Changing focus, he mentioned Russian dumping of nuclear waste and reactor cores into the Arctic Sea, poisoning coastal land and water for hundreds of miles. They talked about Meryl Streep and Alar on apples. Wasn't she great in The China Syndrome? That was Jane Fonda. Oh.
Garbegtrov talked about draining Lake Aral, which devastated the center of Russia and destroyed the largest body of fresh water within the former Soviet Union's borders.
They finally grew suspicious, asking if he was really the Nikolai Garbegtrov and demanding he show them his driver's license.
After his talk was through, Garbegtrov stayed behind to speak with members of the environmental group. Something about their attitude struck him as familiar.
He quickly learned that their faith in the dire pronouncements of dubiously accredited doomsayers was unshakable, even with mountains of evidence to the contrary. There was not an ozone hole that was not man-made nor a polar ice cap that was not melting because someone somewhere liked to squirt cheese on his crackers.
If saving an endangered rat in a California farmer's field threw hundreds of human families into chaos, so be it. Everyone knew animals were intrinsically good and humans were, by nature, evil. After all, the only rat on the bridge of the Exxon Valdez was the human kind.
No matter the motives, no matter the bad science, no matter the downright dangerous silliness, they accepted the words of their leaders with pure, blind faith. In short, they were better Communists than any the old Soviet system had ever produced.
On that day, after years of dispirited wandering, Nikolai Garbegtrov finally found his new home. After joining the international environmental movement, Garbegtrov quickly became the poster boy of Green Earth. He traveled the world-lecturing, hectoring. He liked the West especially. He could always be guaranteed a warm greeting by a fawning press. For the ex-Communist premier who had lost an empire, it was almost like the good old days.
The traffic grew heavier as his car drove into the heart of New Briton. Despite the air-conditioning, his head was sweating. The itch began anew. He did his best to ignore it, pulling his golf hat back on.
His car dropped him off in front of the Chamberlain Hotel in the center of New Briton. He was met by a fresh crush of reporters.
Green Earth handlers hustled the former premier up the sidewalk, beneath the gilded canopy and into the hotel lobby.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries with some of the Green Earth leadership, he was led into the grand ballroom and herded onto the dais amid a flurry of flashbulbs and shouted questions. Someone handed him a few 3 x 5 note cards. On them, carefully typed lines had been written out phonetically. Behind the podium, he perched a pair of bifocals on the end of his nose.
The ballroom noise swelled, then subsided. Garbegtrov didn't smile to the crowd as he read Green Earth's statement. He spoke in heavily accented English.
"Ladies and gentlemen." His words echoed out across the ballroom. "The eyes of world are directed here this week. People of good conscience are about to come together in this small country to confront serious, devastating environmental havoc that the West continues to wreak on rest of globe. Now, during this time when environmental misdeeds of the West should be on trial, Mayana has chosen to reveal its new technology for the disposal of waste. We at Green Earth are skeptical of this device. Is it smoke screen to provide cover for polluting America? If it works, what is cost to precious environment? Will release of atoms destabilize ecosystem?
"These are questions for vigilant press to ask. I would caution other leaders of world as they convene here in days that follow to not forget the environmental horrors the United States and others-but mostly United States-have visited on planet. Green Earth remains vigilant."
He tapped his note cards back together. A few reporters shouted from the hall. Garbegtrov held up a staying hand.
"There will be no questions now. I, like you, seek answers. Donations may be sent to Green Earth world headquarters in San Francisco. Is your planet, people."
And with that, Nikolai Garbegtrov walked offstage. He left behind the growing murmur of the dispersing press corps.
Backstage, Garbegtrov's brow was furrowed beneath the brim of his hat. Members of his Green Earth entourage hurried up to meet him.
"Sock it to 'em, comrade," said an intense, bearded man in a hemp suit. He was just the sort of political agitator Garbegtrov would have sent to a gulag back when the Western media used to ignore the fact that Garbegtrov's gulags were standing room only. "Show them the power of Mother Earth."
The former Soviet leader's eyes were flat. This idiot-indeed all of the dolts in Green Earth-had no idea what real power was like. Or, worse, what it was like to lose it.
"Is my room ready?" Garbegtrov grumbled morosely. His head was itching like mad.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry." The man clapped his hands. Garbegtrov's entourage reassembled around the former Soviet premier. Like a sad little tyrant prince surrounded by his pathetic court of sycophants, Nikolai Garbegtrov-itchy tattoo and all-trudged from the shabby backstage.
Chapter 7
Petrovina Bulganin steered her cute little 2002 Ford Thunderbird convertible through the sharp twists and turns of Moscow's narrow old streets. In the urban valleys the growling engine was a nasty rumble that rattled dirty windows high up in ugly Communistera tenements.
Petrovina didn't pay much attention to the engine sound. She was too busy reapplying lipstick in the rearview mirror.
Barely nudging the steering wheel, she flew around a corner. A big truck blocked her side of the street. Two men lugged a ratty sofa down the back ramp.
Petrovina noted the workers with bland impatience. She flew up to them without slowing, cutting sharply at the last moment and zipping around the truck, her rear wheels just nipping the corner of the ramp. The sports car bounced and the men dropped their sofa. They were cursing and raising their fists at her even as she zoomed off down the street. Petrovina waved a dainty hand back at them. Petrovina Bulganin was in a hurry. And when Petrovina Bulganin was in a hurry, she slowed for neither pedestrians nor other vehicles.
A dumpy old woman in a tattered babushka was crossing the street. Petrovina had finished checking her makeup. She frowned as the woman grew larger. Laying on the horn, Petrovina raced straight up to the horrified crone, zooming neatly around her at the last possible moment.
She watched in the mirror. When the woman twirled and fell, it was from shock. Petrovina knew she hadn't hit her. The car handled like a dream.
The Thunderbird was a gift from a French government official. Petrovina had gotten it for a weekend of passion in his family villa outside Paris. The deal was a simple one. The Frenchman got the lovely Petrovina Bulganin, warm and without reservation. She got her new Thunderbird, along with the latest detailed intelligence on the whens, wheres and hows of NATO's integration with the former Soviet republics of Western Europe. The latter included up-to-date espionage and government contacts-payrolls, codes and time schedules-within four countries. The former included fully independent suspension and an overhead-cam V8.
Petrovina loved her little Thunderbird. She was so glad that Ford had decided to make them again. It was a beautiful little joy, sleek and dangerous at the same time. Much like Petrovina Bulganin.
Petrovina was part of the new wave of Russian espionage agents. Brash, young, good at their game-none of whom had ever set foot inside KGB headquarters. Not that they had not been in the actual building. But by the time this generation came around, the KGB was the SVR. Many in their field had never even known life in the old KGB.
There was a time not too long before when that would have been unthinkable. But ten years was an eternity in the espionage business. The old KGB men were retiring out of the service or moving up to desk jobs. The void was now being filled by young agents for whom the old Soviet system was something that had been dismantled while they were still laughing as children on playgrounds. Those same children-now grown-had known adulthood only in the new Russia.
Petrovina had not been groomed for the espionage business from early childhood or plucked out of school by a keen-eyed KGB scout. When she completed her studies, she entered the job market like anyone else. Her language skills and intelligence quickly landed her a dull desk job with the SVR. She might have stayed for years in that dreary little out-of-the-way position if her personnel file hadn't found its way into a special set of hands.
It had all started nineteen months before.
The events unfolded so quickly Petrovina was fuzzy on all the details. She was working at her desk one Friday morning translating English-language intercepts from Kosovo when her supervisor came to collect her.
Petrovina wasn't sure what was going on. The man brought her to the back of the building, to a corridor and elevator that she hadn't known existed. Two minutes later she was stunned when she found herself being ushered into the office of Pavel Zatsyrko, the head of the SVR.
As a lowly language clerk toiling away in the basement, she had never had cause to catch the eye of someone so important. Briefly she wondered if she was being fired.
Zatsyrko did not offer her a chair. He sat behind his desk, the slats of the blinds closed on the morning sun.
"You have been reassigned," the SVR head announced dully. He didn't look her in the eye. He was looking down at the file on his desk.
"Sir?" Petrovina questioned.
"Here."
He slid her the file. Hesitantly-for she still did not know what was going on-she picked it up. She was surprised to see the file was her own. All of her employment records, all of the data that had been collected on her when she joined the SVR, her entire life-everything was in the file.
"Bring this with you to your new assignment. Your desk has already been emptied. Collect the box with your personal belongings on your way out. If you are asked, you never worked here. The rest will be explained when you get there."
Confused, Petrovina asked where "there" was. Pavel Zatsyrko offered her a withering look and pointed to the file before turning his attention to his desktop and other, more important matters of his workday.
Petrovina found a small scrap of paper in the back of her personnel file. A pink Post-it note with an address.
She took the bus-back then she could only afford public transportation-as far as it would go, then walked the rest of the way. She found the building in an out-of-the-way corner of a bustling Moscow district. It was an impossibly huge slab of concrete that occupied an entire city block.
As she drove her Thunderbird up to the building this day, she thought of herself nineteen months ago. This day she had the top down on her car. Her tousled mane of glorious hair blew wild in the cold, its raven hue matching the twinkling cunning of her coal black eyes.