“Call them, then. Before I lose my nerve.”
“Before we both do.”
Now she looked as worried as I was. She punched in the number anyway.
14
The New Moscow Cultural Center looked like a shoestring operation. Its ground-floor offices were tucked behind a pharmacy and a kitschy souvenir shop with a window full of chocolate Mozart statuettes.
They’d been preparing to lock up when Litzi phoned, but the young man who answered grudgingly agreed to wait after she explained it was urgent. We decided to use fake names and pay in cash.
A buzzer opened the door. A few paintings, none to my liking, were propped on easels in the foyer. A man in his early twenties waited impatiently at a cluttered reception desk.
“You must be Feliks,” Litzi said. “I am Mrs. Brunner. This is my friend from America, Mr. Norris. Thank you for waiting.”
Feliks nodded gloomily.
“You have payment?”
“Certainly. How much?”
“Twenty euros per page.”
Steep. Feliks had probably built in a gratuity for himself. I handed him the prints, but he refused to even glance at them until Litzi put four tens on the desk. He slipped the bills into his trousers and picked up the prints.
His eyes widened immediately, and he dropped the photos.
“Is this joke?”
“No,” I answered. “No joke.”
“Then you are crazy. Or maybe you are police.”
“Neither.”
He retrieved the bills from his pocket and handed them to Litzi along with the prints. She tried to give everything back, but he let the bills fall on the desk and shoved away the photos. As they oscillated to the floor he stood abruptly and disappeared down a hallway.
We looked at each other, wondering what to do next, and we were on the verge of giving up when a benevolent old face crowned with a snowy shock of hair poked from the end of the hall. The little man who emerged looked like a forest gnome who had just crawled out from under a toadstool. As he drew closer he even smelled a little woodsy, like wet leaves on a trail.
“Please,” he said, gesturing down the hallway. “Why don’t we step into my office where there is greater privacy. Bring the documents with you.”
He turned before we could answer, so we followed. His office was small but pleasant, with flowers in terra- cotta pots. A window overlooked an alley through the iron steps of a fire escape.
“I am Director Gelev. You seem to have upset young Feliks. May I get you some tea? I am afraid the coffeepot has already been cleaned for the day.”
“No, thank you.” Litzi said.
“None for me, either.”
“May I see those papers, if you would be so kind?”
I handed them over.
“Mm-hmm.” He flipped to the second one. “Yes, I see.”
He had the bearing of a doctor confirming a dire diagnosis.
“If it is not too much trouble, may I also see your identity papers?”
Litzi and I exchanged glances, then she reached for her ID card. I did the same with my passport. So much for fake names. He looked them over, then handed them back with a slight smile.
“You must excuse my precautions. Even with photographs of very old papers like these, the name of the KGB still carries a great deal of power, as you saw with young Feliks.”
“These are from the KGB?” I asked.
“Did you truly not know this?”
“No. Although maybe I should’ve guessed from Feliks’s reaction.”
“May I ask how you acquired these documents?”
“I, uh…”
Litzi deftly cut in.
“I am an archivist at the National Library.” She presented her business card. “People bring me all sorts of strange old items, thinking that I might have a use for them. Mr. Cage is an old friend who happens to be here on vacation. He brought them from the States.”
Better than what I would’ve come up with, but Gelev immediately shot it full of holes.
“I know the National Library has budget strains, Miss Strauss, but does it no longer employ translators of Cyrillic?”
“I didn’t want to use official resources on a friend’s behalf. This seemed like a more… informal way to handle it.”
“Of course. KGB documents. Very informal.”
He turned to me.
“And you brought these from the States?”
“Yes.”
“Did some emigre give them to you?”
“A friend of one, yes.”
He raised an eyebrow and studied me further. Sweat prickled in my palms as if I’d been hooked up to a polygraph. He almost certainly knew I was lying.
“Very well. I will have them translated and return them tomorrow. I don’t know what sort of price Feliks quoted you, but our standard rate is ten euros per page.”
“I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable leaving them overnight. They’re so old and everything.”
He raised his eyebrows again. The photos, of course, were brand-new. My inclination was to snatch up the prints and leave. Maybe Gelev sensed that, judging from what he said next.
“Well, they do appear to be fairly brief. Perhaps I could go through them with you myself right now and tell you roughly what they say.”
“Yes. That would work.”
He motioned for us to pull up our chairs beside the desk. Then he took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, cleared his throat, and went to work.
“This first one is some sort of field report, from a man named Leo to another named Oleg. No last names are mentioned.”
“Code names, probably,” I said.
He eyed me over the tops of his specs.
“You are familiar with the working tactics of the KGB?”
“Well, no. But…”
“It is probably a safe assumption, all the same. The subject of Leo’s memo is Source Dewey.”
“Dewey? You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
So the KGB knew about Dewey. Were they using him, or stalking him?
“Go ahead.”
“Apparently Oleg was in Moscow. Leo was not.” He paused, running a finger along the lines of text. “‘Dewey’s movements proceed as expected. Mailbox delivery on nineteen seven.’ He means the date, the nineteenth of July.”
“Is there a year?”
