You Are One of Them (14 page)

“We’re growing fast,” Richard said.

I took another sip of Czar. It was tolerable but still tasted like a knockoff. It was like those designer-perfume impostors from the 1980s.
If you like Coke,
I thought
, you’ll love Czar.

Richard burrowed a finger into his beard. His voice assumed the patronizing tone of a commencement speaker. He’d started in the London office but had worked for years in New York, and most recently in Prague, so he said he really knew the Eastern European market. Advertising, he said, was a wonderful business. A creative business. But this office was a special challenge, since advertising was a new concept in Russia. There were three expats in the office: two Americans, one Brit. The expats had a lot of industry experience, he said, and had been hired to teach the local staff how to run an agency. “The Russians don’t know the first thing about marketing. They don’t know about initiative. About competition. Or about hard work. We’re teaching them how to be creative. How to be professional.” He said all this in front of Sveta and in earshot of her Russian colleagues, and more than a few jaws clenched in response. Oleg the solitaire player looked especially vexed.

Much later I learned that because Richard could no longer get good jobs in London or New York, he had allowed a headhunter to lure him to Moscow under the premise that a stint on the “marketing frontier” would be a boon to his CV. Moscow was a plum assignment for journalists and diplomats, but for advertising creatives it signaled a career in decline. They weren’t going to win awards at Cannes for Russian campaigns. When expats like Richard returned to their native countries, they hoped to find juicy offers waiting for them. In fact, their time in Moscow usually dulled their prospects. The bureaucratic red tape and mafia kickbacks exhausted them, and they eventually resigned themselves to getting drunk. Almost every expat I met had a serious drinking problem. And Richard didn’t speak a word of Russian. He’d been there for over a year and hadn’t made an effort to learn the language.

Richard seemed grateful for an audience. I was young and, he must have thought, impressionable, and because I nodded and smiled as he pontificated about advertising, he proposed that I “brainstorm” ideas for the campaign.

“What campaign?” I said.

“Czar,” he said. “You’re American. You know about soft drinks. Maybe you can help Svetlana here come up with something.”

“I don’t know anything about advertising,” I said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Americans know everything about selling. It’s in your DNA. I’m sure you can teach Svetlana quite a bit.”

I couldn’t tell if Sveta was annoyed that I was being encouraged to take her job away from her. When Richard wandered off, I turned to her. “I don’t want to be a copywriter,” I said. “I want to be a journalist.”

“What is difference?” she said.

“In my country there’s a big difference,” I said. Even as I said it, I wasn’t sure I could defend that position. Svetlana inspired knee-jerk reactions in me. With her I was an absolutist.

The Russian in the Ralph Lauren shirt ambled over to Svetlana’s desk and asked her for a cigarette. She tossed him one, and he lit it, expelling the smoke from a sly corner of his mouth.
“Amerikanka?”
he said to me.

“Da,”
I said.

He asked me where I was from. I told him. He started to laugh. “I lived in Washington,” he said in Russian.

“Tochno?”
I said. Really? Then I wondered if I had misunderstood him. I looked to Svetlana for help.

“Andrei’s father was the diplomat,” she said. “In Vashingtone in 1980s.”

The Russian embassy was a short walk from my house. Construction had started on Mount Alto—a controversial location, since it was one of the highest points in the city, an ideal place for surveillance—in the eighties, and even before the new embassy opened years later, its employees and their families were housed in apartments on site. In high school I used to see Russian men stumbling out of The Good Guys, the strip club a few blocks away on Wisconsin Avenue.

“How long did he live in Washington?” I said to Sveta.

Andrei answered me. His English was so devoid of accent that he sounded American. And I realized that he could have passed as American for another reason: he was so clean. He looked like a man who showered every day. Russians thought our American obsession with cleanliness was neurotic. “Four years,” he said. “From 1985 to 1989. I was there when we discovered your tunnel.”

The United States had built a tunnel under the Russian embassy in an attempt to plant listening devices, but the operation was exposed before any intelligence could be gleaned from it. Supposedly Robert Hanssen told the Soviets about it years before he was arrested for espionage.

“Not my tunnel,” I said.

“Not
your
tunnel,” he said. His eyes were teasing and blue. I couldn’t tell if he was flirtatious or cruel.
“Spasibo za sigaretu,”
he said, and returned to his desk.

“Andrei is the account executive,” said Svetlana.

She stubbed out her cigarette in the glass ashtray on the corner of her desk. It was from the Hotel Kempinski. When she saw me eyeing its logo, she said softly, “I took it from the room after I slept with a German. He was the guest there.” I must have looked shocked. “What? You don’t have the sex? Americans are such prude,” she said.

I was getting tired of hearing generalizations about Americans. I wanted to explain that it was her unapologetically transactional attitude to sex that surprised me, but I changed the subject instead. “I thought you were taking me somewhere today,” I said. I was getting impatient. Svetlana had lured me all the way to Moscow, and for what? To show me the promise of Russian consumer goods? “I thought you knew something about Jennifer.”

“Da,”
she said. “Our excursion. Come with me.”

I
FOLLOWED
S
VETLANA DOWN
THE STREET,
where she paused for an endearingly wistful look into the window of a clothing boutique—“The Italians make such beautiful things,” she said—past the grand façades of the Bolshoi Theater and the Hotel Metropol, and then we took a left. Sveta moved like a whisper: it was as if her feet didn’t touch the ground at all, as if she were floating on her opera cape. She wasn’t fast—I had to slow my natural gait to keep my pace with her—but she had a dancer’s control and grace. We were heading toward Lubyanka Square, the home of what was once the KGB.

“Now there is museum at KGB,” she said. She pronounced it the Russian way, Ka-Guh-Beh, the initials cloaked and thuggish.

When we entered Lubyanskaya Ploschad, though, the KGB building was far less imposing than I had imagined. Its Baroque exterior and mustard yellow walls suggested nothing more malevolent than impenetrable bureaucracy. After the coup, she told me, people descended like vultures and tore down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky that had loomed for so long in the center of the square. Dzerzhinsky founded the secret police (originally called the Cheka), and his statue had become a symbol of the culture of surveillance. The museum, she said, was not in the KGB headquarters but across the street, in the building that housed a grocery store called Seventh Continent. “Is very expensive market,” she said. “Only foreigners shop there.”

The museum wasn’t marked; in fact, its glass entrance doors were hidden by heavy curtains, and when we stepped inside, I wasn’t sure we were in a museum at all. It was a low-ceilinged space, with a few dusty display cases recessed against the walls. “Director of museum was colonel in KGB,” Svetlana said, and on cue a man emerged from the shadows. He must have been in his fifties, and his hands were deep in the pockets of a limp, ill-fitting sport coat.

“Zdravstvuite,”
said Sveta. Hello. And then to me, “He will give us tour. I will be translator.” She handed a stack of bills to the man. Rubles reminded me of Monopoly money; they were made of cheap paper in pastel colors.

“U vas dollary?”
he said, looking at me.

Everyone wanted American dollars. I turned to Sveta for direction, and she nodded. So I fished a ten from my backpack. He snapped it out of my hand like a shark.

The room was chilly and poorly lit. The man—his name was Anton, he told us—produced a pen from a pocket and with a sleight of hand the pen became a flashlight. He moved with reverence through the museum. It had been created in 1984, under Andropov, to house spy memorabilia but had opened to the general public only recently, and only by appointment. Anton promised to reveal secrets of the Cold War, but there was nothing revealing about his body language, and I was sure there were many secrets still being guarded across the square. The KGB had disbanded, but spies were still hard at work. The KGB’s successor, the FSB, had more operatives working in Washington than ever before. Anton pointed his penlight at the display cases.

“Here is possible to see the equipment collected from captured American agents,” Sveta translated. “These agents of CIA could speak Russian, dressed like Russians, but could not fool KGB. We knew their Soviet passports were counterfeit because . . .” Sveta paused and looked at me. “How do you call small pieces of metal that bind together the pages of the passport?”

“Staples?” I said.

“Yes, okay, the staples were made of the stainless steel. American steel, not Soviet, you understand? It was the gift away.”

“The giveaway,” I said.

Anton licked his lips as he waited for my reaction; he couldn’t conceal his pride. The entire museum seemed designed to prove that the KGB had consistently outsmarted the CIA. We may have lost the Cold War, Anton seemed to be saying, but no one can beat us at espionage. He showed us KGB gadgets: a radio receiver disguised as a tree trunk, eyeglasses with poison hidden in their frames, a lipstick pistol, books with hollow centers, a
National Geographic
magazine with secret messages encoded in its print.

“Invisible inks,” Sveta said. “Writing that can only be seen under light of the special wavelength. Messages were hidden in letters, in postcards. They could read—how do you say?—between the lines.”

I’d forgotten, until that moment, that Jenny and I once experimented with invisible ink of our own. Someone—our science teacher, maybe?—had told us that messages written in lemon juice would vanish, only to reappear when the paper was exposed to heat. We sliced half a dozen lemons in her kitchen, squeezed the juice into a measuring cup, then diluted it with water.
I was saving those lemons to make a pie,
Mrs. Jones said with an exasperated sigh.
You girls had better not leave all those seeds on the counter.
We dipped cotton swabs into the diluted juice, and once we mastered the awkward task of writing with Q-tips, we filled a white page with random scribble. It was like writing with water, each letter disappearing as soon as it dried. The next morning we carried the blank page down to the basement laundry room and asked Mrs. Jones if we could use the iron. Under the iron’s heat, the secret words appeared, the color of coffee stains. We must have been nine.

Anton fired his light at another case.

“And here is possible to see methods of concealment,” Sveta translated. The light illuminated a gold signet ring. It looked like the ring that Mr. Jones used to wear.

“What is that?” I said to Sveta.

“That is concealment ring,” she said. “For the microdots.”

“Microdots?”

“Very small photographs,” she said, pinching her fingers together as if to sprinkle salt. “Entire documents reduced to size of . . .”

“Punctuation marks,” said Anton, finishing her sentence.

“You speak English?” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “I am KGB.”

Svetlana folded her arms and looked at me.
“
Ponimayesh?”
she said. You understand? She had already started using the informal “you.” She was talking to me as if we already knew each other quite well.

“What?” I said.

“The letter to Andropov,” she said in English. “From your Jennifer Jones. What message do you think was hidden in invisible ink?”

“She was ten years old,” I said. “She wasn’t a spy.”

“Nyet,”
said Sveta. “But her father was.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He was a consultant.” And then I realized how absurd I sounded. All spies, I knew, had covers. Some posed as diplomats—half the employees of the American embassy in Moscow were CIA operatives—others as businessmen. Washington was lousy with consultants—it was a word tossed around so often that I never thought to ask what sort of consulting was going on. “Edmund Jones couldn’t have been a spy,” I said.

“Absolutely he was selling the secrets to us,” said Svetlana.

“You Americans,” said Anton, “never want to believe that anyone could betray your country. You are patriot, okay, but believe me, there are many Americans who worked for KGB. Foreigners are all the time asking me about the Rosenbergs. The Rosenbergs? Of course they were guilty. Edward Lee Howard? Without question. He is living in dacha right now, with protection of KGB.” He paused for effect. Then smiled at me as if I were a grandchild who had asked for candy. “How is the expression? Don’t insult our intelligence.”

•   •   •

“I
T DOESN’T MAKE
ANY SENSE,”
I said to Sveta that afternoon. We were at the Metropol, having lunch. She wanted me to see the interior of the hotel. “Art Nouveau,” she’d promised. “Some of Moscow’s most beautiful rooms.” The dining room was sumptuous and empty. Though we were the only two patrons in the restaurant, I still felt compelled to whisper.

“What?” she said to me.

“Why would Andropov invite Jennifer Jones to visit the Soviet Union if her dad was in the CIA? And why would the CIA let him go? There are background checks.”

“Did I say he was CIA?”

“You said he was a spy . . .”

“He was not CIA,” she said. “But I can assure you that Edmund Jones was invited precisely
because
he could carry the information with him. The gifts for our party officials? The book of Mark Twain for Andropov? What do you think was hidden inside that book?”

The waitress arrived with our borscht. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She had sharp elbows and a lank, defeated ponytail. She set down the bowls without smiling. I waited to speak until she walked away.

“He wasn’t a spy . . . You have no proof . . .” I said, though I could feel doubt gurgling in my stomach. My uneasy thoughts returned to Mr. Jones on Martha’s Vineyard all those years ago: the way his face had turned, on a dime, into one I didn’t know.

Svetlana offered me the basket of brown bread. “Russian bread,” she said. “Absolutely the best.”

I took a piece. She watched me bite into it and waited for my reaction. “Mmm,” I said. She looked victorious, as if my appreciation of the bread were more evidence of her country’s superiority. Svetlana had pushed me to order a big lunch, though she’d opted for only soup and a salad for herself. I knew that this was because she was going to treat me and was making her own meal small to keep costs down. I didn’t want her to spend money on me, but I was sure that I would offend her if I refused her hospitality. Russians were famously generous to guests.

“Why you think I was traveling with Jennifer?” she said.

“Because you were the epitome of Soviet girlhood?” I said.

“What is this ‘epitome’?”

“Epitome . . . it means, like, the best example of,” I said. “Like you were an advertisement for girls in the Soviet Union.”

“Advertisement,” she said. “This is funny. But no, we were together with Jennifer because KGB wanted to know if Jones was double agent.”

“You were an informant?”

“In Soviet Union, comrade, everyone was informant.”

I had no appetite. After just one mouthful of soup, I retired my spoon.

“It is not tasty?”

“I’m not feeling well,” I mumbled.

“When Jennifer was here in 1983,” she said, “all she did was complain about the food.”

“Really?” Jenny’s book made everything about her trip sound dreamy. I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“The only thing she would eat is the chicken Kiev. Very picking.”

“Picky,” I said.

“
Da.
Only Americans are so rich they can refuse food.”

“Not all Americans are rich,” I said.

“But Jennifer was rich, yes? And you are rich. You and Jennifer attend the private schools. She had the swimming pool.”

“My house didn’t have a swimming pool,” I said.

“But you are still rich.”

“My father is rich,” I admitted. I was never comfortable talking about money. I knew that by world standards I was wealthy, but in the milieu where I was raised, most kids had trust funds.

“And your mother?”

“My parents are divorced,” I said.

“I know this. Jennifer told me.”

“Was this before or after she told you I was sad?”

“Of course you were sad,” she said. “Your sister died.”

I said nothing. I didn’t like the idea of Jenny’s using my family history as an anecdote.

“He gives you money, your father?”

I blushed when I thought of the enormous check he’d sent me for graduation. “Sometimes,” I said.

“I give the money to my father,” said Svetlana. “I have bigger salary now, at American company, than either of my parents. Average salary in Russia is eighty dollars per month. My mother works for Russian Olympic Committee for twenty-five years, but I am making more in one week than she is paid in whole month. My father is the chemical engineer. But I am supporting them.”

“Wow,” I said. I had been proud of myself for earning enough money for my trip to Moscow—I’d made the most of all those shifts at the coffee shop—but now I felt like a spoiled child. Maybe Svetlana was right about America. It was like kindergarten.

“Someday,” she said, “I will be rich like you.”

I moved my spoon to the other side of my plate. I felt so self-conscious that if Svetlana had offered me a cigarette, I would have smoked it just to have something to do with my hands.

“You must to eat,” she said.

“I think maybe I should just drink a Coke or something. It will settle my stomach.”

“I have something better than Coke,” she said. She reached under the table and produced a can of Czar.

“You carry this around in your purse?” I said.

She shrugged. “Now we can brainstorm,” she said. She tested the word as she said it, as if it were a melon she was examining before purchase. “Richard says whoever has best idea for Czar wins trip to New York. To work in office in Manhattan for a few weeks. It is incentive. I want to go to USA.”

I poured the can into my empty water glass. The cola was flat. “You really think people are going to drink this instead of Coke? Instead of Pepsi?”

“And instead of kvass,” she said. Kvass was a traditional Russian drink made from fermented rye. “Why not? We must to make brand stand for something.”

“Stand for what?” I said.

“When you think of Russia, what do you think?” she said.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“First thing that walks into your mind when I say Russia.”

“The KGB,” I said.

“
Kak interesno.
This is what most Americans say,” she said. “People come here and expect to see the spies. This is brand association.”

“It’s not a brand,” I said. “It’s your country.”

“USA is brand,” she said. “Your government is selling itself as Land of Free,
da?
Here in Russia we must—how do you call it?—reposition ourselves. So if Czar is Russian cola, what does this mean? How is this cola different from American cola?”

“You said I should come to Moscow to learn the truth,” I said.

“Ah, truth. You Americans love truth.” She leaned back in her chair and cracked her neck. “I think it is the favorite word—after freedom, of course. You want the truth, and you ask for it like the eggs you order for breakfast. Today I want my truth sunny side up! And tomorrow hard-boiled. And then sometimes it is scrambled. And you congratulate yourself for ordering this truth, because you think asking for it is what matters. But what is truth?
Pravda?
No,
Pravda
is a newspaper. We understand that there is not one truth. There is your truth and my truth and yes, your Jennifer Jones’s truth.”