The Russian Embassy Party

By Cliff Adelman

A ride on the edges of history, with all its unanticipated connections, from the 1963 March on Washington to the 1993 chaos of Yeltsins Russia.

When an ex-CIA agent convinces a bumbling law student to write a term paper on international rights on the high seas, the student and his roommates in Washington wind up with the whole Soviet Embassy coming to dinner. This happened on August 10, 1963, and has never been marked in the history books. Out of this encounter spins a story of revenge, counterpoint, and rollicking foolishness, ending on a railroad platform by the Russian-Finnish border in September, 1993. The Russian Embassy Party follows its sort-of-ordinary people in a not-so-ordinary web through the edges of history (the set for I Have a Dream, watching the fall of the Berlin Wall, revelations of the Katyn Forest Massacre, the last gasp failed Soviet coup of August 1991, stumbling attempts to shore up democracy in Yelstins Russia) until . . . Well, lets say only that there is a good dose of history in the story, and a larger dose of realism in the minds, environments, and conversations of both American and Russian protagonists and supporting cast. At the same time, the echoes of the 1963 Russian Embassy Party itself (when the students behaved and talked like the late-adolescents they were) cut veins through the story, linking its participants in ways they realize, bit by bit, as adults.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480800045

Cliff Adelman

Cliff Adelman started making trouble in grade school in the Boston area, made it constructive trouble at Brown and the University of Chicago, and brought the construction to a head in a string of influential monographs that demonstrated how tractable and smart both governments and foundations can be. Not exactly a wall-flower.

Book preview

The

Russian

Embassy

Party

Cliff Adelman

A Novel

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Copyright © 2013 Clifford Adelman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-0005-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0006-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0004-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013902648

Archway Publishing rev. date: 6/05/2013

Contents

Acknowledgments and Appreciations

1 Helsinki, August 1993

2 Washington, DC, June 1963

3 Washington, July 1963

4 Washington, July 1963: Townshend’s World

5 Washington, July 1963: Mulligan’s World

6 Washington, July 1963: Glenn’s World

7 Washington, August 1963: The Russian Embassy Party

8 Washington, August 1963: The Back Side of the Curve

9 Washington, Early September 1963

10 Florence, June 1978

11 Washington, August 1978

12 Klin and Moscow, September 1978

13 Washington, November 1978

14 New York, January 1979

15 Berlin, November 1989

16 Moscow, Summer 1991

17 Vologda, Moscow; November 1992

18 Washington, Fall 1992 - Early Spring 1993

19 Hamburg, June 1993

20 Washington, June 1993

21 St. Petersburg, August 1993: Beyond the Finland Station

22 St. Petersburg, August 20, 1993

23 St. Petersburg, August 23, 1993

24 St. Petersburg, August 25, 1993

25 St. Petersburg, August 26, 1993

26 St. Petersburg, August 27, 1993

27 Moscow, Sergiev Posad, Late August 1993

28 St. Petersburg, August 30, 1993

29 St. Petersburg, August 31, 1993

30 Moscow, September 1, 1993

31 St. Petersburg, September 2, 1993

32 Moscow, September 3, 1993

33 St. Petersburg, Ovrashki, September 4, 1993

34 Moscow, September 6, 1993

35 Vologda, September 9, 1993

36 Vyborg, Mid-September 1993

To Nancy, Jonathan, Nicholas, Aliina, Lucy, and Marigny

The family that reads, rocks!

Acknowledgments and Appreciations

F oremost, to Bobby Hamburger and Peter Ewell, old friends and colleagues, for early and tough readings of the first drafts. To Andrea Somberg, who provided a very key reference point for revisions. To former colleague, Lorelle Espinosa, for casting light on women’s clothing nomenclature. And to Katya Narozhnaya for early Russian language inserts and especially Nadia Kulikova for a complete Russian language cycle. One doesn’t get to this point without such generous assistance.

To the Washington, DC public libraries for maintaining microfiche historical records of real estate inhabitants and bus routes; to the John F. Kennedy Library for providing both photographs and text for JFK’s address to the 1963 summer Government interns; to the Library of Congress for maintaining collections of advertising industry publications; and to the stacks of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, New Republic, Newsweek, New York Review of Books, and the former World Press Review dating to the 1960s and living in my basement.

To kind friends in Russia over the course of five visits (1993, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2005), who opened doors to places and environments in this story that I never would otherwise have seen (Klin, Ovrashki, Sergiev Posad, the housing complexes of Petrodvorets, the back streets of Vasilyevsky Island), who provided English language versions of reports on the Russian economy of the 1980s and early 1990s, taught me Russian foods both in their homes and in various restaurants in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and, more significantly, revealed key tones of the Russian soul and their personal experience of Soviet and Russian history whenever we were together: Vera Samarina, Sasha Sokolov, Leonid Gohkberg, Natasha Gorodnikova, Levan Mendeli, and Nikolai Borisov.

1

Helsinki, August 1993

S omething in his circumstances hinted that the reference should be retrieved. It was written on more than one scrap of paper because Glenn always did it that way: once on page 244 of any book he carried (244 being his birth month/year), and once on a folded piece of paper inside a rolled pair of socks in his suitcase. However much he rehearsed the sequence of train, car number, and time, a gap opened. Perhaps he forgot to write it. Perhaps he trusted memory more than pen. Perhaps it was lost in the early hours of the clean and well lighted Hotel Anna breakfast room when a package appeared between him and a non-descript white-shirted teen sitting at the same table, who rose and muttered take and deliver in Russia; you will know where, and vaporized before Glenn could turn his head.

The weighty package went in the duffel bag to live with another similarly and bafflingly acquired yesterday at a university labor conference, upstairs from a graffiti-filled metal tan doorway, below a golden sign with condensed letters calling out HAPPY DAYS, and illustrating what Don Shapiro meant by an errand in Helsinki. The reference should be retrieved. But not now, walking into streaming light down the slope of the open square toward the rail station. The air was pale and clear; the shadows short. He had noticed this the day before, rambling the parks above the harbor, past benches with men sleeping in semi-vertical positions, bottles in drooping hands; and noticed again stumbling down half cemented paths from the parks into the passenger harbor with its decked out Saarinen-design Baltic-run ferries bearing names such as Magnifica, Braemar, and Norwegian Sun. Who goes to Tallinn or Gdansk in such surface splendor, he asked himself? I guess it’s because, judging by the stern lettering, Tallinn is the dominant point of ship registry in these parts. Not here, not Stockholm, not Hamburg. Maybe I should remember that! And what do we do now? After the herring, the food is mediocre and I am not going to eat alone in harbor restaurants where the wait for a table is at least an hour, the entrees start at the equivalent of forty bucks, and the only action is to watch masts bobbing in a strange evening sun. St. Petersburg is the glow of this venture; Helsinki is a blur.

The suitcase bounced along the cobblestones, almost self-propelled. There was a lot in there to be guarded. Ten K in cash to labor union organizers, an undisclosed amount for something called operating engineers, both loaded in Washington, and electronic equipment in his duffel that defied his understanding, delivered as it was by unseen hands and to be rendered in Moscow in two installments. He just hoped the border crossing would be uneventful. Coming through a large windowed arch flanked by muscular stone models, each holding out what appeared to be globes, the eves of the station enveloped him and his eyes were dragged up to the departure board. It was the 8:25 to St. Pete, The Sibelius. How appropriate. Get something to drink and eat now, Glenn entertained himself, cause who knows what the Sibelius serves, in what key, or how much they’ll charge. A coffee kiosk, with a line in adagio, but also with a palmier and a ham & cheese on what looked like fresh crisp bread, provided. Glenn moved toward the gate, balancing the three items in the crook of his left arm until the palmier bag fell to the gray cement. Oh, shit! he muttered, as he took off his back-pack, put the coffee on the station floor, picked it up, looked at the dust on the palmier crust, and tossed it into a random detritus pail. He put the sandwich in the backpack, carefully bypassing a newspaper with a cross-word puzzle yet to be filled in, and remounted everything. Car 93 the ticket said; position 6B. Put the coffee cup up on the car stairs, got the weight of the suitcase to the top, picked up everything, and stumbled forward. Glenn jammed his left elbow behind the handle of a sliding compartment door, met the eyes of an aging woman in a print dress long enough to pick up the dust motes and sitting to face the rear of the train, nodded, entered with suitcase and brushed her feet with his while twisting the backpack off.

Prastiti [pardon me], he said in rehearsed Russian, though he had no idea of whether she spoke Russian. Well, the train was going to St. Petersburg! Her head dipped, rose, and dipped again. He stood looking out on the now empty platform, wondering where all the people had disappeared when the train answered his wonder with a lurch forward, sending him into his seat sideways. He laughed lightly, smiled at the impassive woman, gathered strength and pulled the suitcase, then duffel bag, up and over his head onto the storage rack. He settled in to watch the urban landscape recede, looking around to catch the fading Sibelius concert hall, then the suburban blur, and into a fir forest, where there had been a Winter War once. Somewhere in his head a Rachmaninoff piano concerto started to play, and his eye-lids resisted falling.

The forests enclosing the train left no room for sleeping vistas. Lake Lagoda was somewhere out there to the West. Another war following the Winter War left maimed and frozen bodies along its shores and a legacy of Nazi cooperation that it took the Finns decades to shake. Black-and-white stills from history’s edge—eyes and muzzles above the snow banks, frozen dead arms saluting the clouds, rolls of gray gunsmoke―chewed imagination’s time until the train slowed for a border’s no-man’s land. Everyone trundled off to a large shack with minimal amenities and passport check, and an engine with a large red Soviet-era star and three red bands across its nozzle replaced the Finnish version with some agony. Glenn looked around at the crowd, scanning. Somewhere in these clumps of humanity and solitary walkers was the connection. Somewhere among the sausage eaters, the beer drinkers. Don Shapiro had said 1100, beyond the border and north of Vyborg. In the smoking compartment between the cars.

Two border functionaries waved green flags; the humanity moved like obedient oxen toward and into the train, which, in turn, slid south with its tattered red star, and Glenn watched the clock turning back: chaotic rural settlements, dirt roads, decayed industrial buildings, small junk yards everywhere, people walking along the tracks, open fires of trash. Trains full of birch and other logs passed in the direction of Finland. Why take such coals to Newcastle, he thought? Russian wood must be dirt cheap, including the border bribes.

The windows rushed into Russian forests and their September rain in August. Glenn looked out through the rain streaks, then at his watch. It was 1058. He jumped up, rumbled through his backpack for the copy of Oblomov, skimmed to page 244 for the 3 x 5 card with his instructions, skimmed the instructions, slid out the compartment door, walked quickly to his right to car 92. There was no smoking compartment. Fast-gaited the distance of car 92 to its next exit. No smoking compartment. It was 1102. Turned, and churned back with the intensity of a fullback, running into a small knot of small dark men in tattered caps, arguing in a language he could not identify. "Izviniti!" [excuse me] his voice pushed eagerly. They did not seem to understand, but opened a hole in the pathway to a now charging Glenn who jerked open the door at the other end of car 93, plunging into the unmistakable sharp reek of cigarettes. Seeing no one in the right hand side seat facing him, he turned to his left.

Do not turn around American! a quiet voice commanded. Not yet. We have game to play first. Go to window in front of you. You are late, and Americans are not expected to be late! Now… the voice continued, but in noticeably raised and shiny decibels as Glenn instinctively turned to peer into the right side corner from which the commands emanated.

I said ‘stop’! No turns! A drill sergeant’s sudden bark. Because we have little quiz. Look out window and tell me what you see.

It was a harmless question; the voice knew who he was; and Glenn shrugged and turned back to the window like one of those obedient oxen, Rain.

Brilliant! came the sarcastic slap. What else do you see?

Trees. Lots of them.

Even more brilliant! Look closely! Do you see anything else in this forest?

The rain and the firs were a blur, but it seemed there were people there. Glenn tried to follow each shape, turning his head right with eyes zeroed in for the two seconds the train’s motion allowed.

There are occasional people walking in the forest.

You are getting better! And what are they doing?

Glenn began to find this tedious, but it was part of the script. It looks like they are carrying baskets.

Are they going for picnic in rain? Or are they putting something in baskets? Ooops! I gave you hint. The voice was playful now. And do not turn around until quiz is over!

They are picking; it’s a forest—it must be mushrooms.

Welcome to Russia, American! the voice boomed. "It is national vegetable. Not beets! Not potatoes! Not what your culture thinks! Mushrooms! Gripi! Remember that when you order soup! The boom came down a register: So much for my minor tourist guide. Little game is now over, and you can turn around and sit down!" It was a preacher’s invitation to the flock.

He was wearing a baseball cap marked USS Yorktown, and a light green zippered pullover, dungarees, heavy work boots. A smooth oval face with a light scar cutting halfway across his upper forehead, and a small moustache from which he wiped the shards of a sandwich. A light frame to match the shards.

Glenn stared downward as he moved across the compartment to a bench facing the baseball cap. So who are you and what’s my relationship to you in this transaction?

Kari Annukka—and you can forget my surname, as I probably lied anyway, and you just crossed border into country of lies. I live in Tallinn—for tax purposes. It’s like offshore refuge for us Finns. He rambled off. Dangerous place—worse than Russia. Cab drivers team up to rob patrons [his left eyelid arched]. You get in and guy drives you to place where you’re not going. Another cab shows up, and enforcer with bat gets out. So I always carry knife. He took an obvious stiletto from his left boot. … tell them I was with UN troops in Golan Heights where show of force is always stronger than use of force, you know (just open your jacket so they see AK-47 junior model) and this is what we cut off Arabs’ ears with. I put knife next to cabbie’s ears, and tell him to go where I am going. He cackled: It never fails.

He silently offered Glenn an L&M.

I haven’t seen those for years.

You probably have not been to Eastern Europe for years. They will cost 50 cents at kiosk in Russia, 20 cents for Russian cigarettes, sometimes less. I keep apartment in Helsinki, where cigarettes cost lot more. Kari then moved onto yet another track: My wife—Russian—is in St. Petersburg and does accounting. I am operator in your—what did you call it?—‘transaction’? hmmm! because my business is buying industrial sludge from Russians and getting it on trains to European processors, and some friends of yours in this—maybe you don’t even know them—set up trust fund thirty years ago that is financing purchase and everything that goes with it. Rules change every week; he waved his left hand with each clause, new papers to file; new people to bribe to get trains over border. It will take Russians five years to figure out that they should do this themselves— he laughed again —and another five before they actually do it. In the meantime, we have this job because this time, someone knows—and has known for long time—precisely where golden sludge lives, and, if there are simply lakes of it, if it is not already in storage tanks, others know all details of how to move this sludge onto my trains.

Is this your ordinary business?

This month, last month. It depends on … what some people call Russian economy, which is whim. Once, communist government controlled economy; now whatever government it is simply interferes.

How do they interfere? And I didn’t think they had any government.

Look at what happened while Gorbachev was around, his mode turned crisp. State sold manufacturing facilities to same managers and workers who had operated those places under Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev—and all those other chevs and nevs. Did that change anything? No and yes. No, because manufacturing place ran same way it always did; yes, because it did at one-third capacity because there were no markets for what it produced. Kari now turned from crisp to animated: What do you do with business that makes treads for tanks? Or fuel tanks for military aircraft? These people cannot imagine how to use their equipment to make something else—and they don’t know what is market. So these places dump off workers, give me labor, shut down for long periods and leave their polluted liquids in barrels and tanks for me to collect, and, if there are simply large pools of this sewage stewing in what was intended to be foundations for buildings, it is for price of small bribes.

He paused, untensed, and flicked out a right index finger: So you would say that, indirectly, government economic interference makes for better business for me. The index finger went vertical, then leveled at Glenn. And as for someone who knows where these—as it turns out—not-so-polluted liquids lie …?

But that someone is not me, Glenn sat back straight.

Oh, yes it is! he countered strongly, then went soft —in a way. I know only part of how this happens, but that someone has naturally been invited to University library at St. Petersburg and will find papers there if that someone follows instructions in crossword puzzle of very ordinary newspaper that person is carrying, and that someone who will naturally be visiting official government Ministry in Moscow will meet someone else and exchange papers, and that same someone will then …well, I don’t know what happens next, but you are natural foreign someone who will not attract same attention as those of us who are close to business. Find ways and unobtrusive places for back-ups of what you find in that newspaper. Think of yourself as courier. You are to be paid well, and we will talk about this later and at other times.

Glenn’s reaction went from some surprise to resignation. Well, yes, he thought of his seemingly simple and as yet unadorned time-table, the newspaper comes from a hand that has written advising me to expect such tasks. And, with stock tickers and ugly trade confirmations drifting through his head, added I’ve been told about payment a long time ago, so a refresher course would be appreciated before I do anything else.

That depends on value of what we bring out and what is determined in the extractors of Karlskrona in Sweden and Zaandam in Netherlands. We don’t know bottom line, as you say, for sure, and certainly people who set up trust fund for this adventure in nineteen sixty … uh … something did not know either, but our estimate is between 20 and 25 million dollars. Your share will be in Swedish bank, account for which has been established and papers are [he opened his leather satchel] … here for you to sign now, and keep one copy. We tried Swiss bank, but this was easier.

And you will direct me?

That is part of my job. We meet naturally on this train, you see? To have few cigarettes. They know you smoke. And we know Russian waste is everywhere. Look back to window! Mushroom gatherer. He finds—and this is real—nuclear reactor rods sticking up out of ground. He recognizes what they are and reports them. He is dead three hours later. The newspaper says it was heart attack at shock of discovery. Great Russian half-comrade, Gorbachev, had nothing to say. Everyone else knows better. They gather mushrooms more carefully now.

The train went into retard and scattered settlements and rail sidings stacked with gondolas and tank cars gradually replaced the rain forests. Standing between the cars and looking down as the ties passed in steady strophes, Glenn’s mind wandered from Kari to what these trains did for anyone’s sense of time? You can count time passing with the ever-moving ladder beneath you. Before these ties and iron were hammered into place there, time didn’t matter much. Whenever your horse got there, it got there. The idea of being late was a measure of days or even weeks. Then it became the click-click of the wheels and the whirling by of the ties, and someone somewhere had to determine when a train will leave its origin and when it will arrive at its destination, and the existential stillness became when. There will be another train and rail ties in this game to which I was drawn thirty years ago by Leonard Townshend, he thought half-dreamily, and when will matter.

We are approaching Vyborg now—Viipuri in my language—and you must pay attention again, Kari snapped and broke the reverie, because this is last stop for train we will be sending in other direction. It is where money is passed for papers to clear border. It may be that we put two parts of train together here, and that means more bribes. You will be back here. You will spend night in hotel I will point out to you. You will find key piece of border crossing papers in tree I will point out to you. You cannot forget any of this! Kari was stern now, though no less voluble. You know, he continued, this used to be my country. We gave Stalin this after Winter War. And then there was Continuation War, and these were part of heritage of thousand years of wars with Russians. My family was first very bitter about prospect of my marriage to Russian.

So did they finally accept it?

I tell you later. Now, come to window with me and watch very, very carefully, and have these things burned into memory. First, tree, because we pass it first. Look for rail crossing sign, big white X. Just beyond it, small woods, and birch tree with red slash. See it?

Yes.

That is place. Now watch where we are going, because you will have to walk up there between the tracks on siding. We are almost stopped, so you see that it is not far. And stop will not be long!

Got it! A rare adrenaline was now running, enough to push a puff of nonchalant petomane.

Kari’s business was oblivious to odors: Now, you see street that goes straight back along side of rail station? It leads into Leningradsky Prospect. He lived here for while, so even if Russians tear down his statues and no one goes to his museum, Vyborg keeps street name. There is hotel on left hand side about three blocks down. Stay there. Be quiet tourist for day or two. Go up Olaf’s Tower, visit Vyborg Castle, walk along harbor front on other side. Tourist, but not too visible as tourist, right? Camera only for heritage places and setting suns. The rest is all memory!

The train started up again. No jerk this time, just a slow motion film as the rail portion of Vyborg slid past.

Now, Kari almost instantly resumed as he walked back to the seats scratching his head, about my wife and my parents. She came from Yeltsin’s district in North, where some commissar thought it would be easier to get at iron ore if they blew up ore-bearing mountain with nuclear device. Of course, iron ore was then radioactive and could not be approached. So they blew up twin mountain to see if they do it right. Very Russian! After 20 years, radioactivity is still in ground water, babies have six toes or two heads, and my parents start objecting by asking why I would want six-toed children. I said, ‘because my wife will always be faithful.’ My Father replies: ‘How do you know’? ‘Because,’ I said, ‘I can always find her at night—she glows!’ Good joke, yes? Kari laughed. Now argument continued and I had to ask my Father to name one Russian he knew who he did not like and he said ‘all the children on their side of the Winter War’ and, Kari shrugged, wait until he has grandchild with five ordinary toes!

You know, Kari, Glenn mused, I learn something about you, but all you know about me is that I am some American who got caught up in this adventure and who will play the poor role of a courier, and then …

Not exactly… Kari’s cheek twitched. I know more. You work for U.S. Labor Department, you are friendly with professors at St. Petersburg State University and one Russian ministry in Moscow (though I forget which one). You are from Chicago, have Master’s degree in public administration, 49 years old and divorced, and live in what you call townhouse in Maryland. You speak some French, not Russian, but you took short course in Russian last year after you made your Russian friendships with delegations visiting Washington. You sing baritone in one of Washington area choruses, and you are currently—how do they say?—dating alto in chorus. You have one child in university, and, beyond that, no real commitments. As to how you became involved in this, they tell me only that it started long time ago. Is that fair?

I’m impressed! Glenn smiled, Whoever coaches you does their research, well, most of it. The alto didn’t work out. He paused, thought that thirty years ago the money was a neutral mirage, and asked, with a tourist’s half-certainty, What can I expect in St. Petersburg?

To you, city will behave like so many others, Kari stared out the rain streaked train window. Crowds will queue up for busses, children will buy fruit ice from vendors in park, students will line halls of university waiting for examination marks, people will move through streets at rush hours pretending they are going somewhere. What you don’t see is that majority are still living in one or two room apartments with three generations—and maybe other relatives. Whoever lives there walks over someone else who lives there to find place to sleep or read or falls into monotonous stream of TV. And toilet stalls? Barely large enough for 12 year-old, with loose plungers and backed-up leavings of its most recent inhabitant. Not what you know, yes? His face turned toward Glenn and he pulled his cap down an inch, But watch carefully. Since August ‘91 place has filled with messianic types, visiting priests of many denominations, nationalists screaming at street corners for return of everybody from Czars to Stalin himself. You will not know what they are saying, but you can read their faces and tones. Your country understands none of this. You thought Gorbachev was popular in Russia, and you now think Yeltsin is popular because he stood on tank. Kari bounced up with gun-fingered hands pointing from his hips. John Wayne, Matt Dillon, huh? He sat, nodding vertically. We understand better. And that is why we are here, no? In chaos, we will make some money. How much? That depends, and you are part of ‘that depends’. A gun finger was back with a smile: you have been chosen, and you chose to be on this train. There is no getting off.

Glenn did not follow Kari’s stare, rather turned it intensely toward the speaker, as if searching for a topic other than choice, and asked, I look at your cap. How did you pick the USS Yorktown?

It came from museum in South Carolina. I went to U.S. ten years ago to take flying lessons to get better job with UN forces, master English, and do odd jobs. I started in Myrtle Beach with some other guys from Finland, got hat there in a store called Eagles—I think—or maybe it was called Wings (there were many Eagles and Wings in Myrtle Beach), then went to live in Cambridge, and practiced flying out of airport near Framingham. I loved Cambridge. Just hearing people talking about deep subjects and being near people interested in ideas and culture. I went to plays, to Passim for folk music, to Storeyville in Boston for jazz. Walked everywhere. Talked with anyone. Enough. More stories later. Go back to your compartment or someone will think something strange is going on… .And you will see me again when you hear particular song.

What does that mean?

You sing, so you know ‘Those Were the Days …’

… my friend, we thought they’d never end … , Glenn hummed sotto voce.

Shhh! Kari’s brows narrowed and his left forefinger went to his mouth in an obvious command, "You will be somewhere in St. Petersburg. A square, in bus line, outside restaurant, standing on bridge. You will hear someone whistling that song. They will be near you. You will ask them for time of day, Kotoryi chas! Remember that! Kotoryi chas! They will not give you correct time. They will give you four digit number that sounds like a time—like 1115 or 1917. They will not speak. The numbers will be written on a piece of paper that is taped to the face of their watch. First two numbers are date; second two are hour at which we will meet at quay where Aurora is tied up. You know Aurora, of course?"

Fired the signal shot for the October 1917 revolution. Now, stop! This arrangement sounds like something out of Le Carré.

First, your history is better than your mushrooms! And Le Carré would never offer something this clumsy. His tongue lash-laughed again. Second—and please note this—whatever our group consists, we are not only people interested in this super-gold sludge, and some of the others may not be nice people. Your friends long ago … when was it? …1963?

You could say that, Glenn looked up at the nondescript train ceiling and turned it into a dim photo gallery of a brick garden in Georgetown with the eye-patched Townshend pointing a hand at Brian Mulligan’s grinning, blond curls, ‘63, ‘78, last year… he trailed off.

Your friends who set you in motion did not imagine crude gangs who would just as soon feed you to Dostoyevsky’s fish in Canal Griboyedova as let you walk halls of Hermitage soaking in whatever art Stalin stole from West. We have less than month to finish this adventure and before Russian army decides to form ecology divisions and interrupt our supply; you have hour or so before we arrive. Go back to your compartment and remember not to pay taxi from Finland Station to your hotel any more than three dollars. They may say five. You insist on three. You are not going far. You have dollars, don’t you?

"Uh-huh. Fsivo kharosheva, Kari."

Glenn walked back through the car with eyes staring blankly through its corridors. What would happen if I simply went home now? he asked himself in silence. No, as the guy said, I chose to be on this train, and a million will wipe out the market losses twenty times over. His compartment, in addition to the ever-sleeping woman in the long print dress, now housed a tall white collared and clean close-bearded gentleman who introduced himself in English (no doubt taking his clue from the copy of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory Glenn had left on his seat) as Valentin from Latvia, an advance man for a guru coming to set up an Ashram in St. Petersburg. I have been here before doing this, he said, they are hungry for the spiritual. They were staying at the same hotel, and agreed to take a taxi together, but for no more than three dollars, Glenn added, because it’s close to the Finland Station, and you have to be firm in bargaining. Valentin nodded and asked what Glenn was to do in St. Petersburg. A tourist? There is much history to see.

Oh, some of that, but I have meetings with people at the University.

So you are academic?

You might say that, yes.

A cautious answer. But caution gave way to something larger when Glenn descended to the St. Petersburg platform, dragging a twisting suitcase, duffel weighted with packages of mystery, and an imbalanced backpack falling off his right shoulder. He looked up at an aging canopy, dripping with the remnants of afternoon rain. Walking toward the station, he was brought short: on the furthest track to his left, a black coal-fired locomotive, engine 293, sat like a museum piece, encased in a glass frame. It was obviously Lenin’s train, and history struck, though the dozens traversing and conversing on that platform were oblivious. The Finland Station, Glenn thought in a silent baffled voice, to the Finland Station, adding, with a slight throat laugh, What am I doing here? How did I get here? Why—and all those circular questions, caught his shoe on the edge of torn concrete, the body momentum sending his back pack into a puddle. Oh, shit! he muttered.

2

Washington, DC, June 1963

G lenn Stevens tripped down the slippery metal stairs from the train and into a gasping heat and cloying moisture blanket. It had been a long and restless ride from Chicago. His mouth was dry, his blue checkered shirt wet and splattered with something he had eaten. Dragging two boxes of books and papers, tied up with rope, in addition to a suitcase and over-the-shoulder bag his mother gave him to carry train toiletries, a chicken sandwich, and reading materials, didn’t help his progress. It was not a promising entrance.

Glenn was to stay with Josh, son of the family doctor, who had bounced through two colleges and three majors and was now in his 5th or 6th year at George Washington in the default of business administration. Taller by a head, thinner by three jacket sizes, and older by two or three years, he had been the park—and then Little League—shortstop star. Nothing could get through him, whereas everything got through Glenn no matter what position he was assigned. That GW was Josh’s third school (after Dickinson and Miami) was a sign of what? Persistence? Yeah, he was still at something, and was generous, would keep Glenn, like another younger brother, until a place was found.

Glenn had an address and a D-2 route that would land him with six blocks to go, but was carrying those two boxes of books and papers in addition to a suitcase, and it was a steamy twilight on the Union Station platform. Condensation dripped from the columns and porters waited like clumps of drooping bushes for those disembarking with far more weights and complications than Glenn carried. Taxi, yes; porter, no. The box twine cut into his palms and it was a long way through the station, but if you are going to get there, you are going to get there yourself.

The address was on Eye St. (Couldn’t they just say ‘I’? Glenn laugh-growled, maybe the next street down is ‘Liver’ and all the way to ‘Rectum’ and was pleased with his act) west of Washington Circle. A basement apartment, Josh said, with a gate for which the bell had to ring just so. And one for which some form of transportation was necessary—not so much for Josh as for Glenn, something the temporary relocation held out, a toy of freedom, a statement, an appearance of person that fit his world of intent. So they huddled over the classifieds for motorcycles and Vespas the next morning, and Josh proposed funding half of whatever they found and taking possession at the end of the summer.

The selection was a four-year old 125cc Puch, a lightweight Austrian creation sold and serviced by Sears, and located somewhere out Reno Road among the leafy Northwest bourgeoisie. To which they journeyed the next heavy June night, tested the machine around the block and through the shadows, put down $75 cash, signed the papers, and rode back toward Washington Circle until the creature died halfway down a long Massachusetts Ave. Embassy hill and could not be restarted even after a cooling off. They took turns walking the wounded beast home, determined first to safeguard it in the morning with something more than a vulnerable Josh padlock, and then to find a way to get it to Sears. No wonder they wanted to sell it, Glenn grumbled. Another not-so-promising entrance.

The second Puch test came due, on schedule. Glenn edged hopefully out in the early steam, across slippery bricks to the wrought iron rail where the machine had spent its embarrassing June night, took four sets of turns on the combination lock before it opened (not very encouraging, he thought), pulled out the throttle plug just a bit, kicked down the starter, and was pulled forward with no response from the engine. Well, he snarled, it’s still in gear, ain’t it. Back to it in neutral, and behold, the creature came to life. Gingerly, he opened the gate while holding the handle accelerator so that the engine was turning at andante speed, came into the street, and found himself and this machine in harmony and the promise retrieved. Destinations: Weaver’s hardware on Wisconsin for a chain and more imposing lock, then the Georgetown University housing office because, chances were, it covered mythical territory. Looks better if you live in that light-headed atmosphere, he thought.

The campus was nearly deserted, still, greens drooping but flowers standing up and crying their colors out. The housing notice board was in a basement, on a long wall with papers flapping on the cork, brushed by heavy air from fans in other unseen rooms. The corridor was dazzlingly lit by both a skylight and superfluous florescent, something Glenn marked only when a huge shadow cast itself over his shoulder onto the bulletin board. He turned to face the matched reality. It was well over six feet and half as wide. From waist to shoulders it looked like a large bundle of groceries with a dozen grapefruit at the bottom.

Hi! Glenn burped, you looking for the same thing as I?

"Do they have a roof? That is the question! Sorry! added the bundle of groceries, now with a wide white grin. Just saw a guy digging a grave—well, maybe it was a flower bed—and had Hamlet on my mind."

Glenn’s burp turned into a giggle, "That’s fine by me, but what kind of