They walked slowly up the road toward the VFW hall, which was all alight for the party. Lisa asked, “What are we going to do about the interrogation, Sam? We both have two strikes before we even walk in there.”
“We seem to be running out of time and space, don’t we?”
Hollis thought of the secrets he had to protect. He had to protect Surikov in the event Surikov had not gotten out of the country yet. He had to protect the fact that the three thousand graduates of the Charm School were about to be blown and swapped for Burov’s three hundred Americans. He had to keep Burov thinking that Alevy had no plans to try to grab a few Americans out of here to show the world. But he could no longer stall Burov, and Burov would get what he needed from Hollis through drugs, clubs, electric shock, or just the polygraph paper. Then Burov would evacuate the camp, and the KGB would alert its three thousand agents in America. Then that would be the end of the operation and the last of America’s MIAs would finally and forever be lost.
Lisa stayed silent as they walked. Finally, she said, “Nina Sturges and Mary Auerbach.”
“Who?”
“The two American women who killed themselves here.”
Hollis didn’t reply.
“Sam… tomorrow we are going to watch eleven good men and women die in a horrible way. Then we are going to be interrogated for weeks. We may not ever leave that building back there. You know that.”
Again Hollis said nothing.
Lisa said softly, “I’ve been thinking… if we went to bed tonight… and just kept on sleeping… together… you and I… forever. Wouldn’t it be better? In each other’s arms?” She added, “They used the propane heater….”
He looked at her. For the first time since he’d met her he felt totally responsible for her fate. But now she was trying to take her destiny and his destiny into her own hands. He said to her, “There have been a lot of sunrises I haven’t looked forward to. But we’ll see this one. Together. I don’t want to hear any more of that.”
“I’m sorry… I don’t want to do it without you… but it’s going to be such a long night.”
“Maybe we’ll find the answers in the long night.”
PART V
It doesn’t do to leave a live Dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
37
Seth Alevy put on his trench coat, took his attaché case, and left his room on the twelfth floor of the hotel located within the complex of new buildings called the Center for International Trade.
He stepped out into the large marble lobby, which he noted was crowded, mostly with Western and Japanese business people.
As he crossed the lobby, he heard a loud shout and turned quickly toward it. At the far end of the lobby, two men in expensive-looking suits rushed toward a burly-looking man and grabbed him, pushing him against a stone pillar. One of the two men shouted in Russian, “We are CIA! Yuri Sergunov, you are under arrest!”
The burly man, Sergunov, delivered a vicious karate chop to the neck of one of the men, who crumpled to the floor. The second CIA man drew his gun, but Sergunov got to his first and fired twice into the CIA man, who dropped to the mauve carpet, blood spreading across his white shirt.
A few people at that end of the lobby screamed and ran as Sergunov sprinted toward the glass doors, brandishing his pistol. He knocked over a doorman, and Alevy saw him disappear into the night.
Someone yelled, “Stoi!”
The action in the roped-off section of the lobby stopped. The CIA man who had been judo-chopped stood and shouted, “Can’t you explain to that cretin how to fake a chop? He nearly broke my neck.”
A man standing next to Alevy inquired, “Do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
The man said in a British accent, “They ought to announce these things, don’t you think?”
“Actually, there’s a sign over there.”
“It’s in Russian.”
“It’s a Russian movie,” Alevy pointed out.
“Can you read that?”
“A bit. Something about asking our indulgence while a film scene is being shot.”
“What sort of film? Looked like a cops and robbers.”
“It’s a spy movie,” Alevy replied. “The fellow who escaped was probably the hero. A KGB man, I’d guess.”
“You don’t say. That’s a different slant on things.”
“This is Russia,” Alevy reminded him.
“Who were the other two chaps, then? Not MI-6, I hope.”
“No. CIA.”
“Ah.” The Englishman thought a moment. “It seemed the CIA men were trying to arrest the KGB fellow. They can’t do that in Russia.”
“It would be good if they could. But this is supposed to be America. Mosfilm uses this place as their American locale. I’ve seen this hotel in ten movies already.”
The Englishman laughed. “Don’t the Russians get tired of seeing the same place?”
“The Russians, my friend, don’t get tired of anything but work.”
“Right you are. Well, this is something to tell everyone back home. You know, I just stepped off the lift, and I was a bit taken aback for a moment. A man can get paranoid in this country.”
“Why is that?” Alevy asked.
The man didn’t respond.
The director was setting the scene again as the CIA man changed into a clean shirt for a retake.
The Englishman said, “This sort of thing is not in the best of taste, if you think about it. I mean, almost everyone here is Western. It’s somewhat offensive.”
“It’s their country.”
“Yes, but really, this is an expensive hotel. We don’t need this sort of thing here. Americans being shot and all that. Though I don’t suppose anyone would know that if they didn’t speak a bit of Russian.”
“Art imitates life,” Alevy said.
“I always thought it was the other way around. Well, I must be going. Good evening.”
Alevy watched the scene begin to unfold again, but decided he didn’t want to see the CIA man take two more shots in the gut, so he turned and left.
He made his way to the shopping arcade, a thickly carpeted concourse with six specialized Beriozkas fronting on it. In the windows of the Beriozkas were decals of American Express, Eurocard, and five other major world credit cards, and the glass was clean.
Alevy walked into the store called Jewelry Store and examined a string of amber beads. Four well-dressed Japanese businessmen browsed together through the elegant shop. An American man next to Alevy said to the woman with him, “If the masses could see this place, they’d revolt again.”
Alevy took the beads, brought them to the counter, and presented a Eurocard issued under the name of Thornton Burns. The salesgirl placed the necklace in a satin box and slid the box into a colorful paper bag. She smiled and said in English, “Have a good evening,” but Alevy had the impression she was reading from a sign over his left shoulder.
He went out into the concourse past the window of a store called For Men and Women that sold an odd combination of Russian furs, embroideries, china, and cut glass. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nine-thirty. The Beriozkas would be closing soon. He passed by the shops marked “Radio Goods” and “Bookstore” and turned into a downward-sloping passage to the food store.
Even at this hour, he noted, the small supermarket was crowded with guests of the hotel, plus diplomats and their spouses from every embassy in Moscow, ranking Party officials with access to hard currency, and black marketeers who were using Western currency at the risk of doing two to five in Siberia.