Beautiful Assassin (23 page)

“A milk shake,” the interpreter replied.

“Yes, a chocolate milk shake.”

After they left, Vasilyev said he had to make a phone call to the Soviet embassy in Washington. For some reason, he took Gavrilov with him. Viktor and I waited there with the Corpse, who sat opposite us, smoking a cigarette.

Finally Viktor nudged me with his elbow. “I have an idea,” he whispered.

“What?” I said.

“Ssh. Just follow my lead,” was all he said, giving me a conspiratorial wink.

“I have to use the can,” Viktor said to the
chekist
officer.

“You’ll have to wait until Comrade Vasilyev returns,” replied the Corpse.

“I can’t wait.”

“Are you a child?”

“Something I had for breakfast didn’t agree with me,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “I have to go.
Now
. The bathroom is just over there.” He stood and pointed off toward a doorway at one end of the huge lobby.

The Corpse glanced in that direction, then gathered his lips in annoyance.

“Or you can come along and hold my hand,” Viktor joked.

“All right, go! But make it snappy.”

Viktor glanced at me.

“I have to go too,” I said.

“You’ll have to wait until he comes back.”

“She should come with me,” Viktor said. “You don’t want her going unescorted to the bathroom. This is New York, after all. Vasilyev wouldn’t want anything to happen to our national treasure,” he added, with a mischievous glance toward me.

The Corpse mulled this over. Finally he conceded. “Well, all right. But get your asses right back. And don’t let her out of your sight.”

I knew Viktor was up to something, and while I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of it, I went along anyway. We passed through an arched doorway, and then, instead of heading toward what were obviously a pair of lavatories—we saw men and women streaming into them—Viktor started for a staircase that led up toward street level.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“We’re in New York. I just want to see a little of the city.”

“Are you mad?”

“You heard them. We’re stuck here for a couple of hours. Besides, we’ll be back before they even suspect anything. I’ll say I had the runs.”

“You know what Vasilyev told us.”

“Big deal,” he scoffed.

“I don’t think you want to get on his bad side, Viktor.”

“What’s he going to do? He needs us. We’re the war heroes.”

“He could ship you home. He could…”

“What?”

“He could make serious trouble for you.”

“Trouble?” he said with a laugh. “You and I just came from the front. We know what trouble is. I thought you had guts, Lieutenant.”

“It’s not a matter of courage, Sergeant. It’s a matter of common sense.”

“Stay then. I’ll be back in a little while. Tell them I had the runs.”

With this, he turned and started up the stairs.

I hesitated for a moment. I thought how Vasilyev had asked me to talk to Viktor, to make sure he stayed in line. Then I figured there would be less of a chance of his getting into trouble if I went with him. And Viktor was right, Vasilyev couldn’t send us both back. He needed us.

“Wait,” I called to him.

Halfway up he turned and reached out his hand toward me. “Hurry up then.”

I rushed up the steps, my heart beating fast. I felt a little frightened, but more than that, I felt a giddy sense of exhilaration, of freedom.

“Five minutes,” I said. “No more.”

“Relax.”

Out on the street, I was nearly overwhelmed by the city’s teeming chaos, by its assault on the senses. Its sights and sounds and smells. Its noise and frenetic pace. By the crush of people surging along the sidewalks. The dizzying skyscrapers whose tops were lost in the afternoon haze. The gaudy colors of the clothing and signs and lights. The tempting fragrances that floated in the air like a stew. The babble of a million voices all seeming to talk at once. The dazzle and glitter of shop window after shop window offering any item imaginable, and some that were, quite frankly, unimaginable. Automobiles and buses zooming in and out, weaving lanes, as if it were all an intricately choreographed dance. In some ways, the pandemonium was like being in the midst of a battle—only the smoke and dead bodies were missing. I was reminded of what Madame Rudneva had told me about New York. But it was many times worse than I could’ve imagined.

“This beats the hell out of a muddy trench, eh, Lieutenant?” Viktor said, grinning.

We started walking, trying to negotiate the surging currents of humanity that flowed past. Viktor and I stumbled along, bumping into people who had gathered at stoplights or paused to gaze in a store window. Those New Yorkers, however, seemed to have mastered the technique for moving through the crowds. They darted nimbly like minnows in a stream, cutting this way, slashing that, speeding up or slowing down. We approached one building whose doorman was holding open the door of a long black limousine that had pulled up at the curb. I watched a couple emerge from the backseat. The young woman, tall and sinewy and lovely, was dressed elegantly, a diamond necklace about her swanlike neck. In her arms she cradled a small dog, no bigger than a rat in one of the sewers of Sevastopol. She was followed by a stout, gray-haired man in his fifties.

We continued on. I was amazed by the Americans’ keen awareness of their own vaunted freedom. They moved about with such complete certainty, with an absolute assurance that the world had been fashioned exclusively for them and their desires. They walked and drove their autos and behaved without the least sense of restraint, or of order or
propriety; they pushed and jostled and elbowed others in their way; they cut in front of people, even old babushkas shuffling along with canes; they yelled and called things out, from the tone both in anger and in jest. I was struck by how they lacked all manner of civility and politeness. How they spat on the sidewalks or tossed their chewing gum or cigarette butts, without the least concern for others or for the fact that a policeman might catch them. How loudly they conversed or laughed, without the slightest regard for someone eavesdropping on them. Back home, no one wanted his conversation overheard, so in public we spoke in cautious whispers or not at all. We who lived under communism kept things to ourselves. Something that Vasilyev had said occurred to me then. How the Americans were not good at keeping secrets. Perhaps he was right.

A few blocks away, in an alley, we came upon a disheveled man in a tattered military coat. He sat on a kind of mechanical creeper, in one grubby paw a tin can with a few coins sprinkled in the bottom, which he shook at passersby like a newborn’s rattle. Both of his pant legs were rolled back, exposing the outlines of stumps.

“Do you think he’s a real veteran?” Viktor asked me.

I shrugged. His uniform looked old, perhaps from the Great War. Viktor reached into his pocket and withdrew a couple of kopeks, and dropped them into the can.

“What’s he going to do with kopeks?”

“Buy some vodka,” he joked.

As we walked along, we saw similar examples of terrible poverty side by side with grand displays of unbelievable wealth. The poverty I well understood. It was the wealth I found hard to comprehend. I saw hungry-looking men gathered in alleys right beside fancy restaurants. The homeless sleeping on the sidewalk near elegant apartment buildings. No one seemed to notice, however, or if they did, to care. America, I was quickly realizing, was a land of glaring extremes, a vast spectrum of humanity.

Passing a fruit stand in front of a store, Viktor reached out and casually snatched an apple, slipping it into his coat pocket.

“Are you trying to get us arrested?” I whispered to him.

“They call it the Big Apple,” he explained.

“Did you make that up?”

“No, it’s true. A sailor aboard ship told me.” When we were a ways away, he removed the stolen fruit from his pocket, rubbed the apple against his sleeve, then tore a bite from it. “Look around, Lieutenant. I think they can spare one stinking apple for one of their allies.”

I had to admit, the sheer abundance of the city was astonishing. Everywhere there was food and more food, food beyond one’s wildest imaginings—on street vendors’ carts, in store windows, in displays before markets, on the plates of people eating in restaurants, hanging in butchers’ and greengrocers’ stalls, displayed on signs, in the hands of people passing by. Nowhere did I see long lines waiting for a loaf a bread, a piece of meat. In the garbage cans on the street I saw enough food to feed entire families back in Kiev. I recalled suddenly how hungry I had been at the front. Yet here there was such a dizzying profusion of food, more even than on the tables of the Party big shots back home. Where did it come from? I wondered. Who had the money to buy it all?

And everywhere, I saw people going about their business with such seeming nonchalance. No, it was more than that. Contempt. An utter contempt for the rest of the world, for the past or the future, for anything but right here and now. All else didn’t matter in the least to these people. As I walked along I saw two well-dressed women my own age conversing in a small patisserie, someone waiting for a bus reading the newspaper, a man whistling as he made deliveries, a couple strolling happily arm in arm, a teenage boy bobbing his head to loud music that wafted out of a store. These Americans didn’t seem to have a care in the world. It was as if for them there were no Kharkov and Kiev, no Smolensk and Sevastopol, no Babi Yar or Nikolaev. It was as if they hadn’t heard about the millions already dead or starving in German POW camps. They were at war themselves, but it was as if it were just a distant rumor, something that didn’t really affect them in any tangible way. Suddenly I felt such a righteous wave of anger rise up in me like bile. They are fools, I thought. Someone must tell them the truth. Someone must make them aware.

“Look at them,” I said to Viktor as we walked along.

“What?”

“It’s as if they don’t know there was a war going on.”

“What do you expect?” he replied, taking a final bite of his apple and tossing the half-eaten core into a garbage can. “They’re spoiled capitalists.”

“Then what the hell are we doing here?”

“Having a little fun.”

“No, Viktor. I’m serious.”

We had stopped at a busy street corner. A rush of traffic surged past us like an attack of Panzers, tires screeching, motors roaring.

Turning toward me, Viktor said, “That’s your problem, Lieutenant. You take everything too seriously. Why not try to enjoy yourself a little?”

“It’s hard to forget the war.”

“No one’s asking you to forget it. Just let yourself live a bit.”

“But doesn’t it anger you?”

“What?”

“That these people are so ignorant of what’s going on in the rest of the world. The suffering. The danger we are all in.”

“You think too much.”

“That’s what my mother told me.”

“She was right.”

At that moment, the light changed and the crowd surged forward. Viktor grabbed my hand and pulled me along.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“A little,” I replied. “Perhaps we should be getting back though.”

But we continued walking and soon found ourselves ensnared by the tantalizing smells of a bakery. We stopped and peered in the window at breads and pastries, frosted cakes and torts, strudel and puddings, something flat that looked like blini but was rolled and filled with some sort of cream. I felt my mouth water.

“Those look delicious,” I said, pointing at the cream-filled dessert.

“Do you want one?” Viktor asked me.

“We don’t have any American money, remember.”

Viktor slipped by me and entered the store.

“Viktor,” I said, following him. “Don’t.”

He ignored me.

“That’s an order, Sergeant,” I told him.

He looked back over his shoulder and said, “We’re no longer on the battlefield, Lieutenant. I don’t take orders from you anymore.”

The store was crowded with people. Viktor got in line and slowly worked his way toward the front, a glass case behind which were more baked goods. A wide-hipped young woman in a filthy apron waited on him, saying in English something like “Can I help you?”

Viktor pointed at one of the cream-filled pastries behind the glass. When the woman reached to pick up something else, he shook his head and pointed again at the item he wanted. Once more she reached for a pastry, and once more Viktor had to shake his head. This went on several times. Finally, her hands on her hips, the woman straightened and said something harshly in English, which I didn’t understand.

“
Zdes’,
” Viktor said, meaning “here.” He pointed again at the one he wanted.

The woman shrugged in annoyance.

“
Zdes’, zdes’,
” Viktor insisted, pointing into the case. Then he held up two fingers.

At last the woman picked up the right one and put two in a bag. She thrust the bag brusquely at Viktor and said something in English.

Viktor removed a fifty-kopek coin from his pocket and placed it on the counter. “Keep the change,” he said in Russian, then turned to leave, grabbing me by the elbow and leading me quickly toward the door.

The woman called after us.

“Keep going,” Viktor told me. I hesitated, so he gently shoved me ahead of him.

Outside, we hurried down the street. I turned back once and saw the woman standing in front of the store, shouting, waving a hand at us. At this we broke into a run and continued down the street for a ways before turning onto a side street. We ran down it for a while, and then Viktor pulled me into an alleyway. I felt suddenly winded from the exertion, the wound in my stomach aching dully. I didn’t realize how out of shape I’d become since being hospitalized. And I couldn’t believe what Viktor had just pulled.

“You’re mad!” I growled at him.

“We’re just having a little fun.”

“Our first day in America, we end up in prison. Vasilyev would love that.”

But Viktor had that disarming, lopsided grin on his face, like a mischievous boy who’d played a trick on his teacher.