***
Wine and morphine in the amount she had needed to cope with the pain of a transatlantic flight and its aftermath were a foul, disgusting, evil combination. Or so Olivia thought the next morning, analyzing the problem rather than merely hating herself. At least she had had something decent to eat for dinner last night. Sushi, she thought. Very good sushi. There was a sushi restaurant in the hotel. Sushi in Vienna. Viennese sushi. What a world this is. From the state of her head, it seemed she had added sake to the noxious mix of morphine and wine. Ah, well. It could have been worse.
She hauled her sad and sorry carcass out of bed to the mini-bar and checked inside the refrigerator. The bottle of Riesling was there, wedged in carefully and, by all visual indicators, empty. She didn’t remember putting it there. There was a little electric tea kettle on top; she filled it with water and turned it on. While she was waiting for the water to boil, she wondered what else she didn’t remember. She did remember eating whatever the chef put in front of her, and very good it had been, too. Especially the eel. She did not remember making a fool of herself, nor bringing anyone back to her room. She looked down at her naked thighs and then over at the bed. Apparently, her memory was correct.
Chamomile tea made her feel that she was alive and a long, hot shower, including washing her hair, followed by breakfast with much hot strong coffee, made her feel as if she were approaching human status once again. After breakfast, Olivia tended to her final bank business. Then she walked to the Hofburg Palace and watched the morning performance of the Lipizzaner stallions.
As a girl, she had learned to ride. Group lessons had been distasteful. Too many barely pubescent, endlessly giggling, gushing, nasty girls with names like Lauren and Jennifer: too little care for developing real skill based upon educated understanding. Her father had arranged for private lessons and she learned quickly, both how to ride decently and how to accept that real expertise would always be beyond her. She hadn’t ridden seriously in years, but she still loved horses with an inept intensity that said more about her emotional appreciation than her practical skill. She did suspect that if airplanes and gliders hadn’t existed, she would have had horses instead.
The Spanish Riding School was a different world. It was flooded by sunlight and echoed with classical music. Its marble pillars were crowned by acanthus leaf capitals, the plaster moldings painted in grays and beiges, and the spectator boxes were draped with red. From above the royal box, a portrait of the school’s founder and patron, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, supervised the stallions and their riders. You would never know how much the impeccably clean and well-groomed pale grey stallions, with their gold-plated double bridles and breastplates and cruppers, their white saddles and red or green shabracks…how much they loved mud. Nor would the uninitiated imagine, from the dark brown tailcoats and bicorn hats, the white deerskin breeches and gloves, and the glossy tall black boots of the riders, how difficult it was to stay clean and neat around a horse. In the center of the arena, with its manicured tanbark, stood the pillars draped with the Austrian flag. The pillars offered a dangerous monument to the supreme art of classical horsemanship: tethered between them, a 500 kg animal would be asked to take momentary flight, then land with the precision of a combat jet on a pitching carrier deck, and more grace.
In the extravagant and precise power of the horses, the tact and sympathy of the riders, their mutual dedication to ephemeral and transcendent beauty, over and over again, Olivia knew she was in one of the world’s holy places. As holy as George’s workshop or Lois’ knitting shop or the perfume store of that wise old man, a soldier once, whose name she’d neglected to ask. This was the holiness she’d worked all those years to defend. This was the holiness she was now leaving America to defend.
But not just for me. Make it not just for me. Find a way. Somehow, find a way.
She arrived at the Café Landtmann first, leaving her name with the waiter, asking him to seat her at a quiet booth. It was not quiet and she spent some dreary minutes listening to a nearby table of Austrians complaining about how the Jews were constantly digging up dirt from the past. They were speaking German, secure in the belief that either Olivia could not understand them or, at least by the standards of her appearance, would sympathize with them. Once or twice, one of the men briefly turned her way, seeking some sort of approval. Olivia stared him down each time.
The waiter led a man to her table. She judged him to be in his mid-thirties and tediously, conventionally handsome, brown eyes, black hair, with tan skin and even teeth. Unscarred. She suspected that beneath his beautiful black cashmere turtleneck, grey wool trousers and fashionable black loafers, he was very fit. But the eyes bothered her. There was simply not a lot of human being home.
Politely, Olivia rose.
“Doctor Tolchin?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Jay Lyons. I’m the person who is supposed to meet you here.”
They sat. The waiter took their orders, a glass of Grüner Veltliner, smoked salmon and asparagus and Wiener Schnitzel for him, for her steak tartar and pumpkin ravioli with a glass of red wine.
He watched her drink her water and nibble on a breadstick as they awaited their food. She was pale and washed out, the faint tremor in her voice and hands saying she’d over-indulged the night before.
“I take it,” he asked finally, slowly, “that you’re playing tourist before your conference.”
“Yes.”
“Might I ask your professional background?”
“Of course. I am an engineer.”
“Very well, engineer. What do you want? I assume that your real interest does not lie in shipping wine and horses to America.”
She opened her mouth, shut it, stared at him for a moment, then answered him fully. “My name is Doctor Olivia Lathrop Tolchin. From 1983 until 1988, I worked as an engineer for the Department of the Army, specializing in sensor technology. From 1988 until a few weeks ago, I worked at Los Alamos. My clearances are TS/SCI and Q, Dark Purple, Present Powers, Leviathan, and a few others. Do these mean anything to you?”
Lyons paused, in the manner of a gamesman who has just watched someone make a very stupid move. “No, not really. As you probably know, in the compartmented world, the existence of many categories is itself classified. Since I am not part of what you say is, or was, your world, I would have no personal knowledge whether these clearances or real or just some figment of your imagination. The TS/SCI generic is well enough known. So is Q. As for your working at Los Alamos, I would of course need to check that out. Which I can’t really do from here. Can I?”
“Would you like my badge number?”
He glared at her as though her offer had ruined a perfectly good monologue. “Your former badge number. Maybe later. As I said, sitting here, I have no way of checking you out, and badge numbers are easily fantasized by those who wish to do so. Now. What do you want?”
“I lied on my exit polygraph.”
“Assuming you took one. Assuming it was a big lie.”
“It was.”
“And the nature of the lie goes beyond how many men and women you’ve slept with recently.”
“How about dead boys?” she murmured into her wine glass.
“I beg your pardon?” Lyons snapped, startled.
Her blue eyes looked hard over the rim. She took her time drinking, realizing that their encounter already lacked one thing she wanted greatly. Dignity. Before long, she suspected, it would lack a great deal more. “I was approached by an agent of a foreign power,” she said.
Lyons attempted to look interested. “How much did the Chinese offer you?”
“Nothing. The Chinese don’t make quickie offers. They cultivate you for years, until you come to them. Or so I’ve been told. It was the Russians.”
“Oh,” he said, now very bored. “Care to be more specific?”
“Last December,” she replied, suddenly feeling like she was tossing pearls before swine. Once again.
“I was at a trade show in DC. The Russian GRU resident in Washington—Major General, he says, Yuri Mikhailovich Getmanov—offered me a chance to do my work as a ground combat sensor specialist in Russia. He mentioned Walter Christie.” Lyons looked at her blankly. “The tank specialist who sold his ideas to the Soviets after our War Department turned him down.” The traitor, she almost added, who helped save our world.
“I said that I would do such work for them, provided I was given creative and intellectual freedom. I didn’t want American-style pressures, people demanding I spend more money and take more time than necessary to produce something that will never work right. I also told him that I could not and would not do this from the United States. I would have to emigrate to Russia. I told him that I expected to have to do operational testing and development in the field. That means, in Chechnya. I am on my way to live in Russia.”
Lyons stared at her, his eyes wide, his mouth open, for some seconds. He had heard what she said, but his brain couldn’t process it beyond—This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. The craziest. The stupidest. Americans simply didn’t do such things. Sure, fifty, seventy-five years before, a few demented nuts betrayed their country for the sake of Communism. Sure, others sold out for money. But they stayed in America and spied and spent their money until they got caught spending their money. But to go to Russia in search of intellectual freedom and creativity? To live there?
“Let me get this straight,” he said slowly, skepticism oozing from every syllable. “You’re telling me that Russian Military Intelligence offered you employment developing tactical sensors. And so, having accepted that offer of employment, you’re moving to Russia. Assuming you’re who you say you are or anything approximating who you say you are, you know you’re breaking several laws and several dozen administrative regulations.”
“Yes.”
“Assuming you’re for real, what you’ve just told me could get you locked up for most of the rest of your life.”
“That is correct.”
“And you plan to do operational testing and evaluation in Chechnya itself?”
“Yes.” Lyons watched Olivia eat her tartar, studying her face with its many fine scars. All things considered, a beautiful and brilliant woman; hard, fragile, and completely and utterly, barking-at-the-moon insane.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because America and Russia have enemies in common. I tell you honestly that my original plan was simply to go. But you don’t leave your country that easily.”
“Thank you for saying something that finally makes sense.”
“Mr. Lyons,” she snapped, “do I really need to point out that this is a serious matter?”
“Please do go on.”
“I may be wrong. I may be delusional on this…”
Lyons raised an eyebrow slightly, perhaps in surprise that Olivia should characterize herself so clearly. “But,” she went on, “I’ve come to think that what I’m doing as an individual might be a bridge of some sort between America and Russia.”
“A bridge?”
“Yes, Mr. Lyons. A bridge, because a weak and hostile Russia, a Russia disintegrating into fifty different pieces, some of them run by Islamist monsters, is not the in best interests of America, Russia, or our world.”
“Lady,” he said casually, “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to. But it ain’t the Central Bridge Agency.”
She watched his face as it smirked into an expression of self-appreciation. “I expect to spend time with Russian Army units,” she added.
Lyons now raised his shoulders a bit. So what? Olivia carefully tried to damp down the rage surging up her spine. Over the years, she had come by her low opinion of the CIA honestly. She’d dealt with them, known them, heard the horror stories, and knew they’d long ago ceased to be whatever they once had been. But she had never before met a CIA officer this crushingly stupid. “Perhaps this might open up a pathway for military-to-military assistance and training programs?”
“I doubt it. Strongly. They have nothing we want. Do the Russians know you’re making this offer?”
She shook her head. “No, of course not. In fact, I waited until I left America to raise this with a representative of my country.”
“Will you tell them what you’ve done?”
“No.”
“Even if they ask you?”
“That depends. This meeting is mine as an American citizen. It is between my country and myself, and you only as a representative of my country. If my offer is accepted…”
“OK,” Lyons said, now easing off a bit. “Before we go any farther, let me clarify one thing. You are not, I say again, not, offering to spy for us.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You are offering to be some sort of ‘bridge’ between our respective militaries.”
“In essence, yes. Between our countries, if you will.”
Lyons exhaled. “Do you know what they will do to you if they learn you’ve done this?”
Her smile, ghostly as it was, startled him. “I can imagine.”
“You might come to wish you’d volunteered to be a spy and not an ambassador of international military-to-military goodwill. Spies have certain options and protections that free-lance military do-gooders do not. Especially since this kind of free-lancing can motivate us to haul you in, lock you up, and forget all about you.”
“Mr. Lyons. I am serious. Are you?”
At that response, Lyons wondered. Time was, as a younger and more adventurous officer, he would have jumped all over this. But that was then and this was an out-of-control lunatic whom America might well be happy to be rid of. “Look,” he said patiently, “I don’t think you know what kind of shape the Russian Army is in today. A troop of Boy Scouts could probably knock off a motorized rifle battalion.”
“I do know that.”
“Living conditions, by our standards, are extremely harsh. This isn’t a hunting trip with all the American comforts you can fit into an RV. In Chechnya—the Chechens will eat them alive. They already are. Frankly, I enjoy watching.”
His last words made the bile rise in Olivia’s throat and she hastily drank some water to cleanse her mouth of the taste. Lyons seemed not to realize that he was speaking of real deaths and real suffering, not only amongst the Russians but also amongst the Chechens. “That may be, but they are going to pay what they have to, in order to restore Federal control.”
“Russia is saying this to us very clearly in back-channel contacts. Certainly, no nation other than Georgia will recognize Chechnya as the independent Islamic Republic of Ichkeria or whatever they call themselves this week, let alone lift a finger to help them. But they’re going to pay a heavy price.”
“Is there any possibility that what I will do for the Russians would be of use to my country?”
“Not in the slightest. You would be of more value to us, although not much, as a good old-fashioned spy.”
“I am not offering to spy or behave treacherously in any way whatsoever, but to be some kind of bridge into the future between Russia and America.”
“Even so. In the first place, as a bridge, as if we were the Central Bridge Agency…” he seemed pleased with himself for the image, “you would be subject to pressure to transmit back what the Russians want us to know, true or false. In the second place, we can obtain an enormous amount of high-quality information through technical means, without the worry of human sources who can be exposed, compromised, turned around, or pressured. Then there is the third.” He looked at Olivia, not unkindly but condescendingly, a condescension that showed clearly in his eyes and voice. “There’s you. You’re beautiful and you’re probably brilliant. You may even be who and what you say you are. But you’re also emotionally unstable. You’re clearly hung over. May I ask if you’re using anything besides the local varietals?”
“I was nearly crippled in an airplane crash a year and a half ago,” she answered, suddenly feeling defi
ant. “I use codeine and morphine for pain and valium because I need them and they have been prescribed.”
“Need and prescribed may be. Are you addicted?”
She looked at him directly. “Addicted? No.”
“Dependent?”
“Oh, yes. Especially during trans-Atlantic flights and the stress of the present moment.”
Lyons took the opening. “Then I have to conclude, as would anyone, that you’re not the most stable person we could deal with. Stability is key in this field.”
It was Olivia’s turn to stare at him, her mouth open. After a second, she realized it, snapped her mouth shut, and drank her wine. Only when she had control of herself did she speak. “Do you know what and how much most people who suffer injuries like mine take?”
“No, I don’t. We don’t deal with people who have such habits, whether they acquired them in airplane crashes or frat parties. Alcohol doesn’t help. Not that I really blame you for drinking before you called us. You’re obviously distraught and you should be. You’re in way over your head. But it doesn’t help your case. Frankly, beautiful, brilliant blondes with emotional problems and drug dependencies are passé when it comes to everything from espionage to serving, in your terminology, as a bridge between two formerly enemy nations.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Well, I’m not going to have you detained, which believe me, we can do here. That would initiate a long, complicated, involved procedure and, frankly, I don’t have the time or the patience for it.”
“And frankly…” Olivia paused, “I’m not worth the trouble.”
“Frankly, that is true.”
Olivia said nothing. Then she smiled. “You know,” she said slowly, “Two years ago, I began teaching a man to fly. A man very much like you in certain ways. He’d not considered it important to mention to the FAA when he was applying for his student ticket that he was epileptic. Not worth the trouble. To make a short story even shorter, he suddenly seizured while he was landing us. We crashed and burned. I got out. I saw that he was still in the cockpit, unconscious. I went back into that cockpit to pull him out. Would you like to know why I saved the life of someone whose ‘not worth the trouble’ attitude nearly got us both burned to death?”
“So you could sue him afterwards?”
Olivia smiled again, and for the first time Jay Lyons had sense enough to fear her. “No. I could have sued his estate just as easily. And in fact I did receive a very handsome settlement out of court. I did it because I would not abandon another human being even though he was shit.” Lyons blanched. Olivia concluded, “I did it because…I am civilized. Are you?”
“Look, Olivia…”
“Doctor Tolchin.”
“Very well,” he said, shakily but recovering, “Doctor Tolchin. I’m not the issue here. Neither is civilization. You’re the issue. You and all the trouble you have the potential to cause yourself. I’m advising you to go home and forget about this. Go home, sober up, get off the meds, get a life. There are a million things an engineer can do, if in fact you are an engineer. Building bridges to Russia isn’t high on anybody’s list. The fact is, as you know, the Russians don’t matter anymore. Whatever their intentions, they have no capability. They’re broke, they’re in chaos, their military is a mess. You think you can somehow help reform it or give them something of value that might also be of value to us. You can’t. They have nothing to offer us. Nor will they, even if you succeed in whatever it is you think you’re going to do.”
Then he saw something, perhaps in the set of her shoulders, perhaps in the way she was refusing to look at him, that made him pause. Then: “Look, you really want to go to Chechnya to help the Russians kill the local crazies, knock yourself out. I’m not going to stop you.”
Left unsaid: Whatever risk Doctor Olivia Lathrop Tolchin might pose to American national security, she was likely to be a self-liquidating problem. He softened slightly. “If you want, I’ll write a memo about this conversation. You won’t go there totally forgotten. Perhaps it might be of value someday.”
“Please do,” Olivia said. Her voice was utterly emotionless.
“Perhaps someone will be in touch.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed.
Lyons took the lack of inflection in her voice for a sign of submission. “You know, you really ought to eat more. A little raw meat, some pasta, and bitter roasted greens just aren’t enough. The strudel here is excellent. They say you can read love letters through the dough, just as the Emperor Franz Josef’s cook said you should. And the Café Landtmann’s signature coffee is dessert in a glass.”
Lyons seemed suddenly pleased to display his knowledge of food. Olivia understood the evasion and consented to endure him prattling about how strudel dough, high-gluten, very elastic, but containing little butter, was laid out on tea towels, spread with filling and rolled, how Gugelhupf, another traditional Austrian breakfast pastry, of yeast dough with kirschwasser—that would be cherry brandy, Doctor Tolchin—raisins and almonds, but sometimes also other nuts and candied fruit, might be related to the Italian panettone.
How uncivilized.
The thought startled her. So did the subsequent realization that there was a fruit knife near her hand, its slight point and serrated edge quite sufficient, although using it effectively would be a messy, noisy process requiring considerable strength.
Lyons finished his Café Landtmann, generously spiked with brandy and coffee liqueur. He stood, offered her his hand, then said, in the manner of a bested foe trying to reassert his superiority, “Take care of yourself, babe.”
Olivia rose, so suddenly and forcefully that Lyons drew back reflexively. “You take care of yourself, too. Gelding.”
Lyons looked quizzically at her for a moment. Then sneered, threw down some schilling for his lunch, and walked away.
And there it was, she thought with bitter finality. He was what her nation and her government had decided they wanted, and he did not want what she had to offer. Neither did her government or her nation. She was bereft now, and because of it, free.