The Tristan Betrayal

by Robert Ludlum

  But what struck Metcalfe about the officers of the Red Army wasn’t just their dress uniforms, the embroidered silver stars on their red epaulets; it was that their hair was now clipped short, in the Prussian style. They even looked like their Nazi counterparts now. Their chests jingled with bronze and gold medals; they had pistols in highly polished leather holsters suspended from their Sam Browne belts.

  Strange, he reflected: now Moscow was allied with the Nazis. Russia had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany, its great enemy. The two great European military powers were partners now. The fascist state had joined hands with the Communist state. The Russians were even providing war matériel to the Nazis. How could the forces of freedom hope to take on both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union? It was madness!

  There was a familiar scent in the air, Metcalfe noticed. It wafted from a number of the Russian women, in their low-cut evening gowns: the hideous Soviet perfume named Red Poppy—how appropriate, given tonight’s performance!—which was so awful that the foreigners called it “Stalin’s breath.”

  An old man caught his eye, approached, whispering, “Bilyeti? Vyi khotitye bilyeti?” You want tickets?

  The man’s clothes were threadbare, but they had once been elegant. His gloves were missing several fingertips, and they’d been repaired with packing twine. This was a man who had once been well off but now was reduced to abjection. His speech, too, was cultivated. He was heart-rending.

  Metcalfe nodded. “Just one,” he said.

  “I have two,” the old man said. “For you and your wife, sir?”

  Metcalfe shook his head. “Just one. But I’ll pay for two.” He produced a small wad of dollars, far more than the transaction required, and the old man’s eyes widened as he handed over a ticket.

  “Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

  As the old Russian smiled, Metcalfe caught a glimpse of the gold fillings that crowded his mouth. This was a man who had once been able to afford such luxuries.

  So much was in short supply in Russia these days, Metcalfe thought. Food, fuel, clothing . . . but the greatest shortage of all was dignity.

  He checked his coat in the garderob, as everyone had to do. A white-haired, wrinkled old woman took his overcoat, stroking it admiringly as she hung it among the shabby, shapeless garments.

  The warning bell sounded, and Metcalfe joined the crush of people moving into the hall to take their seats. As he entered, he was impressed by the opulence of the theater. He had forgotten how lavish it was, what an island of czarist extravagance in the midst of Moscow’s gray drabness. An immense crystal chandelier hung from a high domed ceiling decorated with fine classical paintings. Six tiers of private boxes banked the Czar’s box, which was outfitted with red drapes and gilded seats beneath a gilt hammer and sickle. The main curtain was of gold cloth, and woven into it was CCCP, the Russian initials for the Communist Party, and all sorts of numbers, the great historical dates of the Soviet Communist past.

  His seat was an excellent one. As he looked around the theater, he noticed the young Russian military officer seated directly behind him. The Russian smiled at Metcalfe.

  “It’s a beautiful theater, no?” the Russian said.

  Metcalfe smiled back. “Spectacular.” He felt a jolt. The man had spoken to him in English, not in Russian.

  Why? How had he known . . . ?

  The clothing, it had to be. That was all. To the discerning eye of a Russian, a foreigner stood out easily.

  But how did he know to speak English?

  “Tonight’s performance will be a very special one,” the military man said. He had a shock of flaming red hair, a strong nose, and a full, cruel mouth. “Gliere’s The Red Poppy—you know the story, yes? It is about a dancing girl who is oppressed by a vicious, villainous capitalist.” The hint of a smirk appeared on his face.

  Metcalfe nodded, smiled politely. Suddenly he noticed something about the red-haired military man: he was no ordinary Red Army soldier. He recognized the green tunic and gold epaulets—the Russian was a major in the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie: the GRU. The Main Intelligence Administration of the Soviet military. Military intelligence: a spy.

  “I’m familiar with the story,” Metcalfe said. “We capitalists make convenient villains for your Russian propagandists.”

  The GRU man nodded in tacit acknowledgment. “The lead, the role of Tao-Hoa, is danced by the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina. Her name is Svetlana Baranova.” His eyebrows shot up, but his expression remained impassive. “She is truly extraordinary.”

  “Is that right?” Metcalfe replied. “I’ll keep an eye out for her.”

  “Yes,” the Russian said. “I always do. I never miss her performances.”

  Metcalfe smiled again and turned around. He was filled with alarm. The GRU man knew who he was. It had to be! His face had revealed it; he’d meant to reveal it. There was no question about it.

  Which suggested that the GRU agent had been placed here, directly behind Metcalfe, deliberately. Metcalfe’s head reeled, his thoughts spinning. How could this have been arranged? For it had to have been arranged; there was nothing random about this “coincidence.”

  But how? Mentally, Metcalfe reviewed the last few minutes. He remembered taking his seat, an empty seat surrounded by people already sitting there on either side, front and back. The uniformed GRU agent, Metcalfe now realized, was already there. He remembered seeing the shock of reddish hair, the arrogant, cruel face; it had registered in his consciousness on some level. The GRU man could not have moved in only after Metcalfe had taken his place!

  How, then, had this been arranged? A creeping sense of paranoia prickled at the back of his neck. What were the chances that a seat he had bought at the last minute from a scalper outside the Bolshoi just happened to be directly in front of a GRU agent who knew of his connection to Lana Baranova?

  Metcalfe shuddered as he realized. The old man who had sold him his ticket: a desperate-looking, once elegant man. Desperate enough to do whatever he was ordered.

  It had been a setup, hadn’t it?

  They knew he was going to the Bolshoi, they being the watchers, the Soviet authorities, in this case the elite GRU, and had wanted to communicate to him the fact that they knew, that he couldn’t make a move without their knowing. Or was he being paranoid?

  No. It was no coincidence. He had been followed to the Bolshoi, perhaps, although if he had indeed been followed, it had been expertly done; he hadn’t picked up on the signals, hadn’t seen evidence of the tail, and that was the alarming thing. Normally he was quite adept at spotting surveillance. It was what he did, after all: what he had been trained to do. And Soviet surveillance tended to be clumsy, obvious—subtlety sacrificed for heavy-handed warning.

  But how could this possibly have been arranged at the last minute? He had deliberately not tried to buy a ticket at the Intourist office, which was the standard procedure for a foreign visitor. He had made a point of procuring his ticket at the last minute, knowing that he could always pick one up from a scalper.

  Not until he entered Teatralnaya Square could his followers have known he was headed toward the Bolshoi. That had been a matter of a few minutes, hardly sufficient time to arrange a placement of an agent.

  And then it occurred to him: he had arrived in Moscow entirely in the open, under his true name, with several days’ notice, his arrival cleared by the responsible authorities. They had a dossier on him; there was no doubt about that. Presumably they had no idea about why he was here. But they knew of his past connection to Lana; of that he had no doubt. It was entirely predictable that he’d want to attend the Bolshoi, see a public performance of his old flame. Yes: they had anticipated his moves, put a watcher in place in case he did what they figured he would do.

  He was being closely watched by those who knew who he was. That was the message they were sending.

  But why GRU? Why an agent from Soviet military intelligence? Surely the NKVD was the agency that would be most inte
rested in keeping a close watch on him.

  A final warning bell sounded from out in the lobby, the lights began to dim, and the excited hubbub diminished to an electric silence. The orchestra started playing; the curtain rose.

  And then, several minutes later, came Tao-Hoa’s entrance, and Metcalfe saw her.

  For the first time in six years, Metcalfe saw his Lana, and he was transfixed, lost in her beauty, her litheness. Her radiant face seemed to hold nothing except the purest transport, transparency, joy: she was at one with the music. There was heaven in that face. The audience could have been a million miles away; she was ethereal, a creature not of this earth.

  Compared to her, the other dancers looked like marionettes. Her stage presence was electrifying, her movements at once fluid and powerful. She soared as if untethered by gravity, as if propelled by magic. She soared like music incarnate.

  And for a moment, Metcalfe allowed his heart to soar with her. He was flooded with memories, of the first time he saw her, dancing in Tristan and Isolde—the first and last performance of that production. It was foolish of Igor Moiseyev to have attempted to set a ballet to German music, and the Commissariat of Culture soon showed him the error of his ways. Metcalfe’s time with Lana was cut short with what seemed equal finality. The memory of their brief yet fevered time together haunted him. How could he have ever let her go? Yet how could he have stayed? It was a brief attachment, no more, a fling; he was never going to remain in Moscow, and she was never going to leave.

  And now, he agonized, what had happened to her? Who had she become in the intervening six years? What had she become? Was she the same fragile, impetuous girl?

  What was he about to get her into?

  Suddenly the audience burst into applause as the curtain fell, and Metcalfe was startled out of his reverie. It was intermission. He had been in a daze all this time, lost in his thoughts, his recollections of Lana. He realized that his eyes were wet with tears.

  Then he heard a voice from behind, very close. “It is hard to take your eyes off her, is it not? I never do.”

  Metcalfe turned slowly, saw the GRU man sitting back, applauding vigorously. The movement of his hands and arms caused his tunic to shift just enough to reveal the glint of metal in a holster.

  A gleaming nickel-plated 7.62mm Tokarev.

  I never do.

  What was he implying?

  “She’s something,” Metcalfe agreed.

  “As I say, I never miss her performances,” the GRU man said. “I’ve been watching her for years.” His tone was confiding, insinuating, threatening: a voice of true malevolence.

  The lights in the house came up, and the spectators arose. Intermission at the Bolshoi, as at most Russian theaters, inevitably meant a buffet set out for the patrons. There would be vodka, champagne, red and white wine; there would be smoked salmon and sturgeon, ham and salami, cold roast chicken. Given how poorly fed Muscovites seemed to be these days, everyone living off ration cards, it was no surprise that there was a crush to leave the hall for the banquet.

  The GRU man got up as soon as Metcalfe did and seemed to be intent on following closely behind. But the crowd was thick, and as it undulated up the aisle toward the exit door Metcalfe managed to leave the Russian a good distance behind. What was the Russian intent on doing? Metcalfe wondered. He had made his point: Metcalfe was being watched closely. Obviously the man wasn’t trying to be subtle. He wasn’t trying to disappear into the background.

  The GRU man could see Metcalfe elbowing his way through the crowd, to the protests of those he jostled. “Molodoi chelovyek! Ne nado lyest’ bez ocheredi!” A prim older woman scowled at him. “Young man, don’t try to sneak ahead of me.” A classic response: Russians, particularly elderly women, were always lecturing strangers, telling them how to behave. They would yell at you for not wearing a hat when it was cold out. Your business was their business.

  “Prostitye,” Metcalfe replied suavely. “Forgive me.”

  Once he reached the lobby, he maneuvered his way through an even denser crowd, and by now he was far enough away from the GRU man that he seemed to have lost the watcher, at least temporarily.

  He knew where he was going. He had been to the Bolshoi countless times, had visited Lana here. He knew the layout better even than most regular theatergoers here.

  Attired as he was in a dinner jacket, his face set in an expression of gravity, he was able to make his way, unhindered, toward a beige-painted doorway on which a sign announced in Cyrillic letters NO ADMITTANCE TO THE PUBLIC. It was unlocked, as he remembered it always was. Just inside, however, was the dezhurny, the security guard, a swarthy, pockmarked man in a blue uniform sitting at a table. He was a typical Soviet petty official, no different from the petty officials of the czarist days: indifferent to his job yet at the same time fiercely hostile to any who dared to challenge his authority.

  “A gift for the prima ballerina, Miss Baranova,” Metcalfe intoned in British-accented Russian. “From the British ambassador, my good man.”

  The man looked up suspiciously, put out his hand. “You can’t go in here. Give it to me; I’ll see that it gets to her.”

  Metcalfe laughed. “Oh, I’m afraid Sir Stafford Cripps would never countenance that, my friend. Far too valuable a gift, and if anything were to happen to it . . . well, I’d hate to imagine the international incident that might result, the investigation . . .” He paused, withdrew a small stack of rubles, and handed it to the guard. The man’s eyes widened. It was more than he made in a month, most likely.

  “I’m so sorry to trouble you,” Metcalfe said, “but I really am required to give it directly to Miss Baranova.”

  The guard swiftly slipped the bribe into a pocket of his jacket, looking to either side as he did so. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he said with an officious frown, waving Metcalfe by. “Go. Move on. Quickly.”

  The backstage area was a frantic scene of stagehands moving large props, including an immense painted backdrop of the port in Kuomintang, China, with the prow of a giant Soviet ship set against an orange sky. There was a cluster of male dancers, some clad as Russian sailors, others as Chinese coolies, standing around, smoking. Several ballerinas in Chinese costumes with heavily painted faces scurried by in satin tutus and toe shoes. Metcalfe could smell the perfumed smell of stage makeup.

  A ballerina pointed him toward a door marked with a red-and-gold star. With quickening pulse, he knocked on the door.

  “Da?” came a muffled female voice.

  “Lana,” he said.

  The door was flung open, and there she was. The silky black hair pulled up tightly in a bun, the large clear brown eyes flashing beneath the painted Chinese features, the delicate upturned, chiseled nose, the high cheekbones, the red-lipsticked pout. The breathtaking beauty. She was dazzling, even more luminous in the flesh than she was on the carefully lit stage.

  “Shto vyi khotite?” the petite dancer demanded brusquely without looking up at her visitor. “What do you want?”

  “Lana,” Metcalfe repeated, softly.

  She stared, and then recognition dawned in her eyes. Something in her expression softened for a split second, then hardened into haughty arrogance. The fleeting moment of vulnerability had passed, in its place an amused composure.

  “Why, can it be?” she said, her voice velvety. “Can it really be Stiva, my old, dear friend?”

  Stiva: that was her nickname for him. Six years ago she would call him that in a soft, silky, almost purring tone, but now she said it in a lilting way that seemed—could it be?—almost contemptuous? She smiled graciously, the prima ballerina receiving a fan with imperious condescension. “What a nice surprise.”

  Metcalfe could not stop himself from reaching for her, encircling her with his arms, and as he went to kiss her mouth, she turned abruptly to offer him her talcum-covered cheek instead. She pulled back, the strength in her slender arms surprising him, as if to get a better look at this dear old friend, but the movement seeme
d quite deliberate, intended to break the embrace.

  “Lana,” Metcalfe said, “forgive this intrusion, dushka.” Dushka, or darling: one of his terms of endearment for her from the old days. “I’m in Moscow on business, and when I heard you were playing the lead tonight—”

  “How wonderful to see you. How kind of you to drop by.” There was something almost mocking in her tone, something excessively formal.

  Metcalfe produced a black velvet box from his dinner jacket and held it out to her.

  She did not take it. “For me? How kind. But now, if you don’t mind, I must finish applying my makeup. It’s really a scandal how short-staffed the Bolshoi is these days.” She gestured around to her tiny, cramped dressing room with its three-sided mirror, the small dressing table cluttered with makeup and brushes, lignin makeup remover, and ragged white cotton towels embroidered with a large yellow B and A, for “Bolshoi Artists.” Metcalfe took in every insignificant detail, his senses in a heightened state of sensitivity. “There’s no one to help me with my makeup tonight; it’s terrible.”

  Metcalfe opened the box, revealing the diamond necklace that sparkled against the black velvet. She had loved jewelry, like most women, but with an unusual appreciation for the artistry, the design, not just the size and flash of the precious stones. He handed it to her; she glanced at it quickly, without interest.

  Suddenly she laughed, high and musical. “Just what I need,” she said. “Another chain around my neck.”

  She tossed the case back at him; he caught it, stunned by her reaction. “Lana—” he began.

  “Ah, Stiva, Stiva. Still the typical foreign capitalist, eh? You don’t change, do you? You would force us into chains and manacles, and just because they are made of gold and diamond, you imagine that we do not see them for what they are.”

  “Lana,” Metcalfe protested, “it’s just a little gift.”

  “A gift?” she scoffed. “I don’t need any more gifts from you. You have already given me a gift, my dear Stiva. There are gifts that shrink and confine and enslave, and there are gifts that grow.”