Russian Spring (22 page)

“That is monstrous,” Sonya said when he had quite finished. “But I really don’t see what the problem is.”

“
You don’t see what the problem is?
” Jerry moaned. Hadn’t she understood a word he was saying? “If I go back to the States, I’ll never see you again, and if I don’t, I’ll never work in the space program again!”

“But Jerry, you just told me that they will never give you security clearance to work in the American space program again even if you
do
go back!”

Jerry took another sip of vodka and forced himself to calm down and think. She was making sense. The horrible fact of the matter was that
whatever
he did now, he was already as dead in the Program as Rob Post.

“You’re right, Sonya,” he said sadly. “I’m finished. I’m washed up. Oh God, oh Christ, oh shit. . . . ” Tears began to well up in his eyes, a terrible void seemed to open up in his gut, and he began to tremble. Is this what it feels like to be Rob? he wondered. To feel this emptiness inside for twenty, thirty, forty years . . . ?

Sonya rose rather shakily from her chair, came around behind his, and started massaging the tense muscles at the back of his neck.

“Oh no, Jerry,” she said softly, “you’re not washed up at all. The best part of your life is just beginning. Don’t you see? You’ve got a
fine job ahead of you at
ESA
doing the work you love. You’ve got all of Europe to taste and explore.” She leaned closer, put her arms around his neck, whispered in his ear. “And you’ve got me. . . .”

Jerry sighed. All that was true. What was there for him back in the States anyway? Even if none of this had ever happened, all he had had to look forward to was an eternity of slaving away on stupid military contracts. Here in Europe, he had love, and hope, and work that mattered waiting, work he believed in. But . . . but . . .

“But if I do that, I’ll be a traitor to my own country!” he cried.

Sonya came around the chair to face him. She stood there with her hands on her hips, weaving back and forth woozily but with the fire of more than vodka in her eyes.

“Traitor to what?” she demanded. “Traitor to the Battlestar America program which destroyed your dream and the life of your friend? Traitor to a country which will not even let you pursue your dream elsewhere? Which will not even let you remain with the woman you love? Which requires you to give up everything in return for nothing? Who is betraying whom, Jerry?”

“Now you’re talking like a Russian Communist!” Jerry shouted back at her.

“I am a child of the Russian Spring!” Sonya proudly declared. “And we have at long last learned what you Americans once knew better than any people on Earth but have now, it would seem, forgotten—a nation only thrives when its people are free to follow their own hearts!”

And there she stood, the woman that he loved, the woman who loved
him
as no woman ever had before, drunk out of her mind or not, livid, enraged, impassioned, and utterly magnificent.

In that moment, he would have given up anything for her. In that moment, he would have followed her anywhere. In that moment, he wanted to take her in his arms and hug her to him forever.

But before he could do anything, Sonya Gagarin had sunk to her knees before him, and her fingers were on his fly. “Do not leave me for empty words and stupid politics, love,” she pleaded, as she freed his tremulous cock. “Can you give up
this
in the name of patriotic chauvinism?” she said as she took it in her tender loving mouth.

And she gave him an object lesson in just what it was that he would have to give up in the name of patriotism besides the chance to finally work for a space program in which he could believe.

And when, after a long, long tender time, he let himself go, let himself find release at last in a willing lover’s mouth, he knew that there was a limit to how much a man could be expected to give up for his country, a limit which the demands of his country had long
since surpassed, especially when that country offered nothing in return but the death of a dream.

Afterward, and yet another round of vodka later, Sonya at last found the courage to tell Jerry about Grigori Mikhailovich Pankov’s visit, and why she would not be going back to Brussels on Monday after all, for by that time she was quite thoroughly drunk, and the thought of secrets between them entirely unbearable.

“Then all that stuff about being free to follow your own heart was complete bullshit!” Jerry shouted woozily, for by this time he was not exactly sober either. “You really are working for the
KGB
!”

Sonya rose shakily to her feet. “I love you!” she cried. “I want you to stay here with me! Fuck the
KGB
! Fuck the
CIA
! Fuck politics! Sonya Ivanovna Gagarin follows her own heart!”

She looked down at dear Jerry, still sitting there on his chair with his pants around his ankles, and never had he looked more precious to her. “Is it my fault that what is in my heart happens to happily coincide with the long-range interests of the workers and peasants and space cadets?” she said, and burst out laughing.

Jerry looked up at her, then down at his own dishabille, and he too could not contain his laughter. “Yeah, well, speaking as a tool of the capitalist imperialists and a lackey of the good ol’ bottom line,” he said, “I think maybe the workers and the peasants and the space cadets oughta sweeten the deal a tad. . . .”

“What did you have in mind?”

Jerry managed to rise to his feet. “If your bosses at Red Star are so fuckin’ hot for this deal to go down, then they gotta transfer you to Paris to be with me, or you say that I say ‘no way, José!’ ”

“Oooh, Jerry, I never knew you could be so
political!
” Sonya squealed in delight. “And why not a raise as well, as long as we’re about it, and a more interesting job with some real advancement potential, and no Human Octopus with his hands on my ass!”

“I’ll drink to that!” Jerry declared, and reached for the vodka bottle.

But he never made it. Instead, they both somehow fell forward and collapsed into each other’s arms.

HOOLIGANISM IN THE SUPREME SOVIET

An unseemly display of hooliganism occurred at today’s Supreme Soviet session when Ukrainian and Russian delegates actually came to blows over a resolution introduced to establish a nationalities quota system for the Red Army officer corps.

Russian delegates shouted down the attempt of Ivan Smolents to read the resolution, and several Ukrainian delegates responded with pushes and shoves, and, at least according to some of those present, with fists.

This is carrying the attempt to emulate Western legislatures a bit too far. Such brawls are best left to the Israeli Knesset, where the antagonists prepare by showing up in shirtsleeves, or the United States Senate, where fistfights have an ancient and honorable tradition.

—
Moscow Morning Sun

Larry Krugman: “There’s nothing they can really do about it, is there? It’s like a sweet spin-off from all the taxpayer’s dollars we’ve been shoveling into a high-budget space-epic that’ll never gross a dime. Now that the FCC says we can do it, the Porn Channel’s satellite will be watched over by good old Battlestar America. There’s nothing to stop us from hitting every home satellite dish from Lisbon to Moscow with our twenty-four-hour hard-core format.”

Billy Allen: “You really think you can get ratings with moldy old stag films?”

Larry Krugman: “Moldy old stag films? We’ve got the world’s biggest library of films from the golden age of the American Erotic Cinema, including many such acknowledged classics as
Deep Throat
,
Behind the Green Door
, and
Debbie Does Dallas
, and we’ve already sold out 90 percent of the first year’s commercial time for top
ECU
. A lot of high-grade advertisers over there obviously believe our format will appeal to upscale European consumers.”

Billy Allen: “If you’re right, the good old US of A is finally gonna start giving those government-subsidized highbrow European channels some pretty stiff competition!”

—
No Biz Like Show Biz

VIII

Reasonably early, if not exactly bright, the morning after, Sonya put in a call to Grigori Pankov at the Red Star offices in Brussels, reasonably certain that he would not be there yet to receive it. When she was told he was out of the office, she asked to be put through to Alexander Katchikov, the Regional Director himself, knowing full well that the operator would not be likely to disturb such an august personage with a call from a lowly wage slave in the translation section. However, it was enough to get her on the line to one Dimitri Belinski, a middle-aged, balding man who identified himself as Katchikov’s assistant, no doubt not
the
assistant, but the assistant in charge of deflecting nuisance calls such as this.

“This is Sonya Ivanovna Gagarin,” she told Belinski. “I am calling from Paris to confirm the matter of the indefinite extension of my vacation time.”

Belinski goggled at her woodenly for a long silent moment. “Are you sure you have not had too much vacation already, Comrade Gagarin?” he finally said tiredly. “You are not making any sense.”

“Comrade Katchikov will know exactly what I am talking about,” Sonya told him.

“Comrade Katchikov will have my ass if I disturb him with such ravings.”

“Well then you had better take this up with the
KGB
liaison,” Sonya said. “He will know exactly what I mean.”

“
KGB
liaison?
” Belinski exclaimed with a great show of innocence. “Surely you know that Red Star, S.A., is in no way answerable to the
KGB
!”

Sonya sighed and decided it was time to play the card she had not really used since she was a teenager in Lenino. “You will deliver my message to either Katchikov or the
KGB
and you will deliver it accurately, to wit, that Sonya Ivanovna . . .
Gagarin
wishes to discuss matters connected with the indefinite extension of her vacation time with the proper authorities,” she said frostily. “If I am forced to call a certain number in Moscow in order to transmit it, which I will do if my call is not returned within the hour, you will have occasion to learn personally the extent to which Red Star employees are or are not answerable to the
KGB
.”

And before Belinski had time to digest
that
, she gave him the phone number and hung up.

“Do you think that’s really going to work?” Jerry asked, still lying in bed and nursing his hangover.

“I think I have about enough time for a nice hot shower,” Sonya
told him, which, considering the state of her own head, might not be such a bad idea.

And indeed, she was just toweling herself off from a very long and very hot shower when the phone rang and Jerry’s voice called out from the other room. “It’s for you! Someone called Katchikov!”

Sonya kept Katchikov waiting for a couple of minutes while she dried herself thoroughly, and then for the sake of devilment, emerged from the bathroom stark naked, killed the video, and took the call on the videotel handset, voice only, luxuriating supinely atop the bedclothes next to Jerry with her left hand in his crotch for good luck.

“Katchikov,” said a deep male voice on the other end of the line. “The American is in the room? Just say yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Can you get rid of him?”

“No.”

“Well then why—”

“Comrade Katchikov,” Sonya interrupted, “I did not call you to play telephone games. I called to give you good news, which is that the mission I have been assigned has been almost accomplished. Jerry Reed is about to accept the job offer from the European Space Agency—”

“
He is?
But . . . And you’re saying all this right in front of him?”

“More or less,” Sonya said gaily, snuggling into the crook of Jerry’s arm. “There is no reason for secrecy, since I have already told Jerry everything.”

“You have done
what?
” Katchikov shouted.

“I have done what was required to fulfill my orders, which happily enough coincide perfectly with the dictates of my own heart,” Sonya told him. “One could call it a perfect vindication of the new Communist ideal, could one not? Socialist patriotism, not only with a human face, but with a romantic ending as well; what could be more perfectly Russian?”

“I suppose there is no arguing with results. . . , ” Katchikov admitted grudgingly. “One might say your country owes you its thanks, if I did not suspect that you have acted out of something other than pure socialist idealism.”

“One might say that my country owes me a
concrete
expression of its gratitude,” Sonya said. “Which is to say, Comrade, that there are certain minor details to be ironed out.”

“Details? Why do I not like the sound of this?”

“Jerry has attached certain conditions to accepting employment with
ESA
—”

“
Conditions?
That is for them to deal with, not us!”

“You will forgive me for contradicting you, Comrade Katchikov, but that is not exactly the case,” Sonya said. “You see, Jerry wants very much to take this job, but the problem is that he is an American, he speaks nothing but English, he knows no one in Europe but me, and so naturally he is fearful of succumbing to loneliness and homesickness and even romantic despair were he to be left here in Paris all by himself. . . .”

“I believe I am beginning to get the drift of this . . . ,” Katchikov said slowly.

“Fortunately, it is well within Red Star’s power to overcome this minor obstacle to the achievement of what we all want,” Sonya said. “It is simply a matter of transferring me to the Paris office. . . .”

There was a dry little laugh on the other end of the line.

“Then it is done?” Sonya asked, holding her breath.

“I have no problem with your transfer,” Katchikov told her. “But I have no authority to hire for the Paris office. That will have to come from them, by way of Moscow, assuming that Moscow accepts my recommendation, and it may take some time.”