Carnival of Spies

by Robert Moss

  This was true, up to a point. In the melee and the confusion of flight, it had apparently not occurred to Hossbach to inquire more carefully into the circumstances of Rausch’s death. He had appeared to accept Johnny’s explanation — that one of the ambushers had been lying in wait with a knife — and, above all, the testimony of his own eyes. He had seen Johnny trading shots with a Red sniper. In a hurried nocturnal meeting, Hossbach had advised Johnny to get out of Rio as soon as possible, and given him an address to contact in Buenos Aires. Naturally, Johnny had agreed to these proposals.

  “Come to think of it,” said Max, “it might not be such a bad idea if you were to leave. Helene’s in B.A. She’ll look after you. I can arrange it.”

  “For Sigrid too?”

  “I need her here.”

  “Why? To hunt Trotsky supporters?”

  Max’s eyes flashed. For an instant Johnny was reminded of the inexplicable fear he had experienced when this man’s gaze was first turned on him in Berlin.

  I have many reasons to fear you, Johnny addressed him mentally. But I’ll never succumb to you.

  Max said, with strange, stiff courtliness, “You presume on our friendship.”

  There was something in the tone that made Johnny feel an unwanted, unexpected stab of sympathy, because it suggested to him that in Max’s life, perhaps he really was the closest thing to a friend.

  Johnny said, “I’m needed here too.”

  4

  Heedless of reverses, Emil’s team forged ahead with the making of a revolution. Prestes spent several weeks writing to old comrades, appealing to shared nostalgia for the days when, as rebel tenentes, they had tramped from one end of the country to the other. Some replied apologetically that he had been away from Brazil for too long, that he didn’t realize how much things had changed. “I long to join your movement,” one major wrote, “but because you have accepted the embrace of the Communists, this would be like loving a girl with syphilis.” Others were silent. But there were a few who were ready to rise and who guaranteed the support of whole garrisons. Prestes’ confidence in their eventual success remained unshaken.

  Bangu, the party boss in Bahia, reported that the people were ready to revolt en masse. Cato sent urgent messages from Recife warning that the pot was bubbling over; revolutionary enthusiasm whipped up by the bitter strike at the Great Western railroad and the shabby conditions in local barracks — could not be held in check for long. The ANL, officially banned, continued to organize under the slogan of “Bread, Land and Liberty,” targeting the land barons and the Greenshirts and the Anglo-American companies like Rio Light and Standard Oil. Cash flowed in via Youamtorg, the Soviet trading company in Montevideo, as well as from the local sources Harry Maitland was trying to investigate. Plans for a general strike were well advanced. The railwaymen were committed; so were the seamen and the workers at the huge Malvillis and Bonfim textile factories in Rio. The graduates of Johnny’s training courses were active all over Brazil; pro-government commanders would be surprised in their barracks by a combined assault by armed civilians from outside and rebel soldiers from within. At the appropriate time, the capital would be blacked out by bomb attacks on the towers and accumulators of Rio Light, spreading panic and confusion in the ranks of the government. Lists of reactionaries who were to be shot were circulating, especially in the north. Under Emil’s supervision the conspirators had even drawn up a list of cabinet ministers who would figure in a provisional revolutionary government, to be headed by Prestes. Dr. Alcibiades was to be appointed Minister of Public Health.

  Inevitably there were doubters. Toward the end of October 1935, a veteran Brazilian Communist, Joao Batista Barreto Leite, penned a letter to Prestes counselling caution; he was promptly expelled from the party. Roberto Sisson, the key organizer in the ANL, who had hand-carried secret instructions on preparing an armed rising to regional chiefs in the north, wrote in a similar vein. He knew too much to be kicked out. He was advised that the revolution had been postponed indefinitely and was shut out of all further planning.

  There was a doubter even on the Comintern’s general staff in Rio. Verdi, the Argentinian, asked Johnny to have a drink with him after a meeting largely concerned with plans to disrupt the Central do Brasil, the railroad that linked the capital with São Paulo.

  “I don’t understand Emil’s confidence,” Verdi complained. “Bangu writes from Bahia that the masses are ready to revolt, and Emil swallows it. I went to Bahia. You know who’s really in charge there? A mulatto baker who believes in spirits and hates intellectuals. They had a woman on the committee, a popular novelist and beautiful as well. The idiot baker drove her out. He called her into his office and lolled there in his sweaty undershirt, picking his big toe. He told her she had to make sixty-seven changes in her new book because it wasn’t sufficiently socialist. I doubt if he could read it. How are we expected to make a revolution with these cretins?”

  Verdi took a great gulp of red wine and added, “Either Emil is completely intoxicated or there is a missing element. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s a man who can’t afford to go home empty-handed.”

  But Johnny was thinking that Verdi was right. Unless Emil had taken leave of his senses, he must have a card up his sleeve — one that neither the Argentinian nor Johnny had been permitted to see.

  Verdi mentioned that he had written an editorial for a special edition of the Communist paper, to be issued on the day of the rising. This suggested that Emil had set a deadline. The revolution was going to happen. Johnny’s immediate task was to find out when.

  He lay between sleep and waking, very much alone. After the episode at the fish market Sigrid had spent three full days with him. She was loving and unthreatening, and they even had time to go sailing out in the bay, on a little skiff he rented at the marina.

  She lay on the deck, sunning herself, letting the sea breeze stream through her hair.

  She said, “I wish we could always be like this,” and for a few hours he was completely happy.

  But now he was locked in the familiar cycle of absence and distrust. Sigrid disappeared for days at a time, and sometimes he could only guess at what she was doing. She told him once that she had gone to São Paulo with Max. In his mind Johnny connected this with rumours that a leading Trotskyite had arrived in Brazil. Enemies in the family, he reflected, were often the deadliest kind.

  As he lay there watching the strip of light under the shutters grow brighter, he thought about others who had been close to him: his father, who had predicted, in his soft, sad way, what would happen to the Communist movement; Heinz, who had seen it come to pass, and whose death still cried out for justice; Helene, who had heard the screams but kept the faith. He tried to picture her in Buenos Aires, tried to fathom what sustained her. Perhaps she was duelling with the Nazis; according to Verdi, Argentina was a hotbed of Gestapo and Abwehr agents. That was what all of them needed — a good clean fight, a just war against unambiguous enemies. Not this dirty war, waged in a permanent penumbra.

  He heard the scratch of a key in the lock and sat up in bed.

  “Sigi?”

  “Good morning.” She slipped into the bedroom and kissed him lightly on the side of his face, still crumpled from the pillow. “You look like a child when you’re just waking up.”

  “I’m still asleep,” he smiled at her. “You’ll have to help me wake up.”

  He opened his arms to her, and she kissed his lips. She smelled like a sunlit garden.

  “Later, sweetheart,” she said gently. “I’ve come to collect you. There’s a job Max needs you to do.”

  “What sort of a job?” he asked warily. He had only recently been reminded that an assignment for Max was most likely to get you killed.

  “It’s a security job,” Sigrid said. “He wants you to booby-trap a safe.”

  “I’ll need to get my stuff.” His tools and explosives were stored in Grajati, at the home of Vasco, the Spanish painter who had blown so
me of his fingers off playing with bombs on the beach.

  They drove to Grajati and Johnny emerged from Vasco’s house with a bulky black leather bag, like a doctor’s.

  Their final destination was a modest house in Meier, a working-class district in the northern zone, a long ride from the affluent beach suburbs Emil and the foreign comintern agents preferred. Brown-skinned children ran shouting across the road, chasing a ball, peering in the windows of the car.

  A big German shepherd barked at the two Europeans from behind a screen door. As Johnny climbed the steps, it reared up on its hind legs, pawing at the wire, so that its teeth were almost level with his face.

  “Down, Principe!” a woman called from inside.

  The dog went on barking and leaping until she came and hauled it down by the collar. The barks subsided into a low rumble rising up from the belly.

  “He’s shy with people he doesn’t know,” the woman apologized, releasing the catch on the door to let them in. She smiled at Johnny, and he recognized her at once. She was Prestes’ woman, the one he had met at Petrôpolis. She was wearing a sort of smock over baggy cotton trousers.

  “Carlos isn’t here,” Olga said. “But Max told us you would be coming. The safe is in the next room.”

  The dog followed at Johnny’s heels, sniffing and snarling his hackles raised.

  Johnny turned and held out his hand. The dog shied away, baring his teeth.

  “He’ll make friends in his own time,” Olga said reassuringly.

  It was not at all certain the dog agreed. When Johnny took another step towards the bedroom door, Principe made a run at him.

  “Principe!”

  Johnny stood perfectly still. The dog drew back and started barking again.

  “Look, it would make things a lot easier if you two took him out for a walk,” Johnny suggested. “Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked the dog, who kept on snarling but cocked his head in anticipation.

  Olga did not look entirely happy about Johnny’s suggestion.

  “I promise I won’t raid the liquor cabinet.” He smiled at her.

  “All right.” She smiled back. “I’ll just open the safe for you.”

  He watched from the door as she dialled the combination, conscious of Sigi and the dog watching him.

  “I always thought I had a way with animals,” he remarked to Sigrid.

  Olga had the safe open. She took a pistol from the top shelf and tucked it inside a capacious handbag.

  “How long will you be?” she asked him.

  “Less than an hour, I expect.”

  “We’ll be back sooner than that,” Sigrid announced, taking Olga’s arm.

  “Good boy,” Johnny said to the dog, and he meant it.

  When the women left with Principe on a chain, he picked up his bag of tricks and went into the bedroom. The safe was American-made, the same type as Emil’s. It would be child’s play to wire it up. He started moving papers about to make room for the dynamite.

  On top of the stack was a six-page document, a directive from the leadership of the Communist Party of Brazil, addressed to branch organizers around the country. Johnny scanned it quickly. The contents were mostly generalities. The directive announced that the time was propitious for action, that local party officials — hiding their Communist affiliations — should intensify agitation on every level to install a People’s Revolutionary Government with Prestes at its head.

  He glanced at the paper underneath. It was the draft of a letter, to be signed by Prestes. What it contained was so explosive that Johnny pushed it back into the stack after skimming the first paragraph. He went through the apartment from room to room to check that nobody was in hiding. He peered out the windows to see if anyone was keeping an eye on the place from outside and saw only the children playing ball. Still not satisfied, he went out onto the porch. There was no sign of Olga and Sigrid or of anyone more suspicious than a delivery boy taking groceries into a house nearby. He went back inside and bolted the door.

  Now he studied the draft letter more carefully, trying to memorize every detail. It was addressed to the commanding general in Recife. It advised him to be ready to seize full control on December 14, the date set for a general uprising throughout the country. It stated that the courier who brought the letter would provide a verbal report on the preparations that had been made in other army garrisons.

  With rising excitement Johnny ferreted through the other documents. There was a notebook with a list of officers and sergeants — some identified by pseudonyms, others by their real names — who had promised to join the revolt. There was enough information to identify some of the couriers. There were sketch maps of Rio and other cities, showing where bombs would be planted and barricades set up, but these were less interesting; he had drawn some of them himself.

  Johnny began scribbling notes on a scrap of paper. He allowed himself only ten minutes, realizing that the women might return at any moment. When the time had elapsed, he took off one of his shoes and concealed the information he had stolen inside his sock.

  He had not quite finished wiring the safe when he heard the dog bark outside. He hurried to the door, not fast enough to get it open before Olga had tried her key.

  “You bolted the door,” she challenged him.

  “I thought the maid might come,” he responded, as casually as he could manage.

  “Have you finished?”

  “I’ll just need a few minutes more.”

  The dog shouldered his way past the women, bounded over to Johnny and started licking his hand.

  “I don’t know what you’ve done to him,” Johnny said, looking at Sigrid. “But it seems to have worked wonders.”

  “I told him to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  5

  Colin Bailey was in his favourite corner of the smoking room, dallying over a glass of port and a copy of the Economist, when the club porter came in.

  “Telephone call for you, Major Bailey.”

  The booth was in the lobby, in front of the porter’s cubbyhole.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Norton here, Major. Cecil Norton, at Plunkett’s.”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Norton. How are you keeping?”

  “Very well, thank you kindly, sir. Very well indeed. It’s about those shirts you ordered.”

  “They’re ready, are they?”

  “Shall I send them round, sir?”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll stop in myself.”

  It was a pleasant stroll up Regent Street, through the white light of November. Plunkett’s front window on Savile Row was understated: a couple of bolts of excellent worsted, a striped jacket with the sleeves off, ready for sewing. Bailey went up the stairs and through the cutting room into the tiny back office, where a bright, birdlike little man with a tape measure draped over his shoulders winked at him and produced a Cable & Wireless envelope.

  “I was out to lunch when it arrived, Major,” Norton explained. “I called you as soon as I came in.”

  “I’ll never have reason to complain about service at Plunkett’s, Mr. Norton.”

  “Always a pleasure, sir.”

  Communicating with Maitland via the embassy in Rio had become more trouble than it was worth, in Bailey’s estimation. Summerhayes, who had seemed a decent enough fellow, though a bit dry, was having kittens over the death of that young American — not without reason, Bailey had to concede. In his opinion, Harry’s effort to set up Harvey Prince had been an ill-conceived, amateurish operation with negligible results. He doubted whether it would deceive a professional like Max Fabrikant. Still, his rebuke to Maitland had been coached in the mildest possible language. He couldn’t fault the boy for trying. He had told him to use his wits — and he was, after all, an amateur. But Bailey had cautioned Harry to take no further initiatives without proper consultation and to avoid the embassy altogether. Plunkett’s was more understanding, by and large, than the Foreign Office.

  Bailey
went back to Broadway and set about deciphering Harry’s telegram, which ran to nearly three pages and must have dug quite a hole in his expense allowance. The cable conveyed both urgency and puzzlement.

  Maitland had learned from Johnny that the Comintern had set a date for an armed uprising in Brazil: December 14. It seemed that Johnny had been able to lay hands on extraordinarily detailed information regarding the plans of the conspirators, including the names of senior military officials who had promised to join the revolt. He had come by all these facts in a rather unlikely way. He was a man who was under suspicion, or so he had told Maitland. He had been shut out of policy meetings and believed himself to be shadowed for much of the time. He thought that even his mistress was spying on him. Yet, by his own account, he had been left alone in the flat of the top Communist organizer, at leisure to ransack his private papers. The only explanation he could render was some ridiculous tale of a dog that barked or didn’t bark, or both.

  What was Bailey to make of all this? He could not rule out the possibility that Max Fabrikant was now in control and was playing Johnny back against the British. Harry was convinced that his agent was telling the truth, so far as he understood it, but Harry might not be in a position to judge. It was equally possible that the episode at Prestes’ flat had been a hoax arranged by Max to expose Johnny while feeding false information to Johnny’s handlers. The date for the rising could be pure invention, the list of supposed conspirators a concoction designed to send Bailey and the Brazilian authorities — if they were informed — chasing after the wrong hare.

  Bailey judged that at least some of the information was authentic and highly compromising. Several of the army officers who were named, and at least one of the couriers, had figured in previous reports from Johnny. But that would fit the profile of a professional deception operation, which required a kernel of truth — a kanva, as Max Fabrikant would say to make the lie believable.

  What if Johnny’s entire report, including the date of the planned insurrection, was accurate? That opened another question in Bailey’s mind. Had his agent simply been fantastically lucky? Or was he meant to see the papers in Prestes’ safe?