California Fire And Life

51

Here's the story on Nicky Vale.

Daziatnik Valeshin grows up in Leningrad, his father a minor apparatchik, his mother a teacher at the state gymnasium. She feels that she has fallen in the world – both her parents were professors and she did brilliantly at university. Were it not for one foolish, unguarded night she would doubtless have become a professor as well. But then, she had a child to raise – alone – as Daz's father splits early, a divorce while young Daz is still in the crawling phase.

Mother he sees.

Constantly, oppressively.

She's raising him to be something, most decidedly not a minor apparatchik. They go meatless for weeks to afford ballet tickets, the soup is thinned yet again for a Tchaikovsky recording. At a precocious age he reads his Tolstoy, of course, and Pushkin and Turgenev, and at bedtime she sits and reads Flaubert to him – in French. Not that he understands French, but it is Mother's firm belief that he will somehow absorb the meaning through the rhythm and tone.

Mother teaches him to appreciate the finer things-art, music, sculpture, architecture, and design. She teaches him manners – at the table, in conversation, with a woman. They sit and practice an evening out at a fine restaurant – sitting at the fold-up table in their cramped kitchen, she takes him through the various courses and scolds him into making conversation as if she were the young lady and he were the suitor.

She's as brutal about his grades as she is his manners. Nothing but a "first" will do. The moment he comes home she sits him down in front of his books, then has him review his work for her.

It must be perfect.

Otherwise, she tells him, you will end up like the rest of the proletariat, like your father. Stupid, unhappy, bored, and with no future but to be stupid, unhappy, and bored.

When he gets to the age where he's interested in girls, she chooses them for him. Or more often chooses against them for him. This one is too silly, that one too fat, this one too clever, that one a slut.

Daz knows that her standards are high because she herself is so beautiful. Her face is perfectly formed porcelain, her hair a black-satin sculpture, her neck so long and elegant and white, her manners refined, her intelligence sparkling… How Father could leave her he cannot understand.

And he obeys her. He is first in most of his classes. He wins the prize in English, in history, in literature, in math. Not only that, he's a sneaky, mean, underhanded, intimidating little bastard, so he catches the attention of the local talent spotters from the old state security bureau.

And the bit about Afghanistan is true, except Daz doesn't go as some slog-ass foot soldier, a reluctant warrior in someone else's war. Daz goes as a KGB officer attached to a military intelligence unit, his job to interrogate the villagers to find where the mujahedin are hiding.

For the first few weeks Daz goes about this job in a civilized way, even though that gets him nowhere. However, after he has found out about the third Russian soldier lying naked, skinned alive with his genitals stuffed in his mouth, Daz takes a different approach. His best routine is to have three villagers trussed up like hogs, cut two of their throats, and then offer the blood-spattered survivor a cup of tea and a chance for meaningful conversation. If his hospitality is spurned, Daz usually orders an enlisted man to douse the holy warrior with petrol. Then when Daz is done with his tea he lights a cigarette and tosses the match and warms his hands on the blazing fire. Then he has his unit torch the whole village.

Waits a day or so for word of the incident to filter to the next village and then goes there to ask questions. Usually gets some answers.

All the time, Mother is frantic, sick with worry that her son will be killed in this stupid, futile war. She writes him every day and he writes back, but the Soviet mail system being what it is, there are brutal, endless days of no mail when she is convinced that he is dead. The next day's mail brings a letter, and with it, a torrent of tears of relief.

Daz finishes his tour.

Spends his leave with Mother in a state dacha on the Black Sea, his reward for a good war. There they go out for an evening to a fine restaurant on the shore. A table on the veranda, and the moon sparkles on the water. They have an eight-course meal and the conversation sparkles like the water.

Back in the dacha that night she tutors him on how to be with a woman.

He needs an assignment and the KGB has one for him.

Back in Moscow his handler, a KGB colonel named Karpotsov, takes him on a stroll through Gorky Park. Karpotsov is quite a number, with a broad Slavic face, silver hair greased straight back on his head, an easy way with the vodka and an easier way with women. A real charmer, Karpotsov is, a word painter, and he works his brush on Daz.

Karpotsov knows talent when he sees it and he sees it in young Valeshin. Valeshin is a ruthless, sociopathic, smart little wiseass who would probably torch his own mother, if that's what it took, and that's just the kind of sociopath Karpotsov's looking for. So he walks Daz around the park for a while, looking at women and talking about nothing of any great importance, and then Karpotsov buys two ice creams and sits Daz down on a bench.

And says, "How would you like to go to America?"

He sticks out his broad tongue and takes a lick of the ice cream that is almost obscene. Smiles a Mephistophelian smile.

"I think I would like that very much," Daz says.

Having just been offered a chance at heaven.

"The United States," Karpotsov says – he continues the lecture between licks of ice cream – "is waging economic warfare against the Soviet Union. Reagan knows – and we know – that we can't compete. We can't continue to build missiles and submarines at this pace and still maintain the economy required for a workers' paradise. The ugly truth, Daz, is that they can win the cold war simply by outspending us."

He stops and stares off at the park as if at any moment it is going to disappear along with the Soviet way of life.

He collects himself and continues, "We need cash – hard currency – and the Soviet economy is incapable of generating any. It is simply not to be found here."

"Then where?"

"America," Karpotsov says. "Our expatriate Russian criminals in New York and California are sucking dollars out of the American system like milk from a cow. These are gangsters, mind you, and we have to believe that if common criminals can do this, well…"

What could a cadre of KGB-trained agents do?

"It's a brilliant idea, really," Karpotsov says. And it should be – he thought of it. "It has a double benefit – it takes from them and gives to us. Every dollar we make is a dollar they lose. Where better to attack a capitalist system than at its capital?"

"So my assignment would be in the realm of economic sabotage."

"That's one way of putting it," Karpotsov says. "Another would be to say that your assignment is to steal. And steal, and steal."

Daz cannot believe his ears. He's frozen his ass off in that Afghanistan moonscape, and winter is coming so he'll be freezing his ass off in a Soviet Union that is clearly headed down the drain and the best he can hope for is sharing a one-bedroom with Mother forever, and maybe one week a summer at a dacha on the Black Sea, and part of him knows, I must get away from her and this is my chance, and the other part screams, This is my chance to give her the life she deserves, and now they offer him a transfer to America for the expressed purpose of making a fortune.

So what's the catch?

"Of course you'll have to become a Jew," Karpotsov says.

"A Jew?" Daz asks. "Why a Jew?"

"How else can we get you in?" Karpotsov asks. "Christ, the Americans are always screaming at us – 'Release some Jews, release some Jews.' Fine, we'll release some Jews, along with them a few of our agents trained in – how did you put it – economic sabotage."

"But to become a Jew…"

"It's a sacrifice, I understand," Karpotsov says. "Perhaps too great a sacrifice to ask…"

"No, no, no, no," Daz says quickly. For a heart-stopping second he sees his chance slipping away. "No, of course I accept the assignment."

Karpotsov finishes his ice cream and grins.

" Mazel tov," he says.

So Daz goes to "Jew school."

This is a little course the KGB sets up where Jewish prisoners teach the Torah, the Diaspora, the Holocaust, and the whole catalog of Russian outrages against the Jews. Daz studies Zionist history, the history of Israel, Jewish culture and tradition. Jewish artists, writers, composers.

For graduation they do a Passover seder.

And Daziatnik's like, Done that. Hand me my airline ticket.

But Karpotsov is like, Not so fast, Jewboy – first there's a little matter of prison.

"Prison?" Daziatnik asks. "You didn't say anything about prison."

"Well, I'm saying it now," Karpotsov tells him on another stroll through the park. "Daz, we need you to infiltrate the mob, the Organizatsiya. They're the people who are sucking the money out of the States. Without being a member, you'd frankly be quite useless. And sadly, the qualification for membership is a stay in the system. To establish your bona fides, as it were."

Daz is furious, at Karpotsov and at himself, because he has let the man lure him into a trap, step by step.

"Can't you just create a criminal record for me?" Daz asks.

"We will," Karpotsov says. "But that by itself wouldn't be safe for you. No, there is knowledge and experience – and connections – that you can only get in prison."

"How much time?" Daz asks.

"Not a long stretch," Karpotsov says. "Eighteen months or so for petty theft. I could order you, but I don't want to do that."

Daz's mind is reeling. A year and a half in prison?

"I don't know, Colonel…"

"And who knows?" Karpotsov asks. "Perhaps we could arrange exit papers for your mother?"

Karpotsov is a slick piece of shit. Like every other piece of shit who handles agents, he knows exactly what buttons can be pushed, and when to push them.

Daz says, "How bad could a few months in jail be?"

Uh-huh.