Forty-two hours later I was in Moscow.
The day began with cheerful sunlight. The weather allowed for going about on foot. I parked Fedya in the first lot that came along and, without losing a second, began preparing for the extraction of the seal. First I thought up a name for the operation. «The Second Seal». Simple and tasteful. Then I sketched out in my head an approximate plan of action. As point one of the plan I designated preparation, which I in turn divided into three subpoints: a – material provision, b – acquisition of information, c – taking the decision.
Point two of the plan – the extraction itself.
Point three – evacuation to Hamburg.
Point four – transfer of the money from the «Commerzbank» to «Heidemann».
Point five – return to Romanych.
Rather a lot of points, and ticking them all off was not going to be simple. Only the fulfillment of the first point seemed real. The rest glimmered somewhere off in the distance in barely visible flashes, as ghostly as an apartment for every Soviet family by the year two thousand. Hm…
I threw all extraneous thoughts out of my head and set about carrying out the first subpoint of the first point. Surprisingly, this turned out to be no easy matter. Nobody had any wish to cash my traveler’s checks. The morning and the day went on senseless dealings with assorted employees of assorted offices. Only toward evening did I manage to obtain four thousand eight hundred dollars in cash. God knows what it was all about! Indignant and perplexed, I stuffed the money into my pockets, bought a classifieds paper and called a real estate agency from the nearest pay phone. There they heard me out attentively, then questioned me in detail about my possible wishes and at the very end offered me three options to choose from. I settled on the quickest one. A two-room apartment in Nagatino could be rented that same evening. «So why are we dragging the rubber?» I asked the lady speaking to me, and arranged an immediate meeting with the owner of the apartment.
Renting the apartment turned out to be far easier than getting the owner out of it. The man, an uncomplicated milling-machine operator from ZIL, could not settle down at all and insistently demanded that I drink a bottle of cognac with him for the housewarming, or else there would be no living in the place. I had bought the bottle at his request half an hour earlier, after settling up with him and the girl from the agency. The agency girl, incidentally, galloped off right after that, while the owner stayed sitting in the kitchen. His legs held him up uncertainly, but his speech apparatus was still functioning. “You don’t drink one bottle twice,” he instructed me. “Come on, pour it out to the end!”
In the end I applied a certain amount of force and put him out of the apartment. Said: “Don’t lose the money!” and slammed the door. To the rattling of the doorbell, long and insistent, I did not react. I walked around the apartment getting acquainted with the furnishings. One bed, one sofa, one armchair, one chair, one stool in the kitchen, one table there too and one refrigerator, one telephone in the hall, one television in the big room… Practically every item was present in the singular. Evidently so that it would be easier to count them later. When the ringing stopped and the tramp of departing footsteps confirmed the owner’s exit, I undressed and went to bed.
In the morning the first thing I did was move Fedya to the lot under my windows. I got talking with the car owners there and got straight what costs what in Moscow when driving on foreign plates. I filed the information away and at the nearest exchange point changed five hundred bucks into rubles, preparing a little wad of notes in case of unforeseen encounters with the authorities. Then, reckoning it came out to rather a lot, I cut the wad in half. Strolled around the neighborhood shops, bought a few household odds and ends, wandered around the market. In the end I loaded up so heavily that my hands weren’t enough. Came home like a laden camel.
After a lunch thrown together in haste, I leafed through the classifieds paper from the day before and groaned over the prices. Well, I never! My word!
My soul creaked, my insides resisted as best they could, and I did violence to myself:
– Hello. Miss, good afternoon. It says here: sale of cellular telephones with a visit to the buyer. Have I got the right number? Aha, I’m exactly the buyer. Yes, yes. Only, you see, I have a dacha in Kushchino. Will the signal reach the dacha? You guarantee it? Definitely? What sonnet? Makes no difference to me. And if it doesn’t reach? Can I return it? Thank you. Could you send an agent out to me? Yes, take down the address…
In short, I spent the day in domestic bustle, tried on the hide of a simple Moscow housewife.
In the evening, a late one, black and starless, I settled myself at the table in the little kitchen. Behind the wall the neighbors had some Russian-language rock outfit unknown to me making a cacophony, and it interfered with concentrating. I studied the darkness outside the window, frowned, remembered Romanych, my merry life on San Marco… Sun, air, palms, sea… I sighed and somehow scratched away with a pencil at a map of the Moscow region, jabbed at it with a compass, scratched the top of my head with my index finger… I pined for the distant island and worked up the reconnaissance measures which, as Hans taught, precede the moment of taking the decision itself… He put things elaborately, the devil, may the earth rest light on him.
For reconnaissance I allotted from three days to one week. Depending on circumstances.