The firebird affair

“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.

19
I 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 naïve.”

“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 façade.

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?

19

There 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.

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.”

“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.

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?