Garin accepted that chance occasionally worked in his favor and sometimes did not. He had fought against the tyranny of chance when he was a new intelligence officer working his case load, but after several failures and a few successes, he understood that it was easier—and safer—to accept the unpredictable outcomes of chance and turn them to his advantage. He put on the suit and became a Russian again.
15
SOKOLNIKI AMUSEMENT PARK
GARIN ENTERED YUGO-ZAPADNAYA METRO STATION. He pushed through the afternoon crowd of commuters and came to a group of Komsomol youth in uniform holding basketballs. He got on the first train that arrived and took a seat at one end of the car, lowering his hat and absorbing himself in a newspaper.
Twenty minutes later, he arrived at Kropotkinskaya Station. The doors opened, and a few people got off. Garin looked up from his newspaper at the sound of the car’s pneumatic doors closing, startled to see where he was, and jumped up, mumbling, “Damn it. Kropotkinskaya,” and he squeezed through the closing doors. On the platform he confirmed no one had come off the train after him.
Garin boarded the next train. He got off several stops later, stepped onto the crowded platform, and headed for the stairs. When he got to the mezzanine, he slipped behind one of the fluted columns. He waited half a minute while the flow of riders went through the arched space, and then he continued to walk in the same direction. He emerged on the street and set out on foot for his rendezvous.
GENERAL ZYUGANOV. DEPUTY Chairman Churgin. Lieutenant Colonel Talinov. Comrade Posner. Garin felt the world around him shape and reshape as men played out their roles, but he’d found enough connecting threads to bridge the gaps in his understanding. His suspicions began to settle inside the dark labyrinth. Garin didn’t share any of his worries with Petrov when they met. It was a short and uncomfortable meeting.
“It’s rude to eat before your guest arrives,” Petrov said.
Garin had entered Sokolniki Amusement Park’s administrative cabin and found Petrov with his elbows on the plywood table, cutting sausage. The bottle of vodka was open, two glasses were set out, and the brown paper wrapping was open.
“But I’m starved.” He threw a glance at Garin. “And now you’re a Russian playboy. Fuck me.” He laughed. “Did you trade a carton of Marlboros for those clothes?”
Petrov placed two slices of sausage on a brown bread and bit into the sandwich. He poured Garin a tall glass. “I know I won’t be wasting this on you. What happened? You look terrible.”
Garin drank, said nothing.
“Quiet. Like usual. I saw your signal. I was here yesterday, too. What’s so urgent?”
“We have to move up the date.” Garin saw a grim response on the man’s face.
“Yob tvoyu.” Fuck. “I assumed something was wrong.” He looked steadily at Garin. “I heard an American woman died. Rumors are everywhere in Lubyanka. What I know is that so many rumors carry a lot of falsehoods, but just the fact of the rumors is enough. Talinov is livid. For an implacable man, he is loud. His office is down one floor, but I pass it on my way in. She must have been his asset. I heard him screaming into his telephone. There is a search on.”
Petrov cut a slice of cured meat and moved it to his mouth with his blade.
“We are crossing the border at Uzhgorod,” Garin said.
“Not Finland?” Petrov gazed at Garin. “It’s better. They would expect Finland. It’s better to do what they don’t expect.” He looked up from the meat, cautiously suspicious. “You are now a risk. If they look for you, there is a chance that they will find me. What do I tell my wife?”
“We won’t be seen together. You will travel together with your son in first class. I will be in third class. You have your documents. You only need to buy train tickets. Buy four round trips to Leningrad and four to Uzhgorod. If they look through the reservations, they’ll be looking for a party of three.”
“When?”
“In nine days. A week from Friday. You will board the train after work.”
Petrov poured another glass of vodka. “Have you written my obituary?” With a butcher’s eye he patiently cut a thin strip of fat from the meat. “Beyond a certain point, there is no return. Perhaps we have arrived there. Or perhaps we arrived there when I gave you my name. I will miss these little meetings of ours. It’s pleasant to speak with you.” He threw back his vodka and slammed his glass on the table. “Okay.”
Petrov stood. “Let’s take a walk. I think better when I walk.” He laughed grimly. “The point of no return.”
It was an unusually warm and sunny afternoon. They walked along the narrow path, using the occasion of the mild weather to escape the administrative office’s claustrophobia. Bright white clouds flitted across the pale blue sky, and birds were a chorus in the budding flower beds. It was already spring and the implacable thaw of Moscow’s winter had turned the path into mud.
Petrov dismissed Garin’s concern that they’d stand out walking in a park that had not opened to the public. This was Petrov’s danger, Garin thought—a man who took unnecessary risks on a whim.
THEY MET ONCE more the next day. Garin came at noon with arguments to address the reluctance he expected to hear from Petrov. The big, hulking Russian glided over the path, almost weightless with an uplifting enthusiasm, and when he was seated, he pulled out a cloth bag of film canisters. Garin reached for them, but Petrov kept them.
“When we cross the border,” he said. “And there will be more. It will help in trusting you if I keep these.” Petrov stared at Garin. “The papers you had me put on Talinov’s secretary’s desk have stirred a hornet’s nest in Lubyanka. There are meetings, rumors, speculation, and violent apprehension about who will be pulled from his office. So, the process starts. It is a good time to leave.”
Again, the weather was nice, so they walked, and Garin provided the new details of the exfiltration, using information that he had found in the envelope Ronnie had left at the agreed drop-off. A Mercedes with a specially fitted compartment would meet them to cross the border. His wife would be up front and he and his son would be hidden inside.
When Garin was done, they continued in silence for a time, and then Petrov pointed to the park’s aging attraction.
“They planned the Ferris wheel originally as a replica of the seventy-one-meter-tall ride in Prater Park in Vienna—the Wiener Riesenrad. Have you seen it? No? Well, it’s stunning. This one was supposed to be like that, but funds were short, and it kept being shrunk until it is what you see, a plaything for children. It’s like the Soviet State. Big ambitions, the beautiful idea of worker equality. But there was no will to build that world. It was easier to execute the ones who saw the hypocrisy. Billboards declared prosperity on collective farms while children starved. It was miserable under the tsar, and my family starved then too, but there was no hypocrisy.”
Petrov sat on a bench and patted it, signaling Garin to join him. He lifted his face to the warming sun and enjoyed the spring moment’s little pleasure. Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, lost in thought. It was ten o’clock in the morning.
“I have discussed a plan with Olga. We can’t just be seen going off to the train station with suitcases. Neighbors will take note. The guard in our lobby will report something. So, we have arranged to visit her parents for the weekend in their village, where we go frequently, but we will never arrive. We will make it look like we have died, but no bodies will be found. We will leave word with her parents and our friends that we are stopping on our way at a lake. I will make sure the boat is missing. It will appear as if we capsized. It will be days before the alarm sounds, and then a few more days before the KGB piece together their interviews with neighbors, relatives, and co-workers, and from all this they will only know that we arranged everything for a weekend visit to her folks. They will first think we were murdered. By the time they suspect I am alive, we will be across the border.”