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Author's Note: In 2000, I completed my first novel, “Manor House,” which was selected as a top-five finalist (of 217 novels entered) in the Austin Writers’ League’s
(America’s second-largest regional writers’ group) “Mainstream Fiction” division.
MH was also a top-rated entry (out of approximately 3,500 submissions) on AOL/TimeWarner’s
e-book/POD publishing site. At the end of 2001, an excerpt from my second novel, “My Trip”, which follows below,
became the site's all-time most-reviewed (104), highest-rated (5/5 star average), most-popular submission. However, this story is not yet finished.
Chapter One
Tokyo-1983
OK, Version 1 is finally shipping and early sales are good. Right now I'm
lunching solo underneath Tokyo Station as trains rumble overhead. I'm slurping
noodles and thinking to myself, "Looks terrific, but ZA>COM is still a
startup on a shoestring, still a dinky garage operation. How can we grow the
company?"Suddenly I get a brainstorm. Since we've mapped in both Japanese alphabets and got kanji conversion knocked, how hard would it be to yank one alphabet and shove in another--like Korean, Greek or--Whoa, Nellie--Cyrillic! … A walk in the park! Jeez, our itsy-bitsy outfit has already developed the means for a full-fledged Russian word processor--we just hadn't realized it! I slap my forehead--Wow! The USSR's a big spread. Maybe we can move in. Yahoo!
I slurp more noodles, look up and there's this guy. Guy says--heavy Russian accent--"Mind if I join you?"
Don't know why he wants to join me, but I don't mind. I don't own the table. "No problem," I tell him.
He sits down, introduces himself, hands me his name card. It says he's Alexandre Something-Impossible-to-Pronounce, the marketing manager for Aeroflot Airlines, which has an office down the street.
I know it, so I nod. "Yeah. That's the place the right-wing Japanese keep blasting with their sound trucks. How do you guys ever get any work done?"
He laughs; says I sound American and wants to know what's up with me in Tokyo.
I give him the 90-second capsule sans technology. Say I'm a writer, an "at large" kind of guy. Then he mentions that Aeroflot has this in-flight magazine called Blue Swan. Always looking for contributors. Would I be interested?
"Absolutely."
Alex is tall, handsome, well spoken and tailored. He insists on picking up both tabs. Asks me if I'll go back to his office, talk things over, meet his sales-marketing crew.
Sure. Why not?
So now I'm inside. Meet a bunch of Russians. They're all real friendly. I'm real friendly. It's real casual. Everybody's getting along swell. Feels right, so I bust a move:
"Dudes … are you, like, you know, communists?"
They laugh, adding you got to be to get posted overseas. Moreover, says Alex, they're all believers, card-carrying and proud of it--just love Mother Russia. … So how about me? Like, how am I arranged philosophically?
Me? I tick off capitalist to the core, entrepreneurial to the extreme, free trader to the max, free as a bird. "All I want from life is more money, preferably other people's. Some of yours if you got any." I give a toothy grin to top off my line. They crack up.
Then I tell them, truthfully, that I'm half-Russian on my father's side. Never been to the USSR, but hey, I'm a "roots" kind of guy. I want to go! Catch the Moscow Circus, the Bolshoi, the Hermitage; tromp the Silk Road, swim in the Black Sea, climb the Caucuses, ride the subways, especially those with the rocket escalators in the Moscow stations I've heard so much about. Heck, maybe I'd even find some old relatives while I'm there.
"Closest I ever got to Russia was a chess tournament aboard one of your cruise ships," I inform them. "We're playing outside on the deck with life-size pieces in front of a huge crowd of commies. So he definitely had home-field advantage. But I had your guy a rook down. Then he and his skinny black bishop come out of nowhere, they snuggle up to a scrawny little pawn and checkmate me. Never saw them coming." I slap my forehead. "Jeez, what was I thinking?"
They love my rap. So they offer me the magazine job. I say sure, how about I do a sweet piece on Japanese arranged marriage; follow it up next issue with something hard and informative on artificial intelligence?
Terrific, they say. There's a hint that after an issue or two they'll send me over to figure out some Russo-Japanese angle for future stories.
Cool.
They offer big buckolas, about ten times what I'd usually get for a magazine feature.
Way cool.
Just before I leave, Alex asks if I often travel. "Comrade, travel is what I do." I grin. In that case, he goes on casually, the next time I'm at Narita, could I pick up some silly little pamphlet for him? Nothing improper, of course, something they give away to anyone. Aeroflot's forced to fly in and out of Niigata, he explains, so he never has a chance to get out to Tokyo's main airport. Save him a trip. How about it?
Alarm bells go off so I tell him I'll think about it. Alex drops the subject. I split, promising to be in touch.
Now I'm back on the sidewalk. I want this gig, really want to go to Russia on the house, but I'm no dummy. Could this be the first step in being recruited by the KGB? Maybe this job offer is only a carrot. Rats!
Real suspicious now, I take the ankle express over to the U.S. embassy for some free advice. Soon as I show all the Aeroflot name cards to the information officer, bang!--I'm in a room with five or six intelligence types. But they're real friendly. I'm real friendly. They know my byline from the baseball features I write for The Japan Times. Right off the bat, they want to talk spring training.
"How 'bout them Giants--think they'll repeat?" one of them asks.
"No way, Yomiuri's all washed up. Giants leave their starters in too long--their arms are DOA in August. Their relievers get no work. Then suddenly it's September, and they got N-O-O-O-O-THING."
"Say, I got a kick out of that interview you did with the Japanese baseball commissioner," another one says. "How'd you get Shimada-san to spew so openly?"
I spill the inside scoop on how the commissioner was plotting to rid Japanese baseball of all foreign players within five years, and how my exclusive forced the old goat to recant. Next, the guys and me swap our best jokes. It is not a heavy scene. So I blurt:
"Dudes … are you, like, secret agents?"
They roll their eyes. Somebody says, "C'mon, Chris, this is serious. Tell us what happened over there."
I spill, offer to walk away from this dirty, filthy commie magazine gig.
But that's the last thing they want me to do.
The agent who took off with the Russians' business cards comes back. He says, "OK, here's the deal. Your friend Alexandre is really (so-and-so unpronounceable) and a colonel in the GRU."
"What's GRU?"
"It's their army intelligence, even nastier than the KGB. All these guys belong to it," he says, handing me back the cards.
They tell me, as a loyal American, I should go along with the magazine offer and, of course, periodically report back to them. They'll "make it worth" my while. What the "Ruskies" are surely recruiting me for, they explain, is technology espionage.
"Your main deal is computer software, right? Your pal Alex didn't meet you by accident."
The CIA says they've never been able to get into Aeroflot's office; they're positively jubilant that I did. And then made a beeline straight to them. So won't I please help? Pretty please? These are my fellow Americans, these are real nice guys--but it's clear I have no choice.
It's been only a short time since lunch--and like, wow--now I'm a spy! Maybe even a double agent. I wonder, aside from all the extra money and new friends it looks like I'm going to make, how I can work this to my long-term advantage? Namely our Russian word processor. I start scheming.
