CHAPTER FOUR, MOSCOW, HOLY WEEK 1994: SUSLOV and REBECCA
Going into the fall of 1993, Colonel Dmitri Borisovich Suslov had feared famine. Unlike most famines in Russia—the old Soviet Union, that he had served and loved and sometimes trusted, was no more— this one would not have been political. It would not be state policy, designed to eliminate entire nationalities or classes. Nor would it be the result of war. It would be, instead, the result of an utterly broken economy and infrastructure. Soviet-style Communism may not have worked very well. But it had worked better than anarchy, especially the never-ending anarchy of trying to impose democracy on a people in no way ready for it or even especially desirous of it. Anarchy was anarchy, even if the Americans thought it was leading to something better. It wasn’t.
Suslov was grateful for American humanitarian aid, even if much of it would end up on the black market. Food was food and people would eat it. What he did not care for was the preening, the sense so many Americans seemed to have, that the world was theirs, not so much to dictate to as to play with. At times, he thought, they actually seemed to prefer Russia on the verge of anarchy: hungry, impoverished, beset by organized crime, with wealth going to the most ruthless, not the most productive. At times, they seemed almost pleased that Russia was now an object of their pity, alternately to be succored and scorned.
Suslov spoke more than passable English, acquired during his Spetsnaz training, rarely used but somehow still in his head. He’d known few Americans. Now, however, he suddenly found himself immersed in them and was feeling strangled. Or maybe it was he who wished to do some strangling. The puffed up arrogance so characteristic of Americans who made their careers “helping the less fortunate” now choked him with rage. He was in Moscow, in the old Sovietsky Hotel, not far from Red Square, at the final day of a three-day conference on distribution of humanitarian aid. He was starting to dislike the American species personally, an unusual reaction for a man whose hatreds never applied to groups, only to individuals. So he sat in the seminar room and tried to focus on finding reasons to dislike each American there as a person. The process calmed him a bit. As individuals, he decided after some attempts to the contrary, Americans weren’t so bad. Maybe not so good. But at least, not so bad.
Methodically, but now more amiably, he continued his mental inventory of each American’s shortcomings. Then he got to the woman sitting beside him. Rebecca Taylor—Miss, or at least she wore no wedding ring—was attractive and attractively dressed, and her perfume was pleasant. He did not find her interesting, which was a relief because he found interesting women extremely desirable, and he did not need such a distraction. Still, he might have enjoyed her company, had she not regarded him with obvious distaste and fear as a Russian soldier, which probably meant to her a man with plenty of blood, especially innocent blood, on his hands. Nevertheless, she’d persisted in sitting beside him, this morning and now unfortunately this afternoon as well. No real conversation, only nods and perfunctory greetings.
But he understood the game she was playing so unwillingly. Make contact. Take it wherever it leads.
Rebecca Taylor, Suslov decided as he completed his assessment, was not unlikeable, merely unimportant in her position, her present task, and her view of things. Neither her disapproval nor her intentions mattered, and he expected her to vanish from his consciousness, his subconscious, his unconscious and everything else by evening. But the man on the podium, Robert Matthews, Ph.D., her boss, was in a different category altogether. He was encouraging Suslov’s genuine hate, and now, after an hour of snide, patronizing comments, he finally crossed a personal line. Something about how he hoped that more of the American food went to the black market than to the Soviet, oops, excuse me, Russian Army.
Enough.
Suslov rose slowly, a disciplined, purposeful rage evident. He did not wait to be recognized or even acknowledged, but spoke in a quiet voice, stern with both command and morality, that forced the room to attention. “What have our soldiers done to deserve not being fed?”
At that moment, Rebecca Taylor changed.
Rebecca Taylor was an Indiana farm girl who, the day she realized that honest farming had given way to corrupt agribusiness, decided to get off the farm. She’d gone to the University of Washington because Seattle and Boston seemed about equidistant from the family agribusiness and Seattle had, in her opinion, the better climate. As a freshman she’d taken the standard Western Civ history course, Plato to NATO, and had been instantly transfixed by the professor’s offhand remark that the Soviets had deliberately set out to destroy their own agriculture by placing a higher value on collectivization than on productivity. So as a matter of policy, they starved millions of kulaks, their most productive peasants. In a flash of utterly unexpected rage, she’d stood to say, “Yes, but there are many ways to wreck your agriculture. Look at us.” The professor had dismissed her with some snide remark about the United States being the most overfed nation on earth, thank you, capitalism. Leaving the lecture hall, she’d determined to learn more about why nations starve and why some choose starvation.
For her major, she’d picked Russian studies. She studied with some of the best Sovietologists in the world. Unfortunately, the best Sovietologists in the world were not only aging as the Cold War settled into its seemingly eternal mature phase, they seemed clearly delighted that they wouldn’t have to learn too much new and needn’t expect surprises. Nor did they appreciate her questioning of their assertions that life in the Soviet Union just kept getting better. People were eating, they said, and to the average Russian, that was what mattered.
Degrees in Russian studies don’t equip you for much. But neither do they make you want to head back to the family agribusiness. Adrift, Rebecca decided to sample Boston’s inferior climate. She picked up a fast master’s in international relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and then, still adrift, entered the State Department’s Foreign Service. She had superb Russian, fine recommendations, and few intellectual pretensions beyond a visceral anti-Communism. She was also—a definite plus for State Department types—both pretty and profoundly anti-military. Anti-Soviet military, especially. What Russia had done to the world, she found no different from what Stalin had done to the peasants. Destruction, insane destruction, and destruction only. That Russia was now reduced to accepting American surplus food did not displease her.
But now, at thirty-two, on her second posting to Moscow and still adrift, she found her head snapping up to look in admiration at the Red—Soviet—Russian—Army officer beside whom she had deliberately seated herself. “We know he’s an Airborne officer and that’s about all,” her boss had told her. “Except that he’s wearing lots of medals from Afghanistan and on the fast track to general. See what you can learn. If you get a chance to fuck him…” he'd said, only half in jest, “take it.”
That wasn't going to happen. She found the quiet, weatherworn, very civil man beside her not at all attractive for the simple reason that he thoroughly intimidated her. His slanting Tartar eyes, startlingly green, high Tartar cheekbones, and the long scar that seamed the left side of his face were quite enough. But they were combined with a physical elegance that derived from his obvious and extreme capability. Slowly, she realized that she did not find him attractive because she was forcing herself not to.
“Colonel Suslov,” she heard her boss saying, “I didn’t say your soldiers didn’t deserve to be fed. I said that I don't think American food should be used for that purpose...” he leered from the podium “when there are so many more deserving civilians to feed.”
Suslov's face paled. His ivory skin looked almost translucent next to his hair, a deep red-brown. The old scar on his cheek was suddenly livid. He did not wait for the translator, but spoke in the heavy English of one who knows the language reasonably well but has had little chance to use it. “I repeat the essence of your statement. Better for the food to end up on the black market than to feed Soviet soldiers.”
Matthews, start
led to be called in his own language and very few words, a liar, snapped back, “There are indeed better uses.”
“But that is not the question I asked. I asked, what have Russian soldiers—not Soviet soldiers, the Union is gone, Russian soldiers—conscripts of eighteen and nineteen, done to deserve not being fed?”
There was a long silence in the room. Robert Matthews, Ph.D., glared from the safety of his podium at Colonel Suslov. A man in his fifties, aging poorly, he was balding, which he dealt with by adopting an unconvincing comb-over. He was short and paunchy and slouching and had vapid brown eyes, out of which he looked at most of the world with nearly perpetual alarm. They practically bugged out of his head now. He was a political economist by training, an ideologue of no clear ideology, but a well-developed sense of the authority bestowed upon him by the bureaucracy. Matthews glared down with an expression of, Don't you understand who I work for? “Men with guns always eat first, Colonel. We don’t expect it to be any different here in Russia. How you get the food is your affair.”
It was a calculated insult, flung at a man who looked like, even if he ate first, his self-respect would prevent him from eating more than his fair share, however little that might be. Why is he doing this? Rebecca wondered. Why is he humiliating and alienating every Russian in the room? She did not allow herself to pursue an obvious thought, that Matthews might be jealous of Suslov as a man. But she muttered it softly to herself.
Taylor didn’t realize she’d said something until Suslov, still standing, looked down at her, his green eyes hard and cold and very level. At least he didn’t reek of cigarette smoke, she thought miserably.
“Did you say something?” he asked, politely but loud enough for the room to hear.
“No. No. Nothing at all,” she answered shakily. On the podium, Matthews smiled smugly at the interruption of the confrontation.
“Perhaps, for the best,” Suslov answered calmly. He turned back to Matthews, staring hard at him until the man’s smile vanished, then sat down.