“Indeed it is—as good as New Zealand,” her husband agreed.
“The steaks leave something to be desired,” Mike Barnes told them, “but every week we get steaks flown in from Omaha. Tons of them—we distribute them to all our friends.”
“That is the truth,” Nigel confirmed. “Your corn-fed beef is superb. I’m afraid we’re all quite addicted to it.”
“Thank God for the U.S. Air Force,” Barnes went on. “They fly the beef into all their NATO bases, and we’re on the distribution list. They come in frozen, not quite as good as fresh at Delmonico’s, but close enough to remind you of home. I hope you guys brought a grill. We tend to take them up on the roof to cook out. We import charcoal, too. Ivan just doesn’t seem to understand about that.” The apartment had no balcony, perhaps to protect them from the diesel smell that pervaded the city.
“What about going to work?” Foley asked.
“Better to take the metro. It really is great,” Barnes told him.
“Leaving me with the car?” Mary Pat asked, with a hopeful smile. This was going exactly to plan. That was expected, but anything that went well in this business came as something of a surprise, like the right presents under the Christmas tree. You always hoped Santa got the letter, but you could never be sure.
“You might as well learn how to drive in this city,” Barnes said. “At least you have a nice car.” The previous resident in this apartment had left behind a white Mercedes 280 for them, which was indeed a nice car. Actually, a little too nice at only four years old. Not that there were all that many cars in Moscow, and the license plates surely marked it as belonging to an American diplomat, and thus easy to spot by any traffic cop, and by the KGB vehicle that would follow it most places it went. Again, it was reverse-English. Mary Pat would have to learn to drive like an Indianapolis resident on her first trip to New York. “The streets are nice and wide,” Barnes told her, “and the gas station is only three blocks that way.” He pointed. “It’s a huge one. The Russians like to build them that way.”
“Great,” she observed for Barnes’s benefit, already dropping into her cover as a pretty, ditsy blonde. Around the world, the pretty ones were supposed to be the dumb ones, and blondes most of all. It was a hell of a lot easier to play dumb than to be smart, after all, Hollywood actors notwithstanding.
“What about servicing the car?” Ed asked.
“It’s a Mercedes. They don’t break much,” Barnes assured them. “The German embassy has a guy who can fix anything that goes bad. We’re cordial with our NATO allies. You guys soccer fans?”
“Girls’ game,” Ed Foley responded immediately.
“That’s rather coarse of you,” Nigel Haydock observed.
“Give me American football any time,” Foley countered.
“Bloody foolish, uncivilized game, full of violence and committee meetings,” the Brit sniffed.
Foley grinned. “Let’s eat.”
They sat down. The interim furniture was adequate, something like you’d find in a no-tell motel in Alabama. You could sleep on the bed, and the bug spray had probably done for all the crawly things. Probably.
The sandwiches were okay. Mary Pat went to get glasses and turned on the taps—
“Recommend against that one, Mrs. Foley,” Nigel warned. “Some people come down with stomach complaints from the tap water…”
“Oh?” She paused. “And my name’s Mary Pat, Nigel.”
Now they were properly introduced. “Yes, Mary Pat. We prefer bottled water for drinking. The tap water is good enough for bathing, and you can boil it in a pinch for coffee and tea.”
“It’s even worse in Leningrad,” Nigel warned. “The natives are more or less immunized, they tell me, but we foreigners can get some serious GI problems there.”
“What about schools?” Mary Pat had been worried about that.
“The American-British school looks after the children well,” Penny Haydock promised. “I work there myself part-time. And the academic program there is top-drawer.”
“Eddie’s starting to read already, isn’t he, honey?” the proud father announced.
“Just ‘Peter Rabbit’ and that sort of thing, but not bad for four,” an equally pleased mother confirmed for the rest. For his part, Eddie had found the sandwich plate and was gnawing through something. It wasn’t his treasured bologna, but a hungry kid is not always discriminating. There were also four large jars of Skippy’s Super Chunk peanut butter packed away in a safe place. His parents figured they could get grape jelly anywhere, but probably not Skippy. The local bread, everyone said, was decent, if not exactly the Wonder Bread that American children had been raised on. And Mary Pat had a bread-maker in their cargo container, now on a truck or train between Moscow and Leningrad. A good cook, she was a positive artist at baking bread, and expected that to be her entree into the embassy social set.
NOT ALL THAT far away from where they sat, a letter changed hands. The deliverer was from Warsaw, and had been dispatched by his government—actually, by an agency of his government to an agency of the recipient government. The messenger was not all that pleased by his mission. He was a communist—he had to be in order to be entrusted with such a task—but he was nonetheless a Pole, as was the subject of the message and the mission. And that was the rub.
The message was in fact a photocopy of the original, which had arrived by hand to an office—an important one—in Warsaw only three days before.
The messenger, a full colonel in his country’s intelligence service, was personally known to the recipient, by sight if not especially by affection.
The Russians used their western neighbors for many tasks. The Poles had a real talent for intelligence operations, for the same reason the Israelis did: They were surrounded by enemies. To their west was Germany, and to their east was the Soviet Union. The unhappy circumstances involved in both had resulted in Poland’s putting many of its best and brightest into the intelligence business.
The recipient knew all that. In fact, he already knew word for word the content of the message. He’d learned it the previous day. He was not surprised at the delay, though. The Polish government had taken that day to consider the contents and its import before forwarding it, and the recipient took no umbrage. Every government in the world took at least one day to go over such things. It was just the nature of men in positions of authority to diddle and waver, even though they had to know that delay was a waste of time and air. Even Marxism-Leninism couldn’t alter human nature. Sad, but true. The New Soviet Man, like the New Polish Man, was, in the end, still a man.
The ballet being played out now was as stylized as any performed by the Kirov troupe in Leningrad. The recipient even imagined he could hear the music playing. He actually preferred Western jazz to classical, but in any case the music at the ballet was just the garnish, the system that told the dancers when to leap together like pretty, trained dogs. The ballerinas were far too slender for Russian tastes, of course, but real women were far too heavy for those little fairies they called men to toss about.
Why was his mind wandering? He resumed his seat, falling back slowly into his leather chair as he unfolded the letter. It was written in Polish, and he didn’t speak or read Polish, but affixed to it was a translation in literate Russian. Of course, he’d have his own translators go over it, plus two or three psychiatrists to consider the mental state of the drafter and to compose their own multipage analysis, which he’d have to read, time waster though that would be. Then he’d have to report on it, to provide his political superiors—no, his political peers—with all of these additional insights so that they could waste their time going over the message and its import before considering what to do about it.
The Chairman wondered if this Polish colonel realized how easy his own political bosses had had it. In the end, all they’d had to do was forward it to their own political masters for action, bucking the decision up the tree of responsibility as government functionaries all do, regardless of place or philosophy. Vassals were vassals the world over.
The Chairman looked up at him. “Comrade Colonel, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Please extend my greetings and my respects to your commander. Dismissed.”
The Pole snapped to attention, saluted in the curious Polish way, did his best parade-ground about face, then headed off to the door.
Yuriy Andropov watched the door close before turning his attention back to the message and its appended translation.