13 MOSCOW
On Moscow ’s Tverskaya Street, the flashy foreign cars of the newly rich jockeyed for position with the boxy Ladas and Zhigulis of the still deprived. The Kremlin’s Trinity Tower was nearly lost in a gauzy shroud of exhaust fumes, its famous red star looking sadly like just another advertisement for an imported luxury good. In the bar of the Savoy Hotel, the sharp boys and their bodyguards were drinking cold beer instead of vodka. Their black Bentleys and Range Rovers waited just outside the entrance, engines running for a quick getaway. Conservation of fuel was hardly a priority in Russia these days. Petrol, like nearly everything else, was in plentiful supply.
At 7:30 P.M., Gabriel came down to the lobby dressed in a dark suit and diplomatic silver tie. Stepping from the entrance, he scanned the faces behind the wheels of the parked cars before heading down the hill to the Teatralnyy Prospekt. Atop a low hill loomed the hulking yellow fortress of Lubyanka, headquarters of the FSB. In its shadow was a row of exclusive Western designer boutiques worthy of Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue. Gabriel could not help but marvel at the striking juxtaposition, even if it was only a bit of pantomime for the pair of watchers who had left the comfort of their air-conditioned car and were now trailing him on foot.
He consulted a hotel street map-needlessly, because his route was well planned in advance-and made his way to a large open-air esplanade at the foot of the Kremlin walls. Passing a row of kiosks selling everything from Soviet hockey jerseys to busts of the murderers Lenin and Stalin, he turned to the left and entered Red Square. The last of the day’s pilgrims stood outside the entrance of Lenin’s Tomb, sipping Coca-Cola and fanning themselves with tourist brochures and guides to Moscow nightlife. He wondered what drew them here. Was it misplaced faith? Nostalgia for a simpler time? Or did they come merely for morbid reasons? To judge for themselves whether the figure beneath the glass was real or more worthy of a wax museum?
He crossed the square toward the candy-cane domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, then followed the eastern wall of the Kremlin down to the Moscow River. On the opposite bank, at Serafimovicha Street 2, stood the infamous House on the Embankment, the colossal apartment block built by Stalin in 1931 as an exclusive residence for the most elite members of the
Gabriel gave his map another pointless glance as he set out across the Moskvoretsky Bridge. Crimson-and- black banners of the ruling Russian Unity Party hung from the lampposts, swaying drunkenly in the warm breeze. At the opposite end of the bridge, the Russian president smiled disagreeably at Gabriel from a billboard three stories in height. He was scheduled to face the Russian “electorate,” such that it was, for the fourth time at the end of the summer. There was little suspense about the outcome; the president had long ago purged Russia of dangerous democratic tendencies, and the officially sanctioned opposition parties were now little more than useful idiots. The smiling man on the billboard was the new tsar in everything but name-and one with imperial ambitions at that.
On the other side of the river lay the pleasant quarter known as Zamoskvoreche. Spared the architectural terror of Stalin’s replanning, the district had retained some of the atmosphere of nineteenth-century Moscow. Gabriel walked past flaking imperial houses and onion-domed churches until he came to the walled compound at Bolshaya Ordynka 56. The plaque at the gate read EMBASSY OF ISRAEL in English, Russian, and Hebrew. Gabriel held his credentials up to the fish-eye lens of the camera and heard the electronic dead-bolt locks immediately snap open. As he stepped into the compound, he glanced over his shoulder and saw a man in a car across the street raise a camera and blatantly snap a photograph. Apparently, the FSB knew about the ambassador’s dinner party and intended to intimidate the guests as they arrived and departed.
The compound was cramped and drab, with a cluster of featureless buildings standing around a central courtyard. A youthful security guard-who was not a security guard at all but an Office field agent attached to Moscow Station-greeted Gabriel cordially by his cover name and escorted him into the foyer of the small apartment building that housed most of the embassy’s personnel. The ambassador was waiting on the top-floor landing as Gabriel stepped off the lift. A polished career diplomat whom Gabriel had seen only in photographs, he threw his arms around Gabriel and gave him two thunderous claps between the shoulder blades that no FSB transmitter could fail to detect. “Natan!” he shouted, as though to a deaf uncle. “My God! Is it really you? You look as though you’ve been traveling an age. St. Petersburg surely wasn’t as bad as all that.” He thrust a glass of tepid champagne into Gabriel’s hand and cast him adrift. “As usual, Natan, you’re the last to arrive. Mingle with the masses. We’ll chat later after you’ve had a chance to say hello to everyone. I want to hear all about your dreadful conference.”
Gabriel hoisted his most affable diplomatic smile and, glass in hand, waded into the noisy smoke-filled sitting room.
He met a famous violinist who was now the leader of a ragtag opposition party called the Coalition for a Free Russia.
He met a playwright who had revived the time-tested art of Russian allegory to carefully criticize the new regime.
He met a filmmaker who had recently won a major human rights award in the West for a documentary about the gulag.
He met a woman who had been confined to an insane asylum because she had dared to carry a placard across Red Square calling for democracy in Russia.
He met an unrepentant Bolshevik who thought the only way to save Russia was to restore the dictatorship of the proletariat and burn the oligarchs at the stake.
He met a fossilized dissident from the Brezhnev era who had been raised from the near dead to wage one last futile campaign for Russian freedom.
He met a brave essayist who had been nearly beaten to death by a band of Unity Party Youth.
And finally, ten minutes after his arrival, he introduced himself to a reporter from
The photograph Uzi Navot had shown him a week earlier in Jerusalem had not done justice to Olga’s beauty. With translucent eyes and long, narrow features, she looked to Gabriel like a Russian icon come to life. He was seated at her right during dinner but managed only a few brief exchanges of conversation, largely because the documentary filmmaker monopolized her attention with a shot-by-shot description of his latest work. With no place to take shelter, Gabriel found himself in the clutches of the ancient dissident, who treated him to a lecture on the history of Russian political opposition dating back to the days of the tsars. As the waiters cleared the dessert plates, Olga gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid I feel a cigarette coming on,” she said. “Would you care to join me?”
They rose from the table together under the crestfallen gaze of the filmmaker and stepped onto the ambassador’s small terrace. It was empty and in semidarkness; in the distance loomed one of the “the Seven Sisters,” the monstrous Stalinist towers that still dominated the Moscow skyline. “ Europe ’s tallest apartment building,” she said without enthusiasm. “Everything in Russia has to be the biggest, the tallest, the fastest, or the most valuable. We cannot live as normal people.” Her lighter flared. “Is this your first time in Russia, Mr. Golani?”
“Yes,” he answered truthfully.
“And what brings you to our country?”
