The Kremlin Letter

by Behn, Noel;

  The first Interior Action briefing took place in the basement meeting room, directly after breakfast. Ward took the floor.

  “To accomplish our mission,” he began, “it will be necessary to establish a headquarters in Moscow. One that can be used for six months or longer. Ideally we would like enough room to house eight men. Since every last inch of space in Moscow is under government assignment, this creates a problem. Our best chance is to find a house or apartment that belongs to a Russian who doesn’t use it very often. People who fall in this category are usually high-ranking officials on foreign assignment, those stationed out of the country. We have picked a target. A man presently residing in New York. The objective of interior action is to convince him to cooperate.”

  The lights were switched off and a picture of a dour, round-faced man flashed on the screen.

  “Let me introduce Captain Potkin, head of the Soviet Third Department’s United States operation. He travels under diplomatic immunity, as a member of a United Nations delegation. This mild-mannered, devoted husband and father murdered his first man when he was just fifteen—by strangulation. His victim was in his seventies and partially blind. He had razed his first village by sixteen.

  “Potkin developed his craft under Beria. During World War II he was sent into Germany and skillfully infiltrated the Reichshauptsicherheitsamt. His rise to Nazi trust began in the political prisons, where he efficiently persuaded suspects to give up secrets they had never possessed. Potkin was promoted to the rank of S.S. Hauptsturmführer, Sicherheitsdienst, Gross Paris. His duties included interrogation, reprisal, procurement and the infiltration of Communist intelligence. He kept quite busy. So busy, in fact, that he barely managed to set up three underground networks and assassinate twenty-eight of his fellow German officers. After the war he accompanied Russia’s first delegation to the opening of the United Nations in San Francisco. We next heard of him in northern China, as an adviser to the training of red Chinese guerrillas. As a cultural attaché to Hungary he had not foreseen the Budapest uprisings of 1956, so he was brought back to the seclusion of Russia. His fall from grace lasted four years. Then he was assigned to a highly powerful counter-espionage operation—Colonel Kosnov’s, Third Department. The appointment was arranged through Aleksei I. Bresnavitch, whose name will come up later. Potkin’s star began to rise. He was assigned a new apartment in Moscow and made second in command in the Division of United States Affairs. Later a new car and a summer house near Moscow were awarded him. Kosnov elevated him to head all North American affairs. He has held that position for three years now. That more or less is a capsule view of our subject. You can read the details in your brochures.

  “Captain Potkin seems to have no exploitable vices, so we must start with the obvious possibilities.”

  A picture of an older woman and two young girls flashed on the screen.

  “These are his wife and daughters.”

  From the lecture Rone went to a basement classroom for his first language instruction. It was given by Clocker Dan, the little cherubic man with the tweed jacket. He was extremely patient and extremely tolerant.

  “Now, let us hear your Russian. Take any one of those books on the table and read,” he instructed politely.

  Rone picked up a volume of Gorki and began.

  “Excuse me a minute,” Clocker Dan interrupted. “I forgot to turn on the tape recorder.”

  He snapped on the machine and Rone began again. He read for almost half an hour. Every time he looked up from the page, Clocker Dan was staring at the floor, nodding and smiling to himself.

  “We do read very well. Yes, we do,” he finally said, taking the book from Rone’s hand. “One would think we came from Leningrad itself. Only we’re from Tiflis. Now let me see. You must have learned the language at that Army school in California—the one out near Santa Cruz, perhaps?”

  “Yes,” said Rone. “The Army Language Center.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” he said hopefully. “We’ll get you back on the right track in no time. Class dismissed.”

  Rone left. He could hear Clocker Dan replaying his voice as he walked to the next appointment. Ten A.M. to twelve noon, Personality Instruction—basement room C—Professor Buley. When he entered Professor Buley was waiting with folded hands.

  “Now then,” he began chipperly. “What name would you like? To me you look like a Josef or a Jakob. What do you look like to you?”

  “Either one will do.”

  “Good. Then we agree. Josef it will be. Or should it be Yusev? What about Yorgi? I feel Yorgi is even better.” He examined Rone close up and then from a distance. “There’s no doubt about it. You’re a Yorgi. Now for the patronymic. Something patriotic, would you say? Show how much your poor departed grandparents loved Mother Russia?”

  “What about Nikolayevitch?”

  “Oh-ho-ho-ho. That would put you in the soup, wouldn’t it? Once I knew an agent who took the name Nicholas before going across. They shot his brains out while he was on the crapper for no reason at all. I always attributed it to the name. I think Ilya would be nice. You can never go wrong with that. Or perhaps your father could be Ivan. It’s always best to be simple, I think. Shall we settle for that—Yorgi Ivanovitch, son of Ivan?”

  Rone nodded.

  “Now for the last name I think we should have something historic—historic to Georgians, anyway. It’s a little risky using Djugashvili. Might still get the police in a tizzy. Ah. How does Davitashvili strike you?”

  “Smashing,” said Rone, “but will I ever learn how to spell it?”

  “It won’t matter.” Buley smiled. “You’re supposed to be semi-illiterate.”

  Yorgi Ivanovitch Davitashvili followed the professor out into the hall, where a row of school lockers stood.

  “This one is yours,” said Buley, throwing open the door and taking out some rumpled, smelly clothes. “These are your new uniform. They were lifted right off the back of a peasant heading for Tiflis less than three days ago.”

  “Will they be washed?” asked Rone.

  “And ruin the effect?” Buley was shocked. “If you’re to be a peasant you must eat, drink, sleep and smell like one.”

  “It’s something like method acting, isn’t it?” Rone concluded.

  “You could look at it that way. Stanislavski did not come from Des Moines, Iowa.”

  Rone put on the clothes while breathing through his mouth.

  “Yes,” Buley finally declared after examining Yorgi from all sides, “yes, you have a great potential as a peasant. Now shall we settle down and find you some parents and a random relative or two?”

  After class Rone changed his clothes and rushed back to the room. The Whore was lying on the bed reading a comic book.

  “You smell awful,” he said to Rone. “Where the devil have you been?”

  “Have you had your personality session with Buley yet?” asked Rone, tearing off his clothes and heading for the shower.

  “No.”

  “Wait.”

  “Hold on, old man. You’re only supposed to wash in Russian water.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  After a lunch of thick, stringy vegetable soup, black bread and a glass of tea, Rone went to the fourth floor, where an improvised dental office had been put together. He had never seen the dentist before and assumed he had arrived with the staff for the Tillinger mansion. He explained to Rone that his two fillings would have to be removed and replaced with Russian dental cements. He gave Rone Novocain and then picked up hand tools and a manual drill and began opening the cavities. Buley had explained the dental story to Rone. Yorgi had served with the Red Army in the final days of Stalingrad, and the teeth were drilled at a field dental hospital after the Russian victory. Buley insisted on using old Russian instruments, which was perhaps unnecessary, though there was a distinct difference between the effects of hand and mechanical drills. The cement would be new, but Yorgi could always explain that he had had his teeth refilled within t
he last two years. At an autopsy, of course, no explanation would be necessary.

  Rone’s schedule card indicated another two hours of personality instruction, but this time the location and teacher had changed. He was to report to the Casket Maker in the subbasement. When he got there he found the space had been converted into a rifle range and arsenal. The Casket Maker began displaying Russian rifles and sidearms that Yorgi should have used at Stalingrad. Rone spent the first hour taking the weapons apart and reassembling them. He spent forty minutes on the firing range.

  Before he left the Casket Maker gave him a thick loose-leaf notebook containing detailed information on the Red Army’s defense and attack at Stalingrad. It also included pictures of uniforms, rank, insignias and machinery, as well as the names and photographs of the generals and staff officers. Rone was told to familiarize himself with all the information. The last section of the book was typed on blue onion-skin paper. It was the military history of Yorgi Ivanovitch Davitashvili. This he must memorize.

  When Rone returned to his room later that night he found a neat stack of brochures on his bed with a note: “Please familiarize by morning.” Although there were no departmental markings on the covers, the reports looked like National Security Agency material. They were top-secret biographies and evaluations of the Kremlin’s Central Committee and fifteen other high officials. There was a notation on the last biography: “Of Special Interest.” The brochure dealt with Aleksei I. Bresnavitch.

  15

  Surveillance

  Breakfast the next morning was once again kasha. This time a peach was added to the diet. As they were eating Ward announced that except at certain lectures, only Russian would be spoken in the security area from here on in.

  “The Georgians speak notoriously bad Russian,” Clocker Dan announced at Rone’s language lesson. “You must master their pronunciation and words. We will go back to kindergarten and work forward. Here are the schoolbooks you would have had.” He handed Rone a stack of thin, worn pamphlets. He switched on a record player. “And these are the first songs you would have learned as a child,” he said as the first strains of energetic and exotic music filled the room.

  When Rone arrived for his personality instruction Professor Buley led him to a room in the subbasement adjoining the rifle range. He handed him a sledge hammer.

  “If you break through the concrete you will come to dirt. Then you can spend an hour each day digging. That’s what farmers do, you know.”

  As Rone cracked through the concrete floor Buley sat in the corner shouting more of Rone’s cover story. He elaborated on the founding of Tiflis in the fifth century and began working forward. When the session finished Buley took him upstairs and gave him a notebook on the agricultural aspects of Georgia.

  “Memorize it by tomorrow,” he told him.

  In the afternoon Rone was given his first action assignment on the interior project. He and Janis were to watch every move made by Potkin’s eldest daughter, Sonia. Other members of the group were assigned to his younger daughter and to his wife.

  Sonia was a big-boned girl of eighteen. Her dark hair was swept back into a bun, accentuating the high forehead and square face. Even though she dressed in the latest teenage American fashions, she wore no makeup. She had thick legs and a stocky body. The loss of fifteen pounds would have left her much more feminine.

  Rone and Janis had already been extensively briefed on her habits, so they knew she would be chauffeured from home to an art school on 57th Street around nine A.M. and picked up at five-thirty. Sonia had enrolled eight months before and seemed to have much enthusiasm and some talent.

  At one-thirty Rone entered the art school and went to the registrar’s desk.

  “Are you interested in full-time or part-time instruction?” the biddy behind the desk asked him.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” answered Rone. “I’m not even sure I can paint.”

  “But do you want to?” the registrar asked with passion. “Do you really want to?”

  “I think so.”

  “Oh no, young man. Thinking is not enough. Do you have the urge?”

  “I have a lot of urges,” Rone admitted.

  “Is it a deep, burning, compelling urge, a desire that a thousand floods could not quench?”

  “Now that you mention it, I guess it is.”

  The registrar smiled maternally. “Then that’s all you need to paint.”

  “What about talent?”

  “That will develop in time.”

  “Don’t I need any to start with?”

  “What you lack we will give you. Now in my opinion the full-time course is tailor-made for your needs. Yes it is.”

  Rone saw Sonia come out of the cafeteria. She walked past him and turned up a flight of stairs.

  “… so if that’s agreeable to you just sign this contract and leave a hundred-dollar deposit and you can start class immediately.”

  “You mean I’m accepted?”

  “Of course. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you that you had great potential.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll have to see if I can make enough free time to take all of this. Would you mind writing that schedule out for me?”

  “Of course not.” The registrar typed out the information and handed it to Rone. “If you like there is a social meeting for first-year students every Friday and Tuesday night.”

  “I’ll try to make it, and thank you again.” Rone started out.

  “And if you want to bring someone to the meetings, please do. Every student is allowed three guests.”

  At four o’clock Sonia left the art school and walked slowly east on 57th Street. She stopped to look into several bookstore and antique-shop windows. At Fifth Avenue she turned north and walked into Central Park, pausing in front of the sea lion pool in the zoo. A few minutes later an attendant appeared with a pail and began throwing food to the animals. Sonia watched in great glee. Her next stop was the lion house. This seemed to fascinate her. She took out a pad and made a few fast sketches and then looked over to the tower clock. The time seemed to frighten her. She started half running along a path that traversed the park. She would run a few hundred feet and then walk until she was rested enough to run again. She continued until she was back at the art school on 57th Street. The time was five twenty-seven P.M. She stepped inside the door and waited. At five-thirty the car which had taken her to school in the morning pulled up. Sonia walked out and got in.

  Rone and, Janis stood across the street farther down the block and watched as the car pulled away.

  “Are we going to follow it?” asked Rone.

  “There’s no need. It’s only taking her home.”

  “Even so—”

  “My dear fellow,” Janis said paternally, “the Warlock set this up. He watched her first. He’s the master. We must learn to listen to the master. If he had wanted her followed that closely he would have given us an auto. So just you relax and watch that grocery truck parked down the street.”

  Rone could see the driver of the truck looking into his rear-view mirror. He scanned the area carefully and then started off after the car.

  “Is that one of ours?” he asked Janis.

  “One of ours? My dear fellow, we have too much panache to go chasing about in a common grocery truck.”

  When Rone returned to his room that night there was another stack of brochures on his bed, dealing with officials in the various Russian intelligence services. The note on top of the pile stated: Read by morning.

  16

  The Examination

  Tactical briefing number one took place in the basement meeting room after breakfast. A gaunt, lean man with a Viennese accent gave the lecture. It dealt with Russian interrogation methods. He traced the evolution of brainwashing, torture and coercion as practiced in the Soviet Union for the last forty-six years. He showed motion pictures and slides of technical devices as well as quickly outlining investigation techniques.

  When Rone arrived for
his session with Buley he found the professor waiting with a large assortment of Russian farm tools. He instructed Rone in their proper use and then continued developing the cover story of Yorgi. Rone dug as the professor shot question after question at him in an attempt to trip him up.

  The language lesson with Clocker Dan was spent singing Georgian children’s songs.

  In the afternoon Rone joined Janis down the block from Sonia’s art school. Once again she left the building at four P.M., walked to the park zoo, sketched, then returned without talking to anyone. Just as on the day before, the car, followed at a distance by the grocery truck, picked her up at five-thirty.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen,” said Janis. “That truck accomplishes absolutely nothing.”

  “Then why are they using it?” asked Rone.

  “Looks like a slight case of nerves.”

  “About what?”

  “Maybe us.”

  After supper Rone was summoned to the dining room. The Highwayman, Ward and Professor Buley were waiting for him.

  “Nephew Yorgi,” announced Ward, “the time has come to see just how well you have learned your lessons. Each of us will be popping a few questions at you. Now, we’d like you to answer as quickly as you can, and we would also like you to be as complete as you can.”

  Rone nodded.

  “The other night, you were given brochures on certain Soviet personages. I would like to start with Bresnavitch. What is his full name?”

  “Aleksei I. Bresnavitch.”

  “There was a photograph of him in the brochure. Try to describe it.”

  “He has an angular face with a long, tight jaw. His eyes are hardset and rather close together. His nose is aquiline. He has a receding hairline and parts his hair slightly to the right. His hair looked slightly gray in the photograph. His mouth was large. He had full lips.”

  “Now tell us about” the report. From the beginning.”

  “The first page was all facts,” said Rone.

  “Tell us.”

  “Name: Bresnavitch, Aleksei I. Born: Leningrad, February 13, 1898. Father: Ilya. Mother: Exact name not known, believed to be Gurla. Occupation of Father: Frame maker. Brothers: Boris, killed 1942. Sisters: None. Education: Unknown, believed to have studied in Kiev—unconfirmed. Height: Five feet ten. Weight: Approximately a hundred and eighty-five pounds. Eyes: Gray. Distinguishing marks: Scar at base of right ear.”