Out on the street Yocke carefully wrote down the names as Gregor spelled them in English. The address was merely a street. “Do you know this street?”
“Yes. Off Arbat.”
He had it! A sure-fire page one barn burner that implicated the KGB in the murders of Communist ultranationalist Yegor Kolokoltsev and his henchmen! He jabbed his fist in the air and let out an exultant shout. The story would be picked up by the wire services and papers that reprinted Post stories and run worldwide. By Jack Yocke. Send the best, fire the rest!
He ignored the staring pedestrians and did a little hot-damn shuffle.
He had it all right, but first he had to write it. And if these KGB Commie assholes got a whiff of what was going down, he would write it ten years from now when he got out of the gulag in the middle of the Siberian winter.
He dove into the passenger seat of the Lada. “Back to the hotel, James, and don’t spare either of your beasts.”
Up in his room he packed the laptop in its padded case and confirmed that he had his passport and travel papers. He added a change of underwear to the case and his toothbrush and razor. He decided an extra pair of socks wouldn’t hurt and stuffed them in. Then he zipped the case closed and stood staring at the rest of his stuff, taking inventory. His wallet and credit cards were in his pocket. He had a couple hundred on him. The rest of his cash and travelers checks were in the hotel safe; they could stay there.
He made sure his two suitcases were unlocked. If and when those guys came to look, he didn’t want them breaking the locks.
He looked at his watch. Ten minutes before two. He had had no lunch. He wasn’t hungry. Too excited.
He rode down in the elevator with a smile on his face. He even sang a few bars to himself in the mirror, a little James Brown: “I feel good, da da dada dada da, like I knew I would, da da dada dada da.”
Gregor unlocked the trunk and Yocke laid the computer on top of a pile of engine parts and fan belts.
“We gotta go find these three KGB guys and see if they’ll finger Demodov.”
Gregor sat behind the wheel and stared at him. “Then what? Will you want to go see Demodov? In Dzerzhinsky Square?”
“I’ll just call him, or try to anyway. He’ll deny everything. Not worth the wear and tear on your car.”
“Idiot.”
“His denial in the last paragraph of the story will be the icing on the cake. Every last living soul will know he’s guilty as hell.”
“Idiot,” Gregor repeated.
“Hey, this is the Washington Post, not the Slobovia Gazette. We always run the denials. About one time in a hundred the asshole is telling the truth, then we’re covered. The lawyers like it like that.”
Gregor put both hands on the wheel and sat staring stonily ahead.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
“I don’t know what hole you will dive into when the story is printed, but I live here. I don’t have any holes.”
“I told you I would talk to my editor about a raise. I meant that.”
Gregor snorted.
“What are they going to do to you? Is this your fault? Are you a reporter? You just drove me around and translated, for Christ’s sake! Yeah, they may sweat you a little, and you can tell them everything. You have absolutely nothing to hide or apologize for. You’re an interpreter! Then what? They’ll let you go. You know that and I know that. The world has changed. Joe Stalin is rotting in some hole in the ground.”
Gregor started the car and put it in motion. “I wish I were driving a taxi in Brooklyn with my wife’s cousin.”
It took an hour and a half to find the only address they had, one for a KGB agent named Ivan Zvezdni. His apartment was on the top floor of a ten-story building and they had to walk up. The smell of grease and dirt and cabbage hung like a miasma in the crumbling concrete stairwell.
The woman who opened the door was in tears. Gregor had barely gotten out Yocke’s identity and profession when she began to wail. “They took him away. Just minutes ago,” Gregor muttered to Yocke. “Men from the public prosecutor’s office.”
Yocke eyed the only soft chair and eased himself into it. He wasn’t leaving until he had it in spades.
It took half an hour to get the whole story, but it was worth it. Two mornings ago Zvezdni received a telephone call from Nikolai Demodov ordering him to go to police headquarters and tell the chief to pull the officers out of Soviet Square. Zvezdni knew it was Demodov because he knew his voice. Demodov specialized in political matters.
Although Demodov didn’t explain the order, Zvezdni told his wife that the boss probably didn’t want the police presence tarring the Old Guard with the wrath that Kolokoltsev’s message usually brought forth from Yeltsin’s aides, especially since Yeltsin’s people had denied Kolokoltsev a rally permit. Mrs. Zvezdni didn’t pretend to understand any of it, and she claimed her husband didn’t. Ivan was a good officer, a loyal servant of the state. He always did as he was told, she said.
Whatever Ivan Zvezdni thought of Demodov’s reasons, he obeyed orders this time too. He did, however, take two other agents along to protect himself. Mrs. Zvezdni named them. Now he was under arrest. For doing his duty. For obeying orders. Life was just not fair. Mrs. Zvezdni was reduced to silent tears.
It was damn thin, Yocke thought, but looking at Mrs. Zvezdni he bought it. Well, if you were a KGB agent and your boss called and gave you an order, wouldn’t you obey it?
The apartment was crowded but neat. There was no refrigerator. The family’s food supply sat on a sideboard under a window. The furniture was old, scarred and spotlessly clean. The carpet was clean and threadbare.
“Make sure,” Yocke told Gregor, “that she understands I write for an American newspaper.”
“She knows that. She does not care.”
He wanted to touch her arm, pat her head, but he refrained. She was using a scrap of white cloth to wipe her tears. “Tell her I am sorry,” he said.
He was going to have to work fast. This story was too hot to wait. On the way to the car he told Gregor, “Find a phone.” Gregor didn’t protest.
Gregor made the call to the KGB. After repeated waits and spurts of Russian, he motioned to Yocke and handed him the receiver. They were standing at a pay phone on a sidewalk somewhere near Arbat Street. The phone was mounted on a wall and had a little half booth arranged around it.
“Hello. My name is Jack Yocke. I’m a reporter for the Washington Post.”
The voice on the other end said “wait” in a heavy accent. At least it sounded like “wait.”
Another minute passed before a guttural voice pronounced a name: “Demodov.”
“Mr. Demodov, do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Jack Yocke. I’m a reporter for the Washington Post. We have a story that we are going to run that says that three National Security agents went to police headquarters this past Tuesday and asked the police chief to pull the police out of Soviet Square. The chief complied and Yegor Kolokoltsev was murdered minutes later. According to our information, you were the person who sent them to police headquarters. Do you wish to comment?”
Silence. Finally the voice again. “I did not do that.”
Yocke scribbled the answer in his private shorthand.
“Have you been questioned by the public prosecutor about this matter?”