Manhattan 62 (18 page)

When I think about that life in Greenwich Village in an impossible future, I hit a wall. The girl in the picture isn't Nina. It is Nancy.

October 14

The Millers invite me for coffee, and spend time discussing with me my plans for studies, for possibly a visit home. I don't understand what it is they want. I eat a big slab of coffee cake with raisins. Tomorrow I will be with Nancy at the Village Gate.

October 15

Out of the blue, Rica Valdes, my old friend from Moscow, appears at the Village Gate. Latin Night, this evening. Charlie Byrd, Stan Getz playing Bossa Nova. Symphony Sid. Nancy with me. Then a voice. I am thinking of Brazil. Perhaps Brazil. Desifinado is the tune, it makes everyone sway, all the boys, and the girls in their big skirts, and flat shoes. In the room dense with smoke, filled with bodies swaying to the gorgeous music, I close my eyes. Hot and lush. Brazil. I would like to go to Brazil. Nancy's arm is around my waist.

“It is me, Maxim, it is Rica. Your old friend, Riccardo Valdes,” a voice says, a ghost out of the dark, out of the past. “Come with me.”

Valdes has not slept for days. Walking the street. Sleeping in parks. Says he arrived with Cuban President Dorticos' delegation and heard Dorticos speak on October 8, says Cuba will not accept an invasion. Shows me a piece from the newspaper
Revolucion:
“Rockets will blast the United States if they invade Cuba.” What rockets, I say. They are in Cuba. On the street, he says, “There will be an assassination.”

“Who? Where?”

“I don't know. I need one more piece of intelligence.” He seems distracted, seems almost out of his mind.

“How do you know?”

“I hear things. I am considered safe. I am a trusted member of the Revolution, they believe. I work as a translator. Russians speak carelessly in front of me.”

“What Russians?”

“In Cuba. There are many Russians with the missiles.”

There are no missiles in Cuba. No American news-paper has reported it. Rica has become crazy.

At first, I believe Rica is a triple. Faithful to the cause of the Cuban Revolution, but presenting himself as a “worm”, a man who has turned, and now a man who tells me he is still loyal to Castro. I am uncertain.

In a deli on Bleecker Street, I buy Rica some food. I have not seen him since the spring, when I left Moscow. He had finished his second year of Russian studies, a young Cuban everybody loved. “Max, I will write everything down for you, in case I disappear.”

Who sent him to me? He says Irina Rishkova. But she told me she was not planning any trips to Moscow.

Rica says he has more to report. He needs a place to stay. He wants to stay with me. I find some money, and accompany him on the subway to Harlem, to the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where he has been with his delegation, the Cuban delegation he arrived with on October 6. “We must stop it, Max. We must stop this thing.” What thing?

War, he says, The end of the world.

October 16

You idiot, you damn fucking idiot bastard, You stupid deceitful useless prick, you spend time with Nancy, then you walk away, and for what, because Rica Valdes, that crazy febrile Cuban shows up, and tells you crazy stories about war that nobody would believe.

You listen to him because you're an inept, incompetent agent who's never done a job, and stumbles around like the fucking fool that you are. Sure, your English is good. Your English is great now. You can slip into your American shoes and your American slang, you can swim in the current, and nobody will take you for a patriotic Soviet citizen. I read these pages. I see how my English has improved. I will be a great teacher. The KGB can employ me to teach agents, moles, sleepers, so they go to the United States and subvert the enemy. I can teach them how to write in magazines that we run, where we make allegations against the right-wing, and the racists, provocations, but which the left believes are merely the expression of progressive ideas. I have come to hate this. This people of the left in New York are good people, decent, the best I have ever met. Saul Rudnick is a truly noble man. He never lies.

Before I began to ask all the questions. Before questions went off in my head like grenades planted somehow, sometime. Now, they can examine me for signs of ordinary mortal confusion, of moral ambiguity, and finding it, declare me a one-off, a freak. Americans like me because I am this freak. My own people will say, he has imbibed some terrible thing, he has been brainwashed by the Americans, he has fallen prey to the seductive ugly songs of capitalism. He has drunk American whisky, and learned their ways. The running dogs of imperialism have infected him with it, as if it were rabies.

Nothing prepared me for the reality. The United States for me was constructed of little pieces, snapshots, propaganda, novels, our newspapers, some films, many little bits brought back from the war by our fathers, such as American boots, binoculars, films such as
Sun Valley Serenade.
I heard of a returning army officer, who plays Frank Sinatra while he shaves. “Come Fly With me.” I would like to fly.

Nothing prepares me for New York, for The United States. In the United States there are many bad and difficult things, and they do not have our passion for equal distribution for all, but also good. I read what I want. I do how I like. In Greenwich Village, people seem free. This shocks me first. Then I get used to it. I like it.

My only brief for New York, they tell me, is to study hard. Learn the culture. Perfect your English skills. Make friends who will be useful in the future.

Rica. Riccardo. Mrs Reyes had referred to her daughter's lover as Riccardo. Was this Ostalsky's friend from Moscow?

Feeling caged in that room, I walked in circles. Closed the window. Listened for noise from next door. Was this the Riccardo Mrs Reyes had mentioned? The second in the little brigade of “worms”, she had said. Was there a third? Rica had told Max he had only part of the information. Susana had told her mother the same.

Things are happening too fast. Can I call? G.U. in D.C.?

What was it, this GU in Washington? Who?

Bounine calls me, orders me to meet him. This is not an invitation. We meet at the Carnegie Hall where Bounine must pick up concert tickets, and then to the Carnegie Deli. I am looking for any tail. Bounine seems unworried.

He eats a large pastrami sandwich, drinks Coca-Cola with his pinky finger raised in the air. Eat, Max, he says in Russian. I tell him in English I am not hungry. What do you want, I say. I have a class. He wipes his mouth carefully and tells me that Rica is against us. He talks too much. “Do you understand, Ostalsky?” Bounine says this. “Valdes must go away. You will take care of it. Tell him to meet you.”

At first, I am confused, but Bounine, when we are in the street, explains. It is my job to make Valdes disappear.

Everything has changed. When the message comes from Bounine, I am no longer simply an exchange student. Nothing in my training prepared me for my old friend Rica, and what I was asked to do.

My superiors trust me with an important job. They ask me to eliminate a friend. I am scared. I am the greenest of agents now with plenty of craft and no experience at all.

Rica has said he must pass information to me. I contact him by phone at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, I gave money for a room, I tell him to meet me at the old Pier, I give him precise instructions. We will be safe to talk there, I tell him.

October 17

I must get out of this room. When I returned from Pier, number 46, I didn't sleep at all, and this morning, I went out and saw Mr Miller was getting out of his Oldsmobile. He said there was business to be done in the city, and he had stopped by to collect some things for Muriel who is still in the country. But he is startled to see me, something is not right.

I hear him in the apartment's foyer. Later, there is a note under my door to say he has gone to the country, with a phone number in case I need anything.

They will come back. I have to go away. Where will I go?

Now Rica is dead. He was my good friend.

Ostalsky was a KGB agent. He had been on the pier the night the Cuban—Riccardo Valdes—was murdered. I had been right. Ostalsky had murdered him, his friend, Rica Valdes. He didn't kill the girl on the High Line though. Over and over I had wondered if he killed Susana. How badly I wanted to hang it on him, but I had been with him and Nancy at Minetta Tavern that evening, before I went to the High Line. There was no way Ostalsky could have gone and murdered the girl and returned to the bar.

I would find Ostalsky and confront him, or kill him. They could fire me from the force, they could do what they wanted, but not until I got Ostalsky.

What I had on him—this vicious Red, this killer who had plied us all with his charm—was Nancy. I knew it was his soft spot. If he could consider a life in New York with her, he was vulnerable. This was how I would get to him. I should have called it by its right name: blackmail.

There was pain in my chest, my lungs, from the wracking cough and cigarettes, and because it felt like a hardball had been thrown at my heart.

In those little notebooks, there was plenty that would be of interest to the FBI.

Nancy would hate me. It would make her hate me. The FBI would want more. My betrayal of Max Ostalsky would make me their stooge.

Again, I flipped through the pages. On the inside of the back cover, he had written a list. Names. People he had met in New York. Nancy Rudnick. Saul Rudnick, CPUSA. Phone numbers. Addresses. In some cases, attitudes and tastes.

Saul Rudnick. True believer? Useful?

Nathan Brody. Angry at US government. Blacklisted by Senator McCarthy. Possible alcoholic. Vulnerable to attention.

Mrs Miller appears liberal? She sits with Gladys, the Negro maid, for lunch, coffee. They smoke cigarettes together. Mr Miller does not approve. Mr Miller, an ad man, with a previous life as military officer, more active than it appears?

This was why he was here. To make friends who would be useful in the future. This was his brief.

Make friends.

And me. Even my license plate number.

Pat Wynne. 32. Hudson Street. Second-hand red Corvette car. Homicide Detective, New York Police Department. Irish Catholic, possibly lapsed (or skeptic?) Parents devout Catholic, anti-Communist. Korean veteran. Typical anti-Soviet. But curious about USSR. Flexible?

Secret desire to write police novels. Chesterfield Cigarettes. Cedar Tavern. Prefers Rheingold beer. Italian food. Meatballs. Obsessive at work. Favorite books
—Catch 22,
detective Ed McBain. Ross Macdonald? Close to family: sister, Colleen (married to S. Brennan, FBI desk man); uncle, aunt, Jack and Clara Kelly. Democrats. Union people.

Wynne loves rock and roll Negro music. Is James Brown fanatic. Fond of good clothing.

Visited Cuba on holiday.

Enjoys fishing, basketball, well-informed about players. White Horse Tavern. Associates with radicals, M. Harrington.

The bastard knew everything about me, including the goddamn meatballs and the cop novels. How the hell did he know I had thought about writing a book? I never told anybody. Except Nancy.

Ostalsky must have questioned Nancy to learn more about me. Sucked her dry on the subject. She was the only person I ever told about my idea of writing a cop novel. She told him. She betrayed me with the Commie bastard. I lit a cigarette and put it out. Got up, opened the window, breathed in some damp cold air. Sat down again and began to read.

This was his goal. To make friends. To use them. To turn them. Make me defect? Did he think he could buy me for the price of a few beers?

Make friends with Pat Wynne, the chump of chumps. I was now sure our meeting wasn't accidental. I had been the target.

I found some paper and began copying out Ostalsky's notebooks.

I would return them to their hiding place when I'd finished. He would come back for them. It gave me more power if he had no idea I'd read them. And I would find him. Wherever he was, I'd hunt him down. It would be much easier now. Now I knew he had killed Riccardo Valdes; now I knew who he was.

When I broke into Ostalsky's room, I had wanted something to hang on him, to nail him with, to make Nancy stop wanting him. In the notebooks, I had struck gold, the jackpot.

There were only a few more entries in the notebook, and a letter to Sasha, his cousin.

October 18

I need money. Muriel Miller keeps what she terms “pin” money in a cookie jar shaped like Minnie Mouse. I find almost thirty dollars. I take it.

Dear Sasha,

I know this will never reach you, so it is safe to say I feel trapped. I have barely finished training and I am in the middle of a trap, like a baby mouse I saw in a lab once: the fur was not yet gray, but only a little pale fuzz; the mouse it ran around, beating this tiny body against the steel springs of the mousetrap they put in the cage for some psychological experiment. I am straining against these springs. This Cold War is for nothing. It is to serve only the men who make war. I can say so since we will never see each other, and Sasha, my dear friend, my cousin, you will never read this, I think. Perhaps somebody will find it and send it to you, if I can't come home.

Are you on a ship on its way to Cuba? I hope not. Rica said there are Soviets in Cuba, and missiles. Can this be true? That we are sending missiles? If so, then you as a Naval missile engineer will surely be on a ship. I hope all this is untrue. I hope Rica Valdes had false information, I believe he had become so confused that he was mentally deranged when he said there were missiles on their way, warheads stashed in the hold of the ships. For, if there is a war, we will all be dead. I hope you are well. Be happy. Max.