Conspiracy (24 page)

“They want us to live up to our publicity as wild animals,” Sergei said with a wry grin, “so they decide to treat us that way.” He and Anton were going out tonight for a last bender, Sergei added. Anton was coming over at seven-thirty to say goodbye. Katya thought of the future—after Madrid she was to go on tour in Africa. The Soviet soccer team would be performing in the Far East. Then it would be time for Katya to prepare for the International Championships. 

More isolation.

While her brother was in the shower, Katya decided what she would do. When he came out, she told him Anton had called. He had said goodbye to her on the phone, she said, and wouldn’t be stopping at their apartment. Instead, he wanted Sergei to meet him across town at seven.

When Anton arrived at seven-thirty, Katya was waiting for him. She had no negligee in which to look alluring, but she had taken one of Sergei’s shirts and rolled up the sleeves and buttoned only the lowest button, and she received him at the door wearing only that. He wouldn’t come in at first when she told him Sergei had been called away by a young lady, because he said he’d had a drink or two to get warmed up for the evening and didn’t trust himself with her dressed that way—or undressed that way. 

She told him she’d had a drink or two herself, and that if he didn’t come in she’d be so disappointed she’d probably have two or three more and miss practice tomorrow. When he’d handed her his coat, she flung it aside the way she’d seen an American actress do once in a film, and kissed him right on the mouth.

Since that time she’d thought about it more than once, and still believed that a kind of magnetism had flowed between their bodies. Her own had never seemed so strong or so responsive; not even in world-class competition had she felt the flow of energy that coursed through her when she clung to him. Afterwards she’d cried as he said he loved her and had wanted this too, but that they would have to wait for years until they could marry. “Not until after the ’84 Olympics,” he’d said. “They need you in that one too badly to let me turn their star into my wife. We’d have trouble with a license, housing, all the rest of it. But if we only wait—if you’ll only wait for me, Little, we can live together and raise children who live well.”

Then, in mid-April, her period hadn’t come. She’d known before, really, felt the changing inside, so she wasn’t surprised. But she hadn’t known what to do then; she’d felt all alone since Anton and Sergei had gone, even though the officials sent in Tamara to act as her “chaperone.”

So she turned to the other man whose presence haunted her apartment: Nikolai Kormelin, Deputy Minister of Economics in the Kremlin. She’d seen him first back in 1980, about two months following the Olympics. A dignified, round-faced man of middle age with sleek black hair and a mustache to match, in an office with furnishings that had once belonged to the Tsars. 

He’d made a joke of her name, linking it with that of the once-royal family, and then cheerfully confessed that he’d fallen in love with her from afar, while watching her perform. He wanted her to charm the rest of the world in the same way. It would mean going on tours from time to time, but her practice sessions would not be interfered with.

It would also mean an apartment for her and her brother, a two-bedroom beauty in one of Moscow’s most desirable high-rise buildings. She’d been ready to accept on the spot, but he went on and told her about her duty to the state and The Soviet Union’s expanding role in world economic affairs, and how really economics was the study of public opinion because all things had their value only because people thought they did, and how Katya could make others see the true value of the Russian people. That had really sold her. 

He’d said it in a cheerful way, but with a certain melancholy, as though he knew they both understood that with the current bunch of bureaucratic oafs running the government, the true value of the Russian people might have become very heavily obscured indeed. A real man of the world, Katya had thought after that first meeting, and he was her benefactor! He had continued to bring her to his office from time to time, asking for her impressions of people she met, making her feel important. He cared for her opinions and remembered them, even if months had gone by. As close to a father as she’d had, was Nikolai Kormelin.

So when the middle of May came around with no period too, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was pregnant, she called his office, something she’d never done. When his secretary asked the purpose of the call, she said she was going to Spain shortly and wondered if she could bring anything back for the Deputy Minister, since he’d been so good to her in the past. 

She was rewarded for her generous intentions with an appointment, which then had to be postponed until that evening at the Deputy Minister’s apartment. They sent a car for her and she rode in the back seat with the windows open, drinking in the spring air of Kutuzovsky Prospect. She felt like a queen and a beggar all at once because of the favor she was about to ask of him.

As soon as she’d seen him she knew that it wouldn’t work. Far from being receptive to helping her marry Anton, Nikolai Kormelin had sent his wife and children off to their dacha and was waiting for her with all the eagerness she’d felt when she’d waited for Anton! The whole thing struck her as so ludicrous, yet so predictable, that she’d not felt either surprise or disappointment just then—only ironic detachment from her own problems and sympathy of sorts for the feelings of the Deputy Minister. Poor man, she thought, if he’d waited years for this moment, at least she could repay him for her apartment by staying to have a drink.

After her second drink, she’d had an idea. She would give him his moment in bed, and then in a month or two say she was carrying his child. That would ensure that the child would be born, and possibly Nikolai would do her the kindness of letting her marry the man she chose. So she went to bed with him and suppressed giggles at his lovemaking eagerness, along with tears at his obvious sincerity. 

Afterward he said the hour with her had been the happiest of his life. He grieved because they must never risk another meeting of this kind. Once was explainable as the official briefing session he’d intended it to be, but if she came here a second time, there would soon be talk and trouble for both of them. She went home feeling like a woman of the world, and made up a wonderful pack of lies for Tamara about the Deputy Minister’s instructions for Madrid.

The next morning she’d thought of Dan Richards and America. If she could get away without anyone knowing about Anton, then possibly one day he would be able to escape too. He would come as soon as he could, if he knew she was waiting in America for him; she felt that, just as surely as she felt that the child within her would look like him. That was why she would tell no one, ever, who the child’s father was until Anton was by her side.

“That’s fascinating, Katya,” Dan Richards was saying about what she’d told him of life in Moscow. “Now I wonder if you’d like to join me out on the soccer field. We’ve got our mobile van set up there, and I’m hoping to prove a world champion gymnast can teach an old sportscaster how to handle a soccer ball.”

3

Despite his Italian-tailored silk suit and his French silk necktie, Nikolai Kormelin looked unfashionably disconcerted as he entered Yuri Zadiev’s office. Waiting a few moments for Zadiev to finish a telephone call, he shifted from one Gucci-slippered foot to the other and glanced twice at his Omega quartz wristwatch. “My dear fellow,” he began when Zadiev had hung up, “I’m not accustomed to being summoned in so peremptory a fashion—”

Zadiev diagnosed the man’s impatience as genuine, not bluster to conceal a weakness from the KGB. True, Kormelin had a trunk full of similarly conspicuous luxury goods, newly purchased, in his hotel room. But petty smuggling was a perquisite of the man’s position. The Minister of Economics, Kormelin’s superior, would bring four full trunks back to Moscow after a Western trip. Zadiev himself was allowed to fill an overnight bag.

He cut Kormelin’s protest off with a nod, an understanding smile, and an index finger across the lips, gesturing for silence. “My apologies, Nikolai Petrovich,” he said, “but I need your help on a pressing matter, so I had to impose on our past friendship. Would you be kind enough to walk across the avenue with me to the stadium?”

When they were outside the Palacio de Congresos and their voices were obscured by the traffic, Zadiev let him have it between the eyes. “Sorry to drag you out here, Comrade, but I didn’t want anyone hearing our talk. The problem is your little snow bird, Katya Romanova. She’s about to fly off to America with your child in her belly.”

Kormelin went pale. “Katya—” he whispered. Looking up, he realized he’d virtually admitted having her in bed. And to a ranking KGB officer! But his panic diminished when he saw that Zadiev wore no look of triumph. The tall Ukrainian really seemed to want to help.

All the same, Kormelin spoke carefully. “Please tell me more,” he said. “I haven’t seen Katya since May.”

“June the first,” Zadiev corrected gently. “She left for your apartment in your car at seven-fifteen and returned at half past ten. Checking the records, we find that the others in your family were enjoying a holiday at your country place at the time.”

“How do you people know she is pregnant?”

“Only I know, Comrade.” Zadiev explained about the wired UBC studios and stadium press box, and repeated Katya’s conversation with Dan Richards verbatim. “A man ‘in a high position,’ Comrade. And she wants to protect you. I say ‘you,’ Comrade, because we have a detailed record of her movements during the last six months that I have examined personally. You are the only high official with whom she has had contact away from the public eye. In fact, you are the only male with whom she has been alone during the phase of the month in which she is fertile. Apart from ordering a genetic analysis of her fetal fluids, I can’t think of a more certain indication of your parenthood.”

“Assuming your report is accurate,” Kormelin said quietly.

“Correct. And also assuming that she told the truth to the American announcer. However, considering the risk involved, I find the evidence rather persuasive.”

“What do you intend to do?”

Zadiev shrugged and was silent until they had shown their credentials to the stadium guard and passed through the gate into the parking lot. Then he turned to Kormelin, looking the smaller man directly in the eyes. He never liked to watch people squirm, so he avoided eye contact during most interrogations. With Kormelin, though, it was different. The man was sentimental, and it was plain to Zadiev that Kormelin had treated the girl honorably, else she would not be so determined both to protect him and to carry his child to birth.

Zadiev understood offenses of sentiment and the troubles they could cause, even in a society of enlightened socialism. As he spoke, he thought of his wife, another sentimentalist. At this moment, it being a Friday, she was probably donning her peasant’s garb so as to mingle inconspicuously in the line of worshippers at the Christian Altar cubicle outside Cathedral Square. Despite Yuri’s attempts to persuade her against the practice, she would wait in line for her turn to step up to the glassed-in crucifix, portrait of the Virgin, and opened New Testament. Like the others, she would say her prayer rapidly, kiss the glass over the three holy objects, and then reach for the towel on the chain beside the glass cabinet to wipe away the spittle for the next worshipper.

Sentiment. Religious or romantic, it was difficult to eradicate. The best Zadiev had been able to do with his wife was to persuade her to go on Fridays instead of Sundays, so that her wait on line would not be as long.

“I wanted to ask you what to do, Nikolai,” he said. “It is your child she is taking. I thought you ought to have some say in the matter.”

Kormelin blinked. “I thought precautions were unnecessary,” he said, musing, his mind on the evening of June the first. “She did not mention them. I thought she would have said something. Young people today are so knowledgeable, I thought surely she would know about taking precautions.”

“Perhaps she wanted your child,” Yuri suggested. “She certainly wants it badly enough now.”

Kormelin seemed touched by the idea. He stared at the brick wall of the stadium, pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, saying nothing.

“Our problem, however,” Zadiev went on gently, “is that she is about to leave from this stadium sometime in the next few minutes. I am afraid that my duty to the state would not be fulfilled if I stood by and let her go.”

Kormelin shook his head. “She oughtn’t to go to America.” He gave a sigh. “Oh, Katya. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have done this to you,” he said softly. Then he looked up at Zadiev. “Is it possible that you can prevent her escape without arresting her?”

Zadiev nodded, raising his eyebrows as if asking for further explanation.

“I’m looking at it from all points of view,” Kormelin explained. “If you arrest her, of course there’ll be an examination and the pregnancy will be discovered, and we’ll have spoiled one of Russia’s most beautiful international assets. I feel certain she’d never perform again, not if she feels this strongly about having the baby. But if you simply make it impossible for the escape to succeed, if you can make it appear that something went wrong by mischance, that really no one knows her secret, then think of what you’ll have gained.”

His voice became more animated as his hope lent persuasive force to his reasoning. “She won’t know there’s anything up—so she’ll continue representing the state in good form, waiting for the Americans to make another attempt to save her. And that will give me time to think of something; possibly I’ll be able to arrange an exception to the rules for her. In confidence I tell you, Comrade, that the next few weeks may bring a great change in our department. I may have the power in a short time to overrule those cretinous bureaucrats in the Ministry of Sport. If you can simply buy me some time, I’d be most grateful.”