Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  The Russians had kidnapped Lena, the KGB, it was Max who reconstructed the puzzle, it took him a good long time, he reconstructed it for Hans, to tell him the story of what happened, a very Max-ish story, with real facts, gaps, and cloak-and-dagger padding to fill the gaps, in 1956 Markov is Russia’s deputy Minister of Security, in late August he arrives in Hungary, on its eastern border, a meeting of Warsaw Pact intelligence services, in a railway carriage:

  ‘The Americans are making a nuisance of themselves, we need to give them a serious warning not to make a nuisance of themselves.’

  ‘We could eliminate a few of their agents tonight, comrade Minister.’

  ‘Like diplomats, you mean? And then what? If they’ve got diplomatic passports, we’ll have the United Nations down on us like a ton of bricks. If they don’t, they’re just the small fry.’

  Lilstein is there, a better head on him than most of the other men present, he has a detached air, in fact he’s had an idea but wishes he hadn’t, it’s a bad idea but it might produce good results, a doubtful gesture which might not turn out too badly, though badly for whom? He hesitates while all the rest put forward their proposals, round up one of the known networks and shoot the lot, hang them, do it in public, expel America’s ambassador but not Britain’s, it would produce the same rumpus and would have less fall-out, maybe there’s something could be set moving in Berlin.

  ‘What? Another world war?’

  Markov is beginning to get angry, and the men who are there are afraid of Markov, it’s late, it’s dark and the later it gets the twitchier Markov becomes. It is dangerous to speak within earshot of a man with a record like Markov’s, he saw off the Waffen SS with his foot soldiers, a forceful type, but tonight he’s as jumpy as a cat, the other men speak when he gives them the nod and as they speak they can hear what is going into the report that contains a minute of what they’ve said together with an estimate of their abilities, at this juncture we need to come up with guilty names, if we’re in this mess it’s because there have been anomalies, if there have been anomalies it’s because there have been failures.

  Usually the way out of these messes is to recommend the strongest measure, pull coals out of the fire, only this time, pulling coals out of the fire when the result is a disaster amounts to sabotage, and Markov glares at the advocate of the strongest measures as if he were dealing with a mixture of Anglo-Saxon spy and Trotskyite snake, like in the good old days.

  Then someone recommended to Markov the strongest measures, with safeguards, and Markov asked what exactly, and he doesn’t know, and the report is filled out and he’s marked down as a moron. Markov doesn’t need to tell you in so many words, you might well be the head of Hungarian or Czech counter-espionage, and thousands, millions of people shake in their shoes at the mere mention of your name, but when you’re facing Markov you’re an undiluted moron.

  And if you start talking of safeguards you immediately give the impression of being some sort of moderate and in the pay of the Anglo-Saxons to boot, and just at the very moment when the need is to come up with names, never mind, if we have to go in and clean up Budapest’s mess we’ll pick up anyone who doesn’t have a diplomatic passport and we’ll introduce martial law, without issuing any communiqués or talking about wasted bullets.

  ‘Misha, you’re not saying anything, are you bored? Is it complicated? What have you got to suggest?’

  Markov smiles as he speaks and Michael Lilstein has a feeling that in that smile tragedy is choosing the object it will strike.

  ‘We could snatch someone well known, comrade Minister, someone who is well-protected, who has never been bothered until now, and by snatching this person we would show that we know everything, we’d be returning the goods to the sender, at night, all the way to Austria, they’ll get the message loud and clear.’

  ‘A corpse?’

  A trap, don’t fall into it, you say:

  ‘That’s one option, comrade Minister.’

  ‘It’s still too complicated, Misha.’

  Markov is not smiling now. Lilstein does not like seeing him in this mood. In January 1945, Markov was the first man Lilstein saw looming up in front of him, in woods close to Auschwitz, with his round, beaming face, Sancho Panza in a fur coat carrying a machine-pistol, part of the avant-garde of Konev’s army, Lilstein fell into Markov’s arms, he wept for a quarter of an hour in Markov’s arms, saying nothing, and Markov smiled and said: ‘It’s all over, lad, all over’ to a man who was two heads taller than him and weighed three times less. Markov was one of the political commissars of Konev’s army. He was always in a good humour. He’s done very well for himself. He’s deputy Minister now. Tonight his mood is grim, he says:

  ‘We’re floundering, I must get some sleep, tomorrow morning, at five, we’ll see what needs to be done.’

  Twenty minutes after the meeting ended, Lilstein was called back to Markov’s carriage.

  ‘The Americans have an important agent in Budapest, an agent we’ve never bothered, and you never mentioned the fact to me?’

  ‘There was a good chance the information would end up on a desk that wasn’t yours, comrade Minister, I didn’t have time to come to Moscow personally.’

  And Markov adopts a very mechanical tone, why so many precautions among men who are fighting the same war, all the Ministries have their shoulders to the same wheel, Misha should have sent his message without delay. Markov ends with a wide, childlike smile, the look in his eye dictates Lilstein’s response.

  ‘I was aware, comrade Minister, that it wouldn’t be long before you called us all together. I waited for the opportunity you’ve just created: it’s a woman.’

  Markov throws his hands in the air:

  ‘We haven’t been giving you all this protection so you could come up with hogwash like that!’

  ‘She arrived here not long ago, comrade Minister, she was in Germany, she was already travelling in Germany and Hungary in the days of the Nazis and Horthy, and even before then, she has always known a great many things, she used to be a diva, by which I mean…’

  ‘Misha, I too am a cultured man, I don’t spend all my evenings questioning suspects with a blowtorch.’

  ‘Everyone who matters goes to her public master-classes, comrade Minister, and they invite her to dinner, she’s American.’

  ‘The one from Berlin?’

  Markov couldn’t have asked for more, he doesn’t want an answer, he smiles, a good smile, like in the old days, Sancho Panza, Lilstein wonders why Markov mentioned blowtorches, ‘Comrade Minister, I’m certain that nowadays she’s a full-time CIA operative, with no diplomatic status, if you wish we could pass the information to the Hungarians, let them shoot her, or alternatively wait and only shoot her when we’ve gone in to do Budapest’s housekeeping, but if we send her back to them now, dead or alive whichever, they’ll realise we know everything, everything that is less well guarded than the secret of this woman’s role, they might settle for stirring people up with their Radio Free Europe broadcasts but if they really want to make a more specific response we must tell them that we know everything and are waiting for them to move.’

  ‘Does she still sing?’

  ‘Private recitals, just for friends, comrade Minister, apparently she’s as good as ever.’

  ‘Well, no more recitals! Lower the curtain! Put one of your men with mine, to keep an eye on things, this isn’t a bad idea, you’ve got forty-eight hours, less if possible. You really didn’t waste any time in sending me this information?’

  Kappler doesn’t need to know this part of Lena’s story, not now, in the end Max will tell it to him, adding another episode, dating from in 1954, two years before Budapest, in the end Max will have to tell Kappler what he did in ’56 and ’54.

  Max will turn it into a story in his usual style, with gaps, some invention, elements of the truth, and when the archives are opened fifty years hence it will be seen that Max was not very far wide of the mark, there’ll be a few snippets of in
formation for Max, about 1956 and going two years further back, to early 1954.

  You really should talk about this to a couple of your poker chums, Max, one rumour about Lena is doing the rounds in Washington, McCarthy has a hankering, the McCarthy of the glory days, the communist witch-hunt, a minor scene in the office of Senator McCarthy, he is alone with his aide who is reading aloud from a file:

  ‘This lady, this opera-singer who cosies up to the communists, she travels to the East whenever she wants, the FBI says nothing, the CIA lets her have a free hand, the State Department gives her trip its blessing, the KGB provides luxury hotel accommodation in Prague or Budapest, she’s always had covert dealings, first with the Nazis, as early as 1931, she even cosied up to the Germans between 1914 and 1917, she left Germany in tears, twice, first in 1917 and again in 1941, each time just before we went to war, the Russians must have a helluva fat file on her, they’ve got her, we’ll make her testify to the committee, under oath, diva or not, we’ll fry her, she fraternised with the Nazis and she works for the Soviets and she’s in cahoots with all the liberals in Washington, we’ve got her cold, a typical case, a Nazi, a Bolshevik and a Liberal.’

  McCarthy makes up his mind:

  ‘We’ll subpoena her to appear before the committee.’

  February 1954, McCarthy is about to put a large bomb under the communist and liberal networks, subpoena this woman, Max, you go too far, you talk as if you were sitting on McCarthy’s knee, the bastard, if you knew anything about the man’s morals, shush, not a word, down boy, this is guaranteed château-bottled stuff, aged in our own cellars.

  McCarthy is out to get Lena, and two men ask for a meeting, two unofficial envoys from the White House, smart restaurant, private room, there’ll be two of us, Mr Senator, you can bring your aide, there’ll be no tricks, you can post one bodyguard at the door, not more, it will be a very significant meeting.

  McCarthy has got the White House liberals, communist puppets, where he wants them, they’ve got their backs to the wall, they ask for a meeting and now they’re sitting across from him, private room with a thick-pile carpet, dark red drapes, very quiet.

  Two liberals for McCarthy: Walker, a member of Eisenhower’s private office, the laid-back member of the team, tweed jacket, black-and-orange handkerchief in the breast pocket, Princeton colours, and the fairy, Garrick, grey suit, democratic Senator, two Washington fairies, both under thirty, each born with a silver spoon in his mouth, played football, law degrees from Princeton, muscles and crewcuts to give the lie, liberal fairies, they’ve had the nerve to send him these two, a single indictment will be enough, no cosying-up outside the door, no drinks even, McCarthy starts talking before he’s finished sitting down, his hands are still on the arms of his chair:

  ‘What have you two got that you want to say to me?’

  ‘We’ve got nothing to ask, Senator.’

  ‘What the hell are we doing here, then?’

  ‘We come with a simple message,’ says Walker, ‘a message from the President, you are about to call a lady, please, let me finish, there’s not much to say, the President says: “Don’t”.’

  ‘Or else?’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, the President told us to kick your ass.’ And Garrick adds:

  ‘Until you stop liking it, Senator.’

  No one has talked like that to McCarthy in a long, long while, and the two envoys are cool, provoking, the Chairman of the Committee on UnAmerican Activities lays one hand on his aide’s forearm to calm him down, McCarthy is a good card-player, he started too fast, he’s going to kill these two sons-of-bitches and do it without putting a foot wrong. They watch him, smiling, the blood has not risen to their faces which are not pale either, maybe they’re not complete drag-asses, but they’re pretty young, a Republican and a Democrat, here they are together, McCarthy should have made sure he was better informed, maybe they’re not fairies, take care when you order them dead, he checks them out with a smile:

  ‘You boys served in the war?’

  ‘Yes, Senator.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Korea, Senator, in the marines both, volunteers’ – this is Walker talking – ‘a good outfit.’

  ‘Yeah? What did you do?’

  ‘Flame-thrower, Senator, for a year and a half, I wouldn’t have changed places for the world, and Garrick here was a specialist sharpshooter, his job was to look out for my butt, he did it for a year and a half too, I’m a Republican, he’s a Democrat, we got on like good buddies, and we still do.’

  ‘You did say: kick his ass?’

  ‘Until he stops liking it, Senator, it’s army talk, an image.’

  ‘And what if I shoved my glass in your goddam face?’

  ‘Senator, President Eisenhower said “or else it’s total war”. It’ll only last forty-eight hours at most. Would you let me expand briefly, before you throw the glass? Actors, intellectuals, union bosses, writers, journalists, you can do pretty much what you want with them, foreigners too, have Thomas Mann dealt with as a communist, order The Magic Mountain removed from US cultural centres abroad, you can go further, tickle up Mr Dulles and the CIA, not too much, got to think of your credibility, all that stuff the President can understand, but when he sends us along to warn you to keep off the grass, keep off the grass is what he means. We don’t like the smell of frying, Senator, but we can handle a fry-pan. This lady is gonna disappear from your plans and this meeting never took place.’

  These events of 1954 will be related by Max, Michael Lilstein knows about a third of the story, but on the basis of the third that Lilstein will feed him, plus a few conversations with his friend Linus Mosberger, one of the top men at the Washington Tribune, Max will do something very plausible, he will add the events that took place in Budapest in 1956, and this will be crucial for the way people will remember Lena, the kidnapping, the car, a plausible story.

  Which is why, soon, when he speaks to Kappler, Lilstein will not ask:

  ‘Did you ever see her again?’

  And no one’s chin will start to tremble.

  The other incident, the one which took place in Hungary last August shortly before Russian tanks rolled into Budapest, just a few weeks ago, Lilstein doesn’t have to tell Kappler about it, he has reconstituted it but he won’t tell the tale of the road, the halt, the forest, the woman with the revolver, she takes Lena to one side, Lena looks up at the sky, the stars and our death are bound by hoops of steel, no, the stars and the cold, what the poet said was the stars and the cold, not death, there’s less pathos put like that, anyway death is there, belle of the ball, I’ve been belle of the ball several times, I’ve nothing to complain about, the forest surrounds Lena, she has always loved the forest, you have the feeling that this one isn’t particularly beautiful, there’s the noise water makes in the grass, the Waltenberg larches, we used to ski on the snow between the larches, with Hans, no not Hans, he didn’t ski, at least not well enough for cross-country runs, and he never really wanted to come with me, it must have been Max who quoted the words of the poet to me, in Paris last year, the skiing was with Michael, young Lilstein, nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan, the first pain I felt, you were the cause of the first pain I felt, and now, dear Michael, I am the one who’s going to die.

  It feels so good to enter the forest, the hiss of the skis on the snow, Kägli leads, the monitor, he tries out a new way of braking, a slide with skis aligned, in those days I wasn’t very good at it, that was a quarter of a century ago, the braking action which slowed you from the convergent snowplough to the parallel christiania, hereabouts the forest is not a nice place, I don’t like the dark, it wouldn’t be much better if it were day, at least I don’t have to think that I’m saved by a patch of blue sky, fortunately I don’t have children, a woman with a revolver and a bullet for the heroine.

  Not wild enough, all my life I have never been wild enough, the darkness deepens, the Hungarian forest, hurl curses at them like Tosca does, the way they’ll loo
k if I hurl… No, I’ve nothing to say to these people, why don’t they get on with it, I’m only frightened that the woman will make a mess of it, my heart is beating fast, Max did warn me.

  The woman with the revolver leaves Lena to be by herself for a moment, brings her back to the car, gives her hot tea to drink, looks into her eyes and says in a muffled voice:

  ‘It’s going to get very cold.’

  A biscuit to go with the tea, again the voice says tonelessly:

  ‘It’s going to get very cold.’

  The hood is placed over Lena’s head again, the car, the long ride, in the end she falls asleep on the shoulder of one of the men. When she wakes, she is alone in the car. She hears voices all around her, American voices. A few minutes later she is in a large ambulance driving towards Vienna, men in white coats and a man in a tweed jacket, a black and orange handkerchief in the breast pocket, her friend Walker, he feels her brow, there are tears in his eyes. A doctor takes Lena’s blood pressure, a syringe.

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘A heart stimulant, Ma’am, that’s it, no more field service for you.’

  So in the end, later that morning, face to face with Kappler, Lilstein will not mention Lena’s name. He’ll just ask:

  ‘Why are you so set on going back?’

  Lilstein remembers Kappler from the days when he was so lucid, he used doubt like a drug. One day, Kappler had said to him:

  ‘I am a doubter and you are a nay-sayer, that’s the reason why we like arguing, at least for a spell, also because we’re both from Rosmar.’

  Lilstein knows Kappler but Kappler knows him even better, they have only run across each other two or three times since 1929, and then only briefly, but what happened all that time ago at Waltenberg has bound them together. Kappler is Lilstein’s big older brother, he has a smile that makes him Lilstein’s superior, it always will, he’ll have no bother winkling out from beneath Lilstein’s current demeanour old traces of the pre-war adolescent, the endless discussions they had in those evenings, in the Waldhaus, in one corner of the main residents’ lounge.