“What—that every kid wants to be an astronaut?”
“Nyet,”she replied quickly. “I talk about moon”—the moon, for Chrissake! What's so fucking difficult about it?“There is English word for this moon thing you do. It is, uh, how do you say… falcefekaceja… ah!Hoax! You make hoax!”
“We make ahoax. Are you trying to say the moon landing was a hoax?”
“Da!”she exclaimed happily, and she popped upright and stared down at me. “This is hoax against Soviet people! Everybody know this.”
“Knows,”I replied through clenched teeth. “Everybody knowsthis, Yulia, and you're not actually gonna look at me with a straight face and say that you think the United States faked the moon landings to embarrass Mother Russia! Please don't tell me this!” I stared at her, incredulous.
She compressed her lips and shook her head slowly. “This landing you speak of is filmed in movie studio. Everyone in rest of world know this. Only herepeople believe. How do you think America fly to moon when Soviet Union can't? We had female in space while you were flying monkey! And suddenly you beat us to moon? Oh, please—this is hoax! Look at pictures. You see flag wave on moon, but there is no atmosphere. So how can flag wave? And day is night, when night must be day; and earth rise, when it must fall. And there is belt of radiation…” and on and on KGB went, explaining how the moon landing was nothing more than a giant hoax filmed in a Hollywood movie studio, with the sole purpose of embarrassing her beloved Soviet Union. “We will talk about this with Igor when you meet,” continued KGB, “and then you will see truth. Igor is famous scientist. He tame fire.”
I shook my head in disbelief, not knowing quite how to respond to that. “Well,” I said, fighting back the urge to tell her that her former Soviet Union, including its defunct space program, had become nothing more than a joke, “every human being is entitled to their opinion, although I willtell you that to pull off a conspiracy like that you'd need a thousand people, with every last one of them keeping the same monumental secret, and in thiscountry, I can assure you, if more than two people know something, it doesn't stay secret very long. And I don't want to even mention the fact that there were actually threemoon landings, not just one. So let's just say, for argument's sake, that the government actually hadfaked the first moon landing and had been lucky enough to get away with it—why would they press their luck again? It would be like: ‘Hey, gotcha once, Mr. Brezhnev! Now I want you to watch very closely as I do it again, and see if you can catch me this time!’ But, hey, what do I know? I mean, maybe aliens did land in Roswell, and maybe you wereright yesterday when you said America never actually fought in World War Two”—that was KGB's other pearl of wisdom, shared with me by the tennis court after I beat her six-love, six-love in eleven and a half minutes, at which point we play-wrestled on the grass, an activity that ended with me screaming, “Let me go! Stop! You're hurting me! You're hurting me!”—”and that America stole the plans to the first atomic bomb from Russia and not the other way around.” This had tumbled from her commie-red lips as we watched a History Channel documentary discussing weapons of war. KGB had informed me that Russian people—which is to say, Soviet people—were responsible for virtually every meaningful invention, from the atomic bomb to the X-ray machine to fine literature to Bazooka chewing gum. “The truth is, Yulia—and I say this out of love, as in ya lublu tibea—what I'm really interested in is Igor's cure for fire. Now, tell me what that'sall about, because that'swhat I find most fascinating!”
She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head wryly. “Wouldn't youlike to knows!”
“Yeah,” I shot back, “I would like to knows!So why don't you tellsme!”
She stared at me with narrowed eyes. Then she motioned with her heart-shaped chin over to our perfect little beach fire, at the base of which rested a Duraflame. “You see flame?”
I nodded. “Yeah, what about theflames?”
KBG snapped her long, slender fingers, and the air went pop!“Just like this,” she said proudly, “Igor can make flame go away.”
“And how does he do that?” I asked skeptically.
“He control atmosphere,” she answered nonchalantly, as if controlling the atmosphere were no more difficult than adjusting a thermostat.
I looked at her for a moment, astonished, and also trying to calculate how much money I could have made with some wacky Russian scientist willing to claim he controlled the atmosphere. It was just the sort of thing the Strattonites would have eaten up. I could have stood Igor before the boardroom dressed in a wizard's costume, like Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter,and I would have said into the microphone: “Behold Professor Igor and his cure for fire….” The Strattonites would have gone wild-clapping and cheering and then lighting Lake Success on fire, so Igor could show his stuff.
I said to KGB: “Ohhh, I get it now! I think I've actually seen this in the movies. It was in Austin Powers:Dr. Evil had figured out a way to control the weather, and he was looking to hold the world hostage. On second thought, maybe that was James Bond. Or was it Superman?” I shrugged. “I'm not really sure.”
She shrugged back. “Laughs all you want, big shot, but I not joking. Igor can cure fire, and I am shareholder in company. One day he will…” and as KGB kept talking, I stopped listening. I think she actually believed what she was saying, and not just all this nonsense about Professor Igor but everything. She had grown up with a different set of history books, listening to Soviet TV, where wewere the Evil Empire determined to rule the world. I snuck a peek at my watch: It was nine-thirty. I had to be at the Plaza Athénée by nine a.m. tomorrow morning, which meant I had to leave the Hamptons at six-thirty.
It was time to end this night, which I couldn't do until I had made love to KGB in front of the fire. It was our ritual, after all, something that both of us looked forward to each day. So now I would have to agree with her. Yes, I would say: In spite of my earlier skepticism, I am now convinced that Igor's cure for fire shall change the world. Now, be a good girlfriend, KGB, and make love to me. I don't care that you're a closet communist. I love you anyway!
And that was exactly what happened.
The next morning, at precisely eleven a.m., the Chef and James Loo walked into Room 1104 at the Hotel Plaza Athénée. It was a one-bedroom, two-bathroom suite, and the Chef and James Loo were likes two lambs walking into a slaughterhouse.
I greeted them at the front door, first hugging the Chef and then exchanging a hearty handshake with James Loo, who was short, thin, slightly balding, and wearing an expensive sharkskin suit with no necktie.
I led him and the Chef into the main salon, directly off the entry gallery. The bedroom was on the opposite side of the suite, and the door was closed nice and tight—and for good reason. Inside that bedroom, wearing headphones, revolvers, and some very serious expressions, were four FBI agents—namely, OCD, the Mormon, and two tech guys, both of whom were in their mid-thirties and looked liked they should be working at Circuit City, fixing computers.
We had spent the last two hours analyzing the living room-checking various camera angles and such and places to hide the bugs. It was a small space, perhaps fourteen by twenty feet. Three tall windows that looked out over 64th Street admitted a great deal of light— toomuch light, actually, according to the tech guys, so we closed the bordello-red curtains to reduce the glare.