She ignored him.
“True Red Army Kommandirskie watch. Only sixty dollars American.” He rolled up his sleeve and stuck his wrist in front of her face, too close for her to focus.
Faith pushed his arm back. The clunky timepiece’s metallic face had a large red star and a parachute with two jet fighters zooming away from it. A cameo of the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin decorated the leather band. “Thank you, Frosty” was written all over it. It would be a perfect token of her appreciation for his impromptu assistance, and buying the thing would be the most expedient way to get rid of a persistent black marketeer.
“I saw your eyes. You want,” the man said.
“My eyes say get lost, militia everywhere,” she said in Russian.
“No worry. I paid this week. You speak Russian. Then for you, special price. Thirty dollars.”
She reached in her pocket and rolled a twenty into her sweaty palm and flashed it to him. “You have two seconds. Decide now.”
He pressed the watch into her hand, snatched the bill and disappeared.
Faith dropped it into her pocket as she walked past a militiaman slumped against the glass lobby window. She never could figure out if the militia was the same as the local police, but their military uniforms were much more ominous than any other local police she had ever encountered.
A doorman stopped every Russian attempting to enter, but didn’t ask Faith for identification. She pushed the heavy revolving door, went inside and climbed to the mezzanine, where the hard-currency bar was located.
She paid far too many dollars for a Carlsbad and took a position on one of the bar’s gaudy couches. Five women with heavy makeup and expensive Western dresses sat alone on various sofas, each sipping a glass of water. Any one of them could have been a Paris model. Faith guessed that, in their profession, they might be asked to model from time to time. Alongside them Faith felt particularly dowdy; her sweater matched the carpet and a third of the paisley swirls in the sofa. Someone might mistake her as part of the furniture-not as a call girl from the KGB’s stable, even though she was whoring for them all the same.
She sipped the Danish beer. Her tastebuds already missed Germany.
A man with a trimmed beard and mustache sprinted up the stairs. As he approached her, he removed his aviator glasses and made eye contact. She assumed he was another European businessman looking for a good time. He ordered a martini from the bar and took a seat across from her.
When he opened his mouth, Faith expected a stale pickup line, but instead he said in German, “Although the apple is a Central Asian native, the pomegranate-”
“Shove it. I don’t have the item with me. Meet me in the small park in front of the Bolshoi during tonight’s intermission.” She dashed from the hotel to the metro.
No one tailed her to the columned rotunda of the VDNH metro station entrance, but a large crew could be assigned to her and could be passing her off along the way. She took a five-kopek piece from her pocket and shoved it in the turnstile. Four sets of escalators disappeared down a steep tunnel, running at an intimidating clip. She studied their rhythm and jumped on, clutching the rubber guide rail. Several dozen Soviets rode the escalator. She examined them, but couldn’t place any at the Cosmos. A metro veteran directly behind her read Pushkin as the long escalator ride carried him deep underground.
Air gusted up the long tunnel. A train was on its way. She walked down the escalator, weaving between people. When she stepped off onto the granite floor, inertia hurled her forward. She caught herself, then bounded onto the car as the recorded female voice blared on the loudspeaker.
She rode five stops and switched lines. When the train arrived at the Prospekt Marksa station, Faith remained in her seat. The automated voice announced, “Danger. Doors are closing…” She bolted out, twisting sideways to escape the guillotine of the doors. She turned back around and looked into the car. The man reading Pushkin leaped from his seat and slammed his body into the closed doors. He mouthed something. It wasn’t polite.
She navigated the underground passages, grateful for her year at Moscow State, when she learned her way around the labyrinth. She emerged from the metro beside the red brick Lenin history museum abutting Red Square. The fairy-tale onion domes of St. Basil’s glowed in front of her. Spotlights bathed the gaudy cupolas, towers and spires. The crowd of Soviet and Western tourists that she was counting on had already assembled for the hourly changing of the guard. She was late.
With military precision, the three honor guards goosestepped toward the red granite mausoleum. Each pointed his rifle straight up, the polished bayonet glistening in the camera flashes. Faith quickened her pace, racing them toward the tomb. Tonight several hundred people waited. She slipped into the crowd, but didn’t see Frosty with the leather case and Play-Doh bricks she needed for the hand-off at the Bolshoi. The sharp click of the guards’ heels against the brick came closer. Where was he? The guards approached the mausoleum. Two took their places on the inside of the ones they were relieving; the third stood in the center. Faith had only seconds until the clock sounded the hour.
Then she spotted him.
Frosty had positioned himself near the front, several dozen people away from her. She shoved her way to him, contorting her body between tourists. She pushed up against him. They didn’t acknowledge each other. All eyes were fixed upon the honor guards. The clock on the Kremlin tower struck. The guards swiftly maneuvered around one another with perfect choreography and Frosty fumbled the leather briefcase as he handed it to Faith. She dropped the watch in his pocket by way of a thank-you. The clock played the familiar chimes and then the crowd dispersed.
Faith was already gone.
She walked at a fast clip down the dusty back streets to the Bolshoi. She reached into the side pouch of the satchel. Frosty had come through as promised. She glanced at the Bolshoi ticket and shoved it in her jacket pocket. He had even managed to get her a decent seat-too bad she wouldn’t get a chance to enjoy it. She’d make the drop and weave through the intermission crowd to the theater. Ticket in hand, she could go inside and hide in the ladies’ room until the performance was over and then exit in the collective safety of the masses.
From the shadows of a doorway across the street, she surveyed the popular small plaza in front of the theater. Like wrinkled toothless bulldogs, two babushkas staked out their territories on separate benches, balancing their squat frames on the few intact slats. Several men wore sweaters tied around their shoulders and a few clutched keys in their hands as they paraded around the dry concrete fountain. A handful of women in low-cut cotton dresses intermingled with the sparse crowd. A black Volga sedan was parked on the far side of the square in a no-parking zone.
A company car.
The doors to the Bolshoi opened. Well-dressed Soviet couples and underdressed Western tourists poured out between the white columns. The man from the bar stepped out of the waiting Volga and strolled toward the fountain. When he turned back toward the Bolshoi to scan the crowd, Faith crossed the street. She approached him from behind and handed him the satchel.
He swung around and grabbed her arm. His other arm took away the case.
She swirled around, using her weight to try to break free. Pain radiated from her shoulder as it twisted, but he hardly moved. His fingers coiled so tightly around her wrist that she could feel the bones shift.
The man forced her toward the Volga, shouting in Russian, “If I ever catch you with another man again, you’ll pay for it.”
The Russians turned away from her, not wanting to get involved in a domestic dispute. The Westerners watched.
“Help! I’m not-” Faith shouted before he slapped his hand over her mouth. She bit him until she tasted blood. She kicked and squirmed. She bent over, then straightened up and slammed against him as hard as she could. Her ribs throbbed, but he laughed into her ear. She fell limp, but her weight meant nothing to him; he dragged her across the broken concrete.