Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

“You talk in your sleep,” she said.

“What did I say?”

“It was a bad dream.”

He went to speak, but she stopped his mouth with a kiss. “No words.” She moved her legs over him and kneaded his chest with her fingers, gazing into his eyes with desire.

Everything they needed to say had been said. Everything they wanted from each other they took.

GARIN KNEW THAT EXPERIENCE OFTEN repeated itself—at least it did in his relations with women—and he knew that every intimacy was pleasant at first, and perhaps even intoxicating, and made life appear to be an adventure. But in time, the feelings inevitably grew into something ordinary and perhaps unbearable. Each new beginning with an interesting woman held that sad potential, and he hoped that it wouldn’t happen with Natalya. He wanted to keep everything between them uncomplicated, if only for the weekend while they lived a pleasant moment, trying to ignore the future.

She had left work early Friday afternoon for the start of the last weekend of Lent. They had spent the day apart, and he felt good being away from her. The idea of too much intimacy had begun to wear on him and crowded out what he knew he must do in his final days in Moscow.

That evening, they found themselves on the roof of her apartment house. The dying sun was an orange seam across the horizon, and threatening clouds had moved their conversation to a dark place without any conscious effort on their part. They seemed to know that whatever pleasures they had enjoyed were behind them. What lay ahead was uncertain.

It was warm out in the spring evening, and windows of the building across the street were thrown open for air after having been shut tight all winter. They leaned on the stone parapet looking toward the russet dusk. Now and then they looked at each other and smiled, as if surprised to find themselves in each other’s company. Intimacy between them was still a new thing being tried out.

Natalya ground her cigarette with her heel, extinguishing it, and without turning her head she asked, “How do you know Deputy Chairman Churgin?”

Garin didn’t know what prompted her question. The wine at dinner? The sight of the luminously illuminated Kremlin? The memory of the meeting in Spaso House?

Natalya turned to him. “The head of Directorate S is a man who isn’t photographed. His name isn’t spoken. He is a shadow.”

“He trained me.” Garin addressed the surprise he saw on her face. “He wouldn’t remember. I was twelve. I was in a group at a camp outside Moscow. There were twenty of us receiving training. We were all tan, brown-haired, eager, dressed in the same uniform. The Soviet image of healthy youth. His job was to train illegals to talk, think, and act like regular Americans, even to the point that in our subconscious, we took on a false identity and became a made-up person. It was all very patriotic to be part of the preparation for the day when we’d come out of our holes behind enemy lines and engage rearguard operations against shop clerks, taxi drivers—mothers with strollers.”

Garin laughed at the absurdity of what had been expected of him. Then his face darkened.

“But it wasn’t fun and games back in America. If you were seen as unfit or wavering, the punishment was quick and ruthless. You were recalled to Moscow.” He turned to Natalya. “The woman I spoke of the other night—the one married to the American army captain in Virginia with her son. She was recalled. If you were recalled to Moscow, you didn’t return. The rule was no contact. If a person returned to America and it became known they had been in Moscow, the whole deceit was at risk. So they disappeared. Lost. The woman didn’t exist, except as a name taken from a cemetery marker. Probably she was shot and thrown in an unmarked grave, or it’s possible she died in a labor camp in the gulag.

“It is always harder for the ones left behind. Death comes as a relief to the condemned, but the living suffer the absurdity and grief. Her crime? Even that was a mystery. Too many complaints against her alcoholic, cheating husband? Too much concern for her son? Too much suspicious behavior? Too few reports? Too many care packages of Easter sausage and kulich ? Who knows?”

Garin had gone on at length in a quiet voice. The sun had set, and darkness had fallen on them like a shroud. All around, the lights of the city had come on one by one, twinkling. The two of them stood quietly in the deepening gloom of night. Garin had assumed a meditative pose.

“And this too,” he said suddenly, “has been my life. The mother I resented. What bargain did she make with the devil to believe that the life she chose was worth living?”

Garin’s voice was gruff, and he lowered his head, looking at nothing. Then he looked at her. “You asked how I know Churgin? There were three encounters. I told you about the training camp. The summer after that, I saw him parked in front of our home in Virginia.” Garin paused. “My mother was frightened and pulled me from the window. He never came inside the house, but my mother knew he was unhappy. I saw her fear. She never described the threat, but, like any child, I assumed I had done something wrong. I had failed her in some indescribable way. I would wake up in bed trembling and crawl under my desk, a scared kid thinking it was safe there. Then she left—vanished, actually. I put things together as I got older. Somewhere along the way, I swore I would kill him.

“My third encounter was in Spaso House. I was not surprised he didn’t recognize me. But he was a man I would never forget.”

Garin ended the short account of his life. A part of him felt relieved to have a person he could openly talk to about his hoarded emotions and things he’d never shared, and another part of him, the part that managed fear, went along reluctantly. His life too, he said, had been an unforeseen chain of events set in motion a long time ago, and he’d done what he’d needed to carve out a life for himself.

“It sounds terrible,” he said, laughing, “but it’s been fine. I couldn’t imagine a desk job in a bank or a dull nine-to-five existence. And I’ve met you.” He laughed again, but his voice carried a sense of heartbreaking loss. His survival was a peculiar happenstance of luck and skill. He’d fought a Cold War—against the CIA, Langley, the White House; now he was fighting another war against the KGB, Moscow Center, and the Kremlin. They were all the same thing; all the same enemy, he said.

Natalya touched his hand, arranging her palm over his fist. She leaned against him and coddled his shoulder with a gentle embrace. She felt his body tremble, and she pulled away, gazing into his face. “You’re crying.”

“Yes.” He smiled through the tear that had welled in his eye. “Not a crocodile tear. Just a little one.” He wiped the corner of his eye with his finger. “Or maybe a speck of dust.” He turned to look at her. “We’re alike, you know.”

“In what way?”

“There are people who want to silence us. A few I suspect want to kill us. And we both want to cheat them.”

EVERY MORNING THAT weekend, when the whole of the city beyond the closed shutters of her apartment began to stir, Natalya and Garin were awoken by emergency repairs on a water main. Workmen dug up the street in a leisurely effort to fix the broken pipe, goaded by angry residents who complained they were dragging out the work and disturbing everyone. The crew talked loudly with cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths, ignoring the pleas. Then they applied themselves more vigorously with a chorus of clanging shovels, pickaxes, and pounding jackhammers that entered Natalya’s darkened bedroom, rising and falling in waves of obscenities that filled the brief silences between the pneumatic pounding.