by Robert Moss
Carnival of Spies
Robert Moss
© Robert Moss 1987
Robert Moss has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1987 by Random House
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Ash Wednesday (1936)
Part I – BOLSHEVIKS (1913-1934)
1 - The Call
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
2 – Homecoming
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
3 - The Lost Band
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
4 - The Walk-in
1
2
4
6
5 - The Long March
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Part II - A COUNTRY OF GODS AND MEN (1934-1936)
6 - Our Man in Rio
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
7 - The Art of Insurrection
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
8 - Prince of Shadows
1
2
3
4
5
6
9 - Eyes of the King
1
2
3
4
5
10 - The Bomb Factory
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Part III - THE PATH OF THE DEAD (1936)
11 - The Chinese Method
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
12 – Manhunt
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
13 - The Gift
1
2
3
4
Historical Note
The Comintern
Soviet State Security
Soviet Military Intelligence
Extract from Moscow Rules by Robert Moss
Prologue: Ash Wednesday (1936)
What is done out of love is
beyond good and evil.
-NIETZSCHE
She rode in a chariot drawn by sea horses. A sickle moon and a shower of stars glittered above her crown. Ropes of make-believe jewels cupped her breasts and snaked around her belly. But her body was burning gold, brighter than these. She moved tirelessly, hypnotically, to the voluptuous rhythm of the samba. Around her, across the width of the avenue, the dancers darted and flashed like fireflies and birds of paradise. Tomorrow she might be back in a tumbledown shack on a muddy hilltop in the Northern Zone or trudging off to work with a broom and a mop in the houses of the rich. But tonight she was Queen of the Nile, goddess of the waters, empress of desire. She arched her back, and the dream-ruby at her navel turned little circles. She danced so Ash Wednesday would never dawn, so that Carnival would never end.
In front of the Copacabana Palace Hotel, a crowd of young swells got up as harlequins and Arabian princes paraded in an open car and squirted the girls with cheap cologne. “Cocococococorό, Coco-coco-cocorό!” They crowed the chorus of one of the new songs that had caught the pulse of Rio. It carried all the laughter and all the sadness of the last night of Carnival:
The cock of the night is singing,
Everyone wants to see
What he has to tell.
When the little rooster replies
Cocococococorό
Cocococococorό
The little hen dies.
On the streetcar bound for Botafogo they were chanting the March of the Little Rooster too, and the tram swayed from side to side under their pounding feet. Along the mosaic sidewalk, a man in a black cassock and flat black hat picked his way through the throng. The words of the song seemed to trouble him, or perhaps it was merely the moist tropical heat that rose from the ground and opened every pore, and the sight of so much naked flesh. He looked unnaturally pale, and his eyes were searching for something beyond the streamers and the traveling hips of the mulatto girls. He trod on a mass of gold paper without noticing that it was the crown of a King of Angola. People didn’t want to look at him. It was not the night for priests and Portuguese saints. Their season would come soon enough.
But a dark, pretty girl who was resting at the corner of one of the narrow streets that wound into Lapa, a quarter that lived for the night in all the seasons of the year, stretched out her hand and offered something to him. He paused to look down. It was half a lemon, from the stock she had brought with her in a little string bag so she wouldn’t have to pay for guarand from the street vendors. Caught off guard, he took the fruit and sank his teeth into it, watching the girl warily with his intent grey eyes as if she might pose some danger to him. She had been crying. Perhaps she had lost something precious in the riot of Carnival.
She whispered, “Bless me, Father.”
He frowned, mumbled a few words and waved his hand over her upturned face.
She couldn’t make out what he said. Perhaps he was one of those Dutch fathers who came to Brazil. She watched him with a puzzled expression, and he stumbled on up the street, into a neighbourhood where the services of priests were rarely required. He was such a big man, with powerful shoulders and fists like a prizefighter’s. The cassock looked silly on him. And there was something wrong with the way he walked. His right leg swung stiff from the hip. She saw him limp past half-shuttered windows from behind which women’s voices lapped out, softly propositioning, at the passers-by. Then he stood out in bold profile, listing noticeably to starboard, against the illuminated sign of the Babylõnia Club.
Zé Pimenta, the keeper of the door to the Babylõnia, didn’t like being on duty on the last Tuesday of Carnival, even if the tips were good. By the time the patrons inside were done, it would be too late to show off his finery — he was decked out as a Turkish pasha, complete with turban and baggy pants and pasteboard scimitar — to his girlfriends in the Mangue. They would all be sleeping it off. Zé had been consoling himself with a few fingers of cachaça. He could sneak imported hooch from the bar, but he preferred the raw, potent cane alcohol of his own country. Its effect, after a while, was as hallucinating and enervating as the steamy heat and the relentless beat of the samba drums. He was half asleep when he saw the man in black rise up in front of him like a monstrous crow.
“Dá licença, Zé,” the priest addressed him, pleasantly enough.
“Excuse me, Father.” Zé hastily adjusted his sash. “You wouldn’t want to go in there. It’s dreadful what goes on. Human nature, I’m afraid.”
But something in the priest’s face — was it the strange, set smile or the strong, almost brutal, features? — made Zé step aside. “We don’t see a lot of cassocks in the Babylõnia,” he mumbled as the priest walked into the club.
They didn’t play sambas inside the Babylõnia. Half the clientele was foreign, and the band alternated between tangos and German and American favourites. As the priest entered, a singer with a powder-white face and vocal chords that had been gutted by chain-smoking was attempting a rendition of Lola-Lola’s song from The Blue Angel. A few of the German syllables got transposed, but nobody in this crowd seemed to mind. Girls in bright satin with plunging necklines were trying to prise drinks from the regulars who hung along the bar like vampire bats. Few of the couples who revolved on the dance floor had arrived together. The fancy dress on display was mostly compliments of the house — party hats and clowns’ red bubble noses. But there were a few men in formal evening dress with stiff collars, looking for company that was certified hygienic. The management of the Babylõnia discreetly advertised the claim that its girls were inspected by a qualified doctor once a day.
The whirring propeller fans overhead did not dispel the haze of cigar and cigarette smoke; they distributed it evenly to every corner of the room. The walls were adorned with baroque mirrors and a mural depicting an ancient orgy among hanging gardens. One of the women, dancing with a drink in her hand, shuddered when the reflection of the man in black loomed up suddenly behind her shoulder. Another tittered and called out mockingly, “Coco-coco-coco-cocorό!”
In the mirror he saw the girl he had come for. The candlelight caught the silvery whorls of her butterfly mask and the long white curve of her throat. She was at a corner table with her back to the wall. The two men with her were both wearing dinner jackets. The one he could see in profile was lean and equine and looked mildly bored. The other, squeezed up against the girl, was heavy and flushed and bellowed snatches of Lola-Lola’s song in between gulps from his tankard.
Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss
Auf Liebe eingestellt...
A waiter swooped around them, pouring champagne. Before he replaced the bottle in its silver bucket, he flipped it upside down, and a few inches of champagne disappeared into the ice. It was one of the management’s little tricks to speed up consumption. Nobody noticed except the man who was glued to the mirror.
The girl looked up, and their eyes met in the glass. She pulled away from her admirer, as if to leave the table. The priest made a motion with his hand for her to stay.
He completed a half circle of the dance floor, trying not to let his right foot drag, and came up behind the men at her table.
“Alms for the poor,” he suggested in a wheedling voice.
“Ach, it’s unbelievable,” the ruddy-faced German complained, shifting his bulk to stare at the source of the petition.
The one who looked like a racehorse turned his mouth down and busied himself by screwing a cigarette into a tortoiseshell holder.
“Have you no charity, mein Herr?”
The heavy one turned a deeper shade of red and said, “Piss off.”
“Oh, give him something,” the other German said wearily. “It’s a country of beggars.”
The first German made a disgusted face and threw some money on the table. “Now piss off,” he repeated. His speech was thick and slurred, and he had pulled out his top stud so his collar flapped loose. He swore more violently when he saw that the priest was still perched at the table like a bird of ill omen.
“Do you have something for me, Fraulein?” the man in black said to the girl.
“Of course.” But instead of reaching for her purse she extended her hand to the priest, who took it and raised it to his lips.
“It’s unbelievable!” the first German spluttered. He pawed at the girl’s shoulder and said, “Do you know this holy-water man?”
“He’s my favourite confessor,” she replied with a little smile that dimpled her cheek. She had clear, translucent skin and an oval face framed by waves of fine-spun coppery hair.
“Wait a minute!” the first German slurred. “I know you!” He dragged back his chair and got up to get a better look at the priest. “It’s Johnny, isn’t it? Johnny Gruber! I thought you’d left Rio.”
“It’s a hard city to leave. Engineer Hossbach and I used to live in the same guesthouse in Copacabana,” the priest explained to the girl, as if he were rounding out introductions at a garden party.
“So I’ve found out your little secret!” Hossbach roared at Johnny. “You like to fuck in a priest’s skirts!”
“I’m afraid our friend Hossbach has had too much to drink,” Johnny said to the table.
“Yes,” the other German intervened curtly. “Sit down, Hossbach, and apologize to the lady for your language.” He had a metallic, rather high-pitched voice that reminded Johnny of a blade being sharpened.
Hossbach did as he was told.
“Wolfgang Trott,” the second German introduced himself. “From the embassy. I take it you are living in Rio, Herr Gruber?”
Johnny nodded.
“I’m surprised we haven’t met.” Trott paused, inspecting Johnny’s costume more closely. The cassock was several sizes too small. “I must say, Hossbach has a point,” the attaché went on. “Do you often go about dressed like that?”
“It’s Carnival.” Johnny shrugged as if this explained everything.
“Sit down and have a drink, Johnny,” Hossbach interjected, brandishing a bottle.
“I’m afraid I’ve kept Sigrid waiting too long already. She has to be home before her husband.” Johnny winked.
Hossbach snorted and returned to mauling the girl. He got one of his meaty fists on her thigh, but she wriggled free.
“It’s become quite a ritual in Rio,” Sigrid said coolly, on her feet and smoothing her dress. “Husbands and wives go to different parties during Carnival. But there are still certain courtesies that must be observed.”
“Of course,” Trott agreed, rising to kiss her hand. “I’ve been told that it is no crime in Rio for a man to blow out the brains of his wife’s lover. Is that so, Herr Gruber?”
“I’ve heard something about it,” Johnny mumbled. There was menace in Trott’s icy poise.
“I’m sure we’ll have the pleasure of meeting again,” Trott said as they shook hands. He wore the Nazi party emblem under his lapel, Johnny noted. The stem showed through.
Johnny took the girl’s arm and squired her around the dancers, towards the exit behind the piano.
“It’s not right to keep so much woman to yourself!” Hossbach bawled after them.
When they had reached the stairs, she clutched his arm tighter. “In God’s name, Johnny,” she said in an urgent whisper, “What held you up? And who are those men?”
“Later,” he responded sharply. Her voice was still steady enough, but he could feel the trembling in her arm. She was frightened and angry and probably half dead with fatigue, and it was taking all her reserves to keep up a mask of composure.
There were half a dozen rooms above the Babylõnia Club that could be rented by the hour or the night. The toll collector was a blowsy woman with dyed red hair who sat in a booth at the top of the stairs eating chocolates. She dealt matter-of-factly with the priest and the girl in the butterfly mask. After all, she had seen strange goings-on at the Babylõnia. Just the same, she crossed herself after taking their money and giving them the key to a room at the end of the hall — a room where a federal deputy, no less, had gasped his last while pleasuring two lively brown girls from Bahia.
Johnny locked the door behind them, flung his hat on the bed and took her in his arms. Her mouth tasted of wine and wild strawberries. The edges of her mask chafed his skin, so he pulled it off. In the murky orange light of the bedside sconces he could see the dark rings of worry and fatigue around her eyes. The irises were a pale sea green, the green of pebbles at the bottom of the water. There was a small red scratch mark in one of her eyes, close to the cornea, as if a tiny blood vessel had burst. All the same, she was painfully beautiful.
He pulled her closer, till the contours of their bodies were locked tight together. He was breathing heavily. He did not conceal his quicke
ning desire.
“Johnny—”
He was half waltzing, half shoving her backwards onto the bed. Her body moved in rhythm with his, straining to meet him, as if there was no world, no terror, but this. By an effort of will, she wrenched herself free. The sudden motion caught Johnny off balance. His right leg collided with the brass bed frame, and he winced in pain.
“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “Just an old wound,” he grunted. He sat down heavily on the bed, nursing his leg.
She folded her arms under her breasts and studied him. “You’re lying,” she said. “Let me see.”
Without waiting for his approval, she hitched up his cassock until she found a rough strip of bandage, crudely knotted above the knee. It was caked with blood.
He did not resist when she stripped away the bandage and probed the blackened trench the bullet had dug across his thigh. But the faint flush that had returned to his cheeks drained away when she started dabbing at the wound with a handkerchief soaked in perfume from her bag. She pulled the covers off the bed and made a new bandage with a strip of linen torn from the sheet. She knotted it tight and said, “It may have chipped a bone. I’ll take you to Eusebio. He’ll be home by now.”
Eusebio was a socialist and a doctor, one of the few who had eluded the police over the last few months.
Johnny tested the bandage and shook his head. “It’s not worth the risk. I’ve found us a boat. It sails in the morning. We can go direct from here to the docks.”
“But Johnny, we can’t. We have orders—”
“Forget the orders,” he snapped. “All orders are cancelled. Don’t you understand? We’re finished in Brazil. The revolution is defeated. Kaput. Our only duty now is to save our skins.”
She stared at him, and the unspoken question was clear from her expression, a compound of fear and suspicion.
“The police were waiting for me,” he said quietly. “They waited for me to walk right inside the sack. There were men all-round the block. I got away over the rooftops. There was a church — a priest who was ready to help.”
“A priest?” Her surprise was understandable. In that year of revolution, few men of the cloth were on the side of the rebels.
“A man of God,” he said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter for now.”