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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Heartland
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“You are either incredibly naive, or you have something up your sleeve. Something that you have omitted from your daily summaries. Something even that ferret Shumayev cannot discover.”
“Yes, comrade,” Turalin said.
The First Secretary sat forward and very carefully set his glass down on the table. His hand shook as if he had a slight palsy.
“You have stetched many rules, Vadim Leonid. That in itself is no mean feat. You have been a difficult man
to watch. But watch we have.”
Turalin found that he was becoming angry with this old fool who obviously was on his way out. Angry that something might be going wrong and a scapegoat being chosen.
He had worked so hard, these past twenty-four months, with a dozen bureaucracies in a dozen regions, each of them independent of the others; with a hundred ministries; with a thousand factories and distribution networks for cover; and with thousands of people who all were made to feel that Turalin's ideas were their own.
He started to speak, but the First Secretary held him off with a gesture.
“It may take us years to come to a complete knowledge of how you have operated, so that such a thing cannot happen again. From what I understand, you have single-handedly created at least three hundred conduits for Western funds.”
“It is for the Party, Comrade First Secretary. Certainly not for personal gain.”
“Nothing you have caused by your ingenious manipuations has occurred without the tacit approval and cooperation of your chairman, of the Politburo, and, indeed, of me. But, Vadim Lenoid, you failed us. You neglected to reveal your ultimate goal.”
The First Secretary looking longingly at his unfinished drink. He shook his head. “The American workers shall rise and a new socialism will sweep the land, all because of the Soviet farmers' willingness to believe a new promise.”
“No, comrade, nothing like that.”
The First Secretary's eyebrows rose. “You do surprise
me. What then?”
“An economic revolt of the consumer.”
“And how will this come about?”
“When American food prices rise, as oil and gasoline prices have risen, there will be a revolt of the American people that will demand a change in their government. A change in their government's basic structure.”
“Nonsense.”
“No, comrade, not nonsense. Hard, true fact. We almost accomplished it in the early seventies, when my predecessor manipulated the grain market. There was chaos worldwide.”
“Is that what you desire? Chaos?”
“The breeding ground for revolution.”
“Explain then to me. Explain it well, because you have caused us to embark on a path that is fraught with danger.”
“There are three vital elements to my operational plan, Comrade First Secretary. The first is the creation of a surplus of wheat and corn.”
“Such a mundane beginning,” the First Secretary said with some sarcasm.
“Yes, comrade. The second is a surplus of Western currencies. We will have the grain and the money.”
“Certainly nothing in comparison to the wheatfields of Kansas or the pampas of Argentina.”
“By the time we are finished, perhaps.”
“And the third?” the First Secretary asked.
Turalin had to smile inwardly. Even now he would not reveal the third corner of the triangle. He had his deceptive answer ready.
“And the third is the ruination of the American farmer by the manipulation of the market.”
For a long time the room was silent, except for the music still playing somewhere in the house and the crackling fire on the grate.
The First Secretary reached out for his cognac and drank it in one swallow. He slammed the glass back on the table, then got to his feet.
“Rubbish, Turalin. Pure rubbish! You are maneuvering us into madness.”
Turalin looked up at the man. At that moment he felt very much alone. There was no one to turn to.
“I'm giving you a choice, now, of either abandoning your scheme, or returning here within forty-eight hours with the details for its implementation.”
Turalin got to his feet. “I will return in forty-eight hours, Comrade Secretary.”
“See that you do. And the next time we meet, there will be no lies. No half-truths. Nor will we be alone.”
 
Outside, alone as he waited for Shumayev's car to take him back into the city, Turalin tried to think out his next moves. It seemed almost chilly outside after the oppressive heat in the study, and he shivered.
He had done well over the past two years, and would probably have continued to do well if not for Shumayev's snooping. There were leaks within his own directorate that would have to be plugged. And yet the next phase of the operation would of necessity have to be expanded outward. More people would have to be included. More resources committed.
He turned and looked back at the house. Had he underestimated the First Secretary?
The car came, and the driver jumped out and opened the rear door. “Comrade?” he said respectfully.
Turalin looked at him, then shook his head. “I will not be returning just yet,” he said. He went back to the house and let himself in, just as Shumayev was coming from the parlor.
“Vadim Leonid. You forgot something, perhaps?”
Turalin nodded. “Will the First Secretary see me again?”
“Of course. I'll just tell him you've returned.”
The truth, Turalin thought. Or at least enough of it to insure Brezhnev's cooperation.
Delos Fedor Dybrovik closed the file he had been staring at for the last hour, lit an American cigarette with shaking hands, and got up from behind his desk. He went to the window and looked out across the dark rear gardens to the Polytechnic Museum, which was brightly lit from the front. It was very late.
He shook his head in sadness. The spring had been lovely and the summer, less than a week away, promised to be wonderful. But the fall. The glorious fall harvests were only four months away, and then Exportkhleb would shine as it hadn't since the seventies.
There were some who would call him poetic. Others would classify him as a maudlin fool.
Dybrovik was unlike most Russians, in that although he was a large man, almost fat, his hands and especially the features of his face were light and delicate. Western,
his closest friends called him, a remark that pleased him greatly, because he loved the West.
The Soviet Union was, in his estimation, a magnificent country—from sea to shining sea, as the Americans might say. From the awesome steppes of Siberia, to the Ural Mountains, and finally European Russia, the Soviet Union was as varied as her people.
But once a man traveled outside of the country, to the gaiety of Paris, the hustle of New York, the charm of New Orleans, the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Rome or Montreal or Buenos Aires, Moscow paled to a dark insignificance.
He had been born in Leningrad, and he should never have been given schooling or promotion. His father, a carpenter, had spent more time criticizing the Revolution than building cabinets. And it was rumored that his mother, a white Russian, had been more of a lady of the evening than a wife.
But schooling had come, nevertheless, possibly through some contact of his mother's, and at Lomosov University Dybrovik distinguished himself in business administration and finance.
From there he had gone to work for the Soviet Economic Council, one of his most important early projects being the turnaround of the department store Glavny Universalny Magazin: GUM. It was only a couple of blocks away from his present office, but seemed a million years ago in time.
Actually, it was only fifteen years ago that he had been assigned to Eportkhleb, the Soviet grain-trading bureau. At first he had languished there. “What does a poor carpenter's son from Leningrad know about grain trading?” he had cried more than once. He had learned
though, and learned well, and had in fact risen spectacularly in the ranks. Now he headed the bureau, much of his rapid rise due to the Soviet reward system. Those who did well, who learned their jobs well, were allowed to travel abroad. At once a simple and stunning idea.
Less than a year after he had started with Exportkhleb, Dybrovik had seen Paris, spending two marvelous weeks there with the trade mission. Then Buenos Aires the next year. New York, London, and Paris all in the third year. And, in the next years, every major Western capital.
He smiled now with fond memories, not really seeing the Polytechnic Museum. He had always loved Mother Russia, he told himself, almost as if he had to tell himself in order to believe it. Yet he loved his country better from afar. While in Paris, he often lunched at Russian restaurants. While in New York, he would extravagantly telephone his wife, Larissa, to tell her how much he missed her and their tidy apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt.
After those little nationalistic indulgences, Dybrovik would invariably dress in his finest Western suit, dine at the finest Western restaurant, and hire an escort for an evening of dancing and then pleasure.
This double life in no way affected his performance for the bureau. On the contrary, he often told himself that he did so well precisely because of this dichotomy in his personality and tastes. He could at once understand the solidity and comfort of collectivism and yet see the obvious merits of capitalism. He understood his peers and loved his wife, while at the same time he felt a certain kinship with Western grainmen such as the McMillans of Cargill, the Louis Dreyfuses, the Fribourgs
of Continental, and of course the mavericks like Ned Cook and Kenneth Newman.
He laid his forehead against the cool window glass and closed his eyes for a few seconds. His father, who had lived with his share of strife, had told him once that being a man was nothing more than the willingness to accept responsibility. But what happens when the responsibility is killing you? His father had never been able to answer that question. And his father's responsibility had eventually killed him.
A truck rumbled distantly up the street and disappeared around the corner. Dybrovik turned back to his desk, bundled up the files he had been studying, and stuffed them in a lower drawer. Then he locked the drawer.
If all went well, if the weather held, the grain harvest in the fall would top 250 million metric tons. The largest in the history of the nation. A glorious achievement of the collective farm system, the posters would proclaim. A triumph of Soviet knowhow, the radios and televisions would blare.
But he would not be here to participate in the sale of the twenty to thirty million tons of surpluses expected. He would no longer be a part of the system. He would no longer even be a Soviet citizen.
They had been watching him over the past year or more. His personal mail had been tampered with, and there always seemed to be new staff members underfoot. And three months ago, in Montreal, he was certain that he had been followed.
Degeneration, they would call it. They always had names for everything. He had succumbed to Western decadence. He smoked American cigarettes, drank
Scotch whiskey, preferred steak to borscht, drank coffee instead of tea with lemon from a glass. He understood free enterprise too well. And he had been unfaithful on more than one occasion. In Paris with Marie Genarde. In New York with Marilyn Morgan. In Montreal, just three months ago, with Susanne Armor.
“For those and other crimes against the state, against the sensibilities of good morals, we find you unfit for further travel abroad.”
Dybrovik left his office, walked past the darkened rows of empty desks in the main trading and posting center and down the two flights to the ground floor.
The evening smelled warm and moist, a fog forming from the Moscow River a few blocks away. It was the kind of evening that most people preferred to spend indoors, but it suited Dybrovik's bleak mood.
Unlike Paris or New York, cities that never slept, Moscow was a dark, forbidding city after nightfall. There were very few cars on the streets, no pedestrians in this section, and only the occasional streetlight to provide any illumination.
Stuffing his hands deep into his pockets, he turned east and headed toward his apartment building half a mile away, the soft slap of his heels on the pavement keeping time with his fears, with the nagging worry that had been with him for months. Had he made the wrong decision?
The buildings here were all old, with baroque exteriors, and stained, it seemed, with the sweat of the city; windows like blank eyes, blind to the tribulations of the people who passed. Doorways locked now, but in the daytime opening to shops and offices and a clinic. Busy people here by day, but by night they were all at
home, locked away with their own fears and guilts.
Maybe he was going insane, he thought, stopping momentarily at the corner. Only this morning Larissa had planted that seed in his head.
“What's wrong with you lately, Pasha?” she had asked from the bed where she lay bundled under the covers.
He had opened the windows in their bedroom last night and had forgotten to close them before he went to bed. Larissa had spent a restless night cuddled next to him. It was chilly in the room.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, coming from the bathroom.
“Look at you, you're getting fat, and you don't care. You eat greasy food and smoke disgusting cigarettes. Who would want you, except for me, I ask?”
Dybrovik stared down at his wife. Her face was plastered with a mudpack he had brought back for her from Montreal; her hair was done up with French curlers and wrapped in a scarf from Finland, blue and green.
He loved her, there was no doubt about that. But he loved the West and personal freedom as well. And he never hated them, as he sometimes hated her.
Across the street and down the block Dybrovik turned onto Kutuzovsky Prospekt, his step slower now that he was nearing his building.
In less than twenty-four hours he would be on an airplane for Geneva, where he would pick up the money he had hoarded there (another of his crimes against the state), and continue west. Paris the day after, and then New York City and finally Washington, D.C., where he would ask for political asylum.
It was time, he told himself again. It was time to leave. Time to expand. Time to change—or more accurately, to shed—his old skin, and become, in the light of day, what he had always been.
“Larissa,” he cried out loud, stopping once again, his own voice startling him. It was too late to go back. There were no simple Leningrad days to return to. No Black Sea vacations to pine for. Only freedom in the Western sense of the word.
Years ago he had been in Gaborone, Botswana, with a trade delegation to the capital city, and he had watched from his hotel balcony as five thousand blacks gathered in the city square shouting the one English word “Freedom!” Only in their chanting it came out as two words:
Free Dom! Free Dom! Free Dom!
He could almost hear them now. Shouting, screaming for something they had no earthly conception of. Free enterprise, and voting, and telephones without taps, and butcher shops without lines (supermarkets, they called such places).
Free Dom.
All day he had vacillated about saying something to Larissa—some small word by way of a gentle goodbye. He would never see her again. But did he really give a damn? No children to worry about. Just twenty years of marriage, stretching backward like a littered path through a dense, troubled jungle. Vacillated between that and maintaining a stoic front. Another trip. Be gone for a week. Bring you back something special.
Without realizing it, he had begun walking again. Brezhnev himself lived on this street. Several blocks away, in a less shabby stretch, but on the same street nevertheless.
It had been the proudest moment of Larissa's life
when her husband had been promoted to chief of the bureau and they had been assigned this apartment on the Prospekt.
At length, Dybrovik arrived at his building. He checked his empty mail slot, then walked down the corridor to the back stairwell. They had been having problems with the elevator for the past several months, and the OUT OF ORDER sign was still on the door.
Why was it, he thought as he started up the dirty stairs, that his countrymen never seemed able to get telephones or elevators to work? Rockets to space, deterrent nuclear missiles, and world-girdling nuclear submarines. Triumphs of technology. But when it came to telephones and elevators, all science and technology seemed to break down.
At the top floor he walked down the corridor to his apartment as he pulled the key from his jacket pocket. Once again he hesitated.
If he tried to be tender with Larissa, she would either mistake his intentions for desire and would rebuff him, as she had for the past several years, or she would read right through him, another trick she had developed over the past few years, and would understand that he was leaving.
Either way he would come out the loser. Better not to say a thing. Later, when he was out, he could write her a very long letter, explaining what he had learned in Africa.
He unlocked the apartment door and stepped inside the tiny vestibule, where he took off his sweat-stained jacket and hung it on one of the hooks. He looked at himself in the mirror beneath the hat rack. He had been sweating profusely. His forehead was wet, and his hair was plastered against his skull.
He did what he could with it, with his fingers, then turned and, bracing himself, marched down the short corridor and around the corner into the living room.
Only the light on the small table in front of the window was on, and it illuminated the features of a dark, very intense-looking man who fairly exuded officialdom, although he wore civilian clothes. His three-piece gray suit, although out of date by Western standards, looked very modish here.
“Delos Fedor Dybrovik?” the man asked politely, his voice soft.
“Yes?” Dybrovik said. His knees were weak; his stomach churned and he felt the urgent need to relieve himself. This was trouble. Very big trouble.
The man uncrossed his legs, got slowly to his feet, and shook his head sadly. Dybrovik was surprised at how short he was. His features too, were small, almost delicate.
Silently, the little official crossed the room to the bathroom door, which was between the bedroom and the kitchen. It was ajar, and the little man reached out with his right foot and eased it the rest of the way open.
“We have much to talk about, Pasha,” he said.
Something was hanging from the ceiling of the bathroom, but for several seconds Dybrovik could not understand exactly what he was seeing. It was pink, with mottled splotches of red and blue. But …

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