There was an elderly man sitting at an oak table. He was looking at something through a magnifying glass on a swivel stand. For a moment he looked up at Aarons and then pointed at a wooden chair by the table. Without looking up he said, “And what can I do for you, my friend?”
Aarons said quietly, in Russian, “Arise ye workers from your slumbers.”
The man looked up slowly, “Who was the Islavins’ friend?” he said in Russian.
Aarons smiled. “Lev Tolstoy.”
The man smiled back. “It must have been you who worked out the passwords.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because those idiots in Moscow wouldn’t know Tolstoy from Shakespeare.”
Aarons nodded. “You’ve got something for me.”
“Yes.” He looked at Aarons. “You got the cash?”
“What cash?”
“Look, buddy, let’s not play games. They told me what you needed. And it’s gonna cost you four hundred bucks.”
“You mean you charge them for your help?”
“You bet your ass I do. This is my business. Why d’you think I do this?”
“For the sake of the Party.”
“You must be out of your mind, comrade. I don’t give a shit for the Party. Never have and never will. You want those documents you pay for them like anybody else.” He leaned forward, looking at Aarons. “You sure you’re who I think you are?”
“Who do you think I am?”
The old man shook his head. “No way, my friend. You’re shaping up like FBI to me.”
Aarons reached inside his jacket and took out an envelope. Slowly and carefully he counted out four hundred dollars in ten dollar notes. He slid the rest of the bills back in the envelope.
The old man stood up unsteadily, tried a couple of times to slide the money into his trouser pocket and when he failed he pushed it into a drawer in the table. Then he walked over to where a framed photograph of Abraham Lincoln hung on the wall. Carefully, he took it down and put it on the floor. Aarons saw the grey-green door of a small safe with the large dial of a combination lock. The old man stood in front of the safe so that Aarons couldn’t watch him twisting and turning the dial. When the safe door swung open the old man reached inside, brought out a package, closed the safe, spun the lock and put back the photograph before he walked back to the table.
He sat down carefully and opened the packet, taking out several items, looking through them one by one before he looked across at Aarons.
“You think four hundred bucks is a lot of money, don’t you?”
“It is,” Aarons said rather sharply.
The old man nodded. “That’s what you damn Reds ain’t ever worked out. Some poor bastard’s got to make a profit before you can hand out the apple-pie to all and sundry. What you lot do is to make sure the fella makes the pie don’t get to eat any of it.”
“So why do you come to us for business?”
The old man cackled. “I don’t, comrade, I don’t. It’s you lot come to me.” He paused, and now his face was serious. “Let me tell you what I’ve done for your dollars, my friend.” He picked up one of the papers and waved it at Aarons. “This is your birth certificate. Genuine—not copied or forged, but the real thing. By the way your new name’s Slansky. Igor Slansky. But—do you realise what I had to do to get it? First I had to hunt around the cemeteries to find someone born in the same year as you were and it has to be someone who died soon after birth. That takes time, mister. Then I apply for a duplicate birth certificate in that person’s name. With this I got your supporting documents—driver’s licence, social security card and so on. I got you a passport. All they want is a birth certificate which I got certified at the Health Department for a couple of bucks. Anywhere else you’d pay five hundred bucks for just a phony passport.” Scholes looked at Aarons, shaking his head as he said, “You don’t give a damn about all this, do you?”
Aarons was silent for a moment and then he said, “Don’t you care about Russia?”
Scholes smiled. “No. But if you asked me if I care about the Russian people then I’d say yes. I was there, my friend, when it was all happening. We had eight weeks of communism, the dream come true. Then the power-hungry men strangled it and called it Bolshevism. If it suited them they called it Socialism. Anything to keep control. And after that we had the Moscow Mafia. You do as you’re told or you go to a labour camp if you’re lucky. If not they kill you. Like many others I dreamed dreams …” overcome with emotion he had to take a deep breath, “… and your friends stamped our dreams into the ground.” He wagged a finger at Aarons. “You’re like a man in a film cartoon who walks off the edge of the cliff and goes on walking on thin air—and then he looks down—and he falls. One day you’ll look down, my son. Just a question of time.”
Again Aarons was silent for a few moments and then he said quietly, “If I need documents for somebody else can you provide them?”
Scholes shrugged. “I need the relevant details. Date of birth and so on.” He paused and smiled. “And four hundred dollars.”
Aarons stood up and walked slowly to the door where he turned and said, “Thank you for your help, comrade.”
In the
