The Tristan Betrayal

by Robert Ludlum

  The beetle-browed Litvikov got up from behind his desk as soon as Metcalfe was escorted in by his aide-de-camp. Litvikov was a tall, stoop-shouldered man with shoe-polish black hair and a ghostly pale complexion. Over the last decade, Metcalfe had seen Litvikov rise through the ranks of the department and had seen him transformed from an obsequious glad-hander to a harrowed, anxious presence. But there was something new about Litvikov: anger, indignation, a gladiatorial confidence mixed with fear, which Metcalfe found worrying.

  Litvikov led the way over to his long conference table, which was covered in green felt and stocked with an armamentarium of mineral-water bottles that the commissar never seemed to offer. He sat at the head of the table, his aide to his right and Metcalfe to his left.

  “We have a problem, Mr. Metcalfe.” Litvikov spoke in English with an Oxford accent.

  “The copper mine,” Metcalfe put in. “I absolutely agree. This is a situation my brother and I have been discussing—”

  “No, Mr. Metcalfe. It is not the copper mine. It is something far more serious. I have received reports of erratic behavior on your part.”

  Metcalfe’s pulse quickened. He nodded. “Aleksandr Dmitrovich,” he said jovially, “if your secret policemen are that interested in my romantic life, I wonder whether maybe they don’t have enough to do.”

  “No, sir.” He indicated a stack of yellow sheets, on the table to his right. They were stamped SECRET in red at the top. Surveillance reports, they had to be. “These reports suggest other explanations, Mr. Metcalfe. Explanations that raise serious questions about what you are really doing in Moscow. We are watching you extremely closely.”

  “That’s obvious. But your NKVD is wasting a good deal of manpower on me. An innocent man has nothing to hide.”

  “Yet you act as if you have much to hide.”

  “There’s a difference, Aleksandr Dmitrovich, between concealment and discretion.”

  “Discretion?” the commissar said, raising his eyebrows, his weary eyes full of fear.

  Metcalfe pointed at the stack of surveillance reports. “I have no doubt that what emerges from all that laborious effort is a portrait of what is sometimes called a playboy. A dilettante. A rake. I’m aware of my reputation, sir. It’s something I always carry with me, something I must always try to live down.”

  But the Russian was having none of it. “This has nothing to do with your—with what I believe is called ‘catting around,’ Mr. Metcalfe. Believe me—”

  “Call it what you will, but when a foreigner such as myself, from a capitalist country, gets involved with a Russian woman in Moscow, the risks are borne entirely by the woman. You know this and I know it. I never kiss and tell, sir, and I always protect a woman’s reputation. But here, the risks to any woman I might see go far beyond that of a besmirched reputation. So if the precautions I take seem suspicious to the NKVD, it is of no concern to me. I’m proud of it, frankly. Let them follow me everywhere I go.” He remembered something that Kundrov, Lana’s minder, had said, and added: “There are no secrets in the Soviet paradise, I’m told.”

  “Are you working with the Germans?” Litvikov cut in suddenly.

  So that was it! Kundrov had seen him talking with von Schüssler at the dacha.

  “Are you?” Metcalfe fired back.

  Litvikov’s pale face reddened. He stared at the table and toyed with his ancient fountain pen, dipping it into an inkwell but writing nothing. “Is that your concern?” he said after a long silence. “That we’ll transfer our commercial allegiances to the Germans?”

  “Why do you need to ask me that? You’ve already told me you see everything, you know everything.”

  Litvikov was silent again for several seconds. At last he turned to his aide. “Izvinitye!” he barked to the man, excusing him.

  When the aide had left the room, Litvikov resumed speaking. “What I am about to say to you, Metcalfe, is enough to get me arrested, even executed. I am handing you this weapon in the hopes that you will not use it against me. But I want you to understand my situation—our situation. And perhaps once you understand, you will be more cooperative. I have long trusted your brother; I do not know you as well, but I can only hope that you are as trustworthy—as discreet, as you say. Because now it is not just trade that is on the line, but the lives of my family. I am a man with a family, Mr. Metcalfe. A wife and a son and a daughter. Do you understand?”

  Metcalfe nodded. “You have my word.”

  Litvikov plunged his pen into the inkwell again, and this time he began doodling on the sheet of foolscap on the table in front of him. “Last August, a little over a year ago, my government signed a peace pact with Germany, as you know. Just one day before the pact was announced, Pravda published an anti-Nazi article about the persecution of Poles in Germany. For years, Stalin and all of our leaders had spoken out against Hitler and the Nazis. Our press was full of stories about how terrible the Nazis were. Then all of a sudden, one day in August—all of it stopped! No more anti-Nazi articles. No more anti-Nazi speeches. A complete U-turn. No longer do you read the word Nazism in our newspapers. Pravda and Izvestiya now quote from Hitler’s speeches, favorably! They quote from the Völkischer Beo bachter.” Litvikov’s doodles had become a back-and-forth series of lines, a violent scribble that was becoming a heavy blot. “Do you think this is easy on us, on the Russian people? Do you think we can forget what we have read, what we’ve been told about the atrocities of the Nazis?”

  Metcalfe thought but did not say, And what of Stalin’s atrocities? What of the millions deported and tortured and killed in the purges? “Of course not,” Metcalfe said. “It’s a question of survival, isn’t it?”

  “Does a rabbit seek out the protection of a boa constrictor?”

  “And the Soviet Union is the rabbit?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Metcalfe. If we are attacked, we will fight to the death—and it will not be only our death. If we are invaded, we will fight with a vehemence the world has never seen before. But we have no interest in invading other countries.”

  “Tell that to the Poles,” Metcalfe said. “You invaded Poland the day after you signed your treaty with Germany, am I wrong? Tell that to Finland.”

  “We had no choice in this!” the Russian said angrily. “It was a defensive measure.”

  “I see,” Metcalfe said, his point made.

  “My country has no friends, Metcalfe. Understand this. We are isolated. No sooner had we signed our pact with Germany than we began hearing about how Britain felt betrayed! Britain claimed that they had been ‘courting’ us, that they wanted us to join them in their fight against Nazi Germany. But how did they ‘court’ us? How did they woo us? They and the French sent a low-level delegation—a retired British admiral and a doddering French general—to Leningrad on a slow boat! It took them two weeks to get here. Not foreign ministers, but retired old military officers. This was a slap in the face to all of Russia. This wasn’t a serious attempt at negotiating an alliance. Winston Churchill hates the Soviet regime—and he makes no secret of it. And who did he send over here as his ambassador, London’s most important foreign posting after Washington? Sir Stafford Cripps—a radical backbencher, a socialist with no standing with the British government. What were we to make of this? No, Mr. Metcalfe, the signals from England were clear. They had no interest in an alliance with Russia.” Litvikov’s violent scribbling had torn through the foolscap. He let the pen drop.

  “Yes,” Metcalfe said, understanding. “The Kremlin really had no choice. So this agreement with Hitler—are you saying it’s not a true partnership? It’s a handshake, nothing more, to keep the enemy at bay?”

  Litvikov shrugged. “I am a member of the Politburo, but that does not mean that I am privy to the decision making at the highest levels.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “The questions you ask are not the questions one would expect from a playboy businessman.”

  “It’s in my interest as a businessm
an to be very informed about politics. These days particularly.”

  “Let me tell you something, and I will let you draw your own conclusions. Last month, the Nazis quietly took pieces of Romania and made them part of Hungary. We learned about this only after it happened.”

  “A rift between Hitler and Stalin?” Metcalfe probed.

  “There’s no rift,” the Russian said hastily. “We are whistling in the dark, Mr. Metcalfe. Who knows what this means? I only know that Stalin expects this agreement with Hitler to last a long time.”

  “Expects . . . or hopes?”

  Litvikov smiled for the first time. His smile was the canny grin of a cynic who has seen it all. “My English is sometimes not precise enough. Perhaps hopes is the word I meant to say.”

  “I appreciate your candor. You can count on my discretion.” By speaking openly, even mildly critically, of the Kremlin, Litvikov was imperiling himself.

  Litvikov’s grin faded. “In that case, let me add to what I have already told you. You may take this as a friendly warning.”

  “Emphasis on ‘friendly’ or on ‘warning’?”

  “I’ll let you make that determination. Some of my colleagues have long harbored suspicions about Metcalfe Industries. There are those that suspect that it is not merely a capitalist combine, which is reason enough for wariness on our part, but something more. A front for foreign interests.” His gaze was penetrating.

  “I assume you know better,” Metcalfe said, returning the gaze with equal intensity.

  “I know that you and your family are very well connected in Washington and in leading capitalist circles. Beyond that, I know very little. You should know that I have already alerted your older brother that if repatriation of your properties is necessary, it will be done.”

  “Repatriation?” Metcalfe knew what he meant but wanted the threat to be explicit, thus addressable.

  “Seizure of all Metcalfe facilities, as you well know.”

  Metcalfe blinked but did not react.

  “This may not be of consequence to you, but I assure you, your brother did not take the prospect well when I spoke with him a few hours ago. Do you know the name James Mellors?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “What about Harold Delaware? Or Milton Eisenberg?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Mr. Metcalfe. All of them were American citizens. And all of them were executed by Soviet authorities on espionage charges. They were not released or returned to their native country. And do you think your government raised a fuss? It did not. Larger concerns held sway. Broader matters of international relations. The United States government knew that these men were guilty. They knew that we were in a position to prove it, with written confessions. Nobody in your State Department wanted these confessions to see the light of day, so nothing was said. Comrade Stalin has learned from this. There is no longer any extraterritoriality. Comrade Stalin has learned that to extend a hand of help to the United States only attracts the jaws of rabid dogs. So there is no longer an outstretched hand. That hand is now a fist.” Litvikov clenched a right hand into a tight fist. “Five fingers are collectivized into one fist. Lenin taught that the collective means the disappearance of the individual.”

  “Yes,” Metcalfe said, trying to control his pounding heart. “And it’s Stalin who’s been overseeing the disappearance of a great many individuals.”

  Litvikov rose, trembling with anger. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d watch that I didn’t become one of them.”

  Sitting in a small park across the street from the Metropole, the violinist watched the hotel entrance using a pair of lightweight folding Zeiss 8 × 60 binoculars. He knew from his brief, unsatisfying interrogation of the front-desk clerks what the times of the shift changes were. He had been able to confirm that the set of clerks he had spoken with had left, replaced by others who did not recognize his face.

  He folded the binoculars and put them away, then crossed the street and entered the hotel. He did not stop at the desk but immediately headed for the carpeted main staircase, his destination clear: he was just another foreigner going to the restaurant. No one stopped him, neither at the entrance nor in the lobby: he looked like a foreigner, and it was clear that he was coming to dinner. Most patrons of the hotel’s restaurant were foreigners, after all.

  He entered the main dining room, done in grandiose Art Nouveau style with gold leaf and columns and a stained-glass ceiling and a marble fountain that splashed water. Looking around, as if in search of a dining companion, he merely nodded and smiled at the headwaiter, ignoring him until the Russian moved on. Then, appearing to give up, not finding his companion there, he left the restaurant and went directly to the stairs. Four of the hotel’s guests were on the list that the military attaché had given him. He did not need the help of any desk clerk now. He had their room numbers.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Aragvi Restaurant was located on Gorky Street, just past Central Telegraph. It was one of the very few decent restaurants in Moscow, and Metcalfe and Scoop Martin were badly in need of edible food. They had arranged to meet in front of the restaurant at seven o’clock in the evening.

  But there was another reason that Metcalfe had decided to dine at the Aragvi, a more important reason. It was here, at the men’s room, that Amos Hilliard had arranged to meet Metcalfe, promptly at eight. The embassy, Hilliard had declared, was now off-limits. Besides, the Aragvi had certain characteristics that made it suitable for a furtive rendezvous. The restaurant was bustling and always crowded, and there were always plenty of foreigners in attendance. There were multiple entrances, Hilliard had told him, permitting the diplomat to make an unobserved appearance. Moreover, Hilliard knew the manager of the restaurant. “I’ve lost track of how much money I’ve dumped there, and I don’t mean on food. I’ve greased a lot of palms. That’s the only way you get reasonable service in Moscow.”

  Roger, however, was late. Generally he was punctual, but the Brit was finding it a challenge to get around Moscow, to get things accomplished. It was far worse, he’d moaned, than even occupied France. At least there he spoke the language.

  So Metcalfe was unconcerned that, after waiting a quarter of an hour, there was still no sign of Scoop. Meanwhile, the line snaking in front of the restaurant was growing steadily longer. He stood out here in order to detect any surveillance, though so far he saw none.

  There was no sense in waiting any longer, Metcalfe decided. It was imperative that he be on time for his rendezvous with Hilliard; Roger would figure out, once he showed up, that Metcalfe was already inside. He walked up to the restaurant door, past the long line of waiting Russians, who sized him up from his attire as a foreigner and thus entitled to jump to the head of the line. A man popped his head out and waved Metcalfe inside without even asking his name. Metcalfe did not need to flash his American passport to gain admission; he had only to slip a twenty-dollar bill into the palm of the headwaiter, a strange-looking long-haired man in a long braided coat and pointed shoes. He wore pince-nez attached to a black ribbon around his neck.

  The headwaiter led him to a table for two on a balcony overlooking the main dining room. Below, a band was playing Georgian love songs. He was served warm peasant bread and good butter and gray caviar. Metcalfe ate ravenously and drank several glasses of Borzhomi, Georgian mineral water, which was highly sparkling and strongly sulfurous. By the time the odd-looking headwaiter had come by for the third time to take his order—extra-attentive to this American who was likely to tip generously and in dollars, not in useless rubles—Metcalfe decided to order, for himself and for Roger. Clearly something important had detained him. When Scoop sauntered in, as indeed he would, to announce some coup he’d pulled off, at least there would be food on the table. Metcalfe ordered far more than either of them could possibly eat: satsivi and shashlik and beefsteak and pheasant.

  The band began playing a Georgian song, “Suliko,” which Metcalfe remembered from his last visit
to Moscow. He associated it with Lana, just as he connected so much about Moscow with her. His mind was flooded with memories of her, thoughts about her; he could not help it. And he could not think about her without a sickening, agonizing sense of guilt. He had blatantly manipulated her into doing what she was now doing. Corky had devised a plan of breathtaking audacity, one that required a conduit who could only be Lana. If his plan succeeded, it would alter the course of the war. More than that, it would change history. Compared to the fate of the earth, what was the fate of one person? But Metcalfe could not think this way; that was the kind of thinking that led to tyranny. That was what Hitler and Stalin believed: the destiny of the masses outweighed the rights of the individual.

  And he loved her. That was the plain truth. He loved this woman, grieved for her situation, for the hand that fate had dealt her. He wanted to allow himself to believe that if his plan succeeded, she and her father would also be free. But he knew that the risks were enormous. Any number of things could go wrong. She could be caught, and if she was, she would be executed, a possibility too horrific for him to dwell upon.

  He was surprised, when he next glanced at his watch, to see that it was just two minutes before eight. He got up from the table and made his way to the men’s room.

  Amos Hilliard was already there when Metcalfe entered. He was standing at a washbasin, washing his hands.

  Metcalfe was about to speak when Hilliard put a finger to his lips, then pointed to a closed stall. Metcalfe looked, saw what appeared to be Russian shoes, with Russian trousers pooled over them. For a moment, Metcalfe was uncertain as to what to do; neither man had prepared for this eventuality. He went to the row of urinals and relieved himself. Hilliard kept washing his hands and watching the closed stall in the mirror.