Tag: espionage

Jazz with Ella

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Excerpt

“There won’t be any children, Mrs. White. It’s summer holidays,” Lona said with a smirk. Paul rolled his eyes skyward.
Jennifer felt a little sheepish. Lona was probably correct. However, it was irritating the way she always ensured that everyone knew she was correct. It was time to change the subject. “How did you happen to study Russian, David?” she said, leaning back in the grass, ignoring Lona and fixing on the young man. He had an intelligent, open face with sparkling white teeth but even at the age of 25, his hairline was just starting its slide toward the back of his head. She knew that his family was of English descent, not unlike her own history on her father’s side.
“My father’s in the Air Force,” said David, “and I guess we’ve lived on a dozen different bases as I grew up—Germany, Italy and NORAD in Colorado. I picked up a little of every language but never Russian.”
“So why Russian?” Lona asked.
“Well, six years ago I got chosen along with a lot of other army and air force brats to go on a teen cultural exchange to the U.S.S.R. I had no knowledge of the country before that. We were just supposed to be shining examples of North American kids. It was sure different than this tour. It had been organized by Sputnik—that’s the youth tour group—and we had cocky Komsomol leaders not much older than us in charge.”
“So you have more than a nodding acquaintance with Lenin?”
“And Marx. And Brezhnev. The Komsomol is seriously political, and this was before the signing of the SALT treaty so east-west tensions were high. Believe it or not, it’s more relaxed now.”
“But how did you learn the language?” Paul asked.
“Oh, we had a crash course before the trip. Then we stayed in a dormitory for four months and ate with the Eastern European kids, so we learned a lot that way. We didn’t visit the churches back then because they tried to pretend that they didn’t exist. Instead, we had to study in the dorm a lot and debate the class struggle or dialectical materialism with our team leader. Most of us didn’t have a clue!”
“My god, I’m not sure I could define them now,” laughed Jennifer. “But I bet we’ll know by the end of this trip.”
“Well, that was what sparked my interest in Russian. Learning by talking is the best way. That’s why I didn’t pack my Ozhegov.”

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Straits and Turns

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Necrophilia
Bradley reached home late at night after a long flight, during which they experienced their fair share of turbulence. He knew this flight so well after twenty years of taking it, since he started working on the East Coast, and his house was in Los Angeles. He also knew most of the American Airlines personnel; he had an account set up by the Bureau and always flew this airline. And tonight, Georgia, the flight attendant, offered him a second glass of wine and a good plateful of food, which he relished to the last crumb. Being with the Bureau for so long, he almost did everything as part of a routine, a repetitive action, from the time he’d call to arrange his reservation to the arrival at the airport and to the airline counter where most of the girls recognized him and always served him the best way.
The agency took care of all the bills, it was part of his contract with the CIA and no one ever raised an eyebrow at what he submitted; it was times when he thought of having something extra, something the bureau wouldn’t even bother to look into, however, Bradley was a common sense man and always did his side the best and fairest way possible to make sure he wouldn’t disturb any waters a couple of years away from his retirement.
When he got inside the house, he noticed there was no sound, other than the ventilation system humming its rhythmical music. Brad was so tired that he took off his shoes and went upstairs to their bedroom, only to find his wife, Beth, asleep, even though he had informed her he was on his way home. Undressed, he slipped under the bedcovers when he smelled the strong alcohol odour all over the…

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Jazz with Ella

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Excerpt

Hank stopped before a hammered gold ladle outlined in pearls, which had been owned by Tsar Volodya Feodorovich and was dated 1618. “Wow, dig this jewelled pooper scooper.”
Marty laughed. “Hey, take a look at Lona. She’s practically salivating over that medallion.” The two darted over to join her in front of a glass case.
“What is it?” Hank asked her.
“An encolpion,” Lona said, without tearing her eyes away from the outsized milky-blue sardonyx. “It was made in the 17th century.” Carved on its surface was a depiction of a haloed St. John set within an oval gold filigree border studded with jewels.
“Bet it’s worth a bundle,” Hank said.
Natasha scurried over, too, just in time to catch Hank’s last words. “Treasures of the Armoury are closely guarded,” she announced.
“By whom? Is that your security?” Lona asked innocently. An elderly woman, face lined, kerchief on her head, sat slumped, hands in lap, in a plain wooden chair near the doorway.
“Oh, Natasha, yoo-hoo!” called Linda Appleton. The guide winced as Linda descended on her like a warship sailing into action. “Can you tell me whether photos are permitted in here because David is taking lots of them?” As they moved off to sort out David’s picture-taking proclivities, Hank took the opportunity to corner Lona.
“So what’s an encolpion?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
Lona turned away from the showcase reluctantly. “It’s a medallion worn by bishops, of course. Don’t you know anything?”
Hank couldn’t think of a suitable response so he sloped off, frowning.
★
If they had visited only the Kremlin that first morning, it would have been enough stimulation for the jet-lagged travellers. Jennifer had already used up half a notebook with details of their breakfast, the church, the soldiers’ uniforms and the carriage of Catherine the Great. But instead of stopping for lunch, their tour guide led them out of the Armoury, back into Red Square and up to the longest and most silent of queues that they had seen thus far—for the mandatory visit to Lenin’s tomb.
“Lenin’s memorial has been closed to visitors during renovations,” she told the group. “You are lucky to visit on this one day that it will be open.”

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Jazz with Ella

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She took the elevator down one floor, intending to ask the dezhurnaya the location of Chopyk’s room but for some reason, that floor was unguarded. It took another 20 minutes of getting lost in a maze of hallways, returning to the lobby, inquiring and returning to Chopyk’s floor, only to find that he was not in his room. She rode the elevator back to her own floor, and the doors opened on a pleasant domestic scene.
The dezhurnaya no longer sat alone. On two straight-backed chairs sat a young man and a woman with her arms around a gangly child of about ten who pointed her toes, first right, then left, pressing her sandals into the worn carpet. The man looked up eagerly when the elevator doors opened. She caught his eye for a second, took in the freckle-faced child and petite mother who sat in the shadows, then sped on up the hall. But she could feel the young eyes boring into the back of her head.
“Attention! devushka, woman,” shouted the dezhurnaya. “You have guests.”
Even before Jennifer turned to face the family, it was a moment of knowing, a sense that already on this first night in Moscow profound changes would take place, and this was only the first of them. She stared. Yes, the man did look familiar in a comfortable way. The woman—his wife?—was a stranger. The child was awkward and cute at the same time. The man walked toward her, smiling, his arms outstretched in greeting. He struggled with her name in thickly accented speech.
“Do I know …?” she began and stopped.
“Mikhail Alexandrovich Abram,” he said, grasping her hand. The woman tossed a mane of glossy black hair and approached smiling. “And this is my wife, Marta, and my daughter Nadya.” The child stood knock-kneed, bowed slightly and touched the red Young Pioneer scarf tied around her neck.
“We are your family.”
Jennifer was thunderstruck. “But I have no family here…” she finally responded. She didn’t want to appear rude but she was quite sure that her mother…but then there was a lot she didn’t know about her mother’s background.
“Yes, you do. You are shocked,” Mikhail continued. “I beg your forgiveness for our sudden arrival. May we enter?” He indicated the hotel room.
“Certainly. Go in.”

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Jazz with Ella

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Finally the plane broke through the cloud banks, the turbulence vanished and the sight below pushed all thoughts of adolescent students out of Jennifer’s head. She was flying over the birch forests and ragged patchwork fields of the mighty Soviet Union. She gazed eagerly. An image formed easily in her imagination: two young women—her mother and her aunt—thin and desperate, still grieving the loss of their parents, tramping across this very landscape in 1945 following the path of the victorious troop convoys. How far had they walked to the Polish border? It must have been a wearying journey for the two refugees…
Suddenly a wedge of apartment blocks appeared on the horizon signalling the suburbs of modern Moscow. The plane circled once, the wing dipping to reveal wide straight highways, clusters of huts amid evergreen trees, and finally, the runways of Moscow’s Sheremetyev Airport.
“Hallelujah, we’re really here!” Paul exclaimed. Eve and Dawn giggled. David opened his eyes. A wave of relief flooded the passengers as the plane bumped to a halt. Applause broke out. One stewardess allowed herself a thin-lipped smile while the other busied herself in the galley.
The thunderstorm’s humidity hit them the moment the cabin door opened. The summer air was moist and the black clouds still rolled overhead, but for the group from Canada, now shuffling down the steps to the tarmac, no amount of bad weather could destroy this imperial moment. For some, such as Maria, it was a return to the land her parents spoke of, though not always fondly. For others, Jennifer included, it was their first glimpse of a powerful myth. She had never understood Winston Churchill’s quote about Russia—”a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”—and suspected it was hyperbole, but as she stepped from the plane onto Soviet soil, she shivered. Churchill had met Stalin. He should know.
What was this country all about? She had first come to know it through the literature of long dead authors, Pushkin and Dostoevsky, considered dissidents in their time. Lately she had come to understand its dark underside through the secret writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, banned in the USSR, published in the west. Yet she had also studied its most glorious moments in the ecstatic language of its revolutionaries. Despite the ordeal of the landing, she felt eager, charged, ready to go everywhere, to see it all.

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Jazz with Ella

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“Just close your eyes and think of something else,” he told her.
Paul’s a good buddy, she thought, and he stuck with me through all of the Michael years. She realized she was already thinking of Michael in the past tense and wondered if that was a sign of healing. The last time she had been on a plane she and Michael had flown to California for their first wedding anniversary. That had been just one year ago.
As instructed, she shut out the sight of the storm clouds and retreated into her thoughts. She wondered for about the fifth time why Paul had not been selected to assist Chopyk in leading this Soviet Union trip. It meant prestige and academic advancement. Paul was at least as well educated as she was with all the same qualifications: experience as a teaching assistant and going for his Ph.D. Besides, he was a man and the department favoured men in positions of authority. The graduate women often got no farther up the tenure track than lecturer. Jennifer was a loose cannon; she knew that was her reputation around the department. She was not one to toe the party line—or to sleep with the chairman to improve her grades.
Could it be, as her women’s lib friend had told her, it was because she would accept less money for the job? Just the cost of the trip and a small daily stipend—that was all she was receiving. Paul would have held out for a real salary, she thought uncomfortably. But she had to take this trip. It was ridiculous to think she could continue as a University of Vancouver graduate student in Russian Literature without actual exposure to the Russia of today—the Soviet Union. The department had been trying to organize this language immersion tour, a first for any Canadian university, for years. It was time to damn the expense and go.
This plan had seemed pretty clear until a warm day in May when the departmental chairman, Dr. Hoefert, summoned her to a meeting at Professor Chopyk’s office, and he had hinted to her on the phone that he might have some good news regarding the language tour. It turned out that she had been summoned not so much to Chopyk’s office as to his adjacent waiting room. She spent three quarters of an hour glued to a sticky orange vinyl chair, feeling her hair frizzing wildly in the humidity of the overheated building, one foot bobbing in time to the tapping of the secretary’s typewriter.
Occasionally, Chopyk and Hoefert had glanced through the glass panel as if to determine that she was still there. At first she mentally railed at professors who expected papers to be turned in on time but couldn’t be bothered being punctual for appointments…

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Jazz with Ella

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“Because you don’t want to face the consequences of not helping.” Shukshin glowered at the public official.
“What do you mean?” Pyotr became agitated. “Are you threatening me? If this is a joke it’s gone too far!”
“It’s no joke.” Pavel spoke again. “I need all of the documents: permits, propiska, passport, whatever is necessary, and I need them soon. As to why you should help me then I’m afraid it’s like Shukshin says. You don’t want others to know what we can tell them about you.”
Pyotr froze to his chair. It was not a joke.
To his surprise, Vera chimed in. They were all in it together. “You were seen…at the boathouse. You understand me?” He remained silent so she continued. “With the police chief’s wife—what’s her name, Tanya?—and we all know that the police chief would not like your activities with his wife, would he?”
Pyotr was stunned. It was all collapsing in front of him—the careful secrecy, the hidden assignations. “We…simply meet to talk. There’s nothing harmful….” He stopped. Vera was shaking her head. “We have photos,” and she pointed to a large American-style camera on the bed. “We took photos of you and Tanya together. Believe me, you were not just talking.”
“What! Devil take it! Give me those photos. You have no right…” He stood up, prepared to invoke some bureaucratic rule that would force them to comply—or what? Report them to the police? They sat politely while he worked through his tantrum, sputtered another oath or two and smacked the table with his fist. Finally he sat again and slumped in the chair.
“May I pour you another drink?” Vera inquired with a sweet smile as if he were a friendly visiting uncle. “I think it would be best to find the passport first, don’t you? That way we can make the other documents match whatever the name on the passport.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Pyotr agreed at last. “I know of just such a widow who would probably give up a passport for a sum of money. I hope you people have some cash to pay her.”
“We’ll find the money,” said Pavel. “You find the goods.”
“And some cash for me, for my trouble in locating the passport,” the official continued. But Shukshin had only to glance at him quizzically and indicate the camera once more for Pyotr to understand that any cash benefit to him would not be forthcoming.

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Jazz with Ella

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…she would try out a suggestion that a friend had whispered to her once to increase their enjoyment. It sounded like fun. But what would they do when winter arrived? Really, they needed their own place and that meant that Pavel needed papers—a passport, and a residence permit, at least. They would have to get busy.
★
It was a very different world for Pavel. Up with the rooster, check the chickens, water the market garden with buckets from the well. (Surely they had heard of garden hoses in the Soviet Union? He planned to do a little shopping in Toglyatti or Saratov one day.) Then, check the primitive irrigation system that watered the larger crop of barley. Estimate the height on the patch of sunflowers; as soon as they grew large enough, he had some great plans for intimate picnics with Vera among their stately stalks. She would look gorgeous, her sinuous shape naked in the fresh air. The pine forest was getting a bit old—he always returned with twigs and grit in his clothes. He hadn’t yet thought about how they would find their privacy once winter arrived.
If it were market day, they would pick the early beets and new potatoes and Shukshin would drive the produce into the village using his antiquated motorcycle and attached cart, a vintage vehicle that had probably seen service in the last war. These visits usually entailed time spent in fixing the motorcycle when Shukshin returned. Pavel didn’t know that much about mechanics either, but here he was learning faster. The way the parts fit together was engrossing; he found he could figure it out with some help from Shukshin, and he lamented all the years spent in studying academic subjects without getting a good grounding in what every adolescent learned while growing up: working on the family car.
The elder Shukshin thought he had died and gone to heaven; a good strong lad to do the farm work—at no expense to him other than some room and board. Granted, he wasn’t trained, but then neither was the last lad that he had asked to help him. A dimwit—and he had been sent packing. Fortunately, there was no official record of his ever working for Shukshin. That was the good thing about living in the provinces—no one from Moscow was very interested in whether they stuck to the regulations.
Moreover, Vera was in love with this strong, bright lad. There was only one annoying problem—he was a foreigner. He would likely get…

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Jazz with Ella

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While the unlikely duo of Hank and Lona had been parting company, Jennifer and Volodya had also stood in the shadow of the exit sign once again making their goodbyes.
“Lona offered to take me to New York with her,” Volodya told her, “but I refused…”
“Of course,” Jennifer replied stiffly. “It would mean yet another border crossing and you don’t want that, now do you?”
Volodya’s face creased in a huge grin. “That’s not the reason I refused, my amazing woman,” he said.
He was teasing her, she realized. He doesn’t know what thin ice he’s skating on.
“She said she will contact me when my painting is sold. Ech, but I don’t think she will—if the painting sells for more than she paid me, then why would she let me know? She’s a business woman, right?”
He took Jennifer’s hands in his, kissed them, hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and walked backwards through the automatic doors still holding her gaze. Then he vanished into the humid Montreal evening.
In Vancouver, it was obvious that some of the baggage had been inspected yet again. Jennifer saw almost a full roll of sticky tape covering the top of Chopyk’s suitcase as if the bag had not closed properly after the Customs had poked through it. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. One student missing and three artworks smuggled. Whatever happened, it had been the trip of a lifetime—though just not a lifetime she would care to repeat.
“Whoever goes through first should look for our bus,” called Chopyk. “Probably the driver will hold up a sign.” It seemed like yesterday when she had been the first one through the gate at Sheremetev and the adventure had begun. This time, she lagged behind, reluctant to face the world. Carefully, she propped her things up on a baggage cart. When she finally passed through the sliding doors right behind Linda, she noticed someone waving, someone with black bristly eyebrows and an armful of flowers. The man was not waving at Linda. It had been so long since they had been together, and so much had happened to her in the last three weeks, that she almost did not recognize her estranged husband.
“Michael, what are you doing here?” Despite herself, a full, warm feeling dispelled the black cloud, if only for a moment.

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Jazz with Ella

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Volodya hung back to the end of the line. Jennifer knew now that he would not flee; he would brazen it out. Besides, he had the passport. Soon David was there beside her, as always, to support her.
“Pull yourself together,” he urged her, glancing at her worried frown. “You haven’t been implicated in anything.”
“They’ll ship him back to the Soviet Union.”
“No, I think it’s Lona that’s going down today.”
She was just beginning to calm down when one of the Americans approached her with a shout. “Hey, Jen. Why are they beating up on your guy?”
She could feel the blood rush away dizzyingly. “What do you mean?” Her voice had faded to a whisper.
“They’ve got him by that desk as if he’s gonna be there for life.” The man laughed crudely. “He doesn’t look like a terrorist with that little pointy beard.” With a huge sense of relief, Jennifer realized he was talking about Chopyk as “her guy.” Not Volodya. David let out a long breath. He was thinking the same thing.
The time crawled by. The line snaked through the shabby building with most of the passengers being released to mill about on the apron in front of Jennifer.
As Jennifer remained at her post, Volodya finally appeared from the building walking carefully, nervously, but his eyes held that same light of triumph as they had just a few brief hours ago. He joined her, wordless. David shook his hand.
The very last people to exit the building were Chopyk and Lona who had linked arms. Her face was crumpled like that of a pouty child. Chopyk stared straight ahead and explained nothing as he passed the group. They were ushered to their plane. Volodya resumed his seat beside Jennifer. The plane took off.
Once again, someone had spoiled the party and the tension filled the stuffy cabin. A swarthy young man—Kazak or Uzbek, maybe—walked down the aisle, stared at Lona with interest and finally addressed her in thickly accented English. Jennifer could not hear the exact words but soon the man had insinuated himself into the vacant seat beside the blonde who still looked dazed. He’s either security keeping an eye on her, or she’s found yet another admirer. At least, this time, the trouble was not about her, Jennifer thought with relief.

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