Dean separated himself from the pack; he cast himself as a political man and he had a genius for the rhetoric probably because he was now a true believer. He picketed embassies and sang for the workers; he went up the Amazon with his Indian comrades.
People went to his concerts even if they didn't agree with his politics. At his concerts he could get away with anything, even the slogans, and people ate it up because he was so handsome, so charming, and because he was an American and a good guy.
For Dean, life had meaning: he saw himself as an emissary, as an ambassador of peace, and he said so to anyone who would listen. Now he was no longer just a dumb pretty boy out of some Hollywood studio; he was a man to reckon with. The South American experience became a theme he played out the whole of his life.
The political limelight did for him what cameras did for other stars: it lit him up; it turned him on; it made him shine. It was the making of Dean, and the more he fought the good fight, the more famous it made him and the fame fed the ambition and there was no stopping him.
And there was Patty, the girl he had met at his agent's office in Hollywood. In 1963, they were married in Mexico City. I saw a picture of her, a very pretty girl in a dress with a big skirt. They had a daughter they named Ramona. Many years later, Dean apparently told a friend that not making the marriage with Patty work was the biggest regret of his life. He always sent money for Ramona when he could. By 1964, Dean and Patty were living in a handsome suburban villa in Buenos Aires, where Dean had his own TV show.
It was a charmed life for a while, but then right-wing gangs shot up the house and someone smeared a hammer and sickle in red paint on his garage door. Dean and Patty got guns. He became increasingly radical.
"Brainwashed," said the Countess, finishing her lunch in the Chinese restaurant in London. She straightened her hat.
"Who brainwashed him?" I was exasperated by now, trying to follow her anecdotes of the years in South America, trying to fit it all together.
"I sent him to Russia," she said. "I was a little bit afraid of how he was going left, left, left, and this scared the wits out of me because being Czechoslovakian, having spent some time in the Soviet paradise, I was not exactly very leftist... I admired this beautiful child with all these gorgeous ideas about the world. But I did not like that going left. So I said the only way to prove to him how absolutely wrong he was was to send him to Russia."
The Countess's story rambled. She reported rumors about bank accounts and Porsches that Dean received in exchange for errands he did for the East German Politburo. Chasing Dean Reed, I thought, was like chasing smoke. The Countess was convinced the Communists killed him.
"He knew too much. Over there in the East it is like the Mafia. Once you were in, you could never get out," she said.
As she saw it, Dean was a Manchurian Candidate, run, turned, used, a traitor but a victim, too. Having eaten all the spareribs, and turning to the fortune cookies, the Countess started on a tale about an out-of-body experience in which she met her dead father, who told her where the Czech government treasure was buried.
In London, around the same time that I met the Countess, I also met Artemy Troitsky. A friend called and asked if I wanted to meet a rock critic from Moscow. We agreed to meet at Tui, a Thai restaurant in South Kensington.
Troitsky was a Soviet rock critic with half an inch of stubble on his handsome jaw. He was traveling in Britain to help promote Back in the USSR, his book about Soviet rock.
Troitsky had a cold. He ate his lemongrass soup and blew his nose. It was his first trip to the West. He was my first real Russian. He said his Western name was Art. Wearing black jeans and sweater, an olive green T-shirt and jacket, and a new pair of sneakers, Troitsky had walked that morning from Bloomsbury to Chelsea. His feet hurt.
In the beginning the two of us made the sort of chitchat that seemed appropriate in those first heady days of glasnost. Art's favorite writers were Gogol and Cervantes, although when he was younger he read Kurt Vonnegut and J. D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye was Art's favorite book. In Prague, where he grew up - his father worked there as a journalist - he wore a yellow hat with a peaked brim because he could not get a red hunter's cap like Holden Caulfield's.
In 1963, around the time Dean Reed was already crooning his heart out in Santiago in the pale-blue gabardine suit, Troitsky heard "Surfin' USA." It was the first rock and roll record he ever heard, and because he could not find "surfin" in his English dictionary, he figured it was some kind of dirty word. "Like fucking," he said. "I thought this meant fucking." He was eight years old.
"I only believe in rock and roll and John Lennon," he said now in a way that managed to be both solemn and ironic.
In London, Art spent most of his time going to gigs, sometimes three in one night. Johnny Rotten was fantastic, he said. At the Limelight he heard Pop Will Eat Itself. "They were very good." Art's green eyes shone. "I had a great time. I almost ate myself."
I asked if he had been shopping, but he said that he didn't like shopping much.
"I do have a long list from my wife, Svetlana. She wants a sunlamp and a riding costume from..." He consulted a piece of paper. "Moss Bros. Svetlana is not allowed out of the Soviet Union at the same time as me. She is a hostage," Art said.
There was an uneasy silence while we ate some spicy squid salad and drank more cold Thai beer.
"You know, we have had in Moscow an American singer named Dean Martin," Art said.
Art had very nice manners and this was his first trip to the West, so I supposed he was trying to make an American connection for my sake.
"Dean Martin," I said. "Really?"
"Dean Reed, I mean," he said. "I mean Dean Reed."
"Dean Reed? You knew him? You saw him? Where? Tell me!" I was so excited I knocked a beer into my lap. "Tell me everything!"
But Troitsky just blew his nose again.
"Come to Moscow," he said. "I can introduce you to his interpreter, Oleg. Oleg Smitnoff. Also there is the best friend of Dean's girlfriend. His girlfriend killed herself when Dean Reed died. Big breasts. Very big." Art tugged unsuccessfully at the front of his black pullover.
My head was spinning. There were people in Moscow who had known Dean, people I could meet, a girlfriend, an interpreter.
"Come to Moscow," he repeated.
I said I was coming.
6
February 1, 1988. It was my first night in Moscow. I had followed Dean Reed to the East, to the place that seduced him. As soon as I saw it, saw Red Square, saw the scale, the otherness, I was surprised, excited, elated just being here. Maybe he was, too. Maybe Dean looked at Red Square and thought, Wow!
Off the plane from London we came, Leslie Woodhead and I and our friend Jo Durden-Smith, another journalist. Even years later, looking at my notes, I could absolutely recapture how thrilling it was. All of it seemed exotic: lousy Sheremetyevo Airport with half the lights out; the sudden appearance of an official tourist rep who seemed to know my name but not those of the others; and the ride along the grim endless road into the city with the stark monument to mark how close the Germans had got; the long straight road from the airport that turned into the shabby grandeur of Gorky Street which then exploded into Red Square. And finally, the arrival at the National Hotel where, from the balcony of room 101, Lenin spoke to the masses below.