“The metro is very impressive,” Foley answered, looking around as artlessly as he could.
“Where in America do you come from?” was the next question.
“New York City.”
“You play ice hockey in America?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve been a fan of the New York Rangers since I was a child. I want to see the hockey here.” Which was entirely truthful. The Russian skate-and-pass game was the closest thing to Mozart in the world of sports. “The embassy has good tickets, they told me today. Central Army,” he added.
“Bah!” the Muscovite snorted. “I am Wings fan.”
The guy might just be genuine, Foley thought with surprise. The Russians were as picky about their hockey clubs as American baseball fans were with their home teams. But the Second Chief Directorate probably had hockey fans working there, too. “Too careful” was a concept he did not admit to, especially here.
“Central Army is the champion team, isn’t it?”
“Too prissy. Look what happened to them in America.”
“In America we play a more physical—is that the right word?—game. To you they must seem like hooligans, yes?” Foley had taken the train to Philadelphia to see that game. The Flyers—more widely known as the Broad Street Bullies—had beaten the snot out of the somewhat arrogant Russian visitors, rather to his amusement. The Philadelphia team had even wheeled out its secret weapon, the aging Kate Smith, singing “God Bless America,” which for that team was like breakfasting on nails and human infants. Damn, what a game that one had been!
“They play roughly, yes, but they are not fairies. Central Army thinks they are the Bolshoi, the way they skate and pass. It’s good to see them humbled sometimes.”
“Well, I remember the ’80 Olympics, but honestly that was a miracle for is to defeat your fine team.”
“Miracle! Bah! Our coach was asleep. Our heroes were asleep. Your children played a spirited game, and they won honestly. The coach needed to be shot.” Yeah, this guy talked like a fan.
“Well, I want my son to learn hockey over here.”
“How old is he?” Genuine interest in the man’s eyes.
“Four and a half,” Foley answered.
“A good age to learn to skate. There are many opportunities for children to skate in Moscow, aren’t there, Vanya?” he observed to the man next to him, who’d watched the exchange with a mixture of curiosity and unease.
“Make sure he gets good skates,” the other man said. “Bad ones can injure the ankles.” A typical Russian response. In this often harsh country, solicitude for children was endearingly genuine. The Russian bear had a soft heart for kids, but one of icy granite for adults.
“Thank you. I will be sure to do that.”
“You live in the foreigners’ compound?”
“Correct,” Foley confirmed.
“Next stop is yours.”
“Oh, spasiba, and good day to you.” He made his way to the door, turning to nod a friendly good-bye to his newfound Russian friends. KGB? he wondered. Perhaps, but not certainly. He’d determine that by whether or not he saw them on the train a month or so from now.
What Ed Foley didn’t know was that the entire exchange had been observed by a man a mere two meters away, holding a copy of today’s Sovietskiy Sport. His name was Oleg Zaitzev, and Oleg Ivanovich was KGB.
The Station Chief left the subway car and followed the crush to the escalator. At one time, it would have led him to a full-standing portrait of Stalin, but that was gone now, and not replaced. The outside air was acquiring the early autumn chill, just enough to feel good after the stuffiness of the metro. Around him, ten or more men lit up their foul-smelling cigarettes and walked their separate ways. It was only half a block to the walled compound of apartment blocks, with its guard shack and the uniformed attendant, who looked Foley over and decided he was an American by the quality of his overcoat, without acknowledging his passage by even a nod, and certainly not a smile. The Russians didn’t smile much. It was something that struck all American visitors to the country; the outwardly dour nature of the Russian people seemed almost inexplicable to foreigners.
TWO STOPS FARTHER DOWN, Oleg Zaitzev wondered if he should write up a contact report. KGB officers were encouraged to do so, partly as a sign of loyalty, partly to show their eternal vigilance against citizens of the Main Enemy, as America was known within his professional community. It was mostly to show their institutional paranoia, a characteristic openly fostered by KGB. But by profession Zaitzev was a paper-pusher and he didn’t feel the need to generate more meaningless paper. It would just be looked at, read in a cursory way at most, and tossed into some file box by some other bureaucrat from his upstairs office, never to be read again. His time was too precious for that sort of nonsense. Besides, he hadn’t even talked to the foreigner, had he? He left the train at the proper stop, rode up the moving stairs into the crisp evening air, lighting his Trud cigarette as he got outside. It was a vile thing. He had access to the “closed” stores and could have bought French, British, or even American smokes, but they were too costly, and his funds were not as unlimited as his choices. So, he smoked the well-known “Labor” brand, like untold millions of his countrymen. The quality of his clothing was a tiny bit better than that worn by most of his comrades, but not overly so. Not so much that he stood out from the others. It was two blocks to his apartment building. His flat was #3 on the first—the Americans would have called it the second—floor instead of higher up, and that was fine with him, because it meant that he didn’t risk a heart attack if the elevator didn’t work, which happened about once a month. Today it worked. The elderly woman who occupied the janitor/superintendent’s flat on the ground floor had her door closed today, instead of open to denote some mechanical problem she’d have to warn him about. So nothing in the building was broken today. Not quite cause for celebration, just one of the small things in life for which to be grateful to God or whoever determined the vagaries of fate. The cigarette died as he walked through the main door. Zaitzev flicked the butt into the ashtray and walked to the elevator, which, remarkably, was waiting for him with the door open.
“Good evening, Comrade Zaitzev,” the operator said in greeting.
“Good evening, Comrade Glenko.” The man was a disabled veteran of the Great Patriotic War, with the medals to prove it. Artilleryman, so he said. Probably the building informer, the man who reported unusual occurrences to some other KGB stringer, in return for which he got a niggardly stipend to supplement whatever pension the Red Army paid him. That was the extent of their exchange. Glenko turned the handle and brought the elevator car smoothly to his floor and opened the door. From there, it was a mere five meters to his home.
Opening his apartment door, he was greeted by the smell of boiling cabbage—so cabbage soup for dinner. Not unusual. It was a staple of the Russian diet, along with rich black bread.
“Papa!” Oleg Ivanovich bent down to scoop up his little Svetlana. She was the light of Zaitzev’s life, with her cherubic face and welcoming smile.
“How is my little zaichik today?” He scooped her up in his arms and accepted her darling little kiss.
Svetlana attended a day-care center crowded with other children her age—not quite a preschool, not quite a nursery. Her clothing comprised about the only colorful things to be had in his country, in this case a green pullover shirt and gray pants over little red leather shoes. If his access to the “closed” shops had one advantage, it was in what he could get his little girl. The Soviet Union didn’t even have cloth diapers for its infants—mothers usually made them out of old bedsheets—much less the disposable kind favored in the West. As a result, there was a premium on getting the little ones toilet-trained, which little Svetlana had managed some time ago, much to her mother’s relief. Oleg followed the smell of cabbage to his wife in the kitchen.
“Hello, darling,” Irina Bogdanova said from the stove. Cabbage, potatoes, and what he hoped was some ham cooking. Tea and bread. No vodka yet. The Zaitzevs drank, but not to excess. They usually waited until Svetlana went down to bed. Irina worked as an accountant at the GUM department store. The possessor of a degree from Moscow State University, she was liberated in the Western sense, but not emancipated. Hanging by the kitchen table was the string bag she carried in her purse everywhere she went, eyes always on the lookout for something she might buy to eat or brighten their drab flat. It meant standing in line, which was the task of women in the Soviet Union, along with cooking dinner for her man, regardless of his professional status in life or hers. She knew that he worked for State Security, but did not know his job there, just that it paid a fairly comfortable salary, and came with a uniform that he rarely wore, and a rank soon to take a jump upward. So, whatever he did, he did it well enough, she judged, and that was sufficient. The daughter of an infantryman in the great Patriotic War, she’d gone to state schools and gotten above-average marks, but never quite achieved what she’d wished. She’d shown some talent at the piano, but not enough to go onward to a state conservatory. She’d also tried her hand at writing, but there, too, she’d fallen short of the necessary talent to get published. Not an unattractive woman, she was thin by Russian standards. Her mouse-brown hair fell to her shoulders and was usually well brushed-out. She read a good deal, whichever books she could get that were worth her time, and enjoyed listening to classical music. She and her husband occasionally attended concerts at the Tchaikovsky. Oleg preferred the ballet, and so they went there as well, helped, Irina assumed, by his job at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square. He was not yet so senior as to allow them to hobnob with senior State Security officials at comradely parties. Perhaps when he got his colonelcy, she hoped. For the moment they lived the middle-class life of state-employed bureaucrats, scratching by on their combined salaries. The good news was that they had occasional access to the “closed” KGB stores where at least they could buy nice things for her and Svetlana. And, who knew, maybe they could afford to have another child in due course. They were both young enough, and a little boy would brighten their home.