Whether or not this was the case, I had to start over. Kunavin now gave the order to offer either Nadia Cherednichenko or Lora Kronberg-Sobolevskaia to De Jean.
I’d known Lora for a long time. As I’ve already noted, my cousin, a chemistry professor, met her by chance, and they had an affair. He certainly loved her and she, perhaps, loved him as well, though she always made him do her bidding. Lora was a perfect bohemian, flighty and willful. But she had many gifts. She was a great actress, an excellent chess player, a wonderful card
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player, a good mathematician, and a poet as well. After breaking up with my cousin she got together with the screenwriter Pomeshchikov, destroyed his life by breaking up his family, left Pomeshchikov, got together with some boxer, and in the interludes there were different actors, directors, cameramen, screenwriters, and so on. Lora became renowned within our circles for her temperament.
But, she was completely unsuited to everyday life. She owned nothing but the clothes on her back. Her parents and brother lived in Podolsk, and she would rent tiny closet-rooms in different areas of Moscow, and she always had difficulty with her residency permit. Moreover, Lora was careless in her appearance. When we went to receptions at the embassy, I had to check the way she was dressed beforehand.
When Lora entered the game, she was also in the process of entering into yet another affair with the old Soviet film director Feinzimmer. She would meet him in her hole-in-the-wall rooms. Often, when I came to get her, I would encounter Feinzimmer in her apartment, and I would take her away, despite his presence. In short, Lora Kronberg-Sobolevskaia was an unusual creature and I, for one, was constantly telling Kunavin that it was her we had to use.
There were many, very many receptions of every sort at the French Embassy and many private meetings with Maurice and Marie-Claire. I became such a close friend that they even invited me to lunches and dinners held for representatives of trade delegations, financiers, technical experts, and other guests from France. It goes without saying that I would be there when actors, directors, producers, artists, musicians, and others came to visit. The ambassador sometimes invited Georgii Mdivani as well. It was easier with Zhorzh there. After all, every visit to the embassy was a nerve-wracking affair, since each time we had to make arrangements with Kunavin, set specific goals for the meeting, and write up post-meeting reports. (I recall, for example, meetings with the screenwriter Spaak, with the film actor Jean Maret, with the film producer Mnushkin.)
But one time, on Kunavin’s orders, I invited De Jean on a trip to the countryside, and to dinner afterwards at the Volna Restaurant at the Khimki River-port. It had been decided that on that night Lora would show active interest in Maurice and set up a date with him. This had been discussed with Kunavin in my presence at the Hotel Moscow. Lora was very enthusiastic. It fell to me to create the necessary atmosphere and to assist her in every possible way.
We had arranged it so that right outside the French Embassy Marie-Claire got into our car, a large ZIM, the state luxury car, which, according to our cover story, I had borrowed from the Ministry of Culture. Lora got into De Jean’s car with the little flag, and they rode together the whole way—she and
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Maurice. Zhorzh Mdivani and Taichik were with us and, I think, Chered-nichenko.
We set off for the Planernyi Region . . .
Somewhere at the edge of the forest we got out of our cars, walked around, and took a lot of pictures. At around eight o’clock, we arrived at the restaurant, where a table had been reserved for us in advance. Despite Kunavin’s efforts, a small mishap occurred right at the beginning of the evening. It turned out that there were foreign journalists, Americans, in the dining area, and among them, if my memory serves me right, was the wife of the American journalist Stevens (as Kunavin later told me), who, of course, recognized Maurice De Jean and Marie-Claire and watched us intently throughout the entire meal.
While dancing was going on, I saw that Lora, who had drunk a fair amount, was pressing herself up against the ambassador. And he was smiling and whispering something in her ear. Marie-Claire either didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice. Lora was really letting herself go that night. When I danced with her, she pressed herself up against me, too. I whispered in her ear, “I’m not the ambassador, babe.”
After the evening was over and we had said good-bye to the De Jeans, I took Lora home by taxi. But all of a sudden she got stubborn and said that she wanted to come spend the night at my place, that she been attracted to me for a long time, and that she wasn’t going to let this opportunity get away.
We arrived at my place, having bought champagne at the Praga Restaurant along the way. There Lora told me that Kunavin, speaking on authority for General Gribanov, had promised her, in the event of success, a room of her own in Moscow—no, not an apartment, but a room. But soon afterwards, she’d forgotten about Maurice and the room, and was remembering my cousin and her love for him with tears in her eyes. And then, no longer crying and having forgotten my cousin, she consoled herself with me. There was something pathological in all of this, for her as well as for me.
Soon afterwards Marie-Claire left for France. Summer came. Gribanov decided to force events.
I was given a special, top-secret note from the chairman of the KGB, General Serov, to the USSR State Planning Committee, which allowed me to purchase a new Volga automobile, using my own money, through the intercession of the Ministry of Trade. This was an unheard-of stroke of luck. I felt like a little boy on his birthday. After all, in those years only the very highly placed, the chosen ones, could buy a car this way. Mere mortals had to stay on a waiting list for several years, or spend 75,000 rubles buying a Volga on the black market, nearly risking their lives in the process. My Volga was intended for the Maurice De Jean operation. Gribanov’s chief assistant, Vasily
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Stepanovich, congratulated me over the phone, saying, “Well, now you’re fully armed. Go for it!” Kunavin, an old automobile enthusiast, some other KGB administrator, and I went to buy a Volga at the only automobile dealership in Moscow, on Bakuninskii Street. Kunavin said that this was a big present for me, and I agreed, even though I was paying 40,000 rubles of my own money for this present.
Finally we approached the final stage of the Lora Kronberg-Sobolevskaia epic. In the end, Gribanov wasn’t fully certain of Lora (or perhaps that was simply his style—having doubles and back-ups), and that’s why one more girl was brought into the operation. This was Alla Golubova (code name: Petrova), a beautiful young woman who now works for Intourist. I was to introduce her to Maurice as a straw widow—that is, as the wife of a sailor always out at sea who rarely returned to Moscow. According to the cover story, Alla had a separate apartment on the Arbat in building #41, apartment #14. In actuality, it was an apartment owned by the KGB where I would often meet with lower-ranking agents. Alla really lived with her aunt’s family, and didn’t even have her own room.