Phantom orbit, p.5
Phantom Orbit, page 5
Hoffman handed Volkov a business card that said he was a vice president at an investment firm that specialized in technology investments. He said the firm was building a portfolio of joint venture companies in China, especially in the aerospace industry. He poured two glasses of wine. He saw Volkov studying the food and made him a little plate of prosciutto, sopressata, and Genoa salami.
“Za Zdarovje,” said Hoffman, raising his glass. His Russian pronunciation was near-perfect. Volkov clinked his glass. The food and wine were delicious. The poor exchange student from the edge of Siberia ate and drank heartily.
“Maybe you can help us,” said Hoffman. “Edith told me that you’re studying astronautics. A lot of smart Chinese are jumping into that sector. We think we can make some money with them. As the Chinese say, it’s a ‘win-win.’ We just need contacts.”
Volkov shook his head. “I’m a graduate student. I don’t know anybody, really.”
“But you meet people,” said Hoffman.
Volkov put up the palms of his two big hands. “Mister, please. Like I told you, I am just a graduate student. I am here on a scholarship. The Chinese pay for it. I do some work, part-time. The Chinese pay me. That’s the way it is. I’m sorry.”
“I heard a Russian proverb once,” said Hoffman. “If you don’t take risks, you don’t drink champagne.”
Volkov eased back from the table. “I’m a graduate student on a scholarship,” he repeated. “I’m not scared of anything.”
Hoffman pressed on. “I gather from Edith that you were interested in the Intelsat crash. Me, too, that was a big fuckup. How do you say that in Russian?
“Obosrat’sya,” said Volkov. “It means, ‘Shit in your pants.’ ”
“Well, that’s what happened. It was an expensive satellite. Made by Loral in New York. We helped put that deal together. Now, blooey. I gather the Chinese are embarrassed. They should be.”
They talked for nearly an hour, finishing the bottle of wine and the plate of charcuterie. Hoffman tried several times to draw Volkov out on his work and his Chinese contacts. But the Russian played dumb. He didn’t know anyone or anything.
Volkov became animated when they talked about sports. Hoffman was a hockey fan, it seemed. His family was from Detroit. He had watched the great Sergei Fedorov, a star of the old Soviet national team who had defected to play for the Red Wings.
“I watched Fedorov, too,” said Volkov wistfully. “Before he went to America, he played for CKSA Moscow. The Red Army Team, everyone called it. When he left, we knew it was over.”
“Great hockey player,” said Hoffman. “Best skater in the NHL. It’s a new world, my friend.”
Hoffman wanted to order another bottle of wine, but Volkov said it would be unfair. Americans didn’t know how to drink. And he wanted to get back to campus before they closed the gates.
* * *
The day Edith returned from Hong Kong, Volkov met her at the student center and invited her to dinner that night. He had a little money now, thanks to his job at the institute. He suggested a restaurant near the university that served steamed dumplings. “My nickel,” he said. He was trying to learn American slang. He wanted to talk. It was time. He didn’t want to be “unsettled” anymore.
Edith gave him a coy smile as he made the dinner invitation, and then shook her head. She had a plan of her own. “Come up to my room instead,” she said. “My roommate is away.” She opened her big purse. Inside was a bottle of vodka, a box of crackers, and a wedge of cheese. “A private party,” she said, putting her arm through his.
When they were upstairs, Volkov embraced her passionately. He enfolded her in his big arms, and his hands were under her sweater and then her skirt. She pressed tightly against him, but as he tried to maneuver her toward the bed, she stepped away. “Let’s take it slow,” she said. He nodded but couldn’t resist and came at her again.
“Go slow, baby,” she said, backing away again. “I mean it.”
Edith sat him down on the bed. She got two glasses from the bathroom and poured a shot of vodka for him and one for herself and opened the crackers and cheese. Volkov didn’t want to drink at first. He was wounded.
“I don’t get you,” he said. “So beautiful. Hot and cold. You’re not like a Russian girl. Not like anybody.”
“We don’t know each other yet, Ivan. You barely know me.” She smoothed her skirt and combed her hair with her fingers, so it looked less ruffled.
“Okay. What’s your story, anyway?” He took a swig of vodka, and then another. She refilled his glass. She swept her hair back from her face and shook her head slightly to let the hair fall free.
“I told you, I’m an Irish girl from Massachusetts. A town called Holyoke, on the Connecticut River, almost in New York.”
“What’s it like, this Holyoke?”
“Industrial town. Paper mills. Factories. They’ve mostly closed down now.”
“It sounds like Magnitogorsk. My town. The jobs went away, but the people stayed, the ones who were too old or too poor to escape. I got away.”
“Me, too,” said Edith. She took a big swig of vodka. She was a drinker, too, in addition to everything else.
“Were your parents rich?”
“Not really. My father edited the Holyoke newspaper, the News-Transcript. Peter Ryan, everyone calls him Pete. My mother Kate wrote the editorials. They didn’t have much money, but when I was growing up, they seemed smarter than other people. They were Democrats. Most people in our neighborhood were Republicans.”
“What is he like, your father?” asked Volkov.
“Well, he likes sports, the way everybody does. And he’s patriotic. He sings the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ out loud at Red Sox games. He raises an American flag in his front yard every morning. He was wounded in Vietnam, too. He wasn’t a big hero, just unlucky. In the wrong place when a shell landed. But, yeah, he’s Mr. Red, White, and Blue.”
“My father was patriotic, too. ‘My country right or wrong.’ Isn’t that what you say?
“Yes, that’s what we all say. What did he do, your dad?”
“He was a steelworker. They wore him out. He was unlucky. Russia was unlucky, maybe.”
“I’m sorry.” She poured them both another vodka.
In the long pause, Volkov looked at her. “What was it like, your neighborhood?” asked Volkov.
She closed her eyes and bit her lips. It was as if she were fighting something. She opened them and leaned toward the big Russian.
“We lived in the north part of town, near a bend in the Connecticut River. The streets were all named after Ivy League colleges. First there was Yale Street. Go, Eli! Then Dartmouth, Harvard, Amherst, Stanford, Princeton. North of that was Blessed Sacrament, where we went to church. Small world. Too small for me.”
He studied her face. He’d had a girlfriend, back in Moscow. But she wasn’t remotely as interesting as this woman.
“Did you have secrets? Isn’t that what Catholics do? Go to church and confess their secrets.”
“Of course. Everybody has secrets.” She tightened for a moment and closed her eyes again. “My senior year in high school, my best friend got pregnant. I helped her get an abortion. But I didn’t tell anyone. That was a big secret.”
“What did you say about it at church?”
“Honestly? I lied. When I went to confession, I said to Father Murphy, ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’ I mentioned that I had shoplifted a purse at the department store, which was true, and that I’d had impure thoughts, which was also true. But I didn’t say anything about the abortion. Father Murphy asked me if there was anything else, and I said, ‘That is all I can remember. I am sorry for these and all my sins.’ And that was it. But I never went back to church.”
“So you’re a good liar,” said Volkov.
“Pretty good.”
He put his arms around her once more and kissed her. She relaxed into his embrace at first, and he put his hand under her sweater again. But she shook her head. She looked terribly unhappy, suddenly, as if she had unintentionally broken something precious. He pulled back, wounded again.
“I get it. You don’t want to have sex with me.”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “I’ve wanted to since we met. But, how can I say this? It wouldn’t be right.”
“Why not? If it feels right, then it is right. That’s what I think. We don’t need to have sex. Just let me hold you.”
She shook her head. “It’s wrong,” she said. “I can’t explain.” She looked away. “It would be using you. Crossing a line.”
“What line? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There are things about me that you don’t know. Secrets.”
“We all have secrets. Like you said.”
“But these are different. They could get you in trouble.”
He embraced her again and began to kiss her. But there were tears streaming down her face. And then she was sobbing.
“You have to go,” she said. “Right now.”
“What’s wrong? What did I do?”
“Nothing. It’s my fault. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Volkov tried to comfort her, but she pulled back and buried her head in her hands.
“I mean it,” she said. Her tears continued, and through her weeping, she moaned, “Please, please, please, just go away.”
* * *
They saw each other just one more time in Beijing. Edith approached, looking very drawn, outside his dorm. It was in a remote spot, shielded by trees from passersby and from the cameras that were outside every building.
“Hi,” she said. He was silent. “I am supposed to tell you something. It’s, like, I have to ask, or I’ll get in trouble. My friend Hoffman wants to see you again.”
“Bitch,” muttered Volkov. He was angry. He had missed her, achingly, and this was what she wanted to say to him.
“Tell this Hoffman to fuck off,” he said. “And you can fuck off, too.”
A vexed look crossed her face. It was as if she had been ordered to do something that she detested. “Please see Hoffman,” she repeated. “It could be the best thing, ever. For you, and me, and maybe for both of us.”
Volkov looked at her carefully, silently, and played back in his mind the events of the last few weeks.
“It is not possible.” He paused, shook his head, and backed away a step. “Do you work for . . .” He halted in midsentence. He didn’t want to say the name of the agency. It was death. He started again. “Do you work for . . . the embassy?”
“No,” she said. There was the slightest warble in her voice. “I’m a graduate student, like you.” That wasn’t enough. She knew she had to say more.
“I don’t know what I’ll do when I go back to the States. Work for the government, maybe. I don’t know. But right now, I’m a student. One of my professors arranged it. At Yale.”
Volkov nodded. He swallowed hard. He took another step back.
Edith reached out with a piece of paper of paper in her hand. Volkov could see an address and telephone number, written in block letters.
“I probably won’t see you again. But if you ever want to talk to me, or talk to people like Larry Hoffman, this is my parents’ address and phone number in Holyoke. Call them. They’ll know how to get in touch with me. Wherever I am.”
Volkov hesitated. His heart was pounding. He knew what this was about now, exactly.
“Please take it,” she said. “Life is long. You never know.”
Volkov looked around, to make sure no one was watching. He took the handwritten note. She turned and walked away.
At the bottom of the note, below her parents’ address and phone number, she had written the words: “I’m sorry.”
8
Beijing, April 1996
Professor Cao Lin requested another meeting with Ivan Volkov in early spring when the mid-term exams were over. Volkov had buried himself in his work the month after he said farewell to Edith face-to-face and in his heart. In the numb, solitary precision of his academic studies, he had focused so intensely that he had received the highest grades in all of his classes. His marks in radio astronomy and computational fluid dynamics were “starred” by his professors, which meant that they were exceptionally high.
The meeting with Cao Lin was at the Academy of Sciences. When Volkov was escorted to the big office on the top floor, the academician greeted him warmly, grasping the big Russian’s hand in both of his own. Cao Lin was wearing an open-neck shirt and a new pair of expensive shoes. He looked like the host of a variety show.
On a table, Cao Lin had arrayed some gifts for his visitor. A bottle of Japanese whiskey and another of Russian vodka, a new laptop computer, and a fine cashmere shawl. There was a thick envelope, too, stuffed with cash.
“For your mother,” said Cao Lin, pointing to the shawl. “You must miss her. We can bring her to China to visit you.”
Volkov stroked the soft fabric with his hand. His mother wouldn’t know what to do with something so elegant. She had only known roughness in her life. And it was impossible to imagine her visiting Beijing. She had only traveled to Moscow once.
“You are very kind to think of my mother, Professor Cao. But her health is not good. I do not think she could leave her home.”
“Pity,” said the academician. He motioned for Volkov to sit. They talked about his recent academic performance and his work at the institute. He noted particular areas where Volkov was proficient. He seemed to have received a briefing from every professor.
“A Russian man named Krastev from your embassy came to see me last week,” said Cao Lin after a pause. “He told me the Russians have an interest in you. A future engineer in the new Russia, I think he said. Is that true?”
“I went to see Mr. Krastev when I first arrived in Beijing. I was told it was necessary. I haven’t been back to see him since then. If he has an interest in me, it’s not reciprocated.”
There was a long silence, as if Cao Lin were waiting for his guest to say more, and when he didn’t, the Chinese man broke the silence.
“How is your personal life, if I may ask, Mr. Volkov?” Cao Lin ventured.
“Nothing to say, sir. All I do, really, is work. No time for anything else. That’s the way I like it.”
“No girlfriend?” asked the academician gently.
“I did, sort of. But I stopped seeing her. She is a big nyet for me now.”
“An American girl?”
So he knew. How could it be otherwise? The Chinese watched everything.
“Yes. An American. Edith Ryan. I did not feel comfortable with her. So now I stay away.”
“Yes,” said Cao Lin, as if he already knew that they had separated, as well. “Probably for the best. Having a girlfriend can be a burden for a young man. Too many, what, choices? Probably better to be alone, until you find, we can say, the right girl.”
Volkov nodded. The Chinese had been observing her, too, inevitably. He worried, for a moment, about Edith. But she was a student, like him. She had told him so. He put it out of his mind.
“I am going be very un-Chinese, and say something direct,” said Cao Lin. “I want to trust you. I need someone like you, who is smart, very smart. But who is not Chinese or American. Someone who can go places where these people could not go. Who could act on my behalf.”
“To do what?” asked Volkov.
“It is too soon for me to explain that. Much too soon. But would you be interested in working with me, as a special friend?”
“I don’t know,” said Volkov honestly. “I need to understand better what you are doing.”
“Ha! Of course you do. You are too smart to be stupid.”
Cao Lin went to his desk, picked up his phone, and said a few words in Chinese. Then he returned, a more serious look on his face.
“Do you remember, at our last meeting, we talked about the new American Global Positioning System, this ‘GPS’ ”?
“Yes, certainly. I told you about our Russian GLONASS. But you didn’t seem to think it was very good.”
“It isn’t. Take my word. But this GPS will change the world. It will be so powerful everyone, everywhere will depend on it. Right now it can tell an airplane or a ship where it is, in an instant. But maybe someday soon it can tell each of us the same thing. So that we know exactly where we are, always.”
“How would it do that?” asked Volkov.
“I think you must have a mobile phone.”
Volkov pulled his Samsung phone from his pocket.
“Before too long, the whole world will have one of those. And do you know what? The phones will all connect with this GPS. Everything will. It will be the arrow that points everyone in exactly the right direction. And the clock that orders every encounter, every business transaction. It will be an essential part of, what do the Americans call it, the ‘connected’ world? But do you know what? This GPS is not always, you know, reliable.”
“Why not? I thought you said it was the best.”
“It is. But sometimes there are gaps. They make us wonder.”
Volkov leaned forward. The Chinese professor was trying to tell him something, but he didn’t understand. “What gaps?” Volkov asked.
Cao Lin tilted his angular face, as if measuring his guest. “Do you follow the news?” he asked.
“Not really,” answered Volkov. “I read China Daily at the library sometimes. But I’m not very interested in the news.”
“Smart fellow. Stick to your studies. But perhaps you have heard about the recent difficulty in Taiwan. Chinese missiles and American ships and all of that. CNN can’t stop talking about it.”
