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The Moscow Wire by Steve Silkin Stainton,
newsroom. ... Oh, hi Jack. ... OK, I guess, all things considered. ... Yeah, it’s
cold. How did it go in Algiers? ... Yeah, I heard Henry was real upset about
it. ... Of course it was upsetting. I’d be upset too if my driver were shot
outside my house while I was having breakfast. I couldn’t believe it when I
heard. ... I know. Sokoloff.
You don’t have to tell me. Every time I see the guys from the Times and the
Journal they say: Hey, Ed, kill anyone today? ... What would you say? I tell
’em it’s early yet, gimme some time. ... Well, yeah,
I did file it, there’s no arguing about that. But when I ask accounting to
cut a check, they shouldn't wait three weeks before they start thinking about
it. My sources need to get paid, and they need to get paid on time. ... I
know that’s not how it used to work, you don’t have to tell me, but things
have changed. Everything here changes every day. It isn’t 1980 anymore. You
know what it was like. You’d get nothing until it was official. Now everybody
talks, inside the Kremlin, outside the Kremlin, anywhere, everywhere. It's
crazy. But if you want the news, you pay for it. ... Raslovich was a good
source. He gave me some great scoops. The munitions explosion in Vologda,
remember how far ahead we were on that? ... And he only asked to get paid for
the last one, the nuclear sub, the Whiskey, the one that got stuck on the
rocks off Norway. And we were way out ahead on that one, too. Great headline
in that French paper, remember? Whiskey on the Rocks. I loved that. Anyway, I
kept telling him: The check is in the mail. ... Actually, I don’t know if
they have that expression here, probably something like it. But I meant it
literally. So he waited. He was patient. Three weeks, four weeks and still
nothing. When he stopped asking, I thought the check went through. He didn’t
call me with Sokoloff until the fifth week. He called me at nine one morning.
He said Sokoloff was dead. And I said
to myself: This is a big deal. Sokoloff is one of the last of the old
guard in the cabinet, one of the last holdovers of the Brezhnev years. And
he’s got the army. ... Defense minister since 1980, but he’s held
undersecretary positions since ’67. ... Yeah, a major change, depending on
who replaces him. I asked if he were sure, if he’d heard it from two
independent sources, just like you would. He said yes. ... Of course I asked
who they were, but he could’ve just made up the names and the titles. ...
Yeah, maybe if I’d checked I would have found out, but this is still the
Kremlin and the KGB, chances are they wouldn’t be listed. It’s not
Philadelphia City Hall, you know that, there isn’t a directory you can pull
out and get the number for the city manager or the police chief. Anyway, I
asked Raslovich if he thought there was going to be an official announcement
soon. He said he didn’t know, maybe they would be trying to keep it quiet.
Remember, I thought he had two sources, I didn’t know he hadn’t been paid.
... Yeah, I’d called accounting. Marla told me she'd sent the check the week
before. ... No, not to me, I would've known that it didn’t come. To his
brother-in-law in London. He does his hard currency banking for him. ...
Yeah, I should’ve done that, too, I should’ve asked Raslovich if he got his
money. That would’ve been smart. In hindsight. Anyway, I
called Slawinska at the Polish Embassy. I knew him from Warsaw, he was always
straight with me, or as straight as he could be. Was he press officer at the
Foreign Ministry when you were there? ... Oh, then he must have come after
you got the foreign editor job. Slawinska said he hadn’t heard anything about
Sokoloff. Then Slawinska called me back in half hour and said he couldn’t
confirm one way or the other. But I asked Slawinska if my guy was wrong, if
Sokoloff wasn’t dead. So he called me back in five minutes, right away, and
said nobody could say for sure that Sokoloff was still alive. It sounded like
confirmation to me. The way I see it is I got set up and then went with the
story with a partial confirmation. I take my share of the blame. ... Of course
Slawinska’s answer wouldn’t have been good enough normally, but remember, it
might have been a set-up because the check didn’t go out when it should have.
... No, I said I accept my share of responsibility but everybody else has to
accept theirs, too. I wouldn’t have been set up like that if Raslovich got
his money. ... Wellman wants
to write me up? Oh, come on, he’s only been managing editor for two months.
You’ve got to explain to him what it’s like here. Everything changes every
day. And there wasn’t a write-up for the Neves thing in Brazil. ... Yes, but
not all that different. The Brasilia bureau filed Neves as dead, too, and he wasn’t dead yet. ... That’s what
they claim, that the intern had put the story into the live file instead of
the hold file by mistake. Blame the intern. The results were the same. We
filed the bulletin Sokoloff-Dead and then we had to write a Bulletin Kill,
and they filed the bulletin Neves-Dead and then they had to write a Bulletin
Kill. And their guy was the president. The whole country was waiting for that
guy to croak since he stroked out on election night. Mine was just a defense
minister nobody cared about except me. ... Thanks. I’m
not asking for any special consideration, I take responsibility for my
mistakes, but fair’s fair and there’s enough blame to go around on Sokoloff,
too. ... Yeah, I know Neves died the next week. But we’re all going to die,
so eventually I’ll be right on Sokoloff, too. And nobody’s seen Sokoloff
since Raslovich called him in dead. And the Kremlin has every reason right
now to say he’s alive even if he’s not. So maybe my source didn’t burn me.
... Hell yes, I
asked him what happened. One day he says it’s true, Sokoloff's dead, and the
next day he says he doesn’t know. There’s no telling. I asked him if he set
me up, he swears he didn't, but you never know. I hear that's how they do
things here. I need a little margin
for error here, Jack, what with glasnost now. It’s unchartered waters. ... Oh, right,
I’m glad you reminded me. Gromov. ... Yeah, he’s done a lot for us over the
years, at least since I’ve been bureau chief and even before, from what I’ve
heard. What it is, is this: His son. The kid’s 11, and he’s got this blood
thing, they think it could be treated in the West, easy. But here, it’s gonna
kill him, the kid’ll die. ... Oh, believe me, I know we don’t usually get
involved in stuff like this. But because of his connections -- and those
connections kept us up and running sometimes, remember, when nobody else had
electricity, we could keep filing -- Gromov can get his kid to Helsinki for a
weekend, with his test results, X-rays and everything. ... They
already tried that, they tried sending it all to a hospital in Paris, but the
guy said he needed to see the kid. Apparently it’s a pretty rare condition
and nobody’s going to want to recommend a treatment unless they examine the
kid. So if we could get a specialist, a blood guy, in Helsinki to see him and
tell us what medication he should be getting, we could get it from the doctor
in Paris and you could send it here in the pouch. And it’s a kid, Jack. I
wouldn’t ask if it was just some old drunk. It’s a kid, c’mon. ... Great,
that’s all I ask, see what you can do and let me know as soon as you can and
I’ll tell Gromov. ... Absolutely, do come when it gets a little warmer. It’s wild here these days. Like I said, this ain’t Moscow like anyone remembers. The nightlife’s way better. You go into any bar in any hotel, the women, it’s insane, the only English they know is: Yes. They say yes to everything. You wouldn’t believe it. We’d have a really good time. ... OK, thanks a million for looking out for me on the Sokoloff thing. Like I said, it’s crazy here. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on. Everything here changes every day. Take care. ** Steve Silkin is a Los Angeles writer. He has completed a collection
of short stories, The Telescope
Builder, and two novels, Matt &
Mariko and The Cemetery Vote.
Archived
at http://lit.konundrum.com/prose/silkins_moscow.htm |
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