It’s bad enough that I’m using her, he thought. But endangering her this way? This isn’t something she signed up for. I volunteered for this work, knowing the dangers. Lana never did.
Yet in some ways it was too late to turn back. She had already laid the groundwork with von Schüssler.
He’d have to protect her, avoid being seen with her. His public encounters with her in Moscow thus far could all be explained as a rich playboy’s infatuation, his attempt to reconnect with a past love. And they had taken extraordinary precautions to avoid being seen meeting at her friend’s apartment. These precautions would have to continue, even intensify.
Now, however, he had to use every method at his disposal to make sure he was not tailed. He had left the Metropole through a service entrance, one he had not used before. That had enabled him to avoid the drones, the low-level followers who sat waiting for him in the hotel lobby. But there were others, of course, including the blond NKVD man who seemed to turn up everywhere. So he would take extra measures. He would not be tailed.
He would make sure of it.
The cobblestone expanse of Red Square was bordered on its eastern side by an immense ornate building with a marble and granite facade, several hundred meters long. This was the Gosudarstvenny Universalny Magazin: GUM, the State Department Store, the largest shop in Moscow. Inside was an arcade three stories high that looked something like a turn-of-the-century railway station in London or Paris; it swarmed with people poking around the hundreds of shops. In bleak contrast to the extravagant architecture, however, the shelves were sparse.
The bustling crowds, combined with the innumerable nooks and crannies, stairways and passages, provided Metcalfe with an ideal place to lose any possible followers. Carrying his cardboard suitcase, he stopped into a series of shops, examining the phonograph records, the perfumes, the bad costume jewelry, the peasant shawls. The throngs closed in around him, swallowing him up, making the job of a watcher next to impossible. Anyway, there was nothing suspicious or peculiar about an American businessman visiting Moscow’s most famous shopping gallery, and the narrow suitcase could have carried business files, for all anyone knew. He joined a mob making its way up an iron staircase, climbed up to the first balcony, where he was able to quickly survey the crowds. He saw no one.
Spotting a corner shop that was open on two sides, he entered, looking with great interest at a display of carved wooden toys and elaborately painted nesting matryoshka dolls. He picked one of the dolls up, turned its top half, and revealed a slightly smaller one inside. In all, there were six dolls concealed inside the outer one. It was a beautiful example of Russian folk art, and he thought Lana might appreciate it. It was also a good idea, he knew, to purchase something in order to establish a pretext for being here. While he stood in one line to pay for it, then another line to pick it up—Soviet bureaucracy had invaded even the shops in Moscow!—he glanced casually around. He did not recognize anyone, nor was there any discernible pattern of surveillance that he could make out.
Taking his purchase, he left the shop through the other side, then made an abrupt U-turn, as if he had spotted something of interest. He elbowed his way through the crowd, then climbed another set of stairs. The third level was less crowded. Striding quickly about a hundred feet, he then took yet another staircase back down to the second floor. He entered a men’s room, where several men were standing at a trough urinal, two of them appearing to be drunk. He entered a stall, bolted the door, and then quickly changed into the Russian clothes that Corky had provided. The lining of the peasant jacket had been sliced open, but from the outside it would attract no attention. The shoes, pants, shirt, and jacket were all not only authentically Russian but also had been well distressed. They looked appropriately worn.
From the sounds of it, the drunken men had left; other men had come in. This was good. He donned the light brown wig, which fit tightly over his head, then daubed spirit gum over his chin, upper lip, and eyebrows; when it had dried, he carefully applied the scruffy goatee. It would have been far easier to do this standing before a mirror rather than seated on the closed lid of a toilet, but at least he had thought to bring a small shaving mirror to check that everything was in place. Next came the heavy, unkempt-looking eyebrows. He smeared a bit of dark makeup under his eyes, which accentuated the circles subtly, aging him dramatically. He could have been forty, a smoker, and a heavy drinker, a peasant who had lived a hard life, like most Russian peasants.
He checked himself again, impressed by how different he looked. But he did not want to take a chance; he could go further, and he did. He inserted cotton wads into his mouth, tucking them inside his cheeks next to his upper teeth; this instantly transformed his face. The final touch was to insert specially designed metal nuts into his nostrils, which had been machined for the OSS with tiny breathing holes in them. They felt cold and uncomfortable at first, but they distorted the shape of his nose, made it flatter, more like that of a typical Russian peasant.
Glancing in the mirror again, he barely recognized himself. He peered through the cracks in the stall, saw that there was no one remaining who had seen him enter. Quickly stuffing his American clothes and shoes into the suitcase, he emerged from the stall, then went over to the washbasin, setting his suitcase down on the floor next to it. He washed his hands for a few minutes, then left the rest room, his suitcase remaining behind on the bathroom floor. Later on, some lucky Russian would find it, decide to steal it, and be pleasantly surprised to discover a good suit inside.
Glumly he ambled the length of the second-floor gallery. He had altered his walk, adding a slight limp, as if one leg were a little shorter than the other. By the time he reached the first floor, he was certain that no one was following him. He was a nonentity, a middle-aged Russian who looked like millions of others in Moscow. No one would give him the slightest notice.
Rudolf von Schüssler was annoyed at the interruption.
The prim, pinched-face security officer from the Sicherheitsdienst was sitting in his office asking all sorts of questions about any English-speaking people von Schüssler might have had occasion to meet in Moscow in the last few days. Von Schüssler had too much to do to waste his time being interrogated by a cop, but the ambassador had asked him to make time, so of course he’d agreed. Von Schüssler knew enough to stay on von der Schulenberg’s good side.
“It is possible,” said the man from the Sicherheitsdienst, “that one of these visitors is a dangerous spy.”
The notion seemed ridiculous to von Schüssler, but he played along. “There are a great many Americans and Brits in this town,” he said loftily. “Altogether too many, if you ask me. I was speaking to one particular simpering fool the other night, some prancing dandy, and I couldn’t help reflecting—”
“His name?” the SD man rudely interrupted, leveling his cold gray eyes on von Schüssler.
Von Schüssler squinted, then slowly shook his head. “I can’t remember just now. But if he’s a dangerous spy, I’ll eat my hat.”
The SD man gave a malevolent grin. “And if he turns out to be the one, I may just make you.”
Such vulgarity! von Schüssler thought. Such impudence! Von Schüssler found the man altogether repugnant, beneath contempt. Yet there was something about him that made his skin crawl; he couldn’t put his finger on why. It was not a familiar sensation, but not a wholly unknown one, either. Von Schüssler tried to remember when he had felt like this before, and he recalled a time when he was an adolescent wandering through one of the outbuildings of the family’s schloss outside Berlin. Yes, that was it: the shed was dark, filled with shadows, and he was reaching out for a coiled rope when suddenly he froze, stricken with a sense of primal alarm. And only an instant later did he realize what he had almost grabbed in the gloom: a snake. An enormous coiled snake.
That was what this man from the Sicherheitsdienst reminded him of.
A poisonous snake.
Metcalfe arrived at Lana’s friend’s apartme
nt half an hour early and Lana was twenty minutes late, but it was not time wasted. While he waited, he took out a penknife and pierced the secure cellophane seal that encased the documents, then carefully took them out and examined them. They were impeccable. The paper was coarse and off-white and looked nothing like any paper manufactured in the West. The documents were typewritten, no doubt using a genuine Soviet typewriter, probably identical to the ones in use within the Commissariat of Defense. All of them were stamped with an official Commissariat stamp convincingly decayed from years of heavy use, in the purple ink they invariably used. The papers were all time-and-date-stamped, the dates ranging from a few weeks ago to today.
Some of them were even signed by the Soviet Commissar of Defense. Many were stamped TOP SECRET. Metcalfe had no doubt that the documents would stand up to the most stringent forensic examination in Berlin. He also had no doubt that they would be closely examined.
The thought struck him that if the documents were discovered to be fake, Lana would be killed. And not by the NKVD, but by the Nazis.
So the quality of the forgery was not just a matter of ensuring that Corky’s scheme succeeded.
It was a matter of keeping Lana alive.
The top page in the stack was blank, presumably to conceal its contents from any handlers. As Metcalfe scanned the documents, he was impressed by how plausible they seemed, how detailed—and how extraordinarily misleading. Corky had briefed him a few weeks ago about the Soviet military, though at the time Metcalfe didn’t understand why.
“Russia is a mammoth force,” Corky had said. “The Germans don’t understand that.”
“Oh, come on,” Metcalfe had scoffed. “Of course the Germans know it—why else would Hitler make a deal with Stalin? The Führer only respects strength. You don’t make a deal with a weak man.”
Corky had smiled. “Correct. But don’t confuse what the Germans think with what they know.”
Now, as Metcalfe read through the documents, he understood the illusion that Corky, the great illusionist, was creating. It was like looking at Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting of La Grande Jatte: If you stood too close, you saw only the tiny, precise brush strokes of pigment. You had to stand back to apprehend the entire complex scene.
Anyone closely reading these documents would realize quickly how weak the Red Army was. It was a portrait that was entirely convincing because of its details. There were inventories, memoranda between the People’s Commissar for Defense, Marshal S. K. Timoshenko, and the chief of the general staff, K. A. Meretskov, among scores of lesser officials, all of which contained lists, requisitions—a flurry of paperwork that told a story of a giant with feet of clay.
The Red Army, according to these forgeries, had only twenty cavalry divisions, twenty-two mechanized brigades—far fewer than the Germans believed. The famous Soviet strategic second echelon, particularly the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Armies and their mechanized corps, was simply a disaster; they lacked modern medium and heavy tanks. Soviet military aircraft were obsolete. The shortage of weapons and equipment was disastrous; the equipment the army did have was aging. Parts were in terrifyingly short supply: there were parts available to arm only 15 percent of the tank and armored units. There was no central military communications system; in any war, the Red Army would be forced to use nineteenth-century methods such as couriers and wires. In all, these documents told a story of an alarming deficiency that must, at all costs, be concealed.
It was not true.
Metcalfe knew enough to see that the thoroughly plausible picture evoked by these forged documents bore no basis to reality. The Red Army was going through an upheaval, he knew, but it was far stronger, far more modern—far more powerful—than the story that was told here.
“Weakness is provocative,” Corky liked to say. Arrayed on the birch tabletop before him was a thoroughly convincing pointillist landscape of a feeble nation. Hitler’s generals would see this as an opportunity, a brass ring that must be grabbed. They would decide to invade Russia; for Nazi Germany, there would be no question.
It was a brilliant deception.
As Metcalfe carefully restacked the papers, he glanced again at the blank top sheet. Strange: it wasn’t an ordinary piece of foolscap but a creamy sheet of high-quality, high-rag-content British stationery of the sort that Corky favored. He inspected it closely. It bore the watermark of Smythson of Bond Street: Corky’s favorite stationer. It also gave off the faintest odor of chemicals and peppermint. Pep-O-Mint Life Savers. Corky had handled this sheet of paper more than the others.
The chemical smell indicated something else entirely. Metcalfe took out a miniature vial of crystalline potassium ferricyanide, one of the items he usually carried on his person while in the field. He located a ceramic serving bowl in the kitchen, tapped out a small quantity of the chemical, and dissolved it in a few ounces of water. Then he immersed the blank sheet of paper in the solution. Within a few seconds the spidery indigo script appeared. Corky’s distinctive handwriting.
He pulled out the wet sheet of paper, placed it on the kitchen counter, and began to read.
S—
Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? But such questions are child’s play, my boy, and the time has come to put away childish things. Sooner than you can imagine, the questions will get harder, the answers harder still. Preserving civilization can be such an uncivilized pursuit. But then, someone must practice the dark arts, so that our apple-cheeked compatriots may enjoy the light. It was always thus. Remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was built at night. . . .
Herewith the materials for Operation WOLFSFALLE.
Remember, truth is a shattered mirror. Don’t cut yourself on the shards.
—A
Metcalfe understood at once. He was accustomed to Corky’s riddles. Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? But they don’t reverse at all, Corky was always pointing out; they merely show what’s in front of them. The confusion lies with the viewer.
What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? The irresistible force, Metcalfe knew, was the Nazi war machine. The immovable object was the Russian bear. What would happen when the two met?
They would destroy each other.
And then there was the phrase Corky had used: “Operation WOLFSFALLE.”
Die Wolfsfalle.
The Wolf trap.
Metcalfe realized at once the significance of the code name Corky had chosen. Wolf referred to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler often used the cover name Wolf in his early days. It was his pseudonym, his nom de guerre, probably because the name Adolf was Teutonic for “wolf.” In 1924, shortly after his release from prison for his attempted coup, he took a room at the Pension Moritz in Obersalzberg, Bavaria, registering under the name Herr Wolf.
Wolf was the pet name that Eva Braun, Hitler’s putative lover, called him. His deputy, Rudolf Hess, had even named his son Wolf in Hitler’s honor. And then this past June, Hitler had moved his headquarters to an idyllic Belgian village, Brûly-de-Pesche, which Hitler promptly named Wolfsschlucht, or Wolf’s gorge. This was the Führer’s command post from which he oversaw the defeat of France. It was there that he stomped for joy when he learned of France’s surrender. According to the very latest intelligence, Hitler’s men had begun constructing a complex of heavily fortified concrete bunkers in Rastenburg, East Prussia, that would serve as his headquarters, his Führerhauptquartier.
He had given it the name Wolfsschanze: the Wolf’s lair.
The meaning of Die Wolfsfalle—the Wolf trap—was clear.
When Lana entered and saw him, she let out a scream. Only when she realized who it was did she laugh ruefully. “Bozhe moi! My God, Stiva, I didn’t know you! Why are you dressed like that?” Then she caught herself, shook her head before he could reply. “Of course you are taking such precautions. I’m glad.”
He embraced h
er, and as she kissed him, she shuddered. “Oh, this beard—it feels like I am kissing Rudolf, and it is a terrible feeling. Please, you must remove that disguise at once!”
He just smiled. As much as he wanted to stay with her for as long as she could spare, he knew the visit would have to be brief. The more time he spent here, the greater the opportunity for exposure. He would depart momentarily; the disguise would be useful when he did. He gave her the matryoshka doll, which she received with delight, but very quickly her mood darkened.
“I’m frightened, Stiva.”
He could see it in her face. “Tell me.”
“Of what we are doing.”
Barely able to suppress the acrid sensation of guilt that welled up, he said, “Then you shouldn’t do it. If you’re frightened, I don’t want you to give von Schüssler these documents.”
“No, you misunderstand. What you’ve asked me to do is to be brave. To do something for my father and for Russia both. The way Father fought for Russia with such bravery. You’ve given me a chance to be brave. You’ve given me a purpose.”
“Then what are you frightened about?”
“I cannot fall in love with you again. You’ve given me the gift of your love, my Stiva. But there’s no hope for us. We have no future together. It is like the ballet Giselle.”
“How so?”
“Well, Giselle is a peasant girl who falls in love with a nobleman in disguise, who’s pretending to be someone he’s not. And then when she learns the truth, she knows she can never marry him, and so she loses her mind and she dies.”
“Am I pretending to be someone I’m not?”
“Look at yourself!”
He chuckled. “You have a point. But you won’t go mad, will you?”
“No,” she said. “I can’t. I have the gift of your love to live for.”
“But it’s not a gift, Lana.”
She was looking at the sheaf of documents distractedly; it was clear that she was thinking of something else. “Yes, you’re right,” she said at last. “We are not Giselle. We are Tristan and Isolde.”
The Tristan Betrayal Page 29