The Russian Affair

THIRTY-THREE



Nagged by the impression that she’d missed something crucial, Rosa Khleb stood by the unconscious patient’s bedside. The KGB’s elephant, the man who’d taught them all, lay before them in a pale blue hospital gown, felled by the illness people had whispered about for decades. Rosa and two colleagues found themselves in Doctor Shchedrin’s clinic, in the section reserved for special cases. The room’s furnishings were dignified and the prevailing silence extraordinary for a place in the heart of the city center. Outside, a young birch tree gave a touch of faux rurality to the scene.

Rosa’s cogitations had yielded no conclusions. Almost mechanically, she’d checked the validity of her visa, which she’d been granted because of her work as a foreign correspondent. One of the two possible escape routes went through Prague, the other through Dresden; there was no getting around a stop in one of the Soviet Union’s satellite countries. Rosa had the flight times for Dresden in her head. Her passport, the visa, and her press credentials as a reporter for the Moscow Times lay ready in her apartment. No request for foreign travel had been made for her, but that fact alone wouldn’t be enough to arouse suspicion right away. The Khleb had taken many a spontaneous trip, on assignment for the newspaper or in the service of the Colonel.

It was said that Rosa was so beautiful as a girl that people in her vicinity would start to laugh or cry, because they couldn’t stand it. She’d been called to Moscow to work as a “greeting girl”; when flowers and kisses were to be presented to friendly statesmen, Rosa had been the presenter of choice. She was the blond girl standing behind Kosygin when he addressed the Pioneers, and once, when the selection of “attentive listeners” at an appearance by Brezhnev in a synthetics factory hadn’t seemed sufficiently telegenic, Rosa had been outfitted in work togs and placed in the front row. And thus, at the age of fifteen, she’d shaken the General Secretary’s hand.

Rosa’s beauty increased with each passing year; she became breathtaking and desirable, but her state propaganda assignments occupied her so extensively that she hardly had time for private offers. These were too numerous to count, some of them pushy, some polished, but no one could boast of any success. The blond, all-Russian girl was still a virgin when Kamarovsky received permission to train her for work in his department. He didn’t go about it the way he usually did with future adepts—promises, intimidation of the parents, or blackmail because of past misdeeds. A. I. Kamarovsky counted on the seventeen-year-old’s intelligence and vanity. When she appeared as a pretty ornament for the clown in the Russian National Circus, Kamarovsky waited for her behind the big tent in an official government car and took her to the Turkmenyev, a nightspot whose doors remained closed to ordinary comrades. Kamarovsky gave himself out as a big wheel with some numinous foreign committee and offered Rosa the possibility of accompanying him on a tour as a “friendship ambassadress.” In spite of her popularity, Rosa Khleb had so far been a decorative face known only within the Soviet Union; when Kamarovsky offered her a broader opportunity, she showed even more enthusiasm than he’d hoped. He was amazed at how hard-nosed the young woman was when she spoke about putting herself on display, how accurately, even back then, she assessed herself and her value for the apparat. It had been child’s play for him to transform his project into reality; a “finder’s fee” forestalled Rosa’s parents from worrying about her.

And so she had come into Kamarovsky’s service and was at his side on the tour, which took them exclusively to Western countries. He was cautious enough not to burn Rosa out with normal missions; she didn’t infiltrate anything, and she didn’t have to sleep with Western politicians to pick their brains; the Colonel put his money, as it were, on her virginity. With her, he had something inviolate on his team, and therefore her assignments were of a particular nature. During a security crisis, negotiations led to an exchange of undercover agents. Fourteen men were set free on the far side of a bridge in the dark of night; when they reached their native soil, a blond angel was there to welcome them. Kamarovsky liked toying with such romanticism and used the beautiful young woman as a figurehead. Victory, freedom, revolution—hadn’t such concepts always been symbolized by women, with scabbards slung from their waists and swords in their hands? Kamarovsky didn’t flinch from dressing Rosa in attire appropriate to those iconic images. The uniform of an officer in the Red Army was tailored to her measurements, as was some traditional Cossack garb.

At some point, however, there came the day when Rosa’s youthful magic had completed its service; she herself noticed this later than the Colonel did. Even the prettiest outfits could no longer hide the fact that she wasn’t a girl anymore. When Rosa, too, became aware of this, Kamarovsky unscrupulously exploited her disorientation. The KGB was all she knew; a return to normal life would have necessitated the kind of trivial activities for which she’d long since been spoiled. The Colonel had Rosa go to journalism school, and while she was still taking courses, he employed her in assignments related to the news services. He lifted his prohibition on her having her first boyfriend, who was himself a journalist and, naturally, Kamarovsky’s man. As expected, a normal sex life did away with her aura of inviolability; from that point on, she was only one of the attractive women on external duty. She slept with a Western diplomat, compromised him as directed, and produced the desired results. However, Rosa Khleb’s youthful fame precluded planting her as a decoy in some Western embassy, and therefore she was given short, concise assignments, among them the recruiting of the house painter Anna Nechayevna. It had taken Rosa only two meetings to gain Anna’s trust and deliver her to the Colonel.

What neither he nor anyone else in Moscow knew was that Rosa’s abilities had also attracted notice outside her own sphere. During one of her trips as a foreign correspondent, she allowed some harmless banter with a Swedish Ministry official to turn into something more. The Swede turned out to be in the service of the French, who subtly conveyed to Rosa that it made no sense for a stream of interesting information to flow in only one direction; the heavier the traffic, the greater the likelihood that both parties could profit from it. Of course, money played a role in Rosa’s decision, but even more important was her desire for revenge on Kamarovsky, who’d pushed her into an irreversible career. Maybe it was also that she’d been to Paris, Stockholm, and Vienna a few times too often to be able to forget the delights of private property. From that point on, the Khleb played a childish game with herself: Since she confided secret details about her department to her Swedish lover and only to him, she could maintain the illusion that she was simply chatting with a friend and not committing treason. In return for her information, she received payment from the French, which the Swede concealed by means of discreet transfers to a Stockholm account. One day, in the course of a meeting in Switzerland, he informed her that a man at the second level of the Soviet hierarchy wanted to change sides. She’d been assigned to establish contact with this man, to learn his intentions, and to find out what he intended to bring with him. A complicated ritual had been required to make Alexey Bulyagkov pay attention to her and then to convince him that she, Rosa, Kamarovsky’s devoted follower, was the person charged with responding to his signal. After long negotiations, Rosa’s suggestion was accepted and Stockholm agreed upon as the best place for Bulyagkov’s defection.

Outside the birch leaves were quivering; Rosa’s colleagues had opened the window and were having a smoke. The reason why Rosa felt she might have missed something had to do with the location where Kamarovsky’s seizure had laid him low. When he’d described the symptoms of his disease to her for the first time, Rosa had been fascinated by the idea of a “grand mal,” a sudden illness that fell upon its victim like a punishment from heaven and paralyzed his entire organism. Why had he collapsed right in front of the library? What was he doing there, and why had he chosen this day, of all days? Rosa’s experience with the KGB had taught her that when it came to making any sort of transfer, subway stations, major intersections, museums, and libraries were the best venues; she’d been certain she’d chosen the right spot for her convergence with Anton. Should she have left the country right away, as soon as she saw Kamarovsky sprawled on the steps? Was it still possible for her to leave now? But wouldn’t that be acting too rashly if the Colonel had been at the library only by chance, if he hadn’t even seen her? As a member of the inner circle of Kamarovsky’s collaborators, she’d simply had to show up at the hospital, Doctor Shchedrin’s medical paradise. The Colonel’s peaceful sleep made Rosa think her speculations were improbable; nevertheless, she’d informed Anton of her suspicion. In case of necessity, he was to prevent Bulyagkov from walking into a trap.

The spring, Rosa thought, the spring lures you in and clasps you tight, its breezes blow away clear thoughts until you’re dizzy. If she had to stand around in Shchedrin’s clinic and discuss the consequences of the department leader’s temporary absence, the spring didn’t care. It made the birch wave to her through the window, made the birds chirp and the clouds, no longer low and heavy, sail gaily through the upper sky. Rosa went over to the window where the others were gathered, turned down the offered cigarette, and listened to what her colleagues had to say.