Firebird (25 page)

She thrust the letter into Alexandra’s hands.  “Whatever it says, it won’t bring Charlie back.  Or Eve.”   She moved to the door.

“Please stay, Billie.  We’ll read it together.”

Billie’s face was a dark mask of bewilderment and loss.  “I have my own ghosts to deal with right now.  Read your sister’s letter.  I’ll wait for you in the bar.  You can give it back to me when you’re ready to leave.  I’ll read it then.  Alone.”  Billie stopped.  “I’m trusting you, Baby Sister,” she said, and then disappeared through the doorway.

Alexandra looked down at the thick envelope in her hand.  “For E” was scrawled across the vellum.  She took a deep breath, lifted the flap and opened the letter.

Twisting open one more Russian nesting doll
.

A dozen pages were filled with Charles Fraser’s writing.

“Oh, my God,” she murmured.  She looked at the date in the upper corner.  It was written the night Charles Fraser died, the night Eve had been in Maine.

“
My darling
,” the letter began.

“
Where are you?  I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell and beeper for hours.  I must see you tonight, at our place.”

“Our place,” murmured Alexandra.  Fraser had been on his way to meet Eve when he died...

“You know, don’t you, Eve? You pretended to be sleeping last night, but when I put my hand on your breast, your heart was beating like a trapped bird under my palm.  You knew I’d had a visitor.  You heard our conversation.  I’m sure you recognized his voice.  You’ve met him before.

You’re right to be scared, my darling.

Last night I learned that there’s a Russian agent in-place in Washington.  A man who is now very close to the President.  An advisor, a friend - a man destined for a position of great power after the election. 

But I also was given a warning.  If I begin a mole hunt, the agent will take evasive action.  His code name is Firebird.

Alexandra closed her eyes.  Operation Firebird.

Eve, this information has placed us both in harm’s way.  Any moment we could be implicated in a spy hunt, accused of betrayal, silenced in some unforeseen way.  One seed of doubt, one rumor, and careers and lives are ruined.

The agent must be found, exposed.  But if I initiate another mole hunt, you could be involved.  You were with me in St. Petersburg, more than once.  You remember I asked you to deliver papers for me?  Innocent travel papers, to one of my Russian associates.  But there are photographs, my darling.  We were set up.

Now I have no choice, Eve, you understand that, don’t you?  I’ve got to find the mole.  I have my suspicions.  I have a meeting with the President and his advisors in an hour.

I’ll do everything I can to protect you, my darling.  But there are facts you need to know.

First you have to understand how it all began.

My story begins over thirty years ago, in the city that is now called St. Petersburg.  It was still spring, but already hot, and the wolves came down from the hills to forage for food and water.  I could hear them from the window of my room, howling in the darkness…”

CHAPTER 27

“I shall laugh my bitter laugh.”

Gogol’s tombstone

LENINGRAD / ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

Spring, 1979

It was hot that spring, and the wolves came down from the hills to forage for food and water.  The students could hear them from the windows of their small, stifling rooms, howling in the darkness...

Alexandra sat curled on Billie’s dressing room sofa, reading the words that drew her inexorably back to the city of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and a young Charles Fraser’s world.  She could feel the stifling heat, hear the cries of the wolves in the hills.

It was the spring of 1979.  Many of the students traveling abroad flocked to Moscow for “the Soviet experience.”   But by early May, most headed north to the sparkling blue canals of Leningrad to escape Moscow’s unseasonable heat, the glaring eyes of the Politboro portraits that lined the broad avenues - and the midnight cries of the wolves.

Late every afternoon, the foreigners would gather at The Literary Cafe on Nevsky Prospekt, on the banks of the Neva River where the breeze was cool, to drink coffee laced with vodka and cheap Georgian wine, and argue about the works of Russian writers.  One young man, a twenty-two year old Princeton graduate student from America, would bring his thesis on the Russian Revolution and sit at a small metal table scribbling furiously until the last light faded.  In that spring of White Nights, as those long days of sunlight were called, he frequently wrote until just before dawn.

He never noticed the thin young Russian musician with the battered violin case resting firmly in his lap who sat, every afternoon, at the table next to his.

After a week, the young man finally decided to speak.

“Have you heard the definition of a Soviet Symphony Orchestra returning from a tour to the West?” he asked in his strongly-accented English.  “A quartet!”

The American scholar raised his head and focused, for the first time, on a dark-haired young man with small round glasses. 

“My name is Yuri,” said the slight musician.  “Violinist, Business student, and Dissident Joke Dispenser.”

“Charles Fraser,” said the young American with a grin.  “Are you sure you want to announce to all present that you’re a dissident?”

“Mother Russia is my spiritual homeland,” proclaimed the young man loudly.  “But,” he dropped his voice, “I wonder about her future when I cannot get a telephone installed.”

“Have some wine and tell me the latest joke about Solzhenitsyn.”

Yuri raised his glass.  “If this is your first visit to USSR you are welcome to it!”

Fraser smiled.  “We say ‘Welcome’, Yuri.  Just ‘welcome’.”

“Do you have any extra pairs of blue-jeans?” asked Yuri, his voice yearning.

After that, the two met every evening, a strange bond developing between the liberal scholar and the cynical Russian obsessed with everything American. 

Charles Fraser practiced his Russian, questioned Yuri about life in the Soviet Union, and shared his own stories of growing up in Washington.  Nineteen year-old Yuri learned American slang, wore his friend’s jeans with the cuffs rolled, and complained loudly when the Voice of America broadcasts were jammed by Soviet electronics.  They debated endlessly about politics, music and literature, oppression, freedom, and the struggle against persecution.

One night in late May, Yuri didn’t come to the cafe.

For three nights, Charles Fraser waited and worried.  No one in the cafe knew Yuri’s last name.  On the fourth night, alone at the small table once more, Fraser had just decided to search for his friend when a voice spoke softly behind his shoulder.

“I need a new refrigerator, but our Soviet appliance man cannot come for eleven months, until the first Monday in May.  Sadly, I had to cancel.  That’s the day my plumber is coming to fix the toilet!  Ha!”

“Yuri!”  Fraser spun around and grabbed his friend’s shoulder.  “Dammit, man, where have you been?  I’ve been worried sick!  You’ve lost weight.”

“Not to worry, my friend.  I’ve been
resting
for a few days.”

“My God, Yuri, jail?  What happened to you?”

“Never buy a TV on the street from an out-of-breath dissident.”  The thin Russian forced a haggard smile as he gripped his violin case to his chest and glanced over his shoulder.  “They question all of us occasionally.  But me, more frequently.  I am what they call - a risk.”

“Because we’ve become friends?”

“Nyet, nyet.  Please not to trouble yourself.”  Again Yuri glanced around the crowded cafe.  “Come, let us walk along the Neva.  The night is warm.”

The two friends wandered slowly in the gathering shadows along the banks of the river.  Yuri eyed a group of young men coming toward them and waved a hand as he raised his voice.  “A Socialist, a Capitalist and a Communist met by the Neva,” he began.  “The Socialist was complaining because he had to buy meat and the line was too long.  ‘What’s a line?’ asked the Capitalist.  ‘What’s meat?’ asked the Communist.  Ha.”

“Yuri, enough!  We’re alone now.  Talk to me.”

With one last glance over his shoulder, Yuri turned to Fraser.  “I have never spoken to you of my father.  There is reason for this, Charles.  My esteemed father, you see, is colonel in KGB.”

“Not funny, Yuri.  Get to the punch line.”

“There is no phrase in Russian for ‘punch line’, my friend.”

“Jesus H. Christ!”

“Let me remind you that Jesus has been replaced by our statues of Proletarian heroes!” grinned the pale boy.  Then the smile fell from his face.  “Last night I waited for my father at the Winter Palace.  He meets his friends there every week - then comes home, very drunk, and raves on and on about terrible things.  And now - ”

“What is it?”

“I’ve got to sell my violin,” he murmured.

“You can’t do that, Yuri.  You love your music.”

“There is no more money, my friend.  I can no longer pay for my studies.”

“Keep your violin, Yuri.”  Fraser gave him all the rubles he had, worth almost nine hundred dollars.

Yuri stared at him.  “I will pay you back, my good friend,” he said with solemn promise.  “Someday.  Somehow.” 

And he disappeared into the Russian night.

* * * *

Jon Garcia sipped his whiskey at the Club 1215’s polished bar and watched Billie Jordan.  She sat alone at a dark corner table, swaying slightly, hands clenched, her eyes focused on a small flickering candle.  Finally she stood, threaded her way across the room, and slid onto the red leather bar stool beside him.

“Double scotch, Londell,” she said in her low voice.  “Our best label.  Neat.”

The bartender looked at her in surprise, then poured the whiskey and placed it in front of her.  “Here you go, Miz Satin.”

Billie wrapped her hands around the glass, raised it, and turned to Garcia.  “To vengeance,” she whispered, downing the whiskey in one long swallow.  Her eyes glistened with tears in the darkness.

Garcia raised his glass to her.  “To your brother, Billie.  I’m sorry.  I knew Charley.  He was one of the good guys.”

“He was that.”  She motioned to the bartender.  “One more,” she ordered, “and another for my new friend here.”  Turning back to Garcia, she made a face and said,  “I rarely drink this stuff.  Not a good example for my laydees.  But tonight...”

His eyes held hers.  “Tonight, you feel ambushed.”

She stared down into the empty glass.  “You ever get angry at God, Counselor?”

“Oh, yeah.”  His body was very still.   “I’m
still
angry with him.”

The drinks came and they touched glasses.  This time Billie took only a small sip and placed the crystal carefully back on the zinc counter.  “My Charley blackmailed?  Murdered?”  She shook her head back and forth.  “You think it’s all true?”

“Could be.”

“Will you help me find the truth, Jon Garcia?”

“It’s why I’m here, Billie.”

She turned to him.  Her dark skin was stretched tight across the bold bones of her face.  “It’s too much to take in,” she whispered brokenly.  “Too impossible.”  She leaned closer, her bright eyes looking deeply into his, searching.  “But you already know about that, don’t you?”

“Impossible loss?”  He looked away into the shadows.  “Si.  I do.” 

“Thought so.”  Billie tilted her chin in the direction of her dressing room.  “Makes three of us, then.  Another broken one in there.  You think she’s gonna be okay, Counselor?”

He glanced over his shoulder, picturing narrow shoulders rigid with determination.  “She’ll find a way.” 

“I believe she will.  I like her.  She’s a fighter.”

“Maybe too much for her own good.”  He looked away.  “She told me what you do, at the shelter.  Said you’re good at putting people back together.”

“She said that, did she?”

“I think she needs to be put back together, too.  Will you help her?”

Billie kept her eyes on him as she took another sip of whiskey.  “Yes.  If

she’ll let me.  But she surely has her own way of doing things.”

“Tell me about it.  She’s stubborn and passionate and she scares the hell out of me.”

Billie gave a brief, knowing smile. 

“You understand,” he went on.  “She couldn’t break a potato chip.  And yet she’s ready to rush into the dragon’s den and I can’t stop her!”

“So protect her instead.  Your Alexandra is much stronger than she looks.  It’s her soul that’s scarred.  You can see it, the sorrow and guilt, in her eyes.  My granny called them ‘speaking eyes.’”

“She’s not
my
Alexandra, Billie.  But you’re right about those damned eyes.”

* * * *

In Billie’s dressing room, Alexandra took a deep breath and turned another page of the letter.

“
Yuri disappeared from my life for many years, until we recognized each other at a White House event.  It was Yuri who came to the apartment late last night, of course
,” wrote Charles Fraser.  “
The same man you know now, Eve, as a Russian telecommunications tycoon with homes here and in St. Petersburg and God knows where else.  Yuri Belankov.”

Yuri Belankov?   The name took Alexandra by surprise.  It was so damned familiar.  She closed her eyes.  Yes, she’d met him once.  At an embassy party, with her sister.  But there was something else - the Baranski Gallery!  That was it.  Yuri Belankov had called, and arranged a very substantial contribution to her upcoming St. Petersburg show.  And somewhere she’d read that he had attended Eve’s funeral.  Once more she gripped Fraser’s letter.  Surely Belankov was another piece of the puzzle.  

“
Yuri’s father died two weeks ago.  He was in his mid 70’s,
” continued Charles Fraser.  “
When Yuri searched his father’s dacha, he found ancient KGB files, smuggled out and hidden in the old dacha walls, then papered over by useless rubles.  He spent days reading the files, then flew to D.C. and showed up on my doorstep.