She crossed back toward the desk.
“Hi—”
The clerk eyed her apprehensively.
“Got an easy one for you.”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the United States Embassy?” she asked, quickly adding, “And don’t tell me there isn’t one.”
She figured her luck had changed when he smiled.
Yosef, the flabby KGB man, moved down the main corridor of the dacha with surprising quickness and stealth. The first office was open and empty. He heard the snap-snap-snap of a typewriter coming from another across the corridor. The upper half of the wall was windowed. The blinds were lowered; the slats open slightly. Yosef peeked through them and glimpsed a woman’s hands moving over the keyboard. He assumed it was a secretary at work, and continued down the corridor listening for Raina and Andrew’s voices.
But the hands Yosef saw were Raina’s. She was typing—“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”—in Russian, typing it repeatedly to keep up the noise and the deception. She’d just finished explaining to Andrew that her challenge had been a cover, a way to buy them some time alone; and though still a little uneasy, he had decided to follow her lead.
“My driver,” he whispered, indicating the rotund shadow moving across the blinds. “I thought he was KGB. Now, I’m positive.”
“I’ve no doubt of it.”
“This whole thing feels like a setup.”
“It’s possible. You want to forget it?”
Andrew shook his head no. “We’ll just have to be careful. I mean, why else would they let you go?”
“Because they had no proof. I stuck to my story, and told them nothing. Besides,” she sighed forlornly, “they can arrest me whenever they want, now. They’ve taken my passport. I can’t leave the country.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, pacing nervously to the other side of the desk. “Raina, I have to find that man in Leningrad,” he went on. “How do I—”
“Pardon me?” she interrupted. “I’m sorry, you must stay on this side, my right ear has not come back.”
“Bastards,” he said, moving around her. “The refusenik you told me about. How do I find him?”
“His name is Mordechai Stvinov,” Raina replied. “He lives on Vasil’yevskiy Island. The shipyards are there. Number Thirty-Seven Denyeka Street.”
Andrew took a pad and pencil from the desk.
“No, it’s all here,” she said, indicating she was typing the information amidst the other sentences. “When will you go to Leningrad?”
“As soon as I can. But I have to get there without a watchdog. They’ll know if I fly or take the train. And if I hire a car, they’ll stick me with another KGB driver.”
“Then drive yourself,” Raina suggested. “There are checkpoints along the way, but no schedule. In between, you could take hours or days. They have no way of knowing. They lose track of you, then.”
Andrew shook no emphatically. “Intourist is the only place I can rent a car. They’ll notify the KGB. They probably are the KGB.”
“Most of them,” she replied. “You’ll take my car.”
“Your car — can I do that? What happens at the checkpoints?”
“You have an international driver’s license?”
“Of course. You know Elspeth. She doesn’t miss a trick.”
“Good,” Raina said. “You could get one here if you didn’t, but that would alert them.” She stopped typing, rolled the page from the typewriter, and handed it to Andrew. “Give that to Mordechai, and he’ll know I sent you. Leave the rest to me.”
Andrew broke into a smile.
Yosef had searched the dacha and, not finding them, had gone out the back door to look over the grounds. He was coming back down the corridor when an office door opened.
“I hope you’re satisfied, now,” Andrew said to Raina sharply as he came through it.
“I apologize for any inconvenience that I—”
“Apology not accepted,” Andrew interrupted. He stalked off, leaving Raina standing in the doorway, and blew right past Yosef without acknowledging him.
“Americans,” Raina said to Yosef in Russian. “Their business acumen is exceeded only by their arrogance.”
“No, by ours,” Yosef said slyly, holding her eyes with his.
The desk clerk at the Berlin suggested Melanie take the Metro to the U.S. Embassy. But her New York paranoia surfaced, and she balked until he explained it was a clean, efficient, and safe mode of transport.
She left the hotel, giving her pass to the doorman, and headed for the Metro stop on Karl Marx Prospekt.
A man with a peaked cap exited after her and walked in the same direction. He had no pass, yet went unchallenged by the doorman. Pedestrians knew he wasn’t a hotel worker because employees must use a monitored security entrance which discourages pilfering of food and supplies. Indeed, Muscovites know those who leave hotels via the main entrance without surrendering a propoosk to the doorman are secret police.
Melanie took the Metro to Tchaikovsky Street, one of the boulevards that make up the Sadovaya Bulvar, the outermost ring of Moscow’s spiderweb. The United States Embassy at numbers 19/23 was a few blocks north. Her pace quickened the instant she saw the stars and stripes flying above the neoclassic, nine-story building.
The Marine guard checked Melanie’s passport, then unlocked the access gate and directed her to the Citizen Services Section of the Embassy, which deals with Americans traveling or living abroad.
Lucinda Bartlett was the officer on duty. She listened intently as Melanie told her story with emotional fervor, and asked for assistance in contacting the Soviet minister of culture.
“It’s all so lovely, so romantic,” Lucinda said when she finished. The young woman spoke with a slight sibilance that made her esses whistle, and reminded Melanie of the well-groomed girls who attended Bennington College about twenty miles from where she grew up. “But I’m afraid, the Embassy can’t get involved in this,” Lucinda concluded.
“Why not?” Melanie asked, baffled. She could see Lucinda was moved by her tale, and thought she had finally found someone who would help her.
“Well, first, yours is a personal matter. The Embassy’s role is primarily — bureaucratic. Citizen Services deals with the practical needs of American tourists and businessmen. Second, try to put yourself in the Embassy’s position for a moment. Someone claims the Soviet minister of culture is her long lost father, presents an old photograph and letter, which she says was written to him forty years ago — a letter and envelope without an addressee, which could have been sent to anyone — and asks for help in contacting a high government official. You see?” she asked, implying it would make perfect sense even to a child. “You have no proof whatsoever of what you say. The Embassy can’t take action without it.”
“Do I strike the Embassy as someone who would make this up?” Melanie replied indignantly. The American presence had revived her hope, and this was the last thing she’d expected. “I didn’t come all the way to Moscow to play a game. I’m spending time, money, and energy to find my father. You have no idea what I’ve been through to get this far.”
“Oh, I can imagine. And I didn’t mean to suggest you were making it up. I’d like to help you, but you must realize what your story implies. If I may make an analogy, you’re asking the Embassy to approach a member of the President’s Cabinet with something that could very well turn out to be — rather embarrassing. The Embassy can’t afford to get involved unless—”