Chasing the Storm (12 page)

Chapter 10

Moscow

May 5

Moscow. The word
summoned vast squares filled with swirling snow and goose-stepping soldiers and columns of identical apartment buildings and rosy-cheeked maidens muffled to the eyes in fur.

Rygg and Marin flew in on an ancient Aeroflot Ilyushin II, over emptiness. Miles and miles of forest and fallow fields and curly rivers that seemed, from the sky, to be utterly motionless. Here and there were farmhouses, and occasionally a truck tottering along a dirt road, but the general impression was one of stillness and endless, uninhabited land. As they approached the outskirts of the city, the landscape suddenly fractured into squares of concrete rooftops, the spaces between swarming with highways and meshed rail tracks, all under a gauze of brownish pollution.

Rygg had the briefcase on his lap, and ran his fingers over the handle where the knife lay hidden. He was in his best business attire: natty pinstripe, buffed Crockett and Jones loafers, Breitling Navitimer, sober blue tie. Marin was wearing round steel-rimmed glasses, a neat little three-day beard, jeans, and a Yankees windbreaker over a polo shirt. On his lap, he had three plastic folders, which he kept opening to rearrange the contents. He’d dyed the gray out of his hair, and had acquired a perky little grin, which he now bestowed on Rygg.

“We are now coming over the city Moscow,” Marin informed Rygg. “Moscow is a city of ten million five hundred thousand population. It is furthermore the seventh largest city in the world.” As well as the new uniform, he’d acquired a thicker accent and a pedantic manner of speech. And his name, according to his passport, was now Aleksandr Rovanich, but Rygg could call him Alex. Rygg was still Rygg, but Marin had boosted his rank to vice-president of Iversen Foss and provided him with the documents and business cards to prove it. He was coming to Russia on a mission to scout out possibilities for investment in the Romashkino oilfield. Marin was his tour guide, hired in Athens, who came with an impressive list of past clients and credentials, all typed up in atrocious English and presented in two plastic folders, together with seven stamped official documents.

The previous afternoon, following the chat session with Sasha in Athens, Marin had left to get into his disguise. Rygg had packed up and met him a couple hours later at a café in the center of the town. He spent the first five minutes trying not to laugh. Marin had completely transformed his looks and mannerisms. He was now in his early thirties and accompanied his endless chatter with jerky gestures and little cocking movements of his head. And from the moment of their encounter in the café, Marin did not step out of character for even a second. They checked into a new hotel – Lena would board a later flight to Moscow – and ate a couple meals together before their flight. And after a day of listening to Marin prattle on about Moscow, showing him pamphlet after pamphlet and spewing figures like a stock ticker, he had to remind himself that this was Marko and not Alex, the tiny, chirpy tour guide who just would not shut up about anything.

In the line for immigration at Sheremetyevo Airport, Marin continued to prattle. Many of the men around them had massive, ruddy faces, the eyes sunk into the fat, and great guts cased in shiny polyester shirts. The older women were shapeless tubs, their calves descending into their shoes without any indication of ankle. But some of the younger men were brash and muscular, and the younger women were often startlingly lovely, with delicate bones and full lips.

At the counter, Marin waved Rygg back importantly and presented half a dozen documents, along with Rygg’s passport. He gabbled away, stabbing his finger at a signature here, a number there, shuffling leaves. The attendant was a grim-faced, mustached woman whose jowls swung beside her chin as she wrote in her various ledgers and then stamped four of Marin’s papers with three different stamps. Finally, she stamped both of their passports and handed them over. Marin gathered up the papers and stuffed them in one of his folders, then with his chin motioned Rygg to follow. Rygg walked a mite too slowly for Marin, glowering when he urged him to “Make yourself faster please, Mr. Rygg.”

The hotel van had been waiting for them outside the terminal. Driving quickly away from the airport, it took them along gigantic boulevards. It was still spring in Moscow, and a delicate green lace draped the chestnut trees. The streets were filled with a curious mixture of hiccupping Ladas in nimbuses of black smoke and glossy BMWs and Mercedes-Benz with tinted windows. Marin informed Rygg that Moscow was home to more billionaires than any other city and was one of the most expensive cities for expatriates in the world, but on every street corner derelicts slouched in stairwells or pushed makeshift carts loaded with plastic bags, and the dark slots of alleys were filled with bottles, broken and whole.

Their hotel – the Odessa Korona – was a huge, ornate structure with a frothy marble exterior. Entering the foyer through the revolving doors was like stepping into a church. Plump cherubs cavorted on the ceiling, and the columns were surmounted with gold capitals. Marin informed Rygg that the building was originally a palace, dating from the time of Peter the Great. It had been used as government offices during the communist era, but had recently been refurbished into one of the plushest hotels in the city, where all the “vips,” as he termed them, stayed. Marin dealt importantly with the receptionist, and ushered Rygg into the elevator.

Rygg’s room was as splendiferous as the foyer, with a ten-foot, gilt-framed mirror on one wall and scrollwork furniture and a sumptuous Turkish carpet underfoot. Marin bowed and said that he hoped he would have a pleasant stay, and that he would call for him at “precisely 7:30 the following a.m.”

May 6

In the morning, Marin was as perky as ever. When he appeared in the doorway, shuffling his plastic folders, Rygg just grinned at him. “So what’s the agenda today, chief?” he asked.

“Today,” Marin flipped his plastic folders over, opened one, and tapped his fingers over a page. “Today is the Red Square and McDonald’s. But first, the Izmaylovsky Park!”

“Sounds crazy to me, but I’m ready for anything.”

Izmaylovsky Park (the second largest city park in Europe) was a forest of birches and chestnuts and maples. Alongside the flagged paths, ravens and sparrows pecked in slovenly flowerbeds. Marin led him past busts of poets scabbed by lichen and drably dressed old men playing chess on park benches. A couple mothers walked with their children, and there were a few young couples sprawled in the sunshine on one lawn, but the park seemed mostly empty. “Most people do not like to come to this park anymore,” Marin said. “It is forgotten. Now they like to go to the amusement parks and the video game parks. McDonald’s. The cinema.” His sadness seemed genuine, and Rygg glanced at him. Marin smiled thinly. “Come, Mr. Rygg,” he said. “Let us leave the path for a while. In the spring, Moscow can be very pretty.”

Rygg followed Marin past beds of tulips, onto grass, and then into a stand of birches. They passed an old woman with a basket, and Marin said something to her. She stopped and lifted the checked cloth on the basket, with an apple-cheeked twinkly smile. She was straight out of a fairy tale: like a witch sent to poison them. Inside the basket were two varieties of mushrooms: one orange-capped, with long stems; the other like a sponge on a stalk. Marin picked up a couple mushrooms, examined them, and chatted with the woman for a while. She offered him the basket, trying to press it into his hands, and he smiled and shook his head and patted her arm. When they moved on, he told Rygg: “Breathe deeply. You can smell the mushrooms growing. The white ones, which we call
beyley
– they are fantastic, in soup, or fried with butter.” Inhaling, Rygg smelled earth and leaf mold. It reminded him of being a kid, running around on his uncle’s farm outside of Verdal.

“Mushroom collecting was once our national pastime,” Marin told Rygg. He’d dropped the Alex façade, for the first time in three days, and was little, pensive Marin again, smoking a cigarette. They moved deeper into the trees. “Mushroom-collecting, reading long novels in the evenings, drinking tea. This was Russia. Communism has been painted very blackly in recent years. And it was indeed terrible. Terrible. The years of Stalin were worse even than the years of Hitler in Germany. I am talking in terms of people dying, of quality of life. But there remains a certain nostalgia for the Communist years despite that. There was a national unity, even when we were struggling against the regime, even when we were chopping our furniture for firewood and standing in lines for six hours to receive one loaf of bread. Everyone read Tolstoy and Chekhov and Dostoevsky, everyone swam in the rivers and picked mushrooms and drank tea. Life was hard, certainly, but we took comfort in each other, in sustaining each other. The struggle brought us together. The Berlin Wall, that famous symbol, was keeping the West out. But you could say also that it was keeping our way of life intact. When it fell …” Marin scuffed out his cigarette in a patch of sodden leaves. “When it crumbled, our unity also crumbled.”

They had reached a little knoll where the trees were thinner and straighter, like columns of rolled paper. The birch leaves formed an evanescent roof of tender green. Marin leaned against a trunk and bent his head to light another cigarette. His eyes strayed back along the way they had come. Then he looked up.

“Okay, I think we are alone now.”

“Wow,” said Rygg. “You’re even more suspicious than I am.”

Marin nodded. “I have been on the inside. I was in the FSB; I know how they operate. The national system was collapsing – the system for getting food to the citizens, for transportation, for energy. But the surveillance system was, and remains, the best in the world. In secret bunkers in the Urals, there are enormous caves filled with papers, dossiers, on every citizen. For the last century. Every single citizen. Activities, likes, dislikes, friendships, affairs, meals eaten, books read. They knew everything about everyone. One in three Muscovites was involved in spying on their fellow citizens. An enormous portion of the government budget went into this surveillance, and continues to do so. It is like an addiction for them, a way of life. They cannot imagine running a government without this surveillance. Your hotel, for instance, is completely bugged, I can assure you. Every room. Also the hotel car, the restaurants. Parks like Izmaylovsky were once the favorite clandestine meeting places for the rebellious, where samizdat was exchanged, where messages were passed to Western spies. So the government bugged every park bench, and many of the trees as well. Can you imagine? Every park bench in this park has a tiny microphone embedded. If someone is being followed, they can listen in on the conversation. But here, I think, I hope, we are finally outside their eyes and ears. Okay?”

“Maniac! You’re even more paranoid than I am.”

“Better safe than sorry, right?”

“Okay. So what now?”

Marin looked up at the roof of leaves, then left and right. “All right,” he said. “Are you a fan of the ballet?”

“Sure.” Rygg looked at Marin and raised his eyebrows.

“You know the Bolshoi?”

“Of course.”

“Now, normally tickets are sold out for months in advance. But because Alex Rovanich is such a superior tour guide, he has managed to bribe an official for a ticket. This is for tonight. You will be watching
Romeo and Juliet
, a ballet by Prokofiev. You are very excited.”

“You can even control my emotions?” Rygg said.

Marin leveled a gaze at him. “You are very excited,” he went on. “Now, by chance, you will be sitting next to—”

“Stop.”

“What?” Marin looked quizzically at him.

“Don’t give me too much information,” Rygg told him. “Just the basics. It’s important that things proceed naturally. Organically, do you understand?”

“Yes. You are right, of course. You will be sitting next to … someone. Things should proceed naturally from there. Remember always that you are an oilman, interested in the Romashkino oilfields, which have enormous potential. You want a portion of the cake. Think of nothing else. I will make the contact at the appropriate time.”

“So I’m on my own from now, floating free?”

“Not exactly. We will be watching.”

“We?”

“Someone will be watching you at all times. Someone friendly. Now, you have the briefcase, of course. The briefcase has a latch on the outside, yes?”

“Sure.”

“Normally, naturally, you carry the briefcase with the latch away from your body. Am I correct?”

Rygg nodded.

“Now, if at any time you feel there is danger, or if you feel that you need to make contact, you will turn the latch to the inside, toward your leg. You understand?”

“I got you.”

“Excellent. Have no fear, Mr. Rygg. I think everything will turn out smoothly.” Marin stood up and patted his pockets.

“But … I’ve got a question here, Alex.”

“Yes? What is your question?”

“You’re my tour guide. Aren’t you going to be with me this whole time?”

Marin nodded. He lowered his voice: “As we move closer to the source, it becomes more dangerous. I am not unknown in Russia, as I told you. I cannot show my face, even in disguise, in the circles into which you will be moving.”

At 5:30, as Rygg was watching the news in his room, there was a knock on the door. He opened it to a twenty-something lad, who silently entered and laid something on the bed. When he had gone, Rygg examined the package. It was a brand new suit, with jacket and bowtie. He ripped off the plastic and tissue paper and tried on the jacket. It fit perfectly – much better, in fact, than the jacket he had brought.

He shaved and dressed slowly. The bowtie caused him some hassle, and he finally opened up the computer and Googled “tie a bowtie,” which provided him with half a million results. His first few attempts went awry, but he finally got it looking decent. He was just slicking down his hair when the same attendant knocked again. “Your conveyance to the Bolshoi Theater is ready, sir,” he said, with a bow and, Rygg thought, increased respect, and handed him his ticket.