The Moscow Club

by Finder, Joseph

  “Your man,” Stone mused aloud. “But he was wearing a KGB uniform.”

  “The KGB is not free of us,” he said. “Please, come in.”

  “I apologize about the lateness of the hour, but this is an emergency.”

  “Late? You forget about the hours we kept, all of us who worked and lived with Stalin. He worked throughout the night, because he preferred the night, and we did the same. At my age, it is too late to change. I always work late into the night.”

  “Work?” Stone could not help asking.

  “I am writing my memoirs, memoirs that will never be published, at least not in my lifetime. Oh, maybe in ten or twenty years, if things keep changing at the rate at which they are now.” The old man pursed his lips. “Gorbachev is doing good things for our country, but he is also consolidating his power, Mr. Stone. There is always a danger that we will have another Stalin. If it is not he, it will be another. And that is why we are here.”

  “It was your people, I take it, in the cemetery in Paris.”

  Amusement played in Chavadze’s eyes, the barest wisp of a smile animating his lips. “Yes. We had somebody waiting and watching. We heard 'ou were meeting with Dunayev, and we knew there would be violence.”

  “That was the second shot I heard.”

  “It was important to protect you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me explain.”

  “What does the password mean, ‘Staroobriadets’?”

  “Will you sit down? Come this way.” They moed into a small but comfortable sitting room, furnished with low, overstuffed chairs. “You do not know who the Staroobriadtsy were? They were members of the Russian Orthodox Church who felt betrayed by the traumatic changes taking place in the church three hundred years ago. They spoke up, and they were hounded out, and they disappeared into the woods. Many burned themselves alive. But surely you know all this.”

  “And some still exist,” Stone said. “But am I missing your point? You’re Old Believers. But you don’t believe in Stalinism, do you?”

  “Oh, no, quite the opposite. We want to make sure Stalin never happens again.”

  “And vho is ‘we?’ “

  “We are simply the old guard. Nothing organized, nothing elaborate. An organization of dying old men who have friends still in power, a widespread network. We watch, we listen. We warn and counsel, but never directly intervene, because we have no power to do so even if we wanted. You Americans haxe your foreign-policy establishment, your Council on Foreign Relations; we have only the Staroobriadtsy.”

  Staroobriadtsy. The word Alfred Stone had alluded to in his note. ” ‘We’ again. Who the hell is ‘we’?”

  “We’re patriots. Lovers of the Soviet state. It’s imperfect, but it’s vastly better than under thq czars. You Americans forget that we Russians are ver' different. We do not want democracy—we wouldn’t know what to do with it.”

  “Come on,” Stone said with a snort of derision. “You’re the old guard all right—Stalin’s old guard. You and your cohorts were responsible for administering the world’s longest-playing tyranny, were you not?”

  “One of the longest-playing ones,” Chavadze agreed. “Do you know that Khrushchev was asked much the same thing once, at a Party congress? He was as guilty as any of us. There was a voice from the back of the room, asking why didn’t he speak up when he was in power, tell Stalin off? He responded, ‘Who said that?’ And there was silence. Then he said, ‘Now you understand.’ “

  “You secretly terminated the court-martial of a few heroic men who refused to participate in the massacre in the Katyn Forest.”

  Chavadze was silent a moment. “Then you know. I thought that was lost deep in the Soviet archives. But, yes, I did once. You see, what happened there—the sheer brutality of the massacre—was a powerful influence on me. It completely changed my way of seeing the world, seeing my own country. I knew that true bravery in Russia means not speaking out and acting loudly but maneuvering secretly. One can do so much more.”

  “Why did you agree to see me?” Stone asked abrupfly. “How-much do you know about what is happening?”

  “That your Central Intelligence Agency has been interfering in the affairs of our state? That much is plain.”

  “And M-3. You know about M-3.”

  “Certainly. Our esteemed head of the KGB. We orchestrated that.”

  “What? Orchestrated it? He was a source, wasn’t he? A mole? Wasn’t he— isn’t he—controlled by us?”

  “The reverse, Mr. Stone. The reverse. We controlled you.”

  “Whatr

  “That was the genius of it. We had to control the secret about Lenin, and to do that, we played upon the American government’s hopes and fears. Pavlichenko had been approached by an officer of American intelligence, and he agreed to cooperate. I don’t know why, but it was a good thing. We were thereby able to manipulate your intelligence, leach it of secrets. You wanted to believe you had a mole, we gave you a mole. You were in the midst of the reign of Senator McCarthy, and the more you tore yourself apart, ate yourselves up, the gladder we were, because we were weak. When Stalin died, we were in turmoil, so we welcomed the opportunity to use J. Edgar Hoover, use McCarthy, use Winthrop Lehman. In order to protect himself, Lehman had to convince Hoover that he was ‘running’ an agent highly placed inside Stalin’s Russia. It was all a great deception. I’m sorry your father had to be a casualty of that war, but he might have undone all our careful work. If McCarthy had known”—Cha-vadze gave a dry chuckle—“that he was saving the Kremlin from great devastation …”

  The words echoed horribly. Vm sorry vour father had to be a casualty of that war… . After what Stone had learned from Winthrop Lehman, who was also a casualty of that war …

  Stone nodded slowly, dumbfounded. Everything seemed so far away for an instant, Moscow, his father’s house on Hilliard Street…

  Chavadze continued speaking. “You know, it’s ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Hmm?” Stone responded, a million miles away.

  “That your father was caught in the spasms that began the Cold War. And you—you’re caught in the spasms that are ending it.”

  “Then of course you are aware,” Stone said slowly, “that Pavli-chenko is about to stage a coup, are you not?”

  Chavadze shook his head. “What do you base this on?”

  Stone told him, ending with the details of the CAT scan. “IfPavli-chenko is following Beria’s plan, then he plans to suffer a stroke in a few hours, if he hasn’t already. Tomorrow—today—he will be absent, and then something—some sort of catastrophe—will take place.”

  The old Georgian looked as if he had been struck across the face. “No,” he said. “There have been signs… the murders, the maneuvers. Things have been happening that seemed, at first, only puzzling. There was talk of reassignments that seemed to make no sense, new people brought into our embassies and consulates by Pavlichenko. Talk in our listening posts abroad of a network of emigre-killers who did not answer to the normal KGB channels—as if a separate channel were set up.”

  “There’s so little time,” Stone said urgently.

  Chavadze was nodding. Stone found that in his terror he was involuntarily holding his breath.

  “And the deaths of people who seemed to be connected only to Pavlichenko. Lenin’s former secretary in America … Men who were present at one certain dinner at Blizhny, Stalin’s dacha. All murdered. And—”

  “And what?” Stone asked, knowing from the old man’s strange expression what was to come. His stomach turned inside out.

  “Your father.”

  “Who killed him?” Stone asked, very quietly.

  “This I know. One of our people, who serves on Pavlichenko’s house staff as a cook, managed to tap his phone line at his dacha in Vnukovo. That’s all we managed to learn. Pavlichenko ordered it.”

  There was a long silence, and then Chavadze continued. “Pavlichenko was Beria’s closest, most tru
sted aide.”

  “Yes,” Stone said. “And like Beria, like his mentor, he, too, plans a coup. But unlike Beria, Andrei Pavlichenko is extremely shrewd, extremely measured.”

  Chavadze’s next words came out agonizingly slowly, as if they pained the old man. “I don’t imagine you know the method by which Beria planned to seize power.”

  “Specifically, no. I don’t.”

  “Oh, my Lord.”

  “What?”

  “I was a candidate member of the Presidium then, and so I was privy to Beria’s plans, revealed after he was executed.”

  “What were they? They were the prototype, weren’t they?” Stone whispered hoarsely.

  “Beria used funds that Lehman had provided him, which were therefore untraceable, to purchase a large order of high-powered explosives,” Chavadze said. “Do you know that inside Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square there exists an empty chamber that is sometimes used as an arsenal? Stalin insisted upon this when the mausoleum was designed. …”

  “It can’t be. …”

  508 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  “In many ways it was an ingenious stroke. The explosives piled high within the small mausoleum structure, while several meters away, on top of the thing, stood all of Beria’s rivals. Sitting ducks in a sense, and all of them would be blown up.”

  “Pavlichenko is using CIA plastique to accomplish the same thingr Stone said, leaping to his feet. “A mass assassination. With not only the entire Politburo up there, but the American President as wellf

  Chavadze reached for a telephone next to him and dialed a number. After a moment, he spoke into the receiver: “Who is assigned to security for Lenin’s mausoleum this morning?” He began shaking his head in disbelief.

  Then he cried out, slamming down the phone furiously.

  “The lines have been cut! Pavlichenko must have put his people on me, his employees at the main telephone banks in downtown Moscow!”

  “So they know what you’re asking about.”

  “But they did not cut me off before I learned that the regular personnel have been replaced, suddenly and at the last minute, by the KGB chairman’s private guard,” he said, his eyes wide and glistening with terror.

  “I need your resources now,” Stone said, “if this is to be stopped.”

  “My resources!” the old man said bitterly. “I have people throughout Moscow, even in Europe. Yes, in the KGB, even in the KGB’s guards directorate, are young men who swear allegiance to the Old Believers. Family traditions are passed on to the sons and daughters. But we are powerless to fight the concentrated power of the KGB. My reach is not that great, Mr. Stone. Without my telephone, without time to summon my people, I can be of no help. Pavlichenko has contained operations so precisely that there is pitifully little we can do. My servants—my chauffeur—can take you into Moscow; maybe you and he can make the necessary connections. But now it’s a matter of sheer speed, and I’m afraid we are almost out of time.”

  7^

  3:55 a.m.

  It is extremely easy to construct a bomb. That most people are ignorant of the technique is testimony not to its difficulty but to the simple fact that few people are so inclined.

  The explosives expert from the GRU had begun to make the bomb that would, he believed, avenge the murders of his parents. How strange were the twists of fate!

  He labored, in the small laboratory that the Sekretariat had provided for him, late at night, for reasons of secrecy: he wanted none of his colleagues to have an inkling of what he was working on.

  At this hour, much of the Aquarium was dark. He worked at a black-topped counter, without emotion.

  What was peculiar was that all of the equipment with which he had been provided was American-made. The GRU’s explosives technology was every bit as sophisticated as anything made by the Americans; there was no need to use imported technology; but he did not question his orders.

  Using an array of jeweler’s tools, which he took from cases on the counter, he carefully connected two lengths of wire to a small black electronic detonator, manufactured by a California company. Next he began to attach the detonator to an electrical blasting cap and a nine-volt transistor-radio battery.

  Electrical blasting caps contain small charges that are detonated by means of an electrical current. Emanating from the cap were two wires, six feet long. He screwed one of the blasting cap’s wires to the detonator; the other wire he connected to one terminal of the small

  510 ■ JOSEPH FINDER

  battery. He pushed the blasting cap into a hvo-and-a-half-pound block of plastic explosive. It was not critical where in the block the blasting cap went.

  The explosive, he noticed, was a white C-4, manufactured in the United States. He recognized the label and the serial number: it was made by the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport, Tennessee. He wondered idly how the Sekretariat had managed to get its hands on CIA plastique. And why.

  The other wire emanating from the blasting cap he did not connect to the unused battery terminal; that would have detonated the explosion right there and then. No, this would happen when the time came, when he was ready to set the timer.

  When the plastic bomb went off, the pressure in the chamber beneath Lenin’s mausoleum would instantly increase to such an extent that the three grenades he would place around the room would go off, thereby detonating the cloud of gas. He had determined that three grenades would be enough, but they would have to be a special sort of grenade that creates an explosion at an extraordinarily high temperature.

  He needed white-phosphorus grenades. These, too, had been provided for him, and they were American-made. For unfathomable reasons of bureaucracy, the Soviet Army does not make them. The Sekretariat had, however, gained access to a significant supply of American M-15 grenades, smooth-bodied cylinders a bit smaller than beer cans.

  He unscrewed the normal grenade fuses and then replaced them with snap-diaphragm concussion-detonation switches to which he had affixed blasting caps. These concussion switches, which are shaped like small orchestra cymbals, go off when subjected to great pressure.

  Finally, he attached to the valve of the ten-kilogram cylinder of propane gas a second valve, a time-release one. Valves like these are sold through catalogues by any number of industrial-controls companies. A time-release valve may be used, for instance, to turn on a gas furnace in an office building at five o’clock in the morning, so that the place is warm by the time the employees arrive at nine.

  All he would need was about two minutes in the basement of Lenin’s tomb. He would turn on the propane cylinder and set the time-release valve to begin releasing the gas at eleven in the morning on Revolution Day. Within ten minutes, the gas cloud would be big enough, rich enough with oxygen. Ten minutes, he calculated, was the proper interval. If the plastic bomb went off five minutes too soon or five minutes too late, the whole scheme would fail.

  He finished making the bomb at exactly twenty minutes past four in the morning. The whole assembly fit rather neatly in the satchel, and he was quite proud of his handiwork. It would, he was certain, do the job.

  77

  6:32 a.m.

  Slumped in the car. Stone would not allow himself to rest. Charlotte was gone. She was not in her office, not in her apartment. Stone had called repeatedly from phone booths. No answer.

  And then he knew where she would be, if she had not been arrested.

  During their many talks in the last few days, she’d mentioned a hiding place in Moscow, a hotel called the Red Star in the center of the city where someone she knew worked at the desk. Once, she said, she’d met there with one of her sources who needed absolute anonymity. He knew intimately how her mind worked. If she had to hide, Stone felt sure, that’s where she’d be.

  Chavadze’s driver pulled the black Volga into a side street very near Dzerzhinsky Square, and Stone cautiously got out. He entered a small, dimly lit building whose peeling sign was marked with a simple red star.

  A middle-
aged man with gray-peppered black hair and large pouches under his eyes was working at the front desk.

  “I’m looking for someone, ” Stone said.

  The man looked at him sternly for a moment, then smiled. “Ah, I think I may know a friend of yours,” he said.

  ^‘Charlief’ It was Charlotte’s voice. She appeared from a side room, running toward him, her arms outstretched.

  “Oh, thank God,” Stone said, embracing her.

  As the chauffeur drove seventy miles an hour, Charlotte sat in the back seat of the Volga, clutching Stone. “When I left my apartment to go to the office,” she explained, “I saw a paddywagon, one of the white vans that had once taken me away, and I knew it was no coincidence. So I wheeled around and ran as fast as I could. The Red Star was the only place 1 could think of to hide.”

  Stone was sitting next to her, and he kissed her. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he said. “We need you. / need you. Badly.”

  “Thanks, ” she said softly. “But Lehman—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “He knew he was never going to make it out of Moscow. I went to see him, asked his help. He took something.”

  “Took something? What are you saying?”

  “He killed himself. He died right in front of me.”

  “Lehman’s dead?”

  Stone took Charlotte’s hand and squeezed hard. “Once he meant a great deal to me,” he said, and stopped, but something in his voice indicated to her that there was something else.

  “What is it, Charlie?”

  “Later.”

  Charlotte suddenly looked up at the road and addressed the driver: “I know a shortcut that’ll save us ten minutes. Ten minutes we’re going to need.”

  The driver shook his head, unused to being ordered about by a woman. “You want to drive?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Just do what I tell you, okay? I know all the side streets of this goddamned city.” More quietly, she added: “I knew someday it’d come in handy.”