Mikhail Idov. Operation "Cherry"

The book of Corpus is published by the book of Mikhail Idov, an American writer, who is now working as the editor -in -chief of the GQ magazine in Moscow. Mindful of a long -standing cooperation with the author (one of the stories included in the book first appeared on OpenSpace .ru ), Colta .ru publishes the text from his new collection “Check”.

Ethan Kirsch betrayed the United States of America on July 10, 1984. Treason was terribly unurient. Kirsch imagined a crowded place; Two identical suitcases, cheek cheek, like twins in the final of the Indian film; Fast, in a ballet elegant exchange. In the lobby of Holide Inn in Ohio, overlooking the dull piece of highway 484, nothing of the kind happened. What is the most outrageous, the contact seemed to be bored. It turned out to be a low sinewy man in the Adidas tracksuit with an extra strip. He introduced himself (already badly) Jeff (worse) and shook his hand with excessive enthusiasm of the office trainee. Needless to say, he did not have the same suitcase as Kirsch. He did not have a suitcase at all.

Prior to this moment, Itan at least remained the last illusion: money. Cache. Buildings collected in sufficient quantities in order to acquire a noticeable third dimension and from the category of promises to go to the category of the promised, to delight with their own existence. Money, dry and slippery, a dense pack - dense as the ass of a pornstars, like a brick of a prison wall. Instead, he received a piece of paper with a long shogulin of numbers. He handed the contact, the traitor took. At this, both the meeting and treason came to an end.

A greedy study of a piece of paper showed that the first eleven digits are someone's phone in a third-rate country. (Ethan believed that since the US code is a unit, the codes of other countries reflect their comparative significance.) Then there was a mishmash of numbers and letters, in which it was sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other. Ethan returned to the room and dialed the numbers on the yellowed telephone disk. He heard a piercing three -star, and the robot in a provincial voice reported him for not gaining nine. He obeyed, another melody sounded; Another voice, this time cozy British, recommended gaining 011 in front of the code of the country. The number now consisted of 15 digits. Kirsch made another attempt and, of course, forgot the nine. When an already familiar squeak stuck into his ear, he hung up in despair. He never had to call abroad; The process turned out to be more difficult than decryption of hieroglyphs.

Kirsch closed his eyes, imagined that the number is a line of computer code, as in the laboratory, and won. He was silence, several clicks, a rattling echo of someone else's conversation about “delivery” and “volumes” and, finally, beeps in foreign tonality. A female voice answered in German.

“Uh,” said Kirsch.

The same voice probably repeated the same phrase in French.

“Non,” said Kirsch. “But Parle.”

“To call someone who speaks Japanese?” The voice asked, now in English.

“No,” Kirsch answered in horror. - No, no. I am an American. I call from Ohio.

“Fine,” the woman said. A few more clicks sounded. - The account number with you?

Ethan wanted to hang a phone, but realized that the account number was the rest of the numbers and letters. He dictated them one at a time. It took some time.

- How can I help you? The woman asked.

- Is this a bank?

“Yes,” she said patiently, “this is the bank.”

“Then, probably,” he swallowed, “I would like to know the state of the account.”

- Certainly. Only we cannot report this information to anyone except the sole account holder.

- And who is the holder?

“The holder is anonymous, sir.” So our banks are arranged.

“So I am the holder,” Kirsch said.

“Then you should know how much money you have.”

“Well, can you, I don’t know, give me a plastic card?”

- At the moment, as far as I know, we do not issue debit cards.

- Yeah, I see. Can I pay for the hotel from this account?

“I'm afraid we are not from such banks, sir.”

- Listen, Froilyain. My money is in your bank. How can I get them from there?

“It depends on how you invested them, sir.” When it comes to such amounts, we draw up individual agreements, carefully designed for a particular client. You need to study your documents in order to clarify how they address the issues of emergency withdrawal of funds.

- About such amounts? - repeated Kirsch. - About what amounts?

- Sir.

- Stop calling me "sir." What a rudeness. This is because I am an American, right?

- No.

- Yeah, of course. Where would you even be without us?

“It would be here,” the woman answered.

Two hours later, a multi -stage banking transfer, blew out by Itan from his room for the newlyweds, entered the surname of Kirsch in the branch of the Bank "Komerika" in the city of Troy, Michigan. Around the same time, Generally discovered some notes in the address book of the newly dismissed trainee and called the police, and from the police they called the Holide Inn and found that the guest named Nathan Kurk was calling for Switzerland.

Gravlab was a soft -hearted Pole originally from the town from the Canadian border. Contrary to the voice of the mind (soon he will repeat it at every interrogation - “Contrary to the voice of the mind”) He called the Itan’s suite and left the following message: “Ethan. This is Ted from the laboratory, hello. Ethan, you foolishly, or what? "

Then followed a sigh, a long pause-and the final: "Well, Christmas tree-firing."

The next morning, Kirsch was sitting on the bus and moving in the direction of Washington. On the trip, he concentratedly sorted out options for further actions and approximately in Pennsylvania, he threw everything except two: to confess or emigrate to the USSR. Ethan knew that the second option was theoretically possible. The Russians, annoyed by the outcome of their Jews, greeted rare Western defectors, moreover - they showed them on TV, in every possible way they jacket and arranged with comfort, about which a simple Soviet man could not even think. Well, or just shot right away. So on that way. Or maybe live on, Kirsch thought. Drive on intercity buses. Chew the buns at stops. The backs of these seats are leaned back almost to a horizontal position.

The last passengers landed on Wisconsin Avenue, two quarters from the Soviet embassy: the fate itself with a little finger pumped the scales of the scales. The Kirsch slowly walked around the massive building. He already knew the answer, but was not yet ready for decisive action. Everything around caused nostalgia, or rather, the anticipation of the upcoming nostalgia. These black sighing the bulk of air conditioners on the windows are there? And if not, will I miss them? He crossed the street and hung up to the gate, directly to the amazed soldier with stars on the uniform.

Kirsha was taken out of the States to Helsinki by the Finnair commercial flight. In the Annals of the SVR, his escape was called “Operation“ Cherry ”, because - well, Kirsche , a cherry. Intelligence bought all the places on the plane, but the crew stubbornly behaved as if the passenger manifesto did not consist exclusively of Itan and a shaved -headed agent in the front row. The captain habitually broadcast about types and weather, stewardesses, as expected, were engaged in their training aerobics. Kirsch for the first time in his life received an airplane hot lunch; Chicken and fish were offered to choose from. There was no appetite. Treason. Betrayal. Renegature. Militutism. He used the hygienic package for its intended purpose, also for the first time in his life, and then another one, from the back of a neighboring chair.

When they finally arrived, after the transplants in the terminals that became less and darker, the agent’s head in the front seat, it seems, was to form. Russia called a children's trip to the Paramount studio in the memory of Kirsch. The airport looked like a wasteland made under the airport. Even the asphalt seemed somehow temporary. The car was like a layout. The tongue sounded like American teenagers portray German.

For the formation of these opinions, Itan was released for less than an hour. From the airfield near Kirovograd, whose modest new buildings behind a linden grove he took for Moscow, he was taken directly to the future dwelling: an old village estate surrounded by a new concrete fence. Inside the fence, a Lord’s house, a wooden and creaky, a hut of a gardener on high piles and a garden size and shape with a baseball rhombus, were placed. A linen rope with two teeth with a damp sheet smiled at the whole of the garden - from the window of the house along the trimmed cherries and to the neck of a wooden rooster on the skate of the hut.

“You will live here,” the driver said in impeccable English, taking a lonely backpack of Kirsch from the trunk. - My name is Misha. Gardener's name is Denis Ilyich. He has a daughter, it happens here about once a month. You can sleep with her. In principle, no one should touch you, except in cases where you need to go to the city for a conversation. But in a month or two, this will happen infrequently.

“Yeah,” said Itan. - It's clear.

-Food, pornography, “New York Times” on Sundays-this is all my concern. I will come twice a week. I have a key to home, ”the driver demonstrated the key,“ but there is no key from the upper floor. If you sleep at the top or jerk off, write a purchase list, leave it on the table. So far, everything is in openwork?

- Yes. How do you know such expressions as ...

-If you need to get out somewhere, I will take you.

- Great.

- Do not try to move yourself. The hut of the gardener is designed with the expectation of a complete overview of the perimeter.

Over the next year, Kirsch left the estate four times. A couple of times he performed in television shows, sweating under the sofitis and deafening his own translator from the tambourine. On the last day of his first Russian autumn, Kirsha was taken to the local branch of the KGB in a terrible hurry and asked to identify the person from the photographs. On large glossy cards, an emo Filips comedian was depicted. The meaning of the exercise remained unclear.

The mysterious Misha regularly fulfilled all the needs of Itan, despite their increasing complexity. With his help, the Kirsch discovered Tracy Lords, which at that moment contrary to the appropriate was only sixteen. He fell in love with her teenage chubby, her determination: she was an excellent student, serious and stubborn. She seemed to end not because she ended, but because she succeeded well, and the Kirsch for a while found a soul mate in her. He also succeeded better.

The Sunday issue of New York Times came with a thirteen-day delay, that is, once on Friday, next week-on Saturday, etc. Because of this gap, Ethan, not wanting it, switched to the pre-revolutionary calendar-when Russia forced anyone who ended up in its darkness, jump, say, from June 22 on May 22. Then the day of the editorial came - the terrible day when the newspaper appeared an editorial article about Ed Kocha.

At first, Ethan did not even understand why this text was so alarmed. Then he finally disagreed the same annoying word in the column and stared at him for several minutes in a stupor. It was the word Neighbourhoods , “areas” - written through U , as is done only in the UK. Inside the cranial box, a deaf drum fraction caught. Ethan feverishly launched a page with the results of baseball matches. There was no sense in them. These were random, as in lottery tickets, as in a foreign phone number, a column of numbers. The New York Times turned out to be a fake. The real release, apparently, went out under such a terrible, so catastrophic hat that Kirsha would have enough Kondrashka at one glance at him. Now everything is clear.

In the evening, the gardener found a kirsha on the potato bed. He brought a trembling American home and drank with him until night, all the time complaining about something about a melodic, lulling Ukrainian.

America disappeared from Kirsch’s room, just as the remains of the novel are gradually erased by foam of days: there are no more long hair on the pillow, the overall shampoo ends, and you buy a bottle not burdened with memories; Memories evaporate or embellished in retroactively.

He had special garbage. The fact that the gardener was thrown looked like modest waste of modest being - potato peel, fish scales, cleaning, sawdust. Garbage Kirsha sparkled with bright and dandy objects. Craved boxes from CDs, plastic bags-they bought all this here, sold and, in any case, kept even without any contents.

He began to write memoirs, under the chapter for every year of life. The first five chapters were very short. On page 456, in the thick of the feats of its thirteenth summer, ink ended in the last handle of BIC , and the gardener’s daughter received as a gift a scattering of useless yellow sticks - excellent souvenirs. Large university notebooks with dividers and a spring gave way to thin purple notebooks with young Pushkin on the rear cover. Pushkin looked like a black man, and Itana pleased it.

On his third Soviet New Year, when a comedian lifted a glass of champagne, welcoming the audience, the American TV refused to obey the remote control. There were no compatible remote controls on the black market, so the Kirsch scored the box and forced Misha to buy a healthy “light” - by this moment, Itan already knew that the word “light” means “small flame”. Three months later, in full accordance with the name, the TV caught fire. Misha, cursing, dragged the Czech "Skoda".

At the disposal of Itan were two state channels with ballet and weather, Dnepropetrovsk news and random flashes of Turkish programs through the beads of interference. On CT-1, they even began at some point to show the television chief, an exact copy of Jeopardy ; Four years later, he knew almost all the answers.

2001, 2010

Translated from English Viktor Sonkin