Political Affairs Officer Sharon Greenfield, of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, had been in the city now for three years, longer than anyone else in the American delegation. Greenfield was in her late thirties, tall, dark hair gradually turning gray, but with bright blue eyes that she used to advantage to rivet any man who would dare take her for granted.
Greenfield had seen every form of the human condition here. When the first McDonald’s was opened, there was dancing in the streets. When the first foreign businesses opened that would accept the new convertible ruble, there were more celebrations. When full reforms failed to be enacted and the foreign stores closed, people were depressed. When the food ran out, there were riots. When the new Lithuanian Republic sold its former master its first one thousand metric tons of wheat, there was resentment and anger everywhere. Now, she was seeing simple, abject poverty — people dying in the streets, looting and lawlessness combined with severe martial law. The new Commonwealth of Independent States was powerless to help. The new law in Moscow was the army, whether local or state, and the “Russian Mafia” cartels that bought their protection.
Most of the ticket windows at Leningrad Station were boarded up and the doors locked, but Sharon went directly to one door and entered. A Moscow City Police officer immediately stood in front of her, arms outstretched, and reached for her left breast. She slapped it away. The officer’s face flushed with anger and he took a menacing step forward until a firm voice behind him said, “As you were, Corporal.” The cop backed away but gave Greenfield another satisfied glance.
Today he’s groping me, Sharon thought. Tonight he’ll be booted out of his unit for insubordination, and tomorrow he’ll be either in the gangs, dead after drinking himself into oblivion and passing out on the cold streets, or pounding on the outside gate of the U. S. Embassy, looking for asylum or work or trying to sell worthless information. She had seen it a hundred times.
Her defender — if you could call him that — was Boris Georgivich Dvornikov, formerly the Moscow bureau chief of the KGB and now a high-level official with the Moscow City Police. He was tall, with wavy gray hair, an infectious smile, and big, meaty hands. Dvornikov was sometimes a Communist Party member, most times not; sometimes heterosexual, sometimes not; sometimes credited with a bit of integrity; most times not. They met on an irregular basis, depending on what either of them — or both — needed from the other. Today he had called her.
“My apologies, Sharon Greenfield, for that corporal’s crude and inelegant action. Times are difficult, but I’ll handle his insolence later.”
Of that, Sharon Greenfield had no doubt. Boris Dvornikov was known to be ruthless, even sadistic — traits that had served him well in the KGB and certainly would continue to do so in the new Commonwealth. “Thank you, Boris Georgivich,” replied Greenfield, using the respectful custom of the Russian’s first name with his father’s.
“My pleasure,” Dvornikov said, then motioned to the door behind her. “Pitiful sight, is it not, Miss Greenfield? Three hundred eighty-seven new souls out there today alone. The total is well over three thousand homeless and living in the Leningrad Rail Station.”
“And how many are removed every night?” Greenfield asked. She knew that, with a wide-open press in Russia now, the squalor in Leningrad Station was a political eyesore for the Russian government, so the police had been charged with helping “clean it up.” For Dvornikov, that meant carting away hundreds of lost souls, probably for a long train ride to the farthest reaches of the Russian Federation, and certain death.
“We must deal with the situation as best we can.”
“The pity is that much of their suffering could be avoided.”
“Ah. The noble offer by the United States and the so-called industrialized nations,” Dvornikov sneered. “And all Russia must do is give up our right of self-determination, our national identity, condemn our economic system, and leave ourselves defenseless.”
Greenfield said, “Free elections, free emigration, institute a market economy, and do away with your offensive nuclear weapons. Russia spends billions of dollars — dollars, Boris Georgivich, not rubles — every year in maintaining a three-million-man army, a stockpile of ten thousand nuclear warheads, and a fleet of intercontinental bombers.”
“‘It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright,’” Dvornikov quoted with his usual raconteur’s flair. “Benjamin Franklin. Sometimes a nation needs something as awful as a military to help it stand upright. You have homeless in your country as well, Miss Greenfield, yet you too have bombers and nuclear warheads.”
He paused, then smiled. “Why, you’ve even built and deployed a new aircraft that can take off and land like a helicopter but cruises like an airplane Your Congress and your Secretary of Defense say you’re going to cancel it, but here you’ve gone and built dozens of them, for the Air Force, for the Coast Guard, for the Marine Corps. I wonder who else?”
Greenfield’s eyes widened in surprise, which pleased him.
He went on. “I see it being used by your new Border Security Force — but there are other applications for that wonderful machine. Civil transportation, law enforcement, offshore oil derrick supply — the possibilities are endless. “He paused, making sure he had Sharon’s full attention, then added with a smile, “Why, I’ll bet you can launch one or two of those things off the deck of, say, an old cargo ship right in the Baltic Sea. You could even fly it into Liepaja, land it, retrieve a Commonwealth spy, a band of U.S. Marines …”
Sharon Greenfield hoped some color was still left in her face. Things were bad in the capital, and the Soviet Union was history, but the old KGB spy network was still intact. And Dvornikov was the master.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Boris Georgivich,” Sharon Greenfield said. “It would make a very good book, though. Perhaps an American publisher will offer you a deal, and you can become a novelist. You know, like John Le Carré.”
“Now, that is a fine idea, Sharon Greenfield.” He paused, his smile disappearing, and in clipped, stern Russian ordered the soldier to leave. Sharon took a moment and searched the adjacent rooms and found them all empty. Dvornikov did not question or impede her search — he would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed.
“Let me help you write chapter two of your novel, Boris,” Greenfield said finally. “You invented this Soviet man that was kidnapped by Marines …”
“A Commonwealth officer of Lithuanian birth. A lieutenant,” Dvornikov corrected her. “And not kidnapped. He went willingly. Obviously he was feeding information to the Americans for months and was about to be caught.”
“You can work out the details in your book later, Boris,” Greenfield said, still disturbed by how much Dvornikov knew about the RAGANU operation. “Let’s go to chapter two. Say the Commonwealth officer told his benefactors some interesting tales — like about an American military officer being held captive in a certain Commonwealth research institute for several years. The Americans might want this officer back.”
Dvornikov’s eyes widened in complete surprise.
Sharon had been around Soviet and Commonwealth agents, bureaucrats, and other government officials long enough to know when they were really surprised and only faking it — the CIA teaches a class in body language — and Dvornikov was really surprised. “What do you think, Mr. Dvornikov?”
“I think,” he said slowly, “that you are a better novelist than I am.”