An Agent in Place Read online

  Krostin, as usual, came straight to the point. "I may have stumbled onto something interesting," he told Viktor. He had been scanning snatches of conversation picked up by a microphone buried in the wall near the bulletin board in the American embassy's administrative section. One of the three newcomers to the embassy, the woman named Harkenrider, had been overheard inviting someone named Ben to have a drink with her at the embassy lounge at four. (Krostin divined that the Ben in question was the Arms Control Unit housekeeper, Benedict Bassett, because of a reference in the conversation to the briefing they had both received from the security officer, Custer.) Bassett had begged off, saying he had to see someone at four fifteen. As Viktor would see, the mention of a four fifteen appointment was significant. Later in the afternoon a microphone imbedded in the wall of the outer office of the CIA station had picked up the secretary informing Inkermann that his four fifteen had arrived. "She never uses proper names because they worry about bugs," Krostin explained. "She always refers to visitors by the hour of their appointment."

  Viktor was beginning to see what his section chief was driving at. "You think this Benedict Bassett had an appointment with Inkermann?"

  "Inkermann's response to his secretary over the intercom came across loud and clear. He said, 'Send him on in.'"

  "Him," Viktor repeated thoughtfully, reaching down to massage a swollen ankle.

  ROBERT LITTELL

  Krostin put into words the obvious question. "What business could a housekeeper for the Arms Control Implementation Unit have with the CIA station chief?"

  A light appeared in each of Viktor's eyes. "If it really was Bassett up there," he told Krostin, "it could mean he is more than a housekeeper."

  For the first time since his wife had gone off "on location," Viktor's imagination conjured up something other than the vision of her chalk-white body spiking itself on the circumcised penis of an alcoholic Jewish hustler in a cheap hotel room. "By all means, let's put Bassett onto our Priority Target List," he instructed Krostin. "Don't stint. I want Section Three to assign an entire team to him. If this Bassett is really more than a housekeeper, we are starting out with the great advantage that he does not know we know. Let's not lose it by being overeager or unprofessional."

  Viktor swiveled in his chair and contemplated the thick ribbons of snow slanting across his field of vision toward the street below. For a delicious moment he savored the illusion that the snow was perfectly still and he was rocketing up through it. A pensive smile etched fault lines in his weathered cheeks.

  The sensation of being, at long last, in motion caused Viktor's joints to tingle from something other than gout.

  ROBERT LITTELL

  Saava came bounding down the corridor into Ai'da's arms. He planted a wet kiss squarely on her lips; Aida loved it that at eleven he had no inhibitions about being physical with his mother. Grabbing her hand, he tugged her past the kitchen, where the woman who shared the apartment was grating cooked beets into a meatless borscht, toward the bathroom. "Aida, come see what Vadim is up to," Saava cried in a voice pitched high with excitement.

  The boy pulled Aida along the hallway crammed with cartons of books and valises packed with summer clothing, past the communal refrigerator, into the long, narrow bathroom that managed to smell of sewage no matter how often it was disinfected. Vadim, who was filling a large jar with rust-colored water trickling from a bathtub tap, raised his eyes and flashed a lopsided grin in his wife's direction. Aida's future ex-husband (he categorically refused to get a divorce until he could move into a penthouse apartment overlooking the Moscow River; and he couldn't do that until the present occupant obtained legal custody of her son so that the two of them could emigrate to Israel) had the gaunt, pinched face of a lapsed alcoholic; his eyes, dark peach pits sunken into his skull, bloodshot from the liters of cheap vodka he consumed daily, were fixed in the permanent squint of someone about to make a sales pitch. The skin on the back of his hands crawled with warts. From time to time his entire body trembled like a leaf caught in a current of air. There were moments when Aida wondered what Vadim's mistress saw in him. There were moments when she had difficulty remembering what she had seen in him.

  "He says we will all get drunk and go to America," Saava announced gravely. "He says the streets there are paved with discarded Sony Walkmans, some of which can still be made to work."

  "I have no desire to go to America," Aida said. "I am perfectly satisfied to be here." She turned on Vadim. "Why do you put foolish ideas in his head?"

  Vadim, who had spent the afternoon drinking retsina with a diplomat friend just back from Athens, slurred his words as he answered. "And what is so foolish about going to America? It is a place where ideas are run up flagpoles. Their Madison Street leads the world in advertising. Chances are they could use a creative Russian Jew who has experience pitching products nobody wants to buy."

  AN AGENT IN PLACE

  Aida regarded the jar in the bathtub. "So: What is it you are concocting?"

  "I got the recipe from my taxi driver who got it from a chemist from Uzbekistan. You mix in rice, you mix in sugar if you can find sugar, saccharine if not, you mix in some fruit—I found a peasant selling dried peaches at the central market. Don't ask me what I paid for them because if I told you, which I won't, you would physically assault me. You mix it all up in a jar, you add beer, you add warm water, you cover the jar with a rubber surgeon's glove. As the mixture ferments, the glove inflates. When all the fingers are sticking up, 'the Great Helmsman's Greeting,' which is what the cocktail is called, is ready to drink.''

  "Why do you bother when you have enough money to buy all the alcohol you can drink on the black market?" Aida demanded.

  "I do it because it is illegal," Vadim explained. "I plan to present a bottle to the deputy vice minister in charge of the state advertising budget."

  Saava asked Vadim, "What does it mean, ferment?"

  Vadim turned off the tap, fitted the rubber glove over the lid with a rubber band and carefully lifted the jar out of the tub. "Ferment is what happens when something rots."

  "Like when Communism ferments?" Saava asked brightly.

  Vadim snickered. "Where can I put the jar so it is in the dark?" he asked Aida.

  Aida went back into the corridor and hung her coat and fox fur on a hook. Vadim, carrying the jar with the rubber glove attached as if it were a lid, trailed after her. "While you were busy buying your dried peaches," Aida asked over her shoulder, "did you by any chance find meat for supper?"

  "To tell the truth, I didn't look. If you want I could phone up my taxi driver and have him bring us something from a restaurant."

  "Luckily I found some sardines," Aida told him as she kicked off her galoshes and fitted her feet into fleece-lined bedroom slippers.

  "I think I would prefer meat."

  "If you wanted meat you should have thought about it when you were paying a small fortune for fruit at the central market. Imagine buying fruit in winter!"

  Vadim followed her into the room that served as a living room and Aida's bedroom. It was furnished with a narrow wooden bed covered

  ROBERT LITTELL

  with a bright Uzbek shawl, an armoire with mirrors in the doors, a round wooden table that Aida used as a desk when meals were not being served, makeshift shelves overflowing with books and manuscripts and magazines, and three faded oil paintings hung, the way Russians always hang paintings, high on the wall. "Money," Vadim muttered, looking around for a place to store his jar, "is not my problem. In any case, buying fruit in winter is a poetic gesture. You of all people should be able to relate to that."

  "Poetry is food for the soul. Saava also needs food for the stomach." Ai'da, sorting through the mail piled on the round table, tossed the typewritten envelopes behind the radiator with the others already there; it was a matter of absolute principle with her never to open typewritten envelopes or read typewritten letters. She settled into the only decent chair in the room to take a look at the handwritten note postmarked Leningrad. The letter turned out to be from the head of the Pushkin memorial committee; he was offering to pay her way to the city she called Peter (after its founder, Peter the Great) and everyone else called Leningrad if she would agree to read some of Pushkin's poems at the gathering marking the anniversary of the poet's death in February.

  Vadim shoved aside a pile of Aida's books and squeezed his precious jar onto a shelf in the armoire. Quite pleased with himself, he started recounting the latest joke. "Speaking of meat, did you hear about the woman who stands on line for two hours? When she finally reaches the counter she asks the salesman for meat. He tells her"— Vadim couldn't keep from smirking at his own joke—" 'Here we have no fish. Next door is where they have no meat.'"

  Ai'da didn't laugh. "Why is it always the woman who stands on line in your jokes?"

  Vadim shook his head in disgust. "Where's your sense of humor?" he muttered under his alcoholic breath, and wobbling unsteadily, he staggered toward the room he shared with Saava.

  Tears of frustration, of outrage, welled up. As always Aida resisted the urge to weep. She had lost what sense of humor she still had somewhere between the center of Moscow and the Maritime Station, Rechnoi Vokzal, the last stop on the Gorkovskaya metro line; jammed into the subway car, swaying with the motion of the train, she had felt a hand rub against her buttocks. Twisting around, she had slapped the fat man squeezed up against her. He had bellowed in

  AN AGENT IN PLACE

  surprise and had accused her of being mentally deranged. The other passengers had stared at her as if she was. Maybe they sensed something she didn't. It was true that she could not remember the last time she had burst out laughing; the last time she had found some one or some thing funny. Humor seemed to have been squeezed ou
t of her life. What was funny about scavenging for rubles to make ends meet? Or queuing week in, week out for the pills that her son needed to remain alive? Or living with a filthy rich future ex who could afford meat but forgot to buy it. Where was the humor in spending a small fortune to buy peaches in winter? Her future ex had probably paid twenty rubles for them. For twenty rubles she could have bought two chickens on the black market, three if they were small ones.

  Aida heaved herself out of the chair—she felt as if she could have sat there forever—and knelt down next to the mint geranium she left on the floor so that it would catch the beams of sunlight during the day, the beams of moonlight at night that knifed between two tall buildings across the street. Was an occasional beam of sunlight or moonlight nourishment enough for a plant? Was one small plant clinging to life nourishment enough for a poet?

  Reflecting on the poetic possibilities of the riddle, she made her way along the corridor to her father's tiny bedroom. She opened the door the width of a finger and looked in. As always at this hour Ivan had taken up the vigil that would last until dawn; in the metallic moonlight seeping into the room she could just make him out, sitting in his wicker chair drawn up to the double windows with a layer of cotton on the sill between the two panes to absorb moisture, staring silently into the night, scratching absently at the hair as thick as broom bristles on his chin, lost in thought; lost in fear. His right hand would be on his cane, Aida knew, ready to tap out a staccato message of alarm on the floor if they came. At the slightest sound from outside—a car door slamming, a cat screeching, the whine of brakes— his heartbeat would quicken and he would lean forward anxiously. Although Aida could not see his eyes she could imagine them; they would have the wild concentration of someone who had spent a lifetime waiting. Two lines of Akhmatova's leapt into her head.

  . . . faces fall apart,

  . . . fear looks out from under the eyelids

  ROBERT LITTELL

  Was she missing the humor of the situation, she wondered?

  At supper Saava, pulling a face, gulped down his pills, then again asked Aida to explain why grandfather Ivan slept days and stayed awake nights; again Aida told him he was too young to understand. How old would he have to be, Saava wanted to know. Twelve? Thirteen? Maybe when you are thirteen, she told him. Thirteen, he said gloomily, is too far away to touch. Vadim, sucking noisily on the head of a sardine, snorted. Me also, I'm too far away from thirteen to touch it, he said. He started to laugh, but stopped when he saw that Aida was not amused. She turned back to Saava and asked him what he had studied in history class that day. When he told her she said no, no, it did not happen at all like that even if your textbook says it did, and scraping the last bits of fish from the sardine's skeleton onto Saava's plate, she proceeded to set the record straight. Stalin had not been the wise war leader pictured in the textbook. He had failed to heed warnings that the Nazis planned to attack. The Air Force had been caught on the ground and destroyed. The Red Army had suffered dreadful losses, had been driven back to the gates of Moscow. Stalin himself had panicked and disappeared for ten days. If the tide of war had eventually turned, it had been due more to the courage of the Russian soldiers and their determination to defend the Motherland; it had been despite Stalin, not because of him.

  Lying in bed later, Aida found herself straining to catch sounds from the street. She tried to picture herself bursting into spontaneous laughter at some sight, some comment, but the image eluded her. She wondered if fear could be passed like a virus from one person to another; she wondered if she had been infected by her father. She wondered if she would infect Saava.

  There was a scuffing sound at the door leading to Saava's room. A stain of light spread on the floor as the door swung open. Vadim padded across the room in his bare feet and sank down on the edge of the bed. In the darkness he groped under the blankets, under her nightdress, and began to run his fingers along the inside of her thigh. "Remember how it used to be between us?" he whispered hoarsely.

  Aida was sorely tempted; she did have a garden full of lust and would have welcomed taking momentary refuge in the sanctuary of the sex act. Vadim must have sensed her hesitating because he became bolder, working his hand up to her pubic hair. "Relax," he whispered. "Enjoy it." He leaned toward her until his face was hover-

  AN AGENT IN PLACE

  ing above hers. She got a whiff of the liquor on his breath. Suddenly the idea of being kissed by his alcoholic lips killed whatever desire she felt. She pushed his hand away. "It is out of the realm of possibility," she murmured.

  Vadim wrenched his hand out from under the blanket as if it had been burned. "What a cunt you are, Aida!" he muttered angrily, and smothering a belch in the sleeve of his bathrobe, he lumbered back toward his room to crawl into bed alongside Saava.

  Aida sat up. Her breath came in pained gasps. There is more to me than cunt—" she called after him in the fierce whisper that people in communal apartments used when they argued. Before she could say anything else the door clicked closed, erasing the stain of light on the floor.

  Sinking back onto the pillow, Aida let her lids drift closed over her eyes. In her mind's eye the stain of light lingered, increasing in intensity. The absence of darkness did not annoy her. It reminded her of the white nights she dearly loved in Peter. She encountered a vision of her father staring unblinkingly through the double panes into the night, and began to put words to the images that had been orbiting each other in her head. ^

  At first light, the trolleys grinding up the hill We pressed against each other, whispering.

  By the bed, a canvas satchel stuffed with tea, A collected works, paper, pencil, a photo of me.

  How can you he sure? I asked. It was the way he looked at me.

  How did he look at you? As if I were transparent.

  In the street, the whine of brakes.

  His body, stiff against mine, embraced the

  sound.

  We are into morning, I said.

  If they have not come by now . . .

  ROBERT LITTELL

  Try to get some sleep, I said. I pulled the cover over his head.

  You do not need to do that, he said.

  The memory of a white night had overpowered

  light.

  ROBERT LITTELL

  the Russian winter that gave to the Russian heart its morbid conviction that life was essentially tragedy. In his youth Ben's grandfather had been caught up in the idealism of the Revolution; had fought in one of Trotsky's mobile Red Guard battalions during the Civil War; had become disenchanted when a rude Georgian peasant named Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (better known to the world by his underground name, Stalin) manipulated his way to power on the death of Lenin in 1924; had stowed away on a steamer bound for Istanbul and points west one jump ahead of the Cheka agents hunting him as an "enemy of the people'; had wound up, ancient before he was old, operating a projector in a Bronx motion picture theater. Even on his deathbed, with a death rattle tickling the back of his throat, the stories had continued to gush out of him. Ben remembered being struck by the fact that they had no beginning and no end, but unraveled in a long coil of narrative that broke off only when the ancient heart ceased to beat.

  Was it possible, Ben wondered now, making his way past a peasant woman in a thick quilted Army greatcoat peddling clumps of parsley, that it was his turn to pick up the thread of his grandfather's narrative? One way or another he too would have a story to tell—though the number of people he could tell it to would always be extremely limited.

  Turning off Petrovka into a warren of streets behind the Bolshoi, Ben had to step into the gutter to avoid a group of giggling girls in short skirts and bright tights walking on ice-skate blades covered with rubber sheaths. On the spur of the moment he decided to test his tradecraft. Before leaving Washington he had been given a crash course by Army Intelligence field agents, and elaborately briefed by a nuts-and-bolts type with credentials identifying him as a State Department security officer. The nuts-and-bolts man had discouraged him from practicing tradecraft in the streets of Moscow, first because Ben (according to the field agents) was not very adept at it, then because his failure to spot anyone following him might mean that the Russians had assigned one of their crack teams to him; employing teams that made use of women and even children as well as men, that constantly shifted the point agent, that sometimes trailed targets from in front rather than from behind, made it virtually impossible to pick up the tail.