CHAPTER NINE, MOSCOW, JUNE AND SEPTEMBER 1994: BORODKIN, SUSLOVA
Leonid Pavlovich Borodkin had become a Line X officer in the usual manner. He’d drifted in. He had gotten most of the way through to his Ph.D. in engineering, then collapsed. After a modest recovery, he started out as an honest engineer wanting to do something worthwhile, not quite talented or connected enough to find his way into the important design bureaux or industries, but increasingly disgusted by the shoddy work of so much of late Soviet industry. So he opted for the government, and had come to spend his days in a graceless office with graceless colleagues. His primary task was to analyze American technology and what his government might steal and from whom. It was not a bad job, and in some ways he’d come to appreciate its stolidity. As the Soviet Union crumbled and “privatization” of industries began, he’d thought of jumping to the new private sector. But he was neither a violent nor a crude man and the thuggishness of so many of the new enterprises deterred him. Perhaps later on, when things settled down. For now, he was paid.
He also had hobbies to consider. He ran on occasion and intended to participate in a marathon, should Moscow ever sponsor one. He was also good with languages. English had always been a particular passion; he’d gotten his current job mostly because of his excellent command of technical English. He’d also mentioned, with some pride, his grasp of English literature, especially nineteenth century novels. Perhaps his superiors might keep that in mind, should the need for someone cultured as well as competent ever arise. He did not mention, to them or anyone else, the night he gave up all literature after encountering a Dickens character, or maybe Hawthorne, who was described as “always going to go but never going.” It seemed too much a personal indictment to endure from mere fiction. Of late, he’d tried once or twice to get back into it, but found that his conversational English was taking on some of the characteristics of nineteenth century bourgeois discourse. That might get him looked at strangely someday, so he had to be careful. Best not to read anymore.
Leonid Pavlovich Borodkin was neither happy nor unhappy. Thirty-six, unmarried and with no desire to change that status, he was growing a shell of confining contentment, and that wasn’t bad. He felt secure.
Then one day he arrived at his office and was told that, based upon both his technical competence and his English skills, he had a new assignment. In the inner office of a suite he’d never been summoned to before, he received a brusque briefing from a man who thoroughly intimidated him. Then they went into a conference room. The man left. The world opened. But not as expected, and the opening quickly proved far from welcome.
A woman was seated at the table. Her platinum hair was neatly braided back from her fine, scarred face, the collar of her silk blouse a startlingly elegant contrast to her navy blue pinstripe suit of foreign design. She wore no makeup beyond a little rose lipstick; the clear, beautiful scent of violets, violet leaves, and white cedar perfume reached him. She rose and offered him her hand. “Mister Borodkin, I am very pleased to meet you. My name is Doctor Tolchinskaya. Back in America, it was Tolchin, Olivia Lathrop Tolchin. But it has been made clear to me that Russianizing my name is a symbolic act of profound importance here. Changing names always is. So I am now Tolchinskaya. You have been briefed on what we are going to do together?”
Borodkin reeled within but remained calm. No one in his memory had ever talked to him about doing anything together. And no one had ever before given him such power as he was now to wield over, and also, he cringed, together with…a woman.
“I am briefed,” he said formally. “I have been told that I am to be your minder, your administrator, and your expediter. As your minder, I am required to file periodic independent reports upon your progress. Also, I must report anything unusual that I believe might be of importance to my superiors regarding your activities and attitudes beyond your work.” He paused to enjoy a bit of a tingle. “As your administrator, I will handle the routine operations and requirements of your lab. As your expediter,” he grimaced a bit, then went on smoothly, “you understand that in Russia, not everything is openly available, even now. Always there are shortages. Sometimes things are unavailable for no good reason, or because others desire them to be so. An expediter makes things available. If there is anything you need that cannot be provided through normal procedures, you will tell me and I will do my best to provide.”
“Exactly. Our success or failure is very much up to you. Who else do you report to?”
Borodkin did not reply. It was too sudden.
“I…”
She finished his thought for him. “Very well. I know that you are a Line X officer and you report to Line X for technical matters. I will assume that you report on my reliability to others, whose identity I may not know. I can live with that, especially since I have no choice in the matter.” Her Russian was stiff, awkward, and literate, and he thought, with a twinge, that between her Russian and his English…
Olivia went on. “I expect you to be loyal to your superiors and do whatever is required of you. But I also expect you to be loyal to me, which means reporting on me and to me accurately and honestly and letting me know what I need to know. I will never ask you to lie to your superiors for me. What you need to do as an expediter is another matter. I shall not ask what you do, nor how you acquire what you get for the lab, nor blame you for anything I don’t know about. If necessary, I shall protect you to the best of my ability. Is this acceptable to you?”
Borodkin gaped a moment, fell into an honest, happy smile, and said in perfect English, “Done deal.”
Now it was Olivia’s turn to look very startled.
“Or,” Borodkin went on, “as they used to say in Victorian novels, we will do with each other as we will. I think we understand each other, Doctor. You must understand, I have become aware of your existence and work only in the last few minutes. I am, to say the least, impressed and a bit overwhelmed. This has been an unexpected morning. Now I must ask. Can you do what they say you can?”
“I don’t know. I have no idea about what has been said about me. I know I can do what I say I can. Over the next few months, we will stand up a lab and deliver a prototype of a reliable infrared/acoustic dual sensor, the first of a series, for use in urban warfare in order to locate and pinpoint enemies and civilians and minimize loss of life. Russian life and Chechen life.”
“Where do you plan to get your technology?”
“We will start with old Soviet technology, which for what it is, when it works, is often excellent.” That startled Borodkin. “You will know out of what closed facilities and cities those programs were run. We are going to loot those warehouses of anything that may possibly be of use to us. What we cannot find here, we will procure from abroad. One way or another.”
Stunned, Borodkin found himself staring at her, mouth slightly open. He realized it and closed with an audible click of teeth. Then he felt a shard of spite. This was his country, not hers. He’d been assigned to take orders from an American, a woman…perhaps a Jew. Then he felt a momentary thrill at a word, a defaming word, he’d never used before. A Zhid. Then the pleasant visions of a moment before, dissolved. His power over her, whatever it might amount to, would be sporadic at best, perhaps ultimately nonexistent. Her power over him would be continual and real.
Olivia drew him a glass of tea from the samovar behind her. “Do you take sugar?”
“I do.” She added it and handed him the glass in its silvered filigree holder. “Are all Americans this frank?”
“No, especially not with their futures and very possibly their lives on the line. But I try to live as I wish to be. That’s why I’m here. Mister Borodkin, I am aware of the stakes involved. For your soldiers and civilians, it’s life or death. For us, it’s another kind of life or death. Can you work with me under those conditions?”
“Are you asking me to share your fate?”
She shook her head. “Only that you shall say the truth of what you have found, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion. Those are words from American oaths. I’m not yet familiar with Russian vows, so I use my own.”
Suddenly sickened, Borodkin realized he was afraid of her. She was what she was, fully and defiantly. And she was offering him his own life back. That terrified him more. And it shamed him to realize that she was offering him a lesser life than hers. It would always be a lesser life than hers.
And in that knowledge, he understood another kind of shame. He knew that she was simply offering him life, no “greater” or “lesser” to it, and offering honestly, expecting him to take as much as he could. He knew that although this had been unimaginable an hour before, it now clearly pointed to the life he had wanted and thought he would never have. No. It pointed to the life he had always told himself he wanted and then, comfortably, told himself he would never have. He wondered if she fully understood, or even glimpsed, the terrifying risk she was demanding that he take. He trembled inwardly. Life had finally come to him, in a form utterly different than he had ever expected. But he was no longer certain that, deep down, he really wanted it, or that he could any longer respond. He could not meet her eyes, lest he reveal himself too much, reveal his hesitation, and the reasons for that hesitation.
And he thought of another character, from Dickens or maybe Hawthorne or maybe somebody else, another character whom he’d always considered, in some vague way, an additional personal affront. The man who was always going to go but never going, now seemed of less relevance to him than the man whose standard response to anything was, “I would prefer not to.” In that moment, Borodkin realized, as shame penetrated him like a splinter of glass, he had become that man. He was no longer the man who was always going to go, but never going. He was now the man who preferred not to go. He despised himself for it. And now he despised her, too, for making him know it.
“I can work with you on this basis,” he said quietly.