Where does Mikhail S. Gorbachev live?
At No. 10 Kosygin St., a pale-yellow building perched on the highest bank of the Moscow River with a magnificent view of the city and the Kremlin - if you believe Sunday's unusual performance when the Soviet president walked back to this heavily guarded compound after voting.Moscow's filthy air is fresher in this industry-free neighborhood, which enjoys a luxurious forest surrounding the Stalinesque wedding-cake skyscraper housing Moscow State University.
From the street, the yellow edifice appears to be just an unusually fine apartment building with a swingset on the back lawn. Next door is the dull gray building that was the home of the late Alexei Kosygin, when he was Soviet premier in the 1960s and 1970s.
But from the river below, bay windows and balconies bespeak a rich residence designed to take private advantage of a stupendous site.
Neighbors who watched it being built years ago say the five-floor building extends another five stories into the bedrock of the Lenin Hills. A few hundred yards away, a metro line zips straight to the Kremlin wall.
The Pentagon claims the Lenin Hills are laced with civil defense tunnels, and rumors have long circulated in Moscow that Soviet leaders have a private underground train line from the Kremlin to bunkers in this virtual cliff overlooking the capital.
The unmistakable ZIL limousines used by a handful of top Soviet leaders only occasionally appear at the blockhouse guarding No. 10 Kosygin Street.
"If Gorbachev lives here, he comes and goes underground," said a Westerner who lives in the neighborhood.
Gorbachev's true home has always been a source of speculation. The four-ZIL convoy widely assumed to carry the Soviet leader routinely races down Kutuzovsky Prospect and Rublovskoye Shosse, the best-maintained roads in a capital. whose streets seem to have more holes than asphalt.
Police clear traffic from the middle, so-called "ZIL lane" every morning and evening to let the limousines sail by.