***
The first thing CC Cooper noticed about the woman who opened the door to him was the briefest flicker of genuine fear and pain in her eyes, instantly, almost brutally, suppressed. “Colonel Cooper?”
“Doctor Tolchinskaya, should I leave? I can plead sudden illness.”
She smiled a bit. “No, don’t be silly. It’s OK. Come in, please.”
He set his package down on the floor beside him so she could take his coat from him. “Thank you for having me.”
“Truly, I’m glad you could come.” Olivia evaluated him: a small man with an exceptionally good chest and shoulders and watchful, vivid blue eyes. “This is a beautiful sweater. Did you knit it?”
“No, but thank you for the compliment. My wife made this for me as she was dying. If a man is lucky enough to have a woman who makes him beautiful things, he’d better not complain that there are more colors than brown, grey, and black, with a little blue and green when we feel daring.”
Olivia smiled. “I agree. Men should wear color more. How do you find Moscow in the winter?”
“Cold. Very, very cold, even by the standards of Pennsylvania.”
She smiled wryly. “I grew up in Pennsylvania. It was never like this. I’m Olivia.” Belatedly, she offered him her hand.
“I’m CC.”
He followed her back to the kitchen, where Suslov and Maria Fedorovna were squabbling amiably. “I think,” she murmured in English to CC as she withdrew cautiously, “that discretion is very much the better part of valor here.”
“What do I smell?”
“Maria’s interpretation of an American Christmas dinner. No turkey available, so roast geese with a stuffing of bread and dried fruit that the recipe promises will be more savory than sweet. Brussels sprouts with lemon and mustard seed, and pommes Anna made with the fat I cut out of the geese and chopped. Also chocolate mousse made with olive oil, a recipe she claims she found in a Sephardic cookbook. For me.” He followed her into the dining room with its bar. “Maria Fedorovna is Russian Orthodox, so her holiday comes later. But she feels I need to get back in touch with my faith.”
“Jewish?”
“By birth and minimal upbringing. But there’s not much getting-in-touch to do in Moscow. I’m told that one of the meanings of the word ‘Israel’ is, ‘Struggles with God.’ I may do that someday. But struggle with some of the local rabbis? No, thank you. Old Yiddish proverb. ‘More horse’s asses in the world than horses.’”
“That’s a Kentucky proverb, too. I’ve never wrestled much with God. I have had some run-ins with His staff.”
“Who won?”
“Me, mostly, although God doesn’t like me to advertise it.”
“What are your beliefs?”
“I’m an eggplant.”
“Again, please?”
“When it comes to religion, I take on the flavors of whatever I’m being cooked with. I’d rather be sautéed Protestant than flambéed Catholic, but that’s a personal preference. My wife was overcooked Catholic.”
“How long were you married?”
“Twenty-six good years. Done too soon. And our general? What does he believe?”
“Atheistic former Communist. Not even superstitious. Coldly rational, extremely cultured, very kind to women and children and animals and, almost always, men.”
CC grinned. “Not exactly how we think of atheistic Communists. Or atheistic former Communists, which I much prefer. Of course, no atheist ever told me I was going to char broil in Hell unless I did things his way.”
“True. My bro…my closest male friend here...is a Jewish mystic.”
“Does the General know?”
“Yes. This Jew is also an Airborne colonel and was Dmitri Borisovich’s chief of reconnaissance in Chechnya.”
“A perfect billet for a mystic. They see things we don’t. Also, a bit of mystical faith is required to jump out of airplanes.”
“Or fly them at all, even when you know how and why they work. Volodya and Maria Fedorovna have some fascinating conversations when he’s visiting, about how religions seem to usually be founded by saints and heretics whose understanding is deeper than the common run, but are quickly co-opted by the bureaucrats and thugs and brutes and bullies.”
“Just like countries,” CC agreed, handing her the bag he was carrying. She opened it. Two bottles of good champagne, which went into the small refrigerator under the bar, a bottle of Armagnac, and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. “You are very generous.”
“I have embassy commissary privileges. Also, I’ve been introducing my students to Elijah Craig and Evan Williams.”
“Thank goodness it’s not Wild Turkey.”
“Of which you don’t think much?”
“No.” Olivia’s voice was emphatic. “Certainly not the high-test.”
“The Hundred and One Proof? Who could ask for anything more?”
“Humanity. But Tennessee whiskey is very good.”
“Ain’t nothin’ good ever come outta Tennessee.”
“I feel the same way about California. Armagnac is always beautiful, as are some of the Georgian and Armenian brandies.”
“And vodka?”
She looked at him. “This is the Western Christmas, then there’s New Year’s, and finally the Orthodox Christmas on 7 January, for those who cling to the old ways. Very little work will be done in the country until after the 7th. Drinking here, if your students haven’t already warned you, is all or nothing. Russians distrust moderation.”
“What do you do?”
“Drink in moderation. I’m entitled to be a little eccentric but I don’t abuse it.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Suslov came out of the kitchen, looking bemused, wearing an intricately cabled sweater of deep purple wool, shaped to show off his chest and waist. You could always tell, CC realized, what women thought of their men by what they made for them.
“You put the geese and the potatoes in at the same time,” he recounted. “Now should go in the stuffing and the vegetables and they should all be done in an hour, this is correct?” She nodded. “Maria Fedorovna says neither of us know anything about food in general or cooking in specific, much less about geese, potatoes or…dessert. But I told her, if she burns the stuffing, I’ll say ‘I told you so’ for the rest of her life.’ Then she chased me out of the kitchen.”
“Maria Fedorovna is your mother?”
CC watched Olivia and Suslov exchange wry glances and quickly felt himself a fool.
“Maria Fedorovna is my housekeeper,” Olivia said. CC looked a question at her and she nodded. “That, too, Colonel.” Suslov watched them, two native English speakers giving him an insight into how the language kept its secrets. “But she is also family. She looks after me like I might be her daughter and as far as I am concerned, this is her home.”
“And your family, sir?” Cooper asked.
“My parents both died some years ago. My sister is with the security services and at the moment she is not Moscow. My brother and brother-in-law were killed in Afghanistan.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am told,” Olivia interrupted, “that you were looking for a zakuska your own age.”
CC found himself blushing. “I may never live that story down. Ah, well, you know the saying. Snow on the roof means fire in the chimney. But I’m too old to make a fool of myself or be anything but the perfect gentleman my wife never quite made me into.”
Maria Fedorovna came in, nodded toward Cooper when introduced, then engaged Olivia in Russian squabble. But her brown eyes remained fixed on CC’s. If you hurt her… When Maria Fedorovna had gone, Olivia had poured the men two stiff bourbons and herself a brandy. They went to the table. CC Cooper made up his mind.
“Merry Christmas, Colonel,” Olivia toasted.
“Merry Christmas, Doctor. Merry Christmas, General.” He touched his glass to that of his hostess and her lover, his student. He could smell her perfume, a vision of roses an
d irises blossoming in the stone ruins of some ancient fortress. “Listen,” he said suddenly. “This is not fair to you.”
She went absolutely rigid, her blue eyes huge.
Suslov, who had never seen Olivia like this, sat back.
“I repeat my offer, Doctor. If I’m making you uncomfortable, I will understand and leave.”
“And I will repeat, you are our welcome guest.”
“Very well,” Cooper replied. “However, we might be more comfortable if we were a bit more forthcoming. We are both Americans, very far from home in a foreign land. It is Christmas. I am your guest. I want to understand you. There is a question I would ask you. American to American. You know that I want to ask it. I know that you know I want to. And you know that I know that you know I want to. And the general knows it, too, or he would not have invited me.”
Drinking a little of her brandy, her eyes never left his face. “You recited that well. Just like an old comedy routine. You know and I know and I know and you know.”
“I said it that way to take a bit of the edge off. But it remains a serious matter.”
“Very well. Before you eat my bread and salt, American to American, ask.”
“OK. American to American. What the fuck are y’all doing here?”
“Y’all?” Suslov asked, quietly asserting himself, making his presence known and his loyalties very clear. “You mean there is more than one of you?”
“Sometimes we Southerners say it when we want it to seem like there are more of us than there really are. Other times, we say it affectionately, as if to another Southerner, even when they’re not.”
“I do not understand you, and yet I think I do,” Suslov said, allowing himself to recede.
“What am I doing here?” Olivia answered carefully. “Feeding you.”
“I think I deserve a more serious explanation.”
“As you wish. Our general here tells me that your final posting as an officer was at the Pentagon, where you were required to write preposterous reports praising useless weapons so that the country could waste billions on them.”
“Correct.”
“Then you will know what is a strap-down chicken test.”
CC Cooper smiled. “Deedy do.”
“A what?” Suslov asked.
“Your lady will explain.”
Olivia took another sip of her brandy. “In American weapons development, every so often, you want to show you’re making progress, even when you’ve made none and aren’t expected to. So you strap down a chicken, blow it away with your weapon, and declare the test a success. A strap-down chicken test, then, is one that is simple, rigged, blatantly dishonest, and meaningless. I worked for the Defense Department for eleven years and all I ever did was strap-down chicken tests. When they’d let me get that far. I had no desire to spend my life pulverizing innocent chickens.”
CC Cooper laughed softly. “Remind me someday to tell you about an anti-armor missile that would’ve considered a chicken a real challenge. But do go on.”
“To make a long story short, in December of 1993, I was made an offer by the GRU to help provide sensor technology for urban combat, particularly in Chechnya. This was something I’d been advocating to the Defense Department for years and they were having none of it. I wanted to build simple, cheap, plentiful, reasonably reliable. They wanted complicated, expensive, scarce, and useless. So here we are.”
“But I can go home.”
“You can. I can’t. That was the price I chose to pay for doing important work honorably, against enemies of both our countries, even if the battlefield is confined to Russia for now. There was no way I would do this work in America. Even if I’d been able to have my project at Los Alamos or Belvoir or anywhere else, giving the information to the Russians would have been criminal. Selling it would have been far worse. So when this possibility opened up to me, I took it. And I tell you in all honesty, Colonel, I would rather be here than whoring for the Pentagon.”
“At what point did your ambition override and overwhelm your duties as a citizen?”
Olivia’s eyes and voice, her entire bearing, became glacial. “Thank you for not inflicting upon me the standard verbiage about ‘traitor’ and ‘defector.’ I’ve been there before. I will tell you this. It is not a citizen’s responsibility to allow her intellect to be strangled by her government or her society. It is not a citizen’s responsibility to squander her nation’s limited resources. As a citizen, it is my responsibility to help safeguard civilization itself. We all have our talents. Creating tactical ground sensors is mine. My government chose to prohibit me from doing so, even though they knew that such items will be vital in future wars and will save thousands of lives. They already have. They forbade me to make my contribution, in order to continue to waste American wealth and lives. I chose neither to be complicit in that squandering nor abandon what I knew I could create. I found a country that gave me a chance. I have proven I was right.”
“And you took it upon yourself to make those decisions?”
“Yes.”
“And who are you to do so?”
“Who do I have to be? Who is anyone to make any choices at all when somebody else says no? Whose permission do I need to be a citizen and a human being who has assumed responsibility for my country and our world? A great poet once stood in front of a Soviet judge, who asked him who’d given him permission to be a poet. He answered much the same as I am answering.”
“Josef Brodsky,” Suslov added. “He’s an American now.”
Cooper nodded, then turned back to Olivia. “We could have had this conversation in America.”
“We could have, had we known each other. But we are nonetheless situated differently. When you refused to be complicit in the fraud that American military research and development has become, you retired with a comfortable pension and moved on to a comfortable second career as a professor. I had no such options. My country denied them. Was I to waste the rest of my life because I wanted to do something of value that others found threatening?”
“A woman of your talents could have gone into many fields besides this one.”
“There’s an old Yiddish proverb, Colonel. ‘Play it as it lays.’”
Cooper nodded. “It’s a Kentucky proverb, too. Do you conceive of yourself as a citizen of the world?”
Her disdain showed in her eyes. “No, I am an American citizen who knows her nation has enemies in common with Russia and that there are things our two nations should do in the world together.”
“Agreed.”
Then Olivia’s eyes revealed something else: once again the unmistakable flicker of real fear. Cooper knew she was not so much afraid for herself. It was fear for the man beside her, fear for her housekeeper whom she loved, fear for her mystic paratrooper brother, fear for others he knew not of. He wondered what that must be like for an American, so unused to that kind of fear, a fear that billions accepted as normal. And he understood that, if her fears ever turned to reality, neither her reasons for coming nor her accomplishments would matter to two governments.
He watched her shut away her fear. “I never wanted to be a soldier,” Olivia went on. “But when I was eight, I watched the Marines fighting for Hue City. Were you in Vietnam in 1968, Colonel?”
“No. I was between tours. I was,” he looked down at his bourbon, “a student at Carlisle.”
“If you were in America during Tet and the rest of that awful year, you experienced what your fellow citizens were thinking and doing. I had no real understanding of the war. But I do remember feeling as I watched the television, Those are my people, I should be there. It never occurred to me that being female made that any less imperative. I also thought, there has to be a better way to do this than just blindly throwing grenades around walls and shooting through ceilings and sending human beings into fire and leveling whole cities. After that, everything I learned about city fighting as it was practiced nauseated me. Everyone accepting that this was how it had t
o be. When I realized that cities were going to be the primary battlefields of the future, I chose the contribution I wanted to make. When the Russian offer came, and I realized that all my life I’d been right about these things and I was being throttled and ignored in America because I was right, not because I was wrong… Colonel, I hope that someday the United States and Russia start talking to each other. And I pray to God and His staff that when that day comes, I can provide some kind of bridge, some kind of link, between us. We’re going to need it.”
CC Cooper drained his bourbon, then silently held out his glass. Olivia, silent, refilled it, then added to Suslov’s.
“Olivia,” he said, swirling the liquid a bit, “you have told me what I wanted to know. When I first heard of you, there were words in my mind. Everything from traitor and defector to CIA spy. I do not believe you’re any of these. I do believe you’re more right than wrong. ‘Tis a pity we didn’t meet back in the States. I would have been more than sympathetic. I might have been able to help you.”
“Understood. But it’s too late for that.”
“One never knows what help any of us may someday require.”
“True. Now, Colonel…”
“CC, please.”
“No doubt, General Suslov has told you that I am somewhat given to formality.”
“I sense that much. Dignity matters. Just don’t let it get in your way.”
“It doesn’t. But I would like to ask you a question in a dignified way.”
“Proceed.”
“So far as I know, only two Americans actually know who I am and why I’m here. One is my father back in America, who has promised to say nothing to anyone about it. The other is a reporter for the Washington Post, currently here in Moscow.”
“His name?”
“Hers.”
“Her name?”
“Does it matter?”
“I could find out very easily. Please spare me the aggravation of contending with the Moscow telephone system.”
“Rebecca Taylor. Have you read her articles?”
“Yes, back in the States. I was impressed. Why did you tell a reporter?”
“Because she is a friend who understands. I also told her what I’ve told you, what I’ve told so many Russians, what I say every chance I get. Where I hope this all may lead us.”
“And she no doubt told you how unlikely it was?”
“In some ways. After she understood that I was neither a traitor nor a defector. But that’s neither here nor there right now. There is a question I have to ask.”
“Shoot.”
“Are you going to report me to our government?”
CC Cooper looked her steadily in the eyes for a moment, then looked down.
“Bourbon,” he said softly. “One kind of American whiskey. There are many. None as good, but at least American. Doctor Olivia…right now there are tens of thousands of Americans selling our country down the river economically. They’re selling us out to every country on earth that’ll provide us with cheap labor and cheap junk. They’re wrecking our industries, our farming, and our people. There are tens of thousands of others who are wrecking our future by manufacturing all kinds of lies. Like we’re going to run the world forever while going into debt to everybody, or there ain’t gonna be any more wars, or we can keep on trashing the planet. I grew up on a farm that didn’t grow nothin’ because we’d ruined the land and everybody around us was also ruining the land and erosion don’t stop at the neighbor’s fence or the county line. I know. Most of all, we’re being sold down the river by our own government, don’t matter who’s in or who’s out. You, Doctor Olivia, have done none of that. They’re not getting us ready for what’s gonna happen sooner or later. You are trying to. Does that answer your question? One American to another.”
“It does. One American to another. Thank you. Now, if I may ask another dignified question.”
“Reload and fire.”
“What the fuck are y’all doin’ here?”
Cooper laughed. “Y’know, that’s the first time anybody has asked me that question. Haven’t ginned up an answer yet.”
“Please do so. Will more bourbon be required to assist?”
“Not at the moment. This is what I’ll tell ya. I was bored with what I was doing. I’d wanted to teach counter-insurgency but they wouldn’t let me. Nam-era stuff, they said. Best forgotten, not where the money is, and what with the Cold War over, it was getting harder to justify those big budgets, so no competition wanted from a specialty that doesn’t take a lot of money if you do it right. Here the Russians let me do what I want.” His eyes twinkled into Olivia’s. “Sound familiar?”
“Deedy do,” she answered. “Anything else?”
“Lotsa stuff. My life was boring. No family, not even a part-time zakuska. Jes’ me and my horse and my students. Thought about retiring but, hell, I’m too young to wear my trousers hitched up under my armpits and play golf all day. This offered a change of pace. It were a chance to spend time with some real soldiers fightin’ some real wars, not a bunch of pogues who get along by goin’ along and couldn’t hold a firm opinion on whether the sun’s gonna come up tomorrow. I like to see things for myself. I like to meet new people, stay busy, maybe even…”
“Maybe even what?”
“Maybe even be some kinda bridge someday. We’re gonna need ‘em, sure as God made Wild Turkey 101. Now it’s time to change the subject. There are things I want to know that I can’t ask in a classroom provided by my hosts. So let me ask the Gin’rel here.”
Suslov nodded in acceptance. Cooper spoke slowly. “General, what do you think of what your country is doing with its freedom?”
They were all silent for a long time. Then Suslov spoke. “My sister is an FSB officer. She will tell you there was no honor or even pride, in what we did to dissidents. But at least we had something worth repressing, Akhmatova and Grossman or Solzhenitsyn or Brodsky, who became your poet laureate, although I doubt one American in five hundred has heard of him. Now we have the ‘Naked News’ on television. Women strip while reading newscasts. Some of us remain Communists, but now are bitter and contemptuous and want the former ways back. Others of us who are not quite so rigid, we ask ourselves the question you have asked. Is this what we do with our freedom? Do we waste it on cheap things and cheap ideas and cheap people? Do we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of garbage? Have we come this far, have we endured so much, just so our ambition must be to become just like…” he stopped.
“Just like America,” Cooper finished for him.
“I have learned,” Suslov went on, “that many Americans also despise what their country is letting itself become. Olivia is one of them. So, I think, are you.”
“I am an old soldier who now teaches at a foreign war college. That limits my opinions.”
“In the political realm, certainly. But you may think as you wish about your culture. Stupid is stupid, vulgar is vulgar. I learned English to read your military literature but I was required to learn more when I was training in Spetsnaz for the invasion of NATO Europe. The invasion everyone knew would never happen. I still read your popular magazines occasionally, when available. At our hostel, as you may know, some of the officers indulge a taste for American videos and other forms of your popular culture. We have access to much. I must confess that I share what must be your opinion of so much of it.”
There was not much to be said to that. Olivia was grateful to smell the roasting geese and be able to excuse herself.
“Well,” CC said after a while. “I suppose I should leave.”
“No. For the third time, no. We have had a revealing conversation that offended no one too severely. Had Olivia wished to throw you out, she would have.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“That being so, since she has not and you are her countryman…”
CC Cooper looked Suslov straight in the eyes, just as he had Olivia. “I am glad for that. As a soldier who understands where thin
gs are going, she has taken a tremendous step towards taking the sheer slaughter out of city fighting and she is right to have done so. But it is hard to acknowledge as an American she is right to be here, even if our own country refused her offer.”
“I understand.”
Olivia came in, carrying a tray laden with plates and glasses, knowing without having to overhear that they had made a truce. “Gentlemen, if you will serve yourselves, I will bring Maria Fedorovna her dinner.”
When she returned, she found they had served her as well.
It was later in the evening, after red wine and champagne, and a great deal of food, very boozy, never quite drunk, now slowly sobering up with tea, that they had dessert—chocolate mousse, made with olive oil, scented with curry, heated with chili, strange and utterly wonderful. “So, you are here for another semester,” Suslov said.
“Possibly, until the end of the summer. My thought is to do some travelling before I go back to America.”
“What would you like to see of my country?”
“The people, General. The people.”