House of Many Gods (46 page)

“His favorite restaurant.”

Through a damp vestibule, they entered a cavernous dining room. Ana looked around amazed. Everything outsized, intimidating, the place looked designed in a delirium of fever. Wide, thick stone steps without balustrades climbed the walls, going nowhere, ending abruptly. Yet farther up, a second flight of steps, again ending abruptly as if on the brink of an abyss. Ana silently stared at the dark upper gloom.

“Yes … like a dungeon,” Volodya said. “Here, while Stalin dined,
he watched his henchmen torture dissidents, ‘enemies of the state.’ Men. Women. He watched them tortured to death. The place was patterned after Ivan the Terrible’s ‘Palace of Amusements’ inside the Kremlin when it was a medieval fortress.”

As the waiter showed them to a table, Ana noticed a man in a corner dressed in a tuxedo, holding a stack of menus.

“The maître,” Katya said. “A little dusty.”

Ana moved closer, thinking the figure was plaster, but very realistic-looking, except for an eerie paste-gray face and glass eyes with the look of lobotomized bliss. A musty smell hit her with such force, she cringed. A mummified human.

“One of Stalin’s henchmen. His sin? One day during torture session, his electric prod accidentally set Stalin’s tablecloth on fire. Comrade thought this was deliberate attempt on his life.”

She stood there, disbelieving.

“If we had more time, would show you what happened to Stalin’s projectionist, who accidentally ruined his favorite Charlie Chaplin film.”

They told her that for decades these grotesqueries of Stalin’s were hidden from the public in underground vaults. Now they were collector’s items, selling for thousands of dollars. Ana sat in mild shock while they ordered from a menu written in Cyrillic. Hare stuffed with bloodberries from Tashkent. Roe from the Caspian. Deer-penis wine from Lapland. Red and very tart. Waiters passed silently. Trolleys with jellied pâtés went quivering by. From somewhere the soft strings of a guitar. Ana kept glancing at the mummy holding menus, wondering what would happen next.

“Forgive our black humor,” Volodya said. “Sometimes we Russians even scare ourselves.”

“I’m not really shocked,” she said. “That is … I’ve been in total shock since I arrived.”

“Very different from your United States, no?”

She looked round the table. “I don’t know the United States. I’d never been out of my islands till I got on that plane to come and look for Niki.”

“Not possible!” Katya said. “You don’t know Las Vegas? Miami?”

She shook her head.

“You did this just for Niki?”

“Yes.”

“My God. Volodya, tell her.”

“Shut up.” He leaned forward, refilling glasses.

“Tell me what? Why did you bring me here?”

“We know the owner. A safe place to talk.”

Ana pulled her wallet from her handbag. “Here. It’s all I have, maybe $400 American, $300 left in traveler’s checks and
rubles
. Take it.
Please
, tell me what you know.”

“Put it away. And listen. Your Niki … is okay. We are his friends. He is okay.”

She let out a moan.

“Calm down. We need you to be calm.”

Katya reached across the table, taking Ana’s wrist. “Ana. It is very serious. Yesterday we were not being sure of you. We show Polaroid pictures to Niki. He hear your voice on minirecorder. He is shocked. He wept. That you have come for him. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That is my Ana.’ ”

She tried to breathe evenly. “I need to see him … to talk to him.”

“There is trouble,” Volodya said. “May be dangerous for him. Officials promise him interviews with high-positioned scientists now sick from radiation. But no one will
ever
interview these men. World will never see them.”

While he talked Sandro and Ulan carefully watched the to-and-fro of waiters.

“Was a ploy. To get him back here with his tapes. No one, Yeltsin, future leaders,
no one
, wants world to see what Russian government did to own people. If such tapes are shown, world will see Russia as a joke. We already nuked
ourselves!
”

Ana looked from one to the other. “What happened to Niki?”

“There were meetings. They picked his brain about sickness and pollution in Pacific, in United States, wherever he shot films. They want to see all footage of such films. Good propaganda against U.S. Niki hid them, would not tell where. They said ‘Okay, you keep your word, we keep our word. We make exchange. You do interviews with scientists, then after, you show us tapes you have made, maybe give us copies for archives. They set up interviews. Niki never arrive. Afraid is trap to arrest him. Disappear him.”

Ana shook her head. “He doesn’t need what he brought back. He left copies of those tapes in Honolulu. Why didn’t he turn them over and get out?”

Volodya smiled. “Ana. Remember, this is Russia. Here, logic does not apply.”

“You understand?” Katya said. “Many journalists, cameramen now recording Russia’s devastation. Leaders telling them shut up. Want to keep our filthy history secret. So. They are rounding up such people.”

“You mean, they’re being shot.”

“Not so dramatic. Gulags are finished, yes. But we still have ‘penal colonies.’ Real nightmare prisons. Someone like Niki, little bit known, they would make of him example. Give him four-five years in prison. So he stop making films.”

Ana shook her head. “He would not survive four years in prison. He would die.”

“
Exactly
. So he is in hiding. Not knowing what to do.”

“Please. Let me see him,” she whispered.

“Wait. And listen. They come to Old Arbat looking for him. Posing as sympathetics, network officials offering to help him air such documentaries on TV. They are all assholes. ‘Uncles.’ ”

Katya interrupted. “Then, last week, different type comes. American. Clean-cut. He, too, is looking for Nikolai Volenko. Man named Eric Dancer.”

Ana sat back, letting the name resonate.

“This Dancer says he carries letter from American Consulate inviting Niki to America, to make his films. He says there is sponsor for him, someone guaranteeing Niki’s income. How do we know this man is not working with the ‘uncles’?”

One of the Siberians stood and stretched, then walked over to the draped vestibule, looking left and right.

“I know who he is.”

They didn’t seem to hear her.

Volodya continued. “I ask this American why such a favor for Volenko, who I pretend ‘I never heard of.’ He tells me is personal matter. Of the heart. ‘Suppose,’ I say, ‘this man you seek is not allowed to leave Russia, is accused of embarrassing government with “shocking” documentary films?’ ”

He shook his head and smiled. “This Dancer then names twelve officials, bureaucrats, whose signatures he can buy with
blat
. Illegal payoff. Real opportunistic shits. He tells me he can buy good passport and visa with such signatures. Can do it very fast.”

What he said next jolted Ana halfway to her feet.

“He said if he could find Volenko, could have him on plane for U.S. in twelve hours.”

Katya gently pushed Ana back into her chair. “He gave us card, but we are still not knowing who he is. Even Niki not knowing who he is. So we play dumb, avoiding him. Then this week, you come.”

“Eric Dancer is my mother’s friend. She’s trying to help me. She said he would contact me in Moscow.”

They stared at her, and then Volodya responded.

“If this is so … we need you to confirm this. To meet with him. Here is his card. If he is legitimate, we take him to Niki.”

“Can’t you take me to Niki first?”

Silence fell while a waiter cleared the plates.

Katya spoke again, but softly. “Ana. Every step you now take … very crucial. One stupid move. You put him in prison.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think you are not watched? Your guides, bus driver are not watched? You think you are not seen leaving tour group, asking for Niki, up, down Old Arbat? You think Russia suddenly wide-open? Free? A joke!”

“Just tell me … is he nearby? Does he know I’m here right now?”

“Not important.”

Unable to control herself, Ana suddenly broke down and wept. They looked away, allowing her time to pull herself together.

“I have to see that he’s all right. I need to tell him I’m … carrying his child.”

The men sat motionless. Katya closed her eyes. After a while she opened them, and slapped her hand on the table like a warden.

“Okay. Now we begin to mobilize. Ana, no more horseplay. You are not seeing your child’s father until he is outside of Russia. Or. We finish with you
now
. We walk away. Agreed?”

She would not remember clearly what happened next. She remembered only calling Eric Dancer’s number for hours until they finally reached him.

I
N THE CAR
, V
OLODYA INSTRUCTED HER.
“W
IPE YOUR EYES
. C
OMB
your hair. A little lipstick. We will be in hotel bar across from you. Any problem, you call out my name.”

Katya pulled a small, elegant handgun from her bag and slipped it into Ana’s.

“My God!” she cried. “I don’t want a gun.”

“Darling. It’s Russia. A
status
thing, like cell phones.”

As they pulled up to the National Hotel, Ana gave Katya a letter she had written Niki. “If anything goes wrong, tell him …”

“Shh. Nothing going wrong.”

The hotel had been refurbished from a shabby Soviet-era pile of rocks to a monolith of glass and steel. Security at the door was tight. They checked her handbag and smiled, relieving her of her handgun as if it were a toy. A man in an expensive suit took Ana’s name, then guided her to an area of deep, plush chairs. Snapping his fingers at a bellboy, he spoke in rapid Russian, then stayed at Ana’s side until the American appeared.

“Ana? Eric Dancer.”

He guided her to a table in the bar. “What would you like?”

“Nothing. Tea.”

He ordered two teas, letting her observe him. Average height. Forty, forty-five. Hair close-cropped, blond going gray. An all-American face, nice-looking, almost bland. A face that would not stand out in a crowd. His clothes well made, his fingernails immaculate.

“Ask me anything,” he said. “But remember, time is of the essence.” He nodded to the group entering the bar. “Your friends must know the jokers at the door.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“For your mother. In a roundabout way I owe her.”

“What did she do for you?”

“Her husband, Max, once saved my father’s life. They worked together at Los Alamos, the midforties.”

He explained how, after Hiroshima, when Robert Oppenheimer refused to make more bombs, Washington had pegged him a Communist and drummed him out of the business. Dancer’s father was one of the physicists who had dropped out with him after seeing what bombs could do to humans.

“During the Red Scare no one would hire Dad. He drank, tried suicide a couple times. Then Max McCormick took him on. His family had money, laboratories. He gave my father his own labs, worked with him in the field of immunology.”

In time, Hubert Dancer’s research papers were published. He won recognition and finally regained his dignity.

“Thanks to Max, he died a proud man.”

This was not rehearsed. Ana could tell by the sudden flush on Dancer’s cheeks, the dead calm of his voice, that he was speaking with emotion.

“Then, when Max got sick I went to see him regularly. He asked me to look after your mother. She was what kept him going. He said she was pretty much alone in the world. I guess … you two were never close.”

Ana looked away.

“I call her every week or so … visit when I’m in San Francisco.”

“Are you her lover?”

Dancer smiled. “Your mother’s got about ten years on me, though she’s still beautiful. But no, I’m not her lover. I wouldn’t choose a woman like her. Too damned independent. By the way, we’re getting sidetracked.”

“We’ve only been talking seven minutes.”

His eyes narrowed, half-amused. “I see you take after her. Look, Ana, we can drag this out. We can do lunch and shop while you decide if I’m legitimate, or if I’m scouting for the Russians. Meanwhile, they’re closing in on your boyfriend. I understand he’s got a health problem. You leave, what? Tomorrow? Next day? I lose track of him, you might never see him again.”

She gripped the handle of her cup. “Exactly what is it you do here?”

“I import food. Silly luxuries. Nouveau riche Russians crave New Zealand lamb. Pineapples from Costa Rica. They love California wines. California anything. I bring them that.”

“And what do you
export?
”

“Bodies, Ana. Innocent people who need to get out.”

“Why did you go to the Arbat? You scared his friends. Why didn’t you contact me first?”

“You didn’t pick up your messages yesterday. Besides, I needed to move things along. You see … we don’t really need you to get your friend out. I’ve been busy waltzing certain Russians, trying to set things up. Frankly, you would have been in the way.”

She sat back and studied him. “How can you move around so easily? Are you some kind of agent?”

He played with a book of matches. “Look, this isn’t about espionage. It’s about love. A wonderful thing. Your story has a slightly different spin. Now all we have to do is locate your friend and buy off a few bureaucrats with holes in their socks. Which will get us a passport, and exit visa. And your Nikolai is free. Your mother’s already signed papers to sponsor him. The U.S. Consulate has offered a work visa.”

“What about the men who are trying to find him?”

“I would say that qualifies him for political-exile status. It also means we’ve got to find him quick.”

He drummed his fingers on the table, waiting.

“My mother never described you,” Ana said. “How do I know you’re … really
you?
”

He grinned. “You
do
take after her. Sometimes, sweetheart, you just have to go on faith.”

O
UTSIDE, HIS VOICE TOOK ON AN URGENT, ALMOST MILITARY TONE
as he shook hands with the group.