Vladimir Lunacharski made it a rule to exercise vigorously and never to take more than two pills a week. He was well aware of the dangers of addiction and confident that he could walk the line between his need for wakefulness and his dependency on the orange pills.
Colonel Lunacharski knew well why he disliked coffee. His father, a man of terrible temper, had drunk massive quantities of both tea and coffee. His father’s long, fine fingers had been stained by his addiction to the beans themselves, which, when he could get them, he chewed like candy.
His father, an army sergeant, had died in 1968 of a stroke after a screaming rage over his wife’s having overcooked a ham.
Vladimir thought he remembered when he was an infant and his mother’s breasts gave him sour milk after his father, an army sergeant, had shouted, pounded, and threatened.
The four people in the cafeteria were all at least forty-five years old. Each of them was sitting alone. None of them acknowledged anyone else or looked around. One man near the door had a notebook on the table in front of him, which he thumbed through as he drank coffee. The other two simply put their heads down and ate, though the cafeteria food was no longer the best in Moscow.
Lunacharski had given himself ten minutes, and the ten minutes were almost over. He pushed back his chair and started to rise. Then he saw Klamkin the Frog enter the cafeteria, look around, and head toward him. The colonel was not surprised at the agent’s appearance. He had left a note on the door indicating where he could be found. As Klamkin approached, Lunacharski sat down again, for the Frog was at least two inches taller than he.
“May I?” asked Klamkin, who had brushed back his hair and recently shaved so that he could appear fresh for the meeting.
Lunacharski pointed to the chair across from him and Klamkin sat.
“Spokniokov and Glenin are still outside the Intourist Hotel waiting for the German,” Klamkin said. “Our agent reports that Timofeyeva and Tkach went to the Nikolai Café, where Tkach started a riot. He was beaten but not too badly. Rostnikov arrived to help him.”
“Rostnikov?” Lunacharski thought he might not have heard Klamkin correctly.
“Yes. He went to the theater with his wife, took her home, and then went immediately to the Nikolai.”
“His son’s play,” said Lunacharski.
“Yes. The play was antimilitary but well done.”
“Well done?” asked Lunacharski. “You watched it? Our agents are now doing theatrical reviews?”
Klamkin said nothing.
“And where are Rostnikov and the others now?”
“Home. In bed or at least in their apartments. If Rostnikov goes to Arkush, I will go with him. The only person not sleeping is the Syrian. The light in his apartment window is on and he is pacing. He has people looking for his daughter.”
“Go home, Klamkin. Sleep. Be ready for tomorrow.”
“It is too late to sleep and my apartment building is too noisy in the morning. With your permission, Colonel, I will sleep in the back of the car while Brodivov watches for Rostnikov.”
“Fine,” said Lunacharski. “But don’t become careless. Pull Spokniokov and Glenin from the German before you go to sleep. Reassign them to the search for the Arab girl. I wish to find her before the Syrians or Snitkonoy’s people. Do you drink coffee?”
“Yes,” said Klamkin. “But I prefer tea.”
“Stay here and have a cup before you make the calls,” said Lunacharski. He stood and motioned for Klamkin to remain seated. Klamkin nodded.
As Colonel Lunacharski moved down the corridor he listened to his boot steps echoing through the emptiness. Reports were piled on his desk. What he wanted to do was go into the streets and look for the Arab girl or from the dark interior of an unmarked Zil watch her father pace the floor. What he wanted to do was take the train to Arkush to see for himself, but he had to remain here to monitor the operations. There was no time for indulgence. For him there were reports and pills and a wife he would not have to see for another day.
The world was changing quickly. General Karsnikov sought the possibilities for survival wherever they might be and one of the possibilities lay in the former MVD office of Aleksandr Snitkonoy. Lunacharski had worked out a plan, which he was now perfecting. He would try to be patient. He would watch the Wolfhound’s operation, perhaps even infiltrate it, and demonstrate that while it served a useful function, it was inefficient, ineffective, run by a blustering ass, and peopled by eccentrics who had been unable to function in other security branches.
“The moment will come,” the general had said, “when we can place the evidence before the new Russian administration and I will be able not only to strongly suggest but to present evidence that your department is far more capable of pursuing the special cases of a new government.”
“I understand,” Lunacharski had said.
“I can give you little for this operation, Colonel, but if you succeed, it can mean much for us, much for you. You understand?”
“Completely.”
“We have lost a great deal,” General Karsnikov had said, lighting a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette. “We must work to build a new base of power.”
Colonel Lunacharski had not asked who “we” were, because he knew. In a time when there was little to be pleased with, it was a comfort to be part of the unnamed and waiting army.
ELEVEN
When Sasha Tkach woke up at seven o’clock the next morning, he was unaware for a moment that he had a broken rib, a badly swollen eye, and a variety of abrasions. He had been given a very large injection at the hospital so he had slept. Now pain ran through him from face to stomach and he held back a groan. Maya stirred at his side. She was too heavy with the baby to sleep on her side or stomach, and though she was uncomfortable sleeping on her back, she had learned to accept the discomfort and was now gently snoring.
Sasha had arrived home well after everyone else was asleep. He had undressed, dropped his clothes on the couch, and climbed painfully into bed next to Maya. In her sleep, sensing him, she had reached out, and he had guided her hand into his to keep her from touching his face or his taped chest.
He slept later than he intended. His plan had been to awaken first and be gone before Maya or Lydia could see him. He still had a chance, and had the pain not been five times greater than he remembered from the night before, he probably could have hurried into his clothes and made it into the hall. Had he made it, he would have shaved with the spare often-used disposable English razor he kept in his desk at Petrovka. He knew he should have thrown it away long ago, but since his beard was so light, it would not be too painful to use the blade once more. He got his feet over the side of the bed and was wondering how he would make it through the day when the scream came. Pulcharia was sitting up in her crib in the corner, staring at the hunched-over creature with the horrible eye in her father and mother’s bed. She screamed and Sasha did not bother to whisper, since she had surely awakened both his wife and mother.
“It’s me, Pulcharushka,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” As his wife stirred awake at his side and his mother’s footsteps shuffled to the bedroom door, Sasha felt, for no reason that made sense to him, that it would be all right, that whatever he had gone through had passed, that what had happened in the Nikolai Café had helped him to this understanding. He turned with a small smile on his face to comfort his wife. He knew she would soon be weeping.