The firebird affair

“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.”

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.

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?”

“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.”

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.

28
I 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.”

“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.

29

Joseph, 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.

“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.”

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.