Page 48 of Cry Havoc

MAJOR KIRILL DVORNIKOV SHRUGGEDoff his dark wool overcoat and folded it over his arm, his eyes scanning the restaurant. How Dvornikov missed Paris. During the dark months of winter, he would have even settled for Berlin. A Moscow winter was not for the faint of heart.

Located not far north of the Moscow River and Red Square, close to the statue of Yury Dolgorukiy on horseback to commemorate his founding of Moscow in 1147, the Aragvi restaurant stood out. It had no rivals, and therefore no competition, so much so that it might as well have been a private club.

A man in a rumpled dinner jacket stepped from behind a reception desk and started to open his mouth but was silenced by the rise of Dvornikov’s left finger. The host simply bowed his head. He had not survived this long because he was bad at reading signals, especially the obvious ones.

The restaurant did not cater to the average Muscovite. In fact, there were no restaurants for average Muscovites. The Aragvi was beyond the means of anyone not associated with the highest echelons of the Party or those lucky few whose power was derived from access to people and information. Connections were the real currency at these levels, currency that was traded behind these doors, one of the most exclusive markets on earth.

Old men, Party members and a few of the cultural elite, no doubt currying favors with one another, were seated at partitioned tables. The Khrushchev Thaw that most of the Soviet elite had read about over a decade prior in Ilya Ehrenburg’sThe Thawhad turned the way of the Moscow winter. Even so, a piano piece Dvornikov recognized as the work of Dmitri Shostakovich played from an unseen gramophone, masking the whispered conversations of Aragvi’s patrons.

The Thaw. Not this year, Dvornikov thought.

The Russian writer Ehrenburg was interred at Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery. Maybe one day Dvornikov would make a point of visiting his grave. He had heard the headstone was etched with a portrait by Pablo Picasso, though the major would wait until Brezhnev no longer wielded the sword before paying his respects.

Even more so than behind the Kremlin Wall, deep within Lubyanka, or offices in the Aquarium, the Aragvi was where decisions were made that would either usher in the golden age of the Soviet Union or result in her demise. Decisions such as these were best made on full stomachs.

Dvornikov had stayed far afield during Khrushchev’s ousting in 1964, watching from an apartment in Paris as the Brezhnev era swept the nation. The Soviet Union was now accelerating its arms manufacturing capability in a bid to outmatch the United States while at the same time expanding Soviet influence around the globe. These were dangerous times.

Khrushchev would not live much longer. Reluctantly, the KGB permitted him a house, a dacha, a car, and a pension. Though prosperous by Soviet standards, Dvornikov knew Khrushchev’s retirement for what it really was, a prison without the bars. Dvornikov would have to tread carefully. One did not misstep in Brezhnev’s Russia.

Would the Soviet Union one day fall? Perhaps. One must be ready. Rise, fall, or stagnate, Dvornikov preferred to experience it far from the confines of his homeland, over dinners at Lapérouse with a young female Parisianor possibly a British or American exchange student rather than amongst old men smelling of mothballs and rotting cabbage in frigid Moscow. If a nuclear exchange were to destroy them all, he would rather leave the world in bed with a warm, naked coed.

Without ever making eye contact with the host, Dvornikov found his target and strode through the room. The director’s two bodyguards sat at a table on the far side of the restaurant, drinking ice water and eating stale rye bread. The major always found it unsettling that fresh bread remained an elusive commodity to even the proprietors of the best restaurant in Moscow. At least they did not have to stand in long lines for it as did most of their countrymen. They recognized him and allowed him to approach. Dvornikov had maneuvered in these circles all his adult life. He was comfortable here.

“Director, we have a problem,” Dvornikov said, hanging his damp jacket on the back of a chair and taking a seat across from the man who ran the GRU. Interrupting his superior at dinner, as he knew Lavrinenko was aware, was a power move intended to demonstrate to those watching furtively out of the corners of their eyes that the major had the director’s ear.

“We must if it means disturbing my meal,” Lavrinenko said.

Lavrinenko took a final bite ofshashlik, touched a napkin to the corners of his mouth, and then let it fall to his lap.

“I would only intrude if it was of the utmost importance.”

“I know.”

Dvornikov’s eyes took in the table, noting the stark contrast between the plentiful Georgian food and what he imagined life was like for those struggling to put bread on their own tables just blocks away. He wondered if he was the only man in the room to find the irony in discussing the greatness of Soviet Russia over full plates while the collective stood in long lines hoping for a meager portion of meat and vegetables with which to make soup for their families. History would be the ultimate arbiter of the success or failure of collectivization, and it would be written, as were allhistories, by the victor. Right now, the Soviet-American Cold War felt like a stalemate. He must tread carefully.

“The rumor is that all tables here have microphones,” he said.

“I have heard that.” Lavrinenko smiled. “And it is true, Comrade, but they areourmicrophones. And all the tables are bugged but this one. Advantage, GRU.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Lavrentiy Beria used to frequent this restaurant. He would bring Stalin’s son Vasily for lunch. They liked the Georgian wine. Can’t stand it myself. Doesn’t hold up to vodka.”

“But what does?”

“See that man over there? The one with his back to us, dining with the woman. That’s Kim Philby. Would you like an introduction?”

Dvornikov shook his head.

“He got caught,” the major said. “I’d rather talk with a spy who didn’t,” he added, by way of explanation. Every conversation with Lavrinenko was a job interview, a test, a probe, an examination. The way you handled the inquisition would directly impact a future posting and determine whether that assignment would be Paris, France, or Norilsk, Siberia.

“Ah, true. He did. But he managed to defect to us.”

“I think the British let him. Less embarrassment than a full-blown trial for espionage in England.”

“That is entirely possible. He was not the best of spies looking back on it, but even as inept and overt as he and his compatriots were, he, and they, caused unimaginable damage to British and American intelligence services. Think what a competent asset could do.”

“Like the man you have bringing us keying material?”