In November 1968 the Western monetary system depended for survival on the strength of the West German Deutschmark which was backed by a gold treasury no greater than Kolchak’s.
Put it in CIA hands and who could be sure what use it might be put to? Or allow the CIA to put it in Soviet hands: same question. Or perhaps more so: Russia has always been, and still is, a nation in which all policy is controlled by a small band of totalitarian leaders who are restrained by no law, answerable to no one, and educated abysmally in the realities of the outside world.
My question put Ritter at a loss: evidently it hadn’t occurred to him that I wouldn’t recognize my obligation to prove my patriotism by handing over the gold to the CIA. He tried to conceal his indignant outrage; he tried to act contemptuous: “I’m empowered to offer you a sizable finder’s fee.”
He said it too loudly.
I must have been in a state of emotional idiocy—an aberration from which I would soon recover in terror—but just then I was acting far more professional than he was and that was another thing he couldn’t take. He’d been prepared to deal with a garden-variety scholar and we both knew what that was: probably gutless and naïve, certainly eager to bow before the whim of Authority. He found himself dealing with a self-assured lunatic who wouldn’t knuckle under. It had to be disconcerting; had I been in his position I’d have burst a blood vessel.
“Listen to me, Harry. I’m making you a hell of an offer. Millions. If you turn it down there’s nothing I can do for you. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand threats. You’re very handy with the rack and thumbscrew, aren’t you? You use bribes and blackmail and threats, and then you tell me I ought to do it because it’s the right thing to do. Good God, Ritter, you can’t preach patriotism and morality at gunpoint.”
He became very sibilant and German again. “I would suggest you consider the fact that you are in no position to dictate to me concerning such things as morality and patriotism.” I waited for him to call me Herr Bristow but of course he didn’t, that was only the black comedy inside me.
“I don’t know where your gold is. You may believe that or not—I don’t much care. But you can’t trade me to the Russians if I haven’t got anything they could use. You can’t turn me over to them if I’m worthless—all that would do is destroy your credibility with them.”
Of course I was bluffing but he couldn’t know that.
I stood up. “They’re going to wonder where I’ve been. It’s almost five.”
“You went for a walk to soak up the atmosphere of the city. After all you’re writing a book about it. It isn’t your fault they lost sight of you.”
He hadn’t risen from his chair; the back of it was against part of the door and he had my way blocked. I said, “If the way you handled my getaway this afternoon is an example, you’d never get near that gold—even if I found it for you.”
“It must have been the first day they used the car and the third man on you. I’ve had them under the eye for forty-eight hours. The plan would have worked perfectly well if they’d followed yesterday’s pattern.”
That began to bring me back to earth. I put both palms flat on the table and leaned toward him. “Ritter, what made them change the operation today?”
“You must have done something to alert them.”
“I did nothing. It had to be you. They spotted you, you clumsy bastard.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’ve been in this game long enough to know when I’ve been blown.”
“Sure you have.”
“You’re rattled after all.” He was pleased. “It wasn’t me, you know. Probably they observed your little ballet of indecision around the telephone kiosk last night. That might have been enough to make them increase their suspicions.”
“And just who set up that charade?”
“I did. I was mistaken. I’m to blame, I accept the responsibility, and I apologize.”
“I don’t want your apology,” I said. “I want your absence.”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t conform with my orders.”
“And you’re a good German, aren’t you.”
He tried to ignore that. He said, “You opened a door a moment ago. You said, ‘Even if I found the gold for you.’ “
“Figure of speech. An army of searchers might find it, if they had twenty years to search for it.”
He levered himself to his feet, grunting, one hand against the table for support. “I don’t believe you.”
“Ritter, I’m not responsible for your speculations.”
“Think about this, Harry. In their country the incumbents get to count the votes. In their country ten million of you may get purged out of existence any minute, at the whim of some fool with red stars on his epaulets. You can’t publish what you want to. You can’t even think if your thoughts don’t conform to the party line. You can’t go where you want to go, you can’t even have a conversation without worrying about whether somebody’s going to inform on you. You can’t agitate for reform, you can’t defend yourself against phony charges. The freedoms you take for granted ——”
It was all true and I was tired of it because it was beside the point. I cut him off: “The freedoms which you’re asking me to give up so that I can safeguard my freedom. Aren’t you bombing the hamlet in order to save it?”
“Nuts. I’m asking you for only one thing—a piece of information which isn’t rightfully yours anyway.”
“What makes it rightfully yours?”
“We’re both Americans.”
I laughed in his face.
He said patiently, “Harry, it does make a difference. I won’t torture you or throw you in prison. I draw the line at that.”
“There are heroin pushers who draw the line at rape. I’m not impressed by people who draw lines.”
“You ought to be. If you were having this conversation with Zandor there’d be blood coming out from under your fingernails.”
He led the way out of the dreary apartment and we went down the stairs. I said, “And now?”
“Now I take you back to your neighborhood and you walk back to your hotel.”
“Just like that?”
“What did you expect me to do? Hold you prisoner until you capitulated?”
The temperature had dropped sharply under a pewter sky. We crowded ourselves into the little car and he got the engine going and waited for it to warm up. Our breath fogged the windshield. Ritter said, “Do you mind if I make a suggestion? It’s for your own good. I think you ought to inform Comrade Zandor of the location of the treasure before you leave the Soviet Union. If the information was already out of your hands, your government wouldn’t have reason to harass you.”
I said, “What have you got to gain by advising me to spill everything to Zandor?”
“Just cutting my losses, Harry.”
“No.” I reasoned it out. “You’d have to inform Zandor in advance that I was going to volunteer the gold to the Soviets—as a favor to you. That way you’d get the credit, you’d still get reciprocity from Moscow. One good turn.”
“The KGB might get that impression,” he murmured. He switched on the defroster fan but it didn’t work very well. “Actually the way you’d better do it is write the information in a letter and mail it just before you fly out of the country. That way you’d avoid the tedium of questioning. No point taking unnecessary risks, is there.”
“I wonder how many people you’ve blackmailed into doing the right thing.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I told you before. I have no idea where the gold is. The whole thing’s a fantasy. Yours and MacIver’s.”
He put the Moskvitch in gear.
* Elsewhere, in a section deleted earlier by the editors, Bristow speculated on how’ the gold might have been hidden: “Several possible methods. (A) Much industry had been moved to Siberia. Spur rail lines remained, now unused. Some went through tunnels. Unload gold inside tunnel, then demolish bo
th openings at ends of tunnel as if air-raid bomb damage. (B) Old smelters—numerous in South Russia. Slag piles—enormous. Pile up gold in area of slag heaps, cover it with layer of slag. (C) Several lakes and reservoirs adjacent to spur RR lines. Sink gold in one of them. It won’t corrode. (D) Several new highways then being laid & paved for military transport. Lay gold in road-fill, then pave over it. (E) The traditional way: dig a hole and bury it.”—Ed.
* Probably March 22, 1973.—Ed.
* Italics supplied by the editors. Written in growing haste, some of these passages are characterized by muddled verb tenses and uncertain syntax. As much as possible, we have left the wording alone, feeling that the best editing is the least editing.—Ed.
* Ritter, of course, is the name of the man in the blue suit. Below, Bristow gives him more of a formal introduction. As mentioned earlier in the notes, these passages were added as insertions in the manuscript after Bristow had completed the basic structure; they are written on odd scraps of paper with such indices as “page 382-A, -B,” and so on, to indicate where Bristow wanted them to appear.—Ed.
* This is the next morning—probably Friday, March 23.—Ed.
* It is probably clear from the context that Bristow added this passage and inserted it here. Henceforth such insertions will not be pointed out unless it seems important to do so.—Ed.
* “The Organs” is professional argot for the Soviet KGB.—Ed.
* The reference is to Harris Bristow’s The War in the Aleutians (New York, 1969). Clearly Bristow felt compelled to explain why he refused to cooperate with the CIA’s Karl Ritter; therefore he added this passage to the manuscript. It appears to be one of the last segments he wrote.—Ed.
He reached across my lap to unlatch the door.
I walked back to the hotel and fifty people seemed to spring out of the cement. None of them accosted me but I felt eyes on me.
In the lobby I found Yakov Sanarski and Timoshenko playing chess.
Sanarski greeted me without smiling and I explained my disappearance when he requested the explanation. I was not sure if he believed my story but he didn’t challenge it. He would report to Zandor and it would be up to Zandor to decide.
I did not want to be alone in my room. I pulled out a chair and watched the chess match. Timoshenko was an aggressive but careless player and Sanarski mated him easily. Then the KGB man went off, to a phone or a car, and Timoshenko asked what might be my pleasure for the evening; we had no interviews scheduled for the day. I was in a stage of delayed shock, the tremor starting in; I left the decision to him and resorted to my room to clean up and change. I remembered to put the old hat in one of my coat pockets and when we got to the restaurant I managed to leave it on the hat rack there.
I kept up with Timoshenko drink for drink until it occurred to me that if I had ever needed a clear head in my life it was now. The music was frenetic and earsplitting in the place and Timoshenko was enjoying it hugely, stamping both feet to keep time. There was no need to make conversation with him. The vodka in my blood made it easier to shut out the frenzy of the place; it helped to clear the nervous fears from my head and allow me to concentrate.
In the beginning the gold had been an orphan abandoned on my doorstep and I’d had the freedom to accept or ignore the responsibility of it. But I hadn’t covered my tracks well enough and the CIA was onto it, and Ritter was right—it wouldn’t be very long before Moscow got onto it too.
It meant I was under pressure of time. How long did I have? I didn’t know. I might have a month; I might not have forty-eight hours. The KGB was behind MacIver and Ritter, but how far behind?
At intervals I was disgusted by my own smug and pious moralizing. The rest of the time I thought myself a man of principle. But the road to hell.… I had to consider the temptations of chucking it in. I could still turn back; I still had options. I could give it to Ritter or give it to Zandor and I would be off the hook.
But it was too late for that because I’d taken the baby in off the doorstep and now it was my child.
I did not sleep. The rest of my life hung on the decisions of that night: I vacillated but I couldn’t procrastinate because soon they would take the decision out of my hands. I had to decide now.
But there were so many sides to it and I was cursed with vision that was too clear. I began to see myself contemptuously as a fool who insisted on equivocating about the state of the exact temperature while the building was burning down over my head. I entertained so many but-on-the-other-hands that by the dark small hours I was ready to take any decision at all merely for the sake of having it done with: remember the Kurosawa scene where the Samurai warrior reaches a crossroads, tosses his staff spinning in the air and walks off in the direction indicated by the fall of the staff? The toss of a coin had distinct appeal.
In the end I had to capitulate. As long as two conditions were met I could evade the final decision until I’d had time to study it. The two conditions: I had to keep the secret and I had to keep my freedom.
The one depended on the other, so that I really had to meet only one condition: I had to remain free. Free of coercion, free to move about, free to think, and free to put into execution whatever decision I arrived at concerning the gold.
Reduced to that simplicity, my course of action became clear. I had to get out of the Soviet Union.
The afternoon with Ritter was a Friday and I had the weekend ahead. There were three Saturday interviews on the schedule: a morning interview in the city and two meetings later in the day in Crimean towns.
The plan I worked out was simple enough to work. I got somehow through the morning interview with Timoshenko sitting bored off to one side; when we left the retired navy commander’s house I suggested lunch and it was no great challenge to make sure Timoshenko consumed several beers before we left.
It was a bitter cold day but the snowfall which had been forecast was holding off. We drove past the suburban rubble which hadn’t yet been rebuilt; we went north and occasionally from the hilltops the sea would come in view, overhung by heavy clouds.
According to plan Timoshenko pulled over to the side of the empty road and got out of the car to relieve himself. There were farm fields on either side of the narrow stripe of road. When Timoshenko turned his back to the car to unbutton his fly I climbed across into the driver’s seat and drove away, leaving him staring at me in the rearview mirror with confounded amazement, shouting and waving.
It was a rotten trick to have played on him but I hadn’t been able to work out a better plan.
I used the Intourist map to guide myself in a wide semicircle to the east and south around Sebastopol. It took me nearly three hours to reach the village of Bykovskiy; I kept to the back roads, most of them unpaved. Several times my passage drew the stares of farm people who rarely saw automobiles.
I entered Bykovskiy along a side street and parked the car in a quiet corner that wasn’t visible from the square, the station or the main road. When I got out of the car I felt bulky; my pockets were crowded with everything I dared take with me. The main bulk of the notes was in the briefcase in my right hand but I hadn’t trusted the gold notes off my person in weeks and these were in my pockets.
I had the new hat pulled down over my head, the coat collar turned up; I put the car keys in my pocket—I might need it again—and went along behind the row of buildings that fronted on the village square.
I had to show myself on the square briefly but no one seemed to take an interest in me; it was cold and those who were abroad were intent on their own business. I entered the building and went directly up the stairs, turned along to the door and knocked.
There was no reply. I tried the knob; it was not locked; I let myself into Bukov’s patrician quarters.
He wasn’t home. I laid my coat across my briefcase and sat down to wait for him.
Twice I heard trains come to the depot, stand hissing awhile and proceed. It grew dark; I didn’t dare light a lamp. After a while I found myself
standing beside the front windows watching the occasional vehicles that moved in and out of the square. Timoshenko would have thumbed a ride by now and Zandor would know I had broken my tether; the search would be on, and they’d think of this place soon. If Bukov was away for the night I couldn’t wait him out but if I left this place there was no other place to go.…
I kept vigil, watching for Bukov, watching for anything that looked like an official car.
In the beginning the plan had seemed simple and foolproof but now I saw all the things that could go wrong with it. In the cold room sweat stood out on my face. Now and then something snapped in the dark and I had to take a very careful grip on myself and not relax it for an instant: if I fell apart it would be all the way. A tic set in at the corner of my mouth, my sphincter contracted, I had to keep wiping my palms dry against my hip pockets; and time seemed to distort itself in an Einsteinian way, terror affecting the speed of time in an inverse geometric ratio. It became a kind of marijuana atavism: all the senses drawn to their taut limits, a fine alertness to every subliminal sound and movement—and the conviction that I could parse each passing second.
As a trick of preserving sanity I kept reassuring myself it was the right gamble, the best odds: I kept telling myself I hadn’t made a mistake by not simply applying for an early exit visa and a new Aeroflot ticket.
I reviewed the reasons a dozen times. The answer did not always come up the same. The trouble was I had to deal with probabilities rather than facts. Logic is no better than its premises and mine were uncertain. I’d had to make assumptions and act as if they were facts; but suppose they weren’t true?
I’d accused Karl Ritter of basing assumptions on assumptions; now I was doing that. They went like this:
Assumption: Ritter was not lying when he said the KGB suspected I was involved with the illegal Jewish emigration underground. There were too many ways he could have been right. First there was the fact that Andrei Bizenkev* had opposed my visit from the beginning; naturally Bizenkev would have ordered a full-scale investigation of my background and affiliations and therefore the KGB could have been aware of my close association with Nikki, my extended sojourn in Israel and possibly my connection with Haim Tippelskirch, a known spy. Second there was my prior visit to Bukov. Putting that together with my known contacts with Israeli agents, the KGB had to be “onto me” even if it was for thoroughly erroneous reasons.
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