Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

Petrov drew a deep breath. “My wife is a nervous wreck. Last week, someone in our apartment block was taken. No one says he was arrested, but now no one mentions his name. He’s gone, disappeared. The family says he is off visiting relatives, but my wife saw him taken out to a black Volga.” He clenched his hands. “She won’t talk about our escape openly. If we talk at home, it’s simple things—how was your day, did you go to the store? Nonsense. When we talk about our plans, it is in our bedroom with the radio playing loudly.

“Why am I telling you this? It’s complicated with her. She can’t bear the thought of leaving her parents without saying goodbye. I need to give her reasons to believe our son will be safe if we go.”

Petrov turned philosophical. “If you submit to the state, it gives you what you need, and for me, in my position, we get an annual holiday at the KGB resort on the Black Sea, health care in a special clinic, monthly rations of milk and butter, and a job from which I can’t be fired.” He smiled grimly. “But if you don’t submit and you resist, the benefits vanish, the rations stop, medicines become unavailable, your friends look away, and you are watched. There is no privacy, even in your own home. If you persist in your questions, you are considered difficult and the State unleashes its full arsenal of vengeance. You are sent to Serbsky Psychiatric Institute, where you are treated for a condition the KGB calls ‘lazy schizophrenia’ whose only symptom is resistance to the State.”

Petrov stood. “I tell this to my wife. She knows it, but it’s one thing to know this and another to imagine you’ll never see your parents again.” He stopped at the door. “My wife liked the ABBA. Can you get me Queen? And a woman’s two-piece lingerie, cup size C. Any color. Look, my wife’s unmarried sister’s thirtieth birthday is coming up, and my wife wants something to surprise her. It would help me out, okay?”

“Of course.” Garin also stood and tried to appear upbeat in the face of Petrov’s grim report and gloomy mood. He handed the newly forged passports to Petrov. The documents had been created by the Technical Services Graphics Department, everything meticulously re-created to appear like originals—paper quality, photographs, embarkation stamps that reflected the wear and tear of years of use. The entry stamps were made to emulate the varied pressure that a busy immigration inspector would use when pressing his rubber stamp, some faint, some bolder, and none of the pages with the obvious crispness of an intentional forgery. Only the names were different.

“Good,” Petrov said, shoving his arms into his coat. “This will help. Now let’s hope no one searches our flat and finds the camera.” Petrov had stepped through the door when he stopped and faced Garin. “Get Posner off my back.”

“How?”

Petrov’s eyes narrowed. “You’re clever. Cleverer than you pretend. You’ll find a way.”

“IHEAR YOU’VE BEEN ASKING ABOUT Dmitry Posner.”

Garin was surprised by Helen Walsh’s comment, coming abruptly in the midst of their casual conversation. They were standing together in her crowded living room among guests who talked over one another to make themselves heard as they smoked, drank, and laughed. Her question implied that his few discreet inquiries into Posner had entered the embassy gossip mill.

Helen had a pleasant figure and confident smile, and the slightly flirtatious demeanor of an unmarried career professional in her mid-thirties. Her knowledge of Russian was better than most of the other foreign service professionals, and her long tenure in Moscow came with a two-bedroom apartment with a good view of the Kremlin. She hosted a monthly Friday night salon for embassy staff—particularly the young, single staff, who found it hard to lead normal lives in the closed city—and their French, Italian, and English counterparts. The party’s casual atmosphere allowed guests to unwind from a long workweek, free of the watchful eyes of State Security.

Garin had formed his opinion of his supervisor in their first meeting, when she’d stared at him across her desk with a gambler’s gaze. As was often the case with his judgments of people, his first impression endured and became a lasting impression, and everything that followed simply confirmed his opinion. She belonged to that class of women who took it upon themselves to be familiar with other people’s business—and she knew more than she let on.

Her comment came after she’d described how she made certain that she knew who had arrived to her parties. If she saw someone she didn’t recognize, she’d get the person’s name and ask what they did and who they came with, and then she’d show them to the bar. That was how she got to know everyone, she’d said.

They were standing by a bookshelf of abundant memorabilia in exotic disarray. “I’m a hoarder,” she’d said with a laugh when he’d first been struck by the volumes of samizdat first editions and walls crowded with paintings by jailed Soviet artists.

But now she wasn’t focused on her collection. Garin saw her eyes fix on him, and he knew that the woman who’d avoided him for weeks had a sudden interest.

“I was told to meet him,” he replied. “Do you know him?” Garin glanced around, looking for an excuse to escape her company.

“Know Dmitry Posner? Of course. He sold me that painting.” She directed Garin to a canvas of dense black squares set on a background of ivory white. “He got it off Golukov for nothing when he was arrested and sold it to me for a lot of money. It’s a good racket. There’s a market for dissident art in London. What’s your interest in him?”

“Human rights. Abuses.”

Helen cocked her head. “A clever answer. Maybe it’s even true.”

Garin felt Helen’s eyes on him as if she were trying to read his mind. He had turned his head again, looking to get away, and in the moment of distraction he didn’t catch her question.

“I’m sorry, I was looking for someone. Anything to say about what?”

“About why Ronnie is motioning toward you,” Helen said. “Go ahead, she looks eager to talk.” She nodded at Garin’s glass. “Another?”

“Please.” He took the dregs in one swallow and handed her the glass.

“She’s talking to Rupert Halsey. He comes from a long line of Cambridge communists from the thirties, when it was fashionable among the English upper class, but I know he works for MI6.”

As he stepped away, he felt her hand on his arm, stopping him.

“What are you drinking?”

“Vodka martini. Straight up. No olives.”

“The bartender makes an excellent Moscow Mule. You should try it. Every Russian should.”

Garin crossed the room to Ronnie, but Helen’s comment echoed in the back of his mind. Later, he recorded the incident in his notebook. Her comment was so casual, so out of nowhere, and so notable for its provocative oddity, that it stuck with him. He didn’t think it was a random shot, and like her earlier comment and others that had come to his attention, he had begun to think that his cover wasn’t as good as he had hoped. Rumors had begun to attach themselves to him like burrs. Garin didn’t know how the rumors started, nor did he have a good way to shut them down. And the vagueness of the suspicions was a sort of accelerant—imprecision fueling a wildfire of possibilities that sprung from the dry kindling of the embassy’s social confinement. Garin knew he couldn’t quash the rumors, so he resolved to get his work done quickly and hoped that the speculation would burn out.

“Helen lives well,” Ronnie said when they were alone by the window, away from the crowd. She coddled a drink and had a large cloth bag on her shoulder. “Tenure has its perks.” She pointed at the French Empire furniture and the stunning view of the Kremlin. “She enjoys playing hostess. Everyone wants to come, even the Russians. Look around. Dissidents, poets, physicists, spies. They all want something: a date, to defect, and some want to know who else is in the room.” She sipped her drink. “Everyone wants something.”