Джозеф Файндер - The Moscow Club

Stone, watching Lehman struggle to keep his eyes open, nodded. His head whirled; he could barely speak. “I know,” he said. “I think on some level I’ve always known, although Dad never said anything. My father wanted to protect my childhood. He didn’t want to take from me the one immutable thing. I could never understand why he felt so close to you, so loyal, against all reason. But I think I always had an inkling.”

Lehman, who was almost dead, could not contain a small, pleased smile. “My daughter was a beautiful woman. I shouldn’t – shouldn’t have been surprised when your father fell in love with her. He would do anything – he was even willing to suffer a great indignity in silence – to get Sonya out – Sonya, who was now pregnant with his child. But he didn’t know that Sonya could never be let out, that she was a hostage. And Sonya – poor Sonya – refused to let her child grow up in a land of oppression. This was 1953, remember, and the terror was at its peak. She made the greatest sacrifice of her life. She said – she said she didn’t want her child to be a slave.”

“You couldn’t get her out,” Stone said tonelessly. “But you were able to get me out. That was why my father went to Paris in late 1953. To see Sonya one last time, and to take his newborn child. But why–”

“I had to lie to him. I had to tell him that Sonya had remarried. Otherwise he couldn’t have faced it. A few years later, I told him she had died. But I did everything I could for him.”

“Yes.”

“I got a forged birth certificate for him – for you. I helped him, with money, whenever he’d allow me to do so–”

“I know. I’m – grateful.”

“When I saw you in my archives, I was terrified you’d find out, and I didn’t know what you’d do, how you might disturb the delicate arrangement – as much as you had the right. …”

“Before he died, my father wanted to tell me, but he never got the chance. But I knew.” Somehow Stone had suspected something like this all his life, in the way children can sense things that have no logical explanation: that Margaret Stone was not his real mother. What was it that Alfred Stone had said in a moment of rage, years ago? “You’re the only mother he has!” Yes. The cry of someone who feels at once angry and guilty: I need you to be his mother, since his real mother …

“Some of us – some of us – we’re caught in traps that aren’t of our own making,” Lehman whispered. “In the Cold War between two superpowers. I was, my Sonya was. At least you are not, Charlie.”

And the old man closed his eyes.

Traps. Hostages.

“You are eternity’s hostage,” Alfred Stone liked to quote. “A captive of time.”

Charlie had misunderstood. His father hadn’t been referring to his very public tragedy. He’d been referring to his own, private tragedy. To Sonya. To the mother of his son.

Washington

Almost a full year after that Revolution Day, Stone received in the mail a registered and insured letter from Yakov Kramer, who was by now living in the Brighton Beach section of New York. He found a comfortable chair and opened the package. Charlotte, her hair tied back with a paint-spattered bandana – their new apartment in Georgetown was a disheveled maze of paint cans, spackling, ladders, and drop cloths – stood over him and gasped.

The package contained several yellowed sheets of paper.

Stone pulled them out carefully and, with a peculiar mingling of elation, puzzlement, and shock, examined the documents. They seemed, after all this time, after such a long search, oddly familiar.

On top was a letter. “To the Politburo of the Central Committee,” it began. It was signed “V. I. Lenin.”

Quite a few people with far more important things to do provided generous help in the writing of this book. I thank, particularly, Doe Coover, Peter Dowd, Ami and Varda Ducovny, Lisa Finder, Randy Garber, Diane Hovenesian and Dr. Robert Berry, Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays, Bob Lenzner, Gil Lewis, Jan Libourel, Paul McSweeney, Ray Melucci, Detective Paul Murphy of the Boston Police Department, Richard Rhodes, Robie Macauley, Randi Roth, Ranesford Rouner, Rafe Sagalyn, Charlie Smith, Harry Stoia of Boston Lock & Safe, Joe Teig, Rick Tontarski, Jerry Traum, Joe Walker, Tom Wallace, and, for invaluable assistance on the mechanics of terrorism. Jack McGeorge. I thank, too, my friends in the intelligence profession, who of course bear no resemblance whatsoever to the more odious types contained herein.

For medical expertise, I thank Dr. Stan Cole, Dr. Ann Epstein, Dr. Jonathan Finder, C. George Hori, Dr. David Jablons, Dr. William Ka-simer, and Lynn Swindler.

For specialized wisdom in matters of Sovietology, in these peculiar times when the Soviet Union seems to metamorphose by the day, I’m grateful to many friends and colleagues, including Nick Daniloff, Susan Finder, the nationalities expert Lubomir Hajda of the Harvard Russian Research Center, Elena Klepikova, the Lenin scholar Nina Tumarkin, the encyclopedic Kremlinologist Sidney Ploss, and the incomparable Pris-cilla McMillan. For the textures of life in Moscow, I was helped by many here and during my visits to Russia, including Maria Casby, Ruth Daniloff, Andy Katell, Alex Sito, and Misha Tsypkin.

Working with the people at Viking Penguin has been a pleasure, particularly my splendid, astute editor, Pam Dorman, who was enthusiastically involved at every turn. And of course I must thank the indispensable Danny Baror of the Henry Morrison Agency.

Finally, there are three people without whose generous and patient encouragement I couldn’t have done it: Henry Morrison, the most dedicated agent I know, adviser and champion; my brother, Henry Finder, brilliant editor and brainstormer; and my wife, Michele Souda, for devoted editorial attention and constant loving support, who was there from the start, in a hammock on Martha’s Vineyard.