Dmitri looked across the subway platform. Nobody else except a man in a trench coat playing the tenor sax in a rueful way that made people want to forgive Third World debt. A deep rumbling noise grew out of the darkness at the end of the platform, then a bright light. A late train on the 1-2-3-9 roared out of a tunnel and stopped. The doors opened. Nobody got on or off. The doors closed. The train left.
Vladimir studied a map on the wall. “I think that was the red line.”
A gravelly voice: “Are you looking for Siberia?”
The Russians turned around. A homeless face poked out of the shadows from a dark corner of the platform.
“What’d you say, old man?”
“You looking for Siberia? That Commie place?”
The Russians glanced at each other. The document drop station was a tightly guarded Soviet secret. Just great. Even the bums knew about it. And he was calling it Siberia, adding insult.
“I’ll tell you for a dollar,” said the bum.
Ivan handed him a folded George Washington.
“Go over this platform and around to the other train. Don’t worry if you think you’ve gone too far — just keep going. It’s way down in the bowels of this thing. You’ll find it, just keep going down….”
They started walking away. Ivan stopped and turned and called back to the old man. “How do you know about this place? It’s supposed to be a secret.”
“It
“It’s become idle amusement?”
“Pretty much,” said the bum.
“Wonderful,” said Igor.
The Russians went farther down into the subway. And down. And down.
“Where the hell is it?” asked Vladimir.
“He told us to just keep going,” said Ivan, trotting down another flight of stairs. “If we…hold it, what’s that?”
They saw a dark glass door and approached slowly. The door had a little sign. In small, plain black letters: SIBERIA. Ivan thought he heard something. “Is that music?”
Next to the door were several large windows, also dark, wallpapered from the inside with newspaper clippings. The Russians began reading the articles, all about the discovery of a Soviet document drop station. Their hearts sank. Ivan continued reading: in the mid-nineties, someone had leased the shop for a pub, and they started knocking out interior walls for more space. That’s when they found all the KGB documents and Russian passports and rubles inside the studwork. The clippings said the station was traced to a Soviet agent known as Yuri, who had fled long before the FBI swarmed the place. Other articles chronicled the new, literally underground, coolest bar of the moment that had since sprouted at the location. One story explained that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn’t allow bars in the subway, but this specific location fell in a jurisdictional crack because of complex subterranean rights with foreign corporations in the area of Rockefeller Center.
“There goes the rendezvous,” said Ivan. He took several deep breaths of subway exhaust. “What the hell — let’s get something to drink.” He opened the door.
Inside was a dive’s dive, like if the producers of
The bartender yelled over the Clash on one of the jukes: “What can I get you guys?”
The Russians began draining longnecks.
Ivan heard a familiar voice. He turned around. In the darkness, at one of the tables, a squat old man made a sales pitch to a pair of Juilliard students. He held up a painted wooden figure, twisted it apart at the middle, and took out a smaller figure. Then he twisted that one apart and took out an even smaller one, and so on until he had six figurines of descending size lined up across the table. The man gestured proudly.
“Twenty dollars is a lot of money,” said one of the students. “I don’t know.”
“What’s not to know?” said the man. “These are genuine Romanov nesting dolls. Almost a century old, worth a fortune. This is the bargain of a lifetime!”
“Then why do you have them? How can you sell them so cheap?”
“I told you, after the breakup, the whole country’s for sale. You name it, I can get it. Rocket launchers, cadaver parts, tsarist dinnerware…”
“No, thanks,” said the students, getting up and leaving.
“Wait! Let me show you how they reassemble….” The man desperately pieced the dolls back together. “That’s the genius of these things. That’s the whole beauty…” His voice trailed off. “…shit.”
