DAVID GUREVICH

VODKA FOR BREAKFAST

Objective reality is a nightmare caused by insufficient alcohol content in ones blood.

ANONYMOUS

EXCERPT
HOW GENERAL KOGAN DID NOT SAVE PRESIDENT KENNEDY
SOMEONE AT THE COMMITTEE HAD GOOFED when they sent an American nutcase named Lee Harvey Oswald to prove his love for the Workers Paradise at the Gorizont radio factory in Minsk. Whoever made this tragic mistake thought of Minsk as a backwater where nothing worth CIAs attention had ever happened. In that, the KGB was just another bureaucracy, whose left hand was only dimly aware of the right ones existence. By now, the Oswald surveillance files have been successfully marketed to American checkbook media, so that the entire world or, rather, the few who care could see how the whole thing had been overplanned, overmanned, and ultimately overdone. I do not question the authenticity of yawning descriptions of poor Lee, with his ejaculation and liquor-holding problems, being bandied about from one factory girl to another, from one over-orchestrated picnic to another, like so many episodes of Laverne &

Shirley without the laugh track. The Yankee nerds private life was mishandled by the old Party farts, whose ideas of what goes on between men and women came from chirpy 30s SocialistRealist comedies: a worker meets a farmer girl at the Heavy Industry Pavilion of the Peoples Achievements Exhibition, they listen to the nightingale trills in the moonlight, he gently drapes his coat, festooned with clinking Socialist Labor medals, over her shoulders, she responds with the most bovine of smiles, their mouths move at each other with all the passion of Train A and Train B, never mind the sad, way too sad, Oystrakh violin in the background cut to the moon and fade out. In short, a BelarusFilm production. What they needed to handle Lees private life was Colonel Dolly Levy. There had been Dollies aplenty in the old OGPU, but then they were all purged in the 30s. By the 60s, when this story takes place, the KGB had no room for her kind. Theres always a conspiracy afoot, and always more than one; enough of them are run by complete goofballs, so that eventually all the conspiracies cancel one another out. In this case, the wrench in the works was thrown by KGB Captain Anatoly Yermilov, a freckled twig of a kid in bottle-thick glasses who had never outgrown his childhood passion for Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and their Russki counterpart Aleksandr Belyayev. How people like Yermilov ever find their way into the ranks of the most powerful secret police in the world is another mystery wrapped in an acrostic. In the eyes of Personnel, Yermilov had certain assets: (a) his impeccably proletarian roots; (b) his better-than-proletarian roots, his father being a beat cop in a small blue-collar Volga town; (c) his Aryan Russian, that is extraction. But Comrade Yermilov had never shown much fervor for the Cause or any inclination to write reports on his fellow cadets. About his per-

David Gurevich

formance at the firing range, the less said the better: he was a danger to anyone within fifty meters except for the target, that is. It took an eagle eye of someone like my de facto godfather, General Kogan, to discover this working-class prodigy who was more fascinated by The War of the Worlds than by Das Kapital. ... FORMALLY, YERMILOV WAS NEVER A PART OF LAB 52. Hell, we were never even in the Committees phone book. But Anatoly was a curious kid, though he was working for an agency that did not encourage this quality. Every scientist is a Casanova dying to tell of his exploits, or, to get morbid, a Raskolnikov dying to spill his guts. This is why they have conferences and seminars; but if youre working for the KGB, this avenue is closed. So where else would Yermilov go to shoot the breeze but to a certain basement in Andrei Rublev Street? Yermilov had no psychological workup on Oswald; to him, psychology was as obscure (and possibly as much of a sham) as Party History. But he sensed that one day Lee Harvey would go back. No sane person could imagine that someone who had grown up in the West would willingly spend the rest of his life in Minsk. According to Timur, who had just joined the Lab, he helped Yermilov test the tarakan the cockroach on prison inmates. The politicals had been mostly gone by then, he would explain to me later, and whatever ones were left would soon be gone, too; but what Ivan the Pickpocket would refuse a free fiksa, a gold tooth? They started with sending the simplest instructions: Walk to the left to the right pick your nose put the booger in your mouth. The latter was just an amusing bit at the end of a long working day. They were not sadists. They never transmitted anything to Ivans tarakans that would suggest

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killing one another or even exposing themselves to the guards. They were ready to progress to more complex instructions that would require an Ivan to be released and function in the uncontrolled environment. Although they had selected the mildest, nonviolent cases a pickpocket, an embezzler, a black-market trader in Finnish-made socks springing them free while keeping our reasons secret required a lot of red tape. And then they heard that Oswald had rebelled, asking to go back to the States. And the top brass were prepared to wash their hands off him and let him go! Yermilov was desperate. Implanting the transmitter in Lees dental work was not a problem, though he would have to fly in a Moscow anesthesiologist to make sure his patient woke up. But there was no telling how the tarakan would work once its carrier was outside the huge controlled environment called the USSR. Shouldnt you take it up with the Chairman? Timur asked Yermilov. Surely the KGB could take time off from harassing abstract painters and verslibre poets Yermilovs eyes opened wide, as if Timur had spoken French. Whatever happened outside the Lab was of little interest to him. He had no idea what a vers-libre poet was, nor why the KGB should harass him, nor that the KGB in effect had. and detain the Yank for a while? . . . you could ask the Chairman for an extension Yermilov lowered his head. By then, Timur knew what it meant. Assym bakhur lukum, Timur cursed. A rusty nail in your mamas ass. You never told the Chairman? Yermilov stared into the wall, as if facing the Politburo or, rather, the Grand Inquisition and looking quite Galileo-like at that. Eppure se torna! Im not letting the sonuvabitch out of the country without a tarakan.

David Gurevich

... THE REST OF THE STORY REACHED ME from different sources, and evaluating their veracity could take the rest of my life. Even Kogan, who stayed on the sidelines of Yermilovs project, could not claim he knew exactly who had messed up at what stage. Whenever the late American presidents name came up, Kogan only sighed and knitted his bushy eyebrows. A tragedy of errors, he called it. The KGB was a Soviet institution, meaning no one really wanted to work. But in Oswalds case, they had to do something. Which, according to Kogan, made the Yank a major pebble in the KGBs shoe. The idea of a former U.S. Marine moving to the Soviet Union and not being a spy it did not compute. Yet, whether one used Occams or a Remington razor in the morning, there was no other explanation. The guy was a simple, corn-fed lunatic. What Im saying, Kogan said, is that it was well-nigh impossible for Yermilov to secure any kind of official sanction to monitor LHOs movements, to say nothing of transmitting instructions to his tooth. Which tooth was it, by the way? I asked. Kogan looked at me as if I were an idiot. What am I, a dentist? A tooth is a tooth. Kogan lent a hand, using informal channels, bypassing the station chiefs, mislabeling assignments. It was nothing but trouble. None of our agents wanted to go to Texas. San Francisco, L.A., Miami theyd go in a minute. Fort Worth, they want to go the first thing in the morning, do the transmission, catch the next plane back East. Then, pad the expense report and pocket the hotel money. With these goniffs, you dont even know if they actually did the transmission. Besides, it is not enough to send him instructions to go out and have two vodka tonics at Carousel Club; you have to follow

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up, to make sure he goes there, he buys the drinks its a full-time job. All these bastards wanted to do was seduce UN secretaries on the expense account. He shook his head with so much conviction, it touched my heart. Like any true believer, Kogan never stopped blaming the failure of the Soviet system on peoples laziness. ... YERMILOVS LUCKY BREAK CAME when a Soviet agent sent to Dallas got drunk and left the transmitter on when ordering two shots of Johnny Walker. Shortly thereafter, the somewhat confused Oswald drove up to the house of Major General John E. Walker, and fired two shots through the window. Neither one hit the target Oswald was a notoriously poor marksman but the incident convinced Kogan that a hands-on policy was required. So, in the fall of 63, I sent our boychik to New Orleans, Kogan said. Dont even ask what kind of stupid excuse I made up, recruiting Cajuns or something. Had to make a big withdrawal from my favor bank. Had I known what this meshugga would come up with A dedicated scientist, Yermilov tailed Lee with a vengeance and finesse, never hurtling his subject too far out of the orbit. Go to the drugstore buy a shampoo return the shampoo. He needed to develop full control over the receiver. Sooner or later, the opportunity to do something spectacular would present itself. Yet something was wrong. Either the signal was not clear enough, or Lee was not flossing properly, or on the contrary he had had some dental work done that damaged the receiver. Or, perhaps, Yermilov was smoking too much dope or took one trip too many. Away from Timurs constraints, the bad habits he had acquired at the Lab blossomed in the Big Easy.

David Gurevich

Whatever it was, on September 27, Lee showed up at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City and declared he wanted to go back to the U.S.S.R. and thus escape the constant surveillance and harassment on the part of the FBI. (Anatoly had flunked street surveillance at the Academy.) It was like a bad trip, Yermilov would tell me later, sitting in the next room, listening to this freak going on about Socialism. I imagine how red his ears must have been. But then Oswald began to rant about U.S. policies towards Cuba, and a lightbulb went up. Lee Harvey would go to Cuba and attempt to assassinate Castro! In vain, of course, considering Oswalds abovementioned lack of marksmanship. So what? It would be one for the books. Yesss! Following the transmitted suggestion, Oswald hotfooted it to the Cuban Embassy, where he was . . . told to wait. Here, Anatolys nerves must have given out, or he must have been out of pot, for he burst into the embassy, looking for a Cuban colleague who could issue the stupid Yanqui a visa pronto. I dont even remember what stupid story I came up with, Anatoly told me later, but it must have been really dumb, like saving the sugar cane crops from poisoning. The Cubans looked at me . . . boy, they just stared and stared. I realized it was time to get beamed back to the mother ship. Frustrated, confused, and correctly suspicious that his odd visit had been duly reported to Moscow, Anatoly cut himself loose. He behaved like a Russian Hussar in the days of Napoleonic wars: he returned to New Orleans and visited every bordello he could find. He awakened in the bleak, damp dawn, in an alley behind Bourbon Street, his shirt torn, his money gone jes lahk in dem Delta blues. The difference was that, besides the money, he was also missing his transmitter; and, with it, the possibility of controlling the movements of Mr.

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Oswald. Whose last instruction, Ill remind you, was You must kill the Top Guy. Cuba was closed; he was in America; the rest was history. In the days predating satellite phones, Yermilov could not call Kogan and get him to send a replacement. He had the station chief wire him the airfare which took a week but when he returned to Moscow, Kogan was on vacation, and who else would get this mad scientist back into the U.S.? On the other hand, Yermilov was not in a rush: up to then, everything Mr. Oswald had attempted to achieve in this life had failed miserably, so why should assassination of the president be any different? The salty Black Sea air was doing miracles for Kogans goiter, and the general was not in a hurry to return to Moscow either. When he did return, his desk was buried in the reports on the conspiracy to replace Khrushchev. No wonder he took a dim view of Yermilovs request. Especially after the latter made a full confession regarding the circumstances. Youre a shikker and a druggie, Kogan said. I should send you back to that den of iniquity? You should thank your lucky stars no one knows the real reason you went there, or you would already be living on a hundred rubles a month fixing watches. Go buy some alcoholic from Alias Development a bottle of cognac, have him write you a novel about how you tried to infiltrate Mardi Gras or any damn bullshit about how you managed to waste the Partys money. Dismissed! ... YEARS LATER, KOGAN WOULD SHRUG: the psychopath was able to find a job at the book depository, and you know the rest. Who knew. Was it possible that the Feds picked up the transmitter? If someone passed a word to them? Then they could have

David Gurevich

Kogan yawned. Youve been reading too many thrillers. Did you know Jack Ruby? Yosik Rubinshteyn? Kogan curled his lower lip in disgust. Club owner, hah. A lousy Polish pimp. First, he spends our money as if it was rubles. Then he thinks hell do us a favor, hell get us to forgive his debts, so he picks up his gun and . . . who asked him?

VODKA FOR BREAKFAST