The Company

by Robert Littell

  “Okay, let’s start down the yellow brick road. I’ve been told to expect someone name of Konstantin Vishnevsky.”

  “I am Vishnevsky.”

  “Funny part is we couldn’t find a Vishnevsky, Konstantin, on the KGB Berlin roster.”

  “That is because I am carried on the register under the name Volkov. How, please, is your name?”

  The Sorcerer was in his element now and thoroughly enjoying himself. “Tweedledum is how my name is.”

  “Tweedle-Dum how?”

  “Just Tweedledum.” Torriti wagged a forefinger at the Russian sitting an arm’s length from the table. “Look, friend, you’re obviously not new at this game we’re playing—you know the ground rules like I know the ground rules.”

  Jack leaned back against the wall next to the door and watched in fascination as Vishnevsky unbuttoned his overcoat and produced a battered tin cigarette case from which he extracted a long, thin paper-tipped papyrosi. From another pocket he brought out an American Army Air Corps lighter. Both his hand and the cigarette between his lips trembled as he bent his head to the flame. The act of lighting up appeared to soothe his nerves. The room filled with the foul-smelling Herzegovina Flor that the Russian officers smoked in the crowded cabarets along the Kurfürstendamm. “Please to answer me a single question,” Vishnevsky said. “Is there a microphone? Are you recording our conversation?”

  The Sorcerer sensed a great deal was riding on his answer. Keeping his unblinking eyes fixed on the Russian, he decided to wing it. “I am. We are. Yes.”

  Vishnevsky actually breathed a sigh of relief. “Most certainly you are. In your position I would do the same. If you said me no I would get up and exit. A defection is a high-wire act performed without benefit of safety net. I am putting my life in your hands, Mr. Tweedle however your name is. I must be able to trust you.” He dragged on the cigarette and exhaled through his nostrils. “I hold the rank of lieutenant colonel in our KGB.”

  The Sorcerer accepted this with a curt nod. There was a dead silence while the Russian concentrated on the cigarette. Torriti made no effort to fill the void. He had been through this drill more times than he could remember. He understood that it was crucial for him to set the agenda, to impose a pace that violated the defector’s expectations; it was important to demonstrate, in subtle ways, who was running the show. If there was going to be a defection it would be on the Sorcerer’s terms and at the Sorcerer’s pleasure.

  “I am listed as a cultural attaché and function under the cover of a diplomatic passport,” the Russian added.

  The Sorcerer reached out and caressed the side of the whiskey bottle with the backs of his gloved fingers. “Okay, here’s the deal,” he finally said. “Think of me as a fisherman trawling the continental shelf off the Prussian coast. When I feel there is something in the net I pull it up and examine it. I throw the little ones back because I am under strict orders to only keep big fish. Nothing personal, it goes without saying. Are you a big fish, Comrade Vishnevsky?”

  The Russian squirmed on his seat. “So: I am the deputy to the chief of the First Chief Directorate at the KGB’s Berlin base in Karlshorst.”

  The Sorcerer produced a small notebook from an inside pocket and thumbed through it to a page filled with minuscule writing in Sicilian. He regularly debriefed the sister of a cleaning woman who worked at the hotel a stone’s throw from Karlshorst where KGB officers from Moscow Centre stayed when they visited Berlin. “On 22 December 1950 KGB Karlshorst had its books inspected by an auditor sent out from the Central Committee Control Commission. What was his name?”

  “Evpraksein, Fyodor Eremeyevich. He ended up at the spare desk in the office next to mine.”

  The Sorcerer arched his eyebrows as if to say: Fine, you work at Karlshorst, but you’ll have to do a lot better if you want to qualify as a big fish. “What exactly do you want from me?” Torriti asked suddenly.

  The defector cleared his throat. “I am ready to come over,” he announced, “but only if I can bring with me my wife, my son.”

  “Why?”

  “What does it change, the why?”

  “Trust me. It changes everything. Why?”

  “My career is arrived to a dead end. I am”—he struggled to find a word in English, then settled for the German—“desillusioniert with system. I am not talking about Communism, I am talking about the KGB. The rezident tried to seduce my wife. I said him face to face about this. He denied the thing, he accused me of trying to blackmail him into giving me a good end-year report. Moscow Centre believed his version, not mine. So: this is my last foreign posting. I am fifty-two years old—I will be put out like a sheep to graze in some obscure pasture. I will spend the rest of my life in Kazakhstan typewriting in triplicate reports from informers. I dreamed of more important things…This is my last chance to make a new life for myself, for my wife, for my son.”

  “Is your rezident aware that you are half-Jewish?”

  Vishnevsky started. “How can you know…” He sighed. “My rezident discovered it, which is to say Moscow Centre discovered it, when my mother died last summer. She left a testament saying she wished to be buried in the Jewish cemetery of Kiev. I tried to suppress the testament before it was filed but—“

  “Your fear of being put out to pasture—is it because Moscow found out you were half-Jewish or your dispute with the Berlin rezident?”

  The Russian shrugged wearily. “I said you what I think.”

  “Does your wife know you’ve contacted us?”

  “I will tell her when the time arrives to leave.”

  “How can you be sure she’ll want to go?”

  Vishnevsky considered the question. “There are things a husband knows about a wife…things he does not have to ask in words.”

  Grunting from the effort, the Sorcerer pushed himself to his feet and came around the table. He leaned back against it and looked down at the Russian. “If we were to bring you and your family out, say to Florida, we would want to throw you a party.” Torriti’s face twisted into an unpleasant smile as he held out his hands, palms up. “In the US of A it’s considered rude to come to a party empty-handed. Before I can get the folks I work for to agree to help you, you need to tell me what you plan to bring to the party, Comrade Vishnevsky.”

  The Russian glanced at the clock over the mantle, then looked back at Torriti. “I was stationed in Stockholm for two years and two months before being posted to Berlin. I can give you the names of our operatives in Stockholm, the addresses of our safe houses—“

  “Exfiltrating three people from East Germany is extremely complicated.”

  “I can bring with me the order of battle of the KGB Karlshorst rezidentura in Berlin.”

  Jack noticed the Sorcerer’s eyes misting over with disinterest; he made a mental note to add this piece of playacting to his repertoire. The Russian must have seen it, too, because he blurted out, “The KGB works under cover of Inspektsiia po voprosam bezopasnosti—what you call the Inspectorate for Security Questions. The Inspektsiia took over the Saint Antonius Hospital and has a staff of six hundred thirty full-time employees. The rezident, General Ilichev, works under the cover of counselor to the Soviet Control Commission. The deputy rezident is Ugor-Molody, Oskar—he is listed as chief of the visa section. General Ilichev is creating a separate illegals directorate within the Karlshorst-based First Chief Directorate—the designation is Directorate S. It will train and provide documents for KGB illegals assigned to Westwork.”

  The Sorcerer’s lids seemed to close over his eyes out of sheer boredom.

  The Russian dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out under a heel. “I can give you microphones…phone taps…listening posts.”

  The Sorcerer glanced across the room at Jack in obvious disappointment. Under the floorboards heavy caliber machine guns spat out bullets as the Russians stormed Guderian’s tanks dug in along the Oder-Neisse line. “For us to get a KGB officer, assuming that’s what you are, his wife, his s
on into West Berlin and then fly them out to the West will take an enormous effort. People will be asked to put their lives in jeopardy. An extremely large sum of money will be spent. Once in the West the officer in question will need to be taken care of, and generously. He will require a new identity, a bank account, a monthly stipend, a house on a quiet street in a remote city, an automobile.” The Sorcerer stuffed his notebook back into a pocket. “If that’s all you have, friend, I’m afraid we’re both wasting our time. They say there are seven thousand spies in Berlin ready to put down cold cash for what our German friends call Spielmaterial. Peddle your wares to one of them. Maybe the French or the Israelis—“

  Following every word from the wall, Jack grasped that Torriti was an artiste at this delectable game of espionage.

  The Russian lowered his voice to a whisper. “For the last several months I have been assigned as the KGB liaison with the new German Democratic Republic intelligence service. They are setting up an office in a former school in the Pankow district of East Berlin near the restricted area where the Party and government leaders live. The new intelligence service, part of the Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit, goes by a cover name—Institut fuer Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Forschung, the Institute for Economic and Scientific Research. I can deliver you its order of battle down to the last paper clip. The chief is Ackermann, Anton, but it is said that his second in command, who is twenty-eight years of age, is being groomed as the eventual boss. His name is Wolf, Marcus. You can maybe find photographs of him—he covered the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1945 for the Berlin radio station Berliner Rundfunk.”

  Jack, who had been pouring over the Berlin Base morgue files in the six weeks since he’d been posted to Germany, interrupted in what he hoped was a bored voice. “Wolf spent the war years in Moscow and speaks perfect Russian. Everyone at Karlshorst calls him by his Russian name, Misha.”

  Vishnevsky plunged on, dredging up names and dates and places in a desperate attempt to impress the Sorcerer. “The Main Directorate started out with eight Germans and four Soviet advisors but they are expanding rapidly. Within the Main Directorate there is a small independent unit called Abwehr, what you call counterintelligence. Its brief is to monitor and penetrate the West German security services. The Abwehr staff plans to use captured Nazi archives to blackmail prominent people in the West who have suppressed their Nazi pasts. High on their list of targets is Filbinger, Hans, the Baden-Württemberg political figure who, as a Nazi prosecutor, handed down death sentences for soldiers and civilians. The architect of this Westwork program is the current head of the Main Directorate, Stahlmann, Richard—“

  Jack interrupted again. “Stahlmann’s real name is Artur Illner. He’s been a member of the German Communist Party since the First World War. He’s operated under a cover alias for so long even his wife calls him Stahlmann.”

  The Sorcerer, pleased with Jack’s ability to pick up on the game, rewarded him with a faint smile.

  Jack’s comments had rattled the Russian. He dragged an oversized handkerchief from a trouser pocket and mopped the back of his neck. “I am able to give you—” Vishnevsky hesitated. He had planned to dole out what he had, an increment of information in exchange for an increment of protection; he had planned to keep the best for when he was safely in the West and then use it to pry a generous settlement package out of his hosts. When he spoke again his words were barely audible. “I am able to reveal to you the identity of a Soviet agent in Britain’s intelligence service. Someone high up in their MI6….”

  To Jack, watching from the wall, it appeared as if the Sorcerer had frozen in place.

  “You know his name?” Torriti asked casually.

  “I know things about him that will allow you to identify him.”

  “Such as?”

  “The precise date he was debriefed in Stockholm last summer. The approximate date he was debriefed in Zurich the previous winter. Two operations that were exposed because of him—one involved an agent, the second involved a microphone. With these details even a child would be capable of identifying him.”

  “How do you happen to have this information?”

  “I was serving in Stockholm last February when a KGB officer from Moscow Centre turned up. He traveled under the cover of a sports journalist from Pravda. He was flying in and out for a highly secret one-time contact. It was a cutout operation—he debriefed a Swedish national who debriefed the British mole. The KGB officer was the husband of my wife’s sister. One night we invited him to dinner. He drank a great deal of Swedish vodka. He is my age and very competitive—he wanted to impress me. He boasted about his mission.”

  “What was the name of the KGB agent who came to Stockholm?”

  “Zhitkin, Markel Sergeyevich.”

  “I would like to help you but I must have more than that to nibble on…”

  The Russian agonized about it for a moment. “I will give you the microphone that went dry.”

  The Sorcerer, all business, returned to his seat, opened his notebook, uncapped a pen and looked up at the Russian. “Okay, let’s talk turkey.”

  The hand-lettered sign taped to the armor-plated door of the Sorcerer’s Berlin Base sanctum, two levels below ground in a brick building on a quiet, tree-lined street in the upper-crust suburb of Berlin-Dahlem, proclaimed the gospel according to Torriti: “Territory needs to be defended at the frontier, sport.” Silwan II, his eyes pink with grogginess, his shoulder holster sagging into view under his embroidered Tyrolean jacket, sat slumped on a stool, the guardian of the Sorcerer’s door and the water cooler filled with moonshine slivovitz across from it. From inside the office came the scratchy sound of a 78-rpm record belting out Björling arias; the Sorcerer, who had taken to describing himself as a certified paranoid with real enemies, kept the Victrola running at full blast on the off chance the Russians had succeeded in bugging the room. The walls on either side of his vast desk were lined with racks of loaded rifles and machine pistols he’d “liberated” over the years; one desk drawer was stuffed with handguns, another with boxes of cartridges. A round red-painted thermite bomb sat atop each of the three large office safes for the emergency destruction of files if the balloon went up and the Russians, a mortar shot away, invaded.

  Hunched like a parenthesis over the message board on his blotter, the Sorcerer was putting the finishing touches on the overnight report to Washington. Jack, back from emptying the Sorcerer’s burn bag into the incinerator, pushed through the door and flopped onto the couch under some gun racks. Looking up, Torriti squinted at Jack as if he were trying to place him. Then his eyes brightened. “So what did you make of him, sport?” he called over the music, his trigger finger absently stirring the ice in the whiskey glass.

  “He worries me, Harvey,” Jack called back. “It seems to me he hemmed and hawed his way through his biography when you put him through the wringer. Like when you asked him to describe the street he lived on during his first KGB posting in Brest-Litovsk. Like when you asked him the names of the instructors at the KGB’s Diplomatic Institute in Moscow.”

  “So where were you raised, sport?”

  “In a backwater called Jonestown, Pennsylvania. I went to high school in nearby Lebanon.”

  “And then, for the paltry sum of three-thousand-odd dollars per, which happens to be more than my secretary makes, you got what the hoi polloi call a higher education at Yale U.”

  Jack smoothed back the wings of his Cossack mustache with his forefingers. “‘Hoi’ already means ‘the,’ Harvey. So you don’t really need to put a ‘the’ before ‘hoi polloi’ because there’s already…” His voice trailed off as he spotted the pained expression lurking in the creases around the Sorcerer’s eyes.

  “Stop busting my balls, sport, and describe the street your high school was on.”

  “The street my high school was on. Sure. Well, I seem to recall it was lined with trees on which we used to tack dirty Burma-Shave limericks.”

  “What kind of trees were
they? Was it a one-way street or a two-way street? What was on the corner, a stop sign or a stoplight? Was it a no-parking zone? What was across the street from the school?”

  Jack examined the ceiling. “Houses were across the street. No, it must have been the public school in Jonestown that had houses across the street. Across from the high school in Lebanon was a playground. Or was that behind the school? The street was—“ Jack screwed up his face. “I guess I see what you’re driving at, Harvey.”

  Torriti took a swig of whiskey. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that Vishnevsky is a disinformation operation. When we walked him through his legend, he’d have it down pat, he’d be able to give you chapter and verse without sounding as if he made it up as he went along.”

  “How do you know the Russians aren’t one jump ahead of you? How do you know they haven’t programmed their plants to hem and haw their way through the legend?”

  “The Russians are street-smart, sport, but they’re not sidewalk-smart, which happens to be an expression I invented that means sophisticated. Besides which, my nose didn’t twitch. My nose always twitches when it gets a whiff of a phony.”

  “Did you swallow the story about the rezident making a play for his wife?”

  “Hey, on both sides of the Iron Curtain rank has its privileges. I mean, what’s the point of being the head honcho at Karlshorst if you can’t make a pass at the wife of one of your minions, especially one who’s already in hot water for hiding the fact that he’s part-Jewish? Listen up, sport, most of the defectors who come over try to tell us what they think we want to hear— how they’ve become disenchanted with Communism, how they’re being suffocated by the lack of freedom, how they’ve come to understand that old Joe Stalin is a tyrant, that sort of bullshit.”

  “So what are you telling Washington, Harvey? That your nose didn’t twitch?”