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PART 3: SECRETS AND COINCIDENCES

  Airplanes are good for thinking. Paradoxically, despite being the quintessential modern products, they are also the last refuge from the distractions of modern life. I am afraid that at some point they will allow us to have our phones turned on, and then there will be no place to hide from people trying to reach you.

  There was my father’s death, possibly connected to his investigation of John Brockton’s case. And there was an early demise of the Grand Castle Rock hedge fund, together with the career of a certain Pavel Rostin. Nothing was tying the two events together except for my father and for a certain overlap in timing. Until today. Until the Hardrock Security Company appeared on both threads. Coincidence?

  Merriam-Webster defines coincidence as “the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection.” Seem to have some connection…Perhaps they do, perhaps they don’t. Coincidences are dangerously sneaky. Sometimes they are truly random unrelated events that we attach a meaning to. Karen told me later that a combination of falling snow and us getting separated from the main group felt to her like a sign that we were meant to be together. Later I discovered that she had a magnet sticker on her refrigerator that said, Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. – Albert Einstein, which may have predisposed her to seeing significance where none may have existed. I think that her ovulating at the time – as proven by an immediate pregnancy – made her more ready to embrace the possibility of love, and that may have had something to do with it. Regardless, she took the coincidence seriously, and it changed the course of her life. And mine and Anya’s.

  And other times we walk past coincidences as not worthy of our attention, but in reality they are signs of something taking place behind the curtain, be it undiscovered laws of the universe or levers and knobs being adjusted by men. One day, the physicist Roentgen noticed something strange when investigating cathode rays: A screen at some distance from his experiment glowed when it was not supposed to. He probed further and discovered X-rays. Most likely, the phenomenon has been noticed by others before him but written off as an accident.

  Between my father and Yakov, I have learned that research in physics is not that different from investigating a complex case. You look for coincidences, for anomalies, and try to find who or what is behind them. You decouple complicated problems into simple ones. I remember Yakov quoting Rene Descartes: “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”

  But no matter how cynical or analytical I get about these things, my thoughts go back to that “I can’t imagine the world without her” feeling I had when looking at Karen the morning after. Whatever else I did, or failed to do, that moment stands out in my consciousness as the purest instance of my life, the time I had been touched by something greater than I. I am sure that a chemist would explain this by my body releasing some kind of endorphin. But no one ever will convince me that a chemical reaction is all it was. Our lives are like tapestries, intricate combinations of events following a central pattern. And then there is a spike of color that gives it brightness. I think it’s the hue of us loving another person, without conditions, without constraints, sometimes without any particular cause. It is the proof of God that I can understand because it transcends reason and every natural instinct of self-preservation, not for the collective good or an abstract theory but for a flesh-and-blood human being.

  Sunday, June 17

  I land in Sheremetyevo for the second time in as many weeks. I deliberate whether to call Yakov or Bezginovich first. I decide to go with Bezginovich because it may determine where I go from the airport.

  He answers quickly. “Are you in Moscow?”

  “Yes, just landed in Sheremetyevo.”

  “Where are you planning to stay?”

  “I have not made any plans yet.”

  “How about the Courtyard Moscow City Center on Voznesenskiy Pereulok? It’s centrally located, reasonably priced, and quiet. And it has a bar we can meet at. Some of my clients stayed there, and I know the owner.”

  From his comment “reasonably priced,” I figure that he must have looked into me and my financial situation.

  “Did my father stay there?”

  Bezginovich hesitates, then allows, “Yes, he did.”

  We arrange to meet in the bar at seven.

  The taxi takes me on another trip down memory lane. When I was a student, I used to take a bus. The streets are much busier now, filled with European and Russian model cars. The hotel is as advertised - civilized, not over the top, only two stories, and busy with tourists. Bezginovich called ahead with a reservation.

  I get to my room, unpack, and call Yakov. I smile when I hear him calling out to Anya: “I told you he’d be back within a week!” Yakov gets upset with me for staying in a hotel and harangues me until I agree to come and stay with them after my “downtown business” is concluded.

  “Yakov, I do have a favor to ask.”

  “I figured you would.”

  “I’d like to check on someone who graduated from Moscow State University. His name was Gregory Voron or something like that. He would have graduated in the 1990s.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you can find - when he graduated, what he studied, who he worked with…”

  “All right. So we’ll see you soon?”

  “Yes, soon.”

  I have a bit of time, so I go for a walk to Novyy Arbat. I start at the Arbatskaya metro station, dropped like a red Japanese pagoda into a middle of the square. It’s a tourist trap, filled with shops and kiosks selling magazines, cigarettes, books, films, alcohol, fake handbags, matryoshkas, and T-shirts proclaiming that the wearer’s been to Moscow. Kiosks are manned by loud people, trying to lure tourists into buying whatever they are peddling. It reminds me of New York - boisterous, haphazard, impromptu, and exalted.

  Stalin glares at me from a poster in one of the kiosks. The great man is staring into the bright future. Took me a second to realize that it was not a tribute to the former dictator but a curiosity, a decoration. I wonder if he is turning in his grave from such insolence.

  I go through the underground crossing and find it full of more kiosks and beggars. A group of men is clustered near a building, smoking and gossiping. I walk by a church, then a casino. Everything seems pushy and loud. It’s a cliché, but like many clichés it has truth in it: St. Petersburgers consider Muscovites pushy and loud, while Muscovites think that St. Petersburgers are stuck up on their former glory. Kind of like New York and Boston, especially when the Rangers meet the Bruins in the hockey playoffs.

  Peter the Great wanted St. Petersburg to be everything that Moscow was not: precise, orderly, elegant, centered around palaces and the fortress rather than churches. The window to the West. But it was Catherine the Great that completed his vision, creating an imperial city to rival Paris and Rome. Rightfully, St. Petersburg belonged to both of the Greats, except that Catherine was the one that turned away from the Peter’s dream: As the age of Enlightenment was sweeping Europe, she pulled the country back. And so Russia settled between the West and the East, present in both worlds, belonging to neither. In the battle between the two cities, Moscow eventually emerged the winner.

  Time to head back. I turn onto Borisoglebskiy Pereulok. I like this quieter, greener street lined with trees. That’s where the beauty of Moscow comes across. It’s not intentional, not laid out with a premeditated artistic vision that was looking centuries ahead but instead an accidental collection of streets and buildings that involuntarily come together. In St. Petersburg, you are a child visiting a strict grandfather that spent his life in the military. In Moscow’s little streets, you call on a chaotic and sometimes confused aunt.

  A statue of poetess Marina Tsvetayeava is on the left. Her head leans on her hands, eyes downcast. Yes, poetry was a serious business in Russia. Unlike Mandelstam or Babel, she was not killed. Tsvetayeava came back from exile in Ju
ne 1939. In August, her daughter had been arrested and sentenced to 15 years. A month later, her husband was taken and shot in the Lubyanka prison. Persecuted, lonely, broken, unable to publish, she took her own life and was buried in an unmarked common grave. She knew how it would end:

  As for me, a zone of unrestricted sleep,

  Bell sounds and early dawns,

  In the graveyard of Vagankovo.

  In 1946, on behalf of the party, Andrei Zhdanov condemned verses of Anna Akhmatova, another great poetess, because they were too “autobiographic, intimate, and emotional.” Imagine that, intimate and emotional poetry! Of course, politically correct Juliet would not have asked Romeo to change his name but implored him to double coal production instead. Petrarca’s pining for Laura would have earned him a one-way ticket to the Gulag, but pining for higher steel output meant the Stalin Prize, an apartment in the center, and Kremlin store coupons.

  Between the NKVD and suicide, what was the survival rate of the Russian poets in the 20th century? Someone should run the numbers; I am sure it was not too high. The blood-sucking spider in the Kremlin sat in judgment over who should be published, who met the criteria of “social realism,” who should be hounded or shot outright. And then Stalin would sue his yes-men – What did Mandelstam call them? “A rabble of thin-necked leaders, fawning half-men for him to play with” – to deal with the non-compliant ones. But why did he care about a few lines of rhyming text? Was the power of poetry such that it threatened a mighty state? It was not enough to be careful of what you said, you could be damned by what you did not say, by not heaping enough unquestioning praise and adoration on the leader. You are either with us or you must be destroyed.

  The poets collided with the brutal system and lost. They were not revolutionaries, they did not fight the leadership. They just had that desperate courage of people unable to surrender their humanity.

  The hotel bar looks like a Marriott in most American cities, a typical middle-of-the-road set up with wooden chairs and wooden tables with no tablecloths. What’s different is a cacophony of languages: Russian, English, German, French, others. I am a few minutes early. I make my way to a not-too-crowded bar, grab a chair, and order Heineken. A mini-skirted blonde no more than twenty squeezes herself in the chair next to mine, leans over and asks in a throaty, heavily-accented English, “Where are you from?”

  “New York,” I reply, surprised by the attention.

  “Oh, how long are you in Moscow for?”

  Before I have a chance to respond, a hand gently grabs my shoulder. “Pavel?”

  I turn. Bezginovich does not look much like his sister; he’s short, portly, balding, ears sticking out. But I can see the connection in a small delicate nose and an open smile.

  He tells the blonde: “Sorry, dear, we are here for a meeting.”

  The blonde grimaces, jumps off the chair, catches her balance on stiletto heels, and saunters away. Bezginovich looks after her and shakes his head, “They are pretty much everywhere now.”

  “Who ‘they’?”

  “The working girls, who else. Let’s get a table. Thankfully, it’s not too noisy here.”

  We position ourselves at a corner table.

  “How did you recognize me?” I ask, expecting that he checked me out on the Internet.

  “We’ve met before.” Seeing my puzzled expression, he laughs and gestures with his hand, as if shooing away a fly. His laugh is pleasant and young. “Well, ‘met’ is too strong a word. In my first year at the university, I had to take a mandatory physics course. One day the professor was sick, and you substituted for him. It was impressive, you teaching an auditorium of at least a hundred students while being only a few years older than us. And then a couple of years later your picture was in the news…you and that senator’s daughter…”

  “Congressman’s daughter,” I automatically correct him, and chuckle in embarrassment. “Small world.”

  Bezginovich looks down. “As I said, I am sorry about your father. I tried to talk him out of it.”

  “Why don’t we start at the beginning? You know, why did you approach him?”

  As Bezginovich stares at me, thinking, a waiter appears at our table. Bezginovich purses his lips, “Why don’t we order? It’s going to be a long story.”

  Our waiter leaves with the order, and Bezginovich continues, “You left in 1987?”

  “1986.”

  “Have you been back much?”

  “Until this month, only once. Came here with my family seven years ago.”

  “So you really did not live through the change, did you?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It’s like a preamble, a context that you have to understand about Natalya and me. Moscow now is a city of the world. We are native Muscovites, so we had front row seats to this show – 1991, the year that Yeltsin stood on that tank and the Communist putsch collapsed, that was the beginning. Moscow, being the center of the empire, even a collapsing one, was the land of opportunity. I just became a lawyer and the concept of law and proper legal process was at least nominally being implemented for the first time in generations.”

  “Some people called you an ‘attorney for the mobsters.’”

  “Pavel…may I call you Pavel? Please call me Mark…That was the Russian capitalism of the 90s. The free-for-all lasted until the 1998 financial crisis. Yeltsin threw away his chance. Russia, as it had done throughout the centuries, turned to a strongman. Some of the original oligarchs left or got thrown in jail, and new ones rose. We are still a corrupt oligarchy, but some of the worst excesses are behind us.

  “This brings me to Natalya. Unlike me, she was blessed with good looks, a sexy voice, and a quick mind; she was a natural for the media. But Moscow was flooded with thousands of good looking girls from the provinces, ready to do anything. And a degree in journalism was not worth much. At some point in 1997, she hooked up with John Brockton, having met him at one of the parties. He was a good-looking, successful, American banker and she fell for him. He was the one that helped her get a break at a TV station. That’s all she needed, an opening. When Brockton left for the U.S. in 1998, he asked Natalya to come with him. I know she agonized over it but decided to stay; for the first time she had a real shot at doing something she loved. And she stayed and became the anchor of her own program.”

  The waiter interrupts Bezginovich’s monologue with plates of food. Bezginovich does not seem to worry about his weight, he gets a bloody ribeye steak with a large roast potato and a beet salad on the side. I opt for a boring Caesar salad with chicken.

  After taking a few bites, I try to direct the conversation a bit. “Did she make enemies with her reporting?”

  “Of course. She exposed an oligarch who was siphoning money from a company that he did not own by charging enormous fees for simple transactions. She deposed a minister who was angling to give away a state company to his son-in-law in a phony privatization…”

  “Could any of them have taken revenge?”

  “Three years later in a faraway country? Possibly, but I doubt it. Her last and biggest case was about the 1999 bombings, and that was the one that I thought may have put the price on her head. Do you remember the details?”

  “No, not the details.”

  “In September of 1999, there were a series of apartment buildings explosions in Moscow and two other cities. Hundreds had been killed, and many more injured. The explosions had been blamed on the Chechen terrorists, and Russia launched a war against Chechnya. But some people, including people in the Duma, the Russian parliament, were questioning who was really behind the bombings. Attempts at independent investigations had been squashed until the TV station Telenovostiy launched a series of investigative reports led by my sister, focusing on the incident in the city of Ryazan. In Ryazan, a bomb was found on September 22, 1999. This time, the suspects were arrested. Except that they turned out to work for the FSB, the KGB’s successor. The FSB claimed that this was a test designe
d to check anti-terror preparedness, but not many believed it.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “The new government put the 1990’s oligarchs under its thumb. The oligarch that owned the TV station where Natalya worked ended up on the wrong side, was forced to sell the station and leave Russia. Natalya was let go. She tried to continue investigative reporting with one of the newspapers, but she was not popular with the new regime and had trouble getting access. John Brockton was still calling her, and in late 2001 she picked up and moved to California. After that, she came back to Moscow only once, for two weeks in 2003.”

  “Rozen told me you were at the trial?”

  “Yes, I was there. You know, most of my clients are guilty. Jeff Kron did not strike me as the person who committed the crime. At least not the way they’d been killed.”

  “So you wanted someone to investigate?”

  “Yes. Your father was not my first or second choice. I have my stable of private investigators in Moscow. I asked one of them and he took the case, but two days later called and declined without comment. I went to another one, same story, only this one told me that someone put a word on the street that this case would be ‘bad for business’ and that I won’t find anyone legitimate in Moscow to take it.”

  “Who put a word out?”

  “He did not know or would not tell me. I am an attorney, I give them some work, but there are people that can easily put them out of business for good, you know. They’d rather lose my business than risk that.”

  “So you went to my father?”

  “I went out of Moscow. When your father was first suggested to me, I laughed – why hire an old man? But I had a business trip to St. Petersburg and met with him since I was there already. He really impressed me, he was in a good form, spoke some English, had a computer, and knew his way around the Internet. Thanks to you, it was easy to get a U.S. visa for him. And he was a very experienced investigator.”

  “Did you tell him about the word on the street?”

  Bezginovich makes a face as if I insulted him. “Of course I did! That’s the damn thing – it actually made him want the case! Turns out he watched my sister’s program. I told him that I thought she might have been killed because she continued to work on her exposé of the bombings.”

  The waiter brings us coffee.

  “I hired him in February of last year and your father went to the U.S., ostensibly to visit his family.” I must have winced because Bezginovich quickly adds, “Sorry, he combined his visit to you with flying to Santa Barbara to investigate. He took his time, following leads on both my sister and Brockton. The big find came in September.”

  “What kind of big find?”

  “When your dad searched Natalya’s apartment, he found a key. Mind you, the apartment has been searched before by a number of people. The key had been hidden so well that no one saw it. We traced the key to a safe deposit box in a local bank. Inside was a printout of twenty-four pages.”

  “Was that the bombings investigation?”

  “No. Money laundering, illegal arms dealing, drug trafficking. Companies, accounts, names. Some big names, both Russian and Western.”

  “And what did you do with these materials?”

  “Nothing. You see, your dad was not sure about them. He asked me ‘Are the notes in the margins definitely Natalya’s?’ and I could not say. They looked like Natalya’s handwriting, but I was not 100 percent sure. The letters seemed almost too careful.”

  “Has anyone seen them?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Can I have them?”

  Bezginovich looks at me guiltily. “No. I am sorry. In December, two clients canceled my services. And then I received a call. I don’t know who was on the other end, but he knew everything. He told me to stop the investigation, or more of my clients would start canceling and tax authorities would take an interest in my business. I loved my sister, but I do have a family to protect. I contacted your father and told him the assignment was off. Then I destroyed my copy of the documents.”

  “You stopped my father?”

  “I stopped being his client. Whether he stopped investigating, I don’t know. I am not sure he did.”

  “So he still had the document that you found in your sister’s safe deposit box?”

  “Yes, unless he destroyed it. But as I said, he doubted the document’s authenticity.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  He shakes his head and gets up to leave. “No. I am not sure I should have told you as much as I did. I had to explain your father’s role, I owed that much to you. I am sorry he is dead, but the investigation must end.”

  Bezginovich leaves and I go walking through the Moscow night. Walking helps me think or just unwind. Bezginovich seems like a decent man despite his “lawyer for the mafia” reputation; he must have met with me to soothe his conscience. But the question remains: Was Streltsova investigating something that marked her for death?

  I pass by the Duma and the Bolshoy, with scores of people out on this warm night, and find myself in front of Lubynka. It’s a large Baroque-like yellow brick building, imposing, and ugly. It could be the headquarters of a large bank or insurance company, except that for many years it’s been the headquarters of the Soviet secret police in all its incarnations, from the Cheka to the KGB. The most dreaded building in the whole country. And the tallest, as a joke went: you could see Siberia from it. Yakov’s mentor, Lev Landau, was imprisoned here for a year. He would have been killed by the NKVD goons but for the stand taken by the head of the institute Pyotr Kapitsa. It’s hard for a non-Russian to understand Kapitsa’s bravery.

  There is a new monument in front of the building now; I walk over to look at it. It’s a stone from one of the infamous Gulag camps, here to remind people of the victims of Communist terror. The meat grinder of the Lubyanka cellars: Thousands upon thousands were executed in the basement of this ugly building, and many more were sent to slave away and die in the Gulag.

  Could the FSB have set up the 1999 bombings as Streltsova was alleging? If they did, and she had proof, that would have been a damn good reason to silence her. Is it possible they killed hundreds of innocents just to justify a minor war?

  I turn around, walk down Ilyinka Street to Red Square and St. Basil’s Cathedral. Scores of people are there on this warm night. St. Basil is lit up, rising like the flame of a fire. Legend has it that Ivan the Terrible had the architect blinded so he couldn’t build anything else. There is no truth to it, but it fits with the character. In reality, the Terrible sobriquet is misplaced. There is no proper English word to represent Grozny. It conveys a combination of dangerous, strict, and formidable. Ivan the Terrible was more like Henry VIII of England: intelligent, ruthless, and a womanizer. He was the first “Tsar of All the Russias,” he unleashed terror against his own people, he fought endless wars, and he had seven wives. In a rage, he killed his son, Tsarevich Ivan.

  Ivan the Terrible was an inspiration for both Peter the Great and Stalin. Tragically, Peter the Great condemned his son Alexei to death, while Stalin let his son Yakov die in a Nazi camp. In Genesis, God commands Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, then stops Abraham at the last minute. For the God of the Bible, the sacrifice is symbolic. In Russia, it’s real: To reach the pinnacle of the power, to be able to measure out death to countless others, you had to sacrifice your own flesh and blood. Here it’s a God of vengeance, not love.

  Where do I go from here? This city now feels foreign, I’ve been gone for too long. Yakov is my only connection, and I can’t jeopardize him and Anya and David. But I still have three names: Avtotorgoviy, Mershov and Voron. I’ll try to follow these clues the best I can and hope I don’t reach a dead end.

  Sunday, June 18

  Jet-lagged, I sleep fitfully. First, I dream of driving in a car with the top down through beautiful mountainous scenery, trees on one side, a valley of the other. A powerful engine purrs as I climb up. I reach the
top and slow down, blue sky is all around me. The road starts heading downhill and the car picks up speed. I gently tap the brakes, nothing happens. I slam the brakes as hard as I can, but the car continues to accelerate, tires screeching, as I fight the steering wheel. I am flying into a sharp turn and realize that I won’t be able to make it.

  I wake up, sweating, toss and turn for an hour until the light starts seeping through the window, then fall asleep again. This time, I am with a woman, we are making love. We change positions, but I am always facing her back. I ask her to turn and look at me, she shakes her head. Her hair is blonde like Karen’s, but this does not feel like Karen’s body. In frustration, I grab her shoulder and throw the woman on her back. Sarah’s face is looking up at me.

  I wake up from the hotel phone ringing. It’s Yakov.

  “You did not call last night!”

  I did not realize I was supposed to call and just answer: “Sorry, I had a meeting and then it was late.”

  “Fine, fine. I have some news for you.”

  “What news?”

  “You get up, check out of your fancy hotel, come over here and I’ll tell you.”

  “Yakov, I am not going to inconvenience you and Anya…”

  “Don’t talk rubbish.” Yakov hangs up.

  I eat a quick breakfast, take the new PSP portable console and a couple of games that I bought for David, and walk to the metro.

  The game console is a hit with David, not so much with Anya. Yakov spreads his hands. “Where is your luggage?” I give them both a guilty shrug.

  Three of us proceed to the kitchen where, despite this being before noon, Yakov sets up tea. It’s a carefully orchestrated procedure. He measures loose leaf black tea from a colorful can using a small spoon he has for this purpose. Yakov then pours boiling water over the tea in a special teapot and lets it steep for exactly four minutes. Then he mixes it with hot water to your individual taste: strong, medium, or mild. Sugar cubes are lined up on the side. Yakov does not recognize the concept of adding milk to his tea.

  As I am sipping the hot liquid, Yakov tells his news. “When you asked me to look into this Gregory Voron, I thought ‘It’s Saturday, why didn’t he ask me earlier?’ But I called my friend Vera Semenovna from Student Services anyway – she’s been at the university almost as long as I, and after so many years I figured I would trouble her on a Saturday. And since everything’s been so computerized, she did not even have to leave her home, she could look everything up on the computer.”

  Yakov stops to drink his tea, no doubt for dramatic effect. Anya and I patiently wait.

  “So Vera Semenovna calls me back and she is all upset!” Failing to get a reaction earlier, Yakov prods us by pausing.

  “Why is she upset?” Anya plays along.

  “The records show that Gregory Voron graduated with a degree in history in 1993, but she could not remember anybody like that!”

  I laugh. “Ten thousand people graduate every year. HHow can she remember them all?”

  Yakov raises his right palm as if to signal stop. “Don’t laugh yet. Vera Semenovna is a very thorough person with an excellent memory. See, in addition to graduation records, there are records for individual classes. These are not kept in the main system for long, but Vera Semenovna, being a thorough person, archives them.” Yakov goes back to his tea, then continues. “To make a long story short, Vera Semenovna went into the archives and started checking records of the classes that Mr. Voron supposedly attended. She checks one class record, no such person. She checks another class record, no such person. She checks…”

  “So basically he was not in any of the classes?” interrupts Anya.

  “Vera Semenovna checked seven classes and not a single one had him in it,” proudly declares Yakov.

  “Somebody inserted his name into the graduation record but did not bother modifying the old archives,” I think out loud.

  “Exactly right,” declares Yakov, “if someone wants to check whether Mr. Voron graduated from the university, they’ll be told ‘yes.’ Only a very thorough, expert examination would detect this fraud. Of course, Vera Semenovna is very upset and will take action first thing Monday morning.”

  “What kind of action?” I wonder.

  “Well, expose the fraud of course! We know there are cases of people ‘buying’ degrees from second-rate institutions, but nothing like this has ever happened in our university.”

  I shake my head, “Yakov, you should call Vera Semenovna and ask her to keep quiet about this.”

  “What do you mean? Why?”

  I don’t know what to do. Last night I decided I can’t involve Yakov and Anya any deeper into this case. How do I stop Yakov without saying anything? I try an evasive maneuver. “Yakov, it’s dangerous and best to leave it alone.”

  “Pavel, you asked me to check this name. What did you find out? Why is it dangerous?”

  I look from Yakov to Anya, pleading with them to listen. “Last night I met the man who hired my father to investigate a case. That man was threatened into stopping the investigation. I don’t know what my father had discovered, but I am afraid to involve you. I don’t think checking the records would endanger you, but asking further questions might.”

  Yakov sips his already cold tea, chews his lip.

  “Fine, I will ask Vera Semenovna to drop this matter. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  “I have to investigate something that took place in the Russian stock market about eight years ago. If you can introduce me to someone who’s worked in the market back then, that would be helpful.”

  Yakov’s face turns to show his displeasure,

  “Unfortunately, you are not the only one of my students that traded real science for finance. Back in the 1990s, a number of promising young physicists went into banking and that kind of stuff.”

  “What about Tolik Osipov?” asks Anya. “He runs a bank of some kind.”

  “Yes,” ruefully nods Yakov, “he dropped out in 1995 without even defending his dissertation. Such a waste!”

  I have not heard the name, so Osipov must be not some major oligarch or something. Better this way.

  He disappears into the apartment, comes out with a cordless phone and an old address book that has pages falling out. Yakov flips the book’s pages back and forth.

  “I don’t have Osipov’s number. But I think I know someone who might be able to help. Do you remember Lyonya Krasnov?”

  Both Anya and I gasp. I squeeze out, “Of course.”

  “His family has always been well-connected,” says Yakov and dials a number. “Allo? This is Yakov Weinstein calling for Leonid Krasnov. Not available? So when will he be available? You don’t know? You will take my message, I understand. It’s his former professor Yakov Weinstein, W-e-i-n-s-t-e-i-n. What’s this about? Tell him that Pavel Rostin is in town and would like to get in touch with him.” Yakov hangs up, a bit flustered. “Such an important man, can’t answer his own phone on Sunday? All right, enough business for now. Anya, can we set up a lunch for our guest?”

  The phone rings as Yakov is still holding it.

  “Allo? Yes, this is he. Lyonya? Yes, I am well. Yes, Anya is well too. Pavel is here. He needs to get in touch with Tolik Osipov.”

  Yakov hands me the phone.

  “Pavel, my goodness, how long it’s been!” I easily recognize Lyonya’s voice.

  “Twenty years, Lyonya.”

  “That long, eh? So, why are you looking for Tolik Osipov?”

  “It’s not specifically him; I need to talk to someone who was active in the Russian stock market about ten years ago.”

  “OK, I’ll try to get hold of him. What’s your number? And why don’t you come over for the old times’ sake, perhaps I can help. I am still at the same address.”

  I don’t need to be reminded where it is.

  As I get up to leave, I ask Anya to walk me to the metro station. Yakov hugs me at the door. He does not predict my imminent return. Perhaps he is think
ing that this time the prodigal son is disappearing for good. He was like a second father to me and I was not kind to my fathers.

  “May God keep you safe,” Yakov sounds solemn.

  “God? Yakov, you are a scientist. In all the lectures I’ve taken from you, I don’t recall you mentioning God once.”

  “Pavel, when you were taking my lectures, mentioning God would have cost me my job. I started believing in God on March 5, 1953, well before you were born.”

  “Why March 5, 1953?”

  “That’s the day that the monster died. Fifty years passed, but I remember it well. For months, the smell of pogroms was in the air. The editorials talked about evil spies and murderers, all with Jewish-sounding names. People talked about trains being readied to take all the Jews to Siberia. Stalin’s henchmen were experts at deportations: Poles, Germans, Crimean Tatars…and now they were coming for the Jews, to ‘save us from the righteous anger of the Soviet people.’ Our whole family was packed, sleeping in our clothes, expecting a middle-of-the-night knock on the door. Except for my grandfather, who said ‘God won’t allow this. Not after the Holocaust.’ Stalin died on March 5, before the plan could be carried out.”

  I mumble, “I am sorry, I did not know.”

  “Don’t be sorry, they did not teach this in school. Nobody cares now, they think it’s been too long ago to matter. And I realize it’s not logical and well might be just a coincidence, but I don’t think one comes to God through logic alone.”

  The day is nice and sunny, so Anya and I decide to go to the further-away Oktyabrskaya Station. Anya puts her arm through mine and we walk arm-in-arm through Gorky Park, like we did twenty years ago – before Karen swept into our lives.

  Back in the Soviet days, at the beginning of each school year they would send students to help on farms. Such was the brilliant outcome of collectivization: Once the private property had been eradicated, the farmers cared more about drinking than about the harvest. So each September, the city folks would get mobilized and sent to the country to help. That particular year, we were sent to gather potatoes. Since I was already in my fifth year, I was in a privileged position of working inside where the gathered potatoes were cleaned and sorted.

  The younger students were condemned to labor in the muddy fields, under cold rain and hot sun. Inside we worked under the direction of Semyon Nikanorovich. Semyon was in his 50s, thin as a rail, and foul-mouthed. His bald head was covered by a dirty fur hat even when it was warm. Bloodshot eyes and a red nose immediately alerted us to Semyon’s priorities. He would show up at ten with a half-empty bottle of vodka, the first half already warming him up from the inside. Despite being perpetually drunk, he managed to maneuver through sharp rotating machinery without injuries. One of our seniors was not so lucky - he got half of his little finger cut off and was sent home to Moscow. His replacement was a petite younger girl with a long braid of black hair, big eyes, and a soft voice. She was at the far end of the conveyor, I barely saw her and paid little attention.

  Until Semyon tapped me on the shoulder conspiratorially. “That new girl, she keeps looking at you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I said, trying to keep my eyes on the conveyor and my fingers away from it.

  Semyon belched, emitted a puff of alcohol breath, and confirmed. “Yes, she’s been here for two days, and she would stare at you and then quickly look away. Nothing gets by Semyon Nikanorovich.”

  I was flattered but trying to keep my fingers and limbs intact was the priority.

  Later that night, I stumbled on a bottle game. We all stayed in cinder-block barracks that must have been built years ago for the army and now were sitting empty eleven months out of the year, until the city folks would show up for the harvest. While there were separate sections for men and women, put a couple of hundred young people in their late teens and early twenties into close proximity and things get intermingled rather quickly. A game of bottle has numerous advantages: It does not require any tools but one empty bottle; it can be played in any state of inebriation; and it can be made as sexual or as innocent as the participants like. On one end of the spectrum, it can be played as strip poker where participants have to remove a piece of clothing whenever the bottle points at them. On the other end, you can be required to perform something, like singing a song or reading a poem. This particular game was in the middle of the spectrum: One person would spin the bottle and whoever it points at, had to kiss the first person. I was walking by and someone called out to me: “Pavel, help!”

  It was Volodya, my usual lab partner. He and one other senior boy were surrounded by four giggling younger girls.

  “There are four of them and only two of us.”

  “I am sure you can manage.”

  I smiled and was about to leave when a soft voice mockingly said, “What’s the matter, Pavel, are you afraid of us?”

  It was the black-haired girl that Semyon had pointed out. The others started laughing at me, “Yeah, he is afraid!”

  Trying to save face, I mumbled “fine” and sat down to play.

  After a few embarrassing pecks on the lips, I was ready to leave when the black-haired girl spun the bottle at me. As I was pursing my lips for another peck, she said, “I will take my kiss later.”

  “Anya, this is not fair,” protested other girls, but she held firm.

  I smoked at the time. Later that night, I was outside inhaling a bitter smoke of papirossa, a Russian filterless cigarette with rough tobacco and a hollow end. A shadow appeared at my side and a soft voice said, “I’ve come to collect my kiss.”

  It sounded a bit theatrical, and I started laughing. To my relief, she laughed as well. “I gather your name is Anya?”

  “Yes. Pavel, you don’t remember me at all?”

  I desperately searched my memory. Had I met her at one of the wild parties at Lyonechka’s flat? Did we sleep together, and I was too drunk to recall?

  She came to my rescue. “Last spring, I was in a class where you were helping the professor. You taught two classes and graded one of our tests.”

  I remembered, it was one of the introductory quantum physics classes. The regular teaching assistant got pneumonia, and I was asked to help, even though I was not supposed to, these tasks are reserved for graduate students. Trying to buy time, I asked, “What grade did I give you?”

  “You gave me a four, although I deserved a five. I went to complain but lost my nerve at the last moment. You acted so confident in front of a classroom of students.” She laughed. “All right, I see you don’t remember.”

  I admitted my guilt.

  “Sorry. What is your last name? Perhaps I’ll remember then.”

  “After I collect the debt.” Anya lifted on the tiptoes and took my face in her hands. This was not a peck on the lips but a strong, open-mouth kiss. She let go, and we both breathed out.

  As she turned to leave, I called after her, “Your last name?”

  “Weinstein.”

  “Wait, wait…as in…”

  “Yes, I am Yakov’s daughter.”

  Later, when we made love for the first time in the Lyonechka’s apartment, she told me that she had fallen for me in that class. And she gave Semyon a bottle of vodka so he brought her to work on the conveyor.

  “Pavel, are you OK?” Anya’s voice brings me back. “You have that ‘I am a thousand miles away’ look.”

  Back in the present, I don’t know how to begin, so I just say it. “Anya, I saw Jim Morton.”

  Anya jerks her arm out of mine. “Why?”

  “I had a finance question. About someone he knew.”

  “Did you talk about David or me?”

  “No.”

  She walks silently, so I have to continue. “Anya, I am not sure he has plans for David and you.”

  “But you did not talk about us?”

  “No. Just the feeling I got.”

  Anya bites her lower lip. “I am not surprised, I think so myself. I wish David had a real father. Bu
t at least he has me. And I have him.”

  “Do you want to come with me to see Lyonechka? You knew him too.”

  “Pavel, he is the last person I want to see.”

  I feel like an idiot.

  Anya turns to me fiercely. “Pavel, what happened in 1986? Did you love her? Or did you want to go to America?”

  “I loved her. I am sorry for what I did to you. I did not want to hurt you, but back then I could not live without her.”

  Anya nods. There is this romantic streak in Russia that people would excuse anything for love.

  “I guess that’s better. It tormented me for years that I did not know why you left me. Do you still love her?”

  I evade the answer. “We’ve grown apart, separated.” A few weeks ago I would have said, “Yes.” Now it’s Sarah in my dreams, and I am not sure what it means.

  “Anya, what about you?”

  She shrugs. “I told you, I have my son and my father to take care of. I would like to meet someone, but I am content.” She touches my face, kisses me softly on the lips. “A lot of gray in your hair now, Pavel. I don’t think life has been easy on you. Please be careful.”

  Lyonechka’s building has not changed much. Some of the memorial plaques are gone, and the façade has been painted to cover the empty space. The cars in front are now Mercedes and Bentley, not Chaika or ZIL. The building was popular with the elite of Stalin’s apparatchiks. During the day, they would be a few blocks away in Kremlin or in Lubyanka signing death orders, then come home for a pleasant dinner with the family. They had invented the Russian method of mass production: Instead of individual names, death sentences were signed for lists of hundreds. Must have made everything more efficient. Not as efficient at killing as the Germans, but still.

  The apartment, on the other hand, has been remodeled and brought into the 21st century. The paintings have been changed from social realism to abstract. Contemporary Italian furniture. Books mostly gone, but jade vases still there. Except for the view, it could be an apartment in New York.

  Lyonechka aged. We don’t notice aging as much in ourselves unless we look at old photos, but meeting someone you have not seen in twenty years puts things into perspective.

  He tries to overcome the awkwardness by showering me with food and drinks.

  “Pavel, I have already called Osipov and left your phone number. He is a big cheese now, but I am useful to him because of my connections, and I think he’ll call back. I won’t torture you with questions of why you need to talk to him, I am just happy to help an old friend.”

  “Thank you, Lyonechka.”

  “The last time you were here, we were with the American girls,” reminisces Lyonechka. “What a crazy affair it was! I got into quite a bit of hot water, my parents had to really fight to keep the flat. For a couple of years, it was touch-and-go, but then all hell broke loose with Gorbachev and then Yeltsin. You missed an exciting time; it was like the Wild West in the movies. The ‘privatization’ that allowed the insiders and the well-connected to grab the choice properties. Connections were so important…. Disputes being settled with dynamite and bullets…. And the parties….”

  Lyonechka leans forward, a good times smile playing across his face.

  “The parties we had. It was like people that had been restricted and controlled for many years had suddenly been released and told ‘Anything goes!’ Clothes and inhibitions all came off. I remember taking some clients from England to a restaurant that was built like an amusement park with a river. You swim and there are entertainment stations along the way: Food and naked girls.” He shook his head to leave the memories behind. “It could not continue, of course. We settled into a more normal life. But it’s still very different from your time.”

  “Lyonechka, have you ever gotten married?”

  “No, too much temptation,” he laughs. But then his look darkens. He pours himself a glass of vodka, drains it. “What the heck, it’s been twenty years…I have to tell the truth, to unburden myself. Do you know what I am talking about?”

  I shake my head, I have no idea.

  “For years, I was in love with Anya. I know, Lyonechka the life of the party, Lyonechka the Casanova, hopelessly in love with one girl. But she only had eyes for you, and eventually she got you. She brought you here to make love. It was killing me. That whole thing with the Americans twenty years ago…I thought I’d try getting you in trouble, it’d go public, then perhaps Anya would break up with you. How could I have possibly known that you would fall in love with that American girl?”

  “And what happened after?” My voice is hoarse.

  “I tried to talk to Anya, but she would not give me the time of day. She blamed me. I know she still does…. I wanted to help her a few years ago, and she would not even acknowledge me. All this time…. I am sorry, I am sorry,” Lyonechka cries drunken tears.

  I get up and walk out without saying a word.

  I did not expect to hear from Osipov, so I am pleasantly surprised when the phone rings.

  “Mr. Pavel Rostin?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Anatoly Osipov. How can I help you?”

  “Thank you for calling me. I have a few questions about the Russian stock market in 1996-1998. Can we meet?”

  “I understand you worked on Wall Street?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Interesting. Look, my schedule is full for the next few days, but I have a party I have to attend tonight; why don’t you come with me? You can ask your questions there.”

  “Well, it’s awkward, I don’t know anyone…”

  “Not a problem, you are with me. Where are you staying?”

  I explain and am told to be outside in half an hour.

  I wait outside the hotel in my best – and only – Armani suit. It’s a bit wrinkled from being in the carry-on, but I figure the occasion calls for it. I looked up Osipov, and he turned out to be a co-founder and president of the Stroitelny Bank, one of the ten largest in Russia.

  A black G63 Mercedes growls down the street and pulls onto the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians. The driver comes out, looks around appraisingly, zeroes in on me and asks, “Pavel Rostin?” I nod, and he ushers me into the back seat.

  The man already there offers his hand. “Anatoly Osipov.”

  “Pavel Rostin. Thank you for meeting me.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Osipov is in his mid-thirties, immaculately groomed and dressed, full head of dark blond hair, jovial full lips, a nicely shaped nose. A slightly unnatural tightness of the skin suggests help from plastic surgery. There is another passenger in the front seat, but there is no introduction; I assume he is a bodyguard.

  Osipov came to the university in 1989, knows nothing about my famous-at-the-time departure, and finds the story amusing. Osipov himself did not bother with physics after getting his diploma, but started a bank with a well-connected partner. He just wanted to make money and that meant finance, not physics. As he casually explains, they were “small potatoes” until the 1998 Russian financial crisis. Their bank was “well-positioned” in his words, benefited from acquiring assets of some of the less fortunate rivals, and that propelled the Stroitelny Bank into the rarified air of top Russian banks. I can sense that I am just a curiosity for him as he questions me about the financial models we’ve been using.

  As Osipov finishes describing his ascent, the G63 pulls up in front of a red four-story brick building. There is a small crowd gathered by the door. The driver and the bodyguard part the human sea for us, past a vicious-looking bouncer, and we are escorted inside, while Osipov explains that we are in the Moscow’s newest club, the Diaghilev.

  The music is pumping, and so is the dance crowd which mostly consists of girls in their early twenties sheathed into Valentino and Bulgari micro-dresses and high-heels or knee-high boots. In front of us a man in a silk black cravat and a burgundy velvet coat materializes out of thin air. His shaved head shines like a halo.

  “Tol
ik!” he wraps his arms around Osipov as if it’s his long-lost brother.

  “Misha,” responds Osipov, and introduces me. “Pavel Rostin, from New York.”

  “Welcome to the club, Pavel,” sings Misha and motions us to a private loggia on the side. Two willowy girls in shining dresses are already there with kisses for Tolik and demure “Tanya,” “Olya” introductions for me. A bottle of champagne is chilling on a table. Tolik and I squeeze inside the loggia, the bodyguard and the driver, who probably doubles as another bodyguard, take their seats at the opening. Osipov tells the girls to go dancing, and they reluctantly listen, but don’t go far and start writhing and bumping right in front of us.

  Osipov pours us champagne and hungrily follows the girls with his eyes. With some effort, he tears himself away and turns to me. “So, Pavel, what do you want to know?”

  “Anatoly, do you remember John Brockton?”

  Osipov gives me a blank look.

  I try to refresh his memory. “He was an American fund manager who operated in Moscow from 1995 to 1998.”

  Osipov shrugs. “Sounds vaguely familiar, but there were so many people here. I am afraid I don’t remember him.”

  “How about Avtotorgoviy Securities, do you know about them?”

  Osipov brightens. “Yes, I remember. It was a brokerage firm, I had some dealings with them. It was run by two brothers, Victor and Gennady Crossman. They took a hit in the 1998 crisis, closed the company, started a new one, I don’t recall the name. They were two hustlers.”

  “Where can I find them?”

  “At some cemetery.” Osipov enjoys the effect for a moment, then adds, “It was in the newspapers back in 2001. They were eating in a restaurant at a window table, and a sniper took them both out. After that, window tables became less popular.”

  I swallow icy champagne, and the bubbles hit my sinuses. “Do you know who killed them?”

  “No, like most professional murders it has never been solved. Must have been a real expert, though. Two quick head shots.”

  “Is there anybody left who worked with them?”

  Osipov shrugs. “I would not know.”

  He is distracted now; the girls dancing in front of the loggia must have gotten frustrated from the lack of attention, pulled down their tops, and started tonguing each other. Osipov inhales deeply, enjoying the show.

  Misha’s shaved head appears. He brings two new visitors, interrupting the revelry. One is a man in his sixties, trim, bold, wearing sunglasses and a three-day stubble. He is dressed casually in a black t-shirt, gray jacket with rolled up sleeves, and khakis. An oversized gold Rolex and a gold chain complete the picture. He is followed by a huge man in his late twenties, closely cropped hair, the broken nose of a boxer. The older man pats one of the girls on the bottom, squeezes the other’s tit, and makes his way into the loggia.

  “Hi, Tolik.” He gives me a questioning look.

  “Hi Alexei,” answers Osipov. “This is Pavel Rostin from New York; we were just finishing.”

  “Pavel,” the man acknowledges me.

  “Say, Alexei,” Osipov has an idea, “do you remember the Crossman brothers?”

  “Oh, sure. I did not do them,” laughs Alexei, “but I’d love to know who did. We can use a man like that.”

  “Do you know anybody from their organization who is still around?”

  “Why would you want to know?”

  “It’s not for me, it’s for Pavel here.”

  Alexei lowers his sunglasses, looks at me questioningly, and I feel uneasy. I try to explain: “I am looking into the activities of John Brockton, an American who was here in the 1990s. He used the Crossman’s brokerage firm.”

  Alexei turns to Osipov. “Tolik, why are you helping him?”

  “I don’t know,” stammers Osipov, taken aback. “We had the same professor. He works on Wall Street, he is not involved in our business.”

  Alexei continues to stare at Osipov:

  “The Crossman brothers are dead. Brockton is dead. You bring this guy here. You don’t know who he works for and he is asking questions about the murders?”

  “I can pay,” I offer.

  Alexei’s dirty look tells me it was a mistake.

  “How much would you pay for your life?” says Alexei, his eyes drilling into mine. I feel trapped, jammed behind the table, unable to get out.

  The man with the broken nose leans on the table, Osipov slides away from me. The girls stop their gyrations.

  As if sensing trouble, Misha appears again. This time he is accompanied by a slight man in a dark blue suit and a red tie.

  “Gentlemen, is everyone having a good time? Should I send more girls to your table?” Misha soothes.

  Alexei turns back, glances at Misha, then lingers on Misha’s companion. It feels like some kind of non-verbal exchange is taking place.

  After a few tense seconds, Alexei smiles dismissively and pushes his sunglasses up to cover his eyes. “Sure, why not?” He turns to me. “I guess Americans trying to find dirt on each other. What do I care? My money guy, he’s been around, he might know someone.”

  Misha visibly relaxes and disappears together with the slight man in a suit. Osipov slides back, the girls start moving again.

  Alexei turns away, produces a mobile phone, and punches a speed dial. The girls in front are devouring each other, Osipov’s attention is back on them, his hands digging into the table. Alexei turns back. “Anyone have a pen and a piece of paper?”

  I always carry a pen, an old habit. I produce it, together with my Grand Castle Rock business card. Alexei writes something on the back of the card.

  “My man says this guy ran operations for Crossman,” Alexei says. “He might still be alive.”

  He looks at Osipov, who comes out of the girls-induced trance and turns to me. “Hey, Pavel, Alexei and I have to discuss some business. Kolya will take you back to your hotel.”

  Kolya must be the driver’s name because the man gets up. I follow him out, giving a last look at the dancing crowd. Russia has changed since my time. It’s like the people whose natural instincts had been suppressed for decades had the inhibitions removed, and now they have overreacted to the other extreme.

  The G63 drops me off in front of the hotel. Kolya grunts, “You were lucky tonight; Alexei can be capricious” and does not bother to open the door. When I get to my room, I carefully get the card from my pocket and look at the back. It has a name “Boris Shmulin” with a Moscow phone number. It’s late, but I decide to call anyway. The phone rings for a long time, my hope diminishing with each ring.

  “Allo?”

  “Allo, Mr. Shmulin?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is Pavel Rostin, I am looking for information on Avtotorgoviy Securities.”

  I hear breathing on the other end, then:

  “How did you get my number?”

  “Anatoly Osipov introduced me to a man called Alexei; I don’t know his last name.”

  “Tall, bald, in his sixties, hooded eyes?”

  “He wore sunglasses, so I did not see his eyes, but otherwise yes.”

  This is not exactly true, Alexei lowered his sunglasses when it seemed like he was going to kill me. But I don’t remember what they looked like except it felt like a cobra staring at me just prior to a deadly strike.

  Shmulin muses. “A banker and a gangster. The new Russia. I don’t think I should be talking to you.”

  But he does not hang up, so I rush to keep the connection open. “Mr. Shmulin, I won’t give your name to anyone, and I’ll pay for your time.”

  “The information may not do you much good,” retorts Shmulin, but he still does not hang up. After a pause, he adds, “It’s your business. Come here tomorrow morning and bring $500.”

  I take down the address. It’s in the Zemlyanoy Val area. I feel elated; I found a trail.

  Monday, June 19

  I take the metro in the morning. Today is a weekday, the metro carries harried com
muters. We are jammed together, people staring straight ahead. I arrive at Chkalovskaya station and emerge into a bright sunlight. Even on Monday morning, the walk to Shmulin’s place feels dangerous: the area is populated with street urchins and prostitutes. Drunks are already out in force. I am sure people have been attacked here for much less than the $1,000 cash in my pocket. I do my best to look like a local and walk briskly, avoiding eye contact. It is only a ten-minute walk, but I am sweating at the end.

  Shmulin’s apartment is in one of the eight-story communist-era monstrosities that dot the suburban landscape. I step around a half-dozen young people sitting on the steps in front, climb to the fourth floor and ring the bell at the number 15. I hear someone shuffling to the door, the peephole goes dark, then at least three different locks click. The door opens by about one inch, still latched on a chain. An eye appears at about my shoulder level.

  “Pavel?”

  “Yes, Mr. Shmulin. Can I come in?”

  The eye studies me for about a minute, then a nasal voice pronounces, “Well, come in.”

  Boris Shmulin must have been short even in an earlier age. Now he was thin, stooped and barely five feet tall. Despite this being a warm day, he is dressed in a red fleece coat, a flannel shirt, sporting pants with stripes on the sides, and slippers. A wrinkled face is covered by bottle-thick glasses and a few white wisps of hair are plastered across his bold head. Shmulin gestures to follow him and shuffles down a dark corridor to what looks like a small living room with a table, three chairs, a worn-out sofa, a TV set, and a bookcase filled partly with books, partly with photos, vases, and goblets.

  Shmulin sits on one of the chairs and nods at me to sit in another. Without asking me, he pours two glasses of water from the pitcher on the table. He carefully pushes one glass in my direction, I automatically take it.

  We look at each other, and then he clears his throat. “I am afraid I must ask for the money upfront. Moscow is an expensive city.”

  “Of course,” I count out three $100 bills.

  “I told you $500,” hisses Shmulin.

  “And I have $200 more for you. But I have to see if the information is worth it.”

  Shmulin considers me with suspicion and pockets the bills. He narrows his eyes, stares at me for a while and says,

  “What did you say your last name was?”

  “Rostin.”

  “Are you related to Vladimir Rostin?”

  This is so unexpected that my hand jerks and I spill some of the water.

  “He was my father. Did you know him?”

  Shmulin looks with annoyance at his now wet tablecloth.

  “Your father sat in the same very chair.”

  “When was he here?”

  “Six, seven months ago…I remember it was cold.”

  “Tell me what you told my father.”

  “Why not ask him?”

  “He is dead.”

  Shmulin’s eyes narrow: “How?”

  “He killed himself.”

  I decide not to mention that it might have been a murder, with me as the prime suspect.

  Shmulin bites his lower lip, chews on it and says:

  “I don’t think I want to talk to you. Too dangerous.”

  “Look, it was a long time since you’ve met with my father and nothing happened to you, right?”

  Shmulin shakes his head, “Even if I got lucky once, does not mean I should tempt fate.”

  I play the greed card: “Give me back my money then.”

  Shmulin stands up and pulls a small gun out of the right pocket of his fleece coat:

  “I don’t think so. And I’ll take the rest of what you have.”

  He smiles and stands tall, at least for his height.

  I remain seated, trying to think. Shmulin knew the gangster from last night.

  “Alexei sent me to you, he is not going to like it when I tell him you robbed me.”

  “You don’t know Alexei!” spits out Shmulin but his pupils dilate behind thick glasses and his body stiffens visibly.

  I press on: “He gave me your number. I told you that last night.”

  Shmulin breathes heavily, shoulders sag, smile now completely gone. He puts the gun back in his pocket, sits down dejectedly:

  “All right, I am sorry. I became anxious when I heard about your father.”

  “Don’t do this again,” I try to stop my hands from shaking. Thankfully, he can’t see them under the table. “Now, what did you tell my father?”

  Shmulin scratches his bald head. “Your father was looking into activities of a certain John Brockton. Are you familiar with that name?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Let me start back in 1993. I am an accountant by profession, always been good with numbers. The Soviet Union has fallen, we have a free market, which means the prices are going through the roof, official salaries don’t buy much and are not even paid regularly. Everything for sale, everything a commodity. Mini-skirted young women line up the Tverskaya Street selling their bodies. Army veterans advertize themselves as killers-for-hire. What are you going to do? You have to hustle.”

  Shmulin theatrically spreads his arms to demonstrate that hustling was indeed the only choice.

  “That’s how I’ve met Victor and Gennady Crossman. They were doing black market stuff for years, now they found themselves a new playground. People like that thrive in markets that are either rigged or undeveloped. They speculated in currency until they figured that the stock market is a more lucrative game. There was no such thing as a stock market in the Soviet Union, so it’s all new with no rules, nobody knew what things are worth. The government decided to privatize everything, so in late 1992 they issued 10,000 rubles vouchers to all citizens. People had no idea what to do with these vouchers. The Crossman brothers started by standing on the street with bottles of vodka and trading for vouchers. Then they hired others to do it for them, open kiosks for vouchers trading. By 1994, they accumulated shares in a number of companies. That was the year they hired me to run their operations while they focused on “marketing” as they called it. They were advertising Avtotorgoviy Securities as a brokerage firm, but basically they were looking for ways to hustle their customers. If there was demand for a certain stock, they would sell it at a small profit to one of the accounts they controlled, and then mark it up for a real sale. All their profits would go to a company they set up in Cyprus to avoid taxes.”

  Shmulin stopped, pulled out a handkerchief from the pocket of the fleece coat, and blew his nose.

  “Excuse me. As I said, they were small time. Until they’ve met John Brockton, I think it was in 1995. Brockton had just arrived in Moscow. He was this brash, tall, blond, baby-faced American who dove into the local party scene. The girls loved him; he was known to take home two or three of them at a time. Brockton wanted to purchase a block of shares in a company where Crossman’s accumulated a significant stake. They tried to hustle him, but he figured it out. I think Brockton already knew exactly the scheme that he wanted to run, he needed the right Russian partners to do it.”

  “The scheme was to corner the market in some of the stocks?” I asked.

  “Kind of, but it required some finesse and sophistication. The way that the Russian privatization was structured, only about half of the shares were public; the rest were owned by the insiders. So in some cases you wanted the insiders in on the scheme. Additionally, Brockton’s fund had to trade with multiple parties, otherwise the auditors would quickly figure out what’s going on. It took them a few months to set things up, but by mid-1996 the scheme was in place. Besides the Brockton’s fund, three “investment companies” were involved: One was controlled by the Crossman brothers, one by Arkady Khmarko, and one by Evgeny Voronezhsky.”

  “Voronezhsky?” I could not help my reaction.

  “Yes. Why, do you know him?”

  “No, just the name sounded familiar. Sorry, please continue.”

  Shmulin noisily drinks water. “You must understand tha
t these “investment companies” were not empty shells; they had to have financial backing, access to capital. Let’s say you want to raise the price of a stock from five to ten dollars a share. To make it look legitimate, you have to create decent trading volume. You put a million shares into play to raise the price to $6, so an investment company puts down six million. Over a period of a couple of months, the shares get taken over by another company at a seven dollars a share, then another at an eight dollars. After six months, the shares are back where they started but now they are trading at ten. It’s oversimplified, but you get the picture. And when you have a dozen different stocks in play, you have to manage the cash flow, the inventory. Everyone was making money as long as Brockton’s American investors were buying into his fund. Which they were, in 1996 and 1997 the foreign investors could not get enough of Russian equities. And Brockton himself was being paid based on the fund’s performance. Even I, a lowly operations manager, was doing well and could afford to take dates to the Serebryany Vek restaurant, party with the rich. I knew the dates were not there for my looks, but still. It was a beautiful thing. Until it all went wrong in 1998.”

  “What happened?”

  Shmulin stares at me, says nothing.

  I repeat: “What happened?”

  “I told you $500. Do you think I’ll finish the story without seeing the rest of the money?”

  I hand him the remaining $200. Shmulin smiles in satisfaction and continues:

  “The first cracks appeared in late 1997 when the Russian stock market plunged almost 20 percent in one day. The partners got nervous, but Brockton reassured them that this is a normal process for an emerging market and that the investment flow from the U.S. would go on. He probably knew that the party was ending, but he did not care; he wanted to get his bonus for the year. The market recovered, and the business continued. In May of 1998, the market started dropping again. The Russian government had been funding itself by taking on more and more short-term debt, and its financial position became unsustainable. People started running scared, but in mid-July the International Monetary Fund, IMF, announced a massive bailout for Russia. Many thought that the crisis was over, but this turned out to be only a short respite. In August, the markets started tanking again, then George Soros wrote in the Financial Times that ‘the Russian financial meltdown has reached the terminal phase.’ In mid-August the ruble has been officially devalued and everything collapsed.”

  Shmulin falls silent, tired from his speech. After a minute, I prod him. “And what about Brockman?”

  “Brockton disappeared in mid-July. He would sometimes take off for a week without a notice, taking some of his girlfriends to the French Riviera or skiing in the Alps; nobody was worried until early August when rumors started circulating that he left for good. I think he sensed a few months earlier that the party was ending and carefully prepared his departure. Now remember that the scheme worked only as long as everyone participated. With Brockton leaving, his fund was out of the game. The Crossman brothers and Khmarko smelled the rat and pushed the securities they were holding to Voronezhsky’s company. After the IMF announced the bailout package in July, Voronezhsky must have decided that things were safe for a while. So he was out of the country on vacation. When he came back, he found himself with most of the securities that were in the pipeline and that he could not sell to the fund any longer. As the crisis hit, these securities collapsed – they were artificially inflated and there was no market for them outside of the scheme. Voronezhsky lost tens of millions of dollars that belonged to the mafia that bankrolled him.”

  “What happened?”

  “Voronezhsky killed himself in late August of 1998.”

  “What about others?”

  “The Crossman brothers and Khmarko were not completely wiped out, but they lost a lot of money in the crisis. I lost my job and most of my savings, so now I have to live here.”

  “I know that Victor and Gennady Crossman were killed in 2001. Is that the end of the story?”

  Shmulin cackles, it took me a few seconds to realize that he is laughing.

  “Not quite, not quite. You see, Arkady Khmarko went back to his native Ukraine, started doing well there, but in the summer of 2002, he died in a boating accident. His high-speed boat just exploded as he was driving it on the river.”

  “You continued to follow him?”

  “Not really, but it was in the news. At the time I thought that Khmarko had an accident and the Crossman brothers must have crossed somebody they should have not crossed. But then a year later I read that John Brockton gets killed. This had a lot of publicity, his girlfriend was a Russian TV person at one time. So I said, ‘Boris, there are too many coincidences here.’ I decided to look up Voronezhsky’s second in command, the man who was ‘minding the store’ so to speak during that critical time in the last week of July of 1998.”

  Shmulin pauses dramatically, and I play along. “And?”

  “Took some digging, but turns out he was killed during home invasion robbery in 2000. Right here, in Moscow.”

  “So pretty much everyone who was involved in the scheme is now dead?”

  “Pretty much,” confirms Shmulin, “except for me.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No. If they wanted to kill me, they would have done it a long time ago. They were going after people in charge. I am more afraid of real estate shysters that kill old people for their apartments. It’s a lucrative business in Moscow.”

  “Who are ‘they?”

  Shmulin cackles again. “Your father asked the same question. Probably someone in the mafia that lost money in the scheme. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.” He gets up, signaling that the conversation is over.

  I remain seated, and the eyes behind thick glasses get anxious. “One more question. Please sit down.”

  Shmulin obediently lowers himself back into the chair. “Yes?”

  “I need to find a person. I have a name. I know he used to work for the KGB.”

  Shmulin rubs his chin. “Well, it’s possible. Like any Russian business, we had to have a ‘roof,’ a strong protector within the government. Otherwise, between the mafia and the government bureaucrats, you’d be out of business within a month. Our ‘roof’ was fairly well placed within the Federal Security Service, the FSB. He is retired, but he can still find almost anyone. But there is a price.”

  I know what he is going to say before he says it.

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  “OK.”

  “Who are you looking for?”

  “I am looking for Konstantin Mershov; he moved from Leningrad to Moscow to work for the KGB in the 1970s.”

  “The money upfront.”

  “No, not upfront. When you deliver the information, I’ll pay.”

  Shmulin whines. “I can’t do it this way. You may disappear and then I am on the hook for the money.”

  I stand up.

  “Fine, give me a hundred dollars upfront.”

  “How do I know you won’t pocket it and do nothing?”

  “You know where I live.”

  I think about it, then give him another hundred dollar bill and a card with my mobile phone number.

  As I walk downstairs, four of the youngsters that were sitting outside are now waiting for me at the door out of the building. They block my way and one of them pulls out a blade. “Give us the money!”

  The blade is inches from my throat. Before I can react, I hear a voice behind me. “Let him pass!”

  Out of the corner of my eye I see two large people coming from my right; they must have been in the building, hiding in the shadows. One of the youngsters turns to them, is immediately thrown to the floor, and hollers in pain. A melee begins. I rush to the door and run out into the street. My heart slows down only by the time I get to the metro station. Was someone deliberately protecting me, or did I get caught in a turf war?

  When I get back to the hotel, I redraw the diagram.

  I ma
ke the “Grand Castle Rock fund” circle, with Martin Shoffman, the New Treasury Island ELP, plus Greg Voron with his Eastern Cottonwood private equity fund under it. Beneath the last entry, I write Hardrock Home Security.

  Under the “Brockton-Streltsova’s murder” circle, I put Brockton and Streltsova. Then I add Crossmans, Khmarko, Voronezhsky – all dead. I write Hardrock Home Security and draw a line to the company’s mention under the other circle.

  Below the “Streltsova’s investigation” circle, I put Streltsova’s name and “Nemtsov? Nemschev?” from Streltsova’s notes. Again, I draw a line to the other Streltsova’s mention.

  In the last corner, I put Major Vakunin, investigator Pemin, Petr Saratov and Sam Baker.

  In the middle, I put my father and draw arrows to the “Brockton-Streltsova’s murder” and “Streltsova’s investigation” circles.

  I stare at the diagram and make a dotted line between Voron and Voronezhsky. When people move to another country, they often shorten their name. Voronezhsky was in finance, Voron is in finance. It’s a questionable connection, more of a coincidence.

  After finishing the diagram, I search the Internet for Evgeny Voronezhsky. Nothing, zero, zilch. Did Shmulin lie to me? I try Arkady Khmarko and Google returns his obituary following an August 2002 boating accident on Dnieper, some tidbits about the trading company he ran in Kiev, and a little about the investment company he had in Moscow.

  My phone rings at three in the afternoon. A gruff smoker’s voice says, “Pavel Rostin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shmulin told me you are looking to find someone.”

  “That’s right. Who am I speaking with?”

  “There is no need for you to know my name. You can call me Ivan if you like. Shmulin gave me a name: Konstantin Mershov. Said he worked for KGB in Moscow back in the 1970s. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what do you want to know: Who he does business with, who he fucks, where is he keeping his money?”

  “Just his phone number.”

  “That’s it?” the voice conveys disappointment. “Oh well, that will still cost you.”

  “Shmulin told me five hundred, and he already took a hundred.”

  “Ivan” starts guffawing which sounds like a big dog barking. “What an old shyster…just getting the phone number is only two fifty. I bet he asked for the money upfront.”

  I admit that Shmulin did so.

  “He would have kept half. At least you only gave him a hundred. Where are you staying?”

  “The Courtyard on Voznesenskiy.”

  “Hmm…It should take you about forty minutes to get here.”

  “Where’s ‘here?’”

  “I’ll tell you. Expect my call in an hour or so.”

  “Wait,” I say, “I was going to pay more anyway, so how about checking one more name?”

  “I already like doing business with you. What name?”

  “Probably Andrei Rostin, but could be Andrei Leontsev.”

  “Probably Rostin? Your relative?”

  “My parents adopted a boy whose parents perished in the siege of Leningrad, but I’ve never met him and have not known about him until a few days ago. It’s possible he’s been sent to the Gulag forty years ago.”

  “I’ll see what I can find and call you later.” “Ivan” hangs up.

  “Ivan” does call close to five and tells me to meet him in the Diamonds gentlemen’s club on Prospekt Vernadskogo. I try to suggest that perhaps the place might be loud, but he cuts me off. “We don’t need to talk much. You bring the money, I’ll enjoy the girls.”

  “How would you recognize me?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Be there by six.”

  I debate whether to take a metro or get a cab, but the club turns out to be just off the Yugo-Zapadnaya metro station, the last stop on the Sokolnicheskaya line, and I go with the metro.

  I walk over to Okhotny Ryad station. Sokolnicheskaya was the first metro line in Moscow dating to 1935. Unlike the later Stalinist architecture monstrosities, the early stations have a nice classical feel to them. Last time I was here, it was named after Karl Marx, although no self-respecting Muscovite would call it that. The station was showing its age and the wear and tear of millions of people passing through it every year.

  On a weekday rush hour, secretaries, engineers, businessmen, artists, and schoolchildren streamed through the metro. Moving with the flow, I squeeze myself into a tram and settle into a rhythmic movement as the train makes its way along the line. With the connections worn out, the lights flicker and sometimes go out for a few seconds. During one of such moments, I felt a searching hand probing my back pocket. When I look behind me, a young girl quickly turns away. Thankfully, my wallet and the envelope with $500 are inside a buttoned jacket.

  The tram is still full when we get to Yugo-Zapadnaya, the last stop. I’ve never been at this station before but it is a typical nondescript 1960s construction. Was this blandness of pillars, straight angles, and low ceilings better than the socialist classicism that Stalin treasured? I am not sure. The old escalator makes a clicking noise as it raises the throng of commuters to the surface.

  The Diamond club is only a five-minute walk from the station, and I arrive exactly at six. The club turns out to be a curious combination of a strip joint and a sauna. I hesitate which way to go but lacking more precise directions opt for a more conventional strip joint.

  The scantily dressed waitress assures me that I can apply the $15 entry fee to the sauna later if I choose to do so. “Many visitors start here, but when they find the girl they like they go to the sauna with her. There are private sauna rooms and massage service. Would you like to sit by the stage for the best view?”

  “No, I will be meeting someone so I would prefer a more private spot.”

  “Couches are generally reserved for groups of four,” she demurs, but a $20 bill quickly secures for me something resembling a small red sofa away from the stage. The waitress hands me the menu. “We have salads, hot and cold appetizers, shashliks, soups, cocktails. Private dances are only $30. I am available for private dances, too; you just give me a one song notice so I can change.” She lowers her eyes coyly. “My name is Tanya, I am a good dancer, and I’ll let you touch my tits.”

  “Thank you, Tanya, I’ll just have a beer for now. Heineken if you have it.”

  Tanya sways away on tall platform shoes. She looks like a first-year student that just arrived in Moscow from the provinces. I’ve been gone for too long, and this switch from a false puritanism to wanton sexuality is still jarring to me.

  It’s early in the evening and the place is half empty, but layers of smoke already hang in the air. I am not used to smoking anymore, and my eyes start watering. Through the haze I can see a brunette in micro-fatigues and a Soviet Army hat rubbing herself against the pole on the stage. Then I become aware of a large figure moving toward me from the direction of the bar.

  “Pavel?”

  “Ivan” is in his late sixties, large, red-faced, with short buzz-cut hair and a bulbous nose crisscrossed by a thin net of red lines.

  “Ivan?”

  He sits next to me, and the couch complains with a groan. The waitress appears with my Heineken, he grabs her ass and says, “Tanyechka, my dear soul, bring me a bottle of vodka and a plate of pelmeni.”

  “Oh, Uncle Vanya, don’t pinch.” She giggles. “Will you hire me for a dance later?”

  “Of course, little love, of course.”

  After she leaves, I laugh. “So your name is really Ivan?”

  “No, but that’s how they know me here.”

  “How did you recognize me?”

  “Ivan” smiles and punches me in the shoulder. “You look like a man from a small village that has never seen such a place before.”

  “I lived in Moscow for eight years…” I shrug. “…but it’s a different city now.”

  “It sure is. I just wish I was younger.” He sighs. “This is a countr
y for young people. But I am a cheerful man.” He brightens. “I am grateful that I can afford to come here and enjoy the company of pretty girls.”

  Another girl shows up with a bottle of Stoli, a plate of pickles and two small glasses.

  He pinches her as well. “Svetlana, little darling, how are you?”

  “Good, Uncle Vanya.” She kisses him on the cheek. “You’ll have me for a dance later, right?”

  “Ivan” pours two glasses. “Drink with me, Pavel, I don’t trust people that drink foreign beer.”

  He gulps his vodka, exhales, wipes his lips, and crunches a pickle. I drink half a glass, not willing to risk more.

  “Did you bring the money?” “Ivan” suddenly is all business.

  I hand him the envelope.

  “How much is there?”

  “Five hundred. Please count.”

  “No need to. Not in your interest to cheat me.” He gets a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Computers are great. A dozen years ago, I would have had to show my face in the archives, search through the old files, pay people to forget I was there. Now, I just pay people for access and login with one of their accounts. Konstantin Mershov was a colonel in the FSB. He quit and moved back to his hometown of St. Petersburg in 1999. His phone number is current, so he must still be alive.” “Ivan” pours himself another glass, fills mine to the rim. After repeating the procedure and finishing another pickle, he says. “A fascinating story about Andrei Rostin. Thankfully, the KGB kept good records and preserved them. Your parents never told you about him?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm. He was supposed to be evacuated from Leningrad in 1942, but I guess they did not want to send him away to an orphanage. At the end of the war, he had to go to school and the authorities would have taken him away, so your parents adopted him. They were ridiculously young themselves, and they take on this kid to take care of. Crazy!”

  Tanya shows up with a steaming bowl of pelmeni and two plates.

  “Ivan” loads pelmeni on both plates. “Eat, Pavel. You don’t want to go back drunk; people in this area will kill you for ten dollars. Food here is crap, but pelmeni not too bad.”

  He swallows a couple and drinks another glass of vodka. His face reddens even more.

  “So in 1955 Andrei gets drafted, and a year later he is in Hungary crushing the uprising there. You are too young to remember, but after Stalin’s death, Hungarians thought freedom was within reach. So we sent the tanks to liberate them from themselves. Except that Andrei came back in handcuffs, arrested for insubordination. Normally they would have just shot him, but someone interfered, and he got 10 years instead. He served seven and was allowed to return in 1963. Instead of sitting quietly, he became involved with anti-Soviet writers, was active in samizdat, propagating prohibited works by Solzhenitsyn and others. He was arrested for subversive activities in 1966 and sent back to the camps.”

  “Ivan” refills his plate and pours more vodka for both of us. I do another half a glass. I drank less than half of what he did, but my head is starting to swim.

  “There was nothing from your parents in that file until 1968. That’s when there was a record of a letter from your father denouncing Andrei. That’s the system we lived in. Children were denouncing their parents, parents their children. Our national hero, Pavlik Morozov, was celebrated for denouncing his father to the authorities.”

  “And where is Andrei now?”

  “Ufa, an oil town in the southeast. The second time Andrei served the whole ten years, but this time he did not come back to St. Petersburg. I wrote down his number for you.”

  “Ivan” falls silent, the story must have had an impact.

  I need one more thing from him. “Shmulin told me you provided a ‘roof’ for their operations, is that true?”

  “Yes, back in the 1990s.”

  “So you knew Evgeny Voronezhsky?”

  “That I did. I know the story. Why do you ask?”

  “Because when I checked the Internet, I couldn’t find his obituary.”

  “So what? It’s been eight years.”

  “I am curious. I can go check newspapers archives, but perhaps you remember: Did he leave a family behind?”

  “He had a wife and a son.”

  “Do you remember their names?”

  “Wife’s, no. I think the son’s name was Grisha. He was going to university somewhere out of town, perhaps St. Petersburg.”

  Grisha is diminutive for Grigoriy. When Americanized, that would be Greg. Now the connection between my failed hedge fund and the Brockton and Streltsova’s murder is suddenly not so tenuous.

  “Ivan” finishes his vodka and pelmeni, waves to Svetlana who is circling nearby and stands up unsteadily.

  “You’ve got your money’s worth. Pay for the food and drinks, and Misha will see you to the metro station; we don’t want you robbed on the way.”

  A younger man tears himself away from the bar. I did not realize he’d been watching us all this time.

  Back in the metro, heading to the center. We must be going against traffic, the train is not full. An inebriated soldier tries to strike a conversation with a girl listening to her iPod and demonstratively ignoring him, a gang of five young men going to party downtown, a babushka, an old man wearing a tweed gray flat cap and a dark blue Adidas tracksuit. The young men noisily crowd him, he moves next to me, clears his throat and quietly asks, “Are you visiting Moscow?”

  “Yes,” I decide to respond. “But I lived here twenty years ago as a student.”

  “Ah,” he whispers, “So you remember how things used to be.”

  He nods to the young people that chased him away.

  “Young people knew how to behave, to be quiet and respectful. But if you ask me, it all went downhill after Stalin died. They would not do that under Stalin.”

  “Did he not kill millions?”

  “When you cut trees, chips fly! Stalin made this country great.” The old man is practically spitting saliva in his excitement. “He showed the world what Russia can do; they were all afraid of us. Now too much freedom, no respect inside the country, foreigners don’t respect us, all these Americans, Germans, Chechens, Jews.”

  A strange combination, I think. America is the superpower. Germany, well, two brutal wars will leave bad feelings. Blaming Jews seems to be our tradition, the small tribe being almost a mythical superhuman force. But Chechens? I guess Chechens now arose to a similar status. There’s our dirty little secret: for all of our conquests, for all of our space missions, for all of our nukes, Russia has the worst inferiority complex I have ever seen in a country. I think that’s the real reason why we like strongmen to lord over us and to tell us lies about our greatness. And that’s why the small tribes we can’t subdue take on these absurd, unreal qualities.

  I was born after his death, but for as long as I remember, Stalin was both a monster and a hero. Hero, because he turned our backward country into an industrial and military power and “won the war.” Monster, because of the Great Terror he unleashed in the 1930s. As if he was a perfectly nice guy before and then suddenly went off the rails. Somehow people like the Adidas tracksuited-man next to me conveniently overlook that Stalin started murdering well before the purges. Back during the Civil War, he directed killings of thousands, burning villages near Tsaritsyn, the city that was later named after him, the famous Stalingrad. Then millions died in collectivization efforts he ordered. The Boss, Khozyain, as his gang referred to him. Because that’s what he was: a smart, ruthless, paranoid, immoral, revengeful, psychopathic killer, a mafia boss that surrounded himself with rapists and alcoholics. But he made others afraid of us, and that made him “great.” Will we ever get to the point where greatness is not measured by the ability to bomb someone to smithereens?

  “Sorry, can’t agree with you here,” I reply to the Adidas man. He glares at me and moves away.

  I think my business in Moscow is done for now. I don’t feel safe. I call to make a reservation for
a flight to St. Petersburg. The first available seat is in the afternoon tomorrow.

  Tuesday, June 20

  Since I have time in the morning, I pull out Suzy Yamamoto’s file and research companies on the Eastern Cottonwood private equity list. Who is this Greg Voron and what is he doing?

  A couple of successful sales of public enterprises. First, an Internet e-commerce company, then a failing oil company. Both were purchased in 2002 following the market crash and flipped a few years later for a nifty profit. The rest of the Eastern Cottonwood purchases remained private. Already mentioned Hardrock Home Security company, bought in 2002. A home lender, a home builder, and a private building materials company all in 2003, all based in California. A curious combination. The last one is MRA Technologies, a semiconductor “system-on-the-chip” (SoC) company. That’s a fairly recent and expensive acquisition. The company makes chips for secure communications and networking and was struggling against larger competitors. But the recent news indicate some large wins, especially for portable devices and mobile phones.

  Something does not feel right. In a booming market, I would expect a private equity firm to flip the companies quickly, take them public and re-invest into another acquisition. But only two companies were sold, the rest remained private. And then in 2002 and 2003, well before they had a chance to sell anything, the fund invested over a billion dollars. Someone staked a lot of money to the Eastern Cottonwood private equity fund, but who? Detailed disclosures are not required for a fund with a small number of investors.

  No, things don’t quite add up with Mr. Voron. I am assembling a puzzle of hundreds of pieces without knowing what it looks like.

  Before leaving for the airport, I dial the number in Ufa that “Ivan” gave me.

  A wheezy voice of someone who must have difficulty breathing answers, “Allo?”

  “Allo, I am trying to reach Andrei Rostin?”

  There is a pause, then tentative, “Pavel?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought I’d hear from you. Where are you?”

  “I am in Moscow, about to leave for St. Petersburg.”

  “I’ll come see you there.”

  “Are you sure? I can come to Ufa.”

  “No. Peter is the place. There are direct flights now, and it’s only three hours. I’ll be there tomorrow if I can get on the morning flight.”

  He called the city “Peter,” the name used by locals and old-timers.

  “Let me give you the address.”

  I realize my stupidity even before the words are completely out. Andrei replies gently, “I know the address.”

  I feel strange hanging up. I just spoke with someone who is my brother, even if not by blood. Someone whom I’ve never met before, whose existence was unknown to me. Someone who was with my parents during those horrible days of the blockade. I will meet him tomorrow. I don’t know what to expect or to ask.

  For the second time in two weeks, I land in the Pulkovo Airport. During the war, that’s where the frontline was. The nearby Pulkovo Heights were occupied by the Nazis. They had their long-range artillery there. The shell that hit my parents’ apartment on Liteyniy Prospekt in that brutal December 1941 was probably fired from here. I half expect to be stopped and arrested right here in Pulkovo, but nobody pays any attention to me.

  I get to Malaya Sadovaya in the late afternoon. Despite this being a workday, the street is full of people, locals and tourists. I climb the stairs, open the door. The flat is exactly as I left it. Well, almost exactly. Someone was here. One of the chairs is placed at an angle. I am compulsive about pushing chairs all the way in under the table. It drove Karen nuts.

  I spend an hour going through things, to make sure I have not missed anything on my previous visit. I now know why my father was reading all these books on offshore banking and money laundering. I look for notes in the margins, anything that would give me extra clues, but come up empty.

  The kitchen window overlooks the courtyard. Five kids, three boys and two girls, are playing hide and seek. Another memory crosses my mind. I am ten now, facing a fresh beat down at the hands of Vasya Proshkin, my nemesis. Vasya is two years older and at least twenty pounds heavier. He is a bully and for the past few months he’s been taking a particular pleasure in beating me up. The usual sequence was: Vasya knocks me down, sits on top and pummels me. But he is careful to not hit me in the face, to avoid drawing blood. This way the adults don’t get involved.

  The difference today is that Vasya’s father came out. He is not stopping his son, he is enjoying Vasya being a man. Vasya pushes me especially hard; I fall face down and stay there, expecting to feel Vasya’s weight on top of me and blows to my sides. But nothing happens. I hear steps, look up. It’s my father; he must have come from work earlier. My father stops about ten feet away, stands there saying nothing.

  I turn over, get up. Vasya is standing there not sure what to do, his father behind him. I am not sure what to do either, but I have to do something. I step up to Vasya and hit him. He seems stunned for a moment, then hits me back. I fall, but this time I am not waiting to be pummeled, I turn around and meet Vasya with a kick to the groin. He doubles over, I get up, jump on him, and we roll on the ground, kicking and hitting each other until we are pulled apart. Before we leave, my father says a few words to Vasya’s dad. I don’t know what is said, but Vasya stays away from me from then on. I am bleeding from the nose and the mouth, my white shirt is ruined. Mother cusses at my father for not preventing the fight; he is not responding.

  If I were in a similar situation, would I have interfered on my son Simon’s behalf? Probably. But then, I don’t recall Simon ever coming home with a bloody nose. Private schools, tennis lessons, summer camps, the latest games, and electronics…Why do I feel like we lost Simon along the way?

  There is a knock on the door. As can be expected, it’s Zorkin. He welcomes me as if I am his best friend:

  “Pavel Vladimirovich, I thought I heard you. Welcome back!”

  “Thank you, Evgeny Antonovich.”

  “How long are you back in town for?”

  “I am not sure yet, a few days. I’d like to thank you for finding Anton Rimsky for me. “

  “Oh, I am happy to help. As I mentioned, I am resourceful and well-connected. Pavel Vladimirovich, have you given any thought to my earlier question? You know, the one about the apartment?”

  I mull his question over, to make Zorkin uneasy. “Evgeny Antonovich, I had to travel a lot since we spoke and did not have the time to properly think things through. But I will promise you that I won’t look for other buyers if you help me with a small matter.”

  Zorkin slumps visibly; he must have been hoping for a more definitive action. “Pavel Vladimirovich, please understand that this is not an easy sale for you. Your father’s death is still under investigation. I am not sure you’ll be able to find many buyers under the circumstances.”

  “Evgeny Antonovich, I can wait if needed.”

  Zorkin takes a deep breath, the greed wins out. “How do I know you are not negotiating with someone else?”

  I raise my voice in indignation. “Mr. Zorkin, I just promised you!”

  “OK, OK, what can I help you with?”

  “I had a childhood acquaintance, Grisha Voronezhsky. He went to university here in the 1990s, probably St. Petersburg State University, but I am not completely sure. I can’t find anything on the Internet; can you check for me which university and faculty he studied at?”

  Zorkin shakes his head. “You understand this won’t be easy. I possibly have to send someone to multiple universities, pay bribes to get access to the records…”

  “Evgeny Antonovich, I will gladly reimburse you for any expenses.”

  Zorkin leaves with a sour expression, not sure whether he got any tangible value for his promise to help but too afraid to refuse.

  I pull out the piece of paper that “Ivan” gave me and dial the second number there. My lucky streak of phones being answered end
s with, “You have reached the number of Konstantin Mershov, please leave a message.”

  I dictate my name and phone number.

  I call Detective Rozen. He answers after two rings. “Hello, hold on a minute.” The microphone is covered, and I hear indistinct voices, then Rozen comes back, “Pavel, I walked out of interrogation, I have maybe ten minutes. Where are you?”

  “In St. Petersburg.”

  “Figures.”

  “Sal, can you recommend a private investigator in California?”

  “Why, do you need to follow someone?”

  “No, it’s not that, more of a corporate investigation. I am trying to gather information on a few companies.”

  “Like that Hardrock Security Company that you asked me about before?”

  “Yes, kind of like that.”

  “OK, give me the names.”

  “Sal, I don’t want you to be involved. I just need someone to hire, has to be in California.”

  Sal must be getting frustrated because he carefully spits out each word as if throwing them at me. “Pavel, I checked on you. I know you are practically broke. So don’t act with me like you have the money to burn on private investigators.”

  “Sal, please, I don’t want to put you in any danger.”

  “I appreciate that you are trying to protect me. I will be careful, and there are people that owe me favors. Now, give me the names.”

  I hesitate, but Sal is right, I am broke. I give him the names of the California-based companies that Eastern Cottonwood purchased and hear Sal writing.

  “And what do they have in common?”

  “They are owned by the same investment company.”

  “The one that owns Hardrock Security?”

  “Yes, the same one.”

  “All right, give me a couple of days.”

  Wednesday, June 21

  My phone rings early in the morning.

  “Allo, this is Konstantin Mershov returning your call.”

  “Mr. Mershov, my name is Pavel Rostin. I understand you knew my father.”

  “Yes, of course I knew your father. I’ve met you, too, but you might not remember, you were only a child.”

  “Mr. Mershov, do you know about my father?”

  “Yes, I do. I am sorry.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Pavel, where are you?”

  “Here, in St. Petersburg.”

  “Staying on Malaya Sadovaya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t we meet tomorrow? I will arrange with my son to pick you up, I no longer drive. We’ll come between ten and eleven.”

  I call for voicemails in New York. The usual suspects: Jack, Sarah, Jennifer. Jack wants to meet. Sarah is hoping that I am OK. Jennifer loves me.

  I am about to go for a walk in the afternoon when there is a knock on the door. I open without asking, figuring Zorkin must be back. Instead, it’s a slightly hunched old man with a small beat-up suitcase. He has a deeply lined and wrinkled face, a fringe of white hair around his balding scalp. A long pale scar crosses his right cheek. I instantly recognize the man from the picture with my father.

  “Hello, Pavel. There were seats on the first flight from Ufa, so I got here quickly.” Andrei’s smile is both disarming and sad.

  “Please, come in,” I say. I am not sure what to do or say. Am I supposed to hug him? Shake hands?

  He follows me inside, looks around. “Last time I was here in 2002, four years ago. It looks exactly the same; our father did not change a thing.”

  It hits me when he says “our father.”

  Andrei must sense it because he puts down his suitcase. “I am sorry, it must be awfully strange.”

  “It is.”

  “Why don’t we go take a walk?”

  I nod. And then I realize why he looked familiar in the photo: He was here in 1984, when my mother died.

  Andrei walks slowly, with a limp, his breathing is heavy.

  “I am sorry,” he says. “I am not in a good shape. Too much smoking; doctors say my lungs are bad. As if I don’t know without them. My right leg was broken in ’69 in the camps, never quite healed right. Father was twelve years older, but he was a young man compared to me. Do you mind if we walk to the Bronze Horseman? That’s my favorite place in the city.”

  This would be at least a twenty-minute walk for me, probably an hour for him.

  “Should we get a taxi?” I ask.

  “If you don’t mind, I would prefer to walk. I am not sure when will be the next time that I can walk this city during white nights. I know I am slow, but we have a lot to talk about, and I did not want to do it in the apartment.”

  “Why, do you think it’s bugged?”

  “Possibly, possibly.”

  We resume our walk. “Why did not our parents tell me about you?”

  “It’s a long story. You see, I was arrested in 1956 in Budapest. When Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev made that speech about the personality cult, many people thought that things were really changing. These silly Hungarians imagined that they were free to replace the Moscow puppets and put in their own government. So we sent 200,000 troops to show them the extent of their freedom. Marshal Konev himself, the hero of the World War II, led the invasion. He fought the Germans at Moscow, defeated them at Kursk. In 1945, his armies took Berlin. Now, he was fighting Hungarian civilians. It was war, but they had rifles and we had tanks. They were killing us by hundreds, and we were killing them by thousands. There was a fight for one building in the working-class neighborhood of Csepel, where the resistance fighters managed to burn two of our tanks. When they ran out of ammunition and tried to surrender, the officer ordered them shot. I refused. Under Stalin, they would have put a bullet in the back of my head, but instead they court-marshaled me and gave me ten years.”

  Andrei leans against the parapet of Kazanskiy Bridge, wipes his brow with a handkerchief, catches his breath.

  “My first camp was in the north, near Barents Sea,” he says. “Prisoner number R-3725. Half of the year temperatures below thirty degrees. Never enough food, never enough warm clothing. Trying to stay out of the hole, the solitary confinement. Survival of the fittest. I came back from the camps early, in ’63 and was even able to return to St. Petersburg. All thanks to the father and his boss, Ivan Mershov. Usually you did the whole time and they made you stay somewhere near the camps. I never had a chance to thank Mershov; he died before I came back. I got a job at Kirov’s Works heavy industry plant, a bed in their dormitory. You don’t remember, you were little, but I would come over from time to time. But I did not last long. In a sense, I was freer in the camp. When you have nothing to lose, you are free. There were some very smart, well-educated people there. So when I came back, I became involved with the writers, the ones that were rebelling against the totalitarian state. Of course, they were not being published so I was helping to copy and distribute prohibited works via samizdat. I tried writing myself, but did not have the talent or the patience. In ’66, they arrested me again. It was almost a relief, like pulling a tooth and getting it over with.”

  Andrei has to stop and pause again. A young couple bumps into him, the boy swears.

  “This time they sent me to a camp in the southeast, not far from Chelyabinsk. It was a much better camp than during my first term. We worked on oil fields, that’s where I learned the business.”

  “Why did father write a letter denouncing you?”

  “Ah, you found out about that. You understand, I had already destroyed any chances of him rising up in the ranks. You know what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree. My being a political recidivist made my father automatically unreliable. And he was fine with that. It’s you that he wanted to protect.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. They did not expect to have you; doctors told mother that she was not likely to get pregnant. I read somewhere that older mothers tend to have smarter children. It was true in your case. Even when you were little, it
was clear you were a gifted child. The way you learned arithmetic, the way you learned chess. There were not many schools for talented kids like you. But you had no chance of getting into one with a brother like me. It did not matter to them that I was not a biological son; I grew up with your parents, and that marked them and, by extension, you.”

  “My father denounced you so I could go to the school for the gifted?”

  “It made no difference for me, I was already in the camps. It made no difference to our parents, as their lives were not going to change. But by writing the letter, father was giving you a chance for something better.”

  “Did you see the letter?”

  “Yes. The camp commander showed it to me, rubbing it in. But I knew why it was written; father did the right thing. He tried to apologize for it later, but there was nothing to apologize for. That was the only time I saw tears in his eyes, that’s how badly writing this letter hurt him.”

  “Why did you not come back to St. Petersburg after the second term?”

  “They released me in ’76, but there was no way they would allow me to have the propiska in St. Petersburg this time. You remember what it was like, you had to be registered and have a propiska in order to live somewhere. We were like modern serfs, able to live only where the government let us. And I have not tried to return. In ’71, they transferred me to another camp, this one near Ufa, to work on an oil pipeline. I ended up settling there. Your parents wanted to tell you about me after my release, then your father wanted to introduce us in ’84, when I came here after the mother died. Both times I asked not to.”

  “But why?”

  “Pavel, you were young and brilliant, with all that promise ahead of you. Even though I was only forty when they released me the second time, I was an old zek. I don’t know if you remember the expression, zek for zaklyutcheniy, a prisoner. Seventeen years in camps. I thought your parents sacrificed so much to save me during the war, and I wasted it all. I belong to a different era, the period of time that Russia is trying to erase as if it did not happen. Why saddle you with this?”

  “Do you want to come back now? Did they not cancel the propiska system about ten years ago?”

  “They did cancel it. There is still a registration requirement if you want to stay somewhere for more than ninety days, but it’s much easier for people to move now. No, I don’t want to come back. I like Ufa. I don’t know anybody here. People I knew, they are all dead. No reason for me to return to Peter. But I’d like to go to Paris one day.”

  “Why Paris?”

  “Father told me that’s the only city that can compare to St. Petersburg. I saw pictures, it looks beautiful. Just would like to see the place before I die, to compare for myself.”

  “Father’s been to Paris?” I can’t hide my surprise.

  “Yes, he went early this year. In January, I think. Have you been to Paris?”

  I nod. “It’s true, Paris is the only city that would compare.”

  What was my father doing in Paris in January? It was right before my fund came under attack.

  We finally make it to the statue and find an empty bench. Peter the Great is astride his horse, pointing to the west. The horse is trampling a serpent of his enemies, riding on top of the enormous Thunder Stone. It took two years to move the stone, twelve to build the monument. The Bronze Horseman, named so by Pushkin, is still riding, protecting his city.

  Andrei recites Pushkin’s verses:

  To spite our neighbor

  Here I shall found a great city

  By Nature we’re destined

  To cut a window to Europe.

  Two young couples are being wed, one placing flowers at the statue and taking pictures, the other waiting its turn.

  “When did you last see our father?” I feel strange saying this, referring to my father as also his father.

  “Last summer. He came to Ufa to talk about UfaNeft, the local oil and gas company that I worked for since 1971.”

  “That was one of the companies on Brockton’s list!” I react involuntarily.

  “Yes, he mentioned this name. Also a few others. He brought some pictures for me to look at.”

  “Did you recognize anybody?”

  “Yes, I did. You see, I am an old zek and I could have never become a part of the upper management, but I was there for a long time and close enough to know what’s going on. When the Moscow reformers started privatizing everything, there was a brutal battle to control UfaNeft. One executive was found floating face down in the local river, another was blown up in his car. There were at least three different oligarchs fighting for the spoils until one group won in ‘96.”

  “And who were the people that father was asking about?”

  “Two brothers, I think the last name was Crossman or something like that. They showed up around ’95 or so, set up kiosks where their people were buying privatization vouchers for vodka. That was also a cut-throat business; some kiosks got burned with people inside. The father wanted to understand how the scheme worked, and I helped to provide some missing pieces. Brockton and Crossmans struck a deal with the UfaNeft insiders. The ownership of the company’s shares was split between the two groups, and Brockton and his helpers were manipulating the prices upwards, while the insiders were cashing in. We re-created our vision of the West, only we took the worst of it. The father was an experienced investigator, but this was completely new to all of us; he was trying to learn how they were rigging the market.”

  “What happened when the scheme collapsed?”

  “Oh, the insiders just found another way to rig the game. The oligarch in charge set up various finance and service companies that were supposed to make the operations more efficient but in reality were skimming the cash flow. That lasted for a couple of years, until Putin got rid of the old oligarchs and brought in the new ones. They are still skimming, but not quite as bad; at least some money gets reinvested into the business. Of course, I quit five years ago, I am not involved anymore.”

  “Why did father take this case?”

  Andrei falls silent, then reaches into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and offers me one. I shake my head. He lights up. “You are right, doctors keep telling me I should stop. But here I am, enjoying a cigarette, in Peter, sitting in front of the Bronze Horseman during a white night, talking to my brother…You don’t mind me calling you that? We are not biological brothers, but I loved your parents with all my heart, so perhaps I have earned the right.”

  I choke up. “Of course I don’t mind.”

  “Why did father take the case?” he repeats. “I think for the same reason that I refused to shoot in Budapest. Did you read his war diary?”

  “I found it in his desk a few days ago. There are pages missing.”

  Andrei nods. “I know. You see, to understand him, to understand your mother, to understand me, you have to understand the diary.”

  “But they never talked to me about that!” I cry out. Some of the people milling around turn to look at the source of the commotion. “They did not talk to me about the blockade! They did not tell me about you! I did not know about the letter! Father left nothing but a part of his diary, not even a will!”

  “They were just trying to protect you in the only way they knew how.” Andrei puts a hand on my shoulder. “I think they wanted to spare you the horror. Father could not tell you how much he despised the system where the few so blatantly take advantage of the many. I think it was the forced displays of false fervor and denigration of anyone that so much as did not show enough enthusiasm for the leadership that really incensed him. He could not share this with you.”

  “Did he continue writing?”

  “No. He was a creative person, but he gave up trying to write. He did not want to write what the government would have approved, and he did not want to risk getting his family into trouble.”

  We sit in silence for a while.

  Then Andrei quietly says, “Everything happens for a reason, but often we don’t k
now what it is. For years, it seemed that the 1956 Hungarian uprising was in vain, that people had died for no reason, that my small rebellion had only hurt me and my family and achieved nothing. Then in 1989 the Hungarians reburied Imre Nagy, the hero of the 1956 revolution. On October 23, 1989, on the thirty-third anniversary of the uprising, they proclaimed the new Hungarian Republic and threw out the communist leadership. As the Iron Curtain between Hungary and Austria fell and the borders became open, more and more East Germans started leaving through that border. Fifty thousand people escaped in a week. And that may have been the final catalyst for the Berlin Wall coming down and the world changing. So perhaps it was not all in vain. Perhaps the thousands of small individual tragedies and sacrifices did collectively change the course of history.”

  Andrei takes a whizzing breath, continues.

  “All my life I felt guilty because your parents suffered to save me. Father killed a man because of me; I don’t think he ever gotten over it.”

  “Which man?” I raise my voice again. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll find out. I now believe that there was a purpose to me being saved. Perhaps it was meant for me to meet with you and give you the story. Might be that that’s what the universe wanted.” He slowly stands up. “Pavel, I am tired. I’ll explain the rest of the diary tomorrow. Do you think we can find a taxi to get back?”

  Thursday, June 22

  The clock says 8:32 when I wake up. Andrei insisted on me taking the bed and him sleeping on the couch. I kept tossing and turning in the milky semi-darkness of a northern summer night, until an exhaustion overcame me and I dropped into a deep dark hole.

  I get up and quietly tip-toe into the living room. I don’t have to be quiet, Andrei is gone. On the table, there is a thick envelope and a handwritten piece of paper on top of it:

  Dear Pavel,

  I am sorry I snuck out like a thief in the night, but you were tired, and I did not want to wake you up. I did not tell you yesterday that I purchased a round-trip ticket and my return flight is this afternoon. I am going to the cemetery to see father. I want to go by myself. From there, I will go straight to the airport.

  I am so glad to have met you. In the envelope there are missing pages from the diary. You see, the diary was dangerous, and back in ‘46 your father hid it. After Stalin died, he brought it out of hiding. I read the diary in ’64, when I came back from the camps for the first time. But then things became dangerous again, with me being around, involved in the samizdat. I knew they were going to come after me and that the diary was again dangerous to have around. Father was tired of hiding, so I tore out the most dangerous pages and concealed them at the top of the stairwell. I came back in ’84 when mother died. I was out of the camps already, and nobody cared about a broken old zek, so I retrieved the torn-out pages and took them with me to Ufa. I am giving them back to you, they are rightfully yours.

  I have also enclosed a copy of father’s will. He gave it to me last summer; he felt that the project he took on was risky and wanted to make sure that his will survived. This apartment is all he owned, and he wanted you to have it. Please respect his wishes. I have no need of the apartment, I don’t want it. It brings up difficult memories, and I don’t plan to return to St. Petersburg ever again. He left me the old volume of The Count of Monte Cristo; I am taking it, that’s all I want. Lastly, I enclosed some old pictures that you may want to have.

  Thank you for letting me see the Bronze Horseman one last time.

  Andrei

  I re-read the letter to fully comprehend its contents. As I finish, the bell rings.

  I open the door in my underwear. It’s Zorkin.

  “Pavel Vladimirovich, I am sorry, I can come back later.”

  “It’s all right, come in.”

  “Well, I looked into the matter that you asked me. Turns out there was one Grigoriy Voronezhsky that studied in the St. Petersburg State University. Not only that, he did graduate studies at the Faculty of International Relations and completed his dissertation in 1998.”

  “Do you know what his dissertation was about?”

  “I am afraid I don’t. Now, Pavel Vladimirovich, I’ve done everything you asked of me, how about we discuss the apartment?”

  “Very well, Evgeny Antonovich. As you can see, I just got up. Would you mind giving me half-an-hour to wash up and get ready? Come back then and we’ll discuss business.”

  “Of course.” Zorkin’s face lights up, he can smell the prize.

  I do need a bit of time to think. I wash up, get dressed, and go downstairs to the Sweet Tooth café where I get myself a cake and a large coffee. As I settle back in the apartment, the plan comes to me.

  Zorkin is punctually at the door in thirty minutes, carrying a folder with some papers. He tries to speak, but I interrupt him. “Here’s what we are going to do, Evgeny Antonovich. I will sell you this apartment for a million dollars.”

  Zorkin first smiles, but then catches himself and theatrically spreads his arms. “Pavel Vladimirovich, that is way too much. In this situation, there is a lot of complicated paperwork–”

  I stop him again. “Evgeny Antonovich, let’s not even go down this path. You know very well that this flat in this location is worth at least a million and a half. And to you it’s worth more because you’ll have a whole story of this building to yourself. Half a million discount justifies a lot of complicated paperwork. And a couple of additional favors I will need from you.”

  “Additional favors?” Zorkin is scared that his grip on the apartment is slipping away.

  “Yes. First, I want the transaction to be done quickly and the money deposited into my account on Monday.”

  Zorkin groans but does not protest.

  “Second, I want to be able to go to the St. Petersburg State University and see the dissertation that Grigoriy Voronezhsky wrote.”

  This worries him. “Why? What are you getting me into? This can be dangerous!”

  “Evgeny Antonovich, I just want to see a dissertation that a student wrote, not some secret military plans. This is Russia; anything can be arranged for money, and the half-a-million discount you are getting should cover quite a few, how shall we put it, incentives.”

  Zorkin is unsure, but then he is so close.

  “Pavel Vladimirovich, if I find a way to do this and I bring you the paperwork to sign tomorrow, will you sign it? Or will you find something else?”

  “Evgeny Antonovich, prepare the paperwork, and I will sign it. There will be nothing else, I promise.”

  A bell rings.

  “And now if you excuse me, Evgeny Antonovich, I have other visitors. I am working exclusively with you…for now.”

  I open the door to a tall, thin man around forty. He is dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt. His face seems to be all out of proportion, with a prominent jaw, a long nose, and tiny ears, but the combination is saved by friendly brown eyes.

  “Pavel Rostin?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  The man’s eyes travel to Zorkin, who is standing right behind me.

  I turn to send him away. “This is my neighbor Evgeny Antonovich Zorkin, he was just leaving.”

  Zorkin mumbles something and disappears behind his door. I have no doubt he is listening, probably wondering whether this is his competition for the flat. I point to Zorkin’s door and motion for the man to be quiet. He understands. I step back to grab a copy of Palmer’s statement with Streltsova’s notes and to put on a jacket, close the door and we quietly walk out of the building.

  “Are you Konstantin Mershov?”

  “No,” the man laughs and sticks out his hand, “I am Ivan Mershov. Konstantin is my father.”

  I shake the hand he offered.

  “Ivan? My father worked for Ivan Mershov.”

  “Yes, my grandfather. My father is waiting for you. Can’t drive on Malaya Sadovaya, so we parked just around the corner.”

  I follow Ivan to an old Zhiguli parked near the Turgenev statu
e. Three people are standing next to it: an old man of around seventy and two tall teenagers.

  Ivan introduces me. “This is Pavel Rostin.”

  “Hello, Pavel,” says the old man. “I am Konstantin Mershov. I am sure you don’t remember, it’s been almost forty years since I saw you. You’ve already met my son. This is my grandson, Vitaly, and his friend Oleg Khmelco.”

  I shake hands with all of them.

  The old man says, “I hope you have a few hours. I asked my boys to take a day off, go for a drive.”

  “Where?”

  “Just out of the city, to one of the memorials. This is June 22nd.”

  The day when Germany attacked. I forgot. Or rather, I am not used to thinking about this date.

  Mershov reads my face. “Yes, people here still celebrate the Victory Day, but not many remember the day when the war started sixty-five years ago. Why don’t you climb in the back with me, let the younger generation drive and navigate.”

  Zhiguli is a small car, so Vitaly has to squeeze in the back with us, with Konstantin in the middle. Ivan maneuvers us on Nevskiy Prospekt and heads east, across the Fontanka River, past the Moskovskaya train station.

  “Pavel, is there anything in particular that you wanted to know?” asks Konstantin.

  I get the Streltsova’s paper out of my pocket. “I am trying to learn more about this.”

  Konstantin puts on glasses, reads the short paper, hands it back to me. “Let’s talk about this a bit later.”

  We cross Neva over Alexander Nevskiy Bridge and turn right onto Dalnevostochny Prospekt.

  “You won’t remember my father,” says Mershov. “He was only 57 when he died, two months before his grandson was born. I think most of those that survived the blockade died early; too much of their life force was taken by that horror. My mother only outlived him by two years. And your mother died young, too. Your father was an exception, it was like the suffering made him stronger. He had a certain tough grace about him, an elegant but unyielding dignity of honest strength. You know, your father was like a second son to my dad.”

  Runs in the family, I think, we find ourselves second fathers. But mine waited until his was gone.

  We turn left onto a Murmanskiy highway and proceed east. Majestic buildings of the old St. Petersburg are far behind us now. Instead, the houses here are all built in the shape of match boxes: match box standing upright, matchbox lying down, matchbox on its side.

  “Perhaps it was the way your father took on responsibilities and took care of people,” continues Mershov. “In the first winter of the blockade, people only took care of their families. Some only took care of themselves. When you are starving and freezing, you can’t afford to be helpful. I was six. I saw people sit down and you knew if they didn’t get up, they’d freeze to death. But you walked by without looking because if you tried to help, they’d take you down with them. The kids that lost their parents…most of them died the same winter. But not Andrei. Your parents took him even though they were starving themselves. And later, they did not send him to an orphanage as they were supposed to. They raised him instead. And they were only the age of my grandson here. I read once a beautiful Jewish saying: One who saves a life, saves an entire world. Your parents saved an entire world.”

  We cross another bridge over Neva. The river makes a semi-circle as it flows from the Lake Ladoga to the sea. There is a white-on-blue sign To Shlisselburg, 2.5km. Konstantin tells his son to take the exit. We get off the highway and pull into a park.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” commands Konstantin.

  We walk by a sign, Museum of Breaking the Leningrad’s Blockade. In the clearing stand half a dozen of Soviet tanks from World War II, with the museum building behind them. There are only a few people in the park, mostly tourists with cameras.

  Konstantin points back to the river. “That’s where they crossed it in January of ‘43. I was here with your father a few years back and he was showing me where the crossing was, where the German fortifications were. They called him up in August of ’42. A month earlier, and he would have been thrown into a bloody Sinyavino Offensive just south of here. These marshes…” He swept his arm in a semi-circle. “…are full of bones and metal. But that’s where they broke the encirclement.” He turns to Ivan and the boys. “Why don’t you go look at the tanks and the museum. Pavel and I need to talk.”

  Konstantin and I walk slowly into the woods, down an overgrown path.

  “I am sorry to drag you here,” he says, “but I come to this place every June 22nd. I think it’s good for Vitaly and Oleg to remember; the young generation does not think about the war. That’s the problem, as people forget about the horror, they are more inclined to repeat the same mistakes.” He stops and turns to me. “About that paper you showed me – your father came to me with a similar question a few months ago. It’s a dangerous topic, I did not want to discuss it in front of my family. I joined the KGB in 1958, right after college. Had this romantic notion of fighting foreign spies. But in Leningrad, I mostly dealt with the dissidents. I managed to stay away from Andrei’s case, but I still hated the work. After my parents died, I applied to transfer to Moscow, to the First Directorate. It was the foreign intelligence part of the KGB. I did not get any foreign postings, but I was involved in operations abroad.”

  Konstantin resumes walking.

  “Forward ahead to the mid-80s,” he says. “The Soviet Union is falling apart. As usual, the upper echelons, the Party Central Committee, the leadership of the KGB, they are all trying to figure out how to take care of themselves. They’ve been looting the country for decades. The amount of wealth that the Party has accumulated is staggering. And now they are afraid that a revolution is coming and they will lose everything. So they start preparing. A special group gets formed, firms get set up abroad, funds get transferred.”

  “How do you know? Were you involved?”

  “If I was involved, I would not be talking to you right now. I would be either somewhere high up in the government or, more likely, dead. There is a difference between knowing about it and having the information. The program went on for at least six years; you can’t keep something like this secret. People within the KGB knew about it. People within the CIA and the MI6 knew about it. The devil is in the details, and very few people knew the details. And those who knew, they are not talking. Most of them must be dead. Nikolai Kruchina was one well-known case. He was the Central Committee’s treasurer, he knew the names, the firms, the accounts. So when the ’91 putsch failed, when it became clear that this was the end for the Central Committee and for the KGB, Kruchina supposedly threw himself down a stairwell. But there were others that suddenly died or disappeared. The ones that survived, they looted the country and got away with it.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “Who knows, must be hundreds of billions. They ruled the country for seventy years. Hard currency, diamonds, gold, priceless works of art…the Party had it all, and it’s all gone.”

  It’s quiet, except for the sounds of our footsteps. “Mr. Mershov…”

  “Konstantin, please.”

  “Konstantin, there is something else you discussed with my father a few months ago, right?”

  “Why do you say this?”

  “Palmer’s testimony is a public record. You have not told me much more than that.”

  Mershov stops, points to a wooden bench amongst the trees.

  “Let’s sit down. Yes, I told your father more, and he is dead now. How do I know it was not my information that killed him? Let me see that paper again.”

  I hand him the Streltsova’s paper.

  Mershov studies it, his finger going over hand-written comments. “Where did you get this?”

  “They belonged to Natalya Streltsova. She was killed in California a couple of years ago.”

  Mershov nods. “Yes, that’s what Vladimir…I mean your father…said. She worked for Boris Sosnovsky, the oligarch that had to leave Russia
and not long ago was found hanging in his house in Paris.”

  “The newspaper reported it was a suicide because the door was locked from the inside…”

  Mershov gives a short laugh that turns into a cough. “Sure, a suicide …. And Nikolai Kruchina jumped down that stairwell because he was depressed, nobody pushed him. Sosnovsky was an insider in the Kremlin in the 1990s. He must have known something. When he had fallen out of favor and had to run away rather than get arrested like one of his oligarch friends, he wanted payback. Perhaps he was feeding information to Streltsova for an expose.”

  “Do you know this?”

  “No. That’s what your father thought. He knew more than he was willing to tell me. He came to me to verify his theory about the ‘Stage Seven.’ You saw how Palmer in ’99 spoke of six stages? Remember, ‘they’ originally transferred the assets to take care of themselves. But by 1999, the KGB – with the new names like the FSB, the GRU, the SVR – was back in charge. Actually, more than before. They had their president, they had their oligarchs in control of the economy, they had their people in command of most of the state organizations. They were the government. And the assets could now be used in service of their policies. At least that’s what was being whispered.”

  “Whispered?”

  “I was not high enough to know, just high enough to hear an occasional drunken whisper.”

  “What about that name that Streltsova wrote? Nemschev?”

  “I don’t know about ‘Nemschev,’ but there was an ambitious officer Nikolai Nemzhov in the St. Petersburg’s KGB. He transferred to Moscow, where he is now a colonel in the GRU.”

  I remember Saratov’s words when I was attacked on the Leninskiy Prospekt: The colonel’s orders were to take the package and let him be. “He was from St. Petersburg?”

  “St. Petersburg’s KGB and St. Petersburg State University have been the training ground for our current political elite. We even referred to ourselves as the ‘St. Petersburg Mafia’ and joked that this is revenge on Stalin, who was believed by some to hate the city.”

  “Konstantin, can I ask why you left Moscow and moved back to St. Petersburg? You had a rank of colonel. You were what – sixty-two?”

  “Sixty-three. You see, Pavel, my career ended on May 27, 1997. That’s when Yeltsin signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act. A wave of protests arose immediately because the document was believed to provide NATO, a military organization, with a blank check to extend into the Baltic countries and Ukraine, right to Russia’s borders. We were treated like a defeated power. Those of us that wanted a close relationship with the U.S. have been labeled as ‘traitors.’ Even the man I was reporting to, the Secretary of Security Council Alexander Lebed, said that the agreement trampled our country’s dignity. In 1998, Lebed left Moscow. I was a pariah without any support; I did not have much of a choice but to retire and leave as well.” Mershov stops to catch his breath. His voice conveys dejected acceptance of the reality he does not like. “Back in ’91, I wanted to believe. Yeltsin on the tank, protecting democracy. The image is still with me. At the time, it made me trust that anything was possible. Did not know that Yeltsin was a hopeless drunk who sold a chance of greatness for a bottle of vodka.” Mershov’s voice breaks, then he recovers. “For centuries, Russia has been an Eastern country, the new Constantinople as the boyars called it. Peter the Great finally succeeded in opening the window to the West, pointing us in the new direction. We admired the West and wanted to be like them. And we were afraid of the West because in the last two centuries we suffered brutal incursions from there. Societies have memories, and we reach into them for a response. I am afraid the Russian pendulum will swing back East, to the new great powers rising there. I don’t really understand. I thought that once communism fell, Russia and America would be natural allies. What do we have to fight over? Instead, I feel like Peter’s window was slammed back into our faces. I don’t like it. But then, I am an old retired man. Nobody cares what I think.”

  Ivan and the boys are standing in front of a massive KV-1 tank when we returned.

  The older Mershov sweeps his arm. “In ’43, this was covered in snow. Your father asked me whether I had ever seen blood in the snow. How red it is…They had to go forward under heavy machine-gun fire, there was no air support that day. The person on his left got hit…then the one on his right. Your father kept crawling through the snow expecting a blow any second. In the 1960s, they lifted one square meter of the ground on the beachhead by the river. It had ten pounds of metal in it: fragments of bombs, shells, bullets. One square meter, ten pounds of deadly metal.”

  The drive back is quiet, but when we get close to the city Konstantin asks to visit the cemetery. “They buried your father so quickly, I found out two days after.” And so we drive to Piskariovskoye cemetery. We walk by the monument and Konstantin reads aloud the words written there: “Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.” He shakes his head: “Words, words…Too much have been forgotten already.”

  From memory, I manage to find father’s grave. No memorial stone yet, just a small marker. Ivan, Vitaly and Oleg stay respectfully in the back, as Konstantin lowers to his knees and places his hands on a small mound.

  “I met him in November of 1941. A lifetime. Goodbye, old friend.”

  His shoulders shake. The day is still full of light, warm, humid, windless. For the second time in two weeks, I am saying farewell to my father. The man I just started to get to know.

  I’ve been back for only a few minutes when there is a knock on the door.

  Anxious Mr. Zorkin is there. “Pavel Vladimirovich, I’ve gotten you access to the university’s archives, but you must go tomorrow morning.”

  “Why tomorrow morning?”

  “Because the person that will give you access will be leaving at two in the afternoon and won’t be back until the next week. Her name is Zinaida Petrovna Konyukhova; I wrote down the directions for you.”

  “All right, I will go see her tomorrow morning. Thank you.”

  “And Pavel Vladimirovich, I will have papers for you to sign tomorrow. There is one problem though: It’s difficult for me to raise a million dollars by Monday. It’s a lot of money, I am sure you understand.”

  I spread my arms theatrically. “Evgeny Antonovich, you told me you are a resourceful man!”

  “I am, and I’ve met quite a few rather unusual requests from you.” Zorkin bares his teeth.

  “That you did. And I have not only given you an exclusive deal here, I lowered the price by a very substantial amount. If you want more time, you can have it – but the price will rise.”

  Zorkin clearly would love nothing more than kill me on the spot.

  “Very well, Pavel Vladimirovich, I will do my best to gather the funds even if it costs me. But usually these things require an escrow of some sorts. How do you propose to handle this?”

  “If your friend Zinaida provides me with the access to the archives, I will sign the papers tomorrow but date them with a later date. If the money is not in my account on Monday, I’ll stop the transaction.”

  Zorkin is taken aback. “You will sign the papers tomorrow, even before the money is in your account?”

  I smile confidently. “Evgeny Antonovich, I am sure you researched me and know that my father-in-law is a well-known U.S. congressman. If you try to cheat me, you’d wish you were never born.”

  Sam Baker won’t lift a finger to help me, but Zorkin does not know that. His face turns slightly green. “Of course, I’ll make sure everything’s taken care of.”

  Finally, he is gone. I get the envelope that Andrei left for me. It contains a document, a dozen handwritten sheets of lined paper, and four old, cracked, black-and-yellowish white pictures. I recognize my father’s handwriting; these are the missing pages from the diary. The will is dated July 18, 2005. It is, as Andrei said, leaving the apartment to me. The Count of Monte Cristo and a bank account that as of July 17, 2005 had an equivalent of $2,172, go to Andrei.

 
The pictures are of my parents and Andrei, all taken in front of the Bronze Horseman. In the oldest one, father is in the military uniform. His right arm is around my mother’s shoulders. She wears a light-colored dress. Her left arm is wrapped around my father’s waist. The boy in front is held in place by two hands, my father’s on one shoulder, my mother’s on the other. He looks very serious, while my parents are laughing. The next picture is similar, except father is in a militzia uniform and Andrei looks to be about twelve. In the third one, it’s Andrei who is in a soldier’s uniform. He and father are flanking, mother is in the middle. Mother is not smiling in this one, as if she has a premonition of what’s to come.

  In the last picture, they all are in civilian clothes. Mother is again in the middle, with father and Andrei on the sides. They all look like they are in their early forties. It must have been taken after Andrei came back from the first camp that aged him. In front of them there is a small boy, about two or three years old. I realize that it’s me.

  I am hungry, and I have to get out of the apartment. Not in the mood for long walks, I go downstairs to one of the restaurants on Malaya Sadovaya, find a table where there is enough light to read, place my order.

  I unfold the handwritten pages and organize them by date.

  26 November, 1941

  Three days ago, Mershov took me and Makar off the regular patrol and sent us to the Smolniy Institute, the headquarters of civil and military administration. They normally use the NKVD, not militzia, but they were short of people that week. Smolniy is carefully camouflaged and untouched by bombardment. Makar says under his breath: “Of course, the authorities are focused on protecting themselves, the rest of us be damned!” Then he looks at me and says “Don’t you repeat this.”

  We get stationed outside, by the door, together with an NKVD lieutenant Kulikov. He checks documents of the people coming in, we are supposed to hold our rifles at the ready. Not sure if they expect that German spies would storm the headquarters. At one point on the first day, the lieutenant accepted a parcel and told me to go inside and give it to Comrade Zhdanov, the party leader of Leningrad. I was stopped at the door to the office, questioned and sent in. A fat man was standing behind a big desk, screaming at the two officers standing in front of him: “I want to attack now! I don’t care that the Germans are dug in, send as many people as you have! We all have to make sacrifices! I don’t want to tell Comrade Stalin that we postponed the attack! Do it or I’ll send you in front of the firing squad!”

  At the end of the first day, the lieutenant told us: “Go inside, towards the Canteen No. 12. It’s a private eating area for top party officials. There is usually some food to be had by the door. But remember, don’t take anything out; they’ll shoot you!” Makar and I found the place. By the door, plates have been piled up, with unfinished meatloaf, mashed potatoes, pasta, cabbage. I stood there, hesitant to eat off dirty plates, but Makar whispered: “Don’t be an idiot, save your ration for your family.” And so I ate off someone’s plate with my hands, ignoring the looks of passersby. We did it for all three days and I was able to give my bread rations to my mother, Nastya, and Andrei.

  So that’s when he met Zhdanov for the first time. And now I understand who Kulikov is.

  30 November, 1941

  Mother left for the front the previous morning, as a part of a small orchestra. They went to perform for the troops that will try to break the siege. She told us not to worry, the musicians will be in the back, not in the line of fire. And they’ll get special rations, too.

  They were supposed to return last night, but she did not come home. I tried to reassure Nastya and Andrei, saying they have gotten delayed and she’ll be back tomorrow. It was just the three of us that night, with Andrei nestled between Nastya and I. Andrei was whimpering all night, with Nastya comforting him.

  I rushed to the militzia headquarters in the morning and asked Mershov to find out what happened. He switched Makar and I to patrol the area next to the headquarters. I kept checking with him every hour. When I came in for the third time, Ivan was sitting behind the desk, staring down at his hands. He spoke without looking at me, “They were right on the front line, seeing the soldiers off. The Germans are well-entrenched there, they had every inch covered with fire. It was a direct artillery hit. I am sorry, kid.”

  I started screaming, “That fat bastard! Sitting in a warm office, stuffing his face, sending people to death!”

  A sweaty hand clamped my mouth. It was Makar, holding me from behind, whispering in my ear. “Volodya, don’t! You have to stay alive!”

  The old curmudgeon held me in his arms until my sobs subsided.

  My grandmother was killed in one of those senseless, bloody frontal attacks that Zhdanov and his ilk concocted. She was sacrificed in order for the people in charge to report to Stalin that they are attacking.

  11 December, 1941

  Mershov called us into his office yesterday and told us to do a short patrol today, then report to a cinema in Sadovaya Street. We find there NKVD Lieutenant Kulikov, the same one that we worked with in Smolniy. It’s a fully functional theater, kept warm by its own heating system. Most importantly, there is plenty of food. Kulikov tells us that’s where party functionaries relax in the evening, bring their girlfriends and prostitutes. Our job is to watch the door, make sure that only the people that are supposed to be here can get in. After the show, the food gets packed away, but we can collect what’s left behind, what’s partially eaten. When the show ends, in my gas mask I collect bread, cakes, sausages, cheese. Makar hands me the choicest pieces.

  The city in the dark is dangerous, as gangs and cannibals come out at night. I walk with the rifle in my hands, to make me a less attractive target. It’s a scene from hell: sliver of the moon, skeletons of bombed out buildings, red glow from burzhuiki-set fires that nobody puts out. Snow sparks brilliantly in a cold, deep silence. Searchlights are sweeping the sky. I can see figures moving in the dark. Whenever anyone approaches, I lift the rifle to scare them away.

  I am tired, I have to stop. The shadows creep closer. Leningrad is the city of shadows now. I open and close the bolt of my rifle, sound echoing in still air. The shadows move back. I start walking again, counting steps. When I get home, I wake up Nastya and Andrei. I only let them eat a little bit, so they don’t get sick. With food, comes hope.

  28 December, 1941

  Andrei is not going to last much longer. I can see that he’s lost the will to live, he is just lying in bed silently, air wheezing in and out of his lungs. In desperation, yesterday I asked Mershov whether we can help the NKVD Lieutenant Kulikov in the Sadovaya cinema or in Smolniy.

  This morning, Mershov tells me to report to Smolniy. Kulikov is waiting for me there, we are to go with him and his boss to the airport to receive and distribute a food shipment for the families of the party officials. The giant city outside is starving, but nobody in Smolniy looks hungry. A truck picks us up, and we drive through a city in standstill. We get to unload boxes of food: ham, caviar, cheese, expensive wines. The truck takes us back to Smolniy. As I am about to leave, hungry and exhausted from the effort, Kulikov gives me a small package and reminds me to make sure to stop by Canteen No. 12.

  I don’t look inside the package until I get home. It’s a loaf of bread, three cans of ham, three jars of jams: boysenberry, strawberry, raspberry. Once home, Nastya boils the water, and we feed Andrei two pieces of bread with boysenberry jam. A touch of color comes into his face.

  I realize that the last entry was written right here, across the street. I look up at the apartment’s windows and try to imagine what it looked like in 1941.

  18 January, 1942

  Today, Makar and I patrolled the Haymarket. I asked to come here, wanted to trade a small jar of raspberry jam for a collection of toy soldiers for Andrei. Nastya thought it may lift his spirits.

  Thousands are dying daily from hunger and cold. But here, everything’s on sale. Warmly-dressed, healthy-looking, pitiless people sell
bread, meat patties, and sausages to walking skeletons. A woman produces a wedding ring in a trembling hand to a tall man in a fur coat. He cuts a small piece of bread, “Here, that’s it.” She says, “I need more, it’s a gold ring. My child is dying.” The man is about to take the bread away when he sees Makar pulling a rifle off his shoulder. The man thrusts the bread in woman’s hand and scurries away with his packages. Some others start packing their wares. Makar breathes hard, I see that he wants to kill them all.

  “Where did they get all this when everyone is starving?” I ask.

  “Some work in the food supply chain, they steal,” snarls Makar. “Some kill people and turn their bodies into sausages and meat patties. All prey on others.”

  “That’s what we are, human predators,” I whisper.

  Makar looks at me. “Not all. You saved him, Volodya.”

  I don’t understand. “Saved whom?”

  “Andrei. People are going crazy from hunger, stealing food from their families. There is no way for a child to survive on a dependent’s ration. The bastards here, the bastards in Smolniy, they only take care of themselves and send others to die. But you, you saved someone else’s child. When the judgment comes, God will take the measure.”

  I did not realize Makar is religious. It’s something one has to hide.

  “It’s just one child.”

  “You never know. One soul can make all the difference.”

  This is the hardest month. No food, no heat, no running water, freezing cold. German shelling is much worse than it used to be. But we have this will to live now. Nastya scrambled for wood from burned out buildings, and we have enough to feed the burzhuika for at least a month. We still have two-and-a-half candles left. Both Andrei and Nastya are into the Count of Monte Cristo story, waiting for me to read to them how Dantès takes his revenge. And the metronome keeps beating.

  The waiter brings my food. I take a break, eat absentmindedly, looking around. I like the new Malaya Sadovaya, it’s a happy, cheerful place with tons of people.

  5 April, 1943

  Two days ago, Andrei said he had something to tell me. He saw the man that killed his mother. I asked if he was sure; he said he would not forget that face as long as he lived. He followed the man to a building on the Fontanka River Embankment, just a five-minute walk from our old apartment.

  I told Andrei to show me. Waited and waited, but as the daylight was running out, Andrei grabbed my arm, “That’s him!”

  A large red-faced man walks by us and into the building. He is stout, bordering on fat, wearing a coat with major’s epaulets and an officer’s hat. I remember him. He was in that cinema on Sadovaya back in December of 1941, laughing out loud, grabbing his girlfriend’s tits.

  “You sure?” I ask again.

  “I am,” replies Andrei. “I bumped into him on purpose; he swore at me, I remember his voice, screaming at my mother.”

  “Don’t talk to anyone about this. Anyone!” I look Andrei in the eyes, to make sure he understands.

  The next day, I clean out and load the Walther PPK that I took off the German officer I killed during the January offensive. I wait for the man, but he has a woman with him, they are laughing loud as they walk. I go home. He and he alone is my target.

  6 April, 1943

  Today, I wait again. This time, he is by himself. I follow him as he gets into the building and climbs up the stairs, catch up as he is opening the apartment door.

  “Major!” I call out.

  “What?” he turns impatiently, the smell of alcohol mixed with sour breath.

  I raise the gun and pause.

  He backs into the wall, small eyes growing scared: “You can take anything you want. I have food, I have gold.”

  “Do you remember a woman on Liteyniy Prospekt that you visited in November of ’41? The one you hit over the head with a can of ham?”

  “No, I did not hit anyone!” he protests. But a momentary hesitation betrays him with a flicker of recognition in small eyes.

  Images fly through my brain: Andrei’s mother, her head bashed in; the man laughing in a warm theater; frozen corpses like statues in the snow; Zhdanov lecturing me on sacrifice; resignation in the German officer’s eyes before I kill him; Nastya saying “he became like them” about Dantès; Makar talking about God’s judgment. I can’t wait for God.

  I pull the trigger. The sound is deafening, and I run away as fast as I can.

  I hid the gun in a courtyard place I had chosen beforehand. When Andrei asks me, I remind him to never speak about this to anyone. Never.

  In four days, I will be back on the front line with my infantry regiment. Let them chase me there.

  Before I leave, we are going to apply to adopt Andrei as our son. It will be difficult to send him to school as an orphan, Nastya and I are afraid they’ll take him away from us.

  The table next to mine erupts in cheers. They are celebrating a birthday. I laugh and salute them.

  8 January, 1946

  Tatyana, a teacher in Nastya’s university, has been arrested for maintaining a diary of anti-Soviet propaganda. Tatyana survived the blockade but lost her mother and one of her children. She kept a diary like I did. Tatyana brought her diary to the museum. Nastya read it; it was a simple account of hunger, shelling and death. And then the NKVD came and took Tatyana away. Why?

  Nastya is still helping out in the museum, but she is afraid. After this entry, I will hide my diary in a safe place. I work with Mershov during the day, take writing courses at night. This does not leave much time for editing, but I am almost done with my play!

  30 August, 1946

  This will be my last entry. I have burned my play. Earlier, when I tried to publish it, I’ve been told to eliminate “negative characters.” Then they cast Akhmatova and Zoshchenko out of the Writer’s Union. That fat pig Zhdanov is now in charge of the country’s cultural policy. Nastya can’t work in the museum anymore; it’s getting too dangerous, too easy to be accused of subversive activities. There are rumors that Zhdanov wants to close the museum. Two days ago, the NKVD called me in. My name was on the list of people that came to see Anna Akhmatova. Only intervention by Kulikov, now a captain, saved me. But I’ve been warned that I must demonstrate unquestioning loyalty toward the Party from now on.

  Nothing true about the blockade can be published. They want to wipe out the memory, to rewrite the history. I knew then I had to destroy the play. I have to protect Nastya and Andrei. It’s never enough to destroy a person; they always come after the family. I will not be a writer, I will become an investigator, as Mershov asked me to. I will hide the diary, but I retrieved the Walther PPK that I took off the German officer I killed and it’s now in my desk, loaded. They can come after me, but they will never take me alive.

  That’s it, that’s the end of the diary. I should put the torn pages back into the notebook, in order. No reason to worry about the sixty-year-old killing; they can chase my father’s regiment in the sky. No reason to worry about the NKVD and their descendants, the history made its judgment. I can’t wait for God. Where do you draw the line between revenge and forgiveness?

  Friday, June 23

  Rozen calls in the morning. “Hey, it’s already past six in St. Petersburg, you should be up!”

  “OK, Sal, go ahead.”

  “So we looked into the companies you asked about…”

  “We?”

  “Me and Alex Shchukin. Remember, he was Brockton’s and Streltsova’s bodyguard that was sent for a take-out when they were killed? He is in Los Angeles, was only too happy to help out. Let’s start with the home lender. I visited their local branch, looks like a perfectly legitimate operation. They advertize a lot in Russian and Spanish communities, so Alex asked around in the West Hollywood area where many of the Russians have settled. Turns out there is some kind of scam going on where they basically pay people to take loans.”

  “That does not make sense, the borrowers pay ‘points’ for the loans, not the other way aroun
d.”

  “That’s how it should be, but it seems there is like a rate card, about 1 percent of the loan, depending on your FICO score and God knows what. You sign documents that you are buying a house and taking a million dollar or whatever loan, three months later you sign documents that you either sold the place or that you can’t pay and are walking away from the house, and for your troubles you get paid ten grand. Nice, eh? Alex gave a hundred to one of the fake borrowers to refresh his memory and the borrower remembered the street in Simi Valley, an L.A. suburb, where his supposed house was. I drove to check it out. It’s a private gated community, a big sign in front announcing that the construction was done by home builder whose name you gave me. I pull up to the gate, a guard comes out, and asks me what I want. From his accent, I figure he is from your old country. I tell him I want to see houses for sale, he replies it’s by appointment only. I drove all the way from Santa Barbara, I am not going to turn around, so I pull my badge, say it’s police business. His eyes narrow, like he is calculating whether to kill me or let me through. I pull my jacket open so he can see the holster with the gun. The guard goes back, raises the gate. I drive through the community, perhaps fifty built homes but mostly lots where construction has barely started. I see very few cars, no people. After I leave, I go check the real estate transaction records. Turns out almost 400 homes have been sold on those streets in 2005, prices starting from $700,000, most financed by that home lender. I can’t figure out what the scam is though: they give people the money to buy homes and then pay them to walk away? What’s the deal?”

  I know what the deal is; they are offloading the loans to government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as soon as they make those loans. They don’t care that these loans will never see any payments, they just sell the loans to the government and pocket the money. They sell unfinished houses because the so-called buyers never move in. Another fraudulent game where the sucker is the U.S. taxpayer. Eventually the government will pick up the tab for the worthless mortgages. But that’s what much of Wall Street is doing these days anyway, these guys just seem to be more aggressive.

  I remain silent, so Sal continues, “I think there is some major money laundering going on. But as I said, I don’t get the whole scheme. You do, don’t you?”

  I just say, “Sal, thank you. Please thank Alex for me. No need to look into this further.”

  Rozen sighs, “Fine, be that way. Take care of yourself, OK?”

  I promise to do just that.

  St. Petersburg State University is Russia’s oldest university, founded in 1724 by Peter the Great. That’s a source of pride over the Moscow upstarts to the south. The university is located just across the Big Neva from the Hermitage, on Vasiliovskiy Ostrov (Island). I don’t waste the opportunity to walk by the Palace Square and the Hermitage before crossing the bridge to the Kunstkamera, an anthropological museum. It was the very first public museum in Russia, also started by Peter the Great, who was anxious to follow the Western examples. Its first collection was a cabinet of curiosity, an assortment of deformed fetuses. I shuddered when I read about it. Following the river, I come to the vermilion-and-white three-story faculty building, directly in sight of the Bronze Horseman. After about twenty minutes of wandering within the building, merely finding Zinaida Konyukhova feels like a victory in itself.

  Konyukhova turns out to be a nice-looking woman in her mid-thirties locked away in a windowless office with a small “Archives Administration” sign. She is planted behind a massive desk and seems to be glad to have a visitor.

  “Zinaida Petrovna?” I say.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “I am Pavel Rostin, Mr. Zorkin told me I could visit you.”

  The smile on Konyukhova’s face morphs into an expression of puzzlement. “Did you say Rostin?”

  “Yes.” I answer carefully.

  “There was another person by this last name here a few months ago…” Konyukhova’s voice trails away, her smile gone, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  I try to respond confidently and without hesitation. “It was my father, Vladimir Rostin. He was looking for Grigoriy Voronezhsky’ dissertation.”

  The woman nods. “But I made him a copy, why are you back?”

  “He had a mild stroke and can’t remember where he put it. I searched his whole apartment; I think he accidentally threw it away. He did not finish reading the document and asked me to find it. He could not even remember your name, so his neighbor, Mr. Zorkin, offered to help. You know, Zinaida Petrovna, my father is eighty-one. I am sure you’ve dealt with people that age and know how they can be.”

  The last bit must have convinced Konyukhova. “Yes, my grandfather is eighty-two and he often forgets things. But your dad seemed to be so together.”

  “Yes, well, he was. Until the stroke.”

  “I am sorry to hear about that, I hope he recovers. You see, I am not even supposed to give you access to the archives, let alone make copies.” As she says it, the palm of her right-hand turns face up signaling what’s expected.

  “I understand, but I would love to indulge the old man,” I say while producing a pair of $100 bills from my wallet.

  Konyukhova’s palm flips once again, facing me, signaling to stop. “It’s nice of you to care about your old man.” She pushes herself up and squeezes past the desk to stand next to me. Zinaida Petrovna is pleasantly plump and wears a short black skirt below a prim white blouse. She takes the bills and smiles. “Follow me, please.”

  Konyukhova walks in front of me, her hips swaying. We take an elevator to the basement. Two other men share the ride with us, both eyeing Konyukhova as she stands formally with her hands clasped in front. I follow her to the door with a faded “Archives” lettering which she unlocks with a key. Once inside, she takes my hand with a “We don’t want you to get lost” comment, and we make our way through a library-like setup of shelves filled with books, manuscripts, and binders. She must be bored in her job and enjoys a little game of seduction.

  We turn into one of the spaces between shelves, Konyukhova lets go of my hand, bends down, picks up a thin binder and hands it to me. “I did not have to look it up; I was getting it for your father not long ago.”

  I open the binder to read: “Financial Warfare in the 21st Century: Scenarios, Trends, and Policy Implications. Master’s Thesis by Grigoriy Voronezhsky, 1998.” There are more words on the page, but I have trouble concentrating with Konyukhova’s body emanating heat right next to me.

  Konyukhova takes the binder from my hands, steps back and asks, “Would you like me to make another copy for your father?”

  I squeeze out “Yes” and she leads me to a side wall, where she disappears into a small copier room while I lean against the wall, and take a deep breath. The copier stops whirring, and Konyukhova comes out, hands me a manila envelope with papers inside and takes the binder back to the shelf.

  I had a thought in the meantime.

  “Zinaida Petrovna?”

  “Yes?”

  “The university does have an annual book of graduates, right?”

  She hesitates, unsure of where this is going.

  I add. “All universities print one every year, I think.”

  Konyukhova nods, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Can I look at the one from 1998?” I reach into my wallet and produce another hundred.

  She hesitates, then reaches for the bill. “You can’t make a copy.”

  “That’s OK, I don’t want a copy. I just want to look at it.”

  I follow her to a rack by the entrance to the archives, and she pulls out a book of 1998 graduates off the shelf. I flip through the alphabetical listing, get to the right page. Grigoriy Voronezhsky and Greg Voron is the same person.

  Konyukhova escorts me out of the archives, guides me to a side exit on the first floor, formally shakes my hand and says, “Thank you for visiting the university and good luck with your research.” There is a note of relief in her voice. With that, Konyukhova tur
ns around and marches back, hips swaying, high heels clicking on a stone floor.

  When I get back to the apartment, I open the envelope. It’s has a document of about fifty pages. The table of contents reads:

  1.The Wolfowitz Doctrine and the Brzezinski’s Grand ChessBoard

  2.Financialization of the U.S. and its Societal Implications

  3.Emerging Instruments of Financial Conflict in International Policy

  4.Implications for the Russian National Security

  The doorbell rings. As expected, it’s Zorkin.

  “Pavel Vladimirovich, I have some papers for you to sign,” he says cautiously, half-expecting to be told that I have another assignment for him.

  To his relief, I respond with, “Yes, Evgeny Antonovich, we do.”

  We go through the piles of paperwork. Seems that although the Russian real estate privatization has been done only recently, the document bureaucracy already caught up to the U.S. levels. I date everything with the coming Wednesday. When Zorkin protests that it should be Tuesday, I point out to him that Monday evening in the U.S. will be Tuesday in Russia.

  “What’s another day, Evgeny Antonovich? By the way, one small request for you.”

  Zorkin’s face drops, but he recovers when I explain that I just may ask him to send some of my father’s items to New York.

  “No problem, I will be happy to ship everything.” He sweeps his hand, indicating that he has no interest in any of my father’s furniture. He probably already has a painting and remodeling crew standing by.

  “Thank you, Evgeny Antonovich. That won’t be necessary; I will clearly mark what I would like sent. Here’s the key, I trust you to not use it until Wednesday.”

  “Of course, of course, you can absolutely trust me,” gushes Zorkin, ecstatic at reaching his goal at a price that’s much lower than he was prepared to pay. “Pavel Vladimirovich, should we go out and celebrate tonight? I have connections at the city’s best restaurants!”

  I thank him and beg off. I have had enough of the man.

  I reserve a flight to New York. An unmistakable sign of progress in Russia: One no longer needs “connections” to get airline tickets, doesn’t have to buy them well in advance. If there are seats, you buy a ticket and you get on. Fortunately, my credit card limit is pretty high, the credit card company has not caught up with my new reality. Going through father’s things. I take the diary, the metronome, and the photo album. I put a few other books into a box, marked for a shipment to New York City. Everything else can be left to Mr. Zorkin.