The Debriefing (25 page)

Slowly the old man turns toward Stone, sizes him up, makes no effort to hide that he is not overly impressed with what he sees.

Stone speaks in Yiddish. “Excuse me for interrupting,” he says. “I’m looking for someone, and I was told you could help me find him.”

“You’re looking for someone,” the old man repeats belligerently, “and you were told I would help you find him. Maybe yes, maybe no. The man you’re looking for, he maybe has a name?”

Stone says, “I’m trying to find Leon Davidov.”

The old man studies Stone for a long moment, then mutters in an undertone, presumably so that God won’t hear, “Go get murdered!” With an innocent look on his face, he turns back to resume his conversation with God.

“It’s very important,” insists Stone. Three rows in front, a middle-aged man turns and glares angrily at the intruder. “It’s important,” Stone repeats in a whisper. “I don’t want to hurt him. I only want to speak to him.”

The old Jew looks at Stone out of the corner of his bloodshot eyes. “The why is what you haven’t explained.”

Stone measures his man for a fraction of a second. “I want to tell him what happened to his son.”

The old man mumbles the word “son” several times, starts to tremble. Tears well in his eyes. “It’s me, Davidov,” he mutters. “So where is the good-for-nothing? So what trouble is he in that he admits after all these years he has a father?”

The old man’s pain stirs Stone, and he reaches out awkwardly to touch his elbow. Davidov shrinks back, looking at the hand that almost touched him as if it could contaminate him. “If you have things to tell me, tell them and leave me in relative peace,” he says.

“I have things to tell you,” Stone says, “and I have things to ask you.”

Davidov shakes his head stubbornly. “Nothing is what I’ll tell you,” he whispers dramatically. “People like you is whom I don’t talk to.” He leans toward Stone, his eyes gleaming, his sour breath coming out in excited little gasps; he looks like an emaciated bird about to pounce on a worm. “I was a loyal Stalinist when you were sucking on a tit. I worked in the Ministry of Defense. Stalin once passed within an arm’s reach of me. I could have reached out and touched him, that’s how close he was. It’s the fashion not to talk like this these days, but old clothes are what I feel comfortable in. So you want to tell me news, sonny, so tell it. Me, I’m clean as a whistle!”

In the lobby, Stone tells Katushka, “It’s like talking to a wall.”

“I told you,” she says.

“He’s half mad,” Stone says. “He claims he’s an old Stalinist and has nothing to be afraid of.” Suddenly Stone and Katushka stop in their tracks and look at one another. “Why not?” Stone asks.

“It’s a crazy idea,” Katushka says, “but what do you have to lose?”

“Do you think he’ll do it?” Stone wants to know.

“If it’s me that asks,” Katushka tells him, “he’ll do it.”

Morning Stalin brushes back his mustache with the tips of his index fingers. “I picked the gesture up from the original mushroom,” he says proudly. “I was letter perfect. I once played with Svetlana for an afternoon, and she didn’t suspect I wasn’t the real fig.”

“Maybe she suspected,” says Stone, “and was grateful for the change.”

“Not funny,” snaps Morning Stalin. “Not funny at all.”

“Don’t be nervous,” Stone soothes Morning Stalin. “He’s an old man. Nothing can go wrong.” Stone signals for silence, then knocks gently on the door.

After a moment Davidov calls through the closed door, “So who is knocking?”

“Leon Isayevich Davidov?” Morning Stalin asks. His voice is deep and filled with its own importance.

The door opens as far as the chain will allow. A watery eye stares out into the dimly lit landing. The eye widens. There is a distant choking, a half cry of astonishment. The old man fumbles with the lock, opens the door, sways against the wall for support as he stares at Morning Stalin. “It’s Malechamovitz—it’s the angel of death,” he whispers, backing away from his visitors, sinking weakly onto an unmade bed in the corner of the small dark room.

“Not to panic,” Morning Stalin instructs Davidov in a strong voice. “You are not on any of my lists. I need your help. I need information.”

“Dead is what you are,” Davidov wails, but Morning Stalin silences him with a gesture, walks over to where he is sitting. “Touch,” he orders him.

The old man does as he is told. He reaches out with shaking fingers and touches the back of Morning Stalin’s wrist. The skin is soft with age and moves easily over the bones. Davidov says in a weak voice, “You want to know what? Only ask.”

Stone comes up behind Morning Stalin. “During the war your son, Oleg, took another identity?”

“I had a friend in the Army named Kulakov,” the old man explains, talking to Morning Stalin. “He died a hero’s death. Oleg paid someone at the registry office to file him under K.” Davidov is beginning to enjoy the experience of talking to Stalin. His eyes twinkle. “He was entering the military academy. He thought he stood a better chance with a name like Kulakov than Davidov, if you don’t mind my saying it.” The old man stares up into Morning Stalin’s face. “By any chance, you don’t remember me? In the hall of the Ministry of Defense you once passed me. It was during the Great Patriotic War. Nineteen forty-four. Five at the outside. I was putting new bulbs in old sockets. You passed so close, I could have touched you.”

Morning Stalin glances uneasily at Stone for a cue; Stone nods and Morning Stalin turns cheerfully to Davidov. “Now
that you mention it … light bulbs ring a bell …”

“Gray overalls is what I was wearing,” the old man says eagerly.

“Gray overalls; of course,” says Morning Stalin.

“Where is Oleg?” Davidov suddenly asks Morning Stalin.

Again Morning Stalin looks at Stone, who says, “Oleg is in America.”

“On a mission?” the old man asks.

Morning Stalin coughs and clears his throat, and then acknowledges that Oleg is, indeed, on an important mission for the Politburo.

Davidov explodes off the bed. “Ah, I knew it in my heart of hearts,” he tells Morning Stalin. “When that one-armed bandit Volkov came out of the room after Oleg—”

Stone pushes Morning Stalin aside, grabs the old man by his lapels. “Say that again,” he says softly.

Davidov looks Stone full in the face for the first time. “I know you—you’re the Jew with the handkerchief instead of a yarmulke.” He asks Morning Stalin, “Is he one of us?”

Stone lifts Davidov off the ground and gently shakes him. “Say what you said again,” he orders.

Thoroughly intimidated, the old man cackles weakly. “I knew Oleg was going on a mission when I saw that one-armed bandit Volkov come out of the room after him. Volkov is a big cheese in military intelligence. Not many people know that. But I know it. I used to clean fifteen years ago his toilet.”

Stone relaxes his grip, and Davidov sinks back onto the bed. “That’s what I thought you said,” Stone tells nobody in particular.

Morning Stalin snaps his fingers excitedly. “Of course,” he tells Stone. “Now I remember. Volkov. Ha! Volkov was the real name of the mushroom who conducted the investigations for Vishinsky in the thirties. What was the name he used?”

Stone, smiling broadly, says, “It was Gamov. Gamov was the name.”

“Gamov, yes,” says Morning Stalin. “Gamov’s real name was Volkov. I knew I’d get it eventually.”

“Me too,” exults Stone. “I also knew I’d get it eventually.”

“So you’re leaving,” Morning Stalin says glumly. “I’ll admit it to you frankly: I’m sorry to see you go. You’re an interesting fig. You made me … forget for a few days …” And he adds, “Katushka, too, will be sorry to see you go.”

They pass the zoo park and turn into Katushka’s building. The night watchman, eating cheese off a page of
Pravda
spread on the desk, salutes Morning Stalin—a bit stiffly, it seems to Stone. He rings for the elevator. “I’m sorry to go,” he tells Morning Stalin as the elevator arrives. He hears himself say it, and realizes how profoundly true it is; deep down he is very sorry to leave.

Morning Stalin is silent for a moment, lost in thought. Then he sighs and shakes his head. The elevator door jars open and they head down the dimly lit hallway toward the apartment. “The world has changed in my time,” says Morning Stalin. “When I was a boy, I worked for a dentist. I pedaled his drill. The patients used to tip me to pedal as fast as I could so that the drill would turn rapidly. Nowadays”—he inserts his key in the lock; the door clicks open—“nowadays—”

Morning Stalin never finishes the thought. As he steps across the threshold, he is grabbed on either side by strong arms and pinned against the wall. Stone, all nerve ends, spins away from the arms that reach for him—only to find two heavies blocking the corridor behind him. Now Stone, too, is pinned against the wall and frisked. One of the men cries excitedly when he feels the passports and money in the lining of Stone’s jacket. Stone is thrust, along with Morning Stalin, down the hallway into Katushka’s room. Katushka stands near the window, her thin wrists handcuffed in front of her, a faint mocking smile on her lips. The broken, lifeless body of a cat lies in a corner, and Stone has to stare at it for a long moment before he realizes that it is Thermidor.

Ilyador, without handcuffs, sits on a cushion whimpering hysterically. “I had to do it,” he pleads with Katushka. “They threatened to put me away in one of those asylums.” The words
come between gasps for air. “They said … I was schizophrenic … that I had two personalities … that I was a transvestite. … God help me … I had to do it … I had to do it. …”

Far away, from a saner world, comes the braying sound of a zebra in heat.

They come at Stone in relays, two to a team, patiently posing questions as he sits in a straight-backed wooden chair, his wrists handcuffed behind him, a spotlight trained on his face, the voices coming out of the impenetrable blackness around it.

“What is your real name?”

“What is your nationality?”

“What is your parent organization?”

“Only admit you are the
Grani
courier and we will switch off the light and let you sleep.”

“Your name?”

“Your nationality?”

“Your organization?”

Stone struggles desperately to keep hold of certain threads. He has been arrested by the KGB, of that much he is sure; he recognized Lubyanka Prison, the headquarters of the KGB, as the car into which all three had been bundled drove through the gate. His inquisitors realize he is a foreigner; Stone caught a glimpse of his phony passports and his money piled on the desk just before the spotlight was trained on his face. From the questions thrown at him, he understands that they are convinced that he is the
Grani
courier who disappeared ten days before from the Hotel Rossiya, leaving behind a single copy of
Grani
in his valise lining. Which means they don’t know he is American. Stone means to keep it that way.

“I’ve told you again and again,” he says tiredly—his head is spinning with fatigue, and he has to struggle to organize his sentences sequentially—“my name is …” He gives them the identity of an engineer in a remote Georgian city on the theory that it will take at least a day for them to track down the man who really goes by that name. Buy time, Stone keeps repeating to himself. The only thing that counts now is to buy time.

One of the interrogators, a young man by the sound of his voice, laughs wickedly, and the other moves behind Stone and whispers in his ear: “If you don’t cooperate, it will go hard on you. We know you work for the anti-Soviet émigré groups. We know you were tracking down the relatives of the defector Kulakov to write a story on how they were made to suffer.”

“You will be charged with the murder of the boy Gregori,” sneers the younger man.

“Save yourself,” coaxes the man behind Stone.

“What is your name?”

“What is your nationality?”

“What is your parent organization?”

Somewhere in the building, a woman screams; Stone convinces himself it is Katushka, and he strains against the handcuffs until they cut into the flesh on his wrists. “You’re making a mistake,” he says weakly. “You’re making a terrible mistake.”

“You are without hope,” the man behind Stone whispers. “Think of yourself. What is your name? Only tell us your real name and you will be permitted to sleep.”

Dazed, his head drooping onto his chest, Stone is half dragged, half marched through an endless corridor, down a narrow back staircase to a waiting van. Katushka and Morning Stalin are already inside. They reach down and help him climb in. The metal door is slammed shut, bolted on the outside, and the van lurches forward.

“Are you all right?” Stone asks Katushka. “I thought I heard you scream.”

“They never questioned us,” she explains. “They said we would be charged with harboring an agent sent in by one of the anti-Soviet exile groups. They said they would get back to us when they finished with you. Then some others came and whisked us down the stairs to the van. Then you came. Where are they taking us?”

Stone can tell from her voice that she is very frightened, though she is trying hard not to show it. “How long ago did they arrest us?” he asks.

“Forty hours,” Morning Stalin tells him. “They fed us twice—a breakfast, a lunch.” He grimaces. “My face made them very nervous. You should have seen the heads turn as I walked down the hall. Didn’t I make them nervous, Katushka?”

“They thought you were a ghost who had come to haunt them,” Katushka agrees. To Stone she says softly, “Are you really an anti-Soviet agent?”

There is no answer. His head bobbing on his chest, Stone has fallen into a deep sleep.

Stone surfaces slowly. The first thing he sees when he finally manages to open an eye are the shoulder boards of the young Army officer standing alongside the bed. The bed! Stone jerks upright, blinks several times, looks around. The small room is as neat as a pin. The cot he is lying on is Army-style, with khaki blankets and a footlocker next to it that serves as a night table.

“You can shave if you like,” says the Army officer. “You’ll find an electric razor in the bathroom. After which you are invited to take breakfast with the officer in charge.”