The firebird affair

“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.

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.”

11
We 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.

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.