Since that chance meeting, the brothers drifted further apart. The last Pavel had heard of him, Chuzhoi was hard at work in one of the GRU's gadget-making factories. Another childish GRU fetish.
Then Pavel had been assigned to infiltrate Aeroflot's New York office to root out and expose GRU operatives when the GRU got the better of the KGB in a budget crunch.
* * *
Pavel Zarnitsa discovered that America was wonderful. He loved America. Unlike some, he did not love America because it was so much better than Russia. No, Pavel Zarnitsa was not that kind of Russian. He loved America because it was so much like Russia. It was like coming home to a place that he had forgotten from his youth, so that it was hauntingly familiar and new at the same time.
Oddly, this revelation disturbed Pavel. And he redefined his geopolitical theories.
America and Russia were on an inevitable collision course, Pavel decided. It wasn't because of the differences between the two countries. Actually, it was their similarities that were the problem. Just the reverse of what his brother believed.
Both America and Russia were large industrial nations whose frontiers had been wrested from hostile barbarians by Europeans or Slavs. The Americans had their Indians and the Russians their Mongols and Tatars. One country's redskin was the other's yellowskin.
In time both nations filled out their natural boundaries and sought to expand beyond them. In America, it was the acquisition of new states and territories, like Alaska and Guam. With Russia, it had been the Ukraine and Byelorussia, then client states, most of which had been acquired after World War II. Then these client states had been brought into line only to act as a buffer against the dangerous western part of Europe, which had always been war prone and would always be war prone.
And then there were the Asians. Huge China and its hungry masses. China would always be a problem, even a Communist China. Especially a Communist China.
America, which had more or less friendly neighbor countries and nothing but ocean to the east and west, never understood that.
Could Russia be blamed for entering the war against Japan only after the Nazis had fallen, and only two days after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, (thus insuring victory for the Allies), even if all Russia did was enter the northern part of Japanese-held Korea and fire a few rounds? When, less than a month later, the Japanese surrendered, Russia, technically one of the victorious occupying armies, swallowed up half of Korea.
Shrewd. But that was the Russian way. America was shrewd, too. Perhaps not quite as shrewd, but Americans were canny. Hadn't they acquired Alaska from us in such a way that it at first seemed as if America had the worst of the deal? An admirable people. Just like the Russians.
Which is why Russia would one day have to crush America. There was no room for two identical superpowers on this planet. It had been this way back in the beginning of the War— for Russia, there was only one War, World War II— with Stalin and Hitler. They were too much alike, shared too many similar goals. Allies at first, they had split, not over their differences, but over the recognition that only one of them could achieve the goal both sought. If only Americans were more like the Chinese, Pavel thought, it would be different. A war could be fought over differences, settled, and business would revert to normal.
But America was not China. It was another Russia— big, sprawling, ingenious, and hearty. Pavel knew, too, that the only thing worse would be a Communist America. Here was the flaw in his brother Chuzhoi's view. From close observation, Pavel recognized that if any country could make Communism work, it would be the United States. Americans were that way. And if that ever happened, the few differences between the two great superpowers would evaporate, and so would the things that allowed them to coexist. If Americans proved themselves to be better Communists than the Russians, the Soviets could never tolerate that. The two nations would come together like mighty lodestones, bringing destruction to both, and possibly to the world.
But that ultimate conflict could be avoided, Pavel knew. Russia could secretly undermine and outlast the United States as a world power before that time. It might not happen for generations, but it was inevitable. Pavel only hoped he would not see that day, because it would be a sad one. He really liked America. It had everything Russia had, and more of it. And one thing Russia did not have.
Tacos.
There was no food like the taco in all of Russia.
Pavel Zarnitsa had discovered tacos during his first week in New York. He had resolved to sample the food of every restaurant in a widening spiral around his apartment building until he had found a dozen or so in which he could regularly dine. Pavel liked his food, and restaurant eating. With the exception of a Chinese restaurant, which Pavel refused to enter, Pavel found American restaurants to be quite good. He could not believe the fast service, and had to learn to wait until he was actually hungry before going in, not two or three hours before he expected to be hungry, as he had to do in Russia. But when he entered a dingy establishment called the Whacko Taco, Pavel forgot all about all the others.
Pavel didn't even know what a taco was, but it was the cheapest item on the menu, so he ordered two.
When they arrived, looking as limp as uncooked fish, he didn't even know how to eat one. He had to watch other diners until he understood that one didn't use the plastic knife and fork but simply lifted the folded corn tortilla to one's mouth and bit off one end while some of the meat filling dropped out the other end to fall on the plate. This could be eaten with a fork later.
That first taco had been interesting. But it wasn't until he had wolfed down the second that Pavel experienced the sensation he would later dub, borrowing from American drug slang, the "taco rush."
It began with a hot feeling in the pit of the stomach, which spread outward from the solar plexus and was accompanied by a burning in the mouth and a running of the nose. The brain usually felt clearer and sharper at these times. It was not a meal, it was an experience. From that time on, Pavel Zarnitsa became a taco addict.
Doing research, he discovered that tacos were the perfect food. The folded corn tortilla contained something from most of the major food groups, except fish. For fish, Pavel sometimes added a shrimp for garnish, which he washed down with a dark German lager beer.
To experiment, Pavel tried other Mexican foods. Most of these were made of the same basic ingredients as tacos, except that they were served differently, rolled or flat, but not folded like a taco. Somehow, it was never the same, and Pavel stuck with tacos.
"It must be the design," Pavel said as he picked up his date in front of the downtown Manhattan building that sported a winged hammer and sickle emblem and the name AEROFLOT in Cyrillic letters.
His date was Natalya Tushenka, who was 22 and attractive in a slim-hipped way and who had the glossiest black hair Pavel had ever seen. She had agreed to date him unaware that Pavel was KGB and that she was one of three Aeroflot reservation clerks whom he had not in his mind cleared of any GRU affiliation. Tonight he would find out for sure. In his apartment. But not before they dined sumptuously at the Whacko Taco.
"I do not understand, Pavel," Natalya asked, wide-eyed. Her eyes were so blue, they hurt. They were the eyes of an innocent. "How can the design of a— a taco have anything to do with the pleasure obtained from eating such a thing?"
"I do not understand either," admitted the KGB agent. "I only know that somehow it is different with tacos than other food. Like it is different with some women." He gave Natalya a steady glance as they parked near the restaurant.