Hotel Moscow (14 page)

B
ACK FROM THE
conference, Brooke looked around the lobby of Hotel Moscow and felt the claustrophobic environment tightening around her. She pulled out her camera and aimed it toward the forever-closed and dark gift shop.

With uncharacteristic speed, two guards were upon her. “
Nyet
!”

“Okay.” Why fight it? In a few minutes she would be upstairs, call the embassy, and catch whoever was on duty. They must work after hours; it was the American Embassy, not the Russian. She put away the camera, chiding herself for her impetuousness. The guards could have yanked out the film and exposed it to light. The photos she had taken at the conference would have been lost.

Heading to the elevator, she remembered that her passport was still at the reception desk, where Aleksandr had deposited it upon their arrival the day before. In all European cities she’d
visited, passports were returned after registration had been completed. Brooke swiveled on her heel and headed to the reception area.

Behind the desk, a young woman with a small face and a huge hairdo was absorbed in a book. She didn’t raise her head as Brooke waited.

“
Dobriy dyen,
good day.”

No response.

“Passport,
pazhalusta,
please,” Brooke finally said, using the words of politeness that had come back to her. “Fielding.”

Without looking up, the girl scribbled something on a piece of paper, slid it toward Brooke, and continued reading.

“Ten dollars? What for?”

“Government,” the girl replied in English without looking up.

“You don’t understand. I just want my passport back. I’m not checking out.”

The girl tapped her red fingernail on the written note, not bothering to repeat herself.

Brooke felt Amanda joining her. “I don’t believe it,” Brooke mumbled.

“Let Aleksandr get all our passports,” Amanda said. More women, now off the bus, gathered behind them.

Not wishing to dampen the exhilaration of the day by arguing with Amanda, Brooke stepped back to the lobby. It took fifteen minutes before Aleksandr lumbered over, a stack of blue passports in his hands. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and closed it.

“May I have mine, please?” Brooke asked him.

“Well, the front desk, they were insulted.”

A muscle in Brooke’s back twitched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His face turned crimson. “You argued with them. They must be treated with respect.”

“Respect?” She bristled. “That clerk was rude, yet she has the audacity to complain that I asked for a clarification about some phony tax?”

“She was insulted.”

“Too bad!” Brooke yanked the passports from his fingers, found hers, and distributed the rest to the other women.

“You should give her a gift,” Aleksandr said to her back.

She pivoted on her heel to face him. “So that’s what this is all about? You’re accusing me of insulting the clerk only to milk me to tip her? Has it occurred to you that you’re insulting
me
? And where is my room key? Did you get it at the same time you got the passport, or should I pay someone for it?”

“Take it easy.” Amanda went to retrieve their keys.

Arguing with Aleksandr had the effect of a dog barking at a lamppost. Brooke plopped down on a vinyl-upholstered bench, and dropped her face into her hands. Her fingertips pressed on her tired eyeballs. Last year, in a Taiwanese factory, the director had demonstrated the pressure points his Chinese employees massaged after long hours of stringing fine electric wires. Now she must retrieve her key, get to her room—and to the phone. She would do the rest of the group a favor by arranging bodyguards. Maybe she would also call Delta Air Lines to find out their schedule for the coming days, as she needed to keep her options open.

“Having fun?”

Even before raising her head, Brooke knew by the whiff of cinnamon-and-wood aftershave who it was. She looked up, certain he could see the flush sweeping her face. “You look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Don’t you ever get tired?”

Judd’s laughter revealed a set of straight, square teeth. “I’m the product of postwar starving Eastern European immigrants fattening up their kids with good nutrition.”

She stared at him. Was he, too, a child of survivors? She had never been able to speak about her second-generation experience with an adult who had actually shared it. Holocaust survivors were assumed to have been damaged by exposure to hunger, abuse, loss, cold, degradation, and death. What kind of life could they make for their children? Once, a son of her parents’ friends pointed at a lampshade. “Meet my uncle,” he said, and Bertha, age eight, burst out laughing, immediately getting it: The Nazis had made lampshades out of Jewish skin. The following day, she tried the joke on a playdate. The girl didn’t understand, and the next day she declared in school that Bertha was a liar who made up horrible stories. Afterward, Bertha didn’t tell anyone that the Nazis had also made soap out of Jewish fat.

Brooke swallowed and let a moment pass. “How was your day?” she asked. “I didn’t see you at lunch.”

He smiled. “I was busy at private sessions, and I’ve picked up some business ideas. A meat-processing plant, a cellular-phone company, chains of laundromats, an equipment leasing venture—”

“Are you joining the government privatization feast? If I were you, I’d invest in cement. I’ve never seen so much construction
in concrete.” She flipped back her hair. His presence suddenly made her feel recharged. “But then again, a deal gone sour might end up with you inside a mixer.”

He laughed.

Just then Brooke caught sight of Svetlana arguing with the sentries at the entrance. Her hair, which had been neat after a full day at the conference, now stuck out in clumps. Red scratches ran down her cheeks, and her eyes were swollen.

Brooke rushed over and waved her in past the guards. “It’s okay,” she told them. She put her arm around Svetlana’s shoulders. Stifling her shock, she whispered, “Have the hoodlums come back?”

Svetlana wouldn’t meet her eyes. “No.”

“What then?”

“Uh, it’s personal.” Svetlana’s hand fondled the “Attitude Is Everything” button, and she glanced suspiciously toward Judd as he approached.

“You look like you could use a shot of vodka.” He snapped his fingers like he had just remembered something, and walked away.

“Would you like to speak in private?” Brooke checked her watch. Only forty-five minutes before the group was to leave for the circus, and she still had to make those phone calls. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

“
Nichevo,
never mind.”

“Please. Something happened to you.”

Svetlana shook her head, then her face crumpled.

Brooke tightened her arm around the heaving shoulders and pulled Svetlana outside.

At the line of trees, there were two flagstones. Brooke sat down, motioning to Svetlana. “Can you tell me now?”

Svetlana made a visible effort to control her weeping. She shook her head.

Brooke took a Wet-Nap out of her purse, tore it open, and dabbed the red marks on the Russian’s face. “It helps to talk,” she said in a soft voice.

“We don’t talk about these things.” Svetlana pulled away, found a cloth handkerchief in her vinyl handbag, and swiped at her tears.

“Please, I may be able to help. At least let me try—”

“I don’t want foreigners to laugh at our misfortune.”

“Laugh? Did I laugh yesterday? Let me tell you something. Each of the women in our group has taken vacation time off her job and most paid from their own pockets to be here.”

“How much?”

Brooke recalled the women in her workshop who didn’t understand helping others. “Twenty-five hundred dollars.”

“Two thousand, five hundred dollars? Each of you?”

“Some, like Amanda, are funded by an organization. I am not.”

“But why would you pay so much to come here?” Svetlana’s face clouded. “It’s because you’re Jewish.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Jews are greedy. Maybe you want to steal our ventures?”

Brooke jumped to her feet. “Come on, Svetlana, you know better.” Czars toppled, religions disappeared, villages were erased by pogroms, regimes revolutionized, but like a deadly virus, anti-Semitism was immune to change. “What about the women in the group who aren’t Jewish? What’s their motivation?”

“But why would
you
come here?” Svetlana repeated.

Brooke sat down again. “Who’s going to help women around the globe? Not men, for sure. Not the mafia.” She hesitated, realizing that volunteerism on such a scale was more foreign to Svetlana than Mars. Svetlana could more readily grasp the anti-Semitism she’d heard all her life than the notion of extending kindness toward strangers. “Only women who’ve made it can understand—maybe Jews even more so, because of our history of suffering. Jews believe in helping; doing good is one of the foundations of our religion.” She took a deep breath. “So maybe you should trust me, like you trust your neighbor, that doctor you told me about.”

Svetlana nodded slowly. “Yes. I admire you for going back into the factory yesterday. It was dangerous.”

“Can you now tell me what happened this evening?”

“No.”

“Then how about what happened before yesterday’s incident? What led up to it?”

Svetlana bit her lip. “Okay. I will tell.”

It had started three months earlier. After confirming that the Gorbachevskaya Street Factory could turn out a profit from orders placed for its leather outerwear in the coming season, the Economic Authority guaranteed a loan for the purchase of hides.

The morning the money cleared in the bank account, the thugs appeared. They wore suits. They were polite. They asked the economist to accompany them to the bank and withdraw the money. He had to comply. He gave them the money right there, so it wasn’t a robbery.

“It’s still a robbery even if done in full daylight by polite
people,” Brooke said. “Was it the bank manager or a lower-level clerk who collaborated with them?”

Svetlana shrugged, a gesture of resignation that contained all the contradictions and tribulations of life in Russia. “What’s the difference? Someone at the bank had given them the information.”

“If it was a clerk, you could have complained to the manager.”

“Complain?” Svetlana spit out words. “Only stupid people complain. Nothing would be done anyway. Only trouble.”

Of course, Brooke thought. With no expectation of justice, Russians sought to circumvent problems on their own. Like an industrious ant, Svetlana diligently blazed a new trail each day. “Go on.” She reached out for Svetlana’s hand, hoping to uncover the circumstances of Svetlana’s disheveled appearance. “What happened next?”

“The following weeks, whenever there was money in the bank account, the men returned to demand it. But we needed the funds for our payroll and to purchase raw materials. And now we had to pay interest for a loan that we never saw, on money that was taken away before it left the bank lobby.” Svetlana shrugged. “After two months, my request to change banks was approved.”

Follow the money. It worked every time. “What do you mean by ‘request to change banks?’ Whose permission did you have to obtain?”

Svetlana examined her worn black shoes. “A business can work only with a bank that invites it. You can’t choose. We filed a request with the Economic Authority, and they found a bank that would invite us to service our business.”

“What happened after you switched banks?”

“Same.” Svetlana’s lips quivered. “The morning the account cleared.”

Judd appeared with a pint-size vodka bottle. He unscrewed the top and handed it to Svetlana, tossing Brooke a glance of understanding. She watched him stride away back to the hotel. His lithe figure radiated confidence.

Svetlana sipped the vodka.

“How have you been paying your bills if no money stays in your account?” Brooke asked.

Two old women carrying large brooms began sweeping crushed cigarettes butts from the circular driveway in front of the hotel. Svetlana eyed them.

“We—the workers—sell our vouchers,” she finally said.

“What vouchers?”

Svetlana’s hand shielded the side of her mouth as if she was concerned that the cleaning women were listening. “The shares in government properties all Russian citizens received when communism ended. Many people lost their savings because of inflation. These vouchers are the only thing they have left.”

“The employees sell their shares in order to keep the business afloat?” Brooke sighed. “You won’t own your business much longer if you sell your rights to it. That’s what selling means.”

“What choice do we have? The government gives us no money. We haven’t paid our workers in three months. We’ve been issuing
veksels,
I.O.U.s, but they trade those for half their value for food. We’re just trying to survive!” Svetlana finished the vodka. “We’re just trying to survive,” she repeated.

Sadness crept over Brooke. Survival was the best these women hoped for. “The hoodlums have taken all the money they could
get. What more do they want?” she asked, wondering if they’d been the ones to attack Svetlana again in the past hour.

Svetlana’s gaze followed the two old women moving away with their brooms. “Why do you want to know so much?”

“I’m trying to find out who’s behind the intimidation of small cooperatives like yours. Maybe we’ll be able to stop this.”

“Stop the mafia?” Svetlana raised her eyebrows. “You’re a foreigner. You’re naive. No one can stop them.”

“It’s not my idea. There are Russians who think it’s possible.”

Again, tears welled up in Svetlana’s eyes. “You want to know what they want? They want us to pretend we transferred ownership but received nothing for it!”

Whoever was behind this scheme still had an interest in the factory after it had been sucked dry and ransacked. Where was the value?

“We’ll talk more after I give it some thought.” Then an idea hit Brooke. “How far is your home?”

“Why?”

“I want you to take your daughter to the circus. Use my ticket. I know Amanda has one for you, too. Go home and get Natasha.” What was it like to see the world through her child’s eyes? Brooke rooted in her bag and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. “Take a taxi, have the driver wait while you get her, and have him drive you to the arena. You’ll just make it in time.”