Innocence To Die For

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Innocence To Die For Page 29

by Eidinow, John


  His bedroom was simple. A cane-bottomed chair, a dressing table with a glass and bottle of Evian, a narrow wardrobe, a narrow metal bed with a bolster and a patchwork counterpane. She had laid out towels; they had a now familiar fragrance. The window looked out on to the darkness of the hillside. Nothing was stirring. Some distant flashes lit up the sky. A raid somewhere.

  He debated whether to put the Browning under the bolster then shoved it with the pack into the wardrobe, putting the Mauser under the bolster. The mattress sagged. An uncomfortable night beckoned. True, they would talk early.

  ****

  ‘Good morning, Peter.’ She was standing at the door, smiling, dressed in a long white silk peignoir. ‘We have business to transact as I promised. If you get dressed and go for bread, I will make coffee—unless you prefer tea.’

  The weather had changed. Grey clouds drifting in from the sea brought a light drizzle, more a softness in the air, but she insisted he wore the beret and long raincoat hanging in the hall. Smiling, she grasped it by the lapels and kissed him on the cheek before he left.

  She sent him not to her local boulangerie but to a bigger shop further away and asked him to kindly post a letter for her as he went. It was to her notary in Nantes and better in the post sooner than later.

  In the boulangerie, the one other customer, a middle-aged man in blue overalls, was deep in conversation with the baker about Reynaud’s resigning as prime minister late the night before and Pétain’s appointment in his place, with Weygand as minister of national defence. The old marshal would make a broadcast at lunchtime. Everyone knew what he would announce.

  The baker served Peter without interrupting the flow. Reynaud was a good man and had done his best; the root of the problem was with Blum and his Jewish friends. Simply, the time had come for a change. An armistice was inevitable and Pétain’s leadership would keep the country united while it was worked out. How relieved they were that the fighting was as good as over: ‘il fallait en finir.’ Now Pétain would look after France. As Peter left, they moved on … if the Americans had come in, if the British had pulled their weight, if the left, the Freemasons and the Jews had not degraded society and sabotaged the armed forces …

  ‘Reynaud’s gone. Pétain has taken over.’ He called to her as he came through the door.

  ‘I heard.’

  She was in the main room, which ran the length of the house overlooking the sea, and pointed to the wireless on the dining table, which she had laid for breakfast. The receiver was like Dinah’s – big, a wide dial with foreign stations and a trailing aerial.

  ‘You mustn’t delay. If Pétain signs an armistice, you could be interned.’

  She turned on the wireless and they breakfasted to a background of music with occasional summaries of the news and announcements that the Prime Minister, Marshal Pétain, would address the French nation at noon on matters of state.

  ‘Get your things ready while I clear up. Then we will talk.’ She switched the set off and started to gather the plates.

  When he came downstairs with his pack, a fresh pot of coffee was waiting and she was sitting, relaxed, smoking a cigarette, still in her peignoir. Her eyes were closed. She had opened double doors that gave on to a small terrace and the sound of the sea came clearly, the lazy rhythm of waves advancing and falling back over the pebbled beach below. “With tremulous cadence slow …” He listened and waited.

  She opened her eyes. ‘I suppose you have a gun in there. May I see it?’

  He took out the Browning and laid it on the table. Then, feeling increasingly foolish, he watched her pick it up – in her hand, how monstrous – and point it at him.

  With a smile, she laid it back on the table. ‘I am very happy it was you they sent. But why you? So thoughtful. So different. So inexperienced.’

  ‘You could have shot me.’

  ‘To use violence is really a sign of failure. I have never used a gun. But, yes, a good agent divides the mind into separate compartments – personal and professional – and knows when to move from one to the other, can live and act in one or the other.’

  ‘I am not an agent. Just a soldier. A soldier with an order he does not wish to obey.’

  ‘You are more, better than that. You are aware, I think, though this life has not yet taught you to be watchful and to act relentlessly on what you see.’

  ‘This life?’

  In the quiet of the room, against the rise and fall of the waves, reflectively, pausing occasionally to think how best to explain, she told unfolded “this life” and who had lived it.

  They all came from the eastern borderlands. Perhaps that explained them: the mix of nationalities and languages, the ancient hierarchies, the uncertain, always shifting frontiers, especially with the war and its aftermath. You could go to sleep in one country and wake in another. ‘Coming from England, so unified, so stable, you cannot know how it feels when the town or village where you were born and went to school and made friends slips and slides under your feet.’

  She had said “They”. “They all came from the borderlands.” ‘They?’

  A loose group, not all from the same generation, not all from the same area – Galicia, Bukovina, western Ukraine, south-eastern Poland. Perhaps fellowship ran in the blood. ‘Many, the majority maybe’– she shook her head – ‘were Jewish.’ They had lived a double disadvantage, particularly after the war, at the hands of the new nationalist, anti-semitic governments that came to power.

  ‘You are Jewish?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Those large, slightly slanting brown-yellow eyes were appraising him. ‘Your mother is from Poland, is she not?’

  He laughed in surprise and nodded.

  ‘And her unmarried name?’

  ‘She’s never told us. She thinks of herself as French and brought us up, my sister and I, to think of ourselves as half-French.’

  ‘Dinah wonders, you know, about your background.’

  ‘Dinah? Has talked about me?’

  ‘Dinah is my cousin.’

  She covered his stunned silence by going to the kitchen for more coffee.

  ‘Yes.’ She refilled his cup. ‘Dinah is my cousin.’

  ‘You know about us?’

  She smiled. ‘Perhaps not everything.’

  He pulled out his pocketbook. ‘I have a drawing. My sister made it.’

  ‘It is very good. The expression in the eyes. Your sister is very talented.’

  He looked afresh, seeing something disengaged in the dark eyes. What had been her need to deceive, or just not trust him, even over the briefest of meetings with her cousin?

  She went on. ‘I love her dearly and blame myself for getting her into this.’

  ‘Into what? I must understand.’

  ‘Understanding begins in 1917.’ These borderland people found salvation in the ideals of the Russian revolution. Of course they were already committed to the left in its different forms and hosts of splinter groups. Their shared dream was finding a new homeland in the unity of a free and open socialist commonwealth, its one language the language of communism, its divided society reborn, whole, healed, in international socialism. The infant Soviet Union was the inspiration, the smelter, the moving force in the creation of this new society. Under constant threat, it had to be defended and protected, its ideals spread. The borderlanders committed themselves to this epochal task.

  Vienna was their magnet. They gravitated to Vienna and found each other in the workers’ flats and in working for Austria’s failed revolution. More came as time passed. Friends of friends, relatives. They joined the Third International, the Comintern, and found their niche – one recruited another – in its foreign intelligence division, not realizing that it was really run by and for Moscow, not realizing that in reality they were working not for international socialism but for the Red Army and its intelligence division—‘becoming the property of the so-called Fourth Department.’

  She was reflecting aloud, drawing up from her memories. He kept very
still, moving only to pass and light a cigarette for her, gripped by the strength of her story and the intensity of her recollection, no longer an explanation to a stranger, more a confession to history. The weather had cleared, leaving solitary white clouds to amble across the blue sky. A fishing boat rolled as it came in from the Point, showing the deep Atlantic swell under the calm surface.

  ‘But that was only a stage on the journey.’ Their duties for the Comintern, in reality for the Red Army Intelligence’s Fourth Department, had scattered them across Europe under constantly changing names and occupations, legal and illegal, public and private, but they still kept in touch, met when they safely could. ‘You have to understand how worthwhile it felt. Putting up with the discomforts and dangers, the fear of arrest, arrest itself, the need always to be watchful of everybody. The dangers were real but so was the sense of achievement, the excitement of building the new society. Nothing outside could compare with it.’

  The original generation learned as they went along: how to live and work in secrecy and how to survive. They passed their knowledge and experience to those who came later. There were no training schools. Then, for some, the initial joy and unthinking dedication, the sense of achievement and excitement were slowly drained from this extraordinary life. At different times, the realisation had to come. ‘We were bound to socialism in one country.’ And they realised that “socialism in one country” meant total control by Stalin and his creatures.

  In Russia, the disappearances and trials began. They noticed they were now ordered “to strive for the fatherland”. The NKVD foreign department took them over, one by one. Some went to Moscow for training and indoctrination. ‘Then we too began to disappear. Stalin was clearing out the old house. We learned to dread an invitation to Moscow for consultations or a vacation. “You haven’t been to see us for some time”, the message would come. “Don’t delay.” If you refused, it was a death sentence. If you went, you might never leave. The best you could manage was to delay.’

  ‘Why not give up?’

  ‘Impossible for some: “In spite of everything, everything for the Soviet Union”. Others believed that the terrible events would pass over and a truly socialist state would emerge, purified in the fire. Still others thought Stalin was ignorant of what his henchmen were doing in his name. The mad Yezhov, for instance.’

  She excused herself for a moment. A solitary car in the distance emphasised their isolation. Probably people had gathered to hear the Marshal.

  When she returned, retying her peignoir tightly, she sat back in her chair with her eyes closed, listening to the roar and suck of the sea. ‘You know, first you believe. Then you want to believe. Then you have doubts but trust everything will be for the best. Then you hope things will change, a miracle perhaps. A rumour that Stalin has been assassinated lifts the spirits. Then you are without belief or trust or hope but you have no other life. You are truly without choice or future.’

  ‘Could you not disappear or go to the authorities? Seek their protection?’

  ‘The NKVD has a long arm and a long memory. What I really mean is this. One or two of your old friends decide enough is enough. They are brave and principled and will act only with honour. They will resign. They cannot be persuaded not to. Perhaps they will share their reasons only with the party. Perhaps they intend to share their reasons with the world. Or maybe just resign and disappear. Of course, in resigning they will promise never to reveal any details of their past work. Of course. But understand that how they resign, what promises they give, make not a scrap of difference. Not a scrap. In deciding to leave, they have signed not only their own death warrants but the warrants of all those associated with them. They are defying a pitiless monster. Moscow will assume their circle knew of this treachery and did nothing to prevent it. It has a bottomless capacity for suspicion. “In doing nothing”, it says, “you assisted.”’

  ‘You?’

  She closed her eyes again for a moment. ‘Walter Thomas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We knew him as Walter Krivitsky. Before that, he was Samuel Ginsburg. One of our oldest friends. Very intelligent, very skilful. He worked in Paris and The Hague and became Moscow’s chief operator in western Europe. Through Krivitsky I became a trusted British agent.’

  ‘You were planted on the British?’

  ‘In The Hague. It was not so difficult. German agents also infiltrated your Secret Service station. And then they tricked two of your intelligence officers and kidnapped them.’ She shook her head. ‘The point is Walter desperately wanted to break with Moscow but could not bring himself to make the final move. I saw his indecision. His closest friend led the way – and paid the price on a back road in Switzerland. Then, finally, Krivitsky did jump.’

  ‘And Dinah had worked with him.’

  ‘London was not in his charge. That was for another, very senior agent, a businessman in Paris. Dinah acted as his London go-between. But in former days she and Gershon had close contact with Krivitsky. Also Moscow knows we are cousins.’

  ‘And that is why she is in danger?’

  ‘That would be enough. Turn on the wireless. We must not miss the Marshal. And let us have a glass of wine.’ She went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Muscadet, a corkscrew and glasses.

  The cork was stiff and he had to stand to work it free, but with a long pull it finally popped out. Almost at the same time came a second bursting noise, more a heavy thud, making his ears pop and sing, stunning him. Elisabeth Gerstina flopped back in her chair, her mouth open as though she had been about to speak, her eyes wide.

  A hard object was pressing into his spine. A soft voice was lisping ‘Stay where you are, sergeant, if you want to fight for your country.’ A hand came round him and seized the Browning. Then the pressure was off his back. A brown suit was running across the terrace holding a pistol with a long cylinder on its barrel. By the time Peter had reached the gate, the man was racing towards a car reversing to meet him, engine roaring, passenger door swinging open.

  Peter dropped to one knee. Holding the Mauser with both hands, he took a breath, aimed and fired. Brown suit dropped, rolled over and lay still. Then he got up clutching his shoulder and half fell into the car. The driver hauled him in. Peter fired again, shattering the rear window as the car accelerated away, skidding round the corner. The street was deserted. In the sudden silence, he could hear the sea. On his way back, he picked up the pistol from the bushes where brown suit had thrown it.

  She was motionless in her chair, her mouth still open, the yellow-brown eyes lifeless, the white of her peignoir patterned with red. The room smelled of wine. An elderly male voice was speaking on the wireless:

  ‘Je fais à la France le don de ma personne … I make to France the gift of my person, to relieve her suffering. In these unhappy hours, I think of the unfortunate refugees who, in a state of extreme deprivation, are lining our roads. I express to them my compassion and my solicitude. It is with a heavy heart that I say to you today that it is necessary to cease fighting. I have this evening approached the enemy to ask if he is ready to try to find, between soldiers, with the struggle over and in honour, the means to put an end to hostilities. Let all Frenchmen group themselves around the government over which I preside during these harsh trials, and let them silence their anguish and listen only to their faith in the destiny of La Patrie.’

  ****

  So that was Pétain. The hero of Verdun was taking France out of the war. That should please the mayor and his lady-friend.

  He turned off the wireless to hear any one else approaching and poured the remnant of the wine into a glass. A trace of her fragrance was left on his lips. No honour here. No end to hostilities here.

  He closed her eyes and sat by her, taking her hand, already cold. Had she been expecting this? She’d chosen him to hear her. To receive her secret story. Had he let her down? So inexperienced. Unwatchful. The man they had sent. Why had they sent such a man? The look in her eyes—accept
ance?

  He would never forget her. Never, no matter how brief this encounter, even though he knew next to nothing about her. Bukovinian? Galician? Ukrainian? Polish? Borderlands. In another life, teacher, businesswoman, public figure? Not to be trifled with. A truly compelling woman. Magnetic. With such intelligence, grace and warmth. He had been blessed. He closed his eyes; tears prickled under his eyelids.

  It was time to move. He gently put down her hand – she’d removed last night’s nail varnish he noticed – and went upstairs to fetch a covering. Her handbag was on her dressing table. With a sense of intrusion, he shook its contents on to the bed. Purse, banknotes, compact, lipstick, comb, nail file, handkerchief, chequebook, Marie Lagrange’s identity card and driving licence. A little phial of perfume. Lanvin, Arpège. Had that too come from Au Printemps? Keys: car keys, two sets of house keys, presumably the shop and flat as well as this villa. A small Levant leather-bound diary. The little notebook, page after page of chess moves. The keys, money, diary and notebook went into his pockets.

  He searched the drawers, pulling out each one to look at the back and underneath – crime movies were of some use. The bookshelf had Maupassant, Flaubert, Proust, a French translation of The Brothers Karamazov and Little Dorrit in English, books on needlework, embroidery and fashion, collections of chess games. A box of chessmen and a board. Nothing to help him understand. No trace of Dinah. He stood on a chair to look into the little room in the pitch of the roof. Empty except for some wires running round it.

  Downstairs again, he covered her with a sheet, then searched the rest of the house. Food and drink, pots and pans in the kitchen. Magazines – news, politics, culture, fashion – in the main room. Among them, the magazine with his mother’s photo-essay on Czernowitz. It looked well thumbed and as if it had been rolled up. She hadn’t mentioned it. By the telephone, a list of local numbers, tradesmen. He took it anyway. Nothing at all personal about the place – as though she’d rented the villa for a holiday.

  The noise of bombing came from across the point. Saint-Nazaire. He could hear aircraft. He must move on.

 

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