“What was the ‘strong evidence’ that Stalin had? Was that ever revealed?”
“Never publicly, no. But there was talk. Apparently a dossier was obtained in Prague from Czech intelligence, given to the NKVD. The dossier contained letters written by these Soviet military officers, letters to their German counterparts seeking to enlist their support in a scheme to overthrow Stalin. The signatures were verified, the seals, everything. One of the letters was signed by Marshal Tukhachevsky himself.”
“He wrote such a letter?”
“Of course, he denied it. But he said it made no difference. He was convinced that he was about to be arrested, along with others.”
“He was warning your father, then?”
“That may have been part of why he came. Father told him to write a letter to Stalin himself to clear up this misunderstanding. Tukhachevsky said he had done so already, but he hadn’t received an answer. He said his days were numbered and he feared not only for his life but also for his family. He was a desperate man.
“The next morning, I asked my father who it was that had come in the night. He refused to tell me, of course. He said it was no concern of mine. But I noticed that he had removed the photograph of himself with Tukhachevsky. Later I found it hidden away in a drawer, wrapped in newspaper. And a few days later, Tukhachevsky and seven other high-ranking military officers were arrested. They were tried in secret—their trial lasted barely three hours!—and found guilty of espionage and treason against the motherland.”
Her hands were squeezing his so tight that it was painful. But Metcalfe just nodded, listened.
“They all confessed,” she said. “But the confessions were false. They were tortured, we later learned, and then told that the only way to save their lives—and, more important, their families’ lives—was to sign confessions admitting to a conspiracy with the Germans. They were executed in the Lubyanka. Not in the cellar, by the way, but in the courtyard, during the daytime. NKVD trucks were brought in to rev their engines during the execution in order to cover up the sound of the shots.” She paused for a long time, and Metcalfe said nothing. The only sound was the gentle breathing and nickering of the horses. “As they died,” she continued at last, her voice cracking, “they shouted, ‘Long live Stalin!’ ”
Metcalfe shook his head. He put his free arm around her shoulder, squeezed her tight.
“And of course,” Lana said, “this was not the end but the beginning—of a cascade of blood. More than thirty thousand military officials were purged. Generals, army marshals, hundreds of division commanders, all of the navy’s admirals.”
“Lana, what does this terrible story have to do with you?”
“My father,” she whispered, “was one of the few generals who were not arrested.”
“Because he was not involved.”
She closed her eyes. Her face seemed wracked with pain. “Because he was not caught. Or perhaps it was luck. These things happen, too.”
“Not ‘caught’? Are you saying your father was . . . a plotter against Stalin?”
“It seems scarcely believable. And yet he has often whispered to me of his loathing of Stalin. I have no choice but to believe.”
“But he never told you he was part of any conspiracy, did he?”
“He never would! I told you, he is fiercely protective of me. One single word of his guilt and he would be summarily executed. Stalin does not give anyone the benefit of the doubt.”
“Then what makes you so certain?”
Abruptly she broke away from his embrace. She stood up, walked over to the chestnut horse, and began absently stroking his flank. She was obviously avoiding something extremely painful. After a few minutes, without looking at Metcalfe, she began to speak.
“A few months ago I was invited to a party at the German embassy. It was a terribly extravagant affair, the sort the Germans like to put on, and of course they must always have the crème de la crème of Moscow society there, which means the famous actors and singers and dancers. To be honest, I only go to these things to eat. Really! I’m embarrassed to say it, but it’s true.
“Well, a German diplomat came up to me and asked if I was the daughter of the famous general Mikhail Baranov.”
“Von Schüssler.”
She nodded. “Why did he want to know? I wondered. My father now works in the Commissariat of Defense, and even though his job is quite boring, quite bureaucratic, I must always be careful whom I talk to; we are told there are spies everywhere. He seemed to know all about my father’s military career—far more even than I knew. He said he wanted to talk to me in private, that he had something to share with me that I would find most interesting. I was intrigued, as he intended I would be. We took our drinks to a corner of the room and sat down, away from anyone else. Von Schüssler was clearly a cultured man, different from so many of the Nazi boors I’ve met. I didn’t much care for him—he seemed arrogant and self-absorbed, not at all what you would call a charming man. But he spoke, in a very casual and offhanded way, and I listened. He told me that an old school friend of his who had gone into the SS had shown him a most interesting, top-secret dossier concerning certain highly placed members of the Soviet military. Some of the documents had already been obtained by Stalin, but there were others.”
“Oh, Jesus. Lana, dorogaya. How frightened you must have been.”
“He must have seen the fear in my face. I cannot help it—I flush easily; I am not good at hiding my emotions. I said nothing, pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he could sense my terror. Bozhe moi, Stiva! My God. He said that there were other letters in this dossier, names Stalin never knew about. The SS, he said, liked to hold on to compromising evidence to use when they had a use for it, as if they were trump cards.”
“The bastard was threatening you.”
“But nothing so vulgar, Stiva. Nothing so obvious. It was all quite subtle and understated. Von Schüssler said he saw no reason why this damaging piece of information should be revealed to the NKVD. What was past was past, he said. But didn’t I find it interesting? he said, so casually.”
“However subtly he played it, he was obviously blackmailing you.”
“Ah, but you see, he only wanted to take me to dinner, he said. He said he found me quite interesting and wanted to get to know me better.”
“That bastard.” Of course! It all made sense now. Metcalfe understood, and it sickened him.
“Naturally, I had dinner with him. And again the next night.”
“You had no choice,” Metcalfe said softly. “You couldn’t refuse.”
She shrugged. “I would do anything to protect my father. Just as my father would do anything to protect me. And if it meant spending nights with a man I find tedious and repulsive—well, in Russia people often must do far worse things to save their loved ones. People lie and betray and turn their dearest friends in to the NKVD. People go to the gulag; they’re shot in the back of the neck. It is a very small thing, after all, for me to sleep with Rudolf von Schüssler. I would do far more, far worse, if I had to, to save my father.”
“When I came to see you backstage at the Bolshoi . . . you were terrified, weren’t you?”
She looked at him, and Metcalfe could see tears streaming down her cheeks. “Everywhere there are informants and gossips. If word had gotten back to him that my American lover was back in Moscow . . . I was afraid that jealousy might turn to rage. And he would carry out his threat. He would throw my father to the wolves of the NKVD. Oh, Stiva, I love you as life itself. I always have; you know that. But it cannot be. We cannot be.”
Metcalfe barely heard her words. His mind was spinning, turning, like a kaleidoscope shifting shards of colored glass into one new pattern after another. Lana’s father, a prominent general in the Soviet army, now retired from active military service but still working in the Commissariat of Defense. Her German inamorato, a man close to the Nazi ambassador, von der Schulenberg. An extraordinary chain of connections, lin
ks forged by ambition and coercion and power. A chain that bound his dearest Lana—but was it a chain that could also be used?
Was that what Corky had intended all along?
Metcalfe’s pulse pounded. He stood up, came over to her, put his arms around her, comforted her. She went limp in his arms, seeming to dissolve into him, her body convulsed with deep sobs. Minutes went by. He held her; she wept. There was nothing he wanted to do more than hold his Lana, and in truth holding her was all he could do for her now; it was all she wanted as well. Then, still clinging to each other, she broke the silence. “I am like the Russian people themselves, you know, moi lyubimi. I am beyond help.”
“Maybe not,” Metcalfe said, his thoughts whirling. “Maybe not.”
The symphony of odors almost overwhelmed the violinist, as it did so often when he was indoors, particularly in an unfamiliar place. He could smell the Nivea skin cream that the petty bureaucrat obviously used in place of shaving soap, his Obel pipe tobacco, the rosemary hair tonic he used in a sad and failing attempt to prevent baldness, though it was far too late for that. He could smell the consular officer’s boot polish, which he recognized as Erdal brand; it took him back to his childhood and his father, a strict and orderly man who always kept his boots perfectly shined. His father bought canisters of Erdal shoe polish, which came with free collectible cards depicting zeppelins or gliders or, his favorite, prehistoric animals. He remembered with pleasure the beautiful color drawings of the diplodocus and the archaeopteryx and the plesiosaur, each cavorting in the primordial swamp. It was one of the very few happy memories of his childhood.
Less pleasantly—most of the smells that assaulted his sensitive nasal membranes were, alas, far from pleasant ones—he could smell the anxious bureaucrat’s lunch, whose digestion was not progressing well. The man had consumed bockwurst and pickled cabbage, and he had obviously had an episode of flatulence in this office shortly before the violinist had arrived. It had largely dissipated, but not completely.
“How long a list could that be?” Kleist asked. “I am asking only for a list of British or American males who have arrived in Moscow within the last seven days. How many of them can there possibly be?” The violinist simply wanted to know if one Daniel Eigen had entered Moscow in the last few days.
It was entirely possible, of course—likely, in fact—that Eigen had entered under a different name. However the spy had entered the country, a list was a good starting point, though. It would shorten considerably the amount of time Kleist would have to spend going from hotel to hotel investigating these recent arrivals, making visual identifications.
Meeting with this man was a waste of valuable time. But the military attaché, General Ernst Köstring, with whom he properly should have been meeting, was out of the office for most of the day and had asked him to convey his request to this flunky.
The bureaucrat seemed to have one excuse after another at the ready. The man was a past master at the one skill that was paramount in the German Foreign Office: procrastination. For the last ten minutes he had improvised a veritable cadenza of reasons that he could do nothing. Kleist often encountered such an attitude in the Foreign Service, particularly when they dealt with the Sicherheitsdienst, whom they despised and feared.
Kleist did not particularly care that they despised the SD. That they feared the SD, on the other hand, was useful. So it was with this petty bureaucrat who postured at his little desk reeking of rosemary hair tonic and flatulence: he dislikes me, but he fears me more. These deskbound men, with their flabby asses and their flabby souls, disgusted him. They were frightened, resentful souls who felt superior to men such as the violinist, but they were nothing more than sparrows trailing in the slipstream of an eagle, mice who sought shelter with a lion. These virtuosos of the paper clip and the stapler: how ordinary was their existence, how drab their lives. They did not know, nor would they ever, the transcendence that Kleist, and his mentor, Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, knew: the transport of playing beautiful music, which could bring tears to the eyes of the listener. Or the similar transport of taking a life, which was another kind of music: measured, rhythmic, controlled, requiring not merely skill but instinct, art.
Kleist could not help but stare at the bureaucrat’s throat, as the man gulped nervously and explained why it was impossible, how they could not ask the NKVD for such a list, how they did not, could not, cooperate with the Soviet intelligence service, who after all were working against them, suspicious of them, no matter what the stated policies were. . . . Kleist watched the bobbing of the man’s hyoid bone, the thyroid cartilage of his larynx, the ligaments and tendons and soft fascia. It was so naked, so vulnerable. Briefly he imagined how it would feel to encircle the fleshy throat with a cold, high-tensile catgut E string and, gloriously, to snap it tight, to choke off this unending stream of Scheisse, all this bullshit! Kleist noticed the sharply pointed paper spike on the bureaucrat’s desk and wondered what it would feel like to plunge it into one of this blabbermouth’s eyeballs and into the soft tissue of his brain.
Something in the violinist’s expression, some glint of his malevolent little daydream, must have suddenly come across to the bureaucrat, because Kleist could see the man’s pupils shrink, his blinking become rapid, and all at once the desk man turned compliant.
“. . . Which is not to say that we do not have our contacts here in Moscow,” the man said hastily. “Bribes can be paid to the proper responsible authorities, our counterparts in the Soviet Foreign Ministry. They keep lists of all those who enter the country.”
“Excellent,” Kleist said. “When can I have this list?”
The bureaucrat swallowed, though he tried to cover his anxiety with a suave bravado. “I should think later this week we should be able to—”
“Today. I need the list today.”
The color drained from the man’s face. “But of course, Herr Haupsturmführer. I shall do my best.”
“And if it’s not asking too much, I wonder whether you might find me a room here where I can practice my violin while I’m waiting.”
“Certainly, Herr Haupsturmführer. Why don’t you take my office?”
Chapter Nineteen
“Great thundering Jesus, what happened to you?” roared Ted Bishop as Metcalfe entered the Metropole lobby. “You look as bad as I feel. Even worse than your hotel room after the YMCA boys got through with it!”
Metcalfe winked but kept walking toward the elevator. “You were right—these Russian girls can be wild.”
“I don’t think I ever said that.” Bishop looked confused. “Hasn’t really been my experience.” He approached, shading his bloodshot eyes from the light, and confided: “Seems you’ve got an international following.”
“How so?”
“Not just the Gay-Pay-Oo, or the NKVD buggers, as they’re called these days. That’s par for the course. Now you’ve got the Krauts sniffing around after you.”
“Germans?”
“This morning a Kraut gentleman came by, asking the desk clerks for the names of any recent arrivals. Foreign guests who might have checked in within the last week.”
Metcalfe stopped in his tracks, turned around, and tried to feign nonchalance. “Boy, the Nazis are already measuring Moscow for drapes, huh?” he attempted to joke. “Getting a bit too comfortable here, wouldn’t you say?”
Bishop shrugged. “SD, from the look of him. Sicherheitsdienst, the SS security police, their intel types. But he wasn’t making much headway with the desk clerk. Language difficulties, you know. That added to the fact that the Russkies don’t much like questions, unless they’re the ones askin’ ’em.”
“Did they give him what he wanted?” Recent arrivals? Foreign guests? Conceivably it could be a coincidence, but Metcalfe wasn’t so sure. Why a German? he wondered.
“I took the bloke aside and had a nice little chat with him. You know how starved we are for news—thought he might know something about what the Krauts are up to, gossip, rumors, an
ything I could use. Very least it could be worth a line or two in my next dispatch. You know: ‘According to one German visitor to this beleaguered capital . . .’ People love that malarkey. Used all my ace interviewing skills. Had a good long talk.”
“About what?”
“Fellow really knows a heck of a lot about music. Met Walter Gieseking personally. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, too.”
“Did he ask you for the names of guests?”
“Of course. Kept coming back to that.”
“And did you help him out?” Metcalfe tried to keep the tone light.
“He said an old friend had asked him to look someone up. Said he didn’t remember the exact name. Someone who just arrived from Paris.”
“Well, that rules me out.”
“Be that as it may. I’m a little better at getting information than giving it out, you know. Occupational hazard. Something about his story emitted the faintest odor of fish, I gotta say. Didn’t remember the exact name? Please. Pull the other one; it’s got bells on!”
Roger Martin was still asleep when Metcalfe knocked on his door. “Feel like going for a walk?” Metcalfe said.
“Not particularly,” Roger groaned.
“Good. Let’s go.”
The two were followed out of the hotel by a new set of NKVD watchers, who immediately fell into the tail positions that Metcalfe was beginning to recognize as standard NKVD technique. One lagged behind at a distance; the other crossed the street and walked along at a parallel. They weren’t amateurs, but they weren’t good, either. Was there also another one somewhere in the vicinity, as yet undetected—the blond agent, who was virtually a Houdini by comparison with these two mediocrities? It was certainly possible. But Metcalfe was determined not to give any of the followers cause for alarm or suspicion. He and Roger simply needed to talk, out in the open and away from the hotel microphones. They would keep their movements regular, predictable.
The Tristan Betrayal Page 23