Gordon felt a gentle push on the back. He walked free of the escort’s grip into the bright lights. The already raucous stadium roared in a spectacle for which Gordon was unprepared. Tens of thousands cheered wildly. They waved thousands of banners and signs. Gordon smiled and began to count his steps.
The Chairman shook his hand as they passed. But he kept up his count until he found some tape. Gordon smiled and waved, smiled and waved, smiled and waved. The whole time his skin crawled. With every flash of a camera, with every shout that rose above the others, with every rush of movement in the crowd, Gordon tensed. When his family joined him, the feeling of dread redoubled. Twenty-eight agonizing minutes later — after ‘Proud to be an American’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’ and the last of the balloons had fallen — it was over.
Walking off the stage now crowded with party luminaries, Gordon remembered he hadn’t pointed or winked. He spotted a comical woman in the front ranks wearing a red hat and vest covered with campaign buttons. Gordon smiled, pointed and winked as he made the shape of a gun with his hand and pulled the trigger. A hundred cameras flashed at once. The next morning, the picture was on the cover of almost every newspaper in the country.
Chapter Three
‘Papa, smotri!’ the high-pitched voice chimed, Masha’s finger pointed through the window at the New York City skyline.
‘Only English, Mashenka,’ Pyotr Andreev whispered into his three-year-old’s ear. ‘Remember what mama and papa said. Only English. It’s a game, all right?’
‘Okay,’ she said. Pyotr kissed her smiling face.
His wife Olga and five-year-old daughter Oksana sat quietly. Their escape from the collapsing Russia had, in fact, worked perfectly. One last hurdle remained. No one said another word as they landed, deplaned and queued up at customs.
The security was extraordinary. There were uniformed officers with rifles along the walls. Every bag was opened and inspected carefully. Even the dog in the cage ahead of the Andreevs was removed. It yapped and kicked its short legs excitedly as another customs officer waved a long wand inside the cage, sniffing for explosives. The barking of the dog grated on Pyotr’s nerves, but little Masha enjoyed it immensely. She looked back and forth between Pyotr and the noisy pet. Pyotr kept her hand in his, ready to administer a painful squeeze if she lapsed into Russian.
His throat was dry when their turn came. The officer looked at their Swiss passports, down at their pictures, up at their faces, back down again — repeating the process over and over. It reminded him of the old Soviet Union. Things had changed since the last time he’d visited America.
‘You’re Swiss?’ the officer asked, unzipping a bag with a tearing sound.
‘Yes,’ Pyotr replied. His heart pounded as he wondered whether they’d found all of the tags and cardboard inserts that came with their new luggage. On a quick trip to the bank in Zurich they’d gotten money and passports from the safe deposit box. They’d bought western clothes and toiletries.
He glanced down at the girls. Oksana’s eyes were wide, but she was deathly quiet. Masha was waving at the dog, who had been returned to his cage. His sniveling nose was pressed to the small, grated window.
‘And you are here on vacation, Mr Hoffman?’
‘Yes. We are going to Disneyworld.’
‘Do you have tickets to California?’ the customs officer asked casually as he probed through their clothing with hands covered by white Latex gloves.
‘Florida,’ Pyotr corrected. He pulled his ticket from his jacket pocket. ‘Orlando. We are going to Disney-world, not Disneyland.’ The man looked at the Delta Airlines folder. He didn’t reach for it, and Pyotr put it back into his jacket pocket. It really did have tickets to Orlando in it. The Andreevs, however, had no intention of using them.
Pyotr felt dampness under his armpits. It took incredible concentration to look so at ease — feigning a German accent while speaking English. Uvular trills when pronouncing the letter ‘r,’ not trills off the tip of the tongue as in Russian. ‘Ch’ sounds from the front of the mouth — almost like a hiss of air — not the Russian gargle from deep within the throat.
‘Gaf! Gaf-gaf-gaf!’ Masha’s tiny voice came with a giggle as the dog barked back at her. Pyotr swallowed and he squeezed her hand, but she just smiled up at him. It was the sound Russian kids made to imitate a barking dog. He had no idea what sound dogs made in German or English. Slowly, Pyotr looked back up at the customs officers. Had they notice? The loud snarl of a zipper being run down the soft bag’s side indicated they were through.
Pyotr awkwardly wheeled a luggage cart down the concourse. The wheels turned this way and that. Just ahead of them, a man whose hands were thrust deep in his windbreaker stopped to get a drink of water. It was strange. An August day, the sun was hot. And the man wore a jacket. Not a sport coat or some other item of apparel more fashion than function, but a windbreaker.
Pyotr had to consciously avoid turning to look back over his shoulder as they passed the man. He stopped a couple of times to readjust the baggage on the cart. He saw nothing, but he felt it. That undefined sense of being followed.
The Russian crowd chanted in unison. ‘Authority is oppression!’ one of the Anarchists on the street below had translated.
‘How’s the light?’ Kate asked from in front of Woody’s camera.
‘Bout fifteen minutes left,’ he said as he carefully adjusted the focus.
Kate stood with her back to the railing of a second-floor balcony. Down below, the front ranks of a mob were taunting lines of riot police who ringed the Interior Ministry headquarters. ‘I don’t really want to use the spots,’ she said. She was still spooked from the Red Square stampede on the first day of the fighting. Doubly spooked by the anonymous tip on her cellular phone that had led them to the Interior Ministry.
‘No arguments from me,’ Woody said. ‘Batteries are low anyway.’
Kate peered down over the railing of the sleazy hotel’s dining room. They had bribed one of the kitchen workers with a one million ruble note, which at the day’s closing exchange rate was worth ten cents. By tomorrow it would probably be worthless.
On the street, three lines of white-helmeted riot police nervously stood their ground holding clear plexiglass shields and raised truncheons. They made occasional forays out to the ragged front ranks of the angry mob, raining blows onto someone’s head or spraying long streams of pepper gas into faces before retreating. In return, the crowd was pulling up paving stones and lobbing them into police ranks.
‘Okay, ready when you are,’ Woody said.
Kate tugged at her navy blue jacket and then reached under it to pull down on her white silk blouse. It would only be a head shot, so she wore blue jeans and running shoes beneath. She took one last look in a small mirror and arranged her hair, then cleared her throat loudly for several seconds.
‘Give me some sound,’ Woody said.
Kate fixed a serious expression on her face. ‘The Russian government collapses, but first a word from Purina cat chow.’
‘Your teeth are too damn white,’ Woody groused, fiddling with buttons. ‘Ever consider getting ’em capped?’ She made a face. He held up his hand — five fingers spread out. Kate wiggled her shoulders and rolled her neck. Woody counted down with his fingers. When his last finger curled down, the red light came on and Kate began.