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The Checkup ©2003 Jon L. Adams
Click here to download the Acrobat PDF or read the story below:

He picked up a biscuit, leaned back, and tilted the office chair precariously, nearly losing the balance point. Extending his arm again, Preobazhinsky popped the hinge forward and the seat snapped flat so that his feet landed on the floor under his desk. The snack’s crumbs dropped onto the report in the open folder.

The Common Denominator, his subject of Saturday last. He had watched the man’s apartment from the car in the street for hours. He reported that everything went according to the subject’s normal procedure; the man had turned out his lights near midnight and went to sleep. The radio operator and his boss, Menkin, initialed the report he had penned when his night shift had finished. Nothing was out of place. Nothing was in it to indicate that he had fabricated parts of the report.

He had been assigned to watch the one he called the Common Denominator, a person of intellectual regard who had actually come down from his darkened rooms and left the building. He had witnessed the act and allowed the man to walk away down the rainy street without reporting it or following him. He had broken every rule of a watcher and he had got away with it.

Preobazhinsky wiped the gingerbread from his lips and closed the manila folder. The target had come back an hour later, casting furtive glances around as he scurried along the wet sidewalk. He had reentered and closed the building’s front door. The man had not seen him sitting in the cold car across and the street. The dark night was his theatre; the domain of his work and Preobazhinsky loved the work he did. He had made a decision based on his feeling of kinship with that domain. He had allowed the dissident get away on purpose, out of spite for the system that continued despite the changes that had taken hold in the Motherland. He had determined not to follow the man or report his action, because to him in his domain it was moot and unnecessary.

It was unnecessary because the old man was no longer capable of damaging anything in the country. It had been pulled apart already, by forces much greater and more powerful than either he or the old man. He had decided to let the Common Denominator take his walk in peace.

There was nothing in the report to indicate that the ruse had been detected. He felt relaxed enough to get up and carry it back out to the typing pool and he dropped it on Nadia’s pile of other reports. As he turned to go back, Menkin came out of his hole, the office next to his own, and pulled a curling finger toward his own chin.

“Preobazhinsky. Get in here.”

“I’m putting you to work on a case that only requires one man. The other section on the night watch has been holding this one down, but the Chief wants us to handle it now. So here’s the file on this guy.” He picked up a water-stained shopworn folder and shoved it across his desk.

“This fellow is a doctor-engineer from the Institute for Nuclear Studies and Research, and he’s suspected of having contacts with the Chinese. That’s all I can tell you about it.” Menkin rested back in his creaky chair and placed his fingers tip-to-tip at his sinewy neck, watched his lieutenant and waited for questions. Preobazhinsky silently read the file. The boss continued after a moment.

“You are on 24 hour call with this one, because I can only spare another watcher for the day shift. If either of you gets sick, the other one takes his shift. Understand?”

Preobazhinsky nodded, eyes on the papers.

“The guy,” he continued, “lives in Kuntsevo, by the long lake near the old west road. Do you know that area?”

Of course he did. Preobazhinsky had already found the address and a sketched map of the target’s dacha and neighborhood. The file also listed the doctor-engineer’s neighbors in the wooded area. One of the neighboring families was starred in red pencil, with a notation scribbled alongside. It read: “Preobazhinsky’s wife’s father and mother!”

His next assignment, out among the forests, summer lodges and dachas of Kuntsevo, lived in a fancy hut only a few hundred meters away from Tatiana’s parents. He smiled at the thought that he would have easy access to a toilet and perhaps a warm cup of tea during the watch duty, and Menkin caught the expression.

“During this assignment you must not make contact with any of the neighbors on that list. That includes your wife’s family.”

“Why? They are only a few meters down the road. Do you think they won’t recognize me, sitting in a car and watching this guy’s summer cabin?”

“You will be inside the place across the road from the target. It’s been arranged,” he said and tossed an ancient skeleton key on the desktop.

Preobazhinsky put the key in his pocket.

“The entrance is on the far side of the house from the target. Park behind the gate. There’s a high evergreen shrub all around the place, so your car will be hidden and you can go out around the dacha without being spotted. Don’t use lights inside. There is a room with a window on the second floor at the end of the house facing the Doctor’s place. It is the best location to observe the area. You can go out and walk around after dark, but I caution you to remain unnoticed. This man has many friends out there, and they might report you if they see you hanging around. That could cause serious problems with the investigation. Be the invisible man.”

Three hours later Preobazhinsky closed the dacha door behind him and inspected the large well-appointed country home. When he pulled up and unlocked the high wooden gate, he wondered how the day man covered his presence. He had left his shift, since it was Preobazhinsky’s time to take over the surveillance, but there were no signs of him in the house. Perhaps he worked from a different location. There were plenty of dachas on both sides of the curving road and acres of concealing forest around them all.

The small room closest to the entrance was the kitchen. It was perfectly square, and it had a large cooking and heating stove made of brick painted white and blue along the left outer wall. The table stood in the middle and the working area with a large sink, a small range and what appeared to be a working refrigerator were on the right. The rest of the walls were covered with built-in cabinets and shelves, well stocked with canned vegetables and fruits. The watcher reflected that in his orders was an admonition not to touch any of the fine goods, which he noticed were mostly imported from the west.

He walked around in the fading light and looked for what he always sought the first time he entered someone else’s abode: personal signs of the occupants. There were none. That was the first thing about the assignment that bothered him.

In the next room into the house he found a central single stairway that led up to the bedrooms. There were empty closets on both sides and you could walk around the stairs either way. It had no furniture.

A wide alcove behind the stairway opened into a large back room, the dacha’s parlor. It was filled with upholstered chairs, two couches and bookshelves. A long low reading table stood in front of one sofa and a precious Kirghiz rug covered the floor. The pictures on the walls were watercolor hunting scenes, and there were no personal items in sight. A stone fireplace occupied most of the left wall and the air carried no scent of its recent use.

He went upstairs. The landing opened both ways around the banister well. A large bedroom was above the kitchen, and it had two doors that opened to a balcony over the downstairs door where he had entered. The other room, facing the target’s house, was slightly smaller but was equipped with a western-style bathroom, complete with a porcelain free-standing sink, a bath tub, a shower stall with a rippled glass door and a fine modern toilet with an American-style flush handle. Preobazhinsky was impressed!

At the window he paused to get his bearings, and without disturbing the sheer lace curtains he peeked out at the scene. The narrow space between the back of the dacha and the juniper hedge was about ten feet across. He could look down and right over the vegetation and see the dirt road between the stakeout and the target. The other side was bordered by a line of trees, a wide space where the driveway began, and a stone walk that led from the lane through the firs and birches to the front entrance of the house. The target dacha was located about forty meters into the lot, and it was relatively unprotected without shrubs or fences. He carefully examined the building and noted the windows, the lighted interiors and the possibilities of viewing the place from other locations.

The watcher made a mental note to take a walk along the lane to get a closer look, and he turned and began to examine the bedrooms for evidence of the host’s personalities. As had been the case downstairs, he found absolutely nothing of interest. There were no photographs, no personal mementos, nametags, clothing in closets, shoes, jewelry, toilet articles or for that matter any signs of regular habitation. It was as if the place had been sanitized for his benefit, but he found signs that the dacha had been occupied during the last few weeks. There were water stains on the tub and shower, with traces of dried soap scum. He found the waste bins empty, but a few patches of tissue paper clung to the sides. He noted a smear of cosmetic material on a dresser, and found a broken shoelace tip near the large bed in the room with the superb bath.

Back downstairs Preobazhinsky detected a few signs among the books and journals that indicated both male and female occupation in the past. There were folded pages and some pictures had been torn and removed from magazines. A female aroma lingered on the back of one couch. He smelled cigar smoke on the drapes opposite the fireplace.

But there was no indication that there were regular visitors. Whoever had been here before had not stayed long enough to impress their personalities on the house. Preobazhinsky surmised that the dacha he occupied was either a safe house used by the state organs for unknown reasons, or that the house had been meticulously cleaned prior to his arrival.

It was time to get to work. He went outside as soon as it was dark.

At eight o’clock he made the first telephone report from the kitchen phone. It was not a radio job, and according to plan, he placed the call to a phone number Menkin had provided. He assumed it was a control point nearby, because the exchange was a Kuntsevo number. A female voice asked for the report and he gave it to her in a few clipped words. Nothing to report. Subject not sighted. Lights are on inside the dacha. Dosvidanya. He hung up.

Preobazhinsky walked around the house, pausing here and there to peek through the hedge when he found an opening. There were no real good aspects that offered him a better view than the upstairs window. He let himself through the gate and walked down that road until he came to the intersection with the back lane that ran along the rear of his own dacha and the front of the target’s place. He strolled up a slight incline and walked along the road past the man’s driveway. There were plenty of places where he could see into the well-lighted windows, and he noted all of them. About a hundred meters down the track the watcher turned into the woods. There was no neighbor on that side and he made his way to within fifteen meters of the building. A few thick birch clumps offered adequate coverage, but the ground was soggy and his boots stuck in the mud. Quiet as he could, he carefully refilled his boot marks and retraced his path to the road and eventually to the safe house gate.

At ten he made another report, on the two-hour schedule, and much the same as the first one. Then he went back upstairs to resume his watch by the window. His drying boots dripped in the bathtub, and the sound of a rising winter wind hustled along the eaves and clapboards a few inches from his face.

The relief was due a few minutes before dawn, and he had to remove his car before the replacement arrived. They were to have no contact, which was a strange notation, perhaps the second really important item Preobazhinsky noted about the job. The first, that there were no signs of personalities in the house, had been understandable once he concluded the place was an official address, probably used for off-the-record meetings and the occasional tryst. The order to make no contact with the other watcher and the supplemental detail that he would have no backup or assistant in case anything went wrong flew in the face of KGB procedure. It bothered him to the point that by six-thirty in the morning he had decided to leave on schedule, then double back and watch to see who entered the house for the day shift.

He backed up, stepped out of the idling car and closed the wooden gate, and left the padlock loose. As he made his way down the low hill and around the edge of the lake, he spotted a turnaround where he could come back and park. Then he proceeded to the intersection in the woods, where he waited until he saw the prescribed car enter the lane and proceed back in the direction from which Preobazhinsky had come. It was a black Lada with a red ball on the antenna. He pulled out as if on his way home.

Ten minutes later he was back at the dacha, and he walked up the lane near the gate. He could see clearly that the Lada was not parked behind the shrubs. The lock was still unclosed. Nobody had entered the house.
Preobazhinsky turned around and went back to his car.

The following night was more of the same, and the watcher showed up at work at five, prepared to drive out to the site. Menkin avoided him and there was nothing to do at the office. He left and fought the traffic on the way to Kuntsevo, arriving a few minutes late but still before total darkness had reached into the muddy lanes and always-dark forest. The dacha was cold, but he built no fire and it remained dark and silent. He took up his post at the upstairs window, wearing a layer of two shirts, a sweater and a leather jacket.

The lights were on in the target’s house, just as they had been the evening before. Nothing looked different, except that a light colored Volvo was parked in the drive and there had not been one the night before. He watched and waited, intending to go out and note down the license in a few minutes when full darkness would allow it.

He made the eight o’clock report, complete with the car’s number and description. The ten o’clock report was much the same, as was the midnight call and the one at two a.m. At two-thirty, the car started up and backed out, turned right and drove around the lane beyond sight. He reported the event at four, and prepared to leave in a few hours. His six o’clock call was answered with a request to stop at the office before he went home.

“You wrote down the license, correct?” Menkin grilled him. Preobazhinsky sat at the front of his boss’s desk and wondered what this was all about.

“That’s correct.”

Menkin studied his subordinate’s face too carefully. “Is that all you have to say about this shift?”

“Yes,” the watcher said and observed Menkin’s eyes study his own.

What was Menkin looking for? Had he missed anything? Perhaps he had not seen some activity when he went into the bathroom or while making a telephone report. Preobazhinsky wondered, but there was nothing he could recall that was absent from his reporting.

Menkin looked at a sheet lying on his blotter pad, then looked back at Preobazhinsky and smiled. “Good. That’s all. You can go home. I don’t think you have to come in here tonight. Just go direct to the dacha at the usual time.”

He wondered again as he left for home why he had been called to the office.

Tatiana had lit candles on the table and the good dinnerware was arranged for their guests. Preobazhinsky and his wife sat with the children on their laps joking together on the couch. He pursed his lips at Tatiana.

“I love you,” he said, sure of it as she kissed him full on the lips for the fifth time that day.

“We are having a celebration in honor of father’s new appointment. Since you can’t be around for dinner, we thought a real breakfast would be just as good.” She laughed, got up and went out to the eggs, real ones, ready for the skillet.

He followed her to the tiny kitchen.

“What new appointment?”

“He’s being assigned to the central Agricultural Ministry office. That means he won’t be going down south every week, and he gets a limousine.”

He spun around and walked back to answer the knock at the door. Extending a hand to his father-in-law, Grigori Yefimovich Onegin, he said, “Congratulations! I hear you’re getting booted upstairs!”

Grigori was a tall and thin aristocratic aparatchik of the old party style. He dressed in fine European style, kept a clean and straight official line that included total support for whoever ran the country, and, Preobazhinsky thought raised the most beautiful daughter in Russia.

“Thank you, Sergei,” he said, beaming a broad smile with a twinkle in his eye. Preobazhinsky’s in-laws truly loved the two grandchildren, and they would accept any opportunity to be with them, whether it was for a celebratory breakfast or a weekend out at their dacha. That dacha was less than a quarter kilometer from where their son-in-law had spent the last two nights.

Grigori continued, and he told Preobazhinsky about the promotion: “I am going to work in the Ministry’s new technical office, with direct reporting responsibility to the Deputy Minister. My office will be on the floor below his. How about that?”

He said it was wonderful, and wondered if perhaps it might help his own career. Who you know is important in Moscow, and particularly important in Party work and in the State organs. Preobazhinsky’s career had seemed to hit dead space a few years back and he was considering a change. He had no idea what that might be, but he did know that jumping through hoops in Menkin’s circus, all night long and weekends, was not what he wanted to do anymore.

They ate a tasty early meal, talked about the new job and chatted about Katya’s school projects. By nine-thirty the grandparents were ready to leave. Tati suggested he help her mother down the wide steps. He thanked them on the way down for the toys and books they had brought the children.

He walked out to the curb with them and helped his mother-in-law get into their cream Volvo.

As they waved the car pulled out from the curb and Preobazhinsky read the license number.

“I want to talk with Menkin,” he said, nearly whispering into the receiver. He stood in the dark dacha kitchen. It was nearly eight o’clock that evening. A car chugged past the back windows. The silence returned and the operator at the office finally came back on the line.

“He is not here. And you are not supposed to call anyone except your control number with two-hour reports. Please hang up immediately,” she demanded, officious and short.

Preobazhinsky insisted, adamant and angry, “I must be put in touch with Menkin. If he is not there, he must be contacted right away. Tell him to call me here.”

“No calls are allowed to ring there, Comrade. That location is a surveillance site. The ring would attract . . .”

“Fuck you! Get in touch with him. I demand that you follow my instructions!” He was more than impatient and wanted that expressed to Menkin, if and when the dispatcher contacted the boss.

Preobazhinsky slammed the receiver on the hook and walked out the door to the car. He lit a cigarette, breaking concealment. But then, who gave a whistle about somebody having a very pissed-off smoke in the driveway? Who would be out and about in this miserable rain and sleet anyway, other than morons like himself?

The Volvo came and went again that night. He reported the occurrences and nothing more. He said nothing about the fact that he knew whose car was coming and going from the target’s driveway. At dawn Preobazhinsky left, driving into the city and right to the office. Menkin was not there.

“What’s the matter, darling? You have been acting strange.”

“Nothing, Tati. Nothing.” He lied to his wife as she braided their daughter’s hair for school. He sprawled on the bed, shoes removed but still in his working clothes. His hands were folded under his head on the pillow. He realized the ceiling could use fresh paint.

“Why so quiet?” Tatiana pressed for an answer.

“I’m just tired,” he lied again. “I can’t even get in the mood to go to bed.” Preobazhinsky thought about the darkened ceiling of the bedroom at the dacha where he watched his father-in-law park his car in the target’s driveway two nights in a row. The watcher realized that while he was in the forest house he had never noted the true colors of the painted ceilings. It was always too dark to see them.

He walked into Menkin’s office and the boss was there already, eating a roll and reading something from a dossier. The boss looked up, surprised.

“I need to talk to you, now.”

Menkin smiled, put the pastry on his desk and closed the folder.

“Why did you put me on this guy? I have a right to know that.”

“You enjoy nothing of the sort,” Menkin said.

“You know that the Volvo belongs to Grigori Yefimovich, my wife’s father. You knew that before you sent me out there, didn’t you?”

“Of course, Sergei.”

“Are you checking on me to see if I would blow the whistle on my wife’s family? Is that what this is, some fucked game to test my loyalty?” He was over the edge. He knew he had to maintain control that would allow him to choose his words before they left his lips.

Menkin slowly crafted his answer. “Comrade Onegin has a great responsibility to the Party and the nation. He is being checked, vetted for his own good. The nation has called on him to perform important work and he must be trusted. We are simply aiding in that effort, to make certain Onegin is the man we all suppose he is.”
It was a pat statement, an answer that would be expected, but one that did not suffice.

“Have you been checking up on my own loyalty? Since it involves my family, were you vetting me, too?”

“Of course not, dear Sergei Vladimirovich. We love you here. You have never caused anyone to doubt your efficiency or your devotion to your duty.” He ended it without a single expression on his cunning face that would indicate whether it was truthful or not.

“What is going on, Menkin? Do you think my father-in-law and this doctor-engineer are spies or traitors?”

Menkin turned his swivel chair and touched the tips of his fingers under his pointed chin, and stared down at a spot on the mopboard. His narrow face barely moved as he said: “The doctor-engineer has been out of town since last weekend. Your father-in-law has been visiting the man’s pretty young wife.”

He pivoted back to Preobazhinsky, who without comment excused himself and went down to the car.

That night he watched the target’s house for the last time. The point had been made. He was the one who was being watched, of course. They already knew that Grigori was having an affair with the wife of a suspected disloyal. That, however, was not the point of the assignment. The point was that Preobazhinsky could have just ignored the fact that his father-in-law was humping the man’s wife. If he had ignored it and not reported the truth, he would be regarded as disloyal, protective of his own interests, subject to arrest and punishment. So far as his father-in-law was concerned, the organs were simply gathering more information about his private life, and his weaknesses, to maintain the dossier that they keep on every citizen. He was no different. He was one of them, just like his son-in-law, a prisoner of the same state. You were either a watcher or one of the watched.

It was a great idea, Preobazhinsky realized, for them to assign him to the case. He would be careful, he thought. He would be very careful about what he did with the information he had about Grigori. Should Preobazhinsky go to him, tell him what had happened? Should he remain silent, not letting him know? Menkin had given him no order not to tell. What should he do?

“Are you feeling better this morning?” Tatiana asked. He sat at the table reading a newspaper.

“Yes,” he smiled up at her. Her face resembled Grigori’s more than her mother’s. Preobazhinsky had always liked her nose, and now for the first time he realized it had been one of her father’s genes.

“I am glad,” she said. “Things are really looking up for this family, and I was beginning to worry about you.”

“I’m going to be all right,” he said.

The newspaper was still damp from his walk back from the kiosk. There was a conference of foreign ministers scheduled for March in the city. An airliner had been hijacked in the Mediterranean. A Nobel laureate had died of a heart attack. More freezing rain was expected. The Ministry of Agriculture announced the promotion of Grigori Yefimovich Onegin, old and trusted Party member, to a very important position in the Ministry.

“Everything is going to be all right,” he said.

THE END