The capitalist ruling circles in all the countries of Europe will, as a result of their mutually destructive war, become weak and unable to challenge the glorious rise of socialism throughout Europe and the world. It is our honored duty to liberate the peoples of the world!
Metcalfe read with astonishment mixed with increasing outrage. It was the sheerest madness, but at the same time it was brilliant. It was entirely notional, entirely made up, yet at the same time it was entirely plausible.
And it was yet more evidence, if any were needed, of Corky’s deception. Not just of Hitler—but of Metcalfe. These documents will paint a picture, Corky had said.
What sort of picture?
A painting of a bear, Stephen. But a cuddly one. A bear cub that has been declawed.
Corky had lied to him about the nature of the false documents, just as he’d lied about the real reason he was sending Metcalfe to Moscow. The old spymaster had told him his mission was to assess von Schüssler as a potential target for recruitment when his mission was something else entirely: it was to use Lana to pass on these doctored papers to von Schüssler. And then Corky had deceived him, brazenly, once again, by concealing the true intent of the WOLFSFALLE documents. They didn’t show a cuddly bear cub at all. They portrayed a rapidly rearming military power that was planning a massive secret strike against Nazi Germany.
A couple of sets of perfectly forged documents passed from the daughter of a Red Army general to an ambitious Nazi diplomat. That was all it would take to propel the Nazis into launching an attack against the Soviet Union—an attack that would surely spell the end of Nazi Germany.
Metcalfe’s indignation quickly gave way to worry: If Lana read these documents, wouldn’t she realize that he hadn’t been honest with her? She thought she was passing on documents that would assure the Germans that Russia wanted only peace. Yet these did the opposite. These indicated that Moscow intended to attack Germany first.
What would she do—if she did read them? Would she refuse to hand them to von Schüssler?
Well, it was a risk. He had no choice now. Corky had manipulated him into this, and he would have to manipulate her into it as well. He could only hope that she would not have the time to read them, that she wouldn’t be inclined to do so.
He hoped she would simply pass them over to the German.
“Stiva,” she called out.
She was wearing a black leotard and a loose, large white smock over it; her face was made up, lipstick freshly applied. “You look magnificent,” he said.
“And you are silly,” she said with a toss of her head.
“You don’t just look magnificent, you are magnificent. You’re a remarkable woman.”
“Please,” she chided. “You give me far more credit than I deserve.” She reached for the packet of documents.
“Be careful not to handle them,” Metcalfe said. “Handle as little as possible.”
“Why?”
Why? he thought. Because if you don’t handle them, maybe you won’t look at them. And if you don’t look at them, then maybe you won’t see how you’re being lied to. No, not “being lied to”—how I’m lying to you. How I’m manipulating you, betraying you.
But he replied, “Apparently the wizards who’ve forged these documents have also somehow managed to put fingerprints on them. Fingerprints belonging to the top Soviet military leaders. So that if the Nazis do a fingerprint analysis, these papers will pass muster, seem totally authentic.” Metcalfe was making this up entirely, but it sounded plausible. The lies were convincing, but telling them to her made him ache.
“Ah,” she said. “How very clever.”
“Lana, listen. You’ve been tremendously brave. What you’ve done—I know how hard it’s been. But there’s a reason for everything. So much depends upon what you’ve done. So much hangs in the balance.”
“These papers so dense with figures and mysterious words, you’d think nobody could read them.”
“Yes.”
“And yet each contains something powerful. Like the philter that Isolde’s maid prepares, right?” She laughed.
“Not exactly,” he said uneasily.
“You mean these papers are not designed to produce a deep and abiding love between our fearless leader and the leaders of the Third Reich? They won’t produce an intoxicating affection for Russia in the hearts of von Ribbentrop and Heydrich, Himmler and Hitler?”
Metcalfe gazed at her curiously and swallowed hard. There were depths to her, he realized, that he had only begun to fathom. “You said you know nothing of these things. But you seem to know a little bit more than ‘nothing,’ my dusya.”
“Thank you, my darling. And you, too—we both know a little bit more than nothing. But wasn’t there an English poet who warned against a ‘little learning’? I sometimes wonder whether a little bit more than nothing is more dangerous than nothing at all. But then, I would, wouldn’t I? Since I know almost nothing.” Her smile was cryptic. “Come, my darling. Now it is I who have something to show you.”
“I like the sound of that,” Metcalfe replied. He followed her out into the living room and was surprised to see a Christmas tree in one corner adorned with homemade decorations and fruit. “A Christmas tree?” he remarked. “Isn’t that against the law, in this godless paradise? Didn’t Stalin ban Christmas?”
She smiled, shrugged. “It’s not a Christmas tree, it’s a yolka. We just put a red star on top, and then it’s no longer called a Christmas tree. It’s a pagan custom anyway, decorating fir trees. The Christians just took it over. We don’t have Santa Claus, either; we have Dyed Moroz, Father Frost.”
“And this?” he said, pointing to a varnished burlwood case on a side table. It was lined with green baize and had two intricately tooled, perfectly matched dueling pistols set into the recesses. The walnut half-stocks were ornately figured, carved with acanthus leaves and fluted pistol grips; the octagonal twist steel barrels were engraved with images of fire. “Those must be a century old,” he said.
“Older. It’s my father’s greatest treasure—dueling pistols that they say were used by Pushkin.”
“Extraordinary.”
“You see, our leaders tell us they are creating the New Soviet Man, that we are all new, washed clean of history, washed clean of the bad old traditions and the corruptions of ancestry. But they’re still here, these family roots. They still anchor us. Little things that get passed along from generation to generation. They give us a sense of who we are, these things—what is the English word, such a beautiful word? A poetic word. It sounds like something woven from our breath, from the very air . . .”
Metcalfe laughed. “Heirloom?”
“Yes, precisely!”
“If there’s poetry in that word, you put it there.”
“Heirloom,” she said slowly, treating the word carefully, as if it were itself a fragile antique. “My father has a number of these—heirlooms, his own secret treasures he’s so proud of. Little treasures he has held on to, not because they are valuable, but because so many of his ancestors were so careful to pass them down to him. Like this Palekh music box.” She gestured toward a black lacquered box with a beautiful multicolored firebird on top. “Or this fifteenth-century icon of the Transfiguration.” It was a painted wooden panel measuring maybe four by five inches, showing Jesus in glowing robes, being transformed into a radiant spiritual apparition in the presence of two disciples.
“And someday all these will be yours.”
She looked pensive. “Nothing of value is ever really ours. They are ours only for safekeeping.”
“But I don’t see any of your things, Lana. You must get many gifts from your many admirers. Where do you keep them?”
“That’s what grandmothers are for. Grandmothers who live far away from here. Grandmothers who live in Yashkino.”
“Where’s Yashkino?”
“A small village in the Kuznetsk Basin. Many hours on the train from here. They call themselves ‘provincials
born and bred,’ and that is a boast, not an apology.”
“With Russians, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. But at least you have a safe place for your own heirlooms-to-be.”
“You seem to be imagining Aladdin’s cave. My treasure consists of one gift in particular, from one admirer in particular—although it remains a treasure beyond compare.”
“There you go again—now, tell me, Lana, is that a boast, or an apology?”
“Does it matter?”
“It’s just that you’re starting to make me jealous.”
“Don’t be. The gift of your love is what matters to me more than anything.” She drew him near. “My Stiva, ever since we first met, what you’ve given me—it matters more to me than you can know. More than you’ll ever know.”
“Lana, I—”
The phone rang abruptly. She looked startled. She let it ring several times before she decided to pick it up.
“Allo? . . . Yes, this is Lana.” Her face went pale. She listened, interjecting a few syllables from time to time. After a few moments, she thanked the caller and hung up.
“That was my friend Ilya, the stagehand,” she said. She was flustered, even appearing to be frightened. “He spoke to me in the kind of code we have for speaking on the phone. Ilya says that Kundrov, my minder, has been at the Bolshoi today, asking many questions about me. And about my friend, the American.”
“Go on.”
“But there were others as well. From the NKVD. They are all looking for you. They use the word spy.”
“Yes,” Metcalfe said nervously. “All Americans are spies.”
“No, this time it is different. Orders have been given to find you and, if they find you, to take you in.”
“Threats,” Metcalfe tried to assure her. “Hollow threats.”
“Why, Stiva? Do they know about this—about all of this?” She indicated with a wave of a hand the documents she was taking with her for her meeting later with von Schüssler.
“No, they don’t.”
“You wouldn’t deceive me, Stiva. Would you?”
He embraced her, unable to continue lying. “I must go,” he said. “Your father will be here any second.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Ted?”
“Yes?”
“Do you recognize my voice?”
There was a long pause. “Yes, I think I do. Bloody hell, man, what’s going on?” Ted Bishop’s voice sounded different—muted, tense. It was the voice of a frightened man. Metcalfe was calling from a telephone kiosk several blocks from Lana’s father’s apartment on Petrovka. The British journalist worked out of the Metropole; thus he was almost always there.
“Later,” Metcalfe said abruptly. “I need your help.”
“You’re telling me. This place is swarming with YMCA boys.”
“I need you to grab some things from my room. You can get in, right? You’ve known the staff there for years; someone can let you in.”
“They’ve known me for years, doesn’t mean they like me. Familiarity breeds contempt, and all that. But I’ll see what I can do.”
“I appreciate it. Let me call you back in a few hours with a place to meet.”
“Speaking of phone calls, you’ve been getting a bunch of urgent messages from someone—they’ve even been giving ’em to me, in the dining room, in case I saw you. Someone named ‘Mr. Jenkins’? Bloke sounds desperate.”
“Mr. Jenkins”—that was Hilliard. “Got it,” Metcalfe said. “Thanks.”
“All right—uh, listen, do yourself a favor, and don’t come back here. You understand what I’m saying?”
Metcalfe hung up and immediately placed a call to Hilliard at the U.S. embassy. He identified himself as Mr. Roberts, but before he had a chance to say that he’d lost his passport, Hilliard interrupted.
“Jesus Christ, where the hell have you been?” Hilliard said in a low, trembling voice, some combination of fear and anger. “What the hell have you been up to? You’ve been burned, do you know that?”
“Yes.”
“They’re out for blood, man. You’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge, you understand me? You’re in sanction now. You’ve been called out of play.”
Metcalfe went cold. He had to get out of Moscow, out of the Soviet Union, immediately. He had been burned; he was now designated for either arrest or an immediate kill. Corky had passed on the order that he was to be exfiltrated out of the country at once.
“I’ll need support.” Meaning false papers, visas, plane tickets. Documentation that only Corky could provide.
“Obviously. The good Lord has provided, but He wants you to move fast. Like yesterday. Understood?”
“Understood.” Hilliard’s manner of referring to Corcoran might have been, at another time, amusing. It wasn’t now.
“And as for me, I’m feeling a hankering for satsivi. In half an hour or so.” With that, Hilliard hung up.
Metcalfe rushed from the telephone booth.
The violinist observed the small, balding, bespectacled man leaving the main entrance of the American embassy. The man was, he knew, a minor functionary in the embassy, a third secretary. He was also, according to the intelligence that had been provided him, an agent of American intelligence.
As he tailed the American, the wind shifted, and he caught a whiff of Barbasol. The man had freshly shaved, using an American brand of shaving cream.
Yes. This man would lead him to his target. He was sure of it.
The gun weighed heavily beneath Amos Hilliard’s suit coat. He was not used to wearing a gun, disliked its heft, and he hated what he was about to do. But it had to be done. Corky had been adamant about it. The encoded message had been unambiguous.
Metcalfe is a risk to the mission, therefore a risk to the fate of the free world. It is a sad necessity, but he must be eliminated.
The young agent had accomplished what he’d been ordered to do. But he’d been blown. Moscow was crawling with goddamned NKVD and GRU agents who were on the verge of grabbing the fellow. They’d get him; it was only a question of when, how soon. Corky couldn’t possibly exfiltrate Metcalfe in time. And once they got him, they’d interrogate him as only the Russians could, and Metcalfe would crack; there was no doubt of it. The entire operation would be exposed, and Corky could not—would not—allow that to happen. Far too much was at stake. It must not be jeopardized by a single human being.
Hilliard wondered at times like these whether he was truly cut out for this job. This sort of thing was truly the worst part of the assignment. He sort of liked Metcalfe, but that wasn’t the main thing. He knew that Metcalfe was one of the good guys, one of the white hats. The young fellow was no traitor. But Corky had issued the order, and Hilliard had no choice. He had a job to do.
Metcalfe arrived at the Aragvi Restaurant seven minutes ahead of schedule. “In half an hour or so” meant thirty minutes precisely; Hilliard was as exact with language as he was punctual. The customary line that snaked out the front of the restaurant wasn’t there, because it wasn’t yet dinnertime; this made it easier for Metcalfe to observe the comings and goings. As he staked out the front and side entrances of the restaurant from his vantage point on the steps of Central Telegraph on Gorky Street, he recalled that he’d promised to call Ted Bishop back with a rendezvous site. But that would have to wait until after this meeting. The ache in his shoulder had lessened, though he could still feel the throbbing of a minor blood vessel.
Amos Hilliard entered the Aragvi by the back stairs, where he knew he would not be noticed, and met his way through the dark passage to the men’s room.
He was surprised, and a little unnerved, to find that someone was there. A man was standing at the sink washing his hands vigorously with soap and water. Well, no matter. Hilliard would wait. Once the guy had left, he would take out the Smith & Wesson revolver and screw the sound suppressor into its specially modified threaded barrel. He would double check to make sure the chamber was loaded.
&
nbsp; Stephen Metcalfe would arrive, expecting to receive false documents and instructions on how to leave Russia furtively. The last thing he would expect was for Hilliard to whip out a revolver and fire several silenced rounds into his head.
Hilliard hated having to do this, but there really was no choice.
He hesitated, glancing at the man at the washstand who kept washing his hands with a remarkable thoroughness, working up a foam that Hilliard thought wasn’t possible with that shitty Soviet soap.
There was something naggingly familiar about the blank-faced man with the aristocratic features and the long, delicate fingers. He wondered whether he’d seen the man’s face somewhere before. Just recently, he thought; could it be? But no. It was just his nerves.
Then the man at the sink looked up, and their eyes met, and Amos Hilliard felt a sudden, unaccountable chill.
At exactly one minute before the designated rendezvous time, Metcalfe crossed Gorky Street and strode up to the restaurant’s service entrance. It was unlocked, naturally, given the frequency of deliveries of food and other supplies; he was able to enter undetected and walk through the deserted restaurant to the men’s room where he had met Hilliard just a few days earlier.
There seemed to be no one in here, and he hesitated for a moment, unsure whether to lock the door, as Hilliard had done last time. Best not to, he decided; Hilliard was late. He briskly walked through the room, checking the stalls, and in the last one he saw Hilliard.
Hilliard’s shoes and trousers, to be more precise. There was no mistaking the diplomat’s tweed pants and brown leather brogues; they unquestionably belonged to Amos Hilliard and not to a Russian.
Strange, he thought. Why was Hilliard on the can rather than waiting out here by the sinks, as he had last time?
“Amos!” he called out, but there was no reply. “Amos,” he said again, more concerned.
He pulled at the stall door, which swung slowly open.
The Tristan Betrayal Page 34