me outside the house when I arrived. Surrounded by his usual coterie of security men, he shook his head as if to say, You may be more trouble than you’re worth. “Who’re the punks that followed you and Igor?” he asked, taking my upper arm and leading me toward the back of the house. “What the hell was that about?”“I have no idea, I swear to God.”We took the walkway of crushed gravel. “Tsk, tsk, tsk… not good,” he said looking at me belligerently. I saw doubts in his face as he mumbled, “An American client? Impossible to trace! All you need is the password to these guys’ email account and you can read the saved mail without leaving any fingerprints. I’ve done this on occasion.” Then he stopped and faced me: “Do you suspect someone?”“I can’t even begin to guess,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”“Sense?”We resumed walking. “You’re lucky Igor was there. Did you know he’s way beyond black belt?”“I didn’t know, but yes, I was lucky.”Joseph started to get gloomy. “I’ve been wondering, starik. Churkin already told you everything there’s to know.”“Not quite,” I quipped and kicked a pebble in the path. “There’s this one guy. His name is Rashidov, and he lives in Uzbekistan. He was somehow directly involved. Don’t know how.”“Ah, Rashidov?” Before I could say anything more, Joseph drew a deep weary breath. “Churkin told you that?”“Yes.”The way Joseph said Rashidov’s name suggested he knew who I was talking about. I calculated whether to press him for an explanation, but decided against it. I shouldn’t make any demands I didn’t have to. I was unable to tell Joseph the real story; it was like that from the beginning when I cut my story here and there, adapting it for Joseph’s consumption. What I said was strictly accurate and yet, overall, was a lie. I didn’t enjoy it. From inside me, there was an odd sensation that felt like remorse and I had to repress a discomfort it caused.“I really have to meet this man,” I said.“Hmm. I’ll check it out.”Two days later, Joseph summoned me. “I’ve made a few inquiries,” he said. “Rashidov lives in Sherabad, about thirty kilometers from the Afghan border.” He quit the KGB job in Moscow in December 1991, Joseph went on. Not a moment too soon, just as all non-Russians were purged from security organizations. Returned to the newly-minted Uzbek state security service, which was basically the old Uzbek KGB minus the Russians. But Tashkent distrusted Moscow-based Uzbeks. So Rashidov ended up as regional inspector for the southern border district--as far away as possible from Tashkent. “Now I really wonder how much he knows,” Joseph inquired.I said, “No harm in meeting him?”“I guess not.” He shook his head as if wondering to what a flimsy straw I’d cling to to keep my quest going. “Volkov knows him?”“Keep Volkov out. He’s good for some things, but this is not one of them.” “Oh, I see.” Joseph said, “Another thing, old man. The Uzbek visa. The place is in real turmoil. They don’t want any journalists.”“I’d go as a tourist.”“They don’t want tourists either.” Joseph stood up and started walking around the garden room, reviewing his potted plants. “Uzbekistan is under martial law, for all practical purposes. A slow-burning civil war is under way. Karimov is an old apparatchik. His troops are fighting IMU guerillas. A real mess.”I said without thinking, “I could apply for a transit visa?”“Get real, starik! Transit to where?” “Could your contacts put me in touch with him?” “It wouldn’t work, starik, honest to God,” said Joseph, wagging a cautionary finger. “You’d attract unwelcome attention in a place like Sherabad. I had some slight connection to Rashidov. He’s been a client. I know he keeps a very low profile.”“What else can I do?” “Frankly, not much.”A long silence followed. I wanted to say that there must be a way—there’s always a way—but somehow I felt that was a wrong thing to say right then.Joseph said, “Let’s swim.”After doing a few laps, he waited for me in the shallow end. “You know,” he said, “my high school physics teacher used to say that sometimes you have to violate reason to grasp the truth. He was explaining Einstein and why parallel lines in reality aren’t parallel.”“What’s that supposed to mean,” I said. He looked at me in amazement. “It means that there must be a way,” he laughed. “You just haven’t found it.”After we swam and had beer and sandwiches for lunch, Joseph said, “There’s one possible solution, but you probably won’t like it.”“Try me.”This was Joseph like a conjurer with a deck of cards, warning of the risk involved in what he was about to suggest. “Fly to Dushanbe. The Tajik visa’s no problem. Then sneak across into Uzbekistan. It’s risky, but it’s doable.” “I don’t mind the risk.”“Hold on.” He pinched the cigarette between his fingertips and studied it as though it held an answer. “If you run into a government ambush, you end up dead. Not likely to happen, but you have to consider it.”I thought of Rick. I could imagine him saying, So you decided to punt on the third down, eh? Put in those terms, I realize now, it wasn’t a choice. “What are the odds?” I said.“One hundred to one, I’d say. There are people who could take you to Sherabad, I think. Then take you back to Dushanbe.” “You know these people?” “They are smugglers or IMU supporters, what you’d call shady characters.” Joseph’s voice had a rasp in it. He lit another cigarette and gave me a long and skeptical look. “You can’t remain squeaky clean and get this done, starik. Know what I’m saying?”My stomach sank. I found myself in a deeply pessimistic frame of mind about his proposal. I said, “What‘s IMU?”“Stands for Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They want an Islamic state. In Uzbekistan and in Tajikistan.” I recalled Amanda’s claim that Joseph’s customers were drug dealers and gun-runners. Joseph himself had said several times that he never asked his customers how they made their money. He was merely transferring their money to their accounts in Cyprus or Zurich.“We’re talking about people on the wrong side of the law, aren’t we?”“You might say that, yes.” Joseph spread his hands as if expressing a measure of humility. “But some consider them patriots. Supporting a noble cause.”I felt awkward under the frankness of Joseph’s gaze. He was revealing his baser metal, I thought, showing his imperfections.Something in the back of my mind said that the right thing was to forget I had ever heard Joseph’s suggestion. Hadn’t I already accomplished most of what I’d set out to do? Professor Voronov was alive and well and not negotiating with Al Qaeda. I now knew how Emily died; Churkin knew as much as there was to know about it. But the lure of revenge was overpowering. Over the past weeks, Hector had morphed in my mind into the ultimate prize, perhaps because he remained the only clearly unambiguous target in a world of evil shadows. Bringing Hector to justice meant exacting retribution, settling accounts. What would happen if I fail? All I could do is try hardest. I was now at a decisive point. Either cut my losses and return home. Or go for the jugular. I felt my spine straightening as I said to myself, go for the jugular. I considered a few practical objections in my mind, but somehow was unwilling to consider the moral ones. Once again, I can now see in retrospect, success was still the supreme value in my world. Joseph said, “Your editors may not like this idea… I mean, the characters helping you…” “I don’t intend to ask their permission,” I said. A part of me knew I was doing something wrong, that you can’t navigate unscathed between expediency and principles. But far stronger inner voices said this was necessary and justified; there was no turning away or turning back. “You could present it as enterprise reporting,” Joseph said. “Traveling and talking to Muslim terrorists who supply weapons and food to the Taliban on the other side of the border. You know what I’m saying.”“No. Better just do it.”“What does that mean,” Joseph said.“I’m going to do it period.” “And what then? Aren’t you burning both the bridges and the boats?”“If worse comes to worst, I may not have a job when I get back. I don’t give a shit.” I was more than ready to bolt at that moment. “You know these characters?”“I know some. I also know people who use their services. Now, if you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t do it.”“I want to do it,” I said firmly. My life was no longer in my complete control because my obsession with Hector had turned it into something beyond my free will. I had to try. How do I know it’s impossible before I tried it. Besides, there was no one around to ask if there was another way—only my conscience; and my conscience said this was not the time to indulge my scruples.“Okay,” said Joseph. “I’ll see what I can do.” He was tipping his chair on its rear legs, trying to keep his balance. “What other problems are there?”The talk went on for another hour, but the rest was postscript. Engrossed in details, I relaxed.“You might need a bit of cash,” Joseph said. “How much?”“I’ll find out,” Joseph said and stopped abruptly as if checking himself. “Listen, forget it. I’ll handle that.”“Absolutely not,” I said, as if to assuage my mounting guilt that he was about to violate another major principle. “I have money.”“Let’s say I’m repaying an old debt. After this I don’t owe you anything.”30There was a definite smell of money about the place. People waited in line along the red velvet rope hung from waist-high brass poles. The doorman at the Noah’s Ark was costumed to look like something out of The Arabian Nights. Athletic young men with buzz haircuts stood around in clusters. Long black limousines piloted by chauffeurs with fixed expressions disgorged well-dressed patrons.I walked up to the front of the line. The air was humid; heat of the day stored up in the asphalt and concrete was coming off now. The mention of the Russia Fund dinner worked like a magic wand: the path opened up. The door attendant led me past a menacing bouncer whose hands cupped over his balls and through golden drop curtains into an oasis of Oriental splendor and luxury that was the Noah’s Ark. Stone carvings, wall paintings, tall brass ashtrays, and copper engraved panels provided dramatic touches to the interior.An overly dignified maitre d’ guided me through the crowded dining room. Guests talked and laughed. Champagne glasses clinked. A balalaika group played. The regular Armenian band, the maitre d’ said, had a night off.I was ushered into a separate banquet room in the back of the restaurant. It was full of older mostly pudgy men in tuxedos and tall younger women with bare shoulders and cleavages, and they were laughing a good deal and talking in high, excited voices. In the middle was a long table covered with white linen tablecloths, starched blue napkins the size of a flag, and place cards with a gilded rim. A large poinsettia plant sat in the middle. A side table was laid with food: lobsters on packed ice, a large salmon garnished with cucumbers and gherkins, a selection of cold meats, a pyramid of fresh fruits, and a selection of cheeses.I had half expected that Scarna would provide me with an entrée to influential contacts. A couple of former high KGB officers were members of the Russia Fund board. But when I saw his flushed face, it was obvious that Scarna had already had a couple of vodka slugs too many and that the party had already turned into a daunting drinking binge. “Todd Martin,” Scarna cried, spreading his arms like a welcoming maitre d’. Ben Morgan, his white jacket setting off a golf-course tan, put his arm around my shoulder. “This town’s hopping, don’t you think. Quite a change from the old days.” The former ambassador looked extravagantly healthy for his age, except his lower lip was slightly discolored. With his creased face, gray hair he let grow longer around the ears, and silver sideburns, he had a Biblical presence, like Charlton Heston about to part the Red Sea.An unfamiliar scent assailed me while exchanging cheek kisses with Linda Jelinek, wife of Morgan’s former economic counselor Mel Jelinek, a stylish man with a wide face and a finely trimmed horseshoe beard.“Glad to see a familiar face,” Linda Jelinek said. She took my hand and held it tight. In her forties, five-six, with a narrow graceful figure and curly shoulder-length hair, Linda had a perfectly aligned face and wide greenish eyes. “I always said Mel’s a lucky man,” I flattered her and feigned flirtatious banter. “Not too shabby, not too shabby at all,” I said, my eyes darting to her exposed leg. She acknowledged the compliments with a wave of her hand. “Oh, knock it off, Todd.”The chatter and bonhomie were proceeding agreeably. There was a mood of euphoria in the room. The Russia Fund must have had a very good year, I figured. Watching the faces of the Americans, I suddenly grasped why Hector was Holz’s permanent, irksome concern. For all I knew, Hector might be one of the guests at this festive dinner. On second thought, I concluded that was unlikely because it would suggest the kind of recklessness that was inconsistent with what little I knew about his career. An elderly Russian in a black suit, his pre-tied bow tie moving around like a magnetic needle, called the guests to the table. I was seated between Linda to my right and a bald Russian to my left.“Quite a party you got going here,” I said turning to Linda.“They claim to be working,” she arched her eyebrow.“All work no play,” I laughed. She leaned over and whispered, “Did you notice that the locals now bring their mistresses to official functions.”“Oh yeah?”“The lady in Prada sitting across the table,” she whispered in my ear. “The one with a heart-shaped face. She’s sizing you up as a potential conquest.”I sneaked a furtive glance at the rather attractive brunette in a sleeveless lavender dress and a very thick gold necklace. “C’mon now,” I said, “you’re kidding.”She leaned over again. “But be careful. Her escort is a former deputy prime minister.” She made a quick head bob in the direction of a stocky moon-faced man with a double chin and a reddish blond mustache who was in a deep conversation with Morgan. “That fat pig’s after anything without a Y chromosome.”“God, this takes me back,” I said under my breath. “I remember when he was an up-and-coming Pravda journalist. I always thought he was KGB.”“Well,” she said again lowering her voice to a whisper, “he’s one of Morgan’s key fixers. The other one on his right is certainly KGB. Used to be the resident in Delhi.”“They all love the free market,” I said. “Yeah,” she nodded sadly. “This is a capitalist’s wet dream: capitalism completely off the leash, and you got a license to rub out competitors.” Her puzzled frown suggested she wasn’t sure what to think about her bleak assessment of human nature. “They’re all making money. Lots of it. But I’m not sure I understand what Mel means when he tells me his Russian colleagues are worth their weight in gold. I look at them and wonder why.”“Yeah,” I said. My attention was drawn by a middle-aged man in a charcoal grey suit, whose eyes were too big for his face and made him look like a space alien. He was snatching drinks from passing waiters and downing them as if he was in some crazy competition.“All this is so dreary,” Linda said when I discreetly pointed out the space alien. Then she added with a bored sigh, “I must talk to the guy on my right. He’s a board member and a business partner of Chuck Norris, if you can believe it.”“You mean the Walker Texas Ranger character?””Yes. His series airs nightly on one of the local channels. Norris has invested in a hotel and a casino here, and some other things.”I felt my saliva glands trickle into action when the waiters brought the first course. I loved blini with Sevruga caviar and white truffle butter and I enthusiastically washed them down with freezing vodka. “Bottoms up,” Scarna cried from the other side of the table. He and Mel Jelinek, whose eyes looked distinctly glazed, continued pumping vodka into their bloodstreams. “Your hubby’s getting happy,” I said to Linda.She nodded disapprovingly. “Always the same. The next thing is gypsy music.” The main course was a surprise: a dish favored by Czar Alexander I and named Pate Alexandre in his honor, according to the maitre d’; it consisted of two layers of filet of sole with a layer of salmon in between, all baked in a crust and served with a special sauce and vegetable medley. An army of waiters, all in white gloves, poured wine in the biggest cut crystal glasses I’d ever seen. As Linda had predicted, the gypsy musicians suddenly materialized—one violinist and one harmonica player. They played Ochi Chornie. Guests whooped. Morgan gamely demanded attention at the end of the song and delivered a short address, slurring his words. Glasses were emptied and again refilled. Then red wine was served with cheese selections. Morgan’s garrulous Russian counterpart, looking buff and tough, raised a toast to the Fund and Russian-American cooperation. His speech was three times as long as Morgan’s.The noise level gradually rose. The two gypsy musicians named Yasha and Pasha slowly moved around the table, and several Russians stuck large-denomination banknotes in their pockets. One spat on a banknote and stuck it on the forehead of Yasha the harmonica player. Raucous cheers followed.Scarna took a one hundred dollar bill and tried to attach it in the same fashion to the forehead of Pasha the violinist. The Russians whooped. “Fun in the land of pandemic gloom,” Linda whispered derisively in my ear.This is a waste of time, I thought. I had to cut my losses and leave at the first opportunity. I turned to my bald neighbor on the left, who was holding his glass to the light, appraising the color of the red. He was a lean man who oddly had a second chin tugging at his first. His nose was as narrow as a rudder and had dark pouches under his icy blue eyes. “Not bad, not bad,” the bald Russian said, and took another swallow of wine. “I’m Boris, by the way,” he said and leaned over to take a closer look at my place card, although I thought he was only pretending. “I know your name. You used to work here, a long time ago.”“Yes.”Boris was one of the fund’s consultants, and his specialty was base metals, and to a lesser extent precious metals as well. While he went on with his pitch, I stared at his wristwatch, so slim it looked like a platinum tattoo. “Apart from gas and oil, this is where the money is,” he said in fluent English. He also mentioned the name of my former KGB contact, Sasha Ivanov. “I remember Sasha talking about your unfortunate problem in the Caucasus. I used to work with Sasha. That’s before I went into the private sector.” He leaned back and glanced at the ceiling as he exhaled smoke. I thought, Maybe I’ve struck gold here. “I should have never taken that trip,” I said.He shook his head. “Bloody fighting in the Caucasus… inter-communal massacres and unreason… the kind of stuff worthy a Pulitzer. You must have read Hajji Murat?” I was annoyed. The man understood my state of mind before I left on that trip. In fact I had read Tolstoy’s story before leaving Moscow. I said, irritably, “I never really understood why I was detained.” “Your cryptonym was Samson.” He made little whistling sounds between his teeth.I felt flustered. “My cryptonym? I didn’t know I had a cryptonym. Samson?”“You had long hair and long sideburns, I guess. Sounds childish now, I know, but it was standard operating procedure in those days. Anyway, we had to keep you in the Caucasus for a few days after your wife’s death. The order came from the top.”“So you swiped my press card?”“Locals had to create a pretext for holding you.” “And the bag of hashish?”“Nah. Overzealous local yahoos. The Foreign Ministry apologized formally for the mistake, as you know.” Boris paused, and reached for a toothpick. “Sasha was deeply embarrassed, I can tell you. But this is what happens when you inflate the enemy’s fiendish wickedness and simultaneously exaggerate your own virtue. Thank God, those days are gone. We’ve moved on. Nobody’s interested in the past.” “Yeah.” Waiters served Grand Marnier soufflés followed by French and Armenian cognac. Boris knocked back his cognac. “What brings you here this time?”“I’m researching a book.”“Why?”“Something to do, I suppose.”“Interesting. About Russia?”“Yeah. The last days of the Soviet Union, to be more exact.”“Nobody reads books anymore!” The toothpick moved from one side of the mouth to the other. “You’d do much better joining your pals here, Morgan, Scarna, and others. They have contacts here like nobody’s business.” He winked. “Thanks for the tip.” I changed the subject. “Where’s Sasha Ivanov now?”“Ahhh. He’s a big man. Very big. Deputy Director of the FSB.” This was the now independent foreign intelligence part of the former KGB.I thought of Volkov wiping off imaginary sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand to indicate his great efforts to locate Ivanov. So Volkov had lied. Why?I said, “I’d like to see him.” A thought crossed my mind that Ivanov could be useful. He was in a position to look at the files—if they existed. I was in that fortunate position that I knew him before he became really important. “I don’t think that’s possible.”“Why not?”Boris managed a brief, tight laugh. “At his level there are no private contacts.” Turning his hand into a blade, he sliced air for emphasis. “Some things never change, Mr. Martin. It’s the same in Washington, isn’t it?”“Good point,” I said.“In this city,” Boris went on, “everybody is watching everybody else, storing info for future use against one another. And the higher you fly, the more people keep track of everything you do. As they say, everyone has a skeleton in his closest, but even skeletons here have their own skeletons.” He chuckled.“Sounds like Washington.”“Exactly!”We laughed. “Next time I see Sasha, I’ll tell him how I ran into you at Noah’s Ark,” he said. “Who would have thought…”I decided to leave quietly, certain that my absence would go unnoticed. I slapped Boris on the back. I cocked my eyebrow and smiled goodbye to Linda and left. Outside, it was a warm Moscow night. St. Basil’s was basking in the all-night floodlights, ruby stars glowed atop the Kremlin spires. But breaking the mystery of the vast cobblestone square was a four-story-high Pepsi banner covering the fa?ade of the military museum.31Two days later, I picked up my room key and the desk clerk handed me a couple of messages. One from Kevin Page simply said: CALL ME. Another one, tucked in a letter, was a short written note:“Hon: I have just been summoned by my editor. Rushing to catch the six-thirty Air France to Paris. I’m supposed to do photographs for an art book. Miss you. I’ll see you in DC. Kisses, Amanda xxx”I read the note one more time, then slumped down in a deep armchair in the lobby and rubbed my temples. Gone. Without forewarning. Amanda had mentioned that her work often demanded quick and sudden moves, but I had no recollection of her mentioning an art book assignment. I walked over to the bar and ordered a glass of brandy. A lovely young blonde sitting at the bar alone asked me to buy her a drink. But there was an air of superiority about her that suggested money was of no concern to her, that in fact she was doing me a favor to accept a glass of vodka tonic. I was watching her narrow-hipped big-breasted figure gliding away to the ladies room when Maxim the bartender leaned over and whispered, “If you’re interested, the rest rooms are down that corridor. Her name is Sonia. She’ll be waiting for you.”“Thanks,” I said and finished my brandy. Then I went up to my room and started pacing around. Driven by a prickling sense of anxiety, I could not sit still or read anything. Without warning, a memory of Amanda came back: of her interminably long legs, of her firm breasts and the lovely curve of her throat. Then, moments before I left her last night, she had stood by the window, staring at the ground with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Now I remembered, retroactively, the look in her eyes when she raised her gaze to meet mine. I imagined seeing signs of sadness and cynicism in that look.I wrote her name on a piece of paper several times without thinking. How I loved her vitality, her energy, the way she always said yes. Obviously, whatever it was between us was deeper than I thought.Lying on the bed like a corpse and lost in the world of the present moment, I was unable to summon the will to do anything. Couldn’t even find the strength to sort out my bundles of weird memories. I mustn’t go to sleep, I said to myself. She might call.Later I sat and stared at the phone even though I knew that was stupid. I thought about Jennifer, who could never be caught off guard, who knew what to say to whom and when to say it, who was always in control. My God. Things between Jennifer and me had to be brought to an end, I thought. Regardless of whether I ever saw Amanda again. As always when I wanted to stay awake, I turned on the TV and then ignored it. The noise made me feel less lonely. I tried to imagine what might have happened that precipitated Amanda’s sudden departure, but my brain was frozen. All I could retrieve was a memory of the sensuality experienced yesterday: her middle finger running across my lips, barely touching them. One more night, give me one last night—the tune played in a loop through my head, reminding me of the night we were dancing. The memory of touching her body and feeling her breasts pressed against my chest made my head spin. I felt the words directly applied to my situation. Give me one last night. I felt myself getting older and thought about not having a relationship, not being with someone.Against my better judgment, I opened a bottle of brandy, which I kept in the back of the wardrobe closet. I poured myself one, then another and another, fully aware I’d end up in a morose stupor.The phone rang. I jumped up to pick up the receiver. It was Sonia the hooker. “Can I come up to see you?” “No, I’m asleep.” I hung up.It rang again. This time it was Barbara Browne. “I have tried you several times,” she said. “Kevin Page has been trying to reach you.”“I know. He left a message at the hotel.”“He wants you to call him.”“Okay, you told me.” I said and coughed. “Amanda has suddenly split. Very odd. What can you tell me about her? ”“You dated her, honeychild,” Barbara said and I could imagine a leer crossing her face. “I mean did you see her or talk to her today?” “No,” Barbara said. “Left a message she’s going on an assignment.”“This happens in our business, as you know. Look, I’m on deadline.”What did I know about Amanda? What was she doing here? I assembled the facts in my mind: she’s from Richmond; both parents obstetricians; graduated from William and Mary, attended Columbia. Everything else was vague, poorly defined. I wondered who she really was, the underlying assumption being that I had some special claim on the answer.A happy solution suddenly occurred to me. Why not call her parents in Richmond? They’d be able to give me her phone number, email address. The freshly rekindled hope focused my mind. I glanced at the clock: fifteen minutes to four PM in Washington. With adrenaline rushing, I began making long distance calls. It didn’t take long before I felt utterly crushed. Defeated by the slovenliness of Russian hotel telephone system and the interminable mechanical-voice preliminaries in America. In my alcoholic haze, I came upon another solution. My fingers flying at the laptop, I sent an email to Alex: Please check the Richmond phonebook for Dr. Paul: Husband and wife, both obstetricians. Don’t know their given names. Live and work in the greater Richmond area. Need their phone numbers ASAP.That calmed me. Brandy now was merely analgesic. I watched a documentary about marine experts working to protect giant turtles on the southwestern edge of the island of St. Croix. I flipped to Channel Six and caught the solemn, bearded face of Chuck Norris in a dubbed Walker Texas Ranger. The late news was unexpectedly discomforting. War was the major topic, but the coverage of war was different from what I’d been accustomed to. I had no stomach for watching Afghan villages being blown to kingdom come. Downing yet another glass of brandy, I switched to a channel showing folk dances performed by the Moiseyev ensemble. Without warning or conscious thought, I drifted away from the dancers on the screen to the image of Amanda, which sparked up in my mind as if another television set was just plugged in. Popping a boner as I remembered how her skin sometimes appeared translucent and how seductively she behaved at Kozlov’s party. I felt a spasm of jealousy, but it was a retroactive emotion. Then I conjured up the illusion of her coming out of a hot shower, slowly opening her mouth, moistening her lips with her tongue, beckoning me to join her. It wasn’t working. Instead I heard the voice of my father: Forget her, she’s just a whore. He secretly thought all actresses and prominent professional women were whores. These were the attitudes from the Old Country, just like he thought that having a job was when you wear a shirt and tie, have a desk, regular hours, benefits. Still fully dressed, I lay down on my back. The bed was soft. I closed my eyes and then time just vanished. I was back with my Dad, strolling in Forest Park on a beautiful Sunday morning in late spring. The next day I was going to take a Greyhound bus to my first job as camp counselor in New Hampshire. Don’t forget, Dad said, solemnly as if he was composing his last testament: backbone, will, honor. Whenever he was overcome with emotion, his lips would quiver at the edges. “In life, you sometimes make compromises,” he took my right hand and squeezed it. “But there are certain lines you don’t cross. One wrong step can turn a good life into a bad one.” When I returned the squeeze, his eyes welled. I awoke, three hours later. The station was off the air. I switched the TV off and staggered to the bathroom where I was sick in the toilet bowl. Afterwards, I brushed my teeth, putting a lot of Crest on the toothbrush to get rid of the awful taste in my mouth. Then I peeled off my clothes and slid between the sheets. When I closed my eyes, I saw Amanda again, like Bo Derek in 10 coming out of the water at the Silver Grove beach and beckoning for help. I had helped her tip the rowing boat on its keel, found the oars beneath the boat, and together we dragged it down to the water. I carefully stepped into the boat and sat down facing the shore, then placed two oars into the rowlocks. She brought a picnic basket, knelt to the stern to push us off, then turned around. We sat facing each other. “You just row,” she said, saucily raising an eyebrow before starting to unpack roast beef sandwiches with slices of provolone sticking over the edges of the rye bread. The boat was fiberglass and never picked up the momentum a wooden boat would. “This boat is hard work,” I said. “I know. Plastic boats are too light,” she said. “Let’s relax and have lunch,” she added, handing me a bottle of Carlsberg. I could still hear her voice, fresh and ironic around the edges, as we floated down the river. Afterwards, she stretched like a cat, her flimsy aquamarine bathing suit complemented by her clear complexion, her eyes closed in the dazzling light, her toes touching my shins. ”I’m getting a tan,” she said. Her face was golden, her hair golden, and wild thoughts danced in my head. That same day, I had a glimpse of Amanda’s hidden side and as much as I wanted to dismiss the resulting feeling of unease, I could not deny the startling fact that when I looked at Amanda that night, I saw someone I barely knew. Just after making love, the phone rang. It was past midnight. Amanda’s answers were monosyllabic, but her tone was frigid, icy. In the darkness, she sounded like a different person.“Who’s that?” I asked later. “Oh just my assignment editor,” she said. “Complaining.” On our last day together, she seemed absentminded, remote. I found her drained of all energy and peering glumly out the window as if looking into some gloomy future. She was so thin and so pale she glowed. She must have considered the actuarial odds, I thought. She must have thought that we had no future, that she mustn’t make a poor bargain and give away her youth only to find herself alone at the end of her life. Unlike me, she’d have no second chance. Looking back, I now realized that we never discussed our relationship, what the future held for us, instinctively avoiding all topics that called to mind such concerns. We continued to meet every day, making love with ever-greater passion, but never became truly intimate. I thought I knew why. Because of my obsession with Hector, and thousands of unanswerable questions that turned round and round in my head even when I was not focusing on them. Galina Zvonareva’s death? Okay, people die. The goons who were spying on me? Someone had hired them. Who? Joseph’s help? My deceit? It took me a long time to fish out Rolaids from the night table.When I woke in the morning, I struggled to my feet and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. Then I reached out for the laptop. The screen burst into life. The message from Alex was brief: “Unable to find any obstetricians named Paul in the Richmond area.”My self-confidence undermined, I succumbed to anger and jealousy. The bitch, I muttered unkindly. A nichtikeit, as my mom would say.Alex’s message gave me an acute sense of foreboding, a feeling in the pit of my stomach as if something had gone terribly awry, although I had no idea what that might be. I took a long hot shower and got dressed. Then I took the elevator down to the restaurant.Coffee was bitter and strong and helped kick-start the mind. I had to take charge of my life. Be adult about the whole thing. That, as I understood it, meant I must convince myself that I didn’t give a shit. Yet it was precisely now that I felt drawn to her more strongly than at any time since I first met her. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know who she was. Whoever she was, something in her called out to me.When Joseph called, I had to say immediately that I’d be bad company right now. “Amanda’s just left. No fucking explanation, nothing.”“She’ll be back,” Joseph said.“I don’t care,” I said petulantly.“Playing hard to get. What a bitch!” Joseph apparently thought he was filling all those potholes of worry that had developed in my mind. I launched into a stream of invectives which I imagined would darken Amanda’s golden halo. Astonishingly, I realized none of them turned me against her.“Let us think this through, starik. Eh?”“You don’t get it,” I said irritably. “She’s like a drug that had me hooked after only a few hits.” “No, she’s a habit that needs breaking. I have an idea.”I knew what was coming. “I have a beauty for you: a fabulous nineteen year old ballerina. We call her the game-for-anything Tanya! You name it, starik, and you have it—all entrances, any way you want.” He paused. “That’s if you’re interested. Now seriously, I’ve talked to a few people in Central Asia. You’re on. Check out of the hotel and sleep here tonight. I’m sending a car for you.” 32I was the last passenger to step off the ancient TU-62 at Dushanbe airport. It was nine o’clock in the evening when we touched down and the passengers erupted into applause. Which reminded me of old Aeroflot flights—passengers always cheered as if landings were a touch-and-go proposition. “Dushanbe!” I was at the edge of the known world. How odd, I thought, that I should find myself at this point in my life in the same place I had visited many years earlier to monitor the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Afghanistan. Passengers grappled with their boxes and shouted at their sleepy children as they surged toward the badly lit terminal building. Passport examination seemed perfunctory. Uniformed officials handled travel documents without much interest—mechanically applying the stamp. The bags were slow in coming. The baggage carousels were broken. I grabbed my wheeled bag and was waved out into the arrivals hall. The last to join the line outside the passport control, the first to get through the customs. Before leaving Moscow, I had spent two nights at Joseph’s house in Barvikha while final arrangements were being made. The first night I ended up in bed with the fabulous Tanya, only after I got completely plastered. The worst part of it was that what pushed me over the edge to an orgasm was not Tanya’s angelic face under me—it was the memory of Amanda’s interminably long legs embracing my treacherous flesh. The next day, I was for the most part alone in the big house. The servants and professionally unpleasant guards kept out of my way. I read by the pool, enjoyed the sun on the deck feeling isolated and lonely. People lie, I thought, everyone lies. I lied to Amanda, for example – harmless things like I didn’t tell her about the mole. Perhaps she had to lie too. Indeed, only an old fool could imagine that she’d opt out of her generation to join mine! Before I left for Dushanbe, Joseph told me that a man called Mensoor would meet me at the airport. Mensoor would take me across the Tajik-Uzbek border to Sherabad—and bring me back to Dushanbe. “Do as he says,” Joseph had said. “That’s very important. You can trust him.”It was hot and humid inside the airless terminal. The place was seething with human beings—hawkers, hustlers, country folk in national costumes, urchins selling cigarettes, crippled Sufis with canes and crutches—everybody shouting, jostling, dragging bags of all sizes and shapes. Many lay sleeping near check-in counters.I looked around, preparing to push my way toward the exits, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.“Mr. Todd?”A dark man with a pencil-thin moustache stepped up to me. He was wearing pre-faded denim slacks and a black silk shirt unbuttoned to show lots of curly gray chest hair. And he smoked. “I’m Mensoor. Welcome to Dushanbe.” His smile was friendly, open, filled with healthy white teeth.“Thanks.”“Had a pleasant flight, I hope?”“Yes,” I said.He was under six feet tall and weighed close to two hundred pounds, a pleasant-looking man whose voice was cultured and who had a look about him of a man of action. I declined to be assisted with my bag and followed him across the hall and out into the pandemonium of the Central Asian night. A wailing voice croaked over the airport sound system: a Muslim Romeo on the verge of despair over his girl’s betrayal. Traffic choked the street outside. Fumes rose from the rusty exhaust pipes of green-and-white city busses, which appeared ready for the scrap heap, as did many other cars crawling in the outside lane and rattling like tin cans.Mensoor carefully circled a green Toyota, inspecting its tires. I put my rollaway bag on the back seat while he opened the passenger side door for me and threw away his cigarette. I settled in and immediately handed Joseph’s envelope to him. Without opening it, Mensoor put it into the side pocket of the car. “I bet you must be hungry,” he said.“They didn’t feed us on the plane.” “We’ll have a bite here, then drive to the border, rest for a couple hours at my cousin’s house. We’ll make a crossing in the early morning. This run is a piece of cake provided you take precautions. Most army and police units are in the north.” “Why north?”“There’s big trouble in Andijon. More than a hundred and fifty protesters died.”We drove in silence. The road from the airport led through fields and parklands. I saw a streetlight in the distance. A settlement of low houses and a solitary minaret appeared in front of us.“I’ll take you to Rashidov, but I can’t guarantee he’ll see you. I hope he will.”“I hope so, too,” I said with a small laugh.“We told him you have a few questions about your wife’s death a long time ago.” After a pause, he added, “How did she die?”I gave him a short version. “What is it that you want to know?” “The truth,” I said, and immediately realized I sounded na?ve, or worse, deliberately misleading. Suddenly, I didn’t have much in the way of words.Mensoor snorted. “The truth?” “I didn’t explain myself properly,” I said. “It’s like putting together a puzzle. Rashidov might know a few tiny missing pieces.”I had forgotten the Russian word for closure, which I thought was why Mensoor had problems in grasping the concept. But the more I tried to explain myself, the more I felt enmeshed in my own words, like a tiny crab caught in seaweed. “Vengeance—that I understand,” Mensoor said, shaking his head. “Revenge is a right and an honor.”I said nothing. I was a self-appointed unforgiving administrator of retribution and just deserts, and I had to pretend otherwise.Mensoor continued: “We had a case here where a guy recognized a person who had double-crossed him in a particularly vicious manner some twenty odd years back. So he killed him. Made sure he had the right guy, then emptied a .36 mm into his belly, and turned himself in. Well, this I understand. Mere curiosity makes little sense to me.”I said, “What happened to the murderer?”“The whole town took his side, including the top political and civic leaders. The judge was in an awful predicament. He had to send the man to jail for a few years. But there was an unspoken understanding that he’d be freed after a year or two. This is Central Asia, eh?”Mensoor brought the car to a halt outside a chaikhana, next to a line of parked cars and trucks. The aroma of roasted shish kebab hung in the air.The place had dark wooden floors, red checked tablecloths, waiters dressed in white shirts and black pants. It was noisy, full of dark men with low brows and long stares. We were installed in a special booth upholstered in brown plastic leather. “You’ll have to change your clothes,” Mensoor said after we were seated. “And everything else. Including your passport.” He shrugged, as if apologies were unnecessary.I said, “Is that really necessary?”“Absolutely,” Mensoor said and paused. “I don’t take chances. Your cell is a homing device, so’s your PC. It’s like announcing I’m here. How can you be sure there is not a tiny tracking chip somewhere in your clothes?”I drew a long breath. ”Okay, I’m in your hands.” “We assume all intelligence services are eavesdropping on each other and everybody here.”The manager, whose name was Rifat and who was a friend of Mensoor’s, appeared. Skinny, with a slightly oriental face, he had a coiled snake tattooed inside his left arm and reminded me of a senior police detective in the old Hawaii Five-O series. Like an old married couple, Mensoor and Rifat communicated with gestures and only a few words. “We’ll have some tea.” Rifat smiled and winked. “Sure,” said Mensoor with a small, self-satisfying chuckle. He leaned over to me and said in a low voice: “It’s vodka. You know, you’re in an Islamic country.”Rifat returned with a blue-and-white ceramic teapot and two matching cups. “I’ll leave you two. If you need more tea, ask the waiter to call me.”Mensoor smiled, turning the palms of his hands up. “Rifat is a genius, he knows all the angles,” Mensoor said later. “We joke that he’s got more angles than the geometry text book.”I dug into a plate of roasted lamb, rice, and diced cucumbers in a yogurt dressing. The food was prepared with local spices that exploded pleasantly in my mouth.After we finished dinner, I was led to the manager’s office to put on some new clothes and Mensoor returned to the car. My new outfit included rumpled baggy pants, which were too big for me even after I had drawn the tapes as tight as possible, a lemon-green short-sleeved shirt with buttons missing, old tennis shoes, and a black cap that was too small and covered only the very top of my head like a yarmulke. Afterwards, Rifat handed me a warm, striped cloak known as chapan and led me through the back entrance of the chaikhana to the Toyota.“That’s more like it,” laughed Mensoor, inspecting me from head to toe.I felt a bit uncomfortable.33 The road to Uzbekistan was due west. The car plunged quickly into the darkness of the mountain and began to climb. It was damp and cold. I took the chapan from the back seat and covered myself. The moon was at full strength, turning the road into a white river. “We call it a smuggler’s moon,” Mensoor said, looking up and chuckling. “You don’t need headlights.”After a while, we entered a dense forest. The road narrowed and turned lumpy. Mensoor pulled onto the side of the road to urinate and have a quick smoke. He opened the trunk and returned with a machine pistol. “You need that?” I said.“No one goes to the mountains unarmed,” Mensoor said. “Just in case.” His furrowed face appeared sinister, lit from below by the glow of the dashboard.I closed my eyes. Up to now, my life had been simple. Now I was with the smugglers—smuggling myself into another country. That became my sole concern at the moment. It was like being in a war zone when all you worry about is your next meal and staying alive. I dozed, imagining I was already on the other side and marveling at the turquoise-tiled domes of Samarkand, walking through wondrous bazaars where I had once taken Emily during a short Christmas break and we roamed around looking for oriental spices and fruits from surrounding orchards and gardens. In my dream, we were driving through Registan Square—she coquettishly whispering something into my ear—and the crowds parting before us like waves before the prow of an ocean-liner and I realized it was Amanda that was seated next to me. “We’re here,” Mensoor said, shaking me. I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles.“We’ll rest here for a few hours,” Mensoor said.We were parked outside a large white stucco house—its windows covered with wooden lattices. I was led to a room with beaded curtains, octagonal tables of intricately carved wood, frayed oriental rugs, mirrored throw pillows, and a bed with a wooden headboard festooned with chunky carved grapes. I fell asleep as soon as my head landed on a pillow, staying within my dream, picking it up where I’d left off. I was still in Central Asia, but we were now in the town named Osh. We were tailed everywhere we went. Without trying, we lost the clumsy KGB gumshoes in the Osh central market while dithering near the stalls with local pottery. Then we slipped through a backdoor into the kitchen of a restaurant. It was like we’d arrived at a surprise party. People had never seen Americans before and they invited us to sample the dishes on the menu. Fifteen minutes later, the two breathless goons burst into the kitchen, relieved that they had located their charges.*We crossed the border after midnight, on a motorcycle with a loaded sidecar, riding upward on a narrow overgrown path under a night sky full of bright stars. The mountain air was light and pure. I felt full of energy. We mounted a crest almost to the top when thick brush choked the path. Mensoor cut the engine. I heard a faint distant rumble announce a train. Then deep silence filled the forest. “Let’s go,” said Mensoor. Pushing the motorcycle uphill turned out to be harder than I had expected. I was in a cold sweat by the time we neared the top. What was inside the sidecar? I tried just not to think about it. Once again, Mensoor cupped a hand to his ear. We waited for a brief moment, then mounted the motorcycle and started descent crawling. No engine, no lights, just squealing brakes. “The smuggler’s moon helps,” Mensoor said under his breath and chuckled again. It seemed to take forever. I felt as if thousands of invisible eyes watched our every movement. When we reached a creek near the bottom of the hill, Mensoor said, ”Allah karim!” God is generous, he translated. “I get religious only when I’m transporting explosives.”“You mean we have weapons here,” I said, pointing at the sidecar. The notion made my chest tight.Mensoor chuckled and nodded. “Explosives. Enough to blow up half of Dushanbe. Hundred and fifty kilos of Semtex and one hundred antipersonnel mines.”The yellow beam of the motorcycle lights revealed two large moss-covered boulders, which formed a dam that threw the water to right and left of its course. The boulders also formed a natural bridge that we used to cross to the other side, bouncing over gullies until we reached a country road along the right bank of the creek. Three men, two of them in the traditional Uzbek garb, appeared a short distance ahead. Mensoor dismounted. He embraced each man, then introduced me. “Cousin Jawid,” Mensoor said, pointing at the thick-set middle-aged man. “He’s got a boat.” He turned to the other two men. “Munir and Ismet here are going to take the Yamaha off our hands.” Munir and Ismet untied the canvas cover on the sidecar and made approving noises. They exchanged a few words in Uzbek with Mensoor before they mounted the motorcycle and dashed off. Cousin Jawid led us to the boat, which turned out to be a sizeable flat-bottom vessel with an outboard motor. Jawid looked like a Moslem terrorist from central casting; a broad, flat, unshaven face, dark piercing eyes, a crooked kind of smile, and a thick mustache. This was quite apart from his breath—the pungent mixture of garlic and tobacco—that nearly knocked me down when I leaped into his boat. Mensoor cupped his hands and lit a cigarette. Jawid, a chain smoker, began paddling down the river even though he had a small outboard motor. With long even strokes, he steered the boat toward the middle. Once or twice he cursed when its flat bottom brushed a sandbar. He stopped paddling once we reached the channel of the river. Leaning sideways, he shut one nostril with a finger pressed alongside of it, and from the other expelled a ball of snot.Now we were being pulled downstream by the current. “Jawid’s son is a shahid,” Mensoor said. “A martyr.” He turned around and urinated off the stern. Mensoor continued: Jawid’s son and several other young men were killed in a government ambush. They were carrying food and supplies to the Taliban on the other side of the Amudaria River. “He was twenty,” said Jawid. “Left a wife and a year-old son.”“Too young to die, I said.“It’s not important when we die—only how we die,” said Jawid.“They all knew he was going to die,” Mensoor said. “An old fortune teller had melted lead in water and held it against the boy’s head. The lead formed the shape of a hand grenade! It was written.”Jawid said, “He loved Allah.” He wiped the back of his hand over his nose and sniffed.“They sacrificed a lamb,” Mensoor explained, “to show we are as loyal to God as the prophet Abraham was.”“We love God so much that for him we give up the thing we love most. And do it without expecting anything in return.”I said, “Your son must have loved his wife and kid?”“You can’t love anyone more than you love God,” Jawid said so simply that I understood he had absolutely no doubt about the truthfulness of his statement. “Not your wife, father, children, brothers, other family members. And mind you, you love God without expecting anything in return.”“What about the heaven and the virgins at the end of it,” I said.Mensoor now injected a slight tone of doubt. “One might get in trouble. The Holy Koran says you should not expect God’s mercy, if anyone is dearer to you than God, His prophet, and the struggle on the path of His righteousness.” How do you define the path of righteousness, I wondered. But I kept the thought to myself.“They are all with Allah now, my son and his buddies,” Jawid said solemnly, a cigarette point glowing in the darkness “Living in the celestial gardens of delight, sitting on thrones adorned with gold and served by youths who never grow old and who go round with jugs filled with pure drink. The drink that will give them no headache, nor will it weaken their bodies. And they will take fruits that please them—whatever they desire—and they will be accompanied by fair virgins with large eyes, beautiful as pearls hidden inside their shells.” Mensoor coughed. “Do you have children, Mister Todd?”“One son. He’s a teacher.”Mensoor nudged me and offered his flask. “Another shot of vodka before we go to sleep?”I took a couple of swigs and returned the flask. “Mensoor, why are we going by boat?” “There are checkpoints on the main roads,” Jawid replied. “You never know who we might encounter. Night is the time of unreason, we say, much more so than day.”After a while, he added: “The government is cruel. In Andijon, the troops mowed down the demonstrators, then removed corpses from the streets during the night. Shot to death the wounded before throwing all in a mass grave.”I unrolled a blanket that was foul-smelling and soft. I settled myself at the bottom of the squared-off hull and watched a shooting star fall and disappear. It was as if we were in the heart of the middle of nowhere. Lying down and looking at a sky of the palest lavender suggestive of the end of recorded time, I felt separated from whatever was left of my own history. It was a windless night. I was creeping toward Hector’s former controller and, as I closed my eyes, I fantasized about my capturing the traitor somehow. When I opened my eyes, all I could hear was the soothing babble of the dark river. The sides of the boat blotted all other noises from the outer world. Then my mind flashed to the last time I had rested at the bottom of a boat looking at the sky. We were on a small lake on the edge of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, Ken and I. The summer after we graduated from McKinley High. We took the boat to the middle of the lake. The world was asleep. Stars were a white dust. We were young and we opened our hearts to each other as I could never do later, even to Emily whom I loved more than all the wealth in the world. We craved fame. Ken as a composer. I wanted to work for the New York Times. Be one of the pundits who questioned important people on Meet the Press on Sunday morning. Where had it all gone—the subsequent years of adventure filled with optimism and excitement? What was I doing floating down the Sukhadria River with two IMU activists? I dozed off thinking of Emily. Why was it me she chose to marry when so many others had pleaded with her? She had something, not a glow exactly, but some air of mystery that you wanted to penetrate. But was she really beautiful or had I kept her beauty alive only in my eyes? I had no answer because I could no longer see her clearly in my mind’s eye. With my eyes closed, the darks instincts of my mind now took over and composed Amanda’s image from the memory of her warm and compliant body. Abruptly, my emotions swung to longing: the way she’d present herself, arching her back and then move against me, the stifled cries and the thrusts of her buttocks driving me crazy. Surely she could not have faked it all that time.I woke up shivering with a dawn chill. Wiping off a trail of saliva running down my cheek, I scratched at the skin of my chest, which was tormented by invisible fleas. The light from the east was creeping into the river valley. I saw Mensoor and Jawid prostrate themselves, facing Mecca for the Morning Prayer. “There’s a hydro-electric power plant further down,” Mensoor said later, nodding toward the vast expanses of water ahead.After a while, the Sukhadria River was more than two miles wide, gradually turning into the man-made Kumkurgan Lake. We approached the mouth of an irrigation canal on the western bank.“Oy… oy,” cried Jawid. He wiped his nose on his arm. “Inshallah.” 34I had no idea what to expect, but I kept recalling the photographs Holz had shown me. Bogumilov’s face had sharp features, untamed hair, a prominent nose and a strong chin. Oleg Vissarionovich Bogumilov. A cryptonym? The name the KGB gave to their Uzbek spymaster? It was the patronymic that had made me suspicious in the first place. Was that gallows humor, I wondered. Vissarionovich was Stalin’s patronymic. What if Rashidov turned out not to be Bogumilov? It would mean that I had been thrown off the scent. Was there another explanation? Churkin had said that Rashidov was Hector’s KGB control.As we navigated canals that linked the two rivers in the valley, I asked Mensoor about Rashidov. “He’s an old man,” Mensoor said in a laconic response. A few seconds later, Jawid said, “He’s done a lot for the cause. No protection money, no customs or troops to pay off, just a slice of the cake to IMU. ”“A very good man,” Mensoor said in Russian, then switched briefly to Uzbek.We reached Sherabad before noon. The only tense moment came after we disembarked and got into a waiting taxi. Almost immediately, we were caught up in heavy traffic. The bridge in front of us choked and red taillights stretched way ahead into the town. Plumes rose from hundreds of rusty exhaust pipes and their abrasive tang filled the air. Drivers leaned on their horns, cursing furiously.There was a flashing blue light ahead. “Checkpoint?” Mensoor said in alarm. “Just a traffic accident,” the driver said.I closed my eyes and dreamed of a cold shower and a change of clothes. When I opened them, Sherabad was a mirage. The sun was the deep yellow of an egg yolk. The temperature was over 100. Few men sat in chairs outside a teahouse, apparently ordering nothing. The sight brought memories of a visit to Central Asia years earlier when I wrote about their Muslim population refusing to accept, even to contemplate, the Soviet way of life. Something happened to communism in the furnace-heat, blinding sun all day long, the seat and the heaviness of the night.We passed the open market. Black-cloaked women squatted behind large clay jugs. From the sagging porches of shops that lined the street, beneath faded signs in Uzbek, ranged a sea of turbans—white, deep blue, purple, black and pink—some pumpkin-shaped, some flat and broad. And there were beggars around, an army of deformed humans with knobby limbs, some of them moving about on little wooden trolleys.Soon we entered a warren of mud shacks with corrugated metal roofs. The narrow streets were empty, except for prowling dogs and cats. The people escaped the burning sun.We came to a stop outside Farooq’s Auto Body shop.Farooq was a strikingly handsome man with aquiline features and a finely trimmed beard. He embraced Mensoor, shook hands with me. Farooq pulled his cell phone and flipped it open. The phone emitted a perky bleep and lit up with a light green glow. He pressed once on the keypad and went into the house. When he came out again, he was carrying a copper tray with three small handle-less cups. He said something in Uzbek to Mensoor, then turned to me. ”We must do this quickly.” Thirty minutes later, I sat between Mensoor and Farooq in a small pickup truck.By now it was past two o’clock. The heat was oppressive. I was sweating. The bazaar was deserted.We headed northwest, up a sharp incline. 35The house was on the western outskirts of the town. It was hidden by a wall of evergreens and shrubbery. I saw two closed-circuit cameras, one over the main entrance, the other discreetly placed at the corner west of it.We were admitted by a tall manservant in a flowing white tunic and white baggy shalvar kemeez. He had a long face and a mouthful of outsized teeth. He seemed to be more bodyguard than butler. The manservant winked to Mensoor who took off his shoes—apparently the rule of the house—and placed them on the family rack next to the entrance. “You don’t have to do it,” Mensoor said to me. “You’re a guest.”The manservant winked again and I realized he had an eyelid that was twitching uncontrollably from time to time.I followed Mensoor’s example.We were ushered to a large, airy room. Everything about it, I thought—thick oriental carpets, two divans covered with needlework counterpanes, emerald and orange cushions, potted plants sunk into big terra-cotta containers, palms, rubber plants, ferns, whatnot—everything signaled wealth. I thought about the dramatic contrast between the luxurious interior and an unostentatious, perhaps deliberately neglected exterior.I settled in a sumptuous leather couch. Scanning the room, my eyes were drawn to several framed photographs on top of a lacquered black cabinet. Only one was black and white, obviously a wedding picture in a silver frame, with all the signature touches of a provincial photographer: the young couple posing next to a vase of roses, their petals hand painted red and the stems green. The groom had his left hand lifted ever so slightly to make sure his watch was showing. In the center was the color portrait of a pretty women, slightly older than the bride in the silver frame. Here she was a well-groomed lady with mysterious eyes, long eyelashes, and black hair bouffant styled a la Jackie Kennedy. The remaining four photos showed the couple outside the UN headquarters; on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum; in front of the Smithsonian Castle. In the fourth photograph, she was alone, wearing a wide hat and a long floral skirt, her blouse partially unbuttoned, one hand lifted to close the blouse, a breeze playing across her face. Behind her, a big suspension bridge and a couple of minarets on the opposite side of the river. I concentrated on the man. I got up to take a better look, and my heart began to pound and leap. Was this Bogumilov? Good Lord! I remembered Bogumilov’s steely eyes, the strong chin, facial features, thick unruly black hair and long sideburns fashionable at the time. Could I be wrong?I closed my eyes and opened them again, concentrating my gaze on the man. God Almighty, I thought, there’s no doubt about it. Bogumilov had been Rashidov’s cryptonym.I felt I was close now—so close that I could almost see Hector in handcuffs being taken to Leavensworth. So close to be alarmed by the ruthlessness of my desire for revenge. I looked over my shoulder and said as casually as I was able to manage, “Is this Mr. Rashidov?”“Yes,” Mensoor said.I was right. Rashidov and Bogumilov were one and the same person. Get a grip on yourself, I thought. This was the moment I had dreamed about and I could think of nothing else: I had to get the traitor’s name. That was the only thing in life I wanted. “That’s his wife, Amra,” Mensoor said, pointing at the woman. “A beautiful woman, don’t you think?”“Mmm… yes, yes, very beautiful,” I said distractedly, without even looking at her.“She died from cancer.”“I’m sorry,” I said automatically. “Any children?”“One girl. Married. Her son drew that black cat,” Mensoor pointed at the child’s sketch of a black cat in a wood frame hanging on the wall.I glanced at the sketch, then slowly reviewed Rashidov’s photographs. “He was a rather good looking guy,” I said, just to keep the conversation going.“Ehh, he was much younger then.” “Yes, much younger,” another voice said. Rashidov had quietly entered the room. He walked with a cane, slowly, dressed in white linen trousers and maroon silk shirt. He was slightly stooped now, his head bald except for a gray halo. I noted pigmentation changing circles on the pate of his head. Had I met this man accidentally in the street, I had to admit, I would have never connected him to the young man in the photographs. Not in a thousand years. Not because he was now somehow shorter and older. It was the loss of hair that had altered his appearance much more than the routine ravages of time.Rashidov gave me a surprisingly firm handshake. He looked briefly at Mensoor and, with a quick nod, indicated that he wanted to speak to me in private. Mensoor excused himself and walked out.I stared at the photographs, seeking to reconcile two images. I’d dreamed this scene so many times, but in my dreams, of course, Rashidov was far more expansive and talkative, in fact he was eager to tell everything about Hector. I said, “Your wife was a beautiful woman.” “Yes,” Rashidov said. “She passed away three years ago.”“I’m sorry.” I paused a little for reasons of good taste. “I’m happy that you found the time to see me.”“Actually I didn’t quite understand the purpose of your visit when I was first contacted,” Rashidov said after he settled into a wooden chair with a high back. “But now you’re here and you’re welcome.”Evidently he was showing me the consideration due to a foreigner in a strange land. He craned his head toward the door and then turned to face me: “May I offer you green tea with cardamom. Perhaps Turkish coffee?” He picked up the glasses that hung around his neck, lifted them to his nose, and looked at me. “Or perhaps something more potent? Whisky or raki?” “Scotch, please, and a glass of ice water.” I was dying for a glass of ice water and a shot of whisky.The manservant must have been somewhere by the door for he appeared almost immediately to take orders.“Coffee for me,” Rashidov said. “And a small raki on the side. You must think me a hypocrite, Mr. Martin. I’m one of those Moslems who support Moslem tradition—but not religious orthodoxy.”The servant returned with a glass of cut crystal, a bottle of White Horse, a pitcher of ice water, a small cup of coffee, and a tumbler with raki on a silver tray.Rashidov dug into his pocket and pulled out a string of amber and silver worry beads. “Now,” he said and fixed his eyes on me.I found his inquisitive gaze somewhat disconcerting, as was the thumbing of the worry beads. I quickly summarized why my personal quest for truth had led me to Sherabad. I repeated what Churkin had told me. I wanted to put the whole thing to rest, I said. I owed it to my wife and to my son.Rashidov sat and listened, nodding from time to time. After I finished, we sat briefly in silence. He lit another cigarette and then started playing with his worry beads. “How old was your son at the time?”“He was seventeen. Always thought some monkey business was involved.”“Only one son?”“Yes.”“Hmm, seventeen. Difficult age,” Rashidov sighed. “At that age, children always blame the parents, don’t they? I know. When my wife died, my daughter blamed me—not that she’d ever say it, but I could feel it. Why didn’t I fly mom to the Mayo clinic? I’d taken Amra to the best Swiss hospital and had one of the most renowned oncologists from Sloan Kettering fly over to examine her. Too late. All they could recommend was palliative care.” He puffed on his cigarette and lighted a new one. “You friend Joseph helped arrange for the American oncologist. So you understand why I agreed to see you.”There was no end to surprises when it came to Joseph, I thought. I rubbed a palm across my face, feeling stubble. I was heading for a real beard. And I sympathized with Rashidov.“You have only one child?” I asked.He nodded—yes. “Here in Central Asia, we have lots of children. Partly due to poor education, partly vanity.”“Vanity?”“Yes, vanity. We all secretly seek immortality. Someone to remember you after you’re gone.” He stopped and looked at me deeply. “When you tell me you want to know the truth,” he said, not trying to conceal the sarcasm, “you already know the truth.”“Well, not quite.”He was now stirring his coffee for a full minute, I thought.“I’ll have to disappoint you,” Rashidov said with genuine sorrow. ”I had absolutely nothing to do with your wife’s death. It’s very unfortunate… I’m sorry. I learned about it after the fact. You already know more than I.”I waited for a while. Be straightforward, said an optimistic voice inside me. “Churkin told me you were the case officer of the agent inside the US embassy.”“Oh, did he?” He shook his head, neither yes nor no. Then his face became briefly a rictus of annoyance, I thought. “Well, yes. That’s true,” he said.“In that sense, you were a part of the little plot.”Rashidov winced. “I worked directly for the chairman. But let me assure you that I had no knowledge of their plans for a coup.”“I don’t follow.”“My role was limited. I collected the agent’s reports. I met him a few times. He lived in one of the diplomatic ghettos. All he had to do was slide a manila envelope under the permanently locked doors of the attic in his building. I’d come every day dressed as a maintenance man. My job was to check if there was an envelope waiting for me.” He paused. “Pour yourself another drink, please.”I wasn’t interested in another drink. I said, “How did my wife fit into all this?” “Well…. they had photographs of your wife and Professor Voronov at a concert. Evidence of nefarious CIA activities…”“Why give her a truth drug?”“As I remember, the chairman had to protect our agent. Believe me, nobody wanted to harm your wife. That’s for sure. I’d swear on my wife’s grave.” “To protect your agent?””Yes. Throw the mole hunters off the scent.”“Why her?”Rashidov paused a beat and then shrugged. “There are a number of ways to throw them off. Rumors, clever tricks. Sometimes you let the other side discover”—he made quotation marks with his fingers—“a bug so they’d become convinced that no human intel was involved. This agent was so important that the chairman felt it necessary to mislead our own service.” “His own service?”“Yes. What’s the point of having a fabulous agent in place if any two-bit blabbermouth could sink him?”“So what do you do?”“You know, people gossip. Nothing sinister, just bragging, you know, over lunch in the canteen. So you have to create illusions. As I already said, there was that photograph of your wife with Voronov. The chairman decided to have that little scene at the Prague just to make sure if there was going to be any gossip it would be about the American woman.”I choked a bit. After a moment I said, “When you administer these drugs, do you have to have correct dosages?”“Yes. There’s always a KGB physician present. That’s the rule.”“What if the dosage is incorrect?”Rashidov considered for a moment. “Impossible. That’s never happened,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re beating a dead horse, Mr. Martin. Even if there was a mistake made, we’ll never know. All material evidence was immediately destroyed.”“Like it never took place?”“Yeah.”Which got me to thinking about the next step. “Okay. Let’s say I accept this view,” I said. “It was an accident. But I hope you’d appreciate my interest in meeting the American who betrayed my wife. His actions weren’t an accident, they were deliberate.” The moment I said it, I sensed all was lost.“So you think betrayal has a face?” Rashidov thought for a while, busying his hands with serial rearrangements of his coffee cup, saucer and worry beads. When he continued, his voice didn’t turn hostile, but I knew I had crossed into enemy territory. “You’re asking me to betray the man who’s risked thirteen, fourteen years of his life working for me and my service, who gave us some of the best intelligence we’ve ever had. To be utterly frank, I think you’re out of your mind.”I just looked at him, said nothing. “Do I look to you like a man who’d blow a friend away, Mr. Martin?” Rashidov blew into the palm of his hand. He knew all about betrayals—I saw it in his eyes. I knew at that moment I’d never get anything out of him. I felt my very soul shriveling inside me. Rashidov cleared his throat. “If I could bring your wife back to life, I might even consider your request. But that’s impossible, isn’t it.” There was firmness in his voice, an indication that he’d made his decision. “Why not let the sleeping dogs alone? I think there must be a statute of limitation on everything under the sun.”I thought: there’s no statute of limitation on betrayal, on treason. But there was no point in arguing. I cast around for something to say that could lighten the atmosphere. All I came up with was a mumbled, “Maybe.” Rashidov’s eyes seemed to film over as though he had lost interest in our conversation. “As a rule, I have nothing but contempt for traitors,” he said after a while, apparently to soften the rebuff. “I don’t understand how they can live with themselves.”Here was an opening—one last chance, I thought—I should seize on. “Then why protect someone worthy of contempt?”Rashidov shook his head but kept silent. I watched him as he lit a cigarette. Blowing smoke up, he leaned slightly back and with his left hand brushed a flake of ash from the front of his shirt. Very cool, I thought.I pressed on, swallowing hard. “A traitor is someone who betrays his country, Mr. Rashidov. Russia is not your country.”“Hah!” He smiled bitterly. “My country!”“You can’t still feel loyalty to the country that discarded you like a squeezed lemon? Besides, it’s ancient history anyway.” I was openly pleading now. “What difference can it make to you?”Rashidov kept fingering the worry beads. With great slowness, he then turned his face to me. “You’re asking me to betray a human being. I can’t help you. I imagine it’s easier to betray a country than to betray a friend.”“You know what it takes to develop an agent, Mr. Martin,” he went on, after a pause. “You have to build a foundation of rapport and trust. Demonstrate concern for his well being. Show understanding for his motives and share at least some of his ideas. Give him as great a sense of security as possible. Yes, initially you’re pretending, but after a while a real human bond develops. The concerns become real. He trusts you and you trust him. I’ve learned to live with that and get a good night’s sleep, if you know what I mean.”I struggled to get the meaning of his speech through my skull, half knowing that it was an irrevocable NO. “Your loyalties aren’t clear to me, sir,” I said.He gave me a look, then put his hand on his forehead for a moment. “My dear Mr. Martin, aren’t we kind of getting off the subject? Ah, yes, my loyalties. That’s something I don’t intend to discuss with you.” “Right,” I said.I felt no anger toward this man, I thought. I was angry with myself. I had made a mistake. I had underestimated him. On the way over, I had concluded that the best way of dealing with a man like Rashidov was by being straightforward. I had imagined him helping drug smugglers transport Afghan opium across the border. I could have—should have, I thought—used old techniques to draw him out, make him talk. Why would a thoroughly corrupt former KGB officer, who evidently took bribes from drug traffickers, refuse to reveal the name of a traitor? What right did he have to take the high moral ground?I had failed to prepare. Not only that. I ended up, I have to admit, feeling sympathy for his position. I secretly admired him for protecting his spy and almost told him that. But I didn’t. With a surge of faint hope I thought I might salvage something—anything—by changing the subject. So I raised a generic question about money. “In the end, is it just the money?” I asked, keeping my voice lighthearted. Rashidov thought about this. “With the Americans, yes, it’s always the money,” he said, taking a deep breath. “We used money, too, especially toward the end when everything was going to the dogs. In Hector’s case, money may have not been the primary motive, I suspect. I’d say it was a classic recruitment, you know, when the reward a man expects is denied, he’s angry, furious. Wants to lash out. A few months after he commits his first betrayal, the promotion comes through.” He paused. “Money? Money became important later on…”Now Rashidov studied me more closely, as though he was trying to figure out something. “Well, as I recall, we put nearly two million dollars into his Swiss account. Millions of rubles into his Moscow account.” He chuckled, fingering his beads. “I’m sorry, my dear, that you traveled all this way for nothing.” I said, politely: “I’ve learned a few things.” He smiled with his mouth but his eyes were probing. They were old eyes, the lids wrinkled, deep pouches beneath them. The man was full of surprises, I thought, as we moved from the living room into the hall. Mensoor’s shoes were not on the rack. Rashidov said, “I wish we had met under different circumstances. I wish I could tell you about our struggle against the Karimov dictatorship and about our brave young men who are in the mountains. But that’s neither here nor there…”36The return journey turned into a near disaster. After leaving Rashidov, we retraced our canal journey. Mensoor fell asleep almost immediately. I sat silently, writing down in my notebook all I remembered from my conversation with Rashidov. Then I dozed off. I had come so close, I thought with a surge of sudden selfishness. If only scenarios—several of them—rolled in my mind’s eyes. Then came questions. Rather one question I couldn’t get out of my head – “Why Rashidov refused to betray his former agent?” – which later took the form of “Was it a matter of his view of himself, a matter of self-esteem.” I discovered I was clenching a fist. I have to relax, I said to myself, think about something else.The afternoon was waning fast. “Did you find what you’re looking for,” Jawid had asked me earlier, squatting Arab-style at my elbow. “Yes, in a way,” I said, realizing he was instinctively pouting his lips.“Hmm.” He responded in a non-committal nasal hum. I could have omitted the “in a way” part, I thought, because the search was over. What did it all add up to? The truth was that I had systematically avoided these questions even in the privacy of my mind. This was futile stuff, I knew, and to keep rehashing things over and over again was bound to drive me crazy.As far as I—Todd Martin—was concerned, this was it. Sure, Holz probably won’t give up, I speculated. That’s Holz’s business. But I was at peace. My duty was done. Rick could be proud of me.Lying on my back at the bottom of the flatboat with my eyes closed, I saw images of Rick; holding the teething baby Rick, Rick falling asleep on my chest, later looking for lady bugs in our backyard on Newark Street, or, completely unselfconsciously, trying to catch pigeons in Farragut Square. The angry teenager who thought I was a selfish bastard (“never been there for us”) and who was as good as lost for several years; at least I felt the grief that comes with losing a child. The grown son with whom I kept in touch by email. The never-ending pain.At dusk, we had reached Kumkurgan Lake. It was oppressively muggy and hot.“It’s going to rain,” Jawid said. “Look,” he added pointing at the eastern horizon where dark clouds were gathering fast. The boat moved in a smooth arc toward the eastern shore. When Jawid dug in his paddle, we snuck into a narrow canal. The crickets bleeped steadily about us. Fireflies darted. A slight breeze from the south brought in a scent of pines.I felt swept along by a mood of phlegmatic indifference—all I wanted was to go home.We halted at a ramshackle landing with a sign proclaiming we had reached the First Five-Year Plan collective farm. Decay was what the flaky sign—worn and peeling from the rain, sun, and wind—shouted to the world. It reminded me of a time when such signs were ubiquitous and I had been younger. We rested at the home of a local grade-school teacher. A group of kids was sitting on a low stone wall around it. Several dirty motorcycles were nosing at its side, evoking neglect and indifference. One of the boys had a radio, which was playing “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.” The teacher had the long face and tragic eyes of the Middle East. He immediately took Mensoor aside for a conspiratorial chat while his flat-chested wife, looking tired and sullen, silently served lamb roast, round bread, young onions, and mare’s milk. We ate in silence. When we finished, the wife reappeared, took away my plate, glass, and knife and fork, and disappeared for a long time. Later, she returned to collect other dishes.“Fatima is very religious,” Mensoor whispered by way of explanation. “Dishes used by infidels have to be washed not once but seven times.” As we prepared to leave, Mensoor said, “We’re taking a shortcut this time. We’ll go to Khodza-Kulusum and then cross over to Kara-Kuz. There’s an unofficial border crossing, used only by smugglers.” He laughed. “These are dirt roads, no military patrols.” We bundled ourselves up for a motorcycle ride through the mountains. I noted we were returning with the sidecar again fully loaded. Loaded with what? Raw opium had already been refined into morphine base, which came in the form of brick-sized blocks, which we were now transferring to a heroin lab somewhere outside Kara Kuz in eastern Tadjikistan.It was a dark night, with the moon hidden by the clouds. I held onto Mensoor as we rode north. I could smell the cigarette smoke on his clothes. My mind was trying to think my way through the conversation with Rashidov. The road was empty. We had seen no other cars. After passing through the sleepy kishlak of Oy Bulak, the road—half dirt half asphalt—rose toward Khodza-Kulusum. We stopped so that Mensoor could smoke and relieve himself. “Now comes the tricky part,” Mensoor joked confidently and slapped my back. “But it’s easy if we do it right.”He slowed down when we approached the intersection in the town center of Khodza Kulusum. The main road swung to the right, going due east. The sign read Kara-Kuz, which was a small town on the other side of the border. Mensoor turned right, but after about ten or fifteen seconds, slowed down and then stopped. He mumbled something indistinct as if he were rethinking—reorganizing the trip—all in a brief couple of seconds. I peered into the distance. There was a police cruiser on the horizon. I could make out its form: the light bar made a distinctive silhouette even far in the distance.Mensoor cursed again, made a slow u-turn back to the intersection, and took a sharp right. “We’ll cross at Naubad,” he criedNow he gunned the engine and we sped now up a narrow dirt road going north, wheels spinning furiously and sending up great clouds of dust and gravel.Thunder rumbled distantly and lightning glinted along the northern horizon; the rain was approaching. Then I heard a siren somewhere far behind us sounding off. “Police,” I cried and tightened my grip on Mensoor’s body.The road had become difficult, full of turns, dips, and rises. I turned my head sideways and glanced back. All I could see through a cloud of dust were the headlights of the police cruiser. Uncanny, to realize that you’re being hunted. “They’re coming after us,” I shrieked in panic. “Hang on,” Mensoor yelled as the motorcycle bolted over a hump and into the air. When it came down hard, the springs seemed to be near a breaking point.I was certain that something had gone wrong, that Mensoor had lost control, but everything was happening too quickly to feel anything but nausea. The tension of the ride was knotting every muscle in my body. I thought of Rick, asleep in a room that used to be his when he was a boy, now waking up and reading the newspaper: TRIBUNE REPORTER JAILED ON DRUG SMUGGLING CHARGE. Or even worse: US REPORTER DIES, SMUGGLED AFGHAN COCAINE. A sort of fear gripped me—fear that these headlines would make my son ashamed of me.I was dreaming.The police cruiser was gaining ground. The siren became louder. From the corner of my eye, I caught the muzzle flash of automatic pistols fired from the car. I didn’t hear the sounds of the shots, just an odd smacking noise in the air around my head, which I took to be bullets passing close by. I looked back again and an icy flood of raw terror spread through my veins. “They are catching up,” I yelled. We’re going to die, I thought. “My gun!” Mensoor hollered over the roar of the engine. With his left hand, he clumsily thrust the automatic pistol into my hands, which were clutching his body. “Strelyay, blyad!” (Shoot, dammit). “Strelyay!”I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never fired a pistol in my life. We were saved by something that approached divine intervention, I thought; at least I believed at that point that providence had extended us a helping hand. Off to the left were open tracks leading to a footpath into the woods. As we lurched sharply to the left and charged through, Mensoor screamed again, “Watch out!” Ten seconds later, and the cops would have caught up with us. Instead, we cut through the thicket. A branch struck me on my left temple and almost knocked me off the bike. Other branches ripped off the upper part of my chapan. I dropped the pistol and clutched Mensoor’s body.The gunfire followed us. Suddenly, all was black. The whole world for me became the column of light the motorcycle pushed before us. I heard bullets thump into the trunks of trees. Then a volley of bullets hit the sidecar, shredding the outside tire. Shit, shit, shit, I kept saying to myself, wanting to make sure my brain still worked. “Oh my God,” I cried.Whenever I had hoped for divine intervention, it had never worked out in the past. But now it did, I thought. We continued to move forward, but at a much slower pace, because the sidecar, having little traction on its rim, kept swerving to the right and pulling us off the path and twigs and branches scraping the skin on my face and arms. Cursing continuously, Mensoor slowed down even more, as though negotiating each root and undulation in the ground. After a while the, gunfire ceased. Mensoor stopped and cut the engine. Following the wind-rushing roar of the chase, the silence was eerie. “Fucking morons,” he chuckled as we dismounted, then uttered something in his native tongue and laughed contemptuously. “One cockeyed thing after another.” He tapped and lit a cigarette and pulled on it, all the while talking about the morons never having a chance. I thought he wanted me to think he was the kind of man who was stimulated by being shot at and being missed. The dark now seemed complete, as if the world had been switched off. “Are you hurt?” “No.” “Allah karim!” “Yes, Allah karim.” God’s merciful.He said after a while, “That wasn’t too bad, now was it?”I grunted. My eyes were growing used to the darkness.It started to rain.Sheltered by a tree, I leaned against its trunk, drawing up my knees against my chest, and covering myself with what remained of my chapan. I felt like we’d been on the run for weeks. The image of that police cruiser with orange lights flashing was in the back of my mind. “I lost your pistol, dropped it back there,” I said. “I’m sorry.”“Inshalah,” he said. “We won’t need it. We’re a few hundred meters away from the border.”There was so much I suddenly wanted to ask. We had been through a lot tonight: we had shared danger, been shot at. “We were lucky back there,” I said.“Nah,” he said dismissively. He was not talkative. “I’ve done this trip many times.”“Well… for a minute or two I’d worried that my son was going to read in the newspapers that his father died while smuggling Afghan cocaine,” I said.He said, chuckling, “You forget we’d kept your passport in Dushanbe. There’s no way you’d be identified.”This made me conscious of my absurd get-up, the torn shirt and those ridiculous trousers clinging to my skin and my muddied sneakers and chapan. My black cap was gone.“Rest up,” he replied curtly.The drizzle soon turned into a tropical downpour. It lasted for fifteen minutes or so, and then suddenly stopped. There was a whiff of damp earth in the air, of fresh water and the soft rot under logs. Now the insects were buzzing, the roads and crickets making their noises.“The smuggler’s moon is out,” Mensoor said, pointing upwards to the thin rays of light, which penetrated through the lush tangle of leaves and ivy and boughs of secondary growth. He checked the spare tire and muttered indistinct curses.I said later: “How do you know Joseph?”“I don’t. We met once, a few years ago. But his reputation is golden, I can tell you. Never a kopek missing. Never once.”After a while, we pushed the motorcycle to a clearing basking in the milky light of the moon. Mensoor worked methodically to detach the sidecar, which I helped him hide in the bushes. We covered it up with loose branches, twigs, and half rotten leaves.“Just to remember the place,” he said as he marked a tree trunk with his knife. “We’ll have to come back for it.”We rode later into Tajikistan with lights turned off. Faint fingers of dawn were making cracks in the sky. On the outskirts of Kara Kuz, Mensoor turned on the headlight and became noticeably relaxed. We stopped at a cluster of houses where he checked in with his contacts and presumably informed them about the location of the sidecar.We rolled through a ruby dawn into the Dushanbe valley.The chaikhana was closed. We went to the nearby home of Rifat, the manager. He offered to make coffee, but all I wanted was to wash myself and sleep. I discarded my borrowed clothes and stared at myself in the mirror above a tiny sink in the bathroom. My dense beard made me look slightly disreputable; I was beginning to look like a Taliban. When my head hit the pillow, a blissful exhaustion overcame me immediately. 37The Russian fall arrived in August.It was raining when we landed at Domodyedovo in the late afternoon. I shivered while waiting in line for a cab and wondered if I’d catch a cold. The sky was the color of wet cement. The air was damp. People were wearing plastic raincoats and carrying umbrellas. Moscow’s weather, I knew from experience, was prone to sudden and sharp changes. The rain followed me, spitting insistently on the windshield as the cab struggled through the rush-hour traffic. The city looked and felt different. Was it the sight of the bleak outskirts? Or was it the grayness that seemed to mirror my mood swing. It took us more than an hour to reach the Ukraine Hotel. I was happy to be welcomed by small luxuries—bathrobe, heated towel rail, shampoo and body lotion. I felt I needed a drink badly. On the flight back, I had taken stock of my journey, and concluded that I’d finally reached the end of the line. I thought over what Rashidov had told me. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that the whole journey to Sherabad had accomplished nothing. I was no closer to the mole than I’d been before. It was a somber thought and it brought me in one swoop back to Page’s idea of using the rumors of Professor Voronov’s disappearances as the starting point for an extended feature examining the new world of nuclear terror. This now appeared as a far more attractive prospect than I thought only yesterday. Yesterday I knew I was mildly deceiving myself in order to salvage something of my vanity. Today, I was excited by the story. I decided to drive to Podmoskovye to visit the professor the very next day. But almost as soon as I thought this, my mind was jerked away. I thought of Amanda. “Not an easy person to know or to like,” she had said about herself. Which led me to play a game with myself: did she or didn’t she leave a message for me at the desk.There were no messages from Amanda, but there were several from Barbara asking me to phone her. First, I called Joseph, but he was out for the evening. Then I called Voronov’s daughter Vera. Her dad was feeling better and I was welcome to come by the next morning. We talked for a while, and she cautioned me that Voronov had Parkinson’s, which sometimes affected his mind, but, she added, they were temporary lapses. She gave me detailed instructions how to reach her dacha. “Todd, darling!” Barbara exclaimed when I finally reached her. “Where have you been? The hotel said you’d checked out.”“Doing some reporting.”“Oh God,” she gasped. “Are you sitting down?”“I’m sitting down.”“You’ve been fired! I’m sorry. Really…”“I figured that was coming… shit!” “Should I read you Kevin’s message ““No. Fuck Kevin.” I knew that I had information Page wanted.She said cautiously, “He was quite upset when I talked to him Monday.”“Would you mind sending him a short message?” I used to compose my messages on the telex keyboard—telex was the principal means of transmitting information when I worked in the bureau—then listened to the steel drum cluttering interrupted by the ping at the end of each line. I waited for a moment, imagining I was writing my telex message: “PROPAGE EXMARTIN: FYI FOUND OLD PROF ALIVE AND KICKING AT HIS DACHA. PLAN TO HAVE LONG TALK WITH HIM BEFORE RETURNING HOME BY LABOR DAY CHEERS.” I felt a stab of shame. It was not exactly lying; I was merely arranging information to my advantage. Kevin would naturally assume, I figured, that I had found Voronov this very day.Barbara said, “What does this mean?”“It means I’ve done what he’d asked me to do.”“Whew.”“Listen, did you have dinner? I’m famished, but I don’t feel like eating alone.” Barbara snorted. “It’ll be late. Chechen guerrillas just shot down a Russian military helicopter with more than one hundred persons on board. Apparently no survivors.”“So expect lots of saber rattling.”“Yup. The Russians are talking about taking out Chechen hideouts in Georgia.”“Okay. I’ll walk over to the office in a little while.” Standing under the hot shower, hearing the sound of rushing water, I felt cleaner even before I applied soap. Afterward, I toweled, shaved, put on fresh clothes, and glanced at the mirror. I looked fine, I thought, despite the wrinkles and creeping gray hairs. I watched TV for a while, took the elevator down to the lobby and had a vodka tonic at the bar, and then walked over to the office at a leisurely pace.Barbara jumped up when I entered the office. “Incredible!” She cried, waving a sheet of telex paper: “Look!”The message read: PROMARTIN EXPAGE: YOU HIT THE BALL OUT OF THE PARK. COMPLIMENTS ALLROUND. PHIL DELIGHTED. EXCELLENT WORK CHEERS.” “Boy,” she shook her head in mock amazement. “Last week you’re fired. Now you’re the toast of the town. I don’t get it. But I’m happy for you.”I laughed and caught her eye. “Does this mean I could use the old Lada for another day or two.” “That’s what it means, I guess.” She rummaged through her drawer until she found the car keys.I pocketed the keys and said: “Where shall we have dinner?”“You’d like the Aerostar Hotel. They fly in fresh lobster from Canada.” In the car she said, “So, when are you going home?”“Saturday,” I said. “I’ll have a little time to tie up loose ends.”“Anything I can do for you?” “Could you ask the translator to book a seat for me on Lufthansa to Frankfurt, and United to Washington.”Before we reached the restaurant, she said. “Nobody uses telexes anymore or writes that gobbledygook. Except you and Kevin.”“It’s a lifelong habit, I guess,” I said. Whenever I had to write a message, I automatically used compacted phrases.“Why cheers,” Barbara sneered. Cheers always made me smile. It was an expression I never used in everyday life. Never. Yet I invariably signed off messages with cheers.I shook my head. “I guess it’s something that dates me.” 38 On Thursday, I drove to Podmoskovye to see Professor Voronov. In the morning sunlight, the sounds of the great city retreated and were replaced by the creaking of the branches and the pungent barnyard smells of the soil. Black and white cows grazed by the road. The daily wash hung from clotheslines near wooden houses. I kept a pleasant, sedate pace, wiggling along a river and passing flat potato fields and villages of dark cabins with painted eaves and gardens of tomato poles and sunflowers. I turned right after passing a tiny country church, its azure dome studded with gold stars and found myself on a dirt lane that led to the dacha.Voronov’s daughter Vera, in a lilac-colored blouse with a bow, led me to the garden. “He’s been suffering from acute depressions,” she whispered. “He’s better now—taking lithium.” I felt as if we were in a separate far-off world; birds clucked and rustled around us. The air was humid and sweet. Everything was hushed.Vera spoke softly. “He had to be hospitalized. Even tried to kill himself. All this was kept very private, of course, but please avoid any mention of my daughter. Also, play along when he talks about the shifting borders of the mind. He’s changed. Imagine, my father accepts the disciplines of astrology and magic as worthy of study.” She shook her head resignedly. The notion of things foreordained can disturb the balance of the most rational of men, and Voronov was certain among them.The professor embraced me. His hair was grayer, thinner at the top, and the skin around his eyes was creased like crumpled tissue paper. The sounds of Bizet’s Symphony in C major were floating out from somewhere inside the house. I complimented him for a very clear recollection of the time when our paths briefly crossed all those years ago. He replied with a rueful smile, “Alas, my short-term memory is not nearly as good. I was sorry to hear about your wife,” he said. “Joseph Davidovich told me. You’ve seen him, of course.” “Yes, “ I said. “Joseph’s a banker now. ”I saw a flicker of irritation in his face. “He was one of my most gifted grad students. I never thought he’d end up doing banking!” He liked his dry lips.I said, “Lives like a grand duke. Fantastic?”“Vera, where’s that bottle of Courvoisier? And do make us Turkish coffee,” he cried after his daughter, ignoring my remark. “She told me you are doing something about non-proliferation,” he said, turning to me.“Yes.”“That’s good,” he said, leaning his head back and looking up at the sky. “We have too many bombs. The old-timers like myself, we still feel responsible. Younger colleagues say we’re obsessed by guilt. True. Now they make bigger and better bombs, but responsibility is distributed so thinly that nobody feels any guilt. You know, I still have vivid nightmares about the fusion of tritium and deuterium, I can see millions dead, great cities wiped out. The survivors facing slow death from the fallout—from strontium ninety, plutonium two thirty-nine, cerium one forty-four, barium one forty. From tidal waves, firestorms, temperature changes, droughts, erosion, typhoid, cholera, God knows what.”“Surely things are better now than twenty years ago,” I said. He closed his eyes as if praying, then started shaking his head. “While we’re enemies, the nuclear danger was minimal.”“You think it’s greater today?”“I’m talking about the sense of inevitability. War’s been a test for all technological developments since the dawn of time. Think about it. Besides, wars are unavoidable—in terms of national pride, or in the competition for scarce energy or resources or markets, to name a few.” I remembered his pet theory—he had told me years ago that he had worked out a mathematical proof that a technological civilization lasts about 100 plus years before it self-destructs—and I let him talk. He had also offered a mathematical proof to refute Stephen Hawking’s claim that things can disappear inside a black hole without leaving any traces. But I had no mental equipment for such discussions and much of what he said was way above my head. To be honest, my mind was a complete blank. I looked around the garden, which overlooked the woods and a stream. I watched Vera bring Turkish coffee in small cups. I thought: last time we talked, the professor had been full of optimism; now he sounded like he’s too much of a downer.Voronov picked up the Courvoisier Napoleon bottle to pour me another drink. His hands started shaking so violently that I jumped up and took the bottle from his hands.We talked about the economy and world affairs, and he remembered jokes from the past. When we finished coffee, he turned both cups upside down. “I’m learning to read the future,” he said with a shy smile. “Sort of like reading the tea leaves.” But when he looked at his cup, his face became contorted. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came. Then he suddenly clamped his hands on top of his bowed head and sighed for a long time. I was silent for a long time. The plaintive sounds of Mozart’s clarinet concerto floated out from the house.“Just ignore an old man. I haven’t talked to anyone since Tara’s death.” Tears welled up in Voronov ‘s eyes. I waved to Vera. “Papa tires easily,” Vera cast a disapproving glance at me. She had warned me, her glance seemed to say, that Parkinson’s and dementia affected his mind.I thought she was also signaling that I should be leaving soon. Then the old man began to ramble. He shook his head, as though to fight his own dark thoughts. I didn’t know what further to talk to him about, so I thanked him for his hospitality, said it was time for me to leave, sighed, and got to my feet.He lifted his gaze. “Give my best to your lovely wife,” he said.I said, “I certainly will.” I avoided Vera’s eyes. 39 I returned to Moscow in the afternoon. It suddenly seemed vitally important for me to look through the old arms control files if I was to do a big piece, as per Kevin Page’s instructions. I went to the bureau and worked for a few hours. First I hurriedly glanced at the headline news, scrolled through the day’s news—skirmishes in Afghanistan; Saddam’s WMDs and the need for regime change, talk of diplomacy and UN inspectors—before spending more time on the NBA standings, the won-lost column, the percentages, and the games behind. Then I moved to Dow Jones and the stocks that were in my Roth IRA account. That done, I began rummaging through the old files inside gunmetal cabinets, inhaling the smell of old paper, of faded time, trying to find my way back across the chasm. In a way, it was a perverse thing to do—leaf through the yellowish clippings recounting human efforts over the years to avoid a nuclear war. The problem is that this type of activity does not occupy your complete attention—it allows a portion of your mind to wander. Did politicians believe in their public pronouncements? Or were they merely manipulating the public? All the while mega tonnage soared, missile throw-weight quadrupled, and ever deadlier weapons were introduced: Titan, Poseidon, Minuteman, Scud, SS-9, MX, SS-18 MIRVs. I found a strange kind of innocence about my own stories. And yet, and yet, sweeping my eyes over all those jazzed-up, half-true accounts left me with a feeling that man is capable of finding rational solutions to intractable problems, as Kennedy and Khrushchev did by agreeing on some basic rules to avoid an Armageddon. Yes, sirree, the MAD concept was an appropriate metaphor. You’d have to be mad to start a war that would result in a Mutually Assured Destruction. But then again, as the old professor had insisted, it’s in our DNA to repeat the same mistakes even after we know better. When I returned to the hotel, there was a message from Joseph waiting. He asked me to lunch at his house the next day.Just after nine the next morning, while I was getting ready to go down to breakfast, Joseph’s secretary called. Regrettably, she said, the lunch had to be cancelled. Twenty minutes later, as I was sipping coffee in the restaurant, a waitress brought a phone to my table. Could I meet Joseph at two in the afternoon, the secretary asked. At his in-town place. She gave me the address; it was right off Old Arbat, in the center of the city.“Certainly.”Finishing my coffee, stopping by shops that catered without inhibition to an affluent clientele—diamond jewelry, expensive old wines, cashmere sweaters-- I had a vague premonition. Everything was not well; I was no longer playing my own game. 40Old Arbat was crowded on a humid overcast day in late August. Fashionable crowds and foreign tourists were strolling up and down. It was hard to find a parking space in that neighborhood. I finally swerved into a narrow side street and left the Lada in a no parking zone outside an antique shop some fifty feet away from Old Arbat. I lingered for a while, looking at Russian icons in the shop window before I was assaulted by a powerful smell of fried onions and rancid oil from a small restaurant next door. Joseph’s pied-a-terre was easy to find. Near the entrance to the building, I caught a glimpse of a shaved head at the periphery of my vision. I spun around to take a better look. The man was no longer on the opposite side of the street.I entered the building. Without waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Another of Joseph’s bald, young bodyguards opened the door. “The chief will be with you in a minute,” he said and led me into the living room. A perfect pied-a-terre, I thought. Swedish light oak furniture. Tall windows with net curtains and buff velour drapes. The carpet that felt springy underfoot. Antique vases, icons, and other knick-knacks. Painting covering every square inch of space on two walls. After I quick inspection I realized these were worked of Soviet underground artists from the sixties and seventies: Zverev, Rabin, Sitnikov, Yakovlyev, Sidur, Neizvestny, Krasnopyevtsev. Joseph was all business when he walked in. He suit was gray summer-weight wool with a silky weave and a slight sheen. A pink-red Hermes tie. He looked tired, older than his fifty years. The words “bad mood” might as well have been stamped on his lined, round face. “You like my flowers?” Joseph asked, pointing at two colorful pastels on the wall. ”Done by Yakovlyev.”“Very nice,” I said.“You know, he was nearly blind when I met him…in the loony bin,” he said. ”Lost more than eighty per cent of his vision. But he loved to paint: flowers and sailboats and portraits. They said he was crazy.”“How could he do it when he was nearly blind?”“Don’t know. But I love his work.” He paused. “Now, how about a drink,” he said.I said, “I’ll have a vodka martini. Heavy on the vermouth, please.”Joseph turned a brass catch of a neatly fitted cabinet and a bar opened up with various niches for bottles and implements. With his back to me, he fixed a vodka martini. But something in the way he moved forewarned me that my friend had something important on his mind.“We have to talk,” Joseph said, after taking his first sip, his tone reserved. “Rashidov was murdered yesterday.” “Murdered?!”He took his time, letting the silence make me squirm a bit. “A single bullet. Mensoor’s upset. Lots of other people, too.”I sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that. How did it happen?”“Nobody knows. They’re speculating the shot came from a passing car. It all happened very quickly, outside his house. The servant heard nothing. They said a sound suppressor was used. ”“A professional job?” “Looks like it.”I hesitated.“What do the papers say?”“There’s nothing in the papers.”I said, “Who would want to kill Rashidov?”“That’s what I’d like to know.” He waited for a moment before continuing. “Local police are speculating he was killed by IMU militants, which is ridiculous, of course. Rashidov was IMU’s major fund-raiser.”“What does Mensoor say?”Joseph leaned forward, opened his mouth to speak and then apparently decided against it.We were silent for a while. Then he went on as if he hadn’t heard my question.“One obvious possibility is Karimov’s secret police,” Joseph said, staring at the carpet. “They eliminate someone and blame IMU ‘terrorists.’ Real simple. But some people are wondering whether it’s a coincidence that the hit came a day after he met with you.”I laughed uncomfortably. What on earth was he getting at? “I don’t see what that’s got to do with me!” I heard the sound of my voice and I knew I didn’t sound as confident as I wanted to.His gaze lifted to me inhospitably, as if we were playing a game of truth and dare, and said slowly, “You tell me?” Suddenly I had a feeling I was being watched closely. I felt quickening of my pulse. “For fuck’s sake, Joseph, that’s preposterous!” Stupid motherfucker, I fumed inwardly.I could see him hesitating. “Mensoor was with you all the time, I know. He met you at the airport and put you on the plane back. But we have had several strange incidents, starik, and one’s got to wonder if these are all coincidences. The Patriarch’s Pond woman. The hoods tailing you. Rashidov. Isn’t it odd that people you’re looking for end up dead?” The phone rang. He picked it up and then put his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’ll be only a minute,” he said turning to me. When he resumed, he acted as if he hadn’t asked me a question. “One more thing, starik.” He pulled a face. “Your girlfriend is not who she claims to be. Volkov tells me she is a NOCK, a CIA agent living under non-official cover.”I forced a smile to my lips. “I don’t know. I don’t know who she is. I only know what she told me and she didn’t tell me the truth.” Joseph scratched the bridge of his nose with his little finger. He got to his feet and walked to the window. “Strange,” he murmured, looking out to the street. “Know what I’m saying? Some very powerful people are now checking all possible angles. Volkov and his friends are quite agitated. They say you’re some kind of a decoy.”“For God’s sake, Joseph! That’s crap!” He turned, staring sharply at me. “I’m in a very awkward position, starik. I vouched for you. You know what I’m saying. Now I’m looking for explanations.”To this I had no answer ready, and we shared a somewhat awkward silence.I said, “It could have been an act of vengeance? A jealous husband? Unpaid debts. Who knows. Some local asshole settling accounts…”“This looks like a professional job, starik. The cops have found a man’s wig and a halat. In the ladies’ room at the Samarkand airport. They believe the assassin came from the outside. Officially they blame the IMU, which is more convenient for them.”Joseph paused. He said after a while, his voice going from friendly to officious, I thought: “Is there is anything else I should know about your trip?”It was a moment before I could take this in. If Joseph suspected me, what was I being suspected of?I had to rein in my instinct to lash out. “I’ve been with Mensoor every minute of the day. We were never within a hundred miles of the Samarkand airport.”Joseph didn’t react.“We almost got killed, for Christ’s sakes.” “Yes… Mensoor told me.” “It could have been an old feud, or—” I hesitated, searching for a more delicate phrase for mafia battles over the drug trade. “Perhaps, business rivals? I understand Rashidov was helping in the trans-shipment of Afghan opium to Europe.” Joseph shook his head—no. “The motive is missing.”“Money, for one.”“Not likely!” Joseph gave a small derisive laugh, and then he frowned. “Is there anything else?”“I don’t know,” I said. I could not ignore the sudden hard edge our conversation had acquired. Suspicion oozed through the subtext. Succumbing to an impulse to point out the darker side of Joseph’s business, I said, “But violence isn’t something unusual among people like Rashidov and Mensoor. You know that.”“Don’t follow.” Joseph stiffened and raised an eyebrow.“They operate outside the law. You yourself said so.”Joseph’s expression went blank. “They were fine when you needed their help,” he said, and I knew him well enough to recognize that studied blandness as a sign of anger. His words filled me with deep fatigue. Of course your customers are criminals, I wanted to say. But a voice inside my head said, don’t go there! You went into it knowing full well who you had dealings with.“Yes, they are customers,” he said as though guessing my thoughts. “Because they trust me. The only thing that matters in my business, starik, is trust. We handle millions of dollars and euros and pounds, sometimes without any receipts. ”“Isn’t that called money laundering?” I instantly regretted saying this, but the arrow had left the bow and there was no way of retrieving it. I could see my question got Joseph’s back up. The features of his face suddenly took on an uncompromising cast. “I don’t have to justify myself to you,” he said with a frosty smile. We sat in silence for about thirty seconds. I hoped for the balance to return between us. “Let me tell you a story,” Joseph suddenly said. “Ten years ago, we had no way of transferring money out of Russia. So I had to take a suitcase of dollars and deutschemarks to Zurich. Bribe people along the way, of course, but that’s another story. So I’m in Zurich. In this bank—all marble and modern art and clerks dressed better than members of the Russian cabinet. Now let me ask you: do you think these fine people ever once asked me about the source of the money? No! They happily took it. They took the money the Nazis stole from the Jews. They took the money from Mobutu, Mubarak and other thieves. The Mafias too: Italian, American, Russian, Albanian, Romanian.”I raised my hand to suggest that I was prepared to backpedal.“Hang on for a sec,” he said. “The Swiss are the gold standard in banking. And you want me to ask my clients where their money comes from?” “Sorry,” I said, sensing that the survival of our mutual affection was being seriously imperiled. We were no longer who we’d been when we’d known each other long time ago. Our friendship has gone through numerous vicissitudes over the years, our conversations now and before have changed the shape our minds. What never changed, I had to admit, were my reasons for seeking his company: which was to advance my own agenda. Does that, I wondered, raise the unpleasant issue of the falsity of our friendship?“Then there’s that mysterious client in America who had you followed,” Joseph said. “Volkov had his hackers check it out, without success. Whoever was at the other end of that email address knows how to maneuver through the entrails of the Internet without leaving fingerprints.”In the silence that ensued, Joseph lifted his gaze toward the ceiling as though he wanted to allow the anger of the exchange to dissipate. A lock clicked from somewhere nearby, loud enough to wake the dead. It was Volkov, letting himself in.41 “The traffic is horrible,” Volkov said, placing a brown attaché case on a chair.He walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of Perrier, than eased himself into an armchair opposite me, observing me with his steady, pale blue eyes. “Let’s get to the point,” Joseph said.Volkov grabbed the attaché case, pulled a photograph from it, and put it on the coffee table in front of me. It showed people drinking and chatting beneath a striped umbrella in a sidewalk café. On closer inspection, I recognized Amanda sitting opposite a man who looked like the blond athletic man I saw her talking to at Barbara’s party.“You know this man?” Volkov’s smile intended no warmth. “I saw him at a party here a few weeks ago.” Volkov said, “ His name is Eric Rhein. He’s CIA. So is the lady you call Amanda. Both specialize in hi-tech espionage. He works under a diplomatic cover; she’s illegal, as we say. Your lady has a master’s degree in biochemistry—not journalism.” “What makes you think she’s CIA?” Her name made my features tighten as I recalled her unexpected departure.Volkov laughed out loud. “Our people had them under surveillance in Brussels last year. Just for your information, the two were lovers at the time.”Learning intimate details second-hand about someone I cared for made me uncomfortable—it felt like discovering compromising photos of your lover in an old chest in the attic. But the question I couldn’t get out of my head – “Was she working for Holz?” – now took the form of “Was she feigning all those orgasms?” People are known to be able to do it—feign affection, even feign orgasm. Perhaps our affair had developed—with me being an unwitting partner—as part of a crazy plan concocted by Holz.I said, “Quite frankly, I don’t care.” “Pfft,” Volkov said with contempt, his index finger swinging between himself and Joseph. “We care.”“Why?”Joseph said, “Important business customers of ours want to know who’s behind Rashidov’s murder. You don’t mess around with these people. When it comes to things like this, my friend, Moscow’s not a big city. It’s an amazingly small town. No place to hide. I think it must be the same in Washington.” Volkov puffed at his cigarette, watching smoke wreathe the lamp on the side table. He went on: “We’ve picked up a rumor that foreigners, using Russian proxies, recently hired a known hit man here in Moscow. This is something of interest to our security services.” I stared at Joseph in disbelief, pointing my finger at Volkov. “Is he trying to say that I’ve hired a hit man?”Volkov glowered at me. He evidently found my gesture very offensive.“Hey, nobody’s blaming you, starik,” Joseph said a little awkwardly, I thought, as if trying to change the subject. “It’s just that we’re looking for a rational explanation.” He turned to face Volkov. “Wait! I told you this guy fucking saved my fucking life.” He turned to me: “You know, I bet Radomir Pavlovich the other day that you don’t even know what I’m talking about!”I turned to Volkov who nodded noncommittally.I had no recollection of ever saving Joseph’s life. I always thought this was one of Joseph’s hyperboles, an artful reference to the thousand dollars I once gave him to bribe a housing inspector. “You mean that thousand dollars?” “Fuck one thousand dollars.” Joseph knitted his brow. “Then what?”Silence hung in the room like a weight.Joseph sighed, then gave Volkov a long look, nodding. A painful smile flickered. “So I win, Radomir Pavlovich. Fuck your mother, I told you he doesn’t remember!” “Remember what?” I said.“Amazing really when you think of it!” Joseph got up and began pacing. He halted by the window and stared out to the street for a while. “Remember I was limping when we first met, I had a small cut on my left foot,” he said when he returned to his seat. I nodded—yes.“The doctor put medication on it,” he continued patiently. “Said I must keep the wound clean and not move around. I moved, as you know. Remember the day when the mounted police charged the crowd in Pushkin Square and we ran to my place? Well, the cut was quite deep, but it didn’t hurt. How it got infected I don’t know. You don’t feel much when gangrene sets in. Suddenly, I had to have streptomycin—urgently, the doctor said—or the left foot would have to be amputated. Remember?” He crossed his legs, his right hand miming a sawing motion at the ankle of his left leg.I had to rack my brains to remember vaguely that there was a shortage of streptomycin in Moscow. There was a shortage of everything in Russia anyway.“That was the fucking Soviet Union for you! No streptomycin! But therefore we have rockets,” Joseph began to sing in a shrill sardonic voice the refrain from an old Bolshevik song and was joined by Volkov. “I asked Professor Ginsburg, my former academic advisor. As a member of the Academy of Sciences he had ways of getting foreign medicine, but that took time. That’s when I phoned you. Remember? It was fucking cold…” “Vaguely,” I said, blood rushing to my ears. “The Moscow River was frozen solid, remember?”I nodded. “Emily was on a shopping trip in Helsinki,” Joseph said. “Two days later, she came back with streptomycin. And here I am.”I said nothing. I thought of Emily and suddenly felt remorseful, wanting her to have had a better life than I had given her. My remorse almost palpable, I caught myself reflecting on her frequent train trips to Helsinki—she disliked airplanes and would avoid them unless absolutely necessary – and I thought, all these years later, that I must have been a difficult person to live with and that she’d deserved better. But then I recalled that particular trip Joseph was taking about and I saw her radiant face as she was exuberantly explaining to me how she had managed to get a prescription from a Finnish doctor.”Guess what,” she said, looking at me with gleeful triumph. “I simply told him the truth.”The silence continued for a while.“You know, starik,” he said turning to me, and I sensed he was downcast probably because he was broaching the subject he had not thought about for a long time, “I envied you and at the same time I was proud to be a friend of an American correspondent. You allowed me a peek into the world from which I was excluded. You were rich and untouchable and above everything else you were free. Free.“You probably don’t remember how we all lived in fear in those days, how unreal it all was. We had to hide our misery even from ourselves. You know what I’m saying. There’s a passage in Gorbachev’s autobiography that captures the debilitating spirit of those years, not that I care much for that silly boltun and his boring memoir. But this one passage is truly precious. Gorbachev describes his move from Stavropol to Moscow to join the Communist Party Politburo. The twelve guys who ruled the empire. He was given a dacha out here” – Joseph’s motion suggested somewhere west of his own compound – “not far from the dacha of his patron Yuri Andropov. Okay. Once Gorbachev gets settled, being a country bumpkin that he was he phones Andropov to invite him and his wife for a barbeque. Like they used to do in Stavropol, where Andropov was a regular visitor on account of his poor health. But Andropov rebuffs him by saying, We can’t do this, people will think we are plotting. I am not sure he used those exact words. Incredible, two Politburo members, one of them was chairman of the secret police. And you, my friend, you were free like a bird, you know what I’m saying. And you were not affected by our privations and food shortages and all that horrible stuff. You could buy your way out of almost every problem. If you couldn’t buy fresh fruit and vegetables here, you could have them shipped from Finland.”“I know the streptomycin was a small thing for you,” Joseph continued, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I know, I know. I do favors nowadays, make a phone call or write a check, and I forget it the next day. But the recipients remember. Know what I’m saying? A small gesture can change a person’s life. ” “I’m not sure I get your point.”“There’s no point, starik. The medicine was a trifle for you, but it meant the world to me.” He shrugged, as if other explanations were unnecessary.We all went quiet after that.Then Volkov snorted. The tendons in his neck were stretched tight as he whipped his head around and speared me with a glare. “I’m puzzled,” he said, hostility creeping into his voice. “You’re besotted by the lady, you two fuck like rabbits, and you know nothing about her or what she does?” But the words meant something else: You lying bastard, you’re selling us the quest for closure and other bullshit while doing work for the CIA.I grunted to mask my discomfort. My throat was dry. I felt growing anger at having a part in this conversation. Joseph again started pacing around the room as if he couldn’t force himself to sit still. He was evidently under pressure of some sort, I thought.“What we’d like to know,” Volkov said, “is whether you had mentioned anything about Rashidov and Uzbekistan to your lady?”Suddenly, everybody seemed to be in a bad humor.Joseph returned to his seat. I glowered into my martini glass, smiling ruefully at the memory of that afternoon when Amanda insisted that I could not get an Uzbek visa and when she angrily accused me of still being obsessed with Emily. “I did mention that I wanted to go to Uzbekistan,” I said.“Did Rashidov’s name come up?” Volkov said.“No, not as far as I can remember.” Volkov and Joseph exchanged a long look, consulting without words. Their body language seemed eloquent: they wanted to be rid of me, the pariah. “Well,” Volkov snapped his fingers and stood up.I got up, too. My left leg was tingling. I saw Joseph’s jaws tighten as he looked at his watch.”Christ, it’s so late, I have a meeting,” Joseph said.We all took the steps down and, for a brief moment, stood inside the lobby entrance waiting for the Bentley to arrive. Outside, the cloudy humid sky pressed down on the city like a great granite tombstone. “We’ll talk later,” Joseph said, looking at me. “I’ll call you within the hour.” I watched him walk across the street, surrounded by Volkov and three black-suited bodyguards. My mind flashed to Joseph in the Pushkin Square centuries ago; after the demonstration, we went to Joseph’s communal apartment where he analyzed Norman Mailer’s non-fiction—from The Armies of the Night to Miami and the Siege of Chicago. Insisting he envied the novelist’s freedom. Freedom to create legends around himself—to generate publicity by drinking too much, hurling profanities at his audiences, indulging in drugs and wife-swapping, running for public office—and then writing about it all. Joseph was about to climb in the Bentley when he suddenly turned around. He motioned Volkov and the guards to stay put, then walked across the street over to me.“Now listen carefully,” he said softly, and I heard alarm in his voice. “Get the first plane out of the country! At once! Grab a cab and go to the airport.”Looking over his shoulder, I saw Volkov holding a cell phone, which must have been switched off because Volkov’s big thumb was crooked over the top of it as he was waiting for the power to come up. “What…”Joseph said sharply, looking deeply into my eyes, “Go! By tonight, it’ll be too late. You’re in danger and I can’t protect you. Go! Go!” A look like that was much more eloquent than any amount of talk. Then he abruptly turned around and walked away before I could say anything. I saw Volkov pocket the cell phone. They climbed into the limousine and the bodyguards into the white SUV behind it.42It was three twenty. I read it on an ancient gilded clock in the window of the antique shop. I also saw a yellow parking ticket stuck under the Lada’s windshield. I knew instantly that I must follow Joseph’s advice.The old Lada wouldn’t turn over at first, but eventually rattled into life. Behind the steering wheel and trying to engage the first gear, my left foot shook uncontrollably when I tried to keep down the clutch. I didn’t have the strength, my bones turned to liquid. After several attempts, I managed to slip into first and then second. I drove down New Arbat in second all the way to the hotel, my mind buzzing with questions and receiving no answers.Stay focused, I said to myself. At all costs avoid plunging head first into a sea of the worst possible scenarios one could imagine. Leave everything behind. No time to go up to my room. Just retrieve the passport from the desk clerk and go out to the airport. Catch one of the flights to Helsinki, Stockholm, Budapest. To any place. I used valet parking outside the main entrance and gave the attendant a twenty-dollar bill. I told the desk clerk I needed my passport for an official transaction at the US embassy and would return it within a couple of hours. I also gave him a twenty-dollar tip. Then I jumped in the first taxi idling at the bottom of the steps. To my intense irritation, I was trebling from fear that my sudden departure was about to be discovered any minute. I imagined the entire Russian police force was looking out for me—the moment the alarm went out. 43Sipping Scotch thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic, I ran through the events of the past twenty-four hours, looking for something I might have missed, something that would help me understand. Ever since Joseph’s warning to get the first plane out, I had been running on adrenaline. I kept wondering if I had done the right thing, if I had been too jumpy and the very suddenness of my departure could alert the authorities. How could anyone deduce I was fleeing Moscow? Yes, I reasoned, I had no luggage. It was futile stuff, I knew, and this line of thinking would drive me to madness. And yet, since I had no luggage, I bought two large plastic bags which I filled with wooden spoons, nesting dolls, and papier mache boxes from the Russian souvenir vendors before finding the Finnair agent, who sold me a first class ticket to Helsinki. The terminal was full of tourists—swarming, jostling, and hurrying. Lines for the customs and passport control were long and moved excruciatingly slowly. I reasoned to myself: just follow normal procedures and act natural. I thought that departing passengers were probably being scrutinized through a large one-way mirror in the back. The thought made me feel like a fugitive, burdened by a sense of strangeness and menace, my face a mask, my mouth dry. I imagined a sort of buzz going around in the hall: that’s Todd Martin. And if someone had asked at that moment how I felt, I would have pointed to my heart and said, It hurts right here. The anxiety of what I feared was about to come made my heart beat even harder. When I finally got to the head of the line and I handed in my passport, I heard the announcer saying, Second call for passengers of Finnair flight 156 bound for Helsinki to proceed to Gate Four. A pimply, bucktoothed private of the mustard uniform of internal security troops leafed through the passport. He looked up and down from my photograph to my face several times, then tapped something into a computer and detached a separate paper slip registering my departure from the country. He was about to stamp it when an older officer with several green stripes on his shoulder epaulettes opened the door to the booth. I was gooseflesh all over. Joseph’s parting words pounced on me and where overwhelming. The cops were organizing a search for me, I thought. I was not going to make it. I felt my chest tighten. I imagined my departure slip being perused in some back office and double-checked against the list of departing passengers. That’s him, I could almost hear the senior man saying, that’s Todd Martin; he can’t be allowed to leave. Then what?The senior man grinned and said something to the young soldier, who handed him stamped registration papers from a wire basket. “Todd Martin?” the pimply-faced soldier said.“Yes. Todd Martin.”He handed me my passport and stamped my departure slip before placing it at the bottom of the wire basket.Ta-da!I’m almost safe, I said to myself, hearing Last Call for the passengers of Finnair Flight 156 to Helsinki. I’d be in the air by the time the supervisor collects the next batch of registration papers. Unless something completely unexpected happens. I rushed to the gate, ignoring the inviting halls of duty free. Was anyone watching, I wondered. With trembling hands I accepted a glass of champagne from the chief bursar as I settled in my seat. An electronic ping sounded over the cabin’s audio system and the fasten seatbelt sign was turned on.What was it about the Russian passport controls that always made me feel like a criminal? I’d have suspected there was something timid or deficient in myself had I not heard many colleagues make the same observation. Russia inspires fear, the fear that someone is always watching, always listening. Never mind, I said to myself. This was the last time I’m going through the passport controls at Sheremyetevo.I calmed down once the 727 sliced through the clouds to explode into the sunshine. I had a miniature Finlandia bottle; in first class, one could have as many of them as one wanted. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about Joseph and my final day in Moscow. Instead, I surrendered to the monotony of air travel by listening to Mozart’s Requiem. By the time we landed in Helsinki, I felt a release from the brooding that had afflicted me for most of the past twenty-four hours.I went straight to the Marski Hotel, a fancy and overpriced establishment in the centers of the city near the Stockman’s. There were cheaper and more frugal lodgings to be had in Helsinki, but the Marski was the place of choice by visiting reporters.Immediately after checking in, I sent a message to Barbara: Had to leave unexpectedly for urgent family reasons. My profound apologies. The Lada is on the Ukraine Hotel parking lot. The concierge has the key. I’d appreciate it if the office would pay the hotel bill (I’m sure Kevin Page will approve) and collect my stuff from room 1010, especially my laptop, and send them to Washington. Many thanks for everything. I had early dinner in the Marski restaurant, ordering smoked reindeer, a bear steak, and a bottle of Margaux. For the past seven hours, I’d been living in the pure present, without any connection to the other parts of my life. Now I felt completely empty and drained and exhausted from it all. I thought about Joseph and his need to repay his debt to me. And I felt angry with myself because our friendship was over. I was base enough, God help me, but I couldn’t stoop to condemn my friend. I was the guilty party. While I was debating in my mind the mystery that was Joseph, the waiter brought a second bottle of Margaux. With more wine, my displeasure faded into a transitory indifference. I have no recall of going up to my room. I know I escaped a nocturnal interrogation of myself.The next morning, I bought an economy ticket for the first flight to New York. Still feeling hung-over, I had several miniature bottles of Finlandia and slept most of the flight. I dreamt about walking down a long corridor with many turns. Then I was suddenly caught behind the enemy lines and I knew I was not going to make it. The reason I was not going to make it was because I had forgotten to tell Joseph to pick me up or send Igor to rescue me. Then Joseph unexpectedly appeared. “Run, you’re on your own,” Joseph was saying. He was putting everything he had left in him into that unwavering gaze to convince me to run. What kind of danger was he talking about? Who was after me? I was running when a flight attendant shook me out of my sleep. We were approaching Kennedy. “Fasten your seatbelt, sir,” she said. “We are landing.”Such was my exhaustion that despite my anxiety—and several cups of coffee at La Guardia, I actually drifted into sleep on the late shuttle flight to Reagan National. I awoke when I felt the flight attendant leaning across me to check my seatbelt was fastened. I thought I’d been out cold for no more than a few seconds, but the pressure in my ears said we were coming in for a landing.I thought of Joseph. Then my mind turned to Amanda, and that gave me a tingle in my groin. The truth of the matter is, she had jump-started my libido after years of semi-retirement. So what if she’s a CIA agent? Or an adventuress? Do I really care? I daydreamed about finding her in between the sheets of my own bed.44The roads were all but deserted. The cab approached the marina on the right, the Pentagon floated past as a giant housing project swallowed by the mist, then came the lights of the Memorial Bridge and the Lincoln Memorial. Rain drummed on the roof of the car. I found it soothing to observe the lucent skyline of Washington—the dark waters of the Potomac shimmering with lights all along the embankment; the Kennedy Center, Watergate, Georgetown. I had bonded with this city a long time ago. Less than a year after I came down from New Hampshire, I came to feel that the city was mine. Open to me. Made me feel accepted no doubt because of my association with the Tribune. Even as a lowly night copy editor, I’d say, “This is Todd Martin of the Washington Tribune,” and the person at the other end of the telephone line would listen. The news came on as we approached Rosslyn. It talked about weapons of mass destruction, yellow cake, Islam, nuclear fuel rods, Palestine and M. de Villepin, the French foreign minister. This was a time of strained relations with France and other traditional friends who seemed to disagree with the White House. But the tone of the broadcast indicated underlying fear in a vigilant and fortified capital preparing for terrorists to strike again. The August downpour stopped suddenly before we got to Wilson Boulevard.The hall table in my Rosslyn condo was groaning under a towering pile of mail, perhaps a few letters slipped into the usual packets of bills, credit card offers, catalogues, hearing aid ads, whatnots that the mailman each day thoughtfully bound with a rubber band. Lisa, the neighbor who had watered the plants during my absence and collected my mail, had attached a welcoming Post-it note to a bottle of white Bordeaux. The fridge was bare except for eggs and the leftover provolone cheese.Somewhere over the Atlantic on my way back, I had debated how to tell Jennifer that I had met someone else. That would have to wait, I decided. But now I longed for someone to confide in –someone other than Jennifer, someone who’d understand. In truth, I could not think of anyone I could talk to about Amanda because an admission of my infatuation would be exacerbated the pain of having misplayed my hand. I’d feel uncomfortable, and on top of it slightly embarrassed. Or not so slightly. I should think about her a little less, I said to myself, so that in time I’d forget her. But God, I would have loved to hear her voice now. I phoned Alex.He answered at the first ring. “It’s late, I know, but I’m glad you’re still up and about,” I said.“Welcome back,” Alex said. “Peggy’s asleep. I’m having a Heineken. You just got in?”“Yes.” “How’s your old hunting ground?”“The place looks much better than before. Infinitely better.”“Yeah, another triumph of democracy.” Alex’s sarcasm had the subtlety of a cavalry charge. “Spreading democracy is our new mission in the world, according to the leader of the free world.” “I wouldn’t call Russia a democracy. But about that some other time.” I paused. “What else is new?” “Buyouts are coming. They’re going to eliminate the book section. Other sections aren’t far behind. Shut down ten foreign bureaus.”“I don’t like these rumors,” I said.“Nobody does. Not even Kevin, I guess, but he’ll do the dirty work for the bean counters.”“You can’t blame him,” I rebuked him. “You’d do it too if you were the chief editor.” “Incidentally,” Alex said, “your buddy from Langley is apparently getting a big promotion. Saw it in yesterday’s Times.”“He’s not my buddy.””I’m kidding. Don’t be so fucking serious. I thought you’d be interested.” Alex paused. “Did you accomplish what you set out to accomplish?”I hesitated a moment. “Yes and no.” “You sound disappointed.”“I am, a little.”“Uh-huh.” “Some weird things happened. Someone was running interference from here. I think I need to talk to your friend Bob…” Bob Pittman was Alex’s childhood friend who recently quit his job at deputy chief of the FBI Technical Services department and moved for a ton of money, stock options, and other perks to one of the newly established security firms that have sprung up all over Northern Virginia after September 11, 2001. My hope was that he would be able to trace the mysterious e-mail address before I met Holz.Alex interrupted quickly, “We’d better not talk about it over the phone. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow, right? We have a lot of catching up to do.” “Jesus! You really think we’re being listened to?”“I’m not guessing, dude. I know.”“Oh, c’mon, man. Aren’t you being paranoid?” People who expect the worst, I thought, will always see the worst.“Fuck you. The next thing you’re going to tell me is that the paranoids create the things they fear.”This led to an icy silence on the line before I heard him inhaling deeply. “Let me tell you one thing: perhaps a paranoiac is a person in full possession of the facts.” Then he added sarcastically, “Lots of shit happened here recently.” “Big Brother’s watching us?”“You bet your sweet cheeks. They’re monitoring everything, our calls, our e-mails…”“The feds?”“Who else? All very hush-hush.”“Well, look at it from their point of view…”“Are you kidding me?” Alex cut in frostily, “Start seeing things from their point of view and you get paralyzed.”“They need a court order…” “They invoke national security, and that’s all they need. You know these neo-con extremists have taken over the government: Cheney, Rumsfeld.”“Now why would they eavesdrop on our conversation?”“Because it’s completely insane what we’re doing.” I heard Alex exhale into the phone. “It’s done automatically, dude.”“Like how?”“Computers are programmed to look for certain key words and phrases. They also have lists of suspects. Like I have a Syrian car mechanic who—being a Moslem —is a potential suspect. So the Syrian calls to ask if he should replace the gasket and the NSA picks up the conversation. Bingo, your name gets on a list of people associating with potential suspects. Something like that. And you can imagine phone calls from the Trib building. It’s appalling.”“I saw nothing about it in the papers.”“What planet do you live on?” He halted. “You find real news on Comedy Central. Jon Stewart is the new Walter Cronkite, telling it like it is.”I wondered what Jon Stewart had to do with anything. Wasn’t he a comedian? I wasn’t up with the gossip, I thought. “What about Trib? And the Times and the Post?”“We all sneak in bits of news. Hate to say it, but thanks God for the Times editorial and op-ed pages. Not the front page, though. This administration chokes off access to anyone running a hard-hitting story.”“Brow-beating is an old game, Alex. Have you talked to Page? He knows about it?”“Kevin!” Alex laughed with an exaggerated doze of amusement.“Yeah, Kevin.”“Of course I told him right away. So did Bob Schmitz. Schmitz is doing intelligence, as you know.” “And?” “Kevin says I’m paranoid. He told Schmitz that unless he has someone willing to be quoted by name, there was no point in even bringing up the subject. Now, tell me, who the fuck’s going to speak for the record in this atmosphere? Schmitz, to his credit, made an oblique reference to widespread NSA snooping. The story made a deep inside page. So did his piece suggesting we’re preparing to invade Iraq.”“Crazy,” I said. “You mean it’s been decided.”“Yes.”“I read on the plane that we are taking the matter to the U.N.”“Just window dressing! Let’s talk tomorrow,” Alex said.“Now, don’t forget about Bob.” Talking to Pittman was my priority number one.“First thing in the morning.”After I hung up, I was suddenly wide-awake. I was conscious of the adrenaline surge running through my body. It was unlikely, I knew, that I’d go to sleep any time soon. I considered phoning Rick, but then decided to it would be far better to send him a long e-mail detailing the highlights of my trip before putting in a call.I opened the Bordeaux, sat behind the ancient Compaq computer in my study, and devoted myself heart and soul to writing. I told the story in chronological order, including the painful tale of my infatuation with Amanda, omitting of course details of sexual delight and trying to make the affair seem like an average indiscretion. Almost two hours later, I was still at it, an empty bottle of wine in front of me. As I wrote, I sensed a new mix of emotions unfold inside me. Only after I had pressed the SEND button, I realized what that was: for the first time I could remember, I was telling my son how I felt about things. I stood on the balcony in pre-dawn hours. The night was cooled off by a fragrant breeze coming up the river. I gazed at the flickering lights of Georgetown and the Washington skyline beyond and I thought there was beauty to behold in the world. Nothing moved in the imperial city and as I watched all this languor, I was suddenly frightened by the thought that Rick may find my report wanting. Have I included, I wondered, all the details damaging to my pride?45 I woke up the next morning in my own bed in a silent apartment. My t-shirt was drenched in sweat. I recalled the end of a dream I was dreaming. I was on trial. The courtroom was filled with a deathly silent audience. I played all key roles—judge, jury, prosecutor, defense counsel. I heard the verdict pronounced: Todd Martin is sentenced to a lifetime of confinement in the solitude of his private mind. I lifted my chin from a patch of drool on the light blue pillow and, suddenly confronted by spears of light slanting through the Venetian blinds, then quickly buried my face under the sheet. I dozed off, thinking about the interrupted dream. When I woke again I looked at the clock and bolted upright. It was nine thirty. I must telephone Page, I reminded myself.“Is Kevin in?”“Mister Page is out of town,” an unknown voice replied. “He’ll be back in the office tomorrow.” “Where’s Pam?” “Pam’s off for a few days,” Pam’s temporary replacement said. I felt relieved. I was in no mood to talk to Page right now. What I needed was a cup of strong coffee to kick-start the mind. My next priority was Bob Pittman.I washed and shaved’ as I was putting on my clothes, the phone rang. “Welcome home,” Holz said with bogus cheerfulness. “Oh. Hi.”“Hope you had a productive trip.”“Well, yes and no. But I’m running late. I’ll give you a call when I get to the office.”Holz said, “We could meet for lunch? Or dinner?” “Sorry, Mac, I have to run. I’ll miss the 9:50 train.” I hung up.On the train, I tried to read the morning Tribune, but could not concentrate and put the paper aside. In my mind, I reviewed the sequence of strange happenings, and felt a big lump of pressure behind my sternum. I knew I had to avoid Holz until I got a reading on whether he was behind the e-mail address. I had to know if he’d double-crossed me. I thought of Joseph as I tried to piece together the events of my last hours in Moscow. I had everything in my hands, but I couldn’t read it. What had I missed? How in hell was I supposed to react? I disembarked at Farragut North. By the time I emerged from the L Street entrance, the questions gnawed at me as I walked to the office.I stopped at Caribou Coffee at the corner of 17th Street, ordered coffee and a toasted bagel with cream cheese, then found a table that let me keep watch on the street and mid-morning rush hour scenes. Hundreds of people were hurrying by, jogging, drinking coffee, listening to iPods. Harry Boyd, who covered Justice for the paper, waved while passing by. Zbigniew Brzezinski purposefully walked by carrying a thin attaché case. I finished breakfast and climbed down from the stool. Mr. Dexter, the elderly black man in a blue uniform behind a small reception desk at the side entrance, greeted me warmly. “I’ve known you for twenty years, Mr. Martin, but I’ll still have to see your Tribune ID,” he said apologetically. It was quiet on the sixth floor. When I rounded the corner, I saw Essie Levi sitting on her desk and talking on the phone, legs dangling, shoe tips brushing the carpet. She wore a maroon blouse and a short black pleated skirt that showed off her legs. Essie gave me a welcome smile and waved.“He just walked in,” she said into the phone she’d been about to put down as I came in. “It’s Alex for you.”I rushed to my desk as she put the call through. “Pittman will see you at his office at twelve,” Alex said. “I’ll come along, if you want me to.”“Cool,” I said. “We’ll talk on the way over.”46I phoned Rick. “Hi.” “You read my long email?” “You never got Hector.”I didn’t know what to say.“Unfortunately, no.” “I saw it coming,” he said, so offhandedly, I thought, and I sensed he was trying to hide disappointment. “But you did alright, I guess.” I’d found Hector’s handler, traveled all that way to the border of Afghanistan, walked right up to Rashidov, and found out nothing. Now I wanted absolution and Rick wasn’t giving any. I nearly laughed. The joke had been on me all the time. “ I did my best.” You don’t get any brownie points from your children for almost doing it, I thought. “Hector vanished eleven years ago. I think he is no longer in the spy business, although one can’t be sure. The one man who knew refused to betray him, and that man is now dead, as you know. So I’m afraid we’ll never know.” Funny, I thought, we talked of Hector not as a real person but as if he were a phantom. Rick softened his tone. “What the hell, you gave it a good try, Dad. That’s what matters. Kate is just reading your missive and she says you did great.”I tried to imagine what Rick was thinking; he was probably disappointed that his mom had not been avenged. I was tempted for a moment to tell him that I didn’t think Hector had anything to do with Emily’s death, but decided against it. It would have sounded as a weak excuse. “I gave it my best shot, Rick,” I said uneasily. I don’t say something like this very often, so it must have had an effect.He said, faintly, “I know.”For a moment, both of us seemed to have lost control of our social skills and the silence persisted until Rick coughed, as if announcing his intent to lighten the atmosphere.“Dad, I… we have news… good news…”“Yes?” “You’ll soon be a grandfather.”“Grandfather!”“Yes.”“That’s great news! Wonderful news!” I cried. My soul suddenly teetered between what I saw as two dangers: taking this joy too seriously or taking it too lightly. Then I remembered the long nights when Rick was a baby; we were doing shifts, and one early morning I found Emily with the baby in her lap, both sleeping. Even all these years later, this image evoked a sense of profound happiness and sent waves of pleasure radiating through my body. So I cried, “This is the best news I’ve had in a long time. A new baby! My God, how exciting!” I wanted to ask when the baby was due, but then I figured most expectant women announce their pregnancy after the first trimester, when the greatest chance of miscarriage has past.Rick laughed happily. “Hold on. I’ll get Kate on the intercom.” “Kate, honey, congratulations! That’s great news. I’m so excited.”“Yes, it’s exciting. The baby is due in March.”“Oh, how wonderful. A boy or a girl?”Kate said, “We don’t know. I’m dying to find out.”“There’s no rush,” Rick said. “I’m pretty sure it’s a boy.”“My mom and dad are over the moon,” Kate said. “They’re already setting up a college fund. The first grandchild!”“I can only imagine,” I said. “I’ll have to think of something, too.”Kate said, “Sounds like you’ve had an exciting trip. I read your long e-mail. I can see where Rick gets his writing facility. You know he wants to be a writer…”Rick cut in. “Oh, c’mon Kate!”She laughed. “He and another teacher at his school are writing a screenplay. But nothing as gripping as your emails…”“I’m glad it’s over, Kate, honey.”We talked for a while about the baby, a flowing discourse about new life that the baby meant for all of us. A new life for them, not encumbered by the past. “Dad,” Rick said, “do you think Holz double-crossed you?”“I don’t know, but I hope not.”“I wondered about it after I finished. Somehow it doesn’t make sense, but you never know. Anyway let me know what you find out.”“I’ll keep you posted, Rick, don’t worry.”Kate said, “Todd, you must come visit with us. I hope you do it before next March.” 47Before I turned on my computer, I dialed the CIA switchboard and asked to speak to Amanda Paul. After a pause, the operator came back on the line. “You said Amanda Paul?”I spelled the last name. “We don’t have anyone by that name working for the Central Intelligence Agency, sir.”“I see. I’m sorry.” The stupid bitch, I swore inwardly. You dirty, rotten stupid bitch.The computer showed the number of emails received was 388. I held down the DELETE button and the display flipped to zero. Most were news releases or invitations. I opened one of the several letters. A reader in Columbia, Maryland informed me he had figured out a quicker resolution of the third Spassky-Fischer game in Iceland. “How’s Moscow,” I heard Essie’s voice. I spun around and saw her approaching. “Interesting,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”She offered to get me coffee. I said no. Any more caffeine and I’d fly into orbit. She stood by my desk in silence, then, struggling to affect a casual tone, she eventually said, “Next Friday is my last day. I took the buyout.” “You’re kidding.”“I had no choice.” She smoothed her hair self-consciously.“Oh, boy.” I gave her a long sad look, then got up and put my arm around her. “What are we going to do without you?”She shrugged me off. “You’ll manage,” she said, laughing mirthlessly.Both of us acted flustered.“I keep wondering where it had all gone…” Essie shook her head and stared at the floor.“I don’t follow.” She blushed. “I mean, the years of excitement and fun and camaraderie we had. I kind of gave my heart to this job and now, suddenly… ah, well, nothing about this adds up.””Let’s have lunch next week,” I said, thinking I must say something and that was the only thing that came to mind.She put on a frustrated smile as if to let me know she considered my suggestion perfunctory, something people say and don’t mean it. I put my arm over her shoulder. “What are you going to do?”“Take a long vacation, I guess. Travel the Trans-Siberian to China.” “And then?” “Then start looking for a job.”48WhiteWater Inc. was at the corner of Fairfax Boulevard in Ballston, in a brand new ten-story glass and concrete building with marble floors. The entrance lobby was walled with huge pink marble slabs. The security firm occupied the top two floors, and the rest of the building was leased to other tenants including an IT firm, law offices, the consular section of a Caribbean island state, Waterhouse brokerage firm, and a travel agency. Incorporated in Cayman Islands, the firm could, given the right amount of money, undertake tasks ranging from worldwide surveillance operations and data checks to personal protection to computer security to “international consultations.” The last was a euphemism for providing security to customers operating in dangerous corners of the globe. WhiteWater had its own private army, which consisted of retired Navy Seals, ex-CIA and special-forces guys, ex-Foreign Legion and ex-Chicago goons. Its covert side was rumored to handle special assignments such as intimidation, blackmail, industrial espionage and assassinations.“What exactly do you want from Pittman?” Alex asked on the way over to Ballston after I had told him about the main points of my mission, leaving nothing important out. I said, “I need to know if Holz had played any role in some of the strange things I just told you about, like having me followed around and stuff.”“You mean like he double-crossed you?”“I couldn’t have put it as succinctly as that,” I said. “But yes, that’s the long and the short of it.”“I see,” he nodded. But then, making an uncomfortable face, he said, “What I don’t understand is you paying the former KGB types for information. I can’t believe you paid for your information.”“That’s how things are done over there,” I said. “Besides, I was doing my own thing—I was not working as a journalist.”We took a shiny elevator to the ninth floor, where a receptionist in a white shirt and with teased blond hair asked us to sit down while she buzzed Pittman.“I wonder what made Pittman leave the FBI,” I asked Alex to change the subject. “Apart from money?”“He mentioned the benefits—an annual bonus that almost equals his annual salary, tickets to Redskins games, stuff like that.”A procession of men passed through the reception area, all sporting the short hair and conservative dress that have come to mark the members of a burgeoning security industry along with firm handshakes, unblinking eyes, and strong deodorants.Pittman, in blue gabardine slacks, saffron-colored button-down shirt and a herringbone blazer, came out to greet us. He smelled of Old Spice.Using his hand on the biometric readers that opened various doors, Pittman led us to his office. It was big and airy, with views of cranes and untenanted office blocks. An original Jackson Pollock hung on the wall behind his desk and there was a Redskins helmet atop a bookcase. “The Pollock belongs to the firm,” he explained. “The helmet is mine.” It was cool inside. “We keep it at 68,” Pittman said, looking at me with a considerable amusement.“They expect the veep,” Alex joked, referring to the vice president’s insistence on keeping thermostats at 68.“You shouldn’t be surprised to see him around here,” Pittman said, his smile full of confidence. “We have the best anti-terrorism guys in the business, retired special forces, Navy seals, CIA, DIA. The government is our biggest customer.”After we settled in, I outlined my problem. I talked him through the incident from the time Igor first noticed we were being followed until our encounter with the two thugs at the Starlite Café. Pittman listened, still, without saying anything, only writing a few notes on his yellow pad and asking me when I had finished to repeat what the thugs said about the American client. “So they were sending their reports to an email address,” Pittman tapped the address written on his pad. “And they were subcontractors for a London agency that was acting on behalf of a New York security firm.”“Yes.”“I guess they were supposed to scare you off from whatever you were doing in Moscow, right?”“Probably.”“They said they never actually sent their emails?”“No.”“They were specifically instructed to save them as drafts. Right?”“Right. They said they thought their boss read the messages before sending them on.”Pittman paused, looked at me as if checking me out, I felt, then glanced at Alex. “Let’s run through this sequence again,” Pittman said. Later, he said, “Now who could have been so keenly interested in your Moscow doings? So interested to hire mobsters to rough you up?”“No clue.”Pittman held up his hand. “They were supposed to scare you off from whatever you were doing. What exactly were you doing?”I had to think fast. I didn’t want to disclose that one of my objectives was to hunt down the mole. I focused on my inquiry into Emily’s death instead and told him about my interviews with Volkov and Churkin. How easily these lines slipped from my mouth, in perfect actorial cadence. I surprised myself. I noticed Alex had a worried expression, but he remained silent.Pittman shrugged his shoulders, then tugged at his bottom lip with thumb and finger. “Why would that upset anyone in the United States?” “I’ve no idea.” I kept thinking about Holz and the way his mind worked. It was hard for me to imagine him hiring people to intimidate me to quit doing what he wanted me to do.Pittman’s gaze gave me no comfort. “Who knew about your plans before you left on the trip?”I waited, pretending to think hard. I said, with an air of mockery, “Alex here knew. My son in California knew. No one else.” “Holz, of course,” said Pittman.“Of course.” I had been wondering about Holz ever since I was told that Amanda was CIA, I said. “There’s very little of consequence that goes on this town that Holz doesn’t know about,” Pittman said. “So the odds are good that he knows about our meeting, too.” “There’s always a chance that someone else in the fudge factory may have gotten wind of it,” Alex said.Pittman said, “As I see it, there’s only one thing I may be able to help you with: find out if the Agency was at the other end of that email address. I don’t see what else I could do.”“That would be helpful,” I said.“I’ll ask our computer geeks,” Pittman said. “One NSA guy just joined us recently and they say he can trace the untraceable. He was the guy who encrypted several ultra-secret Agency sites.” Pittman stared at the yellow pad for a while, then put it aside. “Honestly,” he said, scratching his scalp, “If he can’t detect whether Holz or some of his buddies were behind it, nobody can.”Alex said, “You got the email address.”Pittman laughed. “We’re obviously dealing with someone who knows how to cover his tracks. Remember, they wrote drafts and saved them. Now, if I ask you to write something as a draft and save it, I could go into your computer and read the contents of the saved mail without leaving any trace of electronic traffic between two points. This is one of the technological tricks for transferring data without leaving traces.”Alex shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense.” “Let’s see what the geeks say,” I said. “Okay,” Pittman said. “I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”“Please call me on my cell,” I said and gave him the number.In the elevator, Alex said with an annoying expression on his face, “Why didn’t you level with Pittman? It’s like asking a doctor for advice without telling him about all the symptoms.”“What do you mean?”“You didn’t tell him about Hector.”I must have misread the expression on Alex’s face, for I gave him an honest answer. “That’s something I’d rather not publicize. Otherwise I’d have to explain how I learned about the mole’s existence.”Alex turned to me and grabbed hold of my arm. “Don’t you see, dude?” he said insistently. “The mole is someone who wouldn’t want you to meet his old case officer! Suppose the mole is still at Langley. Maybe someone close to the director? You said the director was vaguely aware of Holz’s plan. Who else knew about it?”I caught myself reflecting on this troubling question. I could see what Alex was driving at. But I was sure, as sure as anyone could be, that no one else could have possibly known of my plans except Rick and Alex, and I could not imagine either of them spreading it around. “I told only you and Rick,” I said.Alex went quiet. My thoughts must have been written on my face because he said, “Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”48I phoned Essie to say I’d not be in for the rest of the day. I bought sandwiches at the corner deli. There was no point returning to the office, I thought. I would avoid Holz by spending the afternoon at the pool. It was a hot, muggy day, a last hurrah of summer. There were only three people in the rooftop pool, an elderly couple idling in the shallow end and a young woman in goggles doing laps. I eased myself into a deck chair under an umbrella and thought about becoming a grandfather and about Kate and Rick. Then I followed a succession of silvery jetliners descending onto the National airport runway in the hazy distance. Then I flicked through the morning papers. The headlines spoke about America to Battle the Enemy/To Confront Threats. An editorial approved of the preemption idea. The New York Times featured a story on its front page, suggesting Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons posed a threat to the United States and its allies. The caption under the picture of a dour-looking Swedish weapons inspector named Hans Blix hinted that he was almost confirming—almost but not quite—the existence of Iraq weapons of mass destruction. Reading the story, it turned out Blix’s inspectors hadn’t found any WMD, but he couldn’t exclude the possibility that some were hidden somewhere in Iraq. Other headlines spoke of the arrests of suspected Al Qaeda supporters, Bin Laden tapes, Homeland Security counter-measures and its color-coded system of warnings. On the op-ed pages, neo-con columnists were making a case for war.In late afternoon, I decided to take a stroll over to Roosevelt Island. I wanted to put on hold questions that lingered in the back of my mind, one of them being when to call Jennifer. But as I emerged from the building and bent down to adjust my shoelaces, a gleaming new blue Beamer pulled up. My neighbor Ian smiled through the open window. “Isn’t she a beauty?” His eyes were lit by the joy of possession. “Idles without vibrations, eh,” he added. “Come for a spin?”The car had cream-colored leather upholstery and a dashboard that reminded me of a cockpit. “Sure,” I said and climbed in.Ian Robertson, a stock-broker for Merrill Lynch, was married to Lisa, who watered my plants during my absence. Ian was rich and a crushing bore. The sole mystery about him in my mind was how could Harvard and Wharton produce someone so narrow-minded and uncurious. Lisa, on the other hand, was a delightful conversation partner, passionate about climate change, hunger, poverty, and fresh water shortages. She taught biology at George Mason University and was very attractive, reminding me a bit of Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. “Listen how quiet she is,” Ian said. “Accelerates something fantastic.” He gunned the engine and we sped down George Washington Parkway. A push on a button of his cell phone brought Lisa’s voice to the speakers. “I’m bringing Todd to eat with us,” he said. “You can start the grill.”I stopped by my apartment to take a gift for Lisa: a Russian papier mache box with a colorful painting depicting a scene from the Firebird folk tale that I had bought at the Moscow airport. “My plants are saying thanks,” I said, putting the gift on the table. Lisa took my hand in both of hers then gave me a big hug. “I’ve called Jennifer and asked her to join us for dinner,” she said while pouring our Martinis. “Now tell us all about the trip.”I was too late. For a brief moment, I considered going back to my apartment and calling Jennifer to tell her that our relationship was over. But that would have been too brutal.“Oh, Moscow is no longer as mysterious as it used to be. It’s now like any other place.” I offered a potted synopsis of changes; it was as if I had emerged from a dark cave after eleven years to suddenly confront the helter skelter of a modern city that had somehow come back to life after stifling decades of communism—the noise, the smell, the color of the streets, the fancy shops full of luxury goods, the expensive restaurants. “What about Russian stocks?” Ian asked, sipping his drink.“The guys who run the Russia Fund say they are making money.” Ian said, “All that gas and oil, plus nickel, gold, iron and whatnot.” He proceeded to argue that this would be a raw materials decade.Jennifer turned up at seven-thirty, wearing a black trouser suit with patch pockets, dark eye shadow, and pink lipstick. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. I kissed her on the cheek. She squeezed my upper arm. We all sat down to eat, and Jennifer stretched her leg under the table to rub my calf. In the past, this always quickened my sexual arousal; this time it annoyed me.We ate spare ribs and sausages, roasted small potatoes, and creamed spinach. Mercifully no one inquired about Emily’s death or anything else. We were chatting about the stock market, Alan Greenspan, the approaching mid-term elections, the Redskins, and about Mrs. Dean, a dark-eyed women with refined featured, full lips and a strong lithe figure who lived on the fifth floor. She and her developer husband, who seemed extravagantly healthy for his age as Ian often commented, spent most of their time flying around the globe. The latest twist, Lisa said, was that they were planning to buy a winter home in the Bahamas. And what about Graham, the six-term congressman from Illinois who lived two doors down from the Deans? The paper said his seat is up for grabs this November, Ian said.“National politics is broken,” Lisa said. “This is no longer a democracy, this is a duopoly. What’s needed is a third party to break the present ideological impasse, but the Republicans and the Democrats would never allow it.” Ian laughed derisively and called his wife a “liberal wuss.” Suddenly, the discussion seemed to be deteriorating when Lisa accused the Republican administration of fear mongering to scare the voters before the congressional elections. “Not at all,” Ian insisted. “The Islamic fundamentalists will be stopped once they feel the full power of righteous American fury.” Jennifer chimed in to support Ian. I cast around for something to say that would lighten the atmosphere. “Ian and Lisa remind me of James Carville and his wife on Crossfire.” This started a discussion about the inadequacies of the media. The dreaded moment came later when Jennifer and I found ourselves alone in the elevator going down. I had proposed a nightcap at my place during the dinner, but now my confidence had slipped alarmingly low. “I missed you,” she said, taking my arm. I said, “I have to tell you something.” I felt like an awkward teenager about to break up with a girlfriend. My heart was racing. I tried to formulate a sentence in my mind, but words seemed wrong. Finally I said, “I met someone in Moscow.”She withdrew her arm. The elevator stopped on my floor. “By met someone you mean you were screwing another woman?” She was suddenly calm and cold.I nodded—yes.She gave me a quick glance and went on with false cheerfulness, “And you want out? Is that what you’re saying?” “Yes.”“I see.” She pressed the LOBBY button. “Who is she?”“I don’t even know her real name. But that’s beside the point. I felt I should tell you.”“You don’t know her name?” Jennifer laughed with a hollow gaiety.We were now down in the lobby.“No,” I said.“Right.”“I want us to stay friends,” I said. “You know, of course, that I’ll always be there for you.”She kept silent. “Whew,” she said after a while. “And where’s there?”I cast around for something to say to lighten the atmosphere when she turned around and said, “Goodbye,” then marched out of the building. Later in my bed, I felt deflated. Would I have broken up with Jennifer, I asked myself, if I had not met Amanda? Or more accurately, if I was not besotted with her? I didn’t press myself too vigorously on this point, didn’t demand an answer. It was sufficient, I thought, that I acted properly.49 “Can we meet at eleven?” Pittman asked.“Sure.” I was just starting on my first cup of coffee, sunlight flooding through the kitchen windows.“The Starbucks on Pennsylvania near 17th. I have business downtown.”“I’ll be there.”The phone rang twice while I was eating breakfast. I ignored it. I was certain it was Holz. After a couple of minutes, I considered calling him back. But the more I thought about how the conversation might go, the more determined I became not to initiate it. What exactly could I say? We’ll talk when I figure out whether you’ve double-crossed me? No. What I ought to do, I thought, was wait for Pittman. I washed the cup and plate under the faucet, then put them in the dishwasher. This was what my mother used to do, and I used to laugh at her saying what was the point of having a dishwasher.I took a shower, shaved quickly, and put on khaki pants and a long-sleeved shirt. I drove across the Roosevelt Bridge and took the E Street exit, past the Department of State and the Federal Reserve and the Interior Department to Seventeenth Street. Ahead was the tall iron fence of the White House compound. I swung left and by the Old Executive Office Building, turned left again onto H Street. It was a good omen that I immediately found a parking space outside the bookstore. I fed the meter and checked my watch. Inside the bookstore, I browsed through new bestsellers. After a while, I walked to Pennsylvania. The bollards blocking access to the White House reminded me of the time not so long ago when I had been able to drive visitors past the presidential mansion and the Treasury Department onward to Capitol Hill. At Starbuck’s, I ordered coffee. While waiting, I looked around at other customers: young men and women in suits with cell phones and pieces of paper, a young mother with a pram. Then I took a seat by the window with a great view of people walking up and down Pennsylvania. All the while in the back of my mind, I kept mulling over the question of what to do if Pittman’s fabulous hackers concluded that Holz had double-crossed me. The question nagged at me like the proverbial pebble in a shoe. If double-crossed, I’d retaliate. But I told myself I should not rush to any conclusions. One thing I could do was walk away—refuse to talk to him or give him any information I had collected.For distraction, I went to the newspaper rack and selected that morning’s Washington Times. There was continued fighting at Mazar-e-Shariff; only last week, I had been in the vicinity of that place, only on the other side of the border. In the paper’s editorial opinion, there was no doubt that Iraq had WMDs. Then, in a column featuring short items of world news, there was a following item:MOSCOW (AP)—A powerful bomb exploded outside the Savoy Hotel in downtown Moscow, killing three occupants of a luxury sedan and wounding seven bystanders, including two German tourists. The blast shattered windows in the area and caused a massive traffic jam. Police said among the dead was Joseph D. Rappa, a prominent banker and philanthropist. This was the fifth such wanton bombing in Moscow this year and observers speculated it had all the marks of the encroachment of the Russian underworld.Oh God! A sick dread rose up in my chest, my mind scrambling backward to my last meeting with Joseph. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I re-read the story several times and found myself repressing a misgiving or two. Joseph’s approach to the world had always been somewhat skewed. That was his charming eccentricity way back. Even his high class brothel story, however naughty, was not felonious. But he all but admitted involvement in money laundering. Not only drugs. I suspected him of trading armaments, too; Third World countries were always looking for firearms, and one could pick these up cheap in Russia. And yet I had solicited his help and he had graciously obliged. Certainly he was not a fair-weather friend. I began to squirm, made uneasy by the memory of his final warning on the corner of Old Arbat. How anxious he’d looked. I felt a wave of depression as I ran in my mind over the events of the past six weeks. It appeared to me as though I was somehow at fault. It was not the gentleman in me who solicited his help but rather the cunning newshound, who knew the score all along. Had I told him about Hector, Joseph probably would not have helped me, ergo he’d be alive. On the other hand, car bombings were common in Moscow. It was the fifth such bombing this year, the story said. In any case, the Roman Catholics had it right, with their sacrificial confession and their guarantee of forgiveness to the right of heart! People like me had recourse to the palliative transactions of psychoanalysis. These questions kept circulating in my mind until I saw a taxi drop Pittman off outside the shop. I gestured to him to join me.“Sorry,” Pittman said, sitting down opposite. “I’m running late.”“You want coffee? Something else?” “Nothing,” Pittman said. “Nothing?”Pittman nodded and fixed his gaze on me. “The email address is a decoy. Means nothing.”“What do you mean means nothing?”“The boys traced it to a firm located just outside Luton airport in England. The guy distributes flowers that come by air, mainly from South Africa. It’s an unsecured site and certainly not something the Agency would ever use.” “So it’s not Holz?” “Definitely not. The boys suspect whoever is behind it must have used steganography. They mentioned a few New York security firms that use steganography. They suspect the Russians mafia also uses this method.”I said, “What exactly is steganography?”“A coded message is embedded in ordinary looking stuff posted on the Internet. Stuff like photographs, articles, ads. You don’t know a message is being passed at all.”I felt an inexplicable flutter of alarm. “So they have no idea who the client is?”“No.”“And these coded messages, do they know how to break the code?”“We have special software for it, but we don’t know where to look. Only the NSA could know.”I said, “So this is undetectable? Is there a way to get NSA help?”“Look, the boys have done us a favor. You wanted to know if Holz had spied on you, right? The answer is no.”“I didn’t mean to—”Pittman interrupted. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, pal. This kind of service costs a lot of money.”I stared out of the window. “Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate it.”Pittman stood up. “Well, I’ve got to run.” “Me too. Anyway, thanks very much.” We walked together out of the coffee shop. Pittman dashed off to hail a cab. I walked slowly around the corner to my car, unlocked it, and sat for a while behind the steering wheel. The moment I emerged from the elevator, I saw Essie waving in my direction. “Kevin is looking for you,” Essie said.50“Phil was very happy,” Kevin Page said. “Very,” he added for emphasis. Page held his hand out. “You’ve done it, Martin,” he said. “Well done.” I shrugged uncomfortably.“Tell me all about your Russian professor.” I recalled the wording of my last message to Page.“Well?” Page prodded. I had no choice but to spin a dramatic yarn. The sleuthing pursuit of the professor was fiction, of course, but I did my best to make it sound real. The rest—starting with my arrival at the dacha in Podmoskovye—was more or less straight reporting. Page interrupted. “So the old fellow’s gaga!” “He has his lucid moments. We had a very good conversation about arms control.”I realized that Page was no longer interested. “Yes, arms control,” he signed. “I know you’ve done a lot of leg work, but save it for another occasion.”“It’s a good story,” I said, reminding him that it was his idea. “Just as you said it would be.”He seemed distinctly cool at the recollection.“Let’s forget it, for the time being.” “You mean I shouldn’t do a story at all?”“We’d be compromising means and methods. That’s what I’ve been told. Besides, it’s always the same story. Let’s talk about it later.”I checked my disappointment. Settling back into his swivel chair, Page went on. “Now, take a couple of weeks off. We’re going to pull the chess column. I don’t expect anyone to notice. You’ll be our new Ombudsman.” “Oh?”“It’s Phil’s idea. Comes with a raise.” “Aren’t all salaries frozen?” I asked. “Not in this case. You’d better go upstairs: Phil’s expecting you. By the way, just to give you heads up. Phil mentioned something about the White House’s looking for a new director of the Voice of America. It’s a presidential appointment. Good pay and benefits. It’s yours if you want it.” I was stunned. “Wow! I’m being rewarded?”“They’re happy you found the professor. That’s their way of showing appreciation…” “What exactly does an ombudsman do?” I enunciated the title carefully, as if testing whether there was a real job behind it.“It’s a dream job,” Page said earnestly. “You’ll be the conscience of the paper. Once a week, you do a column about the news business, the paper, whatever you feel like. You’re your own boss.” “Well, it does sound good.” I hesitated. “There’s talk the entire book section is going,” I added cautiously. Page nodded. “We’ll have to make cuts.” For a brief moment, I saw a deeply worried man not sure he could cope and I thought, why seek pinnacles only to find yourself drenched in fires. Then, before my eyes, Page changed back to his normal, confident self—body erect, jaw jutting forward, a gleam in his eyes. “We’ll have to find a way to monetize our content—a new business model.” “It all sounds depressing.”“It is,” Page sighed. “I feel like an accountant.” He smiled, his tone lightening. “Let’s have lunch in the next few days. There’s a terrific new seafood place on K Street.” 51 In the afternoon, I drove to a new safe house in Oakton. I had called Holz from a pay phone mounted on the wall outside the upstairs restrooms at Kramer’s bookstore. Holz issued short instructions, and I wrote down the address. I returned down to the sidewalk café and ordered Caribbean chicken and mango salad and a glass of chardonnay. Looking west I was reminded that the next door Café Rondo, where I had first met Emily ages ago, had gone out of business. It was now an Asian noodle shop. A couple of attractive young women settled at a table nearby and smiled at me. Something about their dress suggested they worked for one of the think tanks in the area. I had a hard time smiling back. Amanda, it seemed to me, had wiped out all my erotic inquisitiveness. Besides, I needed time to take stock of the new situation. I glanced at the headlines in the Tribune: US Warns Saddam on WMD. Cab Driver Slain in Alexandria. District Plagued by HIV. Iraq Able to Launch WMD Attack on Britain At Short Notice, Blair Says. When I caught sight of the shiny, bald head and frowningly thoughtful face of Hank Busby of Brookings, I quickly gave my full attention to the paper to make sure I’d be left alone.I tried to picture myself as director—was that the official title? —of the VOA. I couldn’t. I can’t cut my ties to the Tribune, I thought. That would amount to leaving my old self behind and reinventing myself completely, into someone pompous and important and flashy. Someone else. The Tribune had defined my identity and given shape to my life. In spite of illnesses, deaths, natural calamities, and technical breakdowns, the Tribune had come out every morning, 365 days a year, year after year, keeping the illusion of direction and purpose in our lives, and serving as my anchor—an anchor, I believed, as solid as the republic itself. An anchor that also kept me tied to my past, what I had been.My mind drifted. So much had happened. The main thing was that I had finally sorted out all the misplaced pieces of my life. True, I had failed to ferret out the mole, but I had tried. I was beyond the fear of failure.“I’m done,” I muttered to myself.And that made me feel older in a way that I didn’t care for. But then, I thought, I would soon to be a grandfather. I had seen in a shop on Wilson Boulevard a mobile similar to the one I had bought for Rick in Hong Kong years ago—it had crystal animals dangling from it and it played music—I made a mental note to buy it. Helps develop the baby’s cognitive skills. Then I was suddenly daydreaming. I imagined myself on the narrow bridge holding the hand of a young girl—for some reason I was absolutely sure I’d get a granddaughter—and showing her different birds on Roosevelt Island.I moved to the edge of my chair and adjusted one of my socks.How long is one second of introspection, I wondered. I had reviewed my entire life before finishing the Caribbean salad. I still felt hungry, perhaps because spicy food aggravates one’s hunger.I had walked three blocks west on 19th Street when my cell phone vibrated, nearly making me jump out of my skin. It was Alex. “I’m going to be a grandfather,” I almost shouted, drawing scrutiny from several pedestrians. “I’m not kidding.”“Congratulations,” Alex said. “Now your problem with Rick will be sorted out in no time.”“Yes. We had a normal conversation. Kate asked me to come visit them.” I felt I had re-established a relationship with Rick; the subtext and hints about our conversation that morning were most encouraging. “Wonderful!”“Bob Pittman says Holz was not behind that email address, which is at least something.”“Yeah.”“And listen, Kevin Page offered me the job of ombudsman.”“Very nice,” Alex inhaled deeply. “Flavor of the week, eh?”“To top it all,” I said, “the publisher said that if I wanted to be head of the VOA, the job is mine…”“Boy, they’re buying you off,” Alex said acidly. “You’re being paid a bribe…”“It’s not a bribe,” I protested. “Besides, I don’t want it. I don’t want to be the director of the VOA.” “Did Page mention anything about promotions before you left?”“No. Absolutely not.”“You’ve done them a favor, so they are offering you plum jobs,” Alex said. “In Washington, we call this corruption. Or do you want me to resort to some more unflattering terms?”“Fuck off, Alex.”“So you’re not going to do chess anymore?”“That’s not an option! They’ll drop the column.”“There’s a rumor about it.” “Isn’t it bizarre? I’m appointed ombudsman after breaking every fucking rule in the fucking journalism book.” ”Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Alex.“That’s what Bob Pittman said earlier today.” The Cherokee was parked behind the Hilton near the old Imperial Chinese embassy, which had been converted into luxury condos. It was baking hot from the sun. I turned on the air-conditioning and waited outside for the car to cool off before climbing in. I turned right by the Hilton, drove up Connecticut, then down to Rock Creek Parkway by the Shoreham. Because of roadwork I had to slow down entering Whitehurst Freeway but then quickly moved to Canal Street and Clara Barton Parkway, my eyes feasting on the lush vegetation along the old C&O canal and the Potomac beyond, listening to Bizet’s Symphony in C major on WGMS-FM. The tide was out and the Potomac was shallow near the shore. The afternoon sun shimmered in the brown waters. I thought of Amanda. She had got under my skin, I had to admit. Who was she? That was going to be my first question for Holz. Thinking about Amanda evoked erotic fantasies more detailed than any I remembered experiencing in years. She was there in the very light of my eyes when I nearly rear-ended a red Camaro on the ramp up to 495 South.I got off at the Chain Bridge Road exit, and drove west to Oakton, passing through Tysons Corner and Vienna. Before reaching Oakton shopping center, as Holz had said, I turned into what at first sight appeared to be a corporate campus with primly landscaped grounds, ample parking and overgrown trees. 52 The safe house was one in a group of low, California-style homes that looked odd in a sea of Colonials, speed bumps, and swing sets. It had a glossy floor and smelled of wax polish. There was an uninhabited air about it.Holz closed the front door behind us.“Too bad about your friend Joseph,” he said. “Looks like a mafia hit.”“I feel awful,” I said.“That was bound to happen, sooner or later. He had some very nasty colleagues, I must say. You must have realized it while you were there.”“Well, yes. He was awfully kind to me. I wish I knew who was behind the hit.”“We’ll probably know something in a few weeks,” Holz said. “Anyway, good to see you,” he added, switching the subject.I waited for a while.“I’m afraid I never got to Hector,” I said, feeling guilty even though I had done nothing wrong. “I found Bogumilov, though. Talked to him.”“Hold on,” Holz said, looking slightly troubled as if overcome by the sudden assault of information. “Let’s get some coffee first.” He went to the kitchen, which doubled up as the east wall of the dining room, which in turned opened onto a large living room. A large plasma screen covered one third of one wall. He had seen a specialist in Baltimore, I heard him saying, and now had a new sequence of pills to take three times a day.I snooped: looked at the magazines on the table, at a madly eclectic assortment of books on the shelves. “Black, if I remember correctly?”“Yes, thanks.”He returned with two brown coffee mugs, placed them on the table, and sat down. “Was he Hector’s case officer?”“Yes, he was running Hector all right,” I said. “But before we go any further, tell me who’s Amanda Paul?”“Should I know her?” If Holz was affecting surprise, he was doing a superb job. “I’m told she works for you.”“For me?” Holz gave me a look of severe irritation. “Amanda Paul? Romantic interest?” The surprising stress he put on the last two words made me feel embarrassed. I nodded and went on to explain, downplaying our affair, that Volkov claimed she was CIA. I had seen, I said, a photograph of Amanda and Eric in Brussels in 1999, taken by a Russian agent. “I saw her talking to that same Eric fellow at a party in Moscow,” I said. “Eric? He’s at the embassy?”“Yes. Five eleven, maybe six, close-cropped blond hair, the picture of health and physical fitness. In his thirties. Sound familiar?”“Hmm…” Holz turned up the palms of his hands in a gesture that said not necessarily, his cunning expression now fastened on me. Then he picked up a special phone from the attaché case and stood up. “I’ve got to make a call.” He walked out into the garden.When he returned, Holz said, “We’ll have some answers soon. Okay?”I nodded, without much enthusiasm. Then, rotating my index finger, I said, “Is this place wired.” “Everything’s turned off.” He pulled a small tape recorder and placed it on the coffee table in front of us. “Feels like an official debriefing.”“No,” Holz said, making sure that it was on. “Strictly for my use.”“Ye-es?” I made it a two-syllable word to indicate I thought that was fishy.Holz said, frowning, “I play the tapes over and over again. Each time, I hear different things. Occasionally, I have Jane listen in. Women often hear different things, and they are more intuitive, I think.”“At night as I lie in my bed, I rerun parts of it. That’s when I sometimes have that lightbulb moment. In the middle of the night. I sneak out of bed, you know, not to disturb Jane, because I must write it down,” he started chuckling. “Otherwise I don’t remember a thing in the morning. Short term memory problems, eh.” He went on: “It’s so easy to miss the most important phrase, the key idea, the revealing nuance. Our minds lock on the mundane, the predictable. We shun the counter-intuitive, the apparently implausible.” He paused. “Let’s get back to Bogumilov.”I opened my notebook. “His real name is Rashidov. My impression is that he was the guy who turned Hector in the first place. Something about the way he talked about Hector suggested a strong bond between them. But let me start from the beginning,” I said, adding jokingly, ”Speaking of context.” After that, I told him everything I had discovered. I talked him through every day of my trip, from Washington to Moscow to Sherabad and back. I described in detail my conversations with Volkov, Churkin, and Rashidov. As I was telling the story, a clearer picture emerged in my mind. It was like seeing a puzzle coming together, all the disparate shapes fitting neatly into something that didn’t have words yet. Clearly Emily and I had played totally insignificant parts in a plot to topple Gorbachev in May of 1991. The plotters, led by the KGB chairman Kryuchkov, had laid a trap for an unsuspecting president. They used us to put Professor Voronov in touch with the CIA. Then, knowing in advance of Holz’s plan to exfiltrate Voronov, the plotters prepared an ambush to foil the operation and have it televised on national TV. They could count on Voronov to tell the truth; as a backup, they had Gorbachev on tape encouraging the professor to establish a back channel with the Americans—a sound bite to be used to demonstrate the president’s treachery. The plotters, I went on, evidently didn’t count on rival elements within the Russian security establishment. Somehow, somebody stumbled onto Holz’s infiltration maneuver and, unaware that this was a part of the KGB chairman’s diabolical operation, sounded the alarm. Suddenly, counterintelligence operatives and military intelligence folk swung into action. The coup had to be postponed. The only thing that was not cancelled was the covert action to protect Hector’s identity.“Your prospective defector’s telling the truth,” I said. “A couple of KGB agents used psychotropic drugs, supposedly to elicit vital information from her.” The whole Prague restaurant incident was staged to cover up the tracks that could expose the mole—to protect him and prevent any inadvertent mention of his existence during gossipy luncheons in the Yasenovo canteen. The goal was to create an illusion that the inside information had come from Emily – not the mole. I also sketched my relationship with Joseph and reproduced our final conversation. There were a few gaps—all involving Amanda—and Holz cocked his head a couple of times to let me know, I thought, that he had a sensitive ear for the false note, the thing not said or said incompletely. But he listened from beginning to end with steady, silent attention. The more I talked, the more focused Holz became. He appeared to me like a predator about to pounce, and for the first time, I sensed I was in the presence of a formidable individual. After I finished, I stood up to stretch my legs. He was deep in his thoughts and didn’t seem to notice. He must have gone through the same ritual so many times following debriefings. I walked over to the French windows facing the garden and looked through the Venetian blinds. The grounds were immaculate; apparently the Agency used the services of a professional gardener.“You know,” I hesitatingly broke the silence, looking at my shoes, “I have to tell you that I had certain suspicions about you.” “Suspicions?”I turned around. “Well, for example, I had wondered why I was being tailed.” “Jesus Christ, Todd, you’re nuts,” Holz said softly, shaking his head.“Someone had it in for me,” I said after a silent interval. “Apart from you, only the publisher, Page, and two other persons knew I was going to Moscow.”“Are you sure?”“Yes, I consulted my best friend Alex. I also told my son.” “I thought Rick and you weren’t talking much to each other.”In the past, I would have felt annoyed at the thought of people prying into my private life. Now I said calmly, even though my heart was beating at high speed, “We’ve made up. This whole business has brought us closer.”“Oh, I see.” Holz’s eyes suddenly bored into me. After a while, he added, “Good. That’s good. He’s still in California?”“Yes. By the way, he and Kate Garment are expecting a baby. Remember Kate?”“Of course, she’s my god-daughter,” Holz said. “I didn’t know that,” I said.“Joe Grimes and I have been friends for a long time,” he said. “You know he was operated on recently. Prostate cancer.” He stopped and suddenly moved his head down as if he had remembered something. “Funny, Bev and Joe said nothing about Kate and Rick getting married.”“They didn’t, but I’m told that modern couples don’t marry.” I paused and smiled. “We’re old-fashioned farts.” “Oh.” Holz went quiet for a while. “Okay. Who’s Alex?”“I can vouch for him. Alex Angelides is a colleague at the Tribune. He’s my best friend.”“You can’t trust anyone,” Holz said. “I must have mentioned to you that people are as honest and truthful as they can afford to be. As the saying goes, if your best friend doesn’t covet your BMW, the odds are that he wants to fuck your wife.”“You must have some real nice friends, Mac.” My voice was dripping with irony.“I’m a Hobbesian. Fellows like you have the luxury of a moral point of view even if your moral bearings are no longer as fixed as they used to be. Me.” he paused for a moment. “Cynics like me, we have to do the dirty work. And yet, and yet, for the most part we manage to keep everything within the bounds of law and decency. But let’s not go there.” He smiled sadly. I gave him a brief bio of Alex.“Who else? Think about it.” “No. No one.”Holz looked baffled. He pursed his lips and said, “Are you absolutely sure?”“Yes. What about your side.”“I’ve kept this strictly between you and me,” Holz said, flatly. ”There’s no way anyone at my end could know a thing about your trip.”“What if the mole is working at Langley?” “Impossible.” He paused and stared at the ceiling as if pondering something, his face taut and eyes wide. “Where’s the email address those punks in Moscow used?”I handed him a piece of paper. He started talking electronic technicalities. I didn’t know what he was talking about.He said, “Obviously, somebody was keenly interested in your activities. Someone very IT savvy.” “Looks like it.” I made no mention that Pittman’s whiz kids had already tried to check this out.“We’ll figure it out, I’m sure. I may take a few days.”We ran through the sequence of events again. This time around, Holz kept interrupting me with frequent questions, or prodded me to expand. His focus was Rashidov. What had Rashidov said about throwing the mole hunters off the scent? The relationship between Joseph and drug traffickers? Rashidov’s support for the IMU? Then we moved to the photographs I had mentioned at the UN Plaza in New York and the National Mall in Washington.“Any other photos?”“One: Mrs. Rashidov with what looked like the Golden Gate Bridge in the background, except it wasn’t the Golden Gate Bridge.”“How do you know that?”“Well I thought I saw a couple of minarets over on the Marin County side. Could have been Baghdad or Cairo.”Holz pushed a blank sheet of paper in front of me. “Sketch it as best you can.”“I’m not good at drawing,” I said. “Besides, I only glanced at the photo.”“Do your best.” He evidently found our conversation invigorating “Shit, all suspension bridges in the world look alike,” I said while drawing from memory. Kind of. Ha, ha. Thinking back, I saw the color photograph of Mrs. Rashidov in my mind’s eye; a wide river, couple of minarets on the far bank. For a brief instant, I imagined this might be an important clue—the photo was taken most likely in a Muslim city. But just then, Holz asked, “You’re certain you saw the minarets, right?” “Yes.” What I produced looked like a cartoon. “It must have been a wide river,” I said.“How wide?”I couldn’t say. I couldn’t answer his other questions about that particular scene.The session was interrupted several times. Once to give Holz time to replace the tape. Several times to visit the bathroom. By the time he stopped, it was dusk outside. I was tired and hungry.“We deserve a stiff drink,” Holz said. He got up and went to the kitchen. “Good job, Martin,” he said, returning with a bottle of Black Label and two glasses with ice cubes in them. “I’m so glad you made up with your son. At least you guys have closure now.”“I think he’s disappointed I didn’t get the mole. He didn’t say it in so many words, but I sensed it.” I’d wondered what sort of consolation could score-settling bring? Suppose Hector was captured and executed—he disappeared—but Emily had disappeared, too. No. The two disappearances were not equivalent. “We’re not through, my friend. It’s not over until the fat lady sings.” Holz raised his glass.Afterwards, I went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator looking for food. Only beer and wine. Do safe house rules, I wondered, allow ordering food from the neighborhood Domino’s Pizza?“Now,” Holz went on, “if tonight, tomorrow, the next day, you remember anything that you’ve not mentioned—anything at all, even if it seems completely insignificant—please write it down.” He paused. “Now let’s see about what’s-her-name,” he said and pulled out a mini laptop from his case.Holz gave a wry smile. “Quite a looker,” he said. “Yes, she worked for us under deep cover. Mostly biotech, and biological and chemical weapons.” He added with carefully measured hesitation, “She was in Russia for the science division.”I stood behind Holz, studying Amanda’s image on the small screen. The picture made my chest thump with apprehension.“What’s her real name?” Then I thought: Does that really change things at all? 53“You cost me a good agent,” Holz said.“So you sent her to spy on me?”“No, I had nothing to do with it.”“Look at me, Mac.”“I told you she was sent to Moscow by the science division,” Holz said firmly, looking at me. “Oh, c’mon!”“That’s God’s truth.” I didn’t believe him but I wasn’t going to press him further. What would be the point? The galling part was that I had failed all along to see the obvious; I thought I had gone into this business with eyes wide open, when in fact they were shut tight. Just thinking that it all may have been a complete sham was painful. But I also knew somewhere in the back of my mind I wanted her back, even if she had betrayed me, even if she was a luftiguz( my dad’s favorite pejorative) or a nishtikeit, (which was mom’s equivalent.) Funny how in moments of distress words from my youth come to mind.Amanda’s real name was Joyce Amanda Fisher, Holz went on, looking at his miniature laptop. Her father is a retired army colonel who lives in Puerto Rico. The agency recruited her during her senior year at Vassar, when she opted for deep undercover work. She was sent to Penn State to do a master’s program in bio-technology. She loves horses and was a member of the US equestrian Olympic team. A show jumper. Didn’t take part in the games because she had a dangerous fall during training. She was very gutsy, very competitive, and at the same time even-tempered, in full control of her emotions. Anyone dealing with horses has to be even-tempered, Holz explained. A first-rate mind with an entrepreneurial streak. “The agency bought a bankrupt fabrics store in Beirut. Joyce was nominally the owner. This was her cover. We budgeted a serious chunk of change for her operation. But within six months, the store became the most talked about outpost of Paris ladies fashions in the Middle East—and began to turn a profit. We recouped our investment in two years! This is something very rare for our bean counters. All our operations cost money. The main thing is that she used the shop to gain access to the elites in several Arab countries.” I felt humiliated and nauseous when I left the safe house. I pulled out into the empty road and headed the way I had come. I experienced a twinge of self-pity. The fact was that Amanda had lied to me, deceived me. But how realistic it was to have expected her to tell me she was working for the fudge factory? I got off I-66 at Arlington national cemetery exit, and halted on a deserted road. “No fool like an old fool,” I laughed bitterly.54Three days later, Holz called to ask for an urgent meeting. Right away, if possible. “The same place as last time,” he said. “Let’s say in forty-five minutes.” I took the Orange line to the Vienna metro station, then a cab for a two-mile ride to Oakton. “Thanks for coming,” Holz said when he opened the front door. “I got coffee for you.” He pointed at a Starbucks cup with a plastic top sitting on the coffee table. “Did you know that we have a Starbucks in the building? It sells only beverages, no mugs or bags of beans.” We settled into armchairs. Holz said, “We’ll need more time on that email address. The security firm in New York has no clue who they were dealing with. The client was paying cash—in advance—through a third party. Obviously knows his tradecraft.”I said with heavy sarcasm, “Cash does miracles.”“Well, give me time.” Holz coughed. “Okay, let’s get down to business.” He now adopted the posture of a tough prosecutor about to question a prisoner in the dock. He looked at the yellow pad in front of him. “When Rashidov says that the mole had given thirteen, fourteen years of his life to the KGB, was it your impression that he pulled the numbers out of thin air? Why not six or seven? Or three or four?”“Jesus, how should I know?”“Just tell me what you think.”“I’m trying to.”“Was he perhaps subconsciously referring to his years as Hector’s case officer? Or was he shooting the breeze?” “My impression is that Rashidov had a disciplined intellect. “Holz was staring into the middle distance. I could tell something was troubling him. He appeared to be going through the sequence of events. “Okay. Let’s assume the first. If Rashidov left Moscow in late 1991 or early 1992, this would mean that Hector could have been recruited in 1977 or 1978—before his first visit to the United States as a diplomatic courier.”“You mean Rashidov?”“Right. Rashidov, alias Bogumilov. So we’ll have to figure out where Rashidov served in the mid-seventies.”In the silence that followed, Holz seemed to be digesting some additional information. I reached for my coffee and took a long sip.Holz pulled a manila folder from his attaché case. It was full of photographs. He started arranging them on the coffee table in front of me. Each photo showed a big suspension bridge over a body of water. From the way he was neatly lining them up, I sensed this was an important exercise. A test of some kind.“Now,” Holz said casually, good-humouredly I thought, “which of these bridges looks like the one you saw in Rashidov’s house?” I glanced at him for a moment. “I already told you I concentrated on Rashidov and barely looked his wife’s photo.”“I’m talking about the bridge,” Holz said. “Forget about everything else: just the bridge. How wide’s the river?” I stared at the photographs for nearly a minute. All suspension bridges in the world look alike, I wanted to say. Then I looked at each photograph for about thirty seconds in exaggerated concentration. Once I reached the end of the row, I returned to the beginning and scrutinized them again. Then I gulped, waited for a while and with my index finger pointed one out. “This one.” The river was about a mile across, and its color was dark blue. The sky was a washed-out blue. The far bank was flat with several minarets piercing the skyline. “Are you sure?”I inspected the picture more closely and shrugged. “No. Can’t be absolutely sure.” Holz was now writing something down. Without looking up, he said, “You’ve pointed at the Europa Bridge over the Bosporus.”“Sorry, it looks like a big river to me.”I stood up and scrutinized the photographs from a distance, then squatted down and bent over the photographs as if I was near-sighted. In the end, I again selected the same photograph. “Hmmm… Why? Why that one?”“Don’t know.” I crossed my legs. “It’s just that it has the same feel as the one I saw in Rashidov’s home.”“You said you barely looked at it!”“That’s true. Now when I have to remember how that photograph looked, I can say it looked like this one.” “Okay. We know KGB wives didn’t travel abroad alone.” Holz made another quick notation. “Which means Rashidov himself probably took that photo in Istanbul. That is if this is the bridge you saw. The timing fits. That bridge opened in 1975.” His face lit up suddenly and I realize in retrospect that this must have been the moment when the months of suspicion abruptly crystallized in his mind: he had his suspect.I began to vacillate. “As I said, I can’t be absolutely sure.”“Let’s not fart around, Todd,” Holz threw his hands in the air. “We have a hypothesis to test.” “The hypothesis is?” “The time: late seventies. The place: Turkey. The question for my Turkish counterpart: was a Russian diplomat named Bogumilov—or Rashidov or whatever other alias he may have used—in Turkey at that time?” I could see on Holz’s face that he was gaining confidence. I imagine he was owed favors by many security officials around the world, and these are people who settle their debts; that was in the nature of their business—favors given and favors received. Holz continued, “I’ll send Bogumilov’s photo to Ekrem Effendi. Was there anyone in the Soviet Embassy who looks like this man? The Turks have photos of all Soviet personnel. ” It was the cast of Holz’s features and the apparent lack of doubt in his voice that made me feel I was looking at a bloodhound smelling blood. Evidently, the bridge was the key to the mystery. With a flash of insight, I thought I had confirmed Holz’s earlier hunch; he always followed his hunches.I imagined Holz’s next step—putting in a call to Ekrem Efendi, his opposite number in Ankara. In fact, he had already acted. Something about his facial expression made me feel absolutely certain that Bogumilov’s mug shot had already been transmitted to Ankara. He had seen something that I had not seen. I said, “That’s brilliant!” Holz let out a grunt of irritation. “Let’s not fool ourselves. This is one reading, the reading you and I want to believe.”“What’s the other reading?”“Wishful thinking. Such things happen in my business.”I persisted, “If the Turks confirm it, you can make a list of all Americans whoserved in Turkey at that time and match them up against the names of Americans working in the embassy in Moscow in 1991.”“Exactly.” Holz chewed his lower lip for a moment. “We’ll see if my instincts are shit,” Holz said with disgust. He shook his head and raised his eyebrows. “The papers say you’re in line to become the new DDO.”Holz looked up. “Oh, bullshit. Gossip. You never know if the leak is there to undermine you, or to advance your candidacy. For you it’s a story either way.” He stopped himself, and when he resumed there was a note of bitterness in his voice. “You have no idea of the kinds of infighting and maneuvering going on. We’re up to here,” he lifted his left hand to his throat and made cutting strokes. “Up to here in reorganization. Retooling old operatives. Hiring new people. I look around and I see people with tattoos and pierced noses and lips. If you had strip-searched the entire building ten years ago, you wouldn’t have found a single tattoo or body piercing apart from some ears. Christ! The other day, a young woman with flawless skin and coiffed hair opens her mouth to say something and shit, I see a gold ring on her tongue. Yuck.“The real problem is Rumsfeld. He’s set up a Pentagon analysis unit to compete with us and they churn out pre-masticated intelligence so that the president can digest it easily. I’m a nuts-and-bolts guy, I don’t give a shit about turf battles. Not anymore. But many agency people are cowed. The mindset is: you don’t tell your masters what they don’t want to hear.”Holz continued, “Okay, catching an old Cold War spy cannot be a priority in the new century. That’s what some people say. The Cold War is over. Move on, they say. But I don’t want to move on.”I thought I saw a glimpse of self-loathing in Holz’s eyes.“Say the answer from Ankara is positive. How do you nail your man?” I asked and crossed my legs the other way. “Remember Hanssen?” he asked, a touch too quickly. “Even the KGB didn’t know his identity, but we figured it out: we had his finger prints. Yes siree, fingerprints. Now we have far more sophisticated techniques. The FBI has a new machine using amazing new technologies for DNA testing. All hushhush stuff. Also a new finger print identification process has been developed by a guy at the University of Arizona. We’ll get him. All I need is one item that he has handled.”“Meaning?”“Envelopes, containers or whatever he used to pass information.”I said, “I don’t expect to have that kind of stuff lying around.”Suddenly, he couldn’t get words out fast enough, explaining how the KGB saved everything in Yasenovo’s archives and what he expected to get. “As I told you, we asked our prospective defector to bring us several items. Stuff handled by Hector.”“Has he done it?”“Yes,” he said, his face suddenly open as if this was the most natural thing in the world. “It’s just a matter of getting them to us. It’ll be sorted out in the next few days.”This was like chess, I thought. “Then you’ll let him and his family come over to the US?”“Right.” Holz shook his head in a self-satisfied fashion. “I feel it in my gut,” he slapped his stomach. “We’re on the five yard line, my friend—we mustn’t fumble now.” He paused. “It came to me in the middle of the night as I was playing the tape. Something Rashidov said.”“What?”Holz abruptly stood up and with the heel of his left hand smoothed his hair. “Excuse me for a minute.” I’d been left hanging, like when networks slap a countdown clock at the corner of the screen to pump up the suspense. “Does that mean you have a possible suspect in mind?” I shouted after him.I heard water running in the bathroom.“Hard to tell,” Holz said when he returned. He slumped down in the sofa and began gathering his things—the special phone, the yellow pad and the small laptop—and laying them into his briefcase. “I don’t want to jinx it. One step at the time. Besides, let’s wait for the Turks.”I looked at my watch and stood up. Holz got up and grabbed my upper arm. “We gave it a good try, pal. Rick should be proud of you.” For a moment, I thought he was going to give me a hug. After some hesitation, I said, “You’ll keep me posted, won’t you? You won’t hold anything back, you promised. ”“Yes,” Holz grimaced, as if in pain.“No bullshit?” “You know the rules: I don’t bullshit unless it’s absolutely necessary. Which doesn’t mean I don’t cut corners here and there.”“Speaking of cutting corners, why do I get this strange feeling that you’ve done it with me?”Holz winced. The question, I saw, took him by surprise. “Well, once, now that you mention it. Nothing sinister, really. But I’ll tell you later.”“Don’t bullshit me, Mac. Tell me now!”“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said softly as if something had got him into a confiding mood.“Forgive what?”“This will come out sooner or later, I’m sure, and I’d rather you hear it from me. It’s not what it sounds like.”“What the fuck are you talking about?”“I kind of helped arrange your Tribune assignment to Moscow.”“You did what?”Holz lifted his hand to stop me. “I felt you needed a Tribune cover, just in case something goes wrong. Fortunately everything went smoothly.”I felt stupid. And angry. I stood up and began to pace around. The suspicion forming slowly in the back of my mind now began to solidify. “Jesus Christ! You fucking invented Voronov’s disappearance! You dirty fucking son of a bitch! You knew all along where he was.”“Not exactly,” he said forcefully. “There were rumors Voronov had disappeared and rumors can easily harden into facts. Plus the chatter. Filled with code words and names talking about a potential scientist from Russia, about money, all sorts of things. One day the chatter drops off. Abu Ali or Abu Ibrahim or Abu whatever go silent, and if they are not communicating, we can’t hone in on them. Now what do you do if you’re an analyst? You go with what you’ve got.” He smiled benignly. “Raw intelligence is like the Bible: you can pick out bits to make any argument you please.”I returned to my seat, mulling over his last sentence. “Boy, there’s a lot of margin for error in that, isn’t there. What happens if you fuck up? Or is that when we discover how easily words can escape their meanings?”“You learn how to live with it, pal,” Holz said. “It’s different when it comes to your political masters. In this case, the president was shitting green apples. No kidding. God knows, he easily gets rattled. So we got the president to talk to your publisher about sending you to Moscow.”“Who the fuck is we?” I said, deciding to press on.Holz grinned. “I only reminded my director that you personally knew Voronov, then let nature take its course.” He shrugged. “The director’s nature.” “You’re a devious fucking bastard you are, Holz,” I said, plaintively. Whenever I felt I was getting closer to this man, whenever I knew I was undergoing a shift in sympathies and was getting to like him and like him a lot—his alluring self-confidence, his calm, his logical mind—he’d pull some atrocious trick to make me hate him. Of course he could truthfully insist he had not pressured the director, who, as Holz said, had full access to all raw intelligence and could have concluded whatever without anyone being any the wiser. But he knew I wasn’t buying it.Holz tried to depressurize the atmosphere by grinning. “It worked, didn’t it? You can’t say I didn’t have your best interests at heart.”“Jesus,” I moaned, shaking my head in self-disgust; what folly to permit myself any kind feelings toward this man, I thought. What else was he holding back from me? “It’s been nice knowing you, Mac. I’m done. Hector is not going to be my white whale. I mean that.”“I’m sorry you feel that way, now that we’re so close,” Holz said. “I’ll keep my end of the bargain.” Holz held open the front door. “One last thing.” The expression on his face reminded me of someone who in a flash sees a possible path to victory. “There’s one more thing you could do.”“Fuck you, Holz.” Holz paused and grimaced as if he had discarded this one things after a debate with himself. “Nah, forget it.”55Holz’s duplicity didn’t shock Rick at all. “He meant well, dad,” he said after I told him about my final talk with Holz. I didn’t argue. Rick and I began to talk more frequently that fall. After I called him to report on my final conversation with Holz, Rick called two days later. We talked for an hour, and for once it was not about family matters. He hated the new No Child Left Behind Act, which required him to bring all his eighth-graders up to proficient levels as measured by standardized tests of the state of California. That call was important, because it led to other calls, and pretty soon we were talking like any expectant grandfather talks to his grownup son. One time we discussed a project he had conceived together with another Costa Mesa middle school teacher named Arnie. During the summer, Rick said, he and Arnie had started writing a screenplay about a dysfunctional Orange County family. “So what happened,” I asked.“The stuff we got down on paper seems too contrived.”“Oh?”“Then we both got fascinated by your trip to Russia. I let Arnie read your long email, and he loved it. I thought it would make a great screenplay, provided you’d let me use it. We’d also change the plot to fit our needs.”“I don’t see any problem,” I said, eager to do something for him.“That’s fantastic, Dad.” Rick sounded quite excited. He went on to describe possible plot adjustments: Amanda could be a freelance assassin hired by the mole to kill the hero; Joseph would head a Russian mafia family; they’d need daily shootouts in the streets.As he talked on, I couldn’t help thinking of the time I watched baby Rick chasing pigeons in Farragut Square. Now we were talking like a father and son.The next day, Rick emailed the latest photos of Kate. One of them was taken shortly after the pregnancy test. She smiled a wonderful smile and I understood her charm at once. This was, I said to myself, a real accomplishment. This was what I’d been waiting a long time for. I was still on leave from the paper, although I had moved into my new office not far from Page’s. One Thursday evening after midnight, the phone rang. I was drifting over the Potomac on a small parachute to which I knew I couldn’t cling for very long when I woke up with a jerk.“Dad,” I heard Rick’s voice. “Some bad news. Kate’s father died. He had a heart attack while flying to North Carolina for a board meeting.”“When did it happen?”“Kate’s mother called about an hour ago.”“I’m very sorry. How’s Kate?”“She’s all right, I think. But I’m worried. She’s been very close to her father. We’ll fly out to Washington in the morning. I’ll call you when I know the schedule.”I told him that Kate and he were welcome to stay in the Rosslyn apartment with me, if that was convenient. Rick thought Kate would probably want to be near her mother. “After the funeral, I’d like to spend a couple of days with you,” he added. Newspaper obituaries said Joe Garment suffered a heart attack while on his way to a business meeting in Charlotte. He had suffered from prostate cancer, too. But he died apparently instantly aboard an American Airlines Boeing 737 and was pronounced dead by doctors after they landed there. A 2000 photograph of Garment showed a happy man who’d just sold his investment company to a British banking conglomerate at an enormous profit. The obituaries emphasized Garment’s patriotism, his service to the country, his charitable contributions, his various directorships, and the fact that after graduating from Yale, he had volunteered for service in Vietnam where he earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. His career in the CIA was described as distinguished, but was not reviewed in detail, the emphasis being on his business talents. The Tribune obituary said a private funeral would be held at the Arlington National Cemetery followed by a Celebration and Thanksgiving service at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church (date to be announced).56We buried Joe Garment on the slopes of the Arlington cemetery, in the shadow of General Lee’s mansion. Only family members and a few family friends attended. I qualified, I guess, as the grandfather of Beverly Garment’s expected grandchild. Rick phoned me and told me to drive to the cemetery at quarter to twelve on Wednesday.Before going to the cemetery, I took a long walk over to Roosevelt Island. I strolled into the lush forest, all the while guilt nagging away at me. If I had never asked for Joseph’s help, his car might have never been bombed. I thought of Joseph’s wife Audrey and their daughter. Perhaps someone had phoned Audrey in Holland before the news was published in the local papers. On the other hand, I thought, I was doing what I had to do. Was my desire for revenge such a crime?I sat on a bench for a long time, watching squirrels chase along the path and scamper up into the trees. Then I had to walk back home, put on a dark suit and a black tie.I arrived early at Arlington National Cemetery. The black hearse and about a dozen big cars followed a few minutes later. As the relatives formed a funeral procession, I saw Rick and Kate heading toward me. I had been slightly apprehensive about a reunion in a public place, and I could feel my pulse knocking in my ears when I saw them. I looked at him and was almost dizzy with pride. That’s my son: the handsome healthy man with lively brown eyes, curling lashes, and the strong unruly hair he had inherited from his mother; the beautiful Kate dressed in black, her black wide-brimmed hat casting a shadow over her upper face, wearing the ruby brooch that used to belong to my Emily. Rick and I embraced without speaking a word. He stiffened slightly in surprise but allowed me to hold him longer than I’d expected and I sensed the affection that I had not heard on the phone. Without saying anything, Kate flung her arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks.“I’m so sorry about your dad,” I whispered, holding her for a long while. I could feel the moment luxuriously expanding and I suddenly realized it was touch that met my yearning. It sealed the reconciliation. It was the touch of my pregnant daughter-in-law that reconnected me to my family, that restored the arc of life’s immortality. And I kept wondering if Rick would even know how in my love for him I needed his approval far more than he needed mine. Rick motioned that we had to join the mourners who had already formed a funeral procession. The ceremony was short. The minister recited haunting lines from St. Benedict: What you give you do not give away, for what is ours is yours also.And life is eternal and love immortal, and death is only a horizon,And a horizon is nothing but the limit of our sight.All around me were the sounds of muffled lamentations: the coffin of dark wood with brass handles draped in the Stars and Stripes; the guard of honor; the solitary trumpet playing a lament. After it was lowered into the ground, there echoed the twenty-one gun salute honoring his Purple Heart and Bronze Star. The carefully folded flag was handed to the widow. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Amen.I stood in the background, but my mind was elsewhere. I found myself thinking of Joseph and his armored Bentley. He had looked well, my rich friend Joseph; he was healthy and full of life. He also knew his enemies were lurking in the shadows. Of course it would have all been different if he’d been poor—a pointless hypothesis—and so, to move my mind off this depressing topic I thought about Garment’s life. Then my mind drifted. I teared up a bit. Not for Joe Garment, whom I barely knew. No. Looking at a sea of white tombstones, I was imagining Emily’s funeral at the Pacific View Cemetery—the funeral that I couldn’t attend—and the crest of a hill overlooking the ocean where she was put to rest years ago. My father-in-law took me to visit the gravesite later. He was leaning on me—he had prosthesis below his left knee from having stepped on a mine in Korea—as we were looking down at children running in the white foam of the breakers and at the big catamarans homing in the sunset across an ocean the color of blood. “She’d love this spot. On a clear day, you can see the Catalina islands. You know when she was a girl, we used to sail to Catalina, your wife and I.”57 The next day I had a call from Holz. “How would you like to go for a walk on the Mall,” he said. “It’s rather important.”“Really important?”“Yes.”“Can you give me an idea?”“No,” he said. “Meet me outside the Corcoran at eleven.” Inwardly, I rolled my eyes; after our last conversation, I thought, Holz clearly had a tin ear for the nuances of social intercourse. But I said, “Sure.”I walked down to Connecticut Avenue, cut over on K Street, then down 17th toward the Executive Office Building whose imperial architecture reminded me of the grand Viennese public edifices built during Kaiser Franz Josef’s reign. It was a warm October day. The trees were shedding their leaves, which had turned red and yellow. Holz waited on the steps of the Corcoran. In his herringbone blazer, blue button-down shirt, and dark gray slacks, he easily blended into the surroundings. The nation’s ranking spy, I thought, looked like a prosperous accountant or an art history professor at a small Midwestern college inspecting the art treasures of the capital. Real spies—unlike James Bond—are supposed to be inconspicuous.We proceeded to walk toward the mall, past the stately Red Cross Building and the OAS headquarters with its flags fluttering in the wind.We talked briefly about Joe Garment. Holz informed me that a memorial service to celebrate the life of Garment would be held at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church on Tuesday. I said, “You two were very close, right?” Quite apart from being Holz’s deputy in Moscow, I knew that Garment had managed Holz’s investments when he went into the private sector to run a phenomenally successful hedge fund.“Yeah.” Holz sighed miserably and his body sagged in mock surrender. For some reason, I thought the loss of friend was a burden he had to bear. “I didn’t know him well,” I said. “But he was very good to Rick and Rick and Kate insisted I join the rest of the family at the funeral.” “So you attended the funeral?”“Yes.” We waited at the corner of Constitution Avenue for the lights to change, then crossed over and continued in silence toward the Washington monument. The Capitol Dome rose in front of us.I said, “What’s the important matter you wanted to talk about?”“I didn’t tell you about the Turkish answer.”I made an understanding grunt. “Since I didn’t hear from you, I figured the answer was negative.” “Nah. Quite the opposite.” Holz sighed and looked around in an instinctive gesture of caution. “A man who looked like Bogumilov served in the Soviet trade mission in Istanbul from 1975 to 1978. He used the cryptonym Rashid Ibrahimov. I’ve seen his photo and there’s no doubt whatsoever that we’re talking about the same person.”I nodded. “Does that mean you can nail Hector?” Holz ignored the question. He said, “I have a theory: treason is most often committed to solve immediate personal problems.” He looked in the middle distance as though he was going to tell me about a new chapter in his life.“There was something Rashidov said that grabbed my attention, something about money not being the only motive. I listened to that portion of the tape over and over again. It must be man’s vanity. I speculated that Hector must have been passed over for promotion, that he was angry. When you’re angry you want to lash out, Rashidov had said. And then, a few months after you commit your first betrayal, you’re promoted. Rashidov said that was a hypothetical.”“What are we talking about, Mac?”“There are seven guys who served in Turkey in the late seventies and who were in the Moscow embassy in 1991. Three State, two Agency, and two DIA. Only one of them was due for promotion in 1977. One.” Holz paused for effect. “His promotion didn’t come in 1977; it came through six months later.”There was a silence now.“So you have a suspect?”He stopped walking, bringing us to an abrupt and awkward halt.“Joe Garment.” He chewed on his lower lip. His face got red.I confess this was a shock. “That’s crazy!” Joe Garment was one of the toughest anti-communists I’ve ever met. Then again, there are things that reason could never hope to penetrate. Standing there in the middle of the pavement, I thought about Rick and Kate, and my stomach clenched. The implications were beginning to sink in: Rick and Kate’s marriage, the future of my grandchild. Fortunately, I thought and felt guilty for thinking it, Garment’s heart attack came in the nick of time.“I know it sounds preposterous, but there it is,” Holz said, his brow corrugated. “It goes to show you that we never know another person, even persons close to us.”We resumed the walk. Holz summarized what I still thought was his theory: Garment had served in Istanbul in the mid-Seventies. He was supposed to return to Langley in the summer of 1977 and become deputy head of the Counterintelligence Division. “The promotion was blocked due to certain complications resulting from the Church Committee investigation of the Agency; the Director had to appoint another man to the job. In Garment’s file there’s a mention that he had considered quitting. But the guy who got the job didn’t work out. Garment’s promotion was announced in early 1978. By then, he had already crossed over.” “This is sheer speculation on your part,” I said. “A hunch, Mac!”“It’s consistent with Rashidov’s remarks.”We were now on Jefferson Drive, heading in silence toward the Smithsonian castle. Its turrets reminded me of the happy days all those years ago when I was a Wilson Center fellow and had an office in the Smithsonian tower. Joe Garment? I rubbed my eyes with my hands, as if trying to awake from a nightmare. This could not be happening. I said, pointing my finger at him, “You told me Joe Garment had passed many polygraph tests!”He nodded—yes, then shook his head. “As my former director used to say, any crook can pass a lie detector with a couple of Valium tablets and a sphincter muscle trick. We were all blind. Look: in 1979, Joe bought a large farm with a big dilapidated house in Middleburg for half a million. No mortgage, pal. Nobody paid any attention because the place was unlivable. After he retired from the Agency, he poured money into it and turned it into today’s Walden House.”“He became rich after he retired,” I said.“I know. He handled my money. He became a millionaire during the dot-com boom. Made me some money with his hedge fund. You know, he did a few things for us after he retired.” Some very delicate missions, Holz explained, like making payments to agency clients overseas: a defense minister, trade union executives, newspaper publishers, parliamentarians. Not being formally affiliated with the US government, Garment could pretend to be one of those public-spirited businessmen interested in matters of collective security. “We frequently met for lunch at the Metropolitan Club and the thought never crossed my mind that he was the third man. Which goes to show that it’s impossible to know another man; it’s hard enough knowing yourself.” “We’ll never know for sure,” I said.“I don’t know about that,” Holz said cryptically. “People in my business know a lot of quick and painless ways to die.” Startled, I said: “What’s that supposed to mean?” But before finishing the sentence, I knew in a flash what it meant. I saw everything with a new clarity. Joe Garment had taken his own life.Holz said, “We have pills that make it look as though one’s suffered a massive heart attack. Instant, painless death, for use in emergencies, of course. This was Joe’s emergency.”“You mean you had proof positive that he was the third man?” I stopped and waited for his answer. He shook his head. “No. At first it was only a hunch. Then I played a subtle trick on him. Everything depended on his state of mind.”“But why would he commit suicide?” “He thought I’d caught him red-handed.” His voice was low. “Which I did --- only after he became convinced that was the case.”“And then you let him off the hook?”“Well, not really.”“When did you start suspecting Garment?”He waited for a moment before replying. “The first time we met in the Oakton safe house. While you were talking about your meeting Rashidov.” Holz looked around. “What do you say about a light lunch? Are you hungry?”“There’s a café in the underground passage linking the old National Gallery with the new wing.”“Fine.”We briskly crossed the Mall and took the steps to the National Gallery. People gazed around and shuffled up and down the steps. Inside, we found ourselves surrounded by gaggles of tourists whose shiny eyes and loud laughter made them look, I couldn’t help thinking, like visitors from another planet. We took the steps down to the underground passage. “You said you caught him red-handed,” I said. We were now standing in line. “I checked and re-checked personnel files, dates, reports. I still hoped there was a chance that I was wrong. Remember, I told you all that stuff about new fingerprint identification techniques and DNA. Our second meeting at Oakton?”“Yeah,” I said, feeling again annoyed with myself. “That was mostly bullshit, I’m sorry to tell you.”“Well, you certainly made it sound quite plausible,” I said.“Yes,” he said sheepishly, as if this admission held a key to his character. “I was supposed to be convincing.”So the FBI does not have that fantastic DNA machine, I thought. The defector doesn’t have any artifacts personally handled by Hector. Once again Holz had abused my cooperation, but you had to admire his persistence.. He smiled tolerantly. I said, “Why, Mac?”We were now sitting down with our bowls of clear minestrone soup and pastrami sandwiches with pickled cucumbers.“Because I was setting Joe up,” he said, raising his eyebrows. For a while, no one spoke. Of course, of course. My admiration vanished as I grasped what he was saying. Holz knew all along that whatever he told me would also reach Rick’s ears and through Kate eventually get to the Garments. This was, I now saw, how he gradually entrapped Joe Garment. The realization made me feel like I’d been dropped down a very deep hole. I’d thought the Cold War was a war for souls. From Holz’s perspective, it was a war of duplicity and cunning, war in the shadows. ”The truth is that I had asked the defector to steal some items from the KGB archives, but it’s by no means certain that the stuff would be useful, you know, after so many years. That’s if he could get it out. You see, the defector who stole Robert Hanssen’s file managed to do it during that chaotic summer of 1991. It was his insurance policy, which allowed him later to collect a rather substantial reward. The file covered Hanssen’s betrayals up to 1991. Nothing after 1991, even though Hanssen continued to work for Moscow for another decade. Also, the FBI doesn’t have that fantastic new DNA machine yet, but we’re working on it.”He returned to his soup.“I figured if Garment was guilty, all I needed to do it rattle his cage. Human nature is remorseless.” He said the last sentence with an air of connoisseurship, as if reminding me that he was a student of human nature. He seemed quite calm, I thought, quite at peace with the world when he continued: “So, I had his phones wiretapped. Home, office, cell, everything….”I said, “Without a court order?”For a moment he didn’t reply. He took several spoonfuls of his soup, then began to smile, mockingly, I thought.“It wasn’t necessary. Garment had business dealings with several Saudi and Gulf investors.” I stared at him and shook my head. “You’re too fucking much, Mac.”Holz started to talk about what happened and now he looked, I thought, like a top bureaucrat who knows something that nobody else does. “I counted on his professionalism. An intelligence officer—even a former intelligence officer—always wants to check out the level of threat.”He continued after a long pause. “And guess what? Two days after our Oakton meeting, Garment phoned that professor at the University of Arizona I mentioned to you. The experts’ expert on fingerprinting. Then he phoned an old FBI buddy to talk about the most up-to-date information on fingerprinting and DNA.” Holz finished his soup and set the bowl aside. “Now I was absolutely sure.”“That’s not admissible evidence, Mac,” I said. “All circumstantial stuff, kind of cat-and-mouse game.” Holz considered this, skewing his eyes. “I know. But we’re not dealing here with a robbery or some low-grade crime. Here you’ve got treason and an extremely clever guy. A professional intelligence officer. So I had to play a mind-fucking gambit. Get him to confess. It’s like a chess game.” “Hell chess!” I said. There was a gleam in his eyes. “You should know. The opponent thinks he knows what you’re going to do, and you need to come up with one wholly unexpected move that would convince him he’s trapped and heading to a certain defeat…”“Yeah,” I said. The shimmering light from the water fountain above ground made silvery strings on the glass ceiling, and I remembered taking adolescent Rick to lunch here on Sundays, which was the only reason for him agreeing to visit the National Gallery. I loved the sound of his laughter as he ran through the underground passage. Holz glanced around and lowered his voice. “I feel shitty. God knows I do. How do you go after a guy who’s your long-time friend?”Holz was the last person I could imagine being overwhelmed by guilt. But I remained silent. He sighed. “I said to myself, if he doesn’t confess immediately, I’ll turn him over to the FBI. Right away. But if he does, well…” “So he confessed immediately.”Holz ignored my remark. “I phoned him. I think he’d expected it. I suggested we meet at the main baseball pitch in Nottaway Park. A Little League game was under way and we watched two runners sprinting for home off a hit to empty center. The first made it easy, but there was a throw to the plate for the second. Joe whooped with the parents as the second slid safely under the tag. That’s what I call cool, he said.“Then we walked down the hill to the soccer pitch. I told him that his game was up and I had evidence. I mentioned the phone intercepts, and he said right away, ‘Did Kate and Rick help you set me up?’ I assured him that they had no idea about my little deception. I could hear in his voice that he was relieved. I imagine that the notion of his daughter conspiring against him must have been unbearable.”I caught bits and pieces of conversations around us. Then came the sound of faraway laughter. Holz sneaked a look at his wristwatch. We got up, placed our trays on a conveyor belt, and walked into the tunnel.“And that was all?” “Pretty much.” He signed.For just a second, I thought the look on his face was one of regret.“He asked me to give him a couple of days,” Holz went on. “The way he said it, I knew what he had in mind. It was written on his face. He looked like a ghost. Had I said no, I’m going to turn you in right now, I thought he was about to do something drastic. Honest to God, I thought he had a pill with him, or a revolver. I said, ‘Okay, but there’s a price you have to pay: I need to know a few things.’ I cleared up a few things—my last gift to the Agency.” Holz went silent.We came out of the east wing of the National Gallery, and sat on a stone bench facing the water fountain. Outside, the Mall was bathing in the afternoon sun, and couples were lounging on the golden slopes of the Capitol Hill where the gods hold their assemblies above the world. I said, “And he agreed?”“Yes.”“And what did you ask him?” “Oh, I’d rather not go there,” he said emphatically. “But you got a quid for your quo?”“Yup.”I said, “Why did he do it?”“Who knows? I told him we knew all about Istanbul. He didn’t seem surprised. I imagine he thought Rashidov had betrayed him.”“So you let him off the hook,” I said, keeping my tone matter of fact. Holz looked at me, as if gauging my reaction. “I don’t know why, but I felt like I had to give him a way out.” Whoa? I said to myself, taken aback by his self-confidence. “How could you be sure he’d not try to escape?”Holz smiled bitterly. “Go where? He was finished. He was dying anyway, his cancer had spread. They had operated on his prostate, but that was too late. He didn’t have much time left. Besides, this was the only way to preserve his dignity and reputation.”Shouldn’t I feel some sort of dark relief, I wondered; after all, justice of some sort had been served. Retribution had put paid to the betrayal. Now that the shock of Holz’s revelation had passed, the reporter in me was coming to the fore. Composing a post-mortem on an incredible tale of treason, I considered the shape of the story. It could be handled as a spot story, or a long magazine piece in Sunday’s paper. But what about Rick and Kate? I was already going there in my mind and I wasn’t crazy about the path my mind was taking. I shook my head, as if to counter my own bleak thoughts, and turned to Holz. “What do people in the agency say?”“Nothing.” He shrugged and mustered a lethargic smile, as if that said it all. “All we are and all we do these days is about Nine-Eleven.”“Nothing? You must be kidding.”“Lots of people are going to turn up for the memorial service at St. Alban’s. They’ll all praise him. ”“You mean you didn’t tell the Agency.”“I see no point. Do you?”“Well—” I was mulling that one over. I hadn’t thought about such a possibility, to be honest, and was not sure what to say. So I gave him a vague nod. “You know we’re always blamed whenever something goes wrong. They say Nine-Eleven was a massive intelligence failure even if we’d warned the president a month earlier that Bin Laden was going to attack the American homeland. That really sticks in my throat. I mean, being dragged through the mud in headlines.”“They can say that’s no actionable intelligence, we didn’t provide a time and a place, but hell, you never get a time and a place. Have you ever heard of policy failures? No, only intelligence failures. So I bitch and moan about the Agency all the time. But I love it all the same. It’s my life. I know I sound like a boy scout now, but making Garment’s treason public would touch off another shit storm in Washington, more Agency bashing. To me, that doesn’t make much sense.” He stopped, then his tone of voice dropped quite bit. His facial grimace seemed to say that a lie can sometimes be better than the truth. “We’re an easy target—we can’t fight back openly. God knows we’re broken, but we can still do the job. I’m not going to do any damage. Loyalty, pal. In a strange way I guess I care more for my colleagues than for the institution itself.”I was surprised by this unexpected outburst. Holz was not the kind of guy given to emotion. I said after a while, “So you didn’t tell them?”“The main thing is that the traitor was punished.” “So you didn’t tell them?”“Because we’ll bury this whole goddamned affair for good.” He raised his eyebrows and gave me a meaningful nod. “You and I.”I wanted to laugh. “You and I?”“Yes. No one else will ever know.”I shook my head. I had never considered this possibility either, and I didn’t know quite how to manage it. A thought struck me: all my life I’ve lived with the illusion that I made the most important decisions in my life—when in fact such calls were made for me by other people, or by circumstances. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch, Mac!” I said. “I ‘m sure you agree with me,” he said. The restraint anger in his voice was unsettling.Now we were waiting for the lights to turn green to cross Constitution with its magnificent government buildings stretching as far as eye could see, their massiveness, their fixity and accumulated robustness shouting their imperial mission to the world. Holz‘s limo was at the corner of Pennsylvania, its emergency lights flashing, and I wondered how the driver knew where to pick him up and when.I said, “What makes you so sure?” “You don’t want Rick’s child to have a traitor for a grandfather, do you? You’ve also got to consider Rick and Kate.”“C’mon Mac!”“Do you think their relationship would survive?”We crossed the street in silence. Knowing all this was like dying—dying slowly as the truth sank in and spread like an infection. I tried to imagine what Kate would do if she knew the truth, and the thought sent shivers down my spine. Holz was probably right, I thought. Who’s going to tell Kate that her father was a Russian spy? Good God. I couldn’t do it. And Rick? I shuddered at the thought. That could be the end. Kate would take it, I suspect, as a double betrayal—betrayed by her dad but also by me for having helped expose him. “Just so we’re clear about it,” Holz said in a tone of tautly reined anger. “In case you’re tempted to write something, I’ll categorically dismiss everything you produce as work of an overwrought and sick imagination.” I believed him.His voice slipped back into neutral. “Needless to say, the Agency would go apeshit. Everybody would believe you’d invented the whole thing. We’d make you pay. We have our ways, you know!”“Why are you talking bullshit, Mac? You know damn well I’ll not write it.”“I know you won’t, but just in case.” He signaled the driver. “Can we take you somewhere?”“No thanks,” I said and looked around at the empty grandeur of imperial Washington. “I need air. I want to walk.”The limo halted in front of Holz. “I’m officially retiring a week from Monday. It’s all set. Jane is already down in Virginia Beach. Arguing with the contractors. We’re building a new house. You must come down to visit.”“Sure.”“One last confession.” His face was open and clear as if he was telling me the most innocent thing in the world. “And I’d rather you to hear it from me.” He gave me a weak smile. “I did ask Joyce to keep an eye on you, in case of an emergency. I wanted to protect you.”I exploded. “Oh God, Mac, you’re a damned liar! You said…”He interrupted, “I didn’t lie to you.”“You told me…” “You’d asked me if I’d sent her to Moscow to spy on you. Wasn’t that your question, eh? And I said no, and that’s the truth. She was sent to Moscow by the science division.”“Fuck that shit! It all depends what is is, eh?” Suddenly everything about the man rubbed violently against the exposed nerve endings of my nervous system.“Listen up,” Holz said, resuming his normal, sterile tone. “There’re a few things you may not know.”“Lots of things I don’t know.”“Before she left Moscow, she turned in her resignation. My hunch is that that had something to do with you. She must have discovered her conscience at the bottom of her suitcase.”He climbed into the limo, and rolled down the window. “Before I forget, I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a piece of paper. “Here’s the address and phone number. She’ll be there after October 25.”I held the paper in my hand without looking at it. Did he suspect, I wondered, the lascivious proposals of my imagination, the seductions that I put together at night from my memory of Amanda’s supple body, or of the touch of her hands.“For whatever it’s worth.” Holz kept raising his hands as if aping Tom Hanks in the movie Big. “My informants tell me that she’s inquired about you. But then again, as you’d say, the CIA is not the most reliable of sources.”58The celebration and thanksgiving for the life of Joseph Eliot Garment was held at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, next to the National Cathedral. Outside the church, black limousines lined Wisconsin Avenue; the overflow limos took positions on 36th Place and outside the Greek cathedral on Garfield.Inside the church, Beverly Garment, flanked by her children, sat in the first row on the right. Kate was not sure that her mother would be able to stand the strain. Rick sat next to Kate. Other relatives, all in black, sat in somber silence in the first and second row. I was in the second row, even though, strictly speaking, I was not a relative yet.Two former CIA directors, a retired Virginia senator, two current cabinet members, a hedge fund grandee who spoke with a German accent that gave a sense of profound wisdom to even the most banal of his observations, several former and current ambassadors, a right-wing columnist who started out as a speech writer for Nixon, and members of Washington’s non-elected patrician elite. I knew that Holz must be somewhere in the crowd, but I had been unable to spot him.We all rose and sang, Now the day is over. The first lesson was read by Timothy Metcalf, Garment’s long-time friend and former deputy attorney general. He intoned lines from Lamentations: The Lord is good unto them that wait for him; to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. This was followed by Psalm 121, led by Kate: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hill from whence cometh my help. She managed to keep her emotions bottled up as she read. Chris read Psalm 15: Lord, who shall abide in the tabernacle? Who shall dwell in the holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.Remembrances were full of usual effusiveness, the speakers stressing Joe Garment’s patriotism, generosity, and humility. Then we stood up again and sang, My eyes have seen the glory. This was followed by the commendation, the blessing by the Reverend Charles Eklund, and the dismissal.When it was all done, the organist lustily struck BiltonHiltoneethoven’s Ode to Joy and the mourners walked a short distance to the reception hall Outside, red and yellow leaves were twisting in the air.I spotted Holz in the reception hall. He was standing in the line of mourners waiting to extend condolences to the bereaved widow. Meanwhile, the waiters were serving drinks and canapés, and after a decent interval, the grim tone of the gathering was supplanted by a cocktail party atmosphere. The crowd included people who called themselves analysts and strategists, and heads of institutes funded mainly by different parts of the military industrial complex; they exchanged the latest rumors about the evenings at the White House, who was up and who was down at the State Department and various parts of the Pentagon, and other personnel matters. This made me realize I no longer enjoyed standing for long periods surrounded by too many unfamiliar faces.I moved to the fringe of the party when I saw a familiar face. “Todd darling,” Maggie Dobbs waved enthusiastically. Then she took my hands into hers and brushed her hair against my cheek. Deftly, I grabbed two glasses of white wine from a passing waiter and presented one to her. “You look fabulous, as usual,” I flattered her, looking over her silky black outfit. I was relieved that she didn’t say anything inane about the death of Garment or pretend to sorrow for him. Instead she leaned in close to me, her scent filling my lungs, and whispered: “I hear you’ve been appointed new ombudsman.” “It’s not yet official,” I said. “My sources tell me it’s a done deal,” she said, fixing me with her big brown eyes. She paused and then hoisted her glass. “Here’s to you.”We clinked glasses.“Thanks,” I said. “Let’s have lunch.”“Yes, sure,” I said.I glanced around and saw Rick motioning me to join him and Kate. “I have to go,” I said as I moved away. I saw her blink, then recover with a puzzled smile.59“You’re coming home with me after this?” I asked Rick and Kate after the reception. “Rick will go with you,” Kate said. “I’m going to stay with my mother for a few days. She needs me now.”Rick said, “Kate’ll join us next week.”Rick had become such a likeable young man, I thought, wanting to embrace him. But it was a strange feeling to find myself alone with him. I feared an intimate exchange. It had been much easier to show parts of my hidden life in emails; it was like picking thoughts off the top of my head and casting them into the electronic universe without the benefit of mature deliberation. Now I had to tell him about Joe Garment’s secret life. Or did I? I tried to imagine the grief that Kate would feel if she were told. She didn’t have to know, I thought. As Holz would say, a person is as truthful as he can afford to be. I was sure I couldn’t afford to be untruthful with Rick. I didn’t want our new intimacy to end— I wanted it to have more life. I only had to remind myself of that most excruciating eye contact I had ever put myself through; that moment years ago had become a mnemonic for me, reminding me of the anger and the pain I’d suffered for failing to level with my son. Not this time around, I thought. Things had to be confronted head on. Right away. Tonight.I dreaded his reaction.As I geared up for a Serious Talk, a phone call from my friendly neighbor Lisa gave me a reprieve. She was inviting us over for drinks. We were sitting on her balcony on a warm October afternoon. Rick and Lisa were engaged in intense conversation about his screenplay. My mind wandered. My own attitude toward the late Joe Garment was murky; I could not determine in my own mind how to measure his responsibility for the misfortunes that befell our family. Holz was right, I thought. You bring your own weather to the picnic.All these thoughts came to me in a swirling mist of doubt as Rick was telling how he would shape my Russian narrative into a screenplay. “The rule is,” I heard him telling Lisa, “that a writer should never include in the narrative something that has happened to him without changing it. So I’m imagining changes I’d make.” He and Arnie would have a different ending, he said; a resolution of some sort to make the viewing experience more satisfying.“Exactly,” Lisa said enthusiastically.Suddenly, I knew the screenplay was a bad idea. The story must remain buried for a long while. A rapid series of images raced through my mind. They all morphed into the image of Joe Garment. A few weeks ago, in fact throughout that summer, I was assuming that Hector had somehow directly contributed to Emily’s death. Now I was no longer sure. But did I need to tell Rick what had happened? “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said angrily under my breath. Of course I did.The fact was that in the spring and summer of 1991 a group of high officials led by the KGB chairman and the defense minister had plotted to depose President Gorbachev. Their first attempt, in late May, never got off the ground; their second, in August, failed. The plotters ended up in jail. Garment evidently had a role in the first attempt—his job was linked to the doomed scheme of smuggling Professor Voronov to the United States. The professor was supposed to be the “smoking gun,” expose Gorbachev’s supposedly treasonous behind-the-scene maneuver. Emily and I were nothing more than two insignificant pawns accidentally caught up in the great power struggle of an unraveling empire. The lives of small people can change overnight; it’s just that we see that much later. I didn’t want to burden him with this knowledge, I thought, but there was no way of avoiding it. I owed it to him. Speak your heart, I said to myself, except the heart doesn’t speak and language will have to do.That was what I told Rick as we were sitting later that evening on my balcony and I recounted for him my last conversation with Holz. We drank port. In the distance were the two flashing red lights at the tip of the Monument. Rick’s moon-white face seemed impassive in the smoky light of the evening.“So you agree with Holz?” “Absolutely,” I answered. “Bury this forever? Like it never happened?”“Yes.”“Then explain to me what this whole thing was about. Who was chasing you in Moscow? How did that woman die? All that stuff.”“I don’t know. All I can tell you is what Holz has concluded, and he’s got more information than either of us. Holz believes that Garment hired the Russian mobsters to scare me away and silence Rashidov. But when you throw a lot of money at this sort of problem, things usually get out of hand. Several intermediaries must have been involved. Delays and screw-ups followed. Holz didn’t want to speculate whether Garment had considered having me eliminated, but eventually decided against it. That’s neither here nor there. He certainly didn’t want anyone to talk to Rashidov, but he obviously had no idea where Rashidov was or even if he was alive. That’s why he had me followed in Moscow. But obviously I could not have been followed on my way to Sherabad. They must have found out where Rashidov lived, but by then it was too late. Rashidov’s death bore all the signs of a Moscow Mafia hit. For that matter, so did Joseph’s. Galina Zvonareva may have actually died of natural causes—she was a two-bit freelancer and not a threat to Garment. That’s not implausible. We’ll never know for sure, but this is what Holz thinks had happened.” I watched Rick’s unhappy face, as his loyalty to Kate warred with his desire to curse her father. He hesitated, then pushed himself off the chair, went in to fetch the port bottle, and I had an awful feeling that he wanted to get drunk. “Garment was a nasty piece of work,” I said.“That’s for sure,” he said quickly.“Now, listen, we don’t speak ill of the dead. Tonight is the last time you and I talk about it. I mean it.” “There goes the screenplay,” Rick said suddenly.“Yes,” I said. “Someone as sharp as Kate would put two and two together, I’m afraid. “I grunted in agreement. “I’ll tell Arnie that you wanted to keep the narrative private and I have to respect your wishes.” Something in Rick’s voice, the sadness, the determination, told me that he meant it.“That’s okay.”“What about Amanda,” Rick said. ”Or should I call her Joyce?”“She resigned from the agency. Holz said his spies tell him she’d been inquiring about me. He gave me her phone number.”“Are you going to call her?” “I don’t know.”The phone rang. It was past one in the morning.“It’s Kate,” Rick said to me, then picked up the phone. “Yes, honey. Dad and I are drinking port on the balcony at looking at the DC skyline.” Rick sounded unusually cheerful. I thought he didn’t want her to sense how traumatic the last few hours had been for him, or to suspect he was keeping something secret from her. “Oh, you can’t sleep?”Rick got up. She can’t sleep, he mouthed, going to the bedroom and closing the door behind him.He came back ten minutes later saying Kate wanted to talk to me.“How’s the baby,” I said.“It’s moving. I can feel it now.” “Fantastic!” I said. “If it’s very active, it’s a boy.”“Who says?”“That’s what the Chinese say. Old wives’ tales, I guess.”“I’ll go for an ultrasound exam after we get back home.” “Sure.”“And what are you two guys doing?”“We’re talking.”“Rick tells me that Amanda’s been asking about you.”“That’s what Holz says.”“So she was CIA after all, keeping an eye on you. Boy, that’s what I call a dream assignment.” She laughed. “But then she suddenly quit. Why do you think she quit?” “Holz said she found her conscience at the bottom of her suitcase.”“ I think she cares for you. She felt guilty.” Rick moved closer to shout into the receiver, “I forgot to tell you that Holz gave Dad her phone number.”Kate said, “How marvelous! You’ve got to call her!” “I don’t know,” I said. “Life is a bit frantic at the moment.”“You must, Dad.” It was the first time that she called me dad. “I hope you’ll do it.”“We’ll see,” I said. “If you want her back, you’ll have to go look for her. You have to fight for her. She’s a good person, she loves horses.” The end# ................
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