I gave JC 48 hours. What the hell, let him get over his feelings of Empathy with Edie and get real.
“CIA, how can I direct your call?”
“Message for Agent Concorde.”
“Just a second, sir. Have a nice day.”
“Who am I speaking with?”
“This is Dmitry. Tell Concorde it’s the usual place in two hours.”
Learning from experience: veni, vidi, vici. Back in an hour. Still no vici.
I take #1 train uptown.
“Professor Feldman, I believe this guy I met at your office – I believe he dropped a letter or something on the ground. I picked it up.”
I hand him a sealed envelope. “I put it inside. You can open it, of course – I assume you have a clearance.”
Myron is shell-shocked. Has no idea what to do with it. Tries to interrogate me.
“I’m sorry I must go. I have to take my gay Basque roommate to Emergency at St.Luke’s.”
That stops him but good.
“You have chutzpah coming out of your ears,” JC said on the phone. “Meet me at Landmark Tavern, 11th and 46th. That’s close enough to your slum.”
Inside the bar, I am euphoric. Actually, I liked all drinking places in Russkiland, too. You might say I like bars more than I like booze, really. Even the worst Sov ones, like the pivnaya, a beer bar (yep, no-name) in a basement off Khmelnitsky Street, which was run by an ogre of a bartender named Andrey, previously kicked off the Moscow police force for the usual russian reason called Stoli Fever. The bar was all spilled watery beer and smoked vobla fishbones, but, paradoxically, as close to anonymity as a Sov place can get, due to an impenetrable wall of smoke (“you could hang an ax here,” Russians say, don’t you love the morbidity of their folklore). Just standing there (it was all stand up) for a few months could give you lung cancer. Well – even that, er, tavern had some kind of savage humanity that appealed to me, as opposed to oh-so-genteel coffee places.
But American bars I am plainly in love with. And Landmark Tavern takes the effing prize with its solid measured decor, clean and indifferent to the passage of time (only one TV screen). Drown all hope ye who enter. It’s Foro Romano, Irish version. From now on, drinking Guinness any place else would feel like betrayal.
“You are kind of impatient,” JC says as we settle into a booth. “What’s your rush?”
“It’s not my rush. It’s my MO.”
“Mm. What are you really after, Leonid? Will you settle for a ‘CIA Asset‘ T-shirt? I believe we have it in black-on-black and grey-on-grey. You are what, L?”
“That’s sooo nice of you,” I enthuse. “Can you find out if they got baseball hats, too? But…” I put on a dreamy face. “You don’t have to, really. I just want to be friends.”
JC knows how to regroup, too. “I see. By the way, that was quite a show the other day with this woman – Edith, was it? Took me a few drinks to calm her down.”
“Don’t tell me you turned down her offer of intimacy. It was heartfelt.”
He can’t help it. He grins. “Myron is not far off the mark about you. So what is it that you left out at your interview in Rome?”
“I didn’t say it was Rome. Maybe it was Vienna?”
Vienna was the first layover station en route to the US. Originally it was the one and only layover, but then the PLO had explained to the Austrians that helping Soviet Jews would cause trouble. The Austrians, as befits the land of Anschluss, rolled over promptly and passed the Jews next door. For a few dollars more, Italians agreed to provide them with shelter while they were cleared for the entry visas.
“Now you are playing games with me. Shall we part ways? Professor Feldman’s grant may run out soon and the need for Soviet articles with it.”
“I did not mean to be disagreeable. I just wanted to see how well you know the emigration route.”
“I know it very well. It was my job to keep out troublemakers like you.”
“So what happened? You didn’t like the hours?”
He shrugs. “I work for the government. I got reassigned.”
I get a kick out of watching menace getting enveloped in melancholy.
I read him and I immediately need to step outside. “Excuse me.”
It happens when I get overwhelmed by so much information served in heavy emotional sauce. If I were in the driver’s seat, I would read him like I did Edith; or at least I could pause, chew it slowly, and digest for future reference. But at this stage I am far from being in charge. I need a breather.
I settle down on the john and drop my pants just in case. I light up – absolutely essential and a perfect place for it. OK, so until recently JC was screening Russian emigres for US entry visas under the auspices of US Embassy on Via Veneto in Rome. It’s a plum post, open to molto dolce far niente; something must have gone wrong, for the liaison position with Columbia is not exactly a promotion. It’s fucking doghouse. What could have gone wrong? It’s always money or booze or pussy, the rest is statistically insignificant. First two are less likely, not at his age, not with his nice Jewish boy background; it had to be pussy. On the banks of Tiber, amid the marble and lushness of Villa Borghese, or, more likely, on the swinging beaches of Ostia, this Zhivago found his Lara; was she KGB or just faked pregnancy to secure her visa application? There’ll be time for that later.
This is Bottom Line: Rome was a past failure. Columbia is the present punishment. Leonid Zak: a future way back in. The sooner he gets it, the better.
JC politely inquired about my well-being, not a trace of taunting, which I appreciated. He was a decent guy, really; it was largely irrelevant for now but helpful in the long run.
“The waitress asked if you are ready for your steak.”
“Sure. Always ready.” Good Young Pioneer, Good Boy Scout – countries change, mottos don’t.
For a while, the dialog came to a minimum as we dug into our respective medium rare steaks. I didn’t have much of an appetite – swarms of butterflies in my stomach – but I had no trouble faking it, what with the sirloin perfectly grilled. (Of course I had not had much exposure to good steak.)
“You eat really fast,” JC noted as I resolutely wiped the plate with the remaining chunk of meat.
I knew what he meant: it was bad form to polish off a ten-dollar steak as if it were a Big Mac. But I could not help it. “Just a bad Sov habit.” I had had access to the best restaurant food in Moscow, but it was not the kind of refined experience you wanted to prolong.
“Not great for digestion, either.”
“Living in the USSR is not beneficial to health, period.”
Finally, JC finishes his steak and pushes the plate aside, leaving a few fries behind. Good manners.
“Let’s get back to business, shall we?” JC puts his foot down. Enough BS. “What did you leave out at your interview? You know lying on your application may get you deported.”
“Oh but I didn’t lie. But I didn’t put on an Edith show, either.”
He reflects. “What did you do in Russia, anyway? Did you use this ‘gift’ of yours?”
This is where it gets interesting. “How much do you know about Russia? Do you know what a tzekhovik is?”
The waitress brings the desserts, an apple pie a la mode and a NY cheesecake. As with the steaks, I left the choosing to JC. He claimed these two were essentials at an American and NYC table, respectively.
We share. Both are impeccable. Half the cheesecake slides down my aesophagus more smoothly and quickly than a Formula-1 car. I switch plates. The a la mode business is lexically pretentious, but the concept of marrying warmed pie to ice cream trumps such nitpicking easily.
“You like?”
I mumble incoherently. Table conversation is tabled until I’m done. Lord, give me willpower to stop at half the plate and offer the rest to JC.
I love this country. They should be bombarding the Sov Embassy with desserts like these and prepare to be swarmed with defectors. Were it not for the gravity of the occasion, I would love to rise and stand at attention and, hand on my heart, sing O Say Can You See.
Or something. Not that I know the lyrics. By the morning’s light? But then I don’t know the lyrics of any official Soviet songs, either. Just the first couple of lines. This is our last and final battle/With International the human species will rise? I don’t fare any better with others. Allons enfants de la Patrie, le jour de something est ici?
“Why don’t you finish it,” JC suggests without a trace of a grin.
My God. There are maybe a couple of forkfuls left. Embarrassment galore.
“I’m really not that hungry,” he insists. “Or I’ll just order some more.”
Lowering my eyes, I mutter thanks.
“So,” JC ponders, stirring the sugar in his coffee. “Tzekh is a shop, a section at a factory. Is it like a nachalnik tzekha – a shop manager? A foreman? You are kind of young for that.”
That’s the problem with Ivy League – they teach Tolstoy but not a word about shadow economy.
“Tzekhovik is closer to an entrepreneur. Some I’d call captains of industry.”
JC snickers. “You mean, black market? fartza?”
“I understand your attitude. You are thinking of pimply guys with bad breath and worse accents who grab you outside your hotel and whisper, Levis jeans? Marlboros? Not much to respect there, I agree, ‘sides, every other one is a snitch. Not a crowd to hang with if you want to stay under the radar.”
“And what do you call yourself? Who handled you? What exactly did you do in russia?”
“This will take some explaining…” For some reason, I hesitate, though this is something I should be able to do on a dime. Another thing is that JC is impatient, I can tell, and who wouldn’t be with a crafty customer like myself? He wants it in twenty-five words or less, that’s all his New File can accommodate.
I beat him to it and murmur regrets. Have to be off, meeting with my Kiwi handler. New Zealand Intelligence Service, Whack-a-MaruMaru, y’know? Have a good time on your date. But I’ll be happy to be personally debriefed by you tomorrow, Doing something? same time?
Now he hesitates, like a fucking frayr, a mark, who can’t bring himself to admit he has nothing on his calendar lest I draw some disparaging conclusions about his personal life. As if I can’t tell. This boy will need help with his career, I suspect.
And so I leave him, confused and even a little dazed. And that is a good thing.