“So what the hell are you doing here?” I demanded. “What’s the U.S. interest in Russian art?”
“What I told you was true at one time. A couple of years ago, the Russians let us know they were starting to lose valuable artworks, primarily from churches, but then some of the less valuable artifacts from the museums were missing, too. It was part of the crime phenomenon all through Eastern Europe, once travel restrictions and other controls were eased. All the Russians wanted was a little help on our end, trace where the stuff was being sold in the West, make some arrests, get people to talk, and find the source here that was funding the flow.”
I used a finger to get some breathing room between my neck and my shirt collar. “Sounds like drug interdiction.”
“Same idea. Anyway, we help them out, pick up a stolen Rubens at an auction house in New York, track it back to some semiorganized crime types in Minsk who have Party ties, and everybody’s happy. But then, somebody at Langley’s talking to somebody at State about how perestroika is stuck, and the nomenklatura are getting itchy because Gorby is cutting off their caviar, and suddenly, everyone’s scared shitless there’ll be a coup. So, with the reformers’ blessing, we take the initiative. We target some of the real assholes in the army, the Foreign Ministry, the KGB, and set them up for a sting. We’re paying off these guys in return for some valuable pieces from the museums. We’re taping the transactions, tracing their deposits into foreign accounts, and pretty soon, we have enough evidence to send some important commies to Siberia for treason. It would have gotten some of the real hard-liners out of the way. Then, all of a sudden, way more art is coming out of the country than we need to hold the top Reds’ feet to the fire.”
“Yagamata,” I murmured.
“You got it. Stuff starts turning up in private collections in Japan, and KGB agents there get word back to their masters in Moscow. So our cover is blown, and-”
“Gorbachev gets a short vacation in the Crimea, all expenses paid by the guys who got caught.”
Foley finally looked at me. “Lassiter, you’re not as dumb as you look.”
I didn’t tell him I’d had a Finnish tutor. “But the coup fails, and you go into business for yourself with Yagamata.”
“Wrong! I spoke too soon. Just listen. After those bozos fuck it up-hey, they let Lesley Stahl interview Yeltsin when Parliament was surrounded-everybody at State is so happy they’re walking around with hard-ons. If you know anything about history, you know that when the Russians are unified-no matter what form their government takes-their neighbors aren’t going to get any sleep. It’s in the West’s interest to break down the Union into individual republics with no strong central authority. What the hell does Estonia have in common with Tadzhikistan, anyway?”
I didn’t know, but Foley wasn’t looking for an answer. “The trick, Lassiter, was to separate the republics from central authority without fostering civil war. It wouldn’t do to have the Russian army in Georgia tossing nuclear warheads at rebel troops in Azerbaijan. We have to support the reformers, the nationalists in each of the key republics. They don’t need tanks and mortars. They need food for their people. Central planning kept the country from feeding itself. Jesus, you wouldn’t believe the inefficiency and corruption. There’s a city on the Volga called Astrakhan. The biggest industry is fishing-huge sturgeon from the river, excel lent caviar. But you couldn’t even buy a stinking herring in the city. The central planners ordered it all to be shipped elsewhere.’’
Below us, the orchestra was tuning up. The strings and the horns seemed to be at war with each other. “So send them foreign aid,” I said. “Send them some of our surplus wheat.”
“Not that simple. Who gets to distribute it, the old incompetent bureaucrats or the new incompetent bureaucrats? And how will they pay for it? They have no hard currency.”
“Gold,” I suggested. “They have stockpiles. I’ve read about it.”
“ Had. A few years ago, their reserves were probably thirty-five hundred tons. If they have two hundred tons left, it’d be news to us.”
“Where’d it go?”
“Some was traded for credit with the West, some for dollars and pounds and marks that ended up in Swiss accounts of Party bigwigs. Hey, we’ll never know. The last two Party treasurers, Pavlov and Kruchina, threw themselves out windows before anybody could ask them questions. Lassiter, the fact is, their goddamn country is broke. So what’s our government to do? Give them easy credit? Forget it, might as well give the money away, but that’d never fly in Washington.”
I was beginning to understand, but I didn’t know if it was true. How could you tell with Foley? I said, “So instead of going through diplomatic channels, our government supports a bunch of burglars, just like Watergate, only on a bigger scale. You borrowed Yagamata’s idea. You steal the Russians’ art, sell it to Japanese and German collectors, and use the money to send Wheaties back to Moscow. Is that what you’re telling me? Instead of arms for hostages, art for wheat?”
The lights were beginning to dim, and the music came up. Foley chuckled. “An oversimplification, and I would object to your characterizing us as burglars. Russian officials with the appropriate credentials authorize the sale of the art. We can be considered legitimate brokers. Look, Lassiter, we’re not bad guys. We’re doing the reformers a favor. We’re feeding their people and keeping them in power. Of course, it’s all surreptitious, and we spread some dollars around, but that’s a cost of doing business with the Russians, always has been. Under the communists, everyone who could swing it was vzyatka, on the take. Why should it change now? Besides, it suits our purposes.”
“What purposes?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. But he didn’t have to. I was catching on. “You’re doing the same thing again, aren’t you?”
Still, he was silent.
“Do the new bureaucrats in the republics know you’re setting them up, too? Do they know you’re wired when they make the deals?”
“What we do is in the American national interest. We have bought a certain amount of loyalty there, and we take precautions to assure that our friends stay that way.”
The curtain went up, and on the stage, some European peasants in a colorful village were dancing up a storm. “You’ve bought the whole country,” I said, “just like you used to do in Latin America and Africa and Asia and anyplace else that was for sale. You’ve turned the Soviet Union into just another banana republic.”
From behind us, a loud “Shuush!” I turned around and smiled at a large woman who was slicing a salami and wagging her finger at me.
On the stage, a guy in a brown vest and tights seemed to have a thing for a pretty village woman in a blue dress. “So what went wrong?” I whispered.
“Yagamata got greedy.”
“Again! Why were you still using him?”
“All was forgiven. As it turned out, the coup attempt was the best thing that could have happened for us. So Yagamata was sort of an inadvertent hero, and we needed him as the middleman for the Japanese buyers. But the bastard wasn’t satisfied with his broker’s commission, and with the country in chaos, he smelled an opportunity. He started skimming the artwork, making his own deals with the Russians for unauthorized pieces, selling to collectors who are security risks.”
“But you’re helping him! I heard you back in Yagamata’s warehouse.”
Foley dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I had to find out what he was up to if I was going to stop him. Now that the operation’s been canceled, my job is to terminate the transfers by any means possible and get the stuff back to Russia before any more damage is done.”