Trans-Siberian Express (15 page)

“I am a very physical woman,” she said, almost in apology. Again he felt a pang of anxiety, wondering if she took her pleasure indiscriminately. He felt vaguely humiliated. Suppose I mean nothing to her? he thought.

“Does that imply that it is always like this?” he asked cautiously. Her eyes opened and she looked at him with indignation. “No,” she said, “it does not mean that.”

“You have no lovers?”

“No.”

“And your husband?”

“We perform our duties.”

“Duties?”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Well then. Shall I ask you about your wife?”

“Please don’t.”

“Then what of your mistresses?”

“I’m sorry I started this.”

“You should not question so much.”

He was annoyed at his own jealousy, the smothering feeling of possession. She was silent, looking out the window at the passing taiga. He looked at his watch, his sense of time returning. It will soon be over, he thought, and felt her impending departure like a stab of pain. She put a hand over his watch and nestled her head on his shoulder, seeing the soreness where her teeth had dug in.

“I have drawn blood,” she said, licking the small wound.

She finished her ministrations, then kissed him on the neck and closed her eyes. He watched her slip into a light sleep, her lips parted, her breathing calm, and wondered what it all meant. What did it matter? I have never been so happy, he told himself, and he felt his mind relax and sleep begin.

IN
his mind Grivetsky ran through his options. The sun was slipping beyond the edges of the taiga, but he had not noticed the changing patterns of light. The crowded compartment was thick with the smells and tension of the onlookers. The old man sat silent, motionless, his one good eye fixed on the chessboard as he waited for Grivetsky to move. But the general was carefully replaying their past games, the string of losses that had, at last, revealed the old man’s strategy. He was barely conscious of the movement around him, the whispers of the spectators who watched transfixed, perhaps infused with the same obsession that had kept him at it through an entire night and a full day. When the train stopped, he had sent one of the young spectators to buy sausages and bread, which he shared with his old opponent as they continued their nonstop duel.

“He will never beat him,” he heard someone say behind him, but that only goaded him to greater effort.

“They have been at it for nearly twenty-four hours,” someone said with excitement as the crowd swelled and shuffled, each man trying to find a place from which to see the board.

“He will wear him down.”

“Never. The old man is like iron.”

Grivetsky heard the comments and willed them out of his field of concentration, with the automatic reflex of a horse’s tail swatting flies on its hide. Now he had the fix of the old man’s mind. It was, after all, the classic strategy of the armies of the land-rich nation. Draw in your enemy. Always trade geography for knowledge. Husband your strength while your opponent spends his. It was the classic maneuver that defeated Napoleon and Hitler; that destroyed Chiang Kai-shek. I will win now, he told himself, as his mind jumped ahead a half-dozen moves. He could feel the old man’s mind clicking over the same ground, analyzing the squares and pieces, sensing the imminence of defeat.

A hush fell over the compartment as if each of the spectators had ceased to breath. The old man’s gnarled hand moved, lightly fingered his remaining bishop, then withdrew. The train bounced beneath them, making the pieces on the board jump in tandem. Watching the old man’s hesitation, Grivetsky suddenly was sure of his victory. With that the tension in his mind and body relaxed.

“The old man is finished,” someone said, breaking the tension in the room. The flow of life began again.

The old man raised his one good eye, and blinked. “I am defeated,” he said hoarsely.

He held out a gnarled hand which Grivetsky took, feeling its roughness. The old man’s pressure signaled his admiration. The joy was in the hard fights, Grivetsky knew. What was any battle without a worthy foe? He took the old man’s crumpled ruble notes, stuffed them into his pocket and stood up, feeling the full weight of his fatigue as his joints refused to unlock. With effort, he pulled himself up to his full height.

“You are a great opponent,” Grivetsky said in a gravelly tone. He had not spoken aloud in over twenty-four hours.

“Now let me,” a young man said, obviously thirsting for his own taste of the old man’s blood. His defeat would put two more rubles in the old man’s pocket, Grivetsky thought, knowing the force of will and concentration that had to be invested to defeat him. He looked down into the old man’s eye and nodded. The old man smiled thinly.

Grivetsky turned and moved through the crowd into the corridor, the stiffness in his legs and back painful. Passing through the freezing space between two carriages, he discovered a soldier posted at the entrance to the next car. It surprised him, confronting the impassive young soldier with his machine gun strapped across his chest, a finger on the trigger. He looked at the insignia on the tunic, and recognized it as KGB border command.

“You cannot pass,” the soldier said arrogantly, the butt of the gun jabbing into Grivetsky’s tight stomach muscles. It was then that he realized that he had walked in the wrong direction and, without a word, he turned, reopened the door behind him, and retraced his steps past the crowded compartment where the chess game was being played.

By the time he had seated himself at a table in the almost empty restaurant carriage, it dawned on him that he had confronted a most unusual situation. Why had they tacked a troop carrier onto a regular passenger train, and KGB troops at that? Normal procedures were to transport the military on separate trains, except, of course, for individual soldiers traveling under separate orders.

He dipped his spoon into a bowl of borscht and fished out a potato. Why so much KGB clout? he thought. If this much was blatant, he could imagine the strength of what he could not see.

Normally the general would have put their little cloak-and-dagger games out of his mind. But this time he himself was involved in their games up to the hilt. Dimitrov was directing the little puppet show and Grivetsky was one of the puppets. This whole exercise on the Trans-Siberian was a carefully contrived subterfuge. They were watching him, he was certain, but he could not decide the source of the surveillance. Dimitrov? Bulgakov? Others within the Army? Within the KGB?

He pushed away the stainless-steel bowl and threw down some kopeks angrily. On his way out, he stopped at the table where the restaurant manager worked. The little man jumped up, as if the seat of his pants had suddenly caught fire.

“Good to see you, sir.”

“You know who I am?”

“Of course.”

“Who told you?”

The little man hesitated. Under Grivstsky’s glare, he began to sweat.

“That man told you.” Grivetsky pointed to the empty table at which the red-haired man had sat the other night. The little man followed the direction of Grivetsky’s finger, then looked up at him, dismayed.

“What man?”

“Come on. Don’t play dumb with me.”

“You mean the red-haired man?” The restaurant manager sat down again in anguish.

“Who is he?”

“KGB.”

“No fooling. And he told you who I am?”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t you lie to me.”

The little man patted his pockets and drew out a crumpled piece of paper. He opened it, pointing with grimy finger. “Your name is on the manifest of the soft passengers.”

Grivetsky looked at it, feeling stupid, as if he had lost some of his dignity. Then he was puzzled.

“Well, then who
is
he watching?”

“Sometimes”—the little man sighed—“it seems that they are watching everybody. I don’t ask. I don’t want to know. I have a wife and two children and I have been working for the railroad for fifteen years. They come to me. They ask me to report. They tell me who shall not sit with whom. They drive me crazy.” He had worked himself to the verge of hysteria. “And they have a trainload of troops attached to the train. What do you want from me?”

Grivetsky watched the man’s lips tremble. He turned away and started toward the soft class, feeling the cold shoot through him as he opened the door between the carriages. So they are watching everybody, he thought with contempt, and certainly that includes me. He wondered if he should call Dimitrov. He could make the call from Sverdlovsk, the next stop. But Dimitrov’s line might be tapped. He could call Bulgakov. His phone was almost certainly tapped, but he knew he could make himself understood by using cryptic references that came of long association with the Marshall. Or he could call directly into the protected military line, but that, too, might be tapped.

Entering the passageway of the soft class, he immediately noticed the strange-looking man with the odd walk. He had pulled out one of the spring seats that lined the passageway and was peering out into the darkness. Another KGB man, Grivetsky thought, feeling his contempt rise within him.

“What are you staring at?” he said with deliberate brutality to the seated man, who looked up at him, startled.

“I’m looking out the window,” he said, equally belligerent.

“You think you are so clever,” Grivetsky hissed, leaving the startled man to contemplate his meaning as he let himself into his compartment and slammed the door behind him.

He was livid with rage, a consuming anger that made him clench his fists in despair. Pulling a bottle of vodka from underneath his bunk, he took a long, lingering drink. He felt its heat immediately and leaned back against the wall. By the time he had drunk down to the bottom of the bottle’s neck, the edge of his anger was blunted.

He felt his eyelids droop and his arms and legs grow heavy. Then something flickered in his mind, and his eyes opened wide again. Something was not quite right in his compartment. He searched and re-searched the room with his eyes, probing every square inch and comparing it to his recollection. Then he found what he was looking for. Jumping up from the bunk, he poked into the plastic garment bags in which his uniforms were hanging. When traveling, he always reversed the garment bags, since that was the only way he could be sure the zippers would stay fastened. Now the bags were turned right-side out, and the zippers had slipped down a few inches. Someone had come into his room, removed the garment bags and reversed them.

He opened the bags and drew out his uniform, searching the pockets and the lining for something amiss. What am I looking for? he wondered. Perhaps a new kind of electronic bug. His fingers searched along the seams, under the collars and epaulets. Even after his careful search, he was not entirely satisfied, but he reversed the bags again and zipped them up from the inside. His mind was racing now, its iron discipline returning. Who was watching him? Bulgakov would have the most to lose from any radical change in military policy on the Chinese front. Not that he would protest the strike. What was important to Bulgakov was not ideology, or even policy, but his own prestige and position. It was essential that Dimitrov make Bulgakov feel that he was part of the decision, that he had not been skipped over. But suppose it was too late for that? Suppose Bulgakov had insinuated his own intelligence into the General Secretary’s dacha, and he already knew. Unlike Grivetsky, Bulgakov did not feel that a military man should be above intrigue and ingratiation. He had built his brilliant career as much on ruthless intrigue as on his military talents. It was Bulgakov, he decided. Under that bland façade of hearty camaraderie, Bulgakov was tracking him now. Somehow he would have to warn Dimitrov. He, Grivetsky, would have to learn to intrigue.

He felt the train slow and saw through the window the beginnings of lights. They were on the edges of Sverdlovsk. He took his pistol out of his suitcase and slipped it under his jacket. Then, still feeling the stiffness in his joints, he carefully opened the door to the passageway. The squat man was no longer sitting on the spring seat. Only the younger train attendant was in the passageway, busy with the samovar under which he could see the red glow of the coals.

“Good evening, sir,” she said, looking up at him with wide, pleasant eyes.

“How long do we stop at Sverdlovsk?” he asked.

“Fifteen minutes. It is normally ten, but we are five minutes ahead of schedule.”

“And the telephone?”

“Just inside the station. Turn right.”

“Thank you.” He stretched his hands over the coals, feeling their warmth. “Where is the man that was sitting out here? The funny-looking fellow, the one who waddles.”

“He went that way,” she said, pointing toward the front of the train. “He parades around the passageway as if he didn’t have a compartment.”

“Where is his compartment?”

The attendant pointed. She moved her face closer to his.

“But he’s rarely there. He just stalks up and down the passageway with his funny walk.”

He looked into the woman’s frank, open face. She seemed self-assured, strong. He wondered if he could confide in her.

“And the red-haired man?” he asked casually.

“In there.” She pointed without hesitation.

He had forgotten the woman’s name.

“After we move again, please bring in a glass of tea.”

“With pleasure, sir.”

The train came to a stop at Sverdlovsk. Groups of women vendors shivered in the cold, their baskets held in the crooks of their arms. The train attendant scrambled before him and opened the door, holding it respectfully as he clambered down the metal steps. The station was nearly deserted. He dialed the operator, looking at his watch. He could hear the buzzing sound repeat itself over and over again. After nearly two minutes, he heard a voice on the other end.

“I am General Grivetsky,” he said with controlled anger. “You must put this call through immediately to Moscow.” He read off the number from a little book he kept in his pocket.

“It will take some time,” the operator said.

“How long?”