The Old Boys (15 page)

I asked Mikhail, “You weren’t worried that one of these fellows hadn’t told you all he knew before he was executed?”

“That was not a realistic possibility.”

“But weren’t you concerned about all those loose ends?”

“No,” Mikhail said. “I assumed that sooner or later we would find the missing bombs. They were virtually unshielded to cut down on their weight, and they gave off so much radiation that they should have been readily detectable. However, I was wrong. We spent millions of rubles looking for them all over the Soviet Union with everything from satellites to soldiers with Geiger counters. We never found a trace.”

Meaning what, in Mikhail’s opinion?

“There were many theories,” he replied. “They could be stored deep in a cave or a mine or an oil well. Or hidden someplace where there was already a lot of background radiation from old test explosions. We looked in all such places in the Soviet Union— Kazakhstan, Siberia, Kamchatka, the arctic testing sites, nuclear waste dumps, salt mines, coal mines. The old regime was not tidy about such things, so the country is full of possible hiding places. We found nothing.”

“It did not occur to you that the bombs might have gone abroad?”

“Of course. But we had no responsibility to protect any other country.”

“You still thought these bombs were going to be detonated inside the USSR?”

“Yes.”

“There was one other probable target.”

“The
United States?” Mikhail said. “Not many in the Red Army or the KGB would have wept over a terrorist nuclear attack on New York or Chicago.”

It was a long subway ride back to the hotel and when we got there, in time for breakfast, no hot water was left for a shower and shave. Harley and I were eating kippers and eggs in the dining room, waiting for the hot-water tank to fire up again, when a young man walked through the door and headed straight for our table. He was a muscular, keen-eyed type: Well-cut navy blue blazer, creased gray flannel pants, striped shirt, faux Eton tie, shoes too cheap for the ensemble. Everyone in the world who wears Western clothes looks like an American these days. Consequently I wasn’t sure if this man was a Russian mafia hit man or one of ours or what.

He said, in a Midwestern twang, “Hi, Mr. Waters. Good morning, Mr. Hubbard. May I join you?”

Harley ignored him.

I said, “Pull up a chair. Coffee?”

“Had mine,” the man said, lifting a finger to the waiter. He must have been a good tipper, well known in this place, because the fellow fairly ran across the room.

“Mineral water, please, Boris, and keep it coming,” he said in good Russian.

Our visitor acted and looked like someone who not so very long ago had played quarterback in high school in a town where
that mattered a lot. He had one of those American heads on which a German skull combines with an Irish face, untraceable ears, and Mediterranean eyes. His smile was one hundred percent rich-kid American—$15,000 worth of flashing orthodontia.

I said, “You know our names. What’s yours?”

“Kevin Clark,” he said. No business card, no offer to shake hands.

Harley said, “Anything to add to that information?”

Kevin Clark gave him a charming smile. His mineral water came in the blink of an eye. He drank a full glass before speaking again. The waiter leaped to fill his glass, then hovered within earshot. Kevin paid him no mind.

“Well,” he said loud and clear, as if barking signals, “I’ve been asked to be your friend while you’re in Moscow.”

“Really?” I said. “By whom? “

“By people who are worried about your safety.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

“Sorry, no,” our new friend said. “It’s a confidential relationship.”

“I see. Why are these benevolent folks who want to protect us so worried about us?”

“It’s the company you keep, Mr. Hubbard. Your recent activities in Xinjiang are worrisome, and the man you visited last night is a dangerous person.”

“My goodness,” I said, “but you seem to have scouts everywhere.”

No smile for that one. Boris brought Kevin a second bottle of water.

“It would be best for everyone,” Kevin said, “if you’d leave Russia before our hosts discover a reason to throw you out.”

Harley, born before orthodontists were an American institution, replied with a glimpse of his own irregular, yellowing teeth. “We’re not goin’ anywhere, sonny. And you can go back to whoever sent you, like Tom Berger, and tell ’em that. Horace and I are just a couple of senior citizens on vacation, seein’ the sights.”

“I
have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kevin said. “And I don’t know anybody named Tom Berger. But believe me, I’m just trying to help you.”

“You don’t work for Tom in the American embassy?” Harley said. “Does that mean you’re not a member of the Outfit?”

Kevin did not answer the question. He said, “Look, no matter what your friend Mikhail”—he dropped the name casually—“tells you, there are no lost bombs. This is an old KGB disinformation op designed to make people run around like chickens with our heads cut off.”

“And this you know beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

“That’s correct. And it would be a great shame if the Russian police somehow found out that you’re a convicted felon who had entered their country without making that known to them.”

Harley said, “Frankly, son, I don’t think they’d be too surprised or upset by that news. Maybe they’d rather follow Horace, here, around for awhile to see what he’s up to instead of throwin’ him out of the country.”

“I doubt that. And besides, it’s not the Russian police you should be worried about.”

“Then who
should
I be worried about?” I asked. “I’m dying to know.”

“I’m afraid you’ll know soon enough,” Kevin said. He drank another glass of mineral water—the whole thing, right down. He rose to his feet, leaving a big tip for the waiter, but leaving his check for us to pay. “See you around, gentlemen,” he said.

Harley pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. He held the instrument away from his ear as if he expected whoever answered to talk too loudly. I could hear it ring, then hear the voice of Tom Berger, the local chief of station.

“Tom, it’s me, long time since we last spoke,” Harley said in a voice and diction no one could ever forget after hearing it once. “Quick question. Do you know the young fella my old friend and I had breakfast with this mornin’?”

The voice in the receiver said, “Nope. What’s this all about?”

“Tryin’
to find that out, Tom. No messenger sent to me from you?”

“No.”

“Thanks, Tom,” Harley said. He clicked off. “Sounds like Kevin don’t belong to Tom—supposin’ we can have faith in Tom.”

Then who did Kevin belong to? It was all very mysterious.

Harley and I were too tired after our all-nighter to care. We went straight upstairs after signing the bill for breakfast. Following a five-hour nap, a shave and shower and a restorative pot of tea, we went sightseeing. It was too cold to wander around outside, so we took the subway to the Tretyakov Gallery. I had lost track of time, but it must have been a day off because the place was thronged with pink-faced girls in miniskirts, all searching for boys. It seemed odd to be admiring female legs and breathing perfume in Moscow. This happy crowd was a blessing, making it easy to spot a gumshoe among the nymphs and fauns. As a counter-measure to hidden microphones, their giggles were at least the equal of Mikhail’s tinny old radio.

Sauntering from one long-lost pre-Leninist Russian masterpiece to another, Harley and I talked business. Harley was speaking native New Hampshire now, whole paragraphs speeding by without a final
g
or
r
being heard unless a word like
tomater
cropped up.

“Could be all this business at breakfast was just new Outfit clumsiness,” he said. “But maybe it’s got some basis in reality. Somebody might actually know somethin’.”

“Know something about what?”

“Well, that boy Kevin this mornin’ mentioned the mob.”

“You
think the Russian underworld cares about us?”

“Might be prudent to acknowledge the possibility,” Harley said. “Remember who those mafia bosses used to be. Might as well call it the KGB alumni association. Which brings us back to Mikhail. Notice anything funny about his story?”

This was like asking if I’d noticed that the girls in miniskirts had legs, but I replied, “Any number of things. What do you have in mind?”

“Told us all about the colonels, majors, captains, sergeants and first-class privates he’d put through the wringer, not to mention the scientists and so on who were interrogated. Cast of thousands. Talked about terrorists who may have burglarized the place. However, he never said a word about the likeliest suspects in a thing like this. Namely, the mob.”

A couple of long-limbed girls moved between us and the painting and posed for a picture. The photographer was one of the boyfriends, and he was equipped with the latest thing in a digital camera. When he lifted the camera I saw that he was wearing a very expensive solid gold, blue-faced wristwatch. We moved on to avoid having our picture taken. The kids moved with us, innocent though their giggles may have been, until we lost them in the crowd, as we were conditioned to do.

In the next gallery, filled with Kandinskys, we were more or less alone. Then the same two beautiful girls and their boyfriends entered the room. Harley turned to them and said, in his flawless Russian, “Let me borrow your camera, young fella, and I’ll get a
kulturny
shot of all four of you in front of this fine work of art.”

The startled boyfriend handed over his camera. Harley took his time focusing and framing the shot—
Smile! One more!
At last Harley handed back the camera. We turned our backs and walked away.

“Two shots of us in the camera,” he said. “Not very good likenesses. I let ’em be. Don’t think they got close enough to do much listenin’ or recordin’.”

Was
this street smarts or paranoia? “How would those kids know we were in that particular museum?”

“They got on the subway with us, all bundled up,” Harley said. “Didn’t start skylarkin’ till we all got inside. You’re slippin’, Horace.”

I wish I could say that Harley was wrong about this but the fact is, I had missed them because I hadn’t been looking for golden boys and girls. I’d had an eye out for the old Peter Lorre type in black alpaca suit and oversize fedora. Obviously the times had moved on without me.

Not that I confessed my mistake to Harley. Instead I said, “You noticed the photographer’s watch?”

“Yep. Unless the Russian intelligence service can afford twentyfive grand worth of costume jewelry, looks like those sparrows work for another employer.”

“And how did they know to follow us?”

“Two possibilities,” Harley said. “Mikhail or Kevin. Let’s get out of here.”

It took a moment to collect our coats and hats. Our four young friends were right behind us in line, and they spilled down the steps of the museum behind us, too. It was still snowing. One of the girls, her small round face piquant under its fur hat, ran to us and put her arms around Harley. She opened her burkha-like long coat before doing this, so that there was little between his old bones and her firm young flesh. Eyes dancing, she whispered in his ear. Harley was delighted, but I noticed that he put his hand in the pocket where he carried his money. He whispered an answer in Russian. She pouted and started to whisper a reply, but then her eyes changed, merriment to fear. I followed her glance and saw a man in a long overcoat reading
Izvestia
in the snowstorm. A little farther down the street were more men—not one but two complete surveillance teams, waiting for us. Harley saw them, too. The girl’s companions were already fading into the falling snow, and she ran after them.

“Kind
of flatterin’, everybody takin’ such an interest in us,” Harley said.

“What did the little lady say to you?”

“She said Mikhail wants to see us. Urgently.”

It was snowing harder now. Wearing his old sable hat and fur-lined coat, Harley blended with the crowd. I wore my brand-new Gore-Tex goose-down parka with the hood up. Slush leaked through my high-tech waterproof hiking shoes and I envied Harley his buckled early-twentieth-century black galoshes. The gumshoes followed us. Whoever they were, cops or robbers, they were glued to us. We ignored them as if we were innocent men; shaking them, even if that were possible, would only make them more suspicious. Besides, there was no reason to make a dash for it. I wasn’t particularly worried about compromising Mikhail.