There was one class of citizen, however, who stayed out until the last possible moment; and one of them, a young man of about eighteen, now approached Hollis. He carried a nylon Adidas bag and wore a cheap synthetic leather coat of three-quarter length. He had on American jeans, but his shoes were definitely Soviet. He spoke in good English with exceeding politeness. “Excuse me, sir, do you have a cigarette?”
“No, do you?”
“Yes.” The young man gave Hollis a Marlboro, lit it for him, and lit one for himself. The boy looked up and down the bridge. Hollis noticed a few other black marketeers observing the action. The youth said, “My name is Misha. I am pleased to meet you.” They smoked awhile. Hollis threw his unfinished cigarette off the bridge. Misha’s eyes followed it, then he turned to Hollis. “Do you see this end of the square?” Misha’s gesture took in the south end of Red Square, bordered by the Kremlin Wall, the back of St. Basil’s, the Rossiya, and the Moskva River. “That is where the German, Matthias Rust, landed his aircraft. I was here that day. What a sight it was.”
Hollis nodded. Rust’s landing spot had become part of the unofficial tour of Red Square. The average Muscovite, usually cynical by nature, had been captivated by the young man’s flight. The Soviet court gave him four years. Hollis, as an air attaché, had been inconvenienced by the fallout from that flight when some of his better contacts in the Red Air Force and Air Defense Ministry had been sacked. Nevertheless, as a pilot, Hollis could appreciate the young flier’s daring. Hollis thought that he would like to try something insane like that one day.
Misha said, “He flew for peace.”
“So did Rudolph Hess.”
Misha shrugged. “No politics. Economics. Do you have anything to trade?”
“Perhaps. What do you have, Misha?”
“I have unpressed black caviar. Three hundred grams. Very excellent. It is sixty dollars in the Beriozka. But I would trade it for a carton of American cigarettes.”
“I have no cigarettes on me.”
Misha looked around again, then said, “Well, forty dollars then.”
“It is against the law for us to deal in currency.”
Misha backed away. “Excuse me.”
Hollis grabbed his arm. “Have you been on the bridge all night?”
“A few hours….”
“Did you see an American car on the embankment road about two hours ago?”
Misha drew on his cigarette. “Perhaps. Why?”
“It’s none of your business why.” Hollis pressed Misha against the bridge rail. “Do you want to make forty dollars, or do you want to swim in the river?”
Misha said, “I didn’t see the car myself. A friend told me he saw it. On the embankment road about two hours ago.”
“What sort of car?”
“He thought it was a Pontiac Trans Am. It had a rear spoiler. Dark color.”
“How did your friend know it was a Trans Am?”
“Magazines. You know. I give three dollars American or fifteen rubles for Car and Driver. Same for Track and—”
“Did your friend see where the car went?”
“The Rossiya.” Misha added, “Then a strange thing happened. They hurried over to the Rossiya to see the car and to talk to the driver who they saw in the car — a young man — maybe American. But as they got to the Intourist wing, they saw the car going up Razin Street, away from the Rossiya, with two older men.”
“Two Russians?”
“Two Russians.” Misha hesitated, then said, “The type with closed faces. You know what I mean?”
“Yes. Did you or your friends notice anything else unusual tonight?”
“Yes. About an hour ago. I myself and everyone here saw a blue Ford Fairlane going very fast over the bridge. A cop was chasing it, but the bastard never had a chance. Those Fords can move on the straightaway. The American embassy uses them. Are you from the embassy? Was that your car?”
Hollis turned and walked back toward the underpass. Misha followed. They went down the steps, and Hollis handed Misha two twenty-dollar bills. Hollis said, “I’ll take the caviar.”
Misha reluctantly took the tin of caviar from his gym bag and handed it to Hollis. Misha said, “I’ll give you three more tins and an ancient Russian cross for your jacket.”
Hollis put the caviar in his pocket and said in Russian, “Go home, Misha, and never come back to this bridge. The men with closed faces will be asking about you.”
Misha’s eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open.
Hollis climbed to the top of the stairs and walked back to the bridge. He crossed it on foot, aware of the stares of the other entrepreneurs. Capitalism, Hollis thought, like sex, was hormonal; it existed on the Moskvoretsky Bridge and behind St. Basil’s, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. It existed around every hotel and every farmer’s market throughout Moscow, in small isolated cells that might one day spread and weaken the whole state. Like communism in czarist Russia, capitalism was the new subversive ideology.
Hollis walked out onto Ordynka Street, working out in his mind a Metro route that would get him back alive.
6
Sam Hollis got off the Metro at Smolenskaya station. He walked along the Moskva River embankment and followed the big loop of the river beneath the Kalinin Bridge. The massive Ukraina Hotel rose up across the Moskva, and a dark riverboat slid toward its dock on the Shevchenko Embankment. The autumn was not pretty in Moscow, Hollis decided; it was wet and grey. But when the first snow fell, Moscow was transformed into a sparkling white city of muted sounds and soft curves. The sun shone more often, and the night was starlit, casting iridescent blue shadows over the snowy landscape. The good fur coats appeared, and the women looked better. Children pulled sleds, and ice skaters could be seen in the parks. The snow was like white ermine, Hollis thought, cloaking the hard-featured city.
Hollis turned up a gradually rising street that came off the embankment. At the turn of the century this district, where the new American embassy was located, had been called Presnya. It was then a squalid industrial suburb and fertile ground for Marxist-Leninist ideology. During the revolution of 1905, the workers here had fought the czar’s army, and the whole area had been subject to intense artillery bombardment and — when the revolt was put down — to savage reprisals. The district was now called Krasno Presnya — Red Presnya. It seemed to Hollis that half the streets, squares, and districts of Moscow were prefixed with “red,” to the extent that the word had become meaningless, and the Muscovites in private conversation usually dropped the “red.” Presnya was largely rebuilt, but Hollis still sensed its tragedy. Russia was a very sad country.
Hollis looked up and saw the towering red brick chancery building, its windows all alight as per the ambassador’s orders. A few minutes later he saw the red brick walls and the embassy residences that rose above them. The streets were deserted, and the low ground was covered with a blanket of river fog.
Hollis could now see the lights of the main embassy gate in the wall. The compound was a sort of mini-Kremlin, Hollis thought, and the use of red brick, rare in Moscow, was supposed to make the Russians think of the red brick Kremlin walls and towers. That, in turn, was supposed to make them associate the American embassy with power, strength, and perhaps even God and sanctuary. Hollis thought the Madison Avenue subtlety might be lost on the average Soviet citizen.