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and the police blocked off the most dangerous areas anyway.
The streets around the Frunze Embankment where Boris lived looked quite normal, and people were going to work as usual. All was calm. Taking various side streets to avoid main thoroughfares, Anatoly got me to my hotel in 10 easy minutes.
We pulled into Smolensky Square at 8:30 a.m. where there was much more activity than usual. People were streaming toward the Kiev Bridge that crossed the Moscow River just below my hotel. I hurried up to my room to change for my meetings that day. Sounds of machine guns crackling like Chinese firecrackers, punctuated by cannon rounds, bounced off the huge Stalin Gothic Ministry of Foreign Affairs across the square, rattling the windows of my room. Just then, the floor maid came into my room. “What’s happening?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s just a little war,” she said. “It will be over this evening.”
I called my first meeting which was scheduled for 10:00 and said 1 would be an hour late due to blockades and diversion. I wasn’t quite up to telling them I wanted to watch the war.
Crowds were flowing down to the embankment with an air of excited anticipation, like fans rushing to the football stadium anxious not to miss the kickoff. I could immediately see a dense mass of humanity on the Kiev bridge looking towards thw towering wedding cake of a Parliament building, the so-called White House, where the diehards were making their last stand.
At the river, a hundred yards from my hotel, there were thousands of people stretching on both
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