by Robert Moss
For the next seven years Johnny’s homeland was the world revolution.
He was sent to Romania as military adviser to the communist underground. Helene was invaluable to his cover. They posed as a pair of fashionable idlers dripping with money. They hired a yacht and sailed up and down the Black Sea coast south of Costanza. Helene mixed cocktails and sunbathed half nude — which scandalized the Romanians — while Johnny coached underground leaders in the organizational techniques he had mastered in Moscow. His best student was Saul, a Bessarabian Jew and a wool spinner by trade. Within a few weeks Saul had set up a network of cells inside the army and Johnny was schooling civilian recruits in bomb making and marksmanship at a firing range within sight of King Carol’s summer palace. For a time the revolt prospered, and in Moscow the Fourth Department was delighted with the intelligence windfalls. One of Saul’s men, an employee of the government printing office, supplied them with copies of secret orders and manuals of the Romanian General Staff before they came off the press.
But suspicion fell on one of Johnny’s couriers, an itinerant vendor of soybeans and sunflower seeds. The Romanian secret police operated on the old-fashioned principle that a man is put in jail in order to confess. After the unhurried removal of several of his fingernails, the greengrocer confessed everything. Saul was shot. Johnny owed his escape to Helene, who flirted with a lieutenant at the border while he crouched in the trunk of the car, holding his nose in order not to sneeze.
“You make perfect working partners,” Max Fabrikant congratulated them afterwards.
In theory Max had no direct authority over Johnny. Max belonged to the OGPU, or Unified State Political Administration — in short, the Russian secret police. Johnny was an agent of the Comintern, the general staff of a world movement that was supposed to be independent of the Soviet government.
But if the frontiers were clear on the map, they were invisible on the ground. Most of the Comintern’s military experts were seconded from the Red Army, and General Berzin, the head of the Fourth Department, took a close interest in their activities. Since Stalin had driven out Trotsky and his supporters, the number of chekists in the corridors of the Comintern had increased; often they seemed to be the ones giving the orders. In practice Johnny found himself carrying out assignments for all three agencies — the Comintern, the OGPU and the Fourth Department.
To complicate matters further, the power struggle that was raging in the heart of the Kremlin spilled over into the vast, ramshackle headquarters of the Comintern in Ozhod-Niriat, in the suburbs of Moscow. At one level it was a fight over tactics: whether to pursue the dangerous, solitary road of armed insurrection or, instead, to form fronts and alliances with rival political groups. At another level it was a conflict between old guard Bolsheviks and a new generation of apparatchiks who owed everything to Joseph Stalin.
The most decisive of these shadow battles was played out in 1927, soon after Johnny’s return from Romania. There was tragic news from China, where Borodin — one of the most daring of the Old Bolshevik adventurers — had been sent to make a revolution in alliance with the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang. The omens were against him from the beginning. Borodin arrived (so Johnny heard in Moscow) in a cattle boat full of stinking carcasses. The ship had been caught up in a terrible storm, and most of the animals, hurled back and forth against the slats of their wooden pens, had perished during the night. Now it was the turn of the Chinese Communists. Chiang took them by surprise. Paid off by the Shanghai financiers and their Western friends, he betrayed his Communist allies. Striking without warning, soldiers and squads of killers toured the streets of Shanghai in the dead of night, machine-gunning Reds.
Someone had to take the blame for the costly mistake of trusting Chiang Kai-shek. From Moscow directives went out denouncing “conciliators” wherever they might be found. At the end of November Bukharin, the President of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and a senior member of the Soviet Politburo, was abruptly removed, and his fall crushed hundreds of lesser men who had hitched their wagons to his star. The party line was struggle without compromise, no deals with class enemies or “class traitors” like the Social Democrats in Germany. Within the Comintern, power came to rest in the hands of a curious Balkan duo: Georgi Dimitrov, a Bulgarian, and Dmitri Manuilsky, the son of a Greek Orthodox priest from Tarnopol.
In these treacherous times, Max counselled Johnny, the secret of survival was “Bolshevist elasticity” — and, it seemed, a willingness to inform on your friends. When their paths crossed in Moscow or a foreign capital, Max frequently asked Johnny to report his impressions of fellow agents, including their sexual proclivities, their drinking habits and other peccadilloes. Johnny usually complied. He knew that foreign secret services, especially the British, would try to exploit a man’s weakness to induce him to betray his comrades. Still secure in his own revolutionary faith, he was genuinely outraged when he discovered that some of those he was ordered to work with were cynical parasites, not above pilfering from operational funds or fabricating reports. When he told Max about them, he did not feel like a sneak; they were the ones who were betraying the cause.
But Johnny’s sense of rectitude did not survive an encounter with a moon-faced man in a fur hat who collared him at the Hotel Lux in Moscow and introduced himself as “Drozhdov, a friend of Max.” The year was 1930, and the first snows were falling outside. Although it was only midmorning, Drozhdov insisted on squiring him to the best table in the restaurant and plying him with vodka and caviar and salty river crabs.
“I heard from another friend,” Drozhdov said confidentially, “that you spent an evening with Emil Brandt.”
“Why, yes. I had dinner with him last night. He was my ideological instructor when I was at the M-school.”
“Yes, yes. We know all that. What was the content of your conversation?”
“It was personal.” He had decided immediately that he did not care for Drozhdov. The Russian’s tone was prurient, like that of a man asking to see dirty photographs in the back room of a shop. And Johnny was worried about Emil. He remembered his fellow German as a big, rollicking fellow, quick with a joke, brimming with life — a man who was said to have a tremendous future ahead of him. It was even whispered that he might oust Thälmann’s crowd and take over the leadership of the German Communist Party. They had met quite by chance when Johnny had been strolling with Helene in the Arbat. Emil had called out to them. But for that, they might have walked on without seeing him. The man had not only aged enormously; he seemed to have shrunk. In the Azerbaijani restaurant where they had gone for dinner, he had insisted on sitting with his back to the wall, and his face was contorted by a tic Johnny had never noticed before. Each day, Emil confided, he had to present himself at the Central Committee. He was the subject of an investigation.
“Did Emil Brandt discuss the state of affairs in Germany?” Drozhdov pursued.
“We may have talked about Germany,” Johnny conceded. “After all, we were both born there.”
“Naturally, naturally.” Drozhdov sucked on his teeth. “And of course, you must have discussed party policy in relation to the Social Fascists and the Hitler movement.”
“We may have. I really don’t remember the details.”
“I am sure you would not forget any references to Comrade Manuilsky,” the chekist purred.
“We did not discuss Comrade Manuilsky,” Johnny said flatly. “It was an innocent reunion of old friends. I don’t see that it can be of any interest to the Organs—” this was one of the euphemisms for the secret police in circulation in Moscow.
“Our interests are quite catholic, I can assure you, Comrade Lentz.”
Johnny wanted to ask Drozhdov what charges were pending against Emil. But he was worried that by asking he might provide the Russian with a lever he could use to prise out details of the previous night’s conversation that might do harm to Emil.
Johnny made a show of consulting his watch.
“I have an appointment at Ozhod-Niriat.”
“Of course.” Drozhdov was positively ingratiating. “It’s been a pleasure. I do look forward to meeting you again.” He sucked his teeth. “And please give my regards to the lovely Helene.”
“You don’t know when to be afraid,” Max Fabrikant reproached him two months later in Berlin.
“I didn’t like him.”
“Dear me! And Drozhdov prides himself on being the most cultivated man in Moscow.”
“What are they doing to Emil?”
“Oh, that! It’s all been settled.” Max rubbed his hands and went hunting for a fresh pack of cigarettes. “Emil has recanted. He has written a full letter of apology. I believe it’s in the current issue of Imprecor.” This was the news bulletin of the Comintern. “He admits that the Social Democrats — excuse me, the Social Fascists — are the main enemies of the working class in Germany and that it was a grave tactical error to call for a popular front with class traitors. He quotes the Greek three or four times. Where are those damn cigarettes? Ah.” He found a reserve carton on the bookshelf, wedged between copies of Gide and Malraux. “So you see, all is forgiven. You made an enemy out of Drozhdov for no reason.”
“I thought—”
“What did you think? Really, Johnny, I’m disappointed. I didn’t think you were so naive. Do you actually imagine that Drozhdov needed you to tell him what Emil said to you at that idiotic dinner? That story about the Greek, for example—”
For an instant Johnny saw Emil again at the table, regaining his old élan as the wine flowed. He saw Emil telling a hilarious story of how the Greek, Manuilsky, had tried to lay down the law at a gathering of German Communists. Several of the Germans, street fighters spoiling to take on the Brownshirts, had yelled out “Go back to Moscow!” Then a gnarled old man, a Bremen delegate, had gotten up and bawled, “He’s no good for anything except shish kebab!” Manuilsky had left swearing he was going to break heads in the German party...
The implications of what Max had said suddenly dawned on him. They had picked the restaurant at random. It was frequented by Russians, not foreigners. It was hard to believe their table had been bugged — unless there were microphones at every table. That was possible, but there was a more likely explanation. Johnny remembered Drozhdov’s parting remark.
It was Helene, he realized. Helene had told Drozhdov everything. Even though she was exposing me at the same time. I mustn’t take it personally, he told himself. I mustn’t let Max see me look bitter. She’s a professional, doing her job. That’s the beginning and the end of it. And of our relationship. I’m a fool if I ever forget that.
“Emil was a good man,” Johnny said to Max, turning his emotion into a different channel.
“He’s a better man now. He forgot about Parteibefehl. Party orders. What kind of army allows every man to question orders? Be sure you never make the same mistake, Johnny.”
“But Emil may have been right, dammit. The Popular Front—”
“—is not for discussion by you and me.” Max cut him off. “Don’t overreach yourself, my friend. We’re Marxists, aren’t we? Then we know that history cannot be understood from surface events. There’s a deeper level of meaning, accessible to only a few, with the science and the knowledge required. Don’t you imagine that Stalin may know things that are concealed from you?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then.”
2
Marlene Dietrich swirled off the screen in the leather coveralls of an aviatrix, her goggles pushed back on top of her head. She reappeared in sequins and satins, the brazen finery of a poule de luxe. She was a spy, a mantrap employed by the Austrian secret service. One of her victims appeared on the screen, a man who had sold his country to be betrayed, in turn, by love. He had a revolver; he was preparing to shoot himself. “What a charming evening we might have had,” he whispered, “if you had not been a spy and I a traitor.”
“Then,” she observed calmly, “we might never have met.”
A woman in the row behind Johnny started sniffing.
A man slipped into the empty seat on his left and murmured without looking at him, “The Hollywood idea of espionage.”
Johnny didn’t respond. He stared up at the screen. It was impossible not to think of Helene. There were the visual echoes: the wide, hooded eyes, the tartar cheekbones, the legs that scissored across a room. The character Marlene Dietrich played in Dishonored was a prostitute, recruited by her Austrian spymaster because of her allure and her remarkable sangfroid. “I’m not afraid of life, though I’m not afraid of death, either.” It wasn’t hard to imagine Helene in the role, despite the vagaries of the unlikely plot. This mental association deepened his sense of unease, which encompassed the mission that lay ahead of him, the unknown courier who was sitting at his left hand smelling of onions, the homecoming to Berlin, a place of lengthening shadows, and the woman who resembled Dietrich and was described on three separate passports — Swiss, Belgian and American — as his wife.
The courier belched quietly and whispered a time and an address in the Moabit district. Then he was gone, leaving Johnny with the fleeting impression of a round-shouldered figure in a soft hat.
Johnny stayed in the cinema until the end of the film. In the last scene, the Dietrich character, faced with a firing squad, insisted on dying in her streetwalker’s clothes. She was shown going to meet her maker with the same eagerness — or indifference — with which she might encounter a new lover.
The theatre was hushed, apart from the woman in the row behind, who started snuffling again, and Johnny himself, who made a stifled sound between a sneeze and a snort. The next instant, he was laughing uncontrollably. He was as surprised as the sentimentalist behind him, who muttered, “Shame.” He pressed his hand across his mouth and rushed for the theatre exit.
The white October light gave everything sharper edges: the ominous young men wearing lipstick and rouge who patrolled the Ku’damm, the crowd of Brownshirts daubing swastikas on the windows of a Jewish-owned furniture store, the block-long red banners that festooned the Communist party headquarters on the Billowplatz. But the scant light that leaked down to the inner courtyard of the peeling workers’ tenement in Moabit seemed to have got there by mistake, like water through rotted sacking.
Heinz was true to old habits, Johnny thought as he made his way through a series of low arches. He picked boltholes in places where the neighbours looked after their own kind and had no great love for the police. Nobody challenged him on his way to Kordt’s hideout, on the third floor at the back. But a dozen pairs of eyes marked every step, and he was received at the door by a young tough with a pistol in the waistband of his trousers.
Kordt pounced on Johnny, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m glad I found you,” he exclaimed. “It’s been a long time. I wonder if you can still speak German.”
“Only with a Hamburg accent.”
“Hamburg!” Kordt’s eyes lit up for a moment, but then his smile vanished. “We’ll never see times like those again.”
Johnny was shocked by how much his friend had aged. Deep lines were gouged across his forehead and down his cheeks, as if the flesh had been sucked back into the bone. His cropped hair was like steel wool.
“You’re older too,” Kordt said, reading his thoughts. “You look like a man who’s found out what the world is about. Let me see. You’ll be thirty now. Am I right?”
“Thirty-one,” Johnny corrected him.
“Oh yes, that’s right. Born with the century, isn’t it? Look at Karl here.” He aimed his jaw at the boy with the gun. “All of eighteen, and ready to shoot Hitler and take both our jobs. Aren’t you, Karl?”
Karl looked at the floor and shuffled his feet.
“Come along, old man.” Kordt threw his arm around Johnny’s shoulder and steered him into the kitchen. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
They sat across the kitchen table from each other with the blind drawn, and Kordt poured beer. The
y lolled and drank and nodded at each other for a bit, in a comfortable silence.
“You’ve filled out,” Kordt said.
“You’re thinner. Our average weight must be the same.”
“Tell me about Helene. I heard you two got hitched.”
“We’re partners,” Johnny said hastily and tried to change the subject.
Kordt jabbed him with the stem of his pipe. “Johnny, this is me. Remember? I know you’re fond of the girl. I could see you were right for each other that first night at my place in Hamburg. I sent her to Russia, and in a roundabout way I did the same for you. Like it or not, I’ve got a lot invested in both you kids. So talk to me.”
“She’s very good at her job. She’s a brave girl.”
“But you’re not happy with her, are you? What’s the matter? Is she sleeping around?”
“It’s not that.” Johnny looked at the tangle of dark hair on the back of his friend’s hands and remembered that first night in Kordt’s room on the Valentinskamp. No, he wasn’t jealous. The capacity for jealousy had been drilled out of him, he thought, in his years with Helene. Perhaps that meant the capacity for love had been burned out of him too. In Helene’s presence he felt something more subversive than jealousy. He felt vulnerable.
The night after his last conversation with Max, she had come into his bed, scented from her bath. He had taken her roughly, selfishly, trying to punish her without telling her why. Later, he lay awake for a long time, his head propped up against the heaped pillows, smoking and staring at the sullen panorama of barracklike brick walls beyond the window. In the dark they seemed hostile, pressing forward into the room. He looked at Helene’s face, composed in sleep, and thought, even now, even behind closed eyelids, you are watching me.
Kordt waited.
Johnny finally said, “I’ve had a few problems.”
He described his Moscow encounter with Emil Brandt and his reasons for believing that Helene had been reporting on him to the OGPU.